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BUDDHISAGAR

Karnali Blues
Translated by Michael Hutt

PENGUIN BOOKS
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 Contents

The First Day

The Second Day
The Third Day
The Fourth Day
The Fifth Day
The Sixth Day
The Seventh Day
The Eighth Day
The Ninth Day
The Tenth Day
The Last Day

Translator’s Afterword
Footnotes
The First Day
The Seventh Day
Follow Penguin
Copyright

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 To Our Fathers
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Once, when I was small, I asked my mother, ‘Aama, where was I born?’
‘Oh, I just found you on the road,’ Mother laughed. Sister laughed too,
and confirmed that this was true.
I wasn’t pleased about this. My cheeks puffed out and my face became
tearful. Was I truly just found on the road?
I wondered to myself: who would have left me there? Who might my real
mother and father be? Perhaps I was found beneath a clump of besharam or
under a sal tree?
Mother realised that her son was feeling sad. Smiling, she caught hold of
my hand and pulled me towards her. ‘Don’t cry, you are my own son,
really,’ she said.

The day I was born was a gloomy day, with the sun walking around the
edge of the sky and the clouds only gleaming in its southern tail. Even
though it was Dasai festival time, the weather was depressing. Some birds
were resting in a black mulberry tree, preening their wings with their beaks.
Then they took to the air—bhurrrra.
Mother was returning home from the Amauri Khola that day, following
the cattle, when suddenly her large stomach stirred. The path ahead turned
to one side and she staggered. She felt as if she was having a sharp attack of
colic. As she approached a cowshed, her eyes turned pale with pain and she
squatted down beneath a tall Indian coral tree. In the wall beside her, lizards
were scrabbling to and fro. She began to pant, and she twisted as if she was
going to faint.
Crows were cawing in the bamboo thicket. The skin of Mother’s face
tightened. The veins on her forehead began to swell and her pulse
quickened. Her eyes filled with tears and her cheeks quivered. She grasped
a fistful of dub grass and pulled it up. Tears fell from her eyes and her faint
scream made the crows on the tops of the swaying bamboos take off into
the air. A lizard that had been twisting its head back and forth fled with
cowardly eyes to hide among the splinters of wood.
And I was born.
When he heard that I had been born, Father cycled home from Katasé
Bazaar. He lost himself gazing at my face and his eyes grew wet with
happiness. Raising me to the sky, Father said, ‘May my son’s fortune be
extensive.’
One night, Father inspected me closely, then said to Mother, ‘He has a
wide forehead, so he has good luck. He has a mole on the sole of his foot,
so he will have to walk a lot but he won’t go off anywhere and leave us.’
When I heard this, I snuggled happily into my mother’s lap.
Mother stroked my chubby cheek and said, ‘Tell me now, will you go off
and leave us when you’re big?’
‘No, I won’t go anywhere.’

***

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 THE FIRST DAY

I was standing under the main gate of Kohalpur Teaching Hospital, out of
breath. I looked myself over. My black leather shoes were covered in dust,
there was a stain on the knee of my blue jeans, and from my shirt there rose
the strong aroma of the inside of a bus. I did not have the courage to check
the state of the bag I was carrying on my back.
The sun was hot enough to melt the top of my head. Sweat was running
down my cheeks, my insides were dry and I was parched with thirst.
The hospital guard was giving a man some directions. I went up to him,
out of breath. He scrutinised me and asked, ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Where’s the emergency ward?’ I asked.
‘Do you have someone here?’
‘Yes,’ I answered hurriedly. ‘They brought him in yesterday, I’m told.’
He made a beak of his flaking lips and gestured to the right, so I ran in
that direction. This was the first time in my life that I had ever been in such
a hurry.
I went inside, dragging my limping legs.
The door to the emergency ward was slightly ajar. I heard a clattering
sound and I turned around to see a man pulling an empty stretcher trolley
along behind him.
I pushed the door open and the smell of medicine and sweat assailed my
nostrils. People were lying unconscious on rows of beds inside, some on
their backs, some on their sides, some flat on their faces. Many of their
faces were filled with restlessness and sweat. Among them there was one I
recognised immediately from afar.
How had his body shrivelled up like this?
His blue waistcoat looked as if it had been spread out on a corn stake to
dry. Its buttons had fallen off somewhere, and the waistcoat was in a heap
on the bed. I reached his side, took the bag off my back, and pushed it
quickly under the bed. His eyes were closed, and his face was covered with
sweat and full of pain. I saw his sunken temples, the bones rising from his
cheeks and his left arm quivering in the air. How weak he had become,
shaking like a leaf!
I stood beside him.
His lips opened and closed a little, like the beak of a wounded dove. His
hair had fallen out; the little that remained looked like cotton. Water was
dripping from an upended saline bottle down a fine tube inserted into a vein
on his left hand.
He muttered something then, but I didn’t understand what he was saying.
A faint sound came from behind a green curtain three beds away. I turned
my head to look, and a nurse in a white blouse smiled at me. She paused for
a moment, letting out the air that had accumulated at the top of a syringe.
Then she tapped the top of the syringe with her index finger.
Here in his bed, he slowly turned from side to side.
I settled myself gently at the head of the bed, like a leaf falling onto the
grass. He tossed and turned, and from time to time he twisted his body like
an injured mouse. When he turned onto his back, the depression in his
throat was filled with sweat, and I wiped it away with the bedsheet. I looked
at him, from his head to his feet and from his feet to his head. There was no
movement in his right leg, which always used to tremble when he was
asleep. Gently, I placed my hand on his forehead, which was glistening with
sweat. The veins on the top of his head were wriggling and writhing madly.
Then he realised that someone had come.
His face crumpled and he tried to open his eyes, but they would not open
and water began to seep from their corners. I wiped them and he sighed. My
own eyes burned and filled.
Quietly, I called him, ‘Ba?’
Grimacing, he opened his closed eyes just a little. His hand searched for
something, like a waterbird gliding across the surface of the water. I took
hold of his hand.
‘You’ve come?’ Father’s voice was faint. ‘Tell me now, why did you take
so long?’
‘I couldn’t get a bus in time.’ I held Father’s hand.
‘Are you well?’ Father asked me breathily.
Before I left for Kathmandu, Father’s voice had been clear. ‘Study well,’
he had told me. His face had been bright too. But now he was sick,
swallowing his spit as he suffered. Father’s invalid face was like a
yellowing leaf, his breath was like a monsoon river.
A nurse came. She glanced at Father’s bed, and looked at me and my thin
body too. Then she went to another bed. A man had been lying there
prostrate since I arrived, and still hadn’t moved. The nurse took out a
syringe and the woman next to the bed touched the man’s forehead to wake
him. The nurse planted the syringe into his upper arm. She pushed up the
lower part of the syringe, rubbed his arm quickly with cotton wool, then
took the woman’s hand and placed it there.
The nurse came up to me. I got up and stood to one side, and she tapped
the saline bottle twice with her index finger. As she left us, she put a
thermometer into the right side of Father’s mouth.
‘Don’t let him take it out,’ she said.
Father shook his head from side to side. When he raised his left hand to
his mouth, I reached out to stop him, but he did not move the thermometer.
‘Where did Mother go?’ Father asked me. The end of the thermometer
shook as he spoke.
Mother?
Suddenly, I felt that I would not be able to hold back my tears any longer.
Five years ago, I touched her feet and said, ‘I’m leaving now, Aama. I’ll
phone when I’ve arrived.’
 I wanted to fly away then, like a young bird whose wings have become
strong. I wanted to reach the land of fairy tales—Kathmandu. The rotor
blades of the helicopter that had come to Kalikot, bringing rice and traders’
goods, were already spinning fast for the return journey to Surkhet. The
noise of its motor thundered out over the mountain ravines and pine forests.
The whirlwind it created flew up to touch the sky, mixed with dust and
sand.
Sleeping mats, quilts, beans and ghee had all been loaded into the
helicopter. I was leaving my parents for the first time, like a piece of colour
leaving a rainbow. I bowed at Mother’s feet. Mother fingered the ends of
my curling hair and said, ‘Go well. Don’t forget your home.’
This made me feel overwhelmed by emotion: how could I ever forget my
father and mother? My eyes became misty.
The helicopter staggered up into the sky. I rested my head against the
glass of the window and looked down as the helicopter climbed up on the
rungs of the clouds. I saw Mother—she was looking up into the sky, wiping
her eyes with the end of her sari, standing under a lonely crab apple tree, as
sad as the tree itself.

