Anuradha Roy - An Atlas of Impossible Longing

Before the maid could reply, a quaver came from Kananbala’s direction: “And who is it you’re fucking these days, Meera?” she was saying. “Who is it you’re fucking? Who — is — it — you’re — fucking?”

Meera whirled towards Kananbala, horrified. Kananbala’s eyes were invisible behind glasses on which the morning sun shone. Her smile was sweet and denture-less. She repeated the words in a sing-song, absent-minded tone, rattling one of Mrs Barnum’s tins to keep time. Kalpana guffawed. Meera rushed out of the room, tears stinging her eyes. She could not, could not , continue living in Songarh. She must leave. Anywhere would be better than here. She would go to her brother and beg for shelter, she would look for a job in a city, anything but this nightmare.

She ran to the middle room and sat on the edge of her bed, shoulders tingling again with that familiar pain. Her life had boiled over when she wasn’t looking. What did I expect, she thought, remembering one of Manjula’s sayings, that I’d sprinkle cold water onto hot oil and not get burned by the sputter?

She became aware after a while that her breath was a noisy wheeze. Where’s my trunk? she panicked. Where’s the trunk in which I brought my clothes when I came here? The thought began to grow and cloud her mind. She got up and looked under the bed. She tried the attic in the long room. She could not make out its familiar mustard colour among the shapes huddled there. Frantic, she rushed up the staircase to the loft, but it wasn’t there either. As she came down the stairs, she encountered Kamal going into his rooms. He smiled at her with the new smile he had manufactured just for her.

Meera ran down the stairs, hand sliding on the banisters. Nirmal was coming up and paused at the landing to let her pass. “Where are you rushing to?” he said, sounding eager, but she did not pause.

She stopped by the door to slip her feet into her chappals and let herself out. There was a heaviness in the air, the stillness that comes before a downpour. She began to walk with rapid steps. As her distance from the house grew, she stopped and looked up at the louring sky.

There was a sudden sharp slap on her face, of wind. It gathered force and buffeted her sari. The tall trees at the edges of the fields bent double, surprised by the squall. Dust gathered into ochre clouds and rushed towards her. She covered her face with the corner of her sari and screwed up her eyes. Above her, the tin-coloured sky cracked and warped with lightning. The gulmohars glowed an intense orange, gathering the half-light. She felt the first drops of rain on her arms and the sweet, brown smell of water meeting dry earth. It came down faster. She removed her aanchal from her face and looked up at the sky, holding her face up to the rain, shutting her eyes against what was already a torrent. Under the trees sheltered a few straggly clumps of people who looked at her in amazement.

Something unlocked deep inside her as the rain fell on her face, and into the earth next to her, muddied her sari and gritted her slippers with dirt. In some other place, where nobody knew her, she would start all over again. She would leave as soon as she could. She would get away to a big city where nobody knew her. She would make room for herself.

Already the rain was tapering off, leaving only the damp earth smell which wiped out all memory of the smouldering days that had gone before.

* * *

It had been only about six months since Nirmal’s return to Songarh, and the serenity he had thought was his to keep had scattered over the past fortnight, leaving in its place a profound disquiet. Smoking his fourteenth cigarette of the day, he rested his elbows on the parapet of his roof, listening to Mrs Barnum’s piano which even from this distance was violent and lonely and sad. The crashing notes were reassuring, a sound from long ago, unchanged since his childhood. He wished he was a fossil responding to geological time, creaking, calcifying, hardening, going deeper and deeper into a rock-face or river-bed, metamorphosing over thousands of years from flesh and blood and marrow into stone; better to be a fossil than human, on the cusp of some painful new development almost every day.

In the years since Shanti’s death he had grown so accustomed to solitude that he had lost the ability, perhaps even the need, for friendship. And now, all of a sudden, Meera had told him she was going away to her brother.

“Going away,” Nirmal had repeated.

“Yes.”

“When will you be back?”

“I … he wants me to stay, he says there’s a school near his house, I could teach drawing … or something else. His wife is lonely too and my mother wants me as well.”

She had wrapped her sari a little tighter around her, taken a last look at the ruined fort and turned away from the dogs still tangled up in her sari, pawing her for more food, rolling over in delight at seeing her again. “I just came to see the pups one last time, I have to leave tomorrow.”

“They’ve been waiting for you every evening,” Nirmal had said. “They couldn’t tell why you’d stopped coming, they kept looking towards the path thinking you’d appear.”

“I know,” Meera had said. “How could I have made them understand? I was thinking of them too, but it wasn’t possible to come.”

“I can’t understand!” Nirmal had burst out. “Why this sudden decision to go? Couldn’t you stay a little longer so that —”

Meera had stopped him mid-sentence. “I have to go,” she had said. “It’s all settled.” She had started to walk away, then stopped to say, “If you could carry on feeding the dogs, just until the puppies are older … ”

Sleeping or awake, Nirmal thought the same thoughts. What had changed? Had he done something to make Meera leave? Had he suggested anything inappropriate? Was she offended that he had brought fish for her to eat? Surely not! Was she afraid of the new-found ease of their proximity?

He was not just bewildered about Meera. His mind swung between her and Mukunda; he felt unable to free himself from them. Again and again he remembered the time he had first gone to Mukunda’s orphanage because he had nothing to do, the whim of a pleasant winter morning — he had thought he would go and see the boy his father had left money for in his will — and he had returned with Mukunda, all of six years old.

Manjula had opened the door to Nirmal that distant afternoon; behind him was the boy. He had a thin face with a dimpled chin, greasy hair, large eyes bright with curiosity, and curly, long lashes, like a girl’s. He was in a blue shirt that looked as if it belonged to someone much older than him, his shorts came down to well below his knees.

“This is Mukunda,” Nirmal had explained. “I have brought him home.”

The argument over whether or not to keep Mukunda had continued for two or three days. Nirmal had refused to give in. The boy was too good for the orphanage; they taught them very little, fed them even less and beat them if they disobeyed. After all, our father wanted him looked after. He must be given a place, a life.

“What, in our bedrooms?” Manjula’s voice trembled with rage. “Do we know what caste he is? He could be any caste, he might even be a Muslim. I will not stand it. Hari, Hari!”

“I’m not sending him back,” Nirmal had insisted. “He can stay in my room.”

“Your room! That’s in the middle of the house. I will not allow any such thing. I will not .”

There was a compromise. The boy would stay, but in the outhouse. Would he be scared? Nirmal had asked him, and Mukunda had flashed a brilliant smile. “Me scared? I’m not scared of anything!”

And now Mukunda had to go. Kamal and Manjula had won the long battle.