An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy

returned to the window which framed the house opposite. It looked much the same except that the gate was open, and there were people going in and out of it. There seemed to be a dark patch on the road near the gate. It had been encircled with white. A lacklustre havaldar stood in the shade of the bougainvillea’s orange bloom, drawing on a beedi. Something about the way the blossoms poked incongruously out from behind the havaldar’s head, as if he were sporting a flower here and there, reminded him of another flower in a tribal girl’s hair, the girl who had tried to make him dance in a forest clearing. He smiled to himself at the idiosyncrasies of memory, its insensitivity to the passage of time.
    He returned to the present with a jolt: their own gate was opening and the person pushing it open was a policeman.
    â€œNobody is to bother your mother,” Amulya said to Nirmal. He turned to his wife. “You’re not to talk to anyone, have you understood? Now, is my bath water ready or not? What has happened today? Is everyone stuck at a window?”
    Not getting a response from either Nirmal or Kananbala, he went outside to the head of the stairs and yelled, “Shibu! Is anyone around? Bring my bath water. What a bunch of fools, something happens to a stranger and they forget everything else.”
    Kananbala was peering so hard at an upper window in the opposite house that Nirmal said, “Are you feeling alright?”
    â€œBabu, the police are here,” Shibu called out in a high quaver from downstairs a little later. Amulya gave up all thought of his bath. He smoothed his clothes and went downstairs to the drawing room.
    * * *
    The policeman had finished asking everyone questions, even Gouranga, who stammered that he was always asleep by nine-thirty and had seen nothing. The policeman tapped an impatient finger on the arm of his chair and with a preoccupied air refused another offer of tea, then called the servant back and said, “Alright, tea, bring me a cup, my throat’s dry with all the talking.” He turned to Amulya, running his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. “Is that all? Is there anyone else in this house?”
    â€œOnly my wife, but there’s no need to bother my wife, is there, Inspector Sahib?” Amulya said. “She is ill and never goes out. In fact none of us in this house have anything to do with those people.”
    â€œPrecisely, Amulya Babu, precisely!” the policeman said with new energy. “She never goes out and you said your room is right opposite that house. What does that make her?”
    â€œWhat?” Amulya said.
    â€œMakes her a witness. Bird’s eye view. Ideal witness. We have to ask her if she saw anything.”
    â€œBut she is not well,” Amulya repeated, full of trepidation.
    â€œNo need for worry, Amulya Babu,” the policeman said, soothing. “We are human too. Give us a chance, we are servants of the state, doing our jobs.”
    * * *
    Kananbala looked at the drawing room with wondering eyes. It was perhaps a year since she had been in that room. It seemed dark, a little musty. It seemed to have many more cushioned chairs, heavy carved arms poking out from the sheets that shrouded them. Why were they covered? she wondered. Were there no visitors at all? Did they never use the room? “Why the sheets?” she asked in a whisper, and Amulya said tersely, “Dust.”
    She saw that the polished table-tops were dull with dust. What were her daughters-in-law doing?
    Kamal steered her by an elbow into a chair. Kananbala’s face was hooded by the aanchal of her sari. She took a quick look past its awning at the policeman.
    â€œSo Mataji,” said the inspector, “Did you see anything? Tell me everything. Even what you do not think important.
Especially
what you don’t think important.” He turned to Amulya and Kamal: “One’s work has over the years taught one