***

‘Ey, so he’s come at last.’ I heard Mother’s voice. Standing by the door, she
looked like a black mulberry tree that has dried up in the autumn. She was
holding two bottles of saline and a syringe, and the door she had come
through was still shaking behind her.
‘Yes, I’ve just arrived. Where have you been?’
‘To get medicine. I was on my own, it’s been hard to cope. But now
you’ve come and I’m restored to life.’
I looked closely at Mother. Where was that sunflower of her smiling lips?
Where were those plump cheeks? Where was that long hair?
Her uncombed hair had thinned like an old broom. Dark blemishes had
appeared on her sunken cheeks. Lines of age and despair had spread across
her face. A dirty blouse seemed to hang from her body. Mother tried to
smile but she could do little more than just show me her teeth. The skin on
my face tightened involuntarily, as if it was going to split. As I rushed to
touch her feet, my tears spilled out like water from a filled water-pot.
‘Why is he crying, this one?’ Mother’s voice trembled.
The whole scene before me became dim, and Mother’s face too, as if I
was seeing it through a heat haze. Her mouth trembled and she bit her lower
lip to control herself. Coming to the bedside, she checked the saline level
and looked at Father’s face. Then she put the saline and the syringe away in
a drawer.
I was still feeling dejected.
The woman in the next bed was staring at me. ‘Is this the son?’ she
asked.
‘Yes,’ Mother smiled a little. ‘He came from Kathmandu today.’
‘How old is he? He’s a fine young man!’
‘He must be twenty-two now.’ Mother stroked my hair.
I felt as if something sharp was pricking my eyes, so I rubbed them. The
woman looked at me and said, ‘Babu, don’t cry.’ With this, she turned away
and wiped her own tears with the end of her shawl.
‘You’ve got thin though!’ said Mother. ‘If only you’d eaten properly in
the city…’
I smiled wanly.
‘When did you hear that your father was ill?’
I remembered—when I returned to my room last evening, there was a
screwed-up note hanging from the lock. The writing was really crooked—
Go to Kohalpur Teaching Hospital now. Daddy is ill—phone call at 2.30.
The writing and the language must be the landlady’s daughter’s, I’d
guessed. I didn’t go upstairs to ask who had written the note. The memory
of my father had tumbled like a sick bird into my room.
‘What happened?’ I asked Mother.
Mother told me. Four days ago, after his meal, Father sat warming his
hands on the fire and thinking about something. Mother went out to scrub
the pots and, when she returned, Father had fallen on his back. His arms and
legs had become paralysed and he was unconscious.
 Then, for three days, Mother had watched the high Bharta hill across the
valley. That was the way the helicopters came. And that was the route the
hot breeze took as it came up from Surkhet, cooling all the way. Some
clouds came, and some birds came too. But no helicopter.
After three days, at last, a helicopter arrived—a UN helicopter, which
landed with great pomp as if it had fallen from heaven. It had come to
collect a report on the People’s War. The boys and girls who got down from
the helicopter sat on the helipad to cool their heated breasts in the breeze.
They stood in front of the ‘beautiful mountain’ and took photos.
Some people hurried up to the helipad, carrying Father hanging limply in
a blanket. Mother hurried after them, bearing a jug of water. A young
woman in sunglasses who had come in the helicopter was enjoying the view
towards Kodabada. When she saw a crowd of people hurrying towards her,
she panicked. The tall American standing beside her whispered something
in her ear and, for a moment, the girl stood watching the crowd. Then she
came close and took a photo of the sick man along with the crowd.
‘What happened to him?’ she asked.
‘He is on the cusp of living and dying, this baajé,’ someone said.
‘You should call a doctor,’ she said in English.
‘A doctor?’ someone spat, ‘They’re all dead. Nobody comes to this
Kalikot.’
‘Now what will you do?’
‘Will she take this bajyai to Nepalganj?’ someone asked, pointing to
Mother. ‘Is there a seat in the helicopter?’
‘How sad!’ she said in English. She did not answer the question, but
turned back.
On the helicopter pad, smothered in dust, Mother sat hoping that they
would take Father away when they saw how sick he was. Those who had
come in the helicopter had finished making their calls on the district
administration and the police office and were returning now. Mother stared
fixedly at the helicopter pilot, a white man. She was unable to speak. The
helicopter’s rotor blades began to turn. In a second, the helicopter leapt
straight up, turned sharply and disappeared, filling everyone’s eyes with
dust. After even the last straw of hope and trust that had come into her hand
had snapped, Mother squatted down on the ground right there.
‘Bajyai, don’t worry,’ someone said quietly. ‘Another one will come.’
After 12 o’clock, the wind always jerked around and came to tear at the
crab apple tree beside them. This day it was just the same. Hanging itself
from each branch and leaf and swinging to and fro, it pricked people’s eyes.
Those who had come to carry Father began to return, walking slowly down
to the bazaar. No one spoke.
Father was not conscious of where he was. As he lay on his back, his
chest rose and fell. His lips were as dry as a drought-stricken field. From
those lips there came just two things—‘water’ and ‘has my son come?’
This is what they call fate. After three and a half days, they saw
something on the top of Bharta hill that looked like a sparrow flying up into
the sky.
‘Look Bajyai, it’s a helicopter!’ someone cried.
Mother shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at Bharta hill. The
sparrow became a dove, then a kite, then a sheep, then a cow, then an
elephant, then a helicopter. The sound of its motor could be heard—
bhatatata. Making an ear-piercing din, it circled once around Chuli Malika
and landed.
‘Lau Bajyai, come back bringing a happy Baajé,’ many of them told her,
once they had lifted Father into the helicopter. ‘We will watch over your
house for you.’
The helicopter arrived at Nepalganj. At the Nepalganj airport, Mother
clasped a man’s hand and said, ‘Bhai, find me an ambulance.’
The ambulance ran along Surkhet Road towards Kohalpur as fast as if it
was flying. Mother put Father’s head in her lap and watched from the
window as the electric poles came and went, came and went. Tongawalas.
Rickshaws. Broad fields. Old film posters attached to the walls of houses.
The hospital. And then the emergency room.
A doctor who had come to work late called over, ‘Why did you wait so
long to bring him to us?’
 Mother was silent. The stethoscope reached Father’s chest and moved
about like a rabbit in the thicket of brown and white hair. The doctor
measured Father’s pulse, looking at his watch and moving his lips to count
silently. Without a word, he pulled out a pad and ran his pen across it
quickly. The pharmacy understood what he had written and gave out two
saline bottles and three syringes. And the nurse threaded the creeper from
that saline into Father’s left wrist, like a piece of jewellery. It was after this
that Mother phoned me.

