An Atlas of Impossible Longing

by Anuradha Roy

  Kamal got up, satisfied with his barb, and walked away from the table before Nirmal could think of a reply, a reply both for himself and for Kamal, a reply perhaps for Bakul too.

  In his ten years in the Survey, which he had joined after resigning from his college job, he had avoided Songarh. Instead, imitating his disappearance immediately after Shanti’s death, he had volunteered for longer-than-required postings in Rajasthan, in Madhya Pradesh, in Punjab, scrabbling the earth for past lives. Whatever leave he got from work he spent wandering around the Himalaya, walking and on mule back, in flowering meadows, in dense forests and on bare, icy slopes, collecting leaves, stones, fossils, and bird feathers. He had two trunks full of things he had collected, carefully catalogued. The trunks travelled with him and stood in his tent even when he went on his digs.

  Something, however, had led him the year before to put forward that proposal about Songarh, arguing that the visible remains of the fort and the mounds behind hid perhaps an entire ancient township, and that the Archaeological Survey needed to set up at least a camp office to investigate. Nirmal had known the danger: if the proposal was accepted, he would be posted to Songarh. He would have to go home.

  The proposal had been described as “brilliant” and “persuasive”. Nirmal should have been delighted, but he felt only a sense of inevitability. He had for long years wanted to dig in the earth around the ruined fort of Songarh to find his lost city, but it was not professional ardour that finally had made him write the proposal. It was something unconnected with archaeology, some powerful impulse untranslatable into words. Could he say that on one of his trips to Rajasthan, among the craggy ancient rocks of the Aravalli range where the ochre landscape flamed into the green-yellow of mustard fields against which shocks of magenta bougainvillea cascaded like bloodspills, he had at last felt free of Shanti? Could he admit to himself the sense of wholeness that, uncalled, slid into him then? At last the restfulness – of the first broken ramparts of Rajput forts, the smiling camels, the hapless cries of the peacock in the failing light – of looking and listening without wanting to gouge his heart out and fling it away.

  He had submitted the proposal in the weeks after that. He had felt he was ready to face his home, and his daughter.

  * * *

  Nirmal walked to the fort for a private site survey of his own. He had already asked for two or three workers from the Public Works Department to help with the dig. He would have two junior archaeologists too, both historians who had never been on a dig before. Not much, but a start, Nirmal thought as he walked. He would have to start requisitioning equipment soon, whatever he could get within his budget.

  The first glimpse of the fort’s low, broken-down walls and the hillocks beyond it quickened his steps as always. Posted to Bikaner and Sindh, he had not seen it the past six years. Now, once more, excitement surged through him at the thought that he was about to live out a fantasy. For years in his youth he had dreamed of this; now he would find out if the hillocks hid cities and cultures, if the dry stream-bed was the leftover of some ancient river that had changed course, forcing the people on its banks to abandon their settlement.

  He walked rapidly around, then, trying to calm himself, sat by the shallow pool and lit a cigarette. It didn’t seem that long, Nirmal thought, inhaling, since he had sat at that pool with Shanti, looking out at the dimming light, the broken lines of the ruin slowly erased by dusk. Yet the edges of the memories he had of that time were blurring, little details he had thought indelible had tipped over the edge into oblivion.

  Annoyed at letting his thoughts stray from the work in hand, Nirmal took out a pencil and began to scribble into a notebook he had brought with him. He listed equipment, material, manpower required, he listed books and articles he needed to look up. After a while, accepting him as part of the landscape, plump grey pigeons pecked the ground around him. He saw flashes of green as parakeets swooped and chattered overhead, squabbling for food.

  But now he felt distracted by an odd sound nearby, something between a squeal and a whine. He looked up, startled.

  There was a woman’s voice now, saying, “That’s all, leave me alone.”

  There was a silence, then the woman exclaimed again, “I said that’s enough, will you stop?”

  Nirmal got up, brushing his trousers. Could there be someone in trouble? The voice had come from inside a domed room in the ruin, one of the few structures left with its ceiling unbroken. He walked into its darkness, strong with the smell of pigeon droppings and dust. For a moment inside, he could not see anything in the sudden blackness. He could hear a woman’s voice in the shadows of the dome, amplified by its emptiness.

