An Atlas of Impossible Longing: A Novel Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Anuradha Roy

  Originally published in Great Britain in 2008 by MacLehose Press

  Published by arrangement with Quercus Books

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Free Press trade paperback edition April 2011

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Roy, Anuradha.

  An atlas of impossible longing / Anuradha Roy.

  p. cm.

  1. Orphans—Fiction. 2. India—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. 3. India—History—Partition, 1947—Fiction. 4. Bengal (India)—Fiction.

  5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PR9499.4.R693A85 2010

  823’.92—dc22 2010019362

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0862-5

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0920-2 (ebook)

  For Baba, still here

  CONTENTS

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  PROLOGUE

  PART I THE DROWNED HOUSE

  PART II THE RUINED FORT

  PART III THE WATER’S EDGE

  GLOSSARY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  AT DULGANJ ROAD, SONGARH

  Amulya:

  An austere, learned man who has abandoned Calcutta for a tiny town and has established a herbal potions and pills factory there

  Kananbala:

  His wife, also from Calcutta

  Kamal:

  Amulya’s older son, his second in command at the factory

  Manjula:

  Kamal’s wife

  Nirmal:

  Amulya’s younger son, an archaeologist, a wanderer

  Bakul:

  Nirmal’s daughter

  Mukunda:

  An orphan boy whom Amulya decides to take into the family

  Meera:

  A distant relative, a young widow who lives with the family primarily to take care of Bakul

  Larissa Barnum:

  An Anglo-Indian woman who lives across the road

  Digby Barnum:

  Larissa’s husband, the British manager of the mines that fringe the town

  Tommy:

  A young Anglo-Indian man, a relative of Larissa’s who comes visiting

  Khansama:

  The Barnums’ cook

  Gouranga:

  A servant in the household of Amulya and Kananbala

  IN MANOHARPUR

  Bikash Babu:

  An elderly eccentric who lives in a once-grand riverside mansion in rural Bengal

  Shanti:

  His daughter, who becomes Nirmal’s wife

  Kripa:

  An old retainer in their household

  Ashwin Mullick and Potol Babu:

  Neighbours and friends of Bikash Babu

  IN CALCUTTA

  Suleiman Chacha:

  A teacher of history who gives Mukunda shelter when he needs it

  Farhana:

  His wife, known as Chachi

  Noorie:

  Their beloved parrot

  Malini:

  Mukunda’s wife

  Barababu:

  Malini’s father

  Goutam:

  Mukunda and Malini’s baby son

  Aangti Babu:

  Mukunda’s employer, an unscrupulous builder

  Harold and Bhim:

  Aangti Babu’s thugs for hire

  PROLOGUE

  The house in the picture is afloat on a river the innocuous colour of darkening sepia.

  The house is a folly, a Roman-looking affair with tapering pillars soaring to its arched roof. Palm trees at its sides tousle the sky, leaning close and tall. Watery eddies frozen at the click of a shutter lick the pillars of its long verandah.

  The river has been shifting and turning, spurning its ancient course, hungry for new soil. For years the little town – they call it a town, but it is only two or three brick houses and then fields and thatched huts – for as long as anyone remembers, the town has watched and joked about the indecisive river. Now they can see that the river is a little more daring each monsoon in its progress towards the house, claiming a foot, not the unintrusive inch any more. In my photograph it is still far away, held back by the wall of the ghat, lapping at the slimy stone the women stepped onto going for a wash.

  Then the brown river in the picture begins to rise and the steps to the house become river and the verandah too becomes river. It rises until the verandah’s windows open into water. I see people swimming behind the submerged windows, imprisoned by the drowned rooms as if in some abandoned Atlantis. I watch the palm trees come crashing down through the ornate roof. As the house dissolves, the flowering bakul tree on the left side of the picture flows boat-like into the water on a journey without end.

  PART I

  THE DROWNED HOUSE

  ONE

  In the warm glow of fires that lit the clearing at the centre of straw-roofed mud huts, palm-leaf cups of toddy flew from hand to hand. Men in loincloths and women in saris had begun to dance barefoot, kicking up dust. Smoke curled from cooking fires and tobacco. The drums, the monotonous twanging of a stringed instrument, and loud singing obliterated the sounds of the forest.

  A man with a thin, frown-creviced face topped by dark hair combed back from his high forehead sat as still as a stone image in their midst, in a chair that still had its arms but had lost its backrest. His long nose struck out, arrow-like, beneath deep-set eyes. He had smoked a pipe all evening and held one polite leaf cup of toddy that he had only pretended to sip. His kurta and dhoti were an austere white, his waistcoat a lawyerly black.

  He did not appear to hear the singing. But his eyes were on the dancers: wasn’t that girl in the red sari the one who had come with baskets of wild hibiscus that she had flung carelessly into a corner of his factory floor? And that man who was dancing with his arm around her waist, wasn’t he one of the honey-collectors? It was hard to tell, with their new saris and dhotis, the flowers in their hair, the beads flying out from necks, the firelight. The man leaned forward, trying to tell which of the sweat-gleaming faces he had encountered before in his small workforce.

