An Atlas of Impossible Longing Read Online Free PDF Page B

the solitude of her daily life.
    The fortnight ended, and it was time for the visitors to go. Two tongas had been called for four o’clock. Amulya and Kamal were to go to the station along with a servant carrying a hamper of food for the overnight journey: dinner and breakfast had been packed, and an earthen pitcher of cool water. There was some confusion when one of the horses was discovered to be lame. A servant went in the other tonga to get a third.
    As they waited, Amulya’s cousin said to Kananbala, “Boudi, I will send you a picture of the girl as soon as I reach Calcutta. I’m sure you’ll like her. I know your household, she’ll make a perfect daughter-in-law. Shanti is her name, I’m sure … sings well, cooks well, and has lived a secluded life always. So unspoiled. Not like our Calcutta girls. And as for this rascal,” he said, chuckling at Nirmal who stood looking at the empty road, willing the tonga to appear, “he needs someone to keep him in line. I will make all the arrangements!”
    Kananbala retreated upstairs after the tongas had left, and stood at the window with the remnant of her smile of farewell. As she turned away, she caught sight of herself profiled in the shining teak front of the cupboard. Her head was invisible, lost in the elaborate carvings that began halfway up its doors. Headless, the body was that of a stranger, grotesque in the bumps that it was made up of: a large – no, hillocky – bump of a chest, an almost equally bulbous curve at the stomach, and then the falling away of thin legs beneath a cotton sari.
    Kananbala turned to the mirror next to the cupboard. When had that double chin settled there? When had the chin sprouted those two hairs? When had her skin turned the colour of her husband’s tobacco? She stared at the reflection, feeling herself grow breathless, her throat contract.
    * * *
    Their visitors had, in the manner of all visitors, made a detailed note of their appearances. “You’re growing fat already, Kamal, that’s quite a paunch you’ve got yourself, eh? The first sign of wealth and ease!” they had observed in one direction, and in another, “My goodness Amulya, the sun has blackened you so much you’re invisible in the dark!” But it was their comments about his wife that had touched a raw nerve in Amulya. He had overheard their sister-in-law saying to Kananbala, “Didi, I had only heard from here and there that you’re not well … but look at you! You seem a hundred rather than fifty! Of course you were always dark, never had your mother’s fair colour, but look at you now! Skin like dried-up leather, and is it your scalp I can see through your hair? Songarh’s water is bad, I know, I can see half my hair’s fallen out in just two weeks here! Come to Calcutta with me and I’ll look after you, I really will. Oil massages, cream and flour for your face, baths in rosewater … when I send you back Amulya Babu will think he has a new bride!”
    Amulya remembered a time when Kananbala was petite and pretty, with curling hair that refused to be pinned down, and heavy-lidded, lustrous eyes she lined with kajal morning and night. She would race up the stairs at Shyambazaar – those were steep, old-fashioned stairs, dark and undulating – she would run up the stairs two at a time balancing bell-metal plates of food and once even a harmonium – always too impatient to wait for the servants to do their work. A time when she would step out to the terrace to watch him walk down the narrow lane towards the house and ask as soon as he arrived, “Did you remember to get my lace?”
    And now? It took no time to digest his relatives’ comments. He could hear them in his head for days after they had left. He realised that over the last two months he too had noticed changes in her, and not just in her appearance. All these years – setting up