Now a doctor with a cheerful face stood beside Bed 14 with his stethoscope
round his neck. His eyes looked very large behind his powerful spectacles.
‘How is he now?’ he asked.
‘Just the same.’ Mother looked at the doctor with eyes full of hope.
Touching his sweating brow, the doctor bent to Father’s ear and asked,
‘How are you?’
‘My head is going to split.’ Father trembled slightly, just as a cow’s back
shivers when a drop of rain falls upon it.
‘OK.’
The doctor straightened up. He pulled a pad from his pocket and
scribbled on the white surface of the paper again. Tearing out the page, he
held it out to me, saying, ‘This is a painkiller. Give him two tablets.’
‘What’s wrong with Ba, Doctor?’
‘A brain haemorrhage,’ the doctor said, taking hold of Father’s right hand
and moving his fingers.
I could not speak.
He spoke into Father’s ear as if he was blowing a mantra into it, ‘Move
your fingers.’
Father tried, but his fingers were like the branches of a felled tree and
they would not move.
‘A vein in the right brain has burst and the blood has congealed,’ he said,
turning to me. ‘His left hands and legs won’t work. They are paralysed.’
‘Will he get better though?’
 ‘Now you’re in hospital, bhai, he will be fine. He will walk again,
unsteadily. But how long that will take I cannot say until we’ve done a CT
scan.’
My heart became as light as a kite.
As he was leaving, the doctor told me, ‘There’s no need to worry.’
When the doctor had moved on and was standing at the next bed, Mother
untied the sash around her waist. Inside there was a screwed-up plastic bag,
and wrapped up tightly inside the bag there was some money. It was Father
who had taught her to go to these lengths to hide her money. She pulled a
500-rupee note out of the bundle and gave it to me, and I took it to the
hospital pharmacy.
Night had already fallen. The milky light of the tube light glittered on the
shining marble floor. Behind the large glass screen of the pharmacy, an old
man sat dozing on a chair with his head lolling backwards. A boy of about
twenty-one or twenty-two was there too, grinning with a telephone stuck to
his ear. I pushed the prescription in under the bottom of the glass screen and
stood there.
He looked over at the prescription and indicated that I should just wait a
minute.
After seven or eight minutes, ten Bruset tablets were pushed in my
direction and I ran back with them. Mother took two tablets out of the
envelope and put one into Father’s mouth. ‘Swallow this, please,’ she said.
I had never seen Father take water with his medicine. He chewed both
tablets, crunching them noisily, and his mouth filled with their white dust. I
dripped some water into his mouth. Father stuck out his tongue and moved
it over his dry lips. His tongue was very pale in colour. Mother used the end
of her shawl she thought cleanest to wipe the white dust from his lips.
I went outside. The lights were on in the shops in the bazaar in front of
the hospital. People were hurrying into the hospital, carrying jugs of milk or
juice. I went into the Bijuli Hotel and the sauni quickly put some buff chow
mein on my table.
The fire was smouldering, maybe because some damp wood had been put
onto it, and spreading its stinging smoke everywhere. The partitions, made
of bamboo matting, were blackened. In the fireplace, a two-litre cooker was
ready to give its first whistle of the day. The chow mein was very spicy and
from time to time bits of grit got into my teeth. But still, perhaps because I
was hungry, I found it tasty.
The sauji* was getting ready to kill a chicken on the other side of one of
the partitions. The sauni, who was washing a grinding stone, shouted, ‘I’m
warning you, if you drink jaad again today … !’
There came a screeching and a flapping noise. I peeped through the holes
in the matting. The sauji was plucking the chicken, fuming with anger.
The spiciness of the chow mein had begun to spin around in my stomach.
I got up and asked, ‘How much will that be, Sauni?’
The sauni gathered the hair that was falling on her face into a single
bunch and put it behind her ear. ‘Forty,’ she said.
I gave her two notes of twenty.
‘Are you waiting on a patient?’ she asked, taking the money.
‘Yes.’
‘Where do you eat your meals?’ she asked, as I was about to leave.
I left without answering her. The watchman was drinking tea from a tea
cart to the left of the gate. Some people were sitting gloomily on a bench in
front of the tea cart, sipping their tea mechanically.
‘Where are you off to?’ My feet stopped at the gate. I looked towards
where the voice had come from and saw the watchman.
‘Inside.’
‘You have a patient?’
‘Yes.’
Some nurses whose class or duty had finished were approaching the gate,
giggling. Among them I saw the nurse who always came to Father’s
bedside in the afternoons.
When I entered the ward, I saw Mother standing hopelessly beside
Father.
‘Where have you been?’ she shouted. ‘He never stops in one place for a
moment, this one!’
‘I went to get something to eat.’
 ‘Shouldn’t you tell me when you go out?’
Father was stirring in his bed.
‘So what’s happened?’ I asked.
‘He says he wants to go to the toilet!’
What to do now? His body below the waist was refusing to accompany
his upper half, as if it had already received its inheritance. Fortunately, he
was not holding the saline in his hand. The blood was still spreading in the
cotton stuck to the place where the saline entered his vein.
Father’s eyes were wide open. He stared all around like a young bird
staring at the sky for the first time, and said nothing. His eyes were wet. I
stood at his shoulder. Taking a deep breath, I said to Mother, ‘Lift up his
shoulder then!’
Father’s body rose a little. He had been lying on his back in the bed all
day and the sharp smell emanating from his body entered my nose like an
arrow. I lifted his shoulders, but his legs would not rise. I lifted his legs but
his shoulders would not rise. I was drenched in sweat. Tired, I just stood
there for a moment. Then Mother approached his feet. ‘Go on then, pick
him up!’ she said, lifting his legs with a jerk. I did the same to his
shoulders, and his body rose from the bed slightly. Mother weakened and
she suddenly dropped his legs, which trembled on the mattress for a
moment, and then became still.
‘I can’t do it,’ Mother muttered.
‘What’s happened?’ a nurse hurried over. ‘Why are you throwing the
patient around?’
‘He says he wants to go to the toilet,’ said Mother.
‘Oh. There isn’t even a bed pan here.’ She looked at Father. ‘Take him
carefully. The toilet’s just there.’
Someone who was attending at the next bed came to help. He lifted both
of Father’s legs and said, ‘Right, lift him up now, bhai.’
I lifted his shoulders heavily and we ran, one holding his legs, the other
his arms.
How filthy the toilet was! I feared that we would slip on the scum on the
floor and bang into the wall. And Father’s left leg was dragging, like the leg
of a decapitated goat. I stood him up straight. His body became as heavy as
a tree trunk. I pushed his body forward, but his left foot slipped and twisted
out behind him. How would Father squat down? I looked at his face and
saw that his eyes had turned grey and were turned up towards the ceiling.
With all of this twisting from side to side, it looked as if Father would
strain his back. If it was hard for Father to sit, then what could I do? Maybe
just do it standing up? I clasped his waist tightly with my right arm. It was
difficult, but I managed to untie the knotted drawstring of his trousers.
‘I mustn’t piss on myself,’ Father muttered.
‘I’m undoing your trousers. Just get on with it.’
Father flapped about in agitation, like a bird during its first moments in a
cage. I didn’t let him struggle but held him even tighter, like the bark of a
sal tree clinging to its trunk.
Father looked into my eyes from his own pale eyes, like a boy looking at
his grandfather with helpless, affectionate eyes, hoping that he will make
him a catapult. Then, in a very weak voice, he muttered again, ‘Mustn’t
piss. Mustn’t piss on myself.’

