Anuradha Roy - The Folded Earth

Ama’s eyes fell on the wooden box that she stored valuables in. Nobody else was supposed to know where Ama hid the box or what was in it. But there it was, in plain view, its lid loose and the lock on it broken. Money was missing, as well as one piece of jewellery. This was Charu’s dead mother’s wedding nose ring: a bangle-sized gold hoop strung with pearls and gold beads, almost too heavy for a girl’s nostril to bear even on her wedding day, but nevertheless, a ring without which a hill girl’s wedding could not take place.

When Ama saw that the nose ring was gone, her finger went unconsciously to her own nostril, which a similar hoop had once pierced and left a sagging hole that was now empty of metal or stone. She rubbed it, as if in memory of all the rings and studs that had once pierced it. Slowly she put the box aside, shutting its lid so that the clerk and his wife, who had appeared by then as well, would be denied a look at the contents.

The clerk said, “I’ll get Lachhman, and we’ll go in his taxi to look around. She must be somewhere, maybe one of her animals has wandered and she’s searching for it. Arre O Puran, go and see: are all your cows and goats there in the sheds?”

Ama was looking straight at me, with a gaze so penetrating I could hardly meet her eyes. She said, “What do you say, Teacher-ni? Should we get a car?”

“She told me she might not do her lessons today because she had to go and see a friend who is getting married soon to a boy in Delhi.” I was stammering over the words. “I thought you knew.” Fear was making me feel weak. I needed to sit down. I held the door for support. Charu had no notion of big cities. What had made her do this without a word to me? If she got into trouble I would never forgive myself. Neither would Ama.

“And this boy is a good boy?” Ama said after a thought-filled pause. “After all, her friend’s mother would not marry her off to a rogue. In a far-off city. Eh, Teacher-ni?”

“He’s a good boy, Charu told me.” I tried to keep the tremble from my voice. I thought of setting off in pursuit of her. I had at least had the sense to write down Kundan’s address somewhere. She must have gone to him, where else would she have run to?

“From a good family?” Ama was saying. “This friend’s groom?”

“From a family which wanted nothing but the girl. No dowry, that is what Charu said. And he earns well, has a good, respectable job. His prospects are very good, he is going to travel even in foreign countries and earn five times what anyone here does.”

“Arre Ama,” the clerk said, “stop going on and on about Charu’s friend. She’ll marry who she’ll marry, what do we care? Should I get the taxi or not? I think we should go and look for Charu. It’ll get too late if we wait any longer.”

Ama said, “Let it be today. I think she’ll be back. I think she had told me too about going to this friend’s house, but I had forgotten. Our Teacher-ni, she always knows where Charu is.”

The next morning, Charu woke in one of the corridors of a Nainital hospital. She had spent the night there, finding nowhere else to wait for the morning bus to Delhi. The stench of urine and disinfectant had done away with her hunger pangs and throughout the night she had stayed awake listening to ill people groaning and mumbling in the open-windowed general ward. At night her worries turned into spectres. What if she never found Kundan? Had she enough money if it took time to locate him? What if he said he no longer wanted her? Why had he written so uncaringly in his last letter? What would happen to her if she had to return to Ranikhet after a failed journey? Ama would throw her out of the house with the same ruthlessness she had shown Charu’s father. Ama did not forgive people; she remembered wrongdoing for years. Maybe Maya Mam would fight for her. She would shelter her for a few days. She too had married out of caste — and religion — and she had lost her family.

She closed her eyes and tried to lull herself with thoughts of Kundan. How astonished he would be to see her tomorrow. She could not make herself believe that she would truly see him again, touch him, smell the scent of his skin again, feel his lips — in a mere day, a few hours. What were a few hours after all the months they had spent apart? But these last few hours seemed to stretch longer than weeks and months.

Early next morning, as she walked by the Nainital lake soon after dawn, she noticed that you could see bubbles in the water where underground springs fed it. It did not seem right that she was at the lake without him, he should have been showing it to her. All around her was water, more than she had ever seen. She thought that the ocean on the way to Singapore could not be much bigger. There were dozens of boats moored at the waterside, bobbing in the morning breeze. “We will go right to middle of the lake in a boat,” Kundan had promised her once, after a visit to Nainital with his employer, when he had seen the lake for the first time. He had kissed the soft, tender bit behind her ears and whispered as his hands travelled over her breasts: “There will be nobody but you and me in that boat.” Charu looked out across the water and imagined she and Kundan were at the centre of it, on a red and blue boat with long white oars.

The sun was inching up the sky. Charu had lost sense of the time as she gazed at the water. She had no watch. Panic overtook her. She ran from the lakeside to the bus stop, losing her way, frantically asking one of the pony men leading out a mangy horse where the bus stop was, then scampering in the direction he pointed. Her bag thumped her hips. Her shawl flew off her head. Her breath came and went in shudders.

She reached the entrance to the bus stop. The conductor and driver had only just arrived. They were standing by the bus, exchanging notes, smoking. The early travellers had come, and were waiting for the buses to be cleaned. She ran up to the driver and asked, just to be sure there was no mistake, “Is this the six o’clock bus to Delhi?”

“Yes”, they said. “The doors open after a while.”

She went a little distance off and waited, eyeing the men and the bus watchfully, taking no chances. At five minutes to six, she was first at the door. Other people were now straggling in with suitcases and bags, looking drowsy. She climbed in and got herself a window seat in the second row. The windows were cracked and some of them had the remnants of blue curtains thick with dirt. Charu bunched her curtain away for a last look at the lake. She plumped her bag on her lap. She would comb her hair when she reached Delhi, and before she saw him she would try to find a place to change into the prettier salwar kurta she had packed. She would wash her face and put some fresh kohl in her eyes. She smiled her secret smile, twisting her silver nose stud to settle it better. She took out a stale roti and lump of jaggery and munched on them for her breakfast.

* * *

The journey from Nainital to Delhi takes about eight hours by road. For the first part, the bus drops down from the hills on a narrow, spiral-staired road, with jungle on either side. At times the forest breaks, and when it did Charu saw snow peaks through the gaps. The same mountains she saw in Ranikhet, here too! She leaned her head against the rattling window of the bus and let her thoughts wander.

The bus charged onward, taking the bends at a speed that made her queasy. The driver had a feverish air and a face like a skull, and he flung his shoulders this way and that as he wrestled with his wheel. He thrust his head out of the window to yell to truckers coming the opposite way: “Arre Ustad, is there a jam ahead?” “Is the road open, should I go on?” Otherwise he laughed and sang. When he sang folksongs his voice was swaggering and loud. With romantic film songs it became a high squeak from which he emerged at abrupt intervals to yell curses at cars in his way: “Arre Saala, Privaaate!” He swerved towards big cars to give them a fright.