  The brown-suited, toadlike figure sitting on a stool next to him nudged him in the ribs. “Something about these tribal girls, eh, Amulya Babu? Makes long-married men think unholy thoughts! And do you know, they’ll sleep with any number of men they like!” He emptied his cup of toddy into his mouth and licked his lips, saying, “Strong stuff! I should sell it in my shop!”

  A bare-chested villager refilled the cup, saying, “Come and dance with us, Cowasjee Sahib! And Amulya Babu, you are not drinking at all! This is the first time people from outside the jungle have come as guests to our ha
rvest festival. And because I insisted. I said, it’s Cowasjee Sahib and Amulya Babu who give us our roti and salt! We must repay them in our humble way!”

  A tall, hard-muscled man stood nearby, listening, lips curling with contempt as his relative hovered over the four or five friends Cowasjee had brought with him, radiating obeisance as he refilled their cups. Beyond the pool of firelight, cooking smells, and noise, the forest darkened into shadows. Somewhere, a buffalo let out a mournful, strangled bellow. The drums gathered pace, the girls linked their arms behind each other’s waists, swaying to the rhythm, and the men began to sing:

  A young girl with a waist so slender that

  I can put my finger around it,

  Is going down to the well for water.

  With swaying hips she goes.

  My life yearns with desire.

  My bed is painted red.

  Red are my blankets.

  For these four months of rain and happiness

  Stay, stay with me.

  Without you I cannot eat,

  Without you I cannot drink.

  I’ll find no joy in anything.

  So stay, stay, for the months of rain,

  And for happiness with me.

  One of the girls in the line of dancers separated herself from her partners. She had noticed Amulya’s preoccupied expression, wondered how a man could remain unmoved by the music, not drink their wine. She came forward with a smile, her beads and bangles jingling, her bare shoulders gleaming in the firelight, orange sari wrapped tight over her young body. The toddy made her head spin a little when she bent down to Amulya. As he tried to scramble away, she stroked his cheek and said, “Poor babuji, are you too pining for someone?” She leaned closer and whispered into his ear, “Won’t you come and dance? It wipes sorrows away.”

  Amulya looked up beyond her childish face, framed by curling hair which smelled of a strong, sweet oil, at the flamboyant purple flower pinned into her bun. It had a ring of lighter petals within the purple ones, and a pincushion of stamens. Passiflora, of course. Yes, certainly Passiflora. But what species?

  Despite the haze of alcohol that made her eyes slide from thing to thing, the girl noticed that the man’s gaze was not on her face, but on the flower. She unpinned it and held it out to him. A deep dimple pierced her cheek. The drums rolled again, a fresh song started, and she tripped back to her friends with a laugh, looking once over her shoulder.

  “Hey, Amulya Babu, the girl likes you!” Cowasjee cried, slapping Amulya’s thigh. “You can turn down food and drink, but how can you turn down a lusting woman? Go on, dance with her! That’s the done thing in these parts!”

  Amulya stood up from his chair and moved away from Cowasjee’s hand. “I have to leave now,” he said, his tone peremptory. In his left hand he clutched the purple flower. With the other he felt about for his umbrella.

  Amulya understood he was an anomaly. When still new in the town adjoining the jungle, he had tried to make himself part of local society by going to a few parties. Songarh’s local rich, they too had hopes of him, as a metropolitan dandy perhaps, laden with tales and gossip from the big city, conversant with its fashions, bright with repartee, a tonic for their jaded, small-town appetites. He had had many eager invitations.

  After the first few parties, at which he refused offers of whisky and pink gins, and then waited, not talking very much, for dinner to be served and the evening to end, he had realised that perhaps his being there was not serving any purpose. Was he really becoming a bona fide local by attending these parties when his presence emanated obligation?

  Today – these festivities at the village whose people were his workforce – he had thought it would be different. He had, for a change, wanted to come. He had only ever seen tribal people at work – what were they like at play, what were their homes like? The opportunity had seemed too good to miss; but Cowasjee, in whom the bare-shouldered village girls seemed to unleash more than his usual loutishness, had ensured that this evening was like all the others.

  Amulya looked around for someone to thank, but everywhere people sat on their haunches drinking, or they danced, enclosed in worlds of private rapture. The drums had speeded up, the twanging could scarcely keep pace. Where was his umbrella? And his office bag? Was his tonga waiting for him as instructed? Was anyone sober enough to light his way to the tonga?

  “Oh sit, sit, Amulya Babu,” Cowasjee said, tugging Amulya’s sleeve. “You can’t go without eating, they’ll be sure their food was too humble for you, they’ll feel insulted. The night is young and we have stories to swap! Have you heard this one?” Cowasjee cackled in anticipation of his punchline.

