An Atlas of Impossible Longing (32 page)

We had no sense of our lack of other friends. Perhaps it was unnatural. A boy and a girl, so intimate, not even related. It must have bothered people, although we were joyously oblivious of their concerns.

That is why I was sent away of course – I understood that now, as a father myself. But at that time, when Nirmal Babu told me he was putting me in a school in Calcutta and that I would have to leave Songarh, my mind had no room for reasons. Poets talk metaphorically about broken hearts, but I know that mine was broken then. I felt it cracking, a physical pain, a knife in my ribs, when Nirmal Babu told me I was to leave and repeated it when I did not believe him. When I asked why, on the way to the station – just once, I never asked again – he smiled in a way I knew to be false and said it was for a better education and to take me away from being ordered around by others in the house. That night when I was thirteen, and the world was ending as the train bumped and jogged me away from Bakul and Songarh, I had to bite the blanket so that Nirmal Babu would not hear me cry. I made up my mind: I would never go back to Songarh, never speak to him again for tossing me around from orphanage to Songarh to Calcutta – a game of badminton and I the shuttlecock.

Once he had put me in the school, Nirmal Babu paid the fees on time, wrote me letters a few times a year and twice came to see me. I especially remember the first of those visits, seeing him in the corridor, Motilal the peon saying to Nirmal Babu, here is your boy, and I looking but not looking at his shapeless bush shirt, his big toe poking out from a clumsy sandal, his loose trousers, his gaunt face oddly eager to please. We walked out across the heat-deadened playing field and through the school gates in an awkward silence punctuated only by polite questions from him. He realised, as I did, that plucked out of Songarh's spaces for casual companionship, where there was no need for conversation, we were both at a loss. We tramped through the Indian Museum and walked past the Geological Survey, heat curling out of cement footpaths, driving ticklish trickles of sweat down our backs, Nirmal Babu asking if I'd like ice cream between holding forth on the Gandhara and Kushana periods as I trailed a few feet behind, keeping back the question I wanted to hurl at him: “Why did you give me a home and then throw me out of it?”

I lay back on my hard wooden bunk now, staring into the darkness. I was being sent back again to Songarh, a lifetime after being sent
away. Except that I was a shuttlecock no more, rather an arrow tearing through the night to do harm.

* * *

The man in the next bunk began to let out phlegmy snores. I was far too agitated to sleep. I could think of nothing in particular, yet my head was crowded with so many thoughts that there was no place for them.

Mrs Barnum. I had not thought of her for years. Was she still alive? She had decided to sketch me the minute she saw me. “Sit still,” she had exclaimed, pointing to a big blue-cushioned chair and scrabbling around for her pad and pencil. “What bones! Boy, what is your name?” When she showed me what she had drawn, it was a boy with an angular face, large eyes, dimpled chin and a nose that was a little too long for the face. “That's not like me at all,” I had thought, though I did not dare to say so. Bakul had begun to laugh when she saw the sketch and said, “Yes, that's just how he looks. Funnyface!”

Would I see Mrs Barnum too, I wondered. How would it be, even if years and years had passed since she caught me prying in her bedroom? How could I have snooped around as I did then, especially after the way she had educated me with whatever books she had in the house, her encyclopedias, her
Women's Weekly
magazines and romances? I remembered the first of her monthly birthdays, spooky affairs to which she summoned spirits and told our futures. She was festive in a full-length lace gown and tiara, darting from place to place, stroking my cheek in passing. She had clapped her hands. “Music!” she had exclaimed. “You children must have gaiety and music!” She had picked up the bell by her side and shaken it until the sound pealed out. After five minutes, we heard the khansama come up the stairs wheezing.

“Yes, Madam?” he said, his obsequiousness ostentatious.

“We must have music, khansama, put on the record, that record!” She settled back into her chair, eyes closed.

