An Atlas Of Impossible Longing (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
The house is a folly, a Roman-looking affair with tapering pillars soaring to its arched roof. Palm trees at its sides tousle the sky, leaning close and tall. Watery eddies frozen at the click of a shutter lick the pillars of its long verandah. The river has been shifting and turning, spurning its ancient course, hungry for new soil. For years the little town – they call it a town, but it is only two or three brick houses and then fields and thatched huts – for as long as anyone remembers, the town has watched and joked about the indecisive river. Now they can see that the river is a little more daring each monsoon in its progress towards the house, claiming a foot, not the unintrusive inch any more. In my photograph it is still far away, held back by the wall of the ghat, lapping at the slimy stone the women stepped onto going for a wash. Then the brown river in the picture begins to rise and the steps to the house become river and the verandah too becomes river. It rises until the verandah’s windows open into water.
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