‘Only one carer at each bed please,’ said the nurse at a quarter to nine that
night. ‘No sleeping in empty beds please. Doctor Saab will get angry.’
The carers thinned out in the ward. One carer per bed. The ward looked
like a place where a weekly market had just wound up. After a moment, the
nurse looked all around. She saw Mother and me beside Father’s bed but
said nothing.
After the nurse had gone, I moved to bed number 4 and flopped down
onto it. A new nurse appeared for her ward round. She was twenty or
twenty-two, with a bright and colourful face. Her long thick hair was
gathered up into a bunch, with a dot-pen thrust into it.
She came to our bed and hung up the saline that had been put away in the
drawer. The smooth surface of the stand glinted under the tube light.
Father’s right hand gripped the stand and slid up and down on it. She
pushed a pipe into the saline, and then she caught hold of Father’s arm as it
was going up and down, and laid it flat on the bed. She pushed a second
syringe into the syringe that had already been pushed into the saline. She
looked at it for a moment and the water began to drip down. Then she
moved on to the next bed, her sandals swishing softly along the floor.
Mother must have been feeling hungry. She pulled out an apple that had
over-ripened, stuffed inside her bag. It smelled as foul as the air on a night
bus, and I refused to eat it. But Mother put a small piece of the wrinkling
apple into her mouth. As she chewed it, the juice appeared on her lip and
she wiped it off with the back of her hand.
‘You’re tired,’ I told her. ‘Rest for a while, I’ll stay here.’
Mother did not speak but just sat down on the edge of the bed I was
sitting on. I moved to sit on a stool. All of a sudden, she just toppled right
over and fell fast asleep, lying on her side facing Father’s bed with her left
arm pressed under her head like a pillow. Her knees were bent forward and
her embroidered shawl spread up to her shoulders.
Most of the patients were lying on their beds and appeared to be asleep,
some on their backs, some on their fronts, some on their sides. The carers
on the bedside chairs seemed to be sitting up but were really asleep. Their
heads nodded like clods of tired soil. They would wake up, yawn and peer
at their patient, then go back to sleep again. Some even snored.
I suddenly realized that my feet had been steaming in my shoes for two
whole days. I took off those shoes with their rotten soles and tossed them
into a corner. My socks stank, so I flung them under the bed. When I
touched the floor with the warm soles of my feet, they left print marks.
Suddenly a long sigh of pain from my father’s mouth rang in my ears.
‘What’s wrong, Ba?’ I asked.
‘Pain in my head.’
I placed my right hand on Father’s head—it was as hot as a furnace and
the veins on the top of his head were moving about like crawling insects. I
spread out my hand and pressed down. The veins went crazy as if they were
going to escape from under my hand. I rubbed to and fro gently as if I was
massaging them. Then the veins cooled down a little and Father was calm. I
kept on looking at him and, as I did, I began to remember his face as it was
when we were at Matera: bright and strong.
 ‘Ba, is that a little better?’ I asked him.