  “Nirmal Babu,” the voice said, “please don’t come any closer.”

  “Meera?” Nirmal said. “Is that you?” His eyes got used to the lack of light and he saw that it was indeed Meera. He felt aggrieved at being told to stay away and said, “I wasn’t going to … come any closer. I only heard something and thought there may be someone in trouble. I should leave you alone.” He turned to go back to the pool.

  “Oh no, that’s not what I meant,” she exclaimed, following him with a laugh. “Please don’t misunderstand … It’s just this … ”

  Limping behind her was an emaciated dog, brown and black, fur eaten away in patches, swollen dugs hanging to the ground. It pushed its eager muzzle into Meera’s hand, whining.

  Meera still had the fragment of a roti in her hand. She dropped it to the ground for the dog and said, “She’s had her puppies inside there and she can be quite ferocious about them. That’s why I had to ask you to stay away.”

  Nirmal looked at the dog, wondering what Meera saw in it. It looked mangy and had a strong, unpleasant smell. Politeness made him enquire: “And do you come to feed her every day?”

  “Almost … but sometimes it’s difficult to get away. I feel bothered the days I can’t come.” She stopped and gave a sheepish smile. “It’s silly, I know. They’d survive with or without me.”

  “And you walk all that way to feed this dog? You must like dogs very much.”

  “Not just to feed the dogs,” Meera said, “I like to walk – otherwise I feel cooped up – and also I sometimes sit here and draw. It’s a break from housework.”

  Nirmal noticed a cloth bag hanging from her shoulders and was curious. “What have you been drawing?” he asked her. “Would you show me?”

  “Oh no,” Meera said. “There’s nothing much. Just some sketches.” She clutched the bag closer and laughed self-consciously. “Lots of schoolgirls draw like me. It’s only for amusement.” Then she said, to change the subject, “Were you here to survey the site? I suppose it’s a site now, isn’t it, not just the old Songarh ruin?”

  “Well, not quite survey … ” Nirmal began to explain. Twenty minutes later he realised they were sitting under the banyan tree, and he was still talking: about how he had wandered over the ruins as a boy; how he had found some shiny piece of metal there once and thought it an ancient weapon; how he had tried digging there with a garden khurpi after reading of Marshall and Mohenjodaro; how he had applied for a job to the Archaeological Survey, never thinking they would give him one. He stopped, embarrassed by his garrulity, and said, “I’m not used to talking. Either I can think of nothing to say or I talk non-stop. Really uncouth.”

  “No, no,” she protested, “I’d have stopped you if I was bored. I’m not. But it’s late. I do have to go. It’s time for Bakul to come home from school. I’ll leave you to your work, I’ve disturbed you enough.”

  Before he could protest or offer to accompany her, she had got up and started on her way back. “I did bore her,” he thought. “She couldn’t wait to get away.”

  His eyes followed her as she walked away swiftly. He wondered if that was the first real conversation he had had with her. He sat down again by the pool and tried to return to his notes, but despite himself his thoughts returned to Meera. She had been taking care of Bakul for the past six – or was it
seven? – years, but he hardly knew her. He knew she had been widowed young – even now she was probably no older than twenty-five or -six. A mutual relative by marriage had told Nirmal about her. He had then written to Meera, asking if she would live at Dulganj Road and look after Bakul. He recalled the brief postcard that came in reply, written in a hand that made the letters look like brushstrokes. Now when he thought back to that handwriting, he thought it logical that Meera should like to draw. Her handwriting was a set of beautiful lines you could look at and admire even if you didn’t understand the meaning. But he had understood the meaning, and what her letter had said, beyond its words, was that she would gladly come to Songarh, to look after a house and a child in exchange for a home.

  * * *

  It was a year after her husband’s death that a letter had arrived from Nirmal asking if Meera would live in Songarh, as part of their family, and look after Bakul. His wife had died in childbirth, he wrote, and his work took him away from home for long stretches. The woman who had looked after Bakul for the past four years was too old now, and besides, Bakul needed someone who could give her more than basic care – she would soon need help with homework, someone to talk to, confide in. Meera noticed he did not write that the child needed someone to give her affection, though that was surely what his letter was ultimately saying.

