The Folded Earth: A Novel (27 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

D. C. Kala, Amit Sen, and Ravi Dayal decoded the hills for me. Their erudition, wit, and individualism, their ability to combine austerity with pleasure, make them a unique Himalayan species now extinct.

Something Arundhati Gupta said started off this book. She also read its first draft, as did Myriam Bellehigue, Sheela Roy, Shruti Debi, and Partho Datta. Rukun Advani suffered countless drafts and demands, and there is a lot of his writing and thinking between the lines. Christopher MacLehose, with his idiosyncratic genius, worked on successive versions as he would on an unmade garden: a space to inhabit, plant ideas in, and over time grow into a book.

Manju Arya’s insights have provided much entertainment and education. Mahiraj Mehra’s doctoral work on Ranikhet was a rich source of information, as were conversations with S. Ramesh and Akshay Shah. I have benefitted from Janet Morgan’s
Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of Her Own,
Martin Booth’s
Carpet Sahib,
D. C. Kala’s
Jim Corbett of Kumaon,
and P. N. Dhar’s
Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy
. Another delight was
The Social Economy of the Himalayans,
by S. D. Pant, which arrived out of the blue from MacLehose Press. The book is an example of the many overwhelming kindnesses of Christopher, Koukla, and Miska MacLehose, who break every cliché there is about the cruel impersonality of modern publishing. As do many others at MacLehose Press and Quercus, especially Katharina Bielenberg and Nicci Praca. Martha Levin and Millicent Bennett have helped me learn a great deal about publishing by the powerful mix of ideas, energy, and warmth with which they live-wired the U.S. edition.

Ivan Hutnik and Thomas Abraham’s involvement in this book are fortuitous culminations of old friendships. Nasreen Kabir, Radhika Prakash, and Manishita Das will as always shelter me through its publication. To each of them I am ever grateful.

READING GROUP GUIDE FOR
THE FOLDED EARTH
by
Anuradha Roy

Introduction

In a remote town in the Himalaya, a young widow named Maya tries to put her past behind her. By day she teaches in a school and at night she types drafts of a magnum opus by her landlord, an eccentric scholar and a relic of princely India. Her bond with him and her friendship with a village girl, Charu, seem to offer her the chance for a new life in the village of Ranikhet, where lush foothills meet clear skies. As Maya finds out, however, no refuge is remote enough to separate her from her past. The world she has come to love, where people are connected with nature, is endangered by the town’s new administration. By turns poetic, elegiac, and comic,
The Folded Earth
is a multilayered narrative about characters struggling with their pasts even as they fight for freedom and clarity in the present.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

Enhance Your Book Club

A Conversation with Anuradha Roy

You
currently live in Ranikhet with your husband. What is your experience of the region? What would you like readers of
The Folded Earth
to take away about what life is like in contemporary India?

Young locals in Ranikhet often have the sense that life is elsewhere and leave the town for cities like Delhi looking for the buzz, energy, and opportunities in them. In Ranikhet, by contrast, life is spartan, the weather is often harsh, and the solitude can seem extreme to those unused to it. The pace is very different—everything takes more time—and it has none of a big city’s anonymity
nor its aggression. If readers went to Ranikhet after being in Delhi or Mumbai they would get to know two very different sides of India.

It’s clear from the lush descriptions in the novel that you are deeply enamored of the natural phenomena of the book’s setting. How do you think the setting informed the events of the novel? What are some of the defining characteristics of “hill people”?

A big theme of the book is the place of wilderness in our lives—so “nature” in the book is not meant to be decorative, it is central to it. At the level of what happens in the book, many of those things could have happened only in these mountains: Corbett, the wildlife, the climbing.

I can’t generalize about hill people, of course, and nobody is isolated from urban influences any more because of
TV and the media. But it’s striking how generally good-tempered and lighthearted the villagers are there despite leading such hard lives. It’s not just a matter of good manners—it’s their way of being. Most people there will sacrifice making more money for lying about in the sun in the afternoon for a snooze or chatting with friends. It’s as if they’ve discovered the secret of contentment without a single self-help book.

Maya thinks of Ranikhet as a refuge from her troubled past. Do you think she can ever fully escape? Are you drawn to Ranikhet for any of the same reasons that Maya is? How much of what you’ve written in the novel is informed by actual circumstances?

Maya and I don’t actually share anything but a propensity for long walks. Some things I experience obviously go into my fiction, in the sense that they can trigger a thought process or idea, but they are transformed as I develop the idea. The Ranikhet in the book is not the Ranikhet of real life. Not even the map. Politically, the things that happen in the book reflect disturbing trends in India as a whole, but are not specific to Ranikhet.

You describe Veer’s phone and Internet connection, even while characters like Ama and Charu live rather provincial lives. How much has modern technology impacted impoverished villages like Ranikhet? Do you think the divide between the haves and have-nots is increasing?

The divide between haves and have-nots is increasing all over the country. At the same time, modern technology has begun to reach remote places and is accessible to many more people than before. Village women used to be tongue-tied when asked to speak on a telephone; now I see them using their own cell phones. Yet they might still be extremely deprived in their daily lives, doing hard physical labor, eating poor food, walking long distances to fetch drinking water. It’s difficult to make any sense of it.

Although many of the themes and subjects you write about in
The Folded Earth
are deeply serious, there’s a great deal of humor throughout. How do you balance the two?

I guess what is serious need not be grim, and this is true of fiction as much as it is of life.

You’re an editor at Permanent Black, an independent press that specializes in South Asian history, politics, and culture. How does being an editor differ from being a writer? Please tell us more about the press.

We started our press, my husband, Rukun Advani, and I, eleven years ago. It began with one book on our list, our own savings, and no work space but our dining table. We went through huge uncertainty at that time, not knowing if we would survive; gradually the imprint established itself and the list grew into 300 books by the best scholars on South Asia. But we still work at our dining table and are still independent.

Editing needs you to enter another writer’s head, see a text as the writer; writing fiction needs you to shut yourself into a world that exists only for you, one that you are creating. Editing needs empathy and outwardness; writing needs a cocoon. I couldn’t balance the two. I stopped editing and switched to designing our covers.

You left the ending of
The Folded Earth
ambiguous. Do you have an idea in your head of what might become of Maya after the close of the novel? Or what might happen to the village itself?

I know only as much as the reader does.

The Folded Earth
is your second novel. What did you learn in the process of publishing your first novel,
An Atlas of Impossible Longing,
and how does this experience compare?

The publishing process for
Atlas
was long and disheartening because of the number of times it was rejected, and that left me in despair. The excitement, newness, and thrill of it when it did come out were stratospheric, partly because it was so unexpected that from being universally rejected it would end up being translated into so many languages. The writing of
The Folded Earth
was as intense, but fortunately the publication process had more of the highs and fewer lows.

What’s next for you? Are you working on a new book?

I’m always writing. But for a long stretch I don’t know if what I am writing will shape into a book. That’s where it is right now.

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 harvest 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 work-force—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 she, 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.”