***

‘What does he say?’ asked Father. He was wiping the dust off his bicycle,
then he stopped.
‘He says he’s going to Katasé,’ Mother said irritably.
Since first thing that morning, I had been insisting ‘I’m going with Ba, all
right?’ Wherever Mother went I followed her, catching hold of the end of
her sari and dragging along behind her. If I went with Father to Katasé, I’d
get pauroti and an ice stick. Father would put me in the chair he sat in and
I’d sit there swinging my legs all day.
‘Then let him come, na?’ Father stood his bicycle up in the yard and
looked at Mother.
‘Well, don’t complain to me later that he harassed you.’ Mother looked at
me. ‘He’s only four years old; I’m afraid he’ll get lost in the bazaar.’
‘She worries over nothing. He won’t get lost.’ Father turned to me, ‘Will
you get lost?’
‘No, I won’t get lost.’
‘He’ll eat anything he finds, remember,’ said Mother as she went
upstairs. A moment later, she returned with a blue shirt and a pair of shorts
in her hand.
‘Come here!’ Mother shouted, looking at me. ‘The boy’s as dirty as a
pig!’
I walked meekly over to her.
Mother washed my face and put water on my hair. She kneaded and
rubbed my ankles. As she unfastened my old clothes, she muttered, ‘Chi!
How sour he smells! Does he piss on himself or something?’
I felt ashamed.
Once I had put on my clean shirt and shorts, I looked much smarter.
Mother wrapped a headscarf round the bicycle’s crossbar in case it bruised
me, next to the umbrella Father had fastened to it in case it rained. That day,
Father put on a sky-blue waistcoat and blue trousers, a Dhaka topi on his
head, a watch on his wrist and boots on his feet that came up to his knees.
I sat on the crossbar and held on tight between the handlebars, and Father
climbed on to the bicycle, ringing the bell. Very soon the village was behind
us and we were entering the forest. It was a day in the rainy season, so the
sky was overcast. Father was whistling as he turned the pedals.
There were black clouds in the sky which rumbled loudly from time to
time, and the potholes along the road were full of jumping frogs. To save its
tyres from the potholes, Father steered the bicycle towards the edge of the
road. As the spokes of its wheels brushed the kuro grass that grew there,
they tinkled—tirling tirling.
Along the side of the road there were tall sal trees, and sometimes the
rain-soaked homes of termites. There was silence in the forest and the sky
became even darker. Father pedalled hard in order to get through the forest
before the rain began.
We reached the pipal tree, filled with streamers, flags and bells. This was
one frightening tree on the lonely one-and-a-half hour journey from Matera
to Katasé Bazaar. It was like the head of a wild-haired lunatic.
Around the tree the forest was very dense, and the pipal was dense too,
covered with creepers. It was dark, because the sun could not peer through
the creepers and leaves that blocked its way. It was difficult to see inside.
Who had the courage to go up close to peer in?
The bicycle approached the pipal tree. I turned my head back to look up
at Father’s face and I saw his neatly shaped moustache and pointed nose.
The sound of whistling came from his puckered lips. But the closer the
bicycle came to the pipal tree, the bluer I turned with fear.
‘Why are you frightened?’ Father had noticed, and he leaned down to
speak to me.
‘The gho-ost!’
‘Don’t be afraid, you are a good son. The ghost won’t do anything to
you.’
The dark pipal tree fell away behind us. Once the bicycle turned away, it
was hidden from sight. I had survived, and so had Father. After the dark
forest ended, there was a stretch of bright open land full of langur monkeys.
They had very long tails and their faces and backsides were black. They
were playing with their own tails. When Father saw some langurs sitting on
the road, he rang his bell and they all ran away. One of them stopped dead
and turned to look back at us, then grinned, showing us his teeth, and ran
away. The others, who were running away hurriedly in fear, started to climb
up two tall sal trees on the side of the road.
‘See the monkeys?’ Father laughed.
I nodded my head.
‘If you misbehave at the shop, they will beat you with their tails when we
come back this way. So—are you going to misbehave?’
‘No,’ I shook my head from side to side.
An hour after leaving home, through the gap between two trees full of
langurs, I saw a lot of houses in the distance and smoke rising up to the sky.
This was Katasé Bazaar.
When we reached the wooden bridge at one end of the bazaar, Father
stopped the bicycle and made me get down. First he took the bicycle across
the bridge, then he took me. As soon as we arrived at the bazaar, I took hold
of Father’s hand. So many people! Dogs were running all about. Right there
on the road, people had lit fires and were heating up ghee in great big
cooking pots.
‘Doctor Saap, namaste.’ People pressed their hands together to greet
Father as soon as they saw him.
Father smiled and returned their greetings.
‘Oho, is this your son?’ some of them asked. ‘He looks just like you.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Father said proudly.
After Father had taken us around in a circuit of the bazaar, I found myself
in front of a locked door. Father stood the bicycle to one side and opened
this door. Inside, there were medicines and more medicines. ‘Sit there and
don’t touch, all right?’ said Father, setting me on a pirka. Then he swept the
floor with a broom.
‘What will you eat?’ he asked me a moment later.
‘Pauroti.’
 Soon Father came, bringing a glass of milk tea and some pauroti. I
started dipping the bread into the tea and eating it.
‘Namaste, bhai!’ A fat man with a moustache arrived. ‘Have you just
opened the Medikal?’
Father smiled.
‘Is this your son?’ the man turned to me. ‘What’s your name, Babu?’
‘Brisha Bahadur.’
‘And Father’s name?’
I felt shy. Father looked at me and smiled.
‘Tell me, don’t you know your father’s name?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘Doctor Harsha Bahadur.’