  Meera’s own mother, a widow herself who was dependent on her son, had urged Meera to accept Nirmal’s offer: “The girl will be like a daughter to you. You will never have children of your own, make this motherless one your child! Maybe this is what God meant for you all along.”

  Meera did not want a child. She wanted escape from her husband’s parents, to whom the mere fact that their son was dead and she was alive was an outrage. It had not taken Meera long to decide; she had packed a small trunk and taken the two trains to Songarh within the fortnight.

  It was now eight years since her husband’s death. She knew she was supposed to mourn him for ever, but he was already slipping her guilty grasp. She recalled him only piecemeal – the way his stomach – he had a gentle paunch at twenty-three – sloped into his trousers. Or the way he couldn’t eat without crunching through a pile of green chillies alongside. But his voice – she could no longer hear it in her ears as she did before, if ever she put her mind to it. How had it felt when he touched her? How did he smell when he woke up from sleep and curled up again next to her? Her store of memories, rummaged through too often, had staled now, lost their incantatory power to bring his presence back.

  In the early days at Dulganj Road, she had begun to feel that Nirmal, who was not really related to her except by marriage, was a kindred soul. Nirmal did not speak very much to anyone, yet they always seemed to have things to say to each other when they met by chance on the stairs or in the garden. But who had heard of widows marrying again? Who had heard of a widow marrying a relative? She had overheard people commending Nirmal’s compassion in taking her in.

  And then, to put an end to her thoughts, Nirmal had left Songarh on his new posting, as if never to return.

  Over the years Meera’s attacks of discontent and anger had dwindled until she felt herself ensconced in a comfortable if rather dull routine. But in the past week, since Nirmal’s return, she had felt a return of the turmoil, sensed a tiny flame flicker somewhere inside her, a flame she knew would scorch everything in its vicinity if not stamped out.

  Meera stretched to get rid of the tingling that was starting between her shoulders. Bustling to the garden, she spotted Bakul swinging her ankles from the second branch of the mango tree.

  “Why do you have to be told every day it’s time for your tuition? Don’t you know Chaubey Sir has been waiting?” she said, more harshly than she intended, when Bakul pretended not to notice her. She could not understand the anger that was rising in her, hot and heavy in her shoulders and neck. She looked at Bakul, exasperated. Meera had tried and tried to be friends with her, but there was a hard, recalcitrant centre in the child which made it difficult for other people to approach. Far from confiding in Meera, Bakul hardly spoke to her unless necessary.

  Now she stayed on her perch in the mango tree just long enough to make it clear that she was not coming down because she had been snapped at, but because she had chosen to.

  * * *

  Bakul disliked tuitions, disliked the way Chaubey Sir’s thick moustache dipped into his tea, the way biscuit crumbs clung to it, the way he droned, “If you don’t memorise your tables you’ll never be able to finish your Maths paper.” The moment her tutor let her go, she scraped her chair back, jammed her feet into her slippers and ran across the road to Mrs Barnum’s: she knew Mukunda had already gulped his lemon sherbet and read picture books while she was at work on multiplication and mixed metaphors. Besides, it was Mrs Barnum’s birthday again, and if she was late, she would not get any of the cake.

  “You’re early,” Mrs Barnum said as soon as she saw Bakul. “It isn’t until five.” She shook the brass bell in her hand imperiously and said, “Since you’re here, make yourself useful, girl – run down to the kitchen and get the sandwiches.”

  The room they were in was a large one with mullioned windows that looked out on to the garden and beyond it to Bakul’s house across the road. The windows had green curtains, always firmly drawn, and this gave the room the sense of being an over-decorated, dim aquarium. On one side was a fireplace, with a few chairs around it. Over the fireplace a mantelpiece, at the centre of which stood a glass globe tilting on its tarnished gold stand, continents and oceans and mountain ranges rippling on its surface. Beside it were two other smaller balls of glass, one enclosing a tiny Leaning Tower of Pisa, the other a little cottage with a red roof. If you shook these glass balls, frail, minute snowflakes floated down, clouding the tiny buildings in their private storms.

