The Lowland

their marriage, he now willingly gave. He no longer wanted to touch her in bed, he no longer brought up the possibility of a second child.
    When she was admitted the following spring to a doctoral program in Boston, when they offered to pay her way, he did not object. He said nothing when she started taking the bus there two days a week, or when she arranged for undergraduates to look after Bela the days she was gone. He didn’t fault her for creating a disruption, or for wanting to spend that time away.
    Because of Bela, the possibility of separating was not discussed. The point of their marriage was Bela, and in spite of the damage Gauri had wrought, in spite of her new schedule, her coming and going, the fact of Bela remained.
    Besides, she was a student, without an income. Like Bela, Gauri wouldn’t survive without him.

V
    1.
    Each day it diminishes: a little less water to see through the terrace grille. Bijoli watches as the two ponds in front of the house, and the tract of lowland behind them, are clogged with waste. Old clothes, rags, newspapers. Empty packets of Mother Dairy. Jars of Horlicks, tins of Bournvita and talcum powder. Purple foil from Cadbury chocolate. Broken clay cups in which roadside tea and sweetened yogurt were once served.
    The heap forms a thickening bank around the water’s edge. Whitish from a distance, colorful up close. Even her own garbage has ended up there: wrappers from packets of biscuits or blocks of butter. Another flattened tube of Boroline. The brittle clumps of hair her scalp sheds, pulled from the teeth of her comb.
    People have always tossed refuse into these bodies of water. But now the accumulation is deliberate. An illegal practice taking place in ponds, in paddy fields, all over Calcutta. They are being plugged up by promoters so that the city’s swampy land turns solid, so that new sectors can be established, new homes built. New generations bred.
    It had happened on a massive scale in the north, in Bidhannagar. She had read about it in the papers, the Dutch engineers laying down pipes to bring in silt from the Hooghly, closing up the lakes, turning water into land. They’d established a planned city, Salt Lake, in its place.
    Long ago, when they had first come to Tollygunge, the water had been clean. Subhash and Udayan had cooled off in the ponds on hot days. Poor people had bathed. After the rains the floodwater turned the lowland into a pretty place filled with wading birds, clear enough to reflect moonlight.
    The water that remains has been reduced to a green well in the center, a dull green that reminds her of military vehicles. Winter days, when the sun’s heat is strong, when most of the lowland has turned back to mud, she sees water from certain puddles evaporating before her eyes, rising up from the ground and drifting away.
    In spite of the garbage the water hyacinth still grows, stubbornly rooted. The promoters who want this land will have to burn it to eradicate it, or remove it with machines.
    At a certain hour she gets up from her chair. She goes down to the courtyard to pick a few marigold tops and jasmine, enclosing them in her hand. Her husband’s dahlias are still in bloom this winter, people peering over the wall to admire them.
    She walks past the ponds to the edge of the lowland. Her gait has changed. She has lost the coordination required to place one foot directly in front of the other. Instead she moves by shifting her body from side to side, leaning in with one shoulder, her feet feeling for the ground.
    It happened long enough ago now for stories to be told. The neighborhood children, born after Udayan’s death, go quiet when they see her with the flowers and small brass urn.
    She washes the memorial tablet and replaces the flowers, brushing away those that have dried out from the day before. This past October was the twelfth anniversary. She puts her hand into a puddle, sprinkling the flowers with the water that clings to her fingers, to keep them moist through the night.
    Bijoli understands that she scares these children; that to them she, too, is a kind of ghostly presence in the neighborhood, a specter watching over them from the terrace, always emerging at the same time every day. She is tempted to tell them that they are right, and that Udayan’s ghost does lurk, inside the house and around it, in and around the enclave.
    Some days, she would tell them if they asked, she sees him coming into view,