Anuradha Roy - An Atlas of Impossible Longing

By the end of the cream rolls, the lemony sunlight of the March afternoon had melted without warning into dusk. Meera wondered what she would say at home about the time she had been gone. Who would make the tea before Kamal came home? What would Manjula say about this long absence? And what would they say when they saw all of them return together ?

What was it about darkness, Meera thought, that altered things? Always those injunctions from parents, from husband, from relatives, Come back before dark ! What exactly, she had wondered, would happen in the dark that could not happen in the day? But sunset and rising panic had been with her since she could remember. Someone brushed past her. Meera suppressed a shriek. It was a figure hooded in a nocolour shawl.

“Tonga, Mataji?” the man enquired in a reedy voice.

At last they were in a tonga. It had two long hard seats back to back, facing opposite directions but united by a common backrest. Meera listened to the quiet creak of the wheels, the brisk clopping of hooves, the happy ringing of the bells. The sharp smell of the horse, its particular mix of dung, sweat, and open air, drifted back to her in the breeze and she breathed it in, relaxed by the rocking carriage. She sat with Bakul at the back, listening to Mukunda chattering with Nirmal in front about horses and whips. They reached the swell of the slope that would turn into the homeward road. The thin, shrouded tongawallah whipped his horse, veins snaking down his wrists, riverlike. The horse glistened with sweat despite the chill in the evening air. The tonga hurtled, gathering speed as the slope charged steeper and steeper down before rising again. Meera took a deep breath of the rushing air and tried to tuck her hair into its pins.

Divided from her only by a sheet of thin, hard wood sat Nirmal. If she leaned her head just a fraction, she would be able to rest it on his shoulder.

She shut her eyes for a moment and held tight to the armrest.

Ever since that tea with Meera, Nirmal found he was unable to focus on the paperwork before him by the time the tea boy came in at four each day with his steaming brown cups. What kind of theodolite? How many? Tents or no tents? Were there enough labourers available locally? He had requisition forms to fill out, letters to write, but his mind kept returning to the ruin, or if he was honest with himself, to his knowledge that Meera was perhaps at the ruin at that moment, alone, feeding the dogs, making her drawings.

On the fourth afternoon he gave up the struggle and left the office early, saying he was going for a site survey. He walked right round the ruin, but found no evidence of Meera. He walked into the dome but heard only mewling sounds and a low snarl. Thinking she had gone further afield he wandered towards the dry stream-bed, but he did not find her there either. Disconsolate, and now edgily aware from his feeling of disappointment that his trip had had no professional basis at all, he began to walk back towards the entrance to the fort.

This time there she was, walking rapidly towards the dome as if she were late, shredding rotis as she went. Her cloth bag swung and bounced off her hip with each quick step she took.

He stopped and crept back behind a broken-down wall, sweat beading his forehead. What was he thinking? Why had he come? It was ridiculous. She was a distant relative, a widow; if she sniffed a trace of longing in him she would be offended and shut him out. If anyone in his family or neighbourhood got to know, there would be turmoil; Meera would certainly be ostracised, and perhaps he would be too.

He peeped around his wall, realising the absurdity of his situation: how could he leave without her seeing him? If he did not walk out now, he would have to skulk around for as long as she decided to stay there drawing. He could see she had settled down, leaning against the banyan tree. The dog sat next to her, alternately scratching its ears and sniffing its rear.

He took a deep breath and tried to emerge as if taken by surprise. She saw him and put down her sketchbook.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have realised this has become a workplace now — I really shouldn’t idle here.”

Her words triggered an idea in Nirmal’s head and he blurted it out before he had even thought it through.

“You’re not idling, actually. What you’re doing could be work!”

“What do you mean?” By now he was next to her, bending down to the dog in an effort at friendship, to which the dog was responding with the most imperceptible of tail wags.

“I mean that we need site sketches before we start, detailed ones. Do you think you could do them for me?”

“Wouldn’t you need a professional?” Meera said. “I only sketch, I’m not a draughtsman.”

Nirmal sat beside her and said, “If you’d agree to show me some of your drawings I’d know.”

With some trepidation, she opened her sketchbook and began to turn the pages. There were drawings of trees and flowers, a few of the dog. The lines were sharp and fluid. She had also drawn the ruin from various angles. Nirmal saw that the drawings were more atmospheric than accurate. How, for instance, did the dome look exactly ? How large was it in relation to the pillars? Meera had smudged away some lines, softening the drawings in the style of charcoal sketches, hidden away architectural details behind pastelly trees and clouds. He wondered how to tell her she needed to change her style for the drawings he required. Of course he would also get a professional to draw it, and photographs would be taken every day.

She was looking at his face as he turned the pages. When he turned the tenth page, Meera almost snatched her book away.

“Did I see something I shouldn’t have?” Nirmal sounded offended.

She laughed nervously and said, “I think that’s all, there are blank pages after that.”

“These are wonderful sketches, they really convey the feeling of this place.”

Meera looked away, unable to hide a smile. She had been drawing ever since she had come to Songarh, but she had not thought anyone would be interested.

“Could you try to do this a little more systematically?” Nirmal said. “Do the front first, then one side, then another, keep the lines clean as if it’s a diagram, give as exact a sense of proportion as possible. Just draw the building as if you were drawing a map.” He would not ask for more, he thought, or she might be frightened off.

“I’ll try,” she said, “but I only have a little time every day, so it won’t be quick enough for you.”

Nirmal got up and dusted his trousers.

“A little time every day is enough,” he said. “For a start.”

* * *

Over the next few days Nirmal turned to his papers at the office with something like his old single-mindedness, rejoicing in long hours of work as he planned the Songarh dig. He was suffused with contentment of a kind he had not felt since his return. It was a rare feeling, one that usually came to him, if it did, high on a mountain ridge, the immense folds and humps of hills and valleys falling away before him, edges muted in the evening air. At such times, he saw himself as if from the sky, an infinitesimal speck on a gigantic fold of earth, and yet as significant, as inseparable a part of the mountains, pink sorrel and trees as were the flying squirrels that scampered up the deodars beside him.

Nirmal felt now that the house was getting used to having him back, and Bakul was less truculent. In the evenings, she sometimes followed Mukunda to Nirmal’s rooftop and stood by while Nirmal showed Mukunda how to identify constellations. Sometimes when he sat with the boy, showing him picture books with photographs of the Acropolis and the tomb of Tutankhamen, he noticed Bakul looking over his shoulder. He said nothing to her. If he did, she would leave, he knew. He had returned her box to its place under Kananbala’s bed but had not forgotten his plan to take her to Manoharpur. One evening he said, “When do your summer holidays begin?”