  Over the mantelpiece, on the grey-white wall, gleamed the curved blade of an ornamental golden kukri. Bakul and Mukunda had been fascinated by it. Soon after they had begun coming to Mrs Barnum’s to play, the khansama had told them in his sandpapered voice, “This was the kukri with which Sahib was killed. His ghost wanders Dulganj still, seeking justice. The earth where his blood was spilled never dries, not in the hottest summer. I will show you one day.”

  On the other side of the room was a round wooden table with six chairs. The table had lost one of its legs to termite and had a lighter-coloured replacement which had shrunk after being fixed on, so the table tilted to one side. Bakul saw it was already set with napkins and silver for six people, and a cake on a tiered cake-plate about six times too big for it occupied its centre. Ranged around the cake were empty plates with patterns of roses and vines.

  Mrs Barnum rang her bell again and Mukunda entered from a dark alcove at the end of the room. “Happy birthday, Mrs Barnum,” he sang.

  The khansama, who was waiting just outside the room, came in clearing his throat and said, “Happy birthday, Madam.”

  “Happy Birthday, Mrs Barnum,” Bakul repeated after him, “and many happy returns of the day.”

  “Thank you, m’dear, thank you,” Mrs Barnum said as she rose, smoothing out her buttery frock. “So sweet of you to remember! So sweet of all of you to come!”

  The khansama advanced towards the cake, which had a single tall candle stuck on it, like a pine tree on a cowpat.

  “Shall I light it, Madam?”

  Mrs Barnum seemed querulous. “Why aren’t the others on time? Can’t make people wait, can we?” She sat down and flapped a hand at Bakul. “Sit down, sit down! Don’t make people wait!”

  Bakul and Mukunda knew the routine, and sat down. Mrs Barnum liked celebrating her birthday every month, on an unpredictable day. All the plates, regardless of guests, were served cake and slightly dry, boiled-egg sandwiches. There was lemon sherbet in wine glasses, sweet and murky. The first few weeks, Bakul and Mukunda had been hesitant, looking at each other for guidance, not knowing what to do with napkins in rings, forks and knives. Now they waited each month for the
day they would get cake and sandwiches to eat, things never given to them at home. Mrs Barnum looked around the table, smiled graciously at the empty chairs and at Bakul, and said, “How nice of all of you to remember. I can’t think of a better birthday!” She adjusted her emeralds, patted her hair, and nibbled the corner of a sandwich.

  When they had finished eating, the khansama had to go round the table saying “May I?” before removing their plates. Once the table was clear, Mrs Barnum moved the cake candle to the centre of the table while Mukunda went to the shelves in the shadowed alcove and pulled out a board with numbers and letters, and a heavy silver coin dating from Mughal times. A bumpy coin with uneven edges, a coin that felt like money. Mrs Barnum arranged the board and paused as if embarking on something important. She looked around at Bakul and Mukunda’s candlelit faces.

  “Silence now, and think!”

  Bakul shut her eyes tight, frowning with the effort of thinking only about the board and its numbers. Mrs Barnum’s head was bent over steepled fingers. Mukunda could hear her breathing. He stole a look at Bakul, then guiltily he shut his eyes. After a while he heard a scraping and shifting and looked. The coin was moving across the table from number to letter, number to letter. Mrs Barnum followed each movement and muttered under her breath, “No, you can’t say that! That is not what happened. Really? Is that so? I’ll go there tomorrow. Rat poison? Rat poison? Could be. Stars falling down, on the field, falling down. It’s time for the train, Tuesday’s the day, take the train on Tuesday.”

  As Mrs Barnum muttered and the movements of the coin grew more frantic, her eyes darted from place to place on the board, strands of hair coming loose from her net. The candle cast tall shadows. Bakul did not like to say she was scared, but she always looked away during this part. What if the spirit decided not to leave the room? Sometimes Mrs Barnum stayed in her trances for half an hour or more. And if they were late, Bakul had observed the last few months, Manjula scolded them and muttered right through dinner that it was time Bakul’s freedom was curbed and she was taught to be a young lady. She thought it was best to leave, all things considered.