Anuradha Roy - An Atlas of Impossible Longing

The globe was hollow, filled with a liquid within which floated green ferns and weightless rocks. If spun hard, the blues ran into the greens and the yellows became browns, seas tumbled into the mountain ranges, and the Americas merged with Asia. Bakul sat hunched over it at the dining table, now spinning it, now turning it more slowly until she located India, distracted in between by the tiny giraffes and zebras that were painted into parts of Africa. Mukunda said, “Silly, your Manoharpur won’t be on the globe, the globe is for big places.”

“It will!” Bakul was passionate, “Thakuma said it’s near Calcutta, just some distance away, through rice fields and lotus ponds. First we have to find Calcutta.” She spun it again.

Mrs Barnum came over to the table and with a long, amber fingernail tapped a point on the globe next to the turquoise of the sea: “There,” she said, “there’s your Calcutta.”

She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She could see herself whirling, spinning, her dress swinging out. “Dancing the night away,” she whispered. “I was always dancing the night away in Calcutta, and going to the cinema in my sea-green gown, the men in their bow ties and the champagne afterwards, my feet not touching the ground for dancing, always the prettiest girl at the ball, all the men waiting for Larissa to dance with.”

Mukunda picked up the Leaning Tower in its glass bowl and watched the snow fall. It could mesmerise him, the snow falling, it made him dream of places he had never seen, places waiting for him to reach them. He imagined himself inside the globe, feeling the snow on his face, walking into the tilted tower and looking out from its minute windows, watching the whiteness drift about him.

He was too shy to tell Bakul of his daydreams, but he wanted to sometimes. He wanted to tell her that his dreams took him far beyond Songarh, beyond Calcutta, across oceans, towards icebergs. What would she say? She would certainly say, “Take me with you! I want to come too!” Would he? Perhaps. But what would he do with a girl on a ship? In the stories he was reading, none of the tall, rough men ever took girls with them on their ships.

* * *

That evening, meeting Nirmal alone at the foot of the stairs, Manjula stated: “I think taking the children on this trip is a bad idea.”

“A bad idea?” Nirmal was nonplussed. He was unwilling to start a conversation that would ruffle his new-found calm. “Don’t worry,” he said climbing up the stairs away from Manjula. “It may never happen.”

“Those two shouldn’t be taken on holidays together. They disappear for hours, we don’t know where, and half the time they’re with that Anglo woman who drinks and smokes. Nirmal, I think … ”

“It’s alright,” Nirmal said from the landing towards her upturned face. “They’re only children playing, Didi, don’t worry. I’d better rush. Work to do. Now the dig’s approaching there’s so much to do.”

He turned away. It was only since announcing the trip that he had sensed a real dilution in Bakul’s hostility towards him. Leave me alone, he wanted to tell Manjula, do not interfere.

“Work to do,” Manjula mimicked in an undertone. “They’re all the same, men, think they have important work and we’re just stupid idlers.”

* * *

Late the next afternoon, Nirmal sat with Meera at the ruin somewhat distracted, not really looking at her new drawings. He knew his colleagues at the office were scenting scandal. Someone had seen him with Meera at the ruin one afternoon, and they were beginning to talk about his daily disappearance. But for the moment he pushed the thought aside. This time alone supplied the missing words to the story of his day and completed it for him.

He turned the pages, looking for drawings of the dome’s left side, finding only birds and dogs.

Meera was busy with the dogs some distance away. He continued to turn the pages. She jumped, startled by his sudden, loud laughter.

“Oh no,” she said, running to him, “you’ve got the wrong book!”

He snatched it away from her flailing hands and continued to chuckle. “It’s very good,” he said. “It’s very, very good.” He was looking at a caricature of Manjula, her nostrils flaring over a bull neck and folds of skin, eyes bulbous with rage, ears hung with enormous gold studs, hands on rolling hips.

“You should be a cartoonist too,” he said, turning the page and looking at Kamal, whose paunch flowed pillow-like below his kurta, while his small hands stuck out from his body like stalks from fat brinjals.

“Please, Nirmal Babu,” Meera said, urging. “Please give me … ”

Nirmal turned the page and came upon a picture of himself. Not a cartoon. A sketch. His forehead and cheeks had been carefully shaded in. His hair was drawn in separate strands. His eyes were thoughtful. On the next page another picture of him, from a different angle, this time with a book, glasses on, long legs looped over a chair-arm in the way he knew he always sat while reading. On the page after that yet another picture of him sitting under the banyan tree at the ruin, this one unfinished. They were not sketches. They were a declaration of love.

Meera looked away, aghast.

The earth felt as if it had begun to roll under her feet. She thought she would fall. She felt dizzy and held a tree for support.

From far away she heard Nirmal’s voice. “It’s an earthquake, I think it’s an earthquake.” He looked around, wildly shouting, “Bakul! Ma! We have to go home. Get away, get away from the building, it may fall, it’s already crumbling! I must get Bakul.” He began to run down the path, away from the ruin, but was forced to stop. It was like walking on water. The beaten earth around the fountain moved like an animal shaking itself awake. It rose and fell as if the animal had become a wave in the sea. They heard a deep, distant rumble from somewhere far beneath.

* * *

Manjula and Kamal, who had run out into the garden when the house began to shake, could see Mrs Barnum across the road in a long, blue nightie, hair in curlers, shouting for her khansama. She flung open the gate and ran across the road to them. She had never come to their house since her picnic with Kananbala.

“It’s an earthquake isn’t it? Eh, girl?” She was smiling at Bakul, “Your first?” She reached the others, hair coming loose, nightdress falling off her shoulder. Turning to Kamal she remarked — speaking as if they were outside for a garden party — “D’you think it’ll be as bad as the last one? Now that was an earthquake, but I was in Calcutta that day and dancing enough to shake the floor without any help from quakes.”

“If only we had a conch!” Manjula exclaimed, almost tearful. She was too terrified to take notice of Mrs Barnum’s exposed shoulder and dishevelled hair.

“I know you’re supposed to blow a conch to stop the earth shaking,” Mrs Barnum said. “But not even Triton blowing his wreathed horn would stop this!”

“Where’s Mukunda?” Bakul exclaimed. “And what about Thakuma?” She ran towards the house for her grandmother while Mrs Barnum shouted, “I wouldn’t go inside the house if I were you — it might fall on you!”

“Radha Krishna, Radha Krishna, Radha Krishna, save us, keep us from harm, Radha Krishna,” Manjula muttered.

“It’s over,” Kamal said to Manjula. “Can’t you see? The house is still standing, and nothing’s moving any more.”

“Over?” Mrs Barnum said. “What a pity! So short!”

“Where’s Meera?” Kamal said. “And Nirmal? Why didn’t they come out? It’s a holiday and he’s at work? How very odd!”

* * *

Meera stood clinging to the banyan tree for support, heart thudding, the salty taste of nausea in her mouth. The ground beneath her was still, but she was filled with terror that it would begin to roll again. She looked around for Nirmal, saw him emerging from behind the ruin, laughing like a boy. The minute he had realised it was not a major earthquake he had forgotten all about Bakul and his mother and hurried to examine the ruin instead.