The khansama shuffled up to the dusky alcove at the far end of the
room, where a brass-horned gramophone stood. There was a record in place already, a black disk we could see from our chairs. He dusted it with a corner of his shirt, wound up the gramophone and put a heavy needle on it as it began to rotate.

We sat rigid in our chairs as sound snaked out from the player. I could recognise none of it as music. It began with a tremendous noise that sounded like a tree falling or a ship crashing into ice. Then it became almost silent. If I didn't have sharp ears I would have thought the music had ended. But then it became once more loud and menacing, a huge mix of discordant sounds rising and falling. I kept expecting some singing to start, but there was no human voice. I imagined in the music the dramatic, solitary snow peaks Nirmal Babu talked about, gigantic open spaces and tiny rivulets. The music would swell, then melt down and once or twice I half rose from my chair thinking it had ended, but it started again. I looked at Bakul for help. Mrs Barnum's eyes were closed and a smile touched the edges of her lips. All of a sudden the music dwindled. For a few seconds I thought with relief that it had actually, at last, ended.

This time the silence was broken by the thin sound of a flute. I recognised flutes. In the orphanage we had played them too, and I had a flute of my own that I had bought at a fair. But this one sounded like no other. It was only after I met Suleiman Chacha and whistled him the tune that I came to know what it was – the “Finlandia” by Sibelius, he told me, music from very far away.

Whenever I thought of Bakul later in the Calcutta school dormitory, creaking in my charpoy, swatting mosquitoes, I thought of her with that music, in that house, by the lily pond where I had swum with her, where I had felt her lips crushed against mine, felt her peach-sized breasts through the wet cloth of her thin, summertime frock, her mouth pressed on mine and then away, her hands inside my shirt, and then fumbling in my shorts that seemed to have come alive. In moments of fantasy I used to dream of setting sail with her, charging through black seas and sparkling icebergs to the end of the world. I felt I could almost hear the flute that stilled the icy waves and wondered if Bakul heard it too.

The train to Songarh sped on. I had not thought of my wife or son since leaving home. But this did not occur to me at the time. When the real reason for the journey nibbled at my mind, I pushed it away.

* * *

So much had changed in Songarh in the years I had been away that I could find no familiar landmarks and grew more and more confused on my way from the hotel to Dulganj Road. Everything looked meaner, smaller. I was used to Howrah, which I thought the most enormous, grandest, busiest station possible; Songarh's two-platform station reminded me of the mofussil towns I visited with Aangti Babu. Finlays had peeling paint, a signboard hanging askew, and stiff, pointy-breasted mannequins. I could see that the small shops that lined the single major road sold cheap, tawdry things. There were some new streets and buildings, however, and I misdirected the tonga many times until we had a quarrel over the fare and it was past five when I finally stood before the door of
3
Dulganj Road. Once my home.

I had fantasised in the train that I would stumble upon her, surprise her alone, but Bakul was not in the garden, nor was she by the well. I walked through the empty garden to the front door. I took a deep breath, ran my fingers through my combed hair, reached out for the familiar brass knocker, then realised it was no longer there. On the wall by the door, I found instead a switch for an electric bell. When I pressed it, somewhere far inside I heard an answering tinkle and the bark of a dog.

My heart had begun to beat uncomfortably. I tried to slow down my breathing, wanting to be calm and coherent. I looked back at the garden to distract myself. A madhabilata was in full flower on one of the walls. It had not been there before – a pink flowering intruder in a garden of whites. The mango trees had grown and small, green fruit were visible even at a distance. The sun was still hot and high in a stark-blue sky.

The door had not opened. Enough time had passed for me to
ring the bell again. I pressed the switch harder this time.

As soon as the bell rang, I heard an agitated voice above the frantic barking of the dog; it came from just behind the door.

“Who is it?” It was a young boy's voice.

I almost replied, “It's me,” as I had always done years before, but then remembered and said, “I … my name is Mukunda.”

“I can't open the door. I don't know who you are.”