***

One evening, Father came home on his bicycle, ringing his bell. I was
upstairs, and I ran down when I heard it. Father stood the bicycle against
the mud-built grain store that stood beside the door. In the bicycle’s carrier,
there was a small paper package. Father saw me standing beside him but
said nothing. He took the parcel out, put it by the door and went to the
midden on the east side of the yard. Then he took off his shoes.
‘Bring my sandals, na?’ he turned towards me.
I ran to the kitchen and brought him his sandals, then he climbed up to
the upper floor, his sandals slapping on the steps as he went. When he came
home, he always used to go and sit up there. If the astrologer came to call
on us, they would sit there until late, talking about who knows what. Only if
he had a quarrel with Mother would he wander about in the village until
midnight.
I climbed up to the balcony slowly. Because it was hot, Father was
wearing only a vest. His eyes were shut and he was thinking to himself
about something. I went and stood close to him, hanging my head.
‘What have you come to tell me?’ Father asked me suddenly.
Chandré had been wearing an old hat he had found by the Amauri Khola
which he had pulled into a peak at the front. I too wanted to wander about
wearing a peaked cap.
‘Tell me, don’t be afraid!’ Father smiled.
‘Ba, buy me a hat.’
Father smiled again.
‘Buy me one, na?’
‘I’ll bring you one tomorrow.’ Father smiled and scratched the stubble of
his moustache.
As soon as he got home the next day, Father called me over.
Oh yes! Father had brought me a hat, and now he pulled it out of his bag.
But when I saw it, I immediately felt like crying. A hat had arrived, but it
was like the hats Father wore. It wasn’t the peaked cap I was looking for
which would hold off the sun. Fondly, Father put the hat on my head and
pulled its top into a peak.
I couldn’t say ‘Not this hat!’, I couldn’t stamp my feet and say ‘I said a
real peaked one!’
‘Go and show it to your mother,’ Father smiled.
I went tearfully downstairs and found Mother and Sister in the kitchen.
‘Now why’s he crying?’ asked Mother when she saw me. And I cried and
cried.
‘Why’s he crying?’ asked Father when he saw my red eyes at meal time.
‘Oh, I don’t know why he’s so tearful.’
Everyone stared at me.
Even that night I was still sobbing, with the hat on my pillow. I felt
suffocated inside the mosquito net. My bed was right next to Mother and
Father’s, so they could easily hear my sobs. Sister slept inside. As I sobbed
late into the night, Mother murmured, ‘Whatever has happened to this son
of ours?’ Father dozed for a while, then he got up and switched on a
dazzling torch and came over to my bed with a sigh of despair. Then he
detached an end of the net from my mattress, and shone the bright light of
the torch in my face.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Father touched my forehead. ‘Do you have
a fever?’
 Father’s loving voice made me even more tearful. My sobs came even
harder and my tears just wouldn’t stop. I threw the hat aside and burst out,
‘I just won’t wear such a topi. I said I wanted a cap topi!’
‘All right, don’t cry any more. I’ll bring you one tomorrow,’ said Father.
Back in her bed, Mother was laughing.
Next day, Father came home a little earlier than usual. Mother and Sister
had gone to the Amauri Khola to bring in the cattle, and I was out in the
yard. Father washed his hands and feet, then put his hand into the pocket of
his waistcoat. He had brought me a cap topi.
‘Come here,’ he said, smiling.
I sauntered meekly over to him. Father took out the hat that was rolled up
in a ball in his pocket, straightened it out, put it on my head and turned up
the peak. My heartbeat quickened. I didn’t know what to do.
I ran to Chandré’s house.
After I’d run a little way, I turned to look back at Father. He was
watching me and laughing.
The blue hat had a star on its brow. Delighted, Chandré pulled it off my
head and put it on his own. He danced about, dragging his crippled foot. I
also danced, snatching the hat back to put it on my head. Chandré’s father
had seen his hat and thrown it back into the river, which washed it away. He
had said, ‘These things that wash up on the riverbank belong to dead
people.’ So, when Chandré saw my hat, he was delighted at first. But then
he became hopeless. He sat down on the ridge of a field and I sat down
beside him.
‘If only my father was like yours.’ Chandré was close to tears. ‘There’s
nobody like your father in this Matera.’

***

Chandré and I turned six years old.

