The Lilac House Read Online Free PDF

to thin out and Jak could smell the ocean.
    ‘How far is the sea from here?’ he asked the taxi driver.
    ‘Behind the lodge,’ the man said. ‘But it is not a sea you can swim in. The coast is dangerous.’

    ‘I know,’ Jak said. ‘I have been here before.’
    ‘Then I don’t have to tell you to be careful,’ the man said.
    ‘No.’ He spoke quietly. If only someone had warned Smriti to be careful.
    When the taxi pulled up outside an ugly bleached building, he asked, ‘Are you sure this is the place?’ The driver stared at him blankly, then shrugged. ‘This is the lodge. Not at all suited for people like you. You want me to take you elsewhere? I know of a really good place…’
    Jak held up his hand to pause the flow of words. He paid the driver and pushed open the metal gate. Somewhere in this dingy seaside lodge he would find the first clue, he thought.
     
    The reception clerk made him wait as he filled a register. There was a wall-mounted date sheet. 30 September. A line of red plastic chairs stood alongside a wall. A few men sat there, idly flicking through different sections of the newspaper. One man was talking on a mobile phone.
    He felt their eyes on him. The smoke from their cigarettes stung his throat. Were you here when it happened, he wanted to ask them. It was in the last week of February. On the twenty-eighth. Do you remember? Wasn’t there something you could have done? Anything?
    You sir, he wanted to ask an elderly man in a cream coloured half-sleeved shirt and dhoti who was reading a newspaper, you look like a father, a grandfather; an educated man. Shouldn’t you have said something? Asked her why she was here. Damn it, isn’t that what we do, poke our nose into everything, probe and question all we see? She wouldn’t have liked it. She may have asked you to mind your own business. She may have walked away muttering, ‘Indians!’ But if you had asked her… Maybe.
    As he walked away, he heard the elderly man ask the clerk, ‘Who is that? Not the type we see here.’
    He heard the clerk mutter a response.

    ‘Who is that man?’ Jak asked the hotel boy, feeling the elderly man’s scrutiny brand his back.
    ‘He owns the hotel. Dr Srinivasan sir. He owns everything here in Minjikapuram. Shops. The hospital. The theatre. Everything. He is a very important man.’
    Jak nodded, feigning interest. He felt his thoughts crowd in on him again.
     
    Jak shifts in the chair and puts down the book he is trying to read. He has read the same line twenty times over and it is still only a series of meaningless syllables. He lights a cigar but it tastes bitter and dry in his mouth. He decides to go for a walk. The reception clerk pretends not to see him as Jak walks past. Jak wonders at the hostility of the man’s averted glance. It makes no sense at all. They don’t even know each other.
    He ambles slowly along the road. It is dark by the time he reaches the Minjikapuram main road. He looks at his watch. It is a quarter past six. He stands on the side of the road rubbing the bridge of his nose. What is he doing here?
     
    The cinema theatre is where it used to be, ahead of the bus stand. Jak buys a ticket and enters the darkened hall. He has a seat in the balcony, right at the back. But the theatre is almost empty, so he chooses for himself a seat in the front row. He leans back, propping his feet on the parapet wall in front. He can’t remember the last time he was in a cinema theatre.
    Appa had liked going to the movies. They would go for the night shows – Appa, Amma and he. It was the one weakness his otherwise austere father allowed himself. Amma wouldn’t say it, but movie nights made her especially happy. She would dress in her silks and braid jasmine into her hair. Her laugh would echo through the house and she would cook something special for dinner. As Jak sat there watching the story unfold, of caring husbands and patient wives rewarded, of villains being beaten to a pulp and of
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