An Atlas of Impossible Longing - Anuradha Roy

A book in three parts – Part 1 called The Drowned House - The story focuses on Amulya in 1920's, who is described as a learned man who left his family’s home in Calcutta twenty years ago to set up a business in a small country town at the edge of the jungle, Songarh. Living with Amulya is his wife, Kananbala, and their two sons, Kamal and Nirmal.

Part 2 called The Ruined Fort - Eleven years have passed. Amulya’s household is now headed by his oldest son, Kamal. Nirmal, the second son a widower, is living in another, undisclosed city. He has been traveling most of these eleven years. He stops at home only briefly to check on his daughter Bakul and then disappears again.

Part 3 called The Water’s Edge - The setting shifts to Calcutta around the time of Partition and now the book focuses on Mukunda as he matures into adulthood. The longing mentioned in the title is Mukunda’s longing.

“The astrologer looking at Mukunda’s hand say – “A veritable atlas – What rivers of desire, what mountains of ambition!” “

Cultures may differ but Longing and love are universal. Bakul and Makunda do resemble Heathcliff and Cathy from Wuthering Heights but this book is a lot more broad. The story starts before either are born and the other characters' stories are a lot more fleshed out. Wuthering Heights is really just about Heathcliff and Cathy. Bakul and Makunda's longings in the book are not the only ones that are impossible.

Seeking solitude and a niche for himself, Amulya moves to the idyllic village of Songarh, and sets up a factory that manufactures authentic herbal potions from the unique plants of the region. As much as Amulya appreciates Songarh, his family, especially his wife, dearly misses the bustling life of Calcutta. Her loneliness is an implacable longing. The longing starts there. Each person has his or her own deep longing, and grapples to fill the void caused by it. Due to the stringent rules imposed by a complicated social structure, the characters realize that their longing is almost impossible to be quenched. So, they move on and live through life, trying to swim against the currents, until they resign themselves to the path charted by destiny.

A widower struggles with his love for an unmarried cousin. Bakul, a motherless daughter, runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined in a room at the top of the house, a matriarch goes slowly mad; her husband searches for its cause as he shapes and reshapes his garden.

As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else, and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. He prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, but his thoughts stay with his home, with Bakul, with all that he has lost - and he knows that he must return.