If you looked at him, he was the same height as me, but thinner. His right
leg was limp, like a snake-gourd creeper. His father cut his hair, so it looked
like rice-straw.
 ‘Your father is a doctor,’ he used to tell me from time to time. ‘He gives
you tonic drinks.’
I suppose he said this because I was plump and sturdy. And it was true:
Father brought me all sorts of things from the bazaar. Sometimes apples,
sometimes oranges, sometimes a tonic. I really enjoyed taking the sweet
sugary tonics. Sometimes I would take a tonic six times in a day that was
only supposed to be taken in the morning and evening. Sometimes Chandré
would get one or two lidfulls as well.
‘You’ve finished another one?’ Father was perturbed when he saw the
empty tonic bottle. ‘I tell you not to take too much, but you don’t do as I
say. Do you want to make yourself ill?’
After that, tonic drinks would be banned for a month or two. And I would
pretend to be ill, and just lie around listlessly. Father knew very well that I
was pretending, but he would still bring me a bottle of tonic. Perhaps it was
because of the tonics I drank that my cheeks had become chubby. My arms
and legs were good and plump too. I knew that people in Matera sometimes
turned back to look at me.
Some used to say, speaking loudly enough for me to hear them, ‘He’s a
doctor’s son, see how handsomely he has grown. Then look at our children,
all dried up like sinki, fermented radishes.’
When he heard people saying this kind of thing, Bhagiram Tharu would
fly into a rage. ‘Don’t cast your gaze on the boy, he’ll fall ill!’
Bhagiram was an old man. He sat under a tall sal tree beside the Amauri
Khola, making woven fans. Sometimes he was whittling away at dry
splinters of bamboo; at other times he would be winding green and red
thread around short lengths of stick. When he coughed, a few flecks of
blood could be seen in the phlegm he spat out. Kancha Lamichane told us,
‘He has a fatal disease, don’t get close to him.’ So, Chandré and I were
afraid to go near.
During the rains, he would open out an umbrella made of sal leaves and
squat beneath it. His shirt was as full of holes as a sieve and looked as if it
had been hung on his thin bones. Whatever the weather was, hot or cold, he
was always beside the Amauri Khola. He was even there when it was
raining. Sometimes if it rained suddenly, Chandré and I would take shelter
under the same sal tree. When he saw us, the old man would chuckle, and
when it was raining heavily, he would sing. In the heat, he mopped his
sweat and muttered to himself.
‘They say he summons Ban Devi,’ Chandré told me one day.
When I heard that Ban Devi lived in the forest and terrorised children,
and that she made their stomachs swell up so that they died, I was afraid to
go out to piss when I needed to during the night. I just pissed in my bed
without realising that I was doing so.
‘Ey, he still hasn’t stopped peeing in his bed!’ Mother rebuked me one
day.
‘Hey, why do you pee in your bed?’ Father stroked my hair. ‘Now you’re
such a big man, you shouldn’t pee in your bed!’
‘I’m scared of Ban Devi in the night,’ I said.
‘If you’re scared, you should tell us!’ Mother shook out the sleeping mat.
‘Ban Devi only scares people who have done something wrong,’ Father
told me. ‘Nothing will happen to a good boy like you.’
And so, I stopped pissing in my bed. Chandré was pissing in his bed too,
but his own father put a stop to it by thrashing him. After that, he stopped
being afraid of approaching Bhagiram. And there was another reason for
not being afraid any more. Gradually, the cowherds from Tharu Gaon
started to come over to the Amauri Khola to bring home their livestock.
They liked associating with Bhagiram. They teased him, calling him
‘Baajé’, and played dandibiyo and baagchaal. The old man was delighted
when he saw them too. During the hot summer weather, he would shout,
‘These hill people have used up all the forest. Ban Devi will curse them.
Look, it doesn’t rain any more. It’s getting hotter.’ And they all moved their
heads in agreement.
In the evenings, there began to be big gatherings of cowherds and Tharus
beside the Amauri Khola. Mother gave me the job of bringing in our cow,
Lakshmi, and Panché, our bullock, as they returned from the forest. I could
hardly have forced them to come, of course, but as soon as they saw me,
they took up behind me. So I stopped reading the alphabet book that Father
had brought for me and scampered off to the Amauri Khola. It was great
fun to watch the cowherds playing dandibiyo there.
One day, I was returning home, driving the cattle in front of me, when a
bicycle bell tinkled behind me. It was Father.
‘Where have you been, wandering about all on your own?’ he stopped to
ask me.
‘I’ve come to bring in the cattle.’
‘Who told you to?’
‘Mother.’
‘I see,’ said Father. Then he put me on his carrier and rode the bicycle out
of the cattle’s way. From time to time, my nose bumped into his waistcoat.
A strange smell was coming from it: it was bitter, just like camphor.
Father brought the bicycle to a halt in the yard and I jumped off.
‘Are you trying to turn him into a cowherd?’ Father walked into the
smoke-filled kitchen, raising his voice. ‘Can’t you go yourself?’
‘Who’s trying to turn him into a cowherd?’ Mother became angry too. ‘It
won’t be long before Parvati’s examination. My place is here, cooking the
meal.’
In a temper, Mother thrust a smouldering piece of firewood into the
cooking fire, and that night Mother and Father did not speak to one another
at all. Sister sat staring into space and I just felt like crying.
The very next day, Father went to Sister’s school at Khairiphanta and,
two days after that, I was bathed and washed and sent off to school myself,
walking along behind Sister. Chandré, who we met on the way, also took up
behind us. When he discovered that Chandré had been going to school for
three or four days, Chandré’s father also followed us there one day.
‘Come here,’ Father said one day, as soon as he returned from Katasé.
I went up to him.
He had brought me new books and exercise books, and red, blue and
green sign pens. I jumped for joy. Sister was reading by the light of the
lantern, so I went and lay on my stomach next to her. On the first page of
my new exercise book, I drew a picture of a man with two front teeth
protruding.
 I showed it to Sister. ‘Who’s this?’
Sister giggled. ‘It’s Ba,’ she said.

***

Chandré and I had no great taste for studying. But although we were dull in
our studies, we were skilled at swimming, which we had learned by
swallowing river water three or four times a day. The river shrank so much
in the winter that you could see the stones beneath the water. Chandré had
learned to dive like a frog. I tried to dive once too, but my chest hit the
water with a loud slap and was red and very sore for a long time afterwards,
so I gave up diving.
After we came back from school, our place was by the Amauri Khola for
the rest of the day.
The water of the Amauri Khola was only knee-deep in the winter, but it
became cloudy and swollen during the rains, submerging the wooden
bridge, bursting its banks and flooding the level ground beside it.
Where does it come from, this Amauri Khola? I used to wonder about
that so much that my head ached with the question. One day, I stood up on
the tall stump of a sal tree and gazed into the distance. I saw that the river
took a loop around the sal forest and disappeared.
One day, Chandré told me, ‘I know: they say it comes from Chisapani.’
‘Ba, where is Chisapani?’ I asked Father. Father was busy twiddling the
radio’s nose to get a better reception. ‘It’s very high up in the hills. You’ll
go there some day.’
I waited for many days, but Father did not take me to the place where the
Amauri Khola came from. Once, I followed its course until I was very far
away, but when it came to a dark forest, I got scared and ran home.
One day, Father was very happy because he had brought home two kilos
of grapes. He sat in the kitchen, joking with Mother, and that day I ate a
stomach full of grapes.
‘Ba, I want to see the place where the Amauri Khola comes from,’ I said,
biting into a grape.
 Father laughed and looked at me.
‘I want to go to Chisapani!’ I insisted.
‘Chya, what a lot of trouble he gives us, this one!’ moaned Mother,
stirring the rice with a spatula as it became nearly ready to eat. Sister also
glanced at me, smiled, and put her face back in her book.
‘Not now,’ said Father. ‘We’ll go when you’re a bit bigger.’
‘When will I be big?’
‘When you’ve passed class five.’
The next day, I kept on telling Chandré the same thing, ‘Once I’ve passed
class five, I’m going up even higher than Chisapani.’
After he’d been hearing this from me for a long time, Chandré said,
‘Take me too, na?’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll sit on Father’s crossbar and you can sit on the
back.’
In his longing to go to Chisapani on the back of a bicycle, Chandré
brought a stolen pomelo fruit the next day, and we sat on the bank of the
Amauri Khola and ate it. That night, his father found out about it and beat
him. Chandré told me he cried all night.
Two days later, Chandré sneaked up behind me and pulled down my
shorts. I hated having my shorts pulled down in front of the cowherds. They
all laughed, and old Bhagiram laughed too—ho ho ho.
I ran to the Amauri Khola.
‘Wait, you dare to pull down my shorts?’ I threatened him through my
tears. ‘I’m going to tell my Ba!’
Chandré turned blue with fright.
When he brought another stolen pomelo the next day, I forgave him, and
after that he didn’t get up to any mischief for several days. But why would
he ever reform? One day, he and I found a plastic packet that had been
washed up by the river. Most of the writing printed on it had faded away,
but Chandré could make out ‘…p tobacco’. I don’t know what got into him
next. He gathered some goat dung from the ground, which was soft from
being steeped in water and looked just like blackberries. I too mistook it for
blackberries sometimes and started to eat it, then had to run retching to the
river to wash my mouth out. Chandré took the dung into the palm of his left
hand and kneaded it with his right thumb, as if it was tobacco. Once he had
kneaded it three or four times, he put it into the plastic, rolled it up and put
it in his pocket. Then he indicated Bhagiram with a glance.
Bhagiram was weaving a fan. As he squatted there, his knees reached his
ears, perhaps because he had become thin. His loincloth had slipped back
from his knees to his waist and was hanging down.
‘Have some of this, Uncle.’ Chandré went up to him and gave him the
tobacco packet he had folded away in his pocket.
‘What’s this?’ the old man looked at him from his cloudy eyes.
‘Tobacco from Bombay.’
The old man took it with his trembling hands. Yes, it probably had come
from there. He looked at the packet and saw that it was open.
‘This is only half a packet.’
‘Father was using it. I stole it.’
The old man thought he might as well taste it. He took a pinch between
his thumb and index finger, rubbed it on his upper lip and said, ‘Ram Ram.’
And then Chandré began to laugh, rubbing his stomach. His right leg was
lame, and now his left leg started bending too. My face and ears heated up.
Chandré’s chortles began to bounce off the trees and come back to us. The
old man staggered to his feet and shook like a shaman. He spat in disgust—
thu thu!
Then Chandré ran, and I took off behind him at speed. Suddenly the old
man lashed out at Chandré with his stick, but it merely touched Chandré on
the thigh. There was no chance of him getting hold of us. So he bellowed,
making the whole Amauri Khola shake, ‘Fuck you, you bastard Paharis!’