“Listen, I have to see … ”

“I told you, I can't.”

I could feel sweat tickle my scalp and bead my forehead. My fresh blue shirt had started to stick to my back. Annoyance at talking to a door and having the dog bark on at me made me shout:

“Look, whoever you are, I have to see Nirmal Babu and I am not going until I do. Where is he? If you don't let me in I'll just climb over the courtyard wall.”

There was a brief lull in the barking. Then the voice, which had a slight tremor, now said, “You can't scare me. You can't climb over anything. I won't open the door. And the dog bites.”

I looked at the door with exasperation – a block of wood I had seen countless times before. I stepped back and looked it up and down, wondering what to do. To the right, by the well, was the outer door that led into the courtyard and to my room. I could see that it had a lock on it. Although I had threatened to scale the courtyard wall and it would have been possible to do so, I felt foolish thinking about it. I returned to the door and shouted, “Are you still there?”

No answer.

“I just want to see Nirmal Babu,” I said, “I am … an old friend of his. Tell him it is Mukunda. Or tell Bakul it is Mukunda.”

I waited. After a moment the voice, sounding less belligerent, said, “You'll have to wait outside, I can't open the door. They'll be back soon.”

I walked back into the garden. I plucked a leaf in passing and began to tear it into tiny, mango-smelling shreds. I wandered towards the well and stood leaning over its wall, which seemed much lower than I remembered. The white jasmine next to it was still there, still scattering
the water with its flowers. I could discern the dark reflection of my head in the distant circle of light that was the base of the well. I dropped in a stone. The splash sounded far away, the circle of light wavered and broke and then stilled itself again. All the water I had drawn here! All the buckets I had filled!

I began to walk around the garden, bored by my thoughts, tired of waiting. I did not know much about plants and trees, but could see that it was now a beautiful garden, filled with the old fruit trees I recognised, fragrant bushes and creepers and many new saplings tied with stakes. Despite the greenery and the well, there was a not a drop of water to be had and the heat had parched my throat until I could think of nothing else, not even the boy's odd behaviour. Finally I sat down in the old garden swing-chair, too downcast and tired to care about my clothes crumpling into a sweaty mess. I closed my eyes and began to rock.

* * *

I must have dozed off. They were standing over me looking down, frowning and curious. Like the bears finding Goldilocks, Bakul said later. It was almost dusk. Their bodies were silhouetted against the soft light. I blinked away my sleep and tried to stand up. The swing jolted forward hitting my legs and I fell back into it.

Bakul giggled, then covered her mouth with her palm. I managed to heave myself out of the swing.

“Have you been waiting long?” Nirmal Babu said. “I am not sure we have met.” He sounded wary.

“Oh, Baba,” Bakul squealed. “Can't you see? It's Mukunda!”

I was not surprised that she recognised me. I had expected no different. I would have known her too, anywhere. Her face had changed, but only a little: her cheeks curved now where they had been thin and flat, and her hair reached her waist. It was tied back but around her face it scorned the hairpins and oil, or whatever it was she had used to neaten it; strands that had broken free curled at her neck and forehead. Her eyes were the same odd colour, only her
gaze was different, amused and enquiring where it had been watchful and sullen before. In the light of dusk her sari, the yellow of mustard flowers, glowed against her ill-fitting white blouse which drooped on one side to reveal a thin gold chain. The sari fell away in curves I should have expected, but still I was astonished.

I looked away.

“Is it really you, Mukunda?” Nirmal Babu enquired. He adjusted his glasses – I had never seen him wearing glasses before – to look at me closer.

“Of course!” he said. “I thought you looked familiar. How stupid of me. How could I … What a shame, the boy made you wait outside. But he was not to know.”

* * *

I climbed the stairs, sliding my hands on the banister as I used to when I lived in that house, running up and down many times every day, on errands repeated again and again. I could almost hear Manjula and Meera calling, “Mukunda! Where is that boy! Hiding again!”