Anuradha Roy - An Atlas of Impossible Longing

The third picture had the two of them staring at their wedding photographer. Nirmal glanced at it and put it aside. That thin, young face, the mop of hair, was that me? He went to the wardrobe mirror and studied the shadowed face that looked back at him. The hair was combed straight back like his father’s. There were deep lines on his cheeks, bracketing his nose. His face was still thin, but not thin as in the picture. Gaunt. Old. An old face. At just thirty-seven, he was an old man. And yet, not a patriarch as his father had been, not even an authoritarian like his brother.

His thoughts slid back two days. He had heard a knock on his door and prepared himself for another invasion from Manjula, but it was Meera. He was self-conscious about his dishevelment and did not want to call her into his untidy room with its rumpled bed, although he knew it was she who would have it cleaned later in the day, get the maid to make the bed and pull out filled ashtrays from under chairs and bed. He had stepped out onto the roof, shivering slightly in the early morning chill, and said, “Is anything wrong?”

“I … ”

In the soft light of the morning, her skin seemed luminous. He saw she had already bathed, and her hair loose, wet, had painted a ring of damp over her shoulders. Little specks of water hung diamond-like to it. She usually had a direct gaze, but today she would not look at him.

“Actually I came up to put the clothes out to dry … ”

Nirmal noticed a small iron bucket with wet, wrung-out clothes next to her. He waited, still wondering why she had called him out. “ … and I thought I should tell you … please don’t be angry with her, she’s young, and doesn’t know … Bakul, she has damaged some of your books … ”

“Books? Which books?”

“The staircase cupboard, books there, I … ”

Before she could finish what she was saying, he had rushed down the stairwell to the landing. Someone had begun to move the shredded books to one side, making piles of the scraps. Nirmal had knelt on the floor, tossing the scraps this way and that until the small space of the landing was covered with torn paper, in the middle of which he sat, inchoate with rage.

He felt sheepish about it now, about Meera watching him, trying to calm him, trying to salvage whatever little seemed retrievable. That evening when he came home from work he had seen that three of the books, painstakingly stuck back together, had been left on a windowsill in his room. Nobody but Meera would have done it.

What did she think of him? he wondered. A middle-aged man, sentimental about pressed leaves? A stupid man who had tried to punish his daughter by descending to the level of the child? Sticking back those pages must have taken Meera all day. Why had she done it? And Bakul, did she hate him so much that she had lashed out the only way she thought would hurt?

He looked at the photographs in his hand again, and for the first time weighed his own culpability. That little aluminium box contained all of Bakul’s memories of her mother, her most precious belongings. What had he done to add to them? Could he possibly make up for his neglect? Nirmal sat alternately smoking, looking at the pictures, and smoking again. Then, all at once, he seemed to reach a decision and got up from the bed.

I must show Shanti’s house to Bakul, he thought. That’s the only way I can give her some real connection with her mother. I ought to have taken her there long ago. She still has a grandfather; she must meet him.

He felt as if something had loosened inside him, given him space to breathe again. A surge of excitement made him push the box away and go out to the verandah. He would book railway tickets, it would be their first journey together. He would take Mukunda too, open up the boy’s world. They would stop in Calcutta on the way, he would show them the Victoria Memorial, he would show Bakul a real tram, not a tin box.

And since he couldn’t possibly manage the two children alone, he would take Meera too. He could barely wait to tell her, to see her eyes widen and her face light up.

Charged up by the thought of travel, yearning already for the familiar clacking of a train, Nirmal put his shoes on and went down the stairs. Why spend the entire holiday at home? he thought, and began to walk rapidly towards Finlays, looking for a tonga he might hail on the way.

* * *

Meera was running her fingers through a sari that was draped over a mannequin at Finlays. The mannequin was on a pedestal by the door, two feet taller than Meera, a pasty white with apple-red lips. An orange sari with a gold border rode its buxom body. Meera looked down at her own sari, her usual off-white, this one with a narrow brown border. Some day, she fantasised, I’ll again wear sunset orange, green the colour of a young mango, and rich semul red. Maybe just in secret, for myself, when nobody’s looking, but I will.

Unknown to her, Nirmal was watching from outside. It had brought him to a standstill, to see her doing something so ordinary, looking at a sari, the kind of sari that a widow could never wear. Beside the outsized orange and gold mannequin, Meera looked shrunken and drab, clutching her cloth shoulder bag as people milled around looking at things, buying things. Shop assistants and customers brushed past, indifferent to her. It was clear to them, as to Nirmal, that she was not there to buy anything. He was overcome by an unexpected twist of tenderness at her awkward presence, at her solitude in that crowded shop.

He went in and said, “What a surprise!”

Meera sprang away from the mannequin as if tainted by association.

“I … um … I had to bring the children out … it’s a holiday … ” she stammered. “They’re just over there, in the bookshop.”

Nirmal hesitated, wondering if he should, then sidestepping his misgivings he said, “There’s a tea stall outside. Will you have some?”

There were two sets of folding tin tables and chairs under an awning. Looking around, feeling self-conscious, Meera sat in one of the chairs, hoping it would not tear her sari or leave a stain, rust-brown on white. How odd it would seem to people who knew her, Meera, drinking tea in public with Bakul’s father. What conclusions would they jump to?

She said, “I brought the children for a treat. They don’t get out much … ”

“Didn’t you want to go to the bookshop too? I remember you used to read my father’s books. Surely you’ve finished them all in these six years.”

That he should have remembered how he had come upon her once raiding Amulya’s old glass-fronted book cupboards made Meera smile into her tea.

“Well, I’m reading some of them for the third or fourth time. I don’t buy too many new ones.” She looked away.

“Were Baba’s books good enough to re-read? What did he have? I’ve hardly looked really. I remember he read a lot of … botany.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Meera giggled. “Many solemn books. But also romances! Really. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights — those English novels. One called The Satin Roses of Cairo . They all have his name on them.” She stopped, thinking she was being improper. “I wonder where the children are,” she said. “I should go to the bookshop and fetch them.” She started to gather her things.

“Do you want a cream bun?” he said on impulse. “Did you know Finlays makes very good cream buns? Well, at least as good as any you can get in Songarh.”

She put her bag down but kept her hand on it as if she would rise any minute.

“Cream buns?” she said. “At our age?”

But she ate one, wiping the spilling cream surreptitiously with a white handkerchief embroidered with pink roses. She wondered if the hanky was clean. Nirmal noted it was the only bit of colour in her wardrobe and watched it touch her lips.