  Amulya sat again, annoyed and reluctant, barely able to summon up a strained smile to the yodelled laughs that accompanied the ensuing discussion about why a woman’s two holes smelled different despite being geographically proximate. “Just like the difference between Darjeeling tea and Assam!” one of Cowasjee’s friends shrieked. “Both in the hills of eastern India, but their aromas worlds apart!” The third said, “You bugger! More like the difference between the stink of a sewage nullah and a water drain!” They nudged each other and pointed at the girls dancing by the fire. “She’s for you,” giggled one. “How ’bout taking her home and confirming the Assam–Darjeeling hypothesis?”

  The tall, muscular villager stepped out from the shadows, one fist clenched around a long bamboo pole. In two rapid strides, he and his weapon were towering over them. Cowasjee shrank back on his stool. The obsequious middleman noticed the threat and scurried out from a corner. He said something over his shoulder to the drummer, then to a woman tending a cooking pot. The drums fell suddenly quiet. Confused, the dancers stopped mid-stride. The woman called out, “We will eat now, before the chickens run out from the rice!”

  The stringed instrument played on, its performer too rapt to pause. The man with the bamboo pole stepped aside, not taking his expressionless eyes off Cowasjee.

  * * *

  Far away, Kananbala heard the faint sound of drums, like a pulse in the night. Another night of waiting. At nine-thirty the neighbour’s car. Slamming doors. Shouts to the watchman. Ten. The whir of the clock gathering its energies for the long spell of gongs to come. The creaking of trees. A single crow, confused by moonlight. The wind banging a door. Ten-thirty. The owls calling, one to the other, the foxes further away. Then the faint clop of hooves. Closer, the clop of hooves together now with the sound of wheels on tarmac, whip on hide. A tongawallah cursing. Amulya saying, “That’s it, no further.” His voice too loud.

  Kananbala dropped her age-softened copy of the Ramayana and went to the window. She could see her husband hunching to release himself from the shelter of the tonga, too tall for its low bonnet. She turned away and returned to the bed, picking up her Ramayana again. When Amulya entered the room and looked around for his slippers, she did not tell him she had put them under the table. When he asked her, “Have you eaten?” she pretended to be immersed in her book. When he said, “Are the children asleep?” she replied, “Of course. It’s so late.”

  “They only served dinner at ten. They wouldn’t let me leave without eating, what do you expect me to do?”

  “Nothing,” Kananbala said, “I know …” Something caught her eye and she stopped.

  “What is that?”

  “What? That? Oh, it’s a flower.”

  Amulya’s voice was muffled beneath the kurta he was pulling off over his head. She could see his vest, striped with ribs, his stomach arcing in. She looked again at the flower, dark purple, wilted. He had placed it under the lamp near the bed. In the light of the lamp she could see one long, black strand of hair stuck to the gummy edge of its stem.

  “I know it’s a flower,” she said. “Why have you brought it home?”

  “Just wanted to identify it … “ he said, leaving the room.

  She had often asked him before: were there women at the parties he went to? The host’s wife? Her friends or relatives? Why could sh
e, Kananbala, never be taken? He always laughed with condescension or said, exasperated, “I have never met women at these parties, neither do I aspire to.” And what of today, the festival at the tribal village – could she not have been taken? If she were a tribal woman herself, she would have needed no man’s permission.

  Amulya returned to their room with a large, hard-covered book. He sat near the lamp and opened it, then put on his black-framed spectacles. He picked up the flower in one hand, turned the pages of the book with the other, looking once at the pages and once at the flower, saying under his breath, “Passiflora of course, but incarnata? I’ve never seen this vine in Songarh.”

  Kananbala turned away, lay back against her pillow and shut her eyes. She could hear pages rustling, Amulya murmuring under his breath. She wished with a sudden flaming urge that she could stamp on his spectacles and smash them.

  Amulya laid the flower against an illustration in the book and whispered, “Incarnata, yes, it is incarnata. Roxburgh has to be right.”

  * * *

  In about 1907 , when Amulya moved from Calcutta to Songarh, he could still see the town had been hacked out, maybe a hundred years before, from forest and stone. The town perched on a rocky plateau, at the edge of which he could see, even from the house, a dark strip of forest and the irregular, bluish shadows of the hills beyond. In the distance were broken-down walls of medieval stone – the ruined fort, the garh from which the town took its name. A few walls and one domed watchtower, enough to fuel Amulya’s fantasies, could still be discerned in the ruins. In front there was a shallow pool with inlaid stone patterns around its edges. Beyond the fort lay an ancient, dried stream-bed that separated it from the forest and hilly mounds. It was said that an entire city would some day be found buried around the fort. Some claimed Songarh had been one of the centres of Buddhist learning in the ancient past and that the Buddha himself had rested there, under a tree, on one of his journeys. On his first visit to the fort, Amulya saw that there was indeed an ancient, spreading banyan tree with its own jungle of stone-coloured aerial roots. The tree had a knot on its main trunk that in a certain light looked like the face of a meditating man.