The Folded Earth by Anuradha Roy

Author:Anuradha Roy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 0857388312
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Published: 2011-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

5

Charu hovered at home around the time the postman made his rounds, pretending she had work to do there. She looked up each time she heard Bijli bark and subsided when she saw there was nobody in particular the dog was barking at. For a few days after a letter from Kundan Singh, I could hear her happy voice everywhere. She tripped down the shortcut through the forest to the bazaar with canisters of milk for regular customers, and when she returned, her face would be wreathed in smiles, although her shoulders were bent with the leaking sackfuls of rotting vegetables that she collected from the market for her cows and carried home on her head. Then as the days passed, and the gap between letters lengthened, her ebullience dwindled.

Each time a letter came, I asked her if she wanted me to write a reply and she shook her head. One day she said, “I’ll write when I can write by myself.” She was improving. She no longer forgot spellings from one day to the next. To begin with I was teaching her words like “hum”, “tum”, and “theek” that I thought would most quickly help her frame her first independent letter. Meanwhile she made me write Kundan’s address on stamped envelopes once in a while and she posted him things – leaves, pine needles, pressed flowers – that I came to know about when he mentioned them in his replies.

“It is very hot here,” the letter I read to her that June said.

You will never be able to imagine how hot. In the afternoon I can see flies falling dead out of the air. When I come back to my room my bed has dead flies on it. There are dust storms here instead of rain. The wind picks up dust from the ground and blows it around. It looks dark with the dust as if it’s very cloudy. It stings your eyes. It is very hard to cook in this heat. The kitchen is as hot as a pot on the fire. The water in the tap is hot enough for tea. Yesterday I went to a fair after work. There were dancers like in movies. It had bright lights and a giant wheel like we had seen once in the army grounds. But I remembered that wheel and did not want to climb into this one alone for a ride. I walked around and thought of walking in the mountains. I bought earrings with red stones. It is pretty, but not as pretty as the one I have, with a green stone. I will write again.

Your Loving Friend.

Kundan Singh’s large-lettered scrawl covered all three sides of his inland letters, and all the space on the flaps, as if he were determined not to waste a millimetre. His letters were in simple language, and crowded with vivid details from his days. The landscape of his life became clearer with each blue inland that arrived. He described his room: it was a small one over the garage.

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