Anuradha Roy - An Atlas of Impossible Longing

“What’s happening?” I exclaimed, getting up in alarm and going towards the sound. “Who’s there?” I yelled into the darkness, “Come on out, you cowards!”

“Sit down, Mukunda,” Nirmal Babu said in a resigned, unsurprised voice. “They can’t reach us here. They won’t come in if they know we’re sitting outside. And maybe they think we have a huge Alsatian.”

“What d’you mean? I’m going to go out and find them. What’s going on?”

Then, even before Nirmal Babu began to explain, I knew. These were Aangti Babu’s men, my colleagues Bhim and Harold. Knowing what they were capable of, I could tell they were still just horsing around, had not yet really rolled up their sleeves. Their faces seemed to bob above the wall, gloating at my predicament.

“I’d thought we could spare you these tiresome details,” Nirmal Babu said into the darkness in the same resigned tone, “but I suppose … sit down, Mukunda, it’s no use pacing about.”

I returned to my place next to Bakul but kept glancing at the boundary wall, wondering when the next stone would come. I could picture the cadaverous Harold intoning, “Look up at the stars, look, look up at the stars”, as he searched for stones outside and pitched them through the night-sky into the garden.

“This is why Ajay could not let you in,” Nirmal Babu was saying. “A few days ago, when Bakul had come with me to the doctor to get my blood pressure checked, two men came in claiming to be people from the electricity board. Ajay let them in and they went to the mains and cut off our electricity. When we came back, the house was in darkness. It took half a day’s work for the electrician to repair it. So now Ajay has instructions not to let anyone in since he is too young to judge.”

Nirmal Babu fiddled with his matches. The red tip of a cigarette returned.

“The reason you don’t see Kamal and Manjula here is that they left Songarh. The business collapsed, Kamal was deep in debt despite selling all the assets — even the factory and some land for growing medicinal herbs. Their needs had changed too. Kamal thought he’d get a job and Manjula was never happy here anyway.”

Nirmal Babu paused as if it was difficult for him to speak.

“Oh Baba! Don’t make excuses for them!” Bakul exclaimed. “They were dreadful,” she said, in a scathing tone. She turned to me. “One day we discovered that they had sold the house behind our backs, using some old legal papers Baba had given them in the years when he travelled all the time. They said absolutely nothing to us, just that we’d have to move, holding out some fiddly amount of money as a bribe.”

“Not a bribe, Bakul,” Nirmal Babu said, “just a share, compensation.”

Another stone fell into the garden with a thud. A handful of gravel clattered onto the tin roof of the outhouse near the gate. Ajay came and took away the frantic dog.

“I’m sure we could have contested all this in court, but Baba … ”

“I don’t want to waste my life in a law court,” Nirmal Babu cut in sharply, as if he had said this many times before. “There are other things to think about and do.”

Bakul must have decided not to pick a fight. She took a sharp breath but said nothing.

“I can’t see any way out, Mukunda,” Nirmal Babu said. “I don’t want to waste my life in law courts, especially fighting my own brother. I want to get Bakul married and then I’ll move somewhere smaller.”

Bakul snorted, but too softly for her father to hear.

“You know I was never one for relatives, Mukunda,” Nirmal Babu said, forcing a smile. “But now I’m really having to cultivate them to find a suitable boy for Bakul. Tell me, is there anyone you know who might be a possibility? One of your friends?”

In the darkness I could not see his face and although his tone sounded jocular, perhaps he was half serious. After all Bakul was almost twenty-three, and at her age most girls were married. She did not think so, I suppose, and snapped, “Baba!”

“Well,” sighed Nirmal Babu. “I just need some time, but the dealer who’s bought this place is in a hurry, and he’s set his goons on us. One night it’s pebbles, another night it’s our doorbell ringing repeatedly, some other night we find our well has rubbish thrown in it. We’ve never seen a soul, but these things have been happening the past fortnight or so.”

He rubbed his hand over his eyes and then said, “For tonight maybe their activities are over. They must have run out of stones.” He got up from his chair and stretched. “Stay here tonight, Mukunda, why return to the hotel when your own home’s here?”

I got up too. “I need to go,” I stammered. “I really have some work, some papers.” I could not meet his eyes, even in the dark, knowing what secrets my own eyes hid.

“He doesn’t want to stay, Baba,” Bakul said scornfully. “He likes the comforts of his hotel.”

“No, no,” I protested. “It’s not that, Bakul, the hotel is no good, but … ”

“But this house is much worse?”

I could see her teeth shining in a smile in the darkness. “Don’t bother him, Bakul,” Nirmal Babu said. “But will we see you again?”

“I’ll be back,” I promised. “Tomorrow.”

* * *

I poured out a large rum from a bottle I had bought at a shop near the station. The water I mixed into it was lukewarm, and it was already late, but I took a long, scorching gulp. What am I to do, I kept repeating to myself, what am I to do? I could not throw up Aangti Babu’s job and say to him, “I won’t do your dirty work, take it somewhere else.” What if he did? Everyone else would be more ruthless than me.

I could move them out gently, find them a nice place. But then, to think of that house, my home, going over to Aangti Babu and his henchmen, to be broken into, broken down, bartered away in parts, built over, forgotten. Impossible!

I had never thought the work I did would one day boomerang this way; its darkness had always been locked away behind the doors of other people’s lives. It seemed out of the question that I should continue. Yet if I gave up Aangti Babu’s work, what would I do? What other trade did I know? How would I feed my son? My wife?

I lay staring up at the ceiling, noticing the fan for the first time. Its bulbous centre was greasy and yellow. The grease was so thick and heavy, it did not look as if the fan could hold onto it much longer. It creaked through each rotation, so slowly I could see its blades were edged with warty soot. With each rotation a drop of dirt seemed to form and I waited for it to drop onto my open eyes.

My wife. What would she think of me flirting with Bakul the way we had all evening? And Tommy. Why were Bakul and he so comfortable together, so intimate? Were they lovers?

And if they were, why did it trouble me?

* * *

The sun shone straight on my face. It was already midday. I lay still for some moments, scratching the weal of a mosquito bite near my ear and listening to the muted sounds of the hotel. I got up at last, looking sourly at the half-empty bottle of rum, the glass next to my bed, and picked up my towel. The bathroom at the end of the corridor must be empty, I thought, and a long bath would do me good.

As I opened the door, I almost stepped into a leafy mass just outside. It seemed to be a bunch of flowers. I picked it up and returned to my room. There was just one large flower: it was pure white, some sort of lily with curling stamens. It had been uprooted together with its long, fleshy leaves. At the end of the leaves was the bulb, a large, whitish turnip-like thing with root-hairs sprouting out of the flesh, bits of the mud it had grown in still clinging to its skin.

I sat down on my bed holding the plant. There was something defenceless and infinitely vulnerable about the bulb, as if a heart had been torn out of a body and left out in the open for anyone to see. The flower reared out and away from its dumpy ordinariness, exquisite, perfect. I put the plant on the bedside table, but I could not look away from it. By turns it seemed enigmatic, pathetic, and even malevolent. I could not imagine why it had been left at my door, or by whom. Was it one of Harold’s eccentric notions of a threat?