When we meet Maya, the schoolteacher at St. Hilda’s School in Ranikhet, she has already spent six years in the hill town. “Though I cannot know precisely when it happened, a time had come when I had become a hill-person who was only at peace where the earth rose and fell in waves like the sea.” That is how Maya describes herself. Maya had left Hyderabad as a young widow. Her husband, Michael Secuira, had died in a mountaineering accident high in the Himalaya near the lake Roopkund, some 15,000 feet above sea level. She had hoped that Ranikhet, so far away from Hyderabad, would help to ease her pain. The Folded Earth is a novel of Maya’s memories, of the six years she spent in Ranikhet, her childhood in Hyderabad, her marriage to a Christian against her father’s wishes. Memories don’t follow any sequence and the narrative moves freely in time and space, though a sense of time does enter the story with the changing seasons in Ranikhet. Roy’s description is precise, unadorned and authentic. The advent of spring is identified by the first dog roses that bloom. That sets off her memory — how Diwan Sahib rescued Maya, thorn by thorn, when she was caught in the briars in the dog rose creeper that ran along the wall at Light House, the higgledy-piggledy mansion where Diwan Sahib lived. Diwan Sahib is a central figure in the story and the Light House is where much of the action takes place or is initiated. Maya lives in a cottage rented from him and spends her evenings reading the newspapers with him and typing a biography of Jim Corbett that Diwan Sahib wrestles to complete. He was the finance minister of the Nawab of Surajgarh, now a relic of the Raj — regal in his worn brown dressing gown and woollen cap “while his immense height, his great age and the whiteness of his hair and beard made everyone around him deferential”. Maya was the only person he ever allowed close. It was rumoured that private letters of Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru were in his possession and scholars and historians visited him seeking these letters. But Maya remained his only confidant. Apart from Diwan Sahib, the other part of Maya’s “family” was Charu, a village girl of 17, her grandmother Ama, and her half-witted uncle Sanki Puran. Charu was one of Maya’s pupils at St. Hilda’s who at most times played truant and spent her time grazing her grandmother’s cattle. Sanki Puran, who the world thought was not quite there, talked to the animals and the animals talked to him. This Diwan Sahib knew and Maya understood. “Life changed for Charu in December” begins an early chapter in the book. She meets Kundan Singh, a half-Nepali servant at the hotel being set up in Ranikhet. At around the same time Maya meets Veer, Diwan Sahib’s mountaineer nephew, orphaned in childhood who has now made Ranikhet his base. The development of these relationships form two key strands which propel the narrative forward. There is a sense of furtive guilt in Maya’s longing for Veer for she is haunted by the memory of Michael. But Charu and Kundan are free and innocent. It would be unfair to the reader to reveal what happens to these two relationships. Suffice it to say that they do not follow the expected path. As the seasons change, life changes in Ranikhet. Political rivalry, religious bigotry and the march of urbanisation take their toll on the hills and their people. The savagery that Sanki Puran suffers at the hand of “the civilisers” is a powerful example of a losing battle. Anuradha Roy writes delicately chiselled prose. It takes time to take in the details but by the end of the book Ranikhet is no longer a hill resort. It is more than the sum of its rambling mansions, its bazaars and the distant snow peaks. It needs to be tended and protected. Otherwise it might meet the fate of Sanki Puran’s fawn.
Aloke Roy Chowdhury can be contacted at alokeroy@hotmail.com