***

‘Sneak out a new exercise book and some ink,’ said Chandré.
Mother had planted tobacco plants all around the house and they had
already sprouted leaves. I was idly pushing holes through a leaf with my
forefinger.
 ‘What for?’ I asked, pausing.
‘Let’s print some Nagas, na?’ he whispered. ‘If you post them on
people’s houses, they give you money.’
The next day was the festival of Nag Panchami. Chandré persuaded me
that we should go to see the old astrologer and get him to print some Nagas
for us. If we went from Tharu house to Tharu house, sticking them on their
doors, the Tharus would give us money. Then when we’d go to Katasé, we
would get to eat rice and cold ice.
Chandré’s idea seemed like a good one to me. I crept upstairs, put
Sister’s new exercise book and a bottle of ink into my pocket, and came
down again. As soon as I appeared, Chandré ran off and I followed him.
A small path went towards the west via an Indian coral tree near our cow
shed. It led to the old astrologer’s house where the astrologer lived with his
wife and their son Basudev. The astrologer didn’t let Basudev go out for
fear that if he wandered about in the village, he might be touched by a pig.
The astrologer was sitting on a rug which he had spread out on the floor
of his porch. In front of him there was a calendar. For a moment, I hid
behind the cow shed wall and watched. I didn’t have the courage to go any
further. Chandré pushed me from behind once or twice.
‘Who’s that in the cow shed?’ we heard the astrologer’s loud voice.
I showed myself meekly in the yard.
He looked at me over the rim of his thick spectacles. ‘Why are you here?
Basudev’s not at home.’
‘Print some Nagas,’ I said, and gave him the ink and paper.
‘Where did you get this?’ the astrologer was surprised.
‘Father brought it for me yesterday,’ I said, looking at Chandré, who had
now appeared at my side. ‘Print some, na?’
The astrologer took the exercise book. He wet his finger and counted the
pages.
‘There are thirty. That’s fifteen for me and fifteen for you, all right?’
I looked at Chandré, and he indicated that I should agree. Once I had
agreed, the astrologer went inside the house. Some thin smoke was coming
out of the door. When he came out, the astrologer was holding a stamp for
printing Nagas. It was the same size as a grinding pestle and it had snakes
coiled around it. He rinsed it off and dried it briefly, then broke open the
exercise book. He wiped ink onto the stamp with a rag, then placed a page
of the book over the stamp and stroked it. Then he took the page off and
handed it to me, saying, ‘Lau, dry this in the sun.’
Oh yes! On the page there was a picture of twelve blue snakes all wound
around one another. I put the wet paper in a corner of the yard. And then the
astrologer stamped Nagas on each of the pages, one by one.
Once they had dried, Chandré picked up the fifteen pages and sped off
with them.
Early next morning, Chandré came and called me quietly, and I ran out to
meet him. He was carrying an old bag with the Naga pictures in it. As we
reached Tharu Gaon, he moulded a small amount of cow dung into a ball on
a leaf and made me pull up a fistful of grass. Then, at each door, he applied
cow dung in four places and stuck the page onto it, while I did the same
with the grass. Some people gave us rice, some gave us 8 annas, some Re 1.
Some smiled and gave us both rice and money.
When all of the fifteen pages had gone, Chandré’s bag was half full. We
had collected Rs 8. Sitting on the bank of the Amauri Khola, Chandré gave
me Rs 4. I didn’t want to take the rice home, so he took that. But as soon as
I reached home with the Rs 4 in my pocket, Father saw me and roared,
‘Come here!’
I was frightened.
Sister came running out of the kitchen and said in a tearful voice, ‘He
went off with my exercise book and my ink. Ba, you should beat him!’
I felt as if I was going to wet myself.
‘Was it you who stole it?’ Father came close.
I stood still, hanging my head. Father stroked my head and asked me,
‘Tell me the truth, was it you who went off with it? I won’t beat you.’
‘Yes,’ I was nearly crying. Then Father slapped me and I felt giddy.
‘Are you turning into a thief? The things you ask for I bring you, corpse!
Tell me who you gave it to.’
 ‘Why are you beating him like this?’ Mother came running to my side.
When I saw her, I could no longer hold back my tears.
‘Tell us now, who did you give it to?’ Mother stroked my cheek. ‘How
can Sister do her studies now, tell me!’
‘I printed some Nagas,’ I said, sobbing.
‘And what did you do with them?’
I took the coins from my pocket and handed them to Mother. After this,
Father calmed down. He did not speak but went upstairs. After a moment,
there came the sound of the radio—ghyaar-ghyaar.
‘It’s the jogis who put up the Naga pictures, not us,’ Mother said,
speaking loudly enough for Father to hear. ‘Your father beat you because he
was afraid you’d turn into a jogi. So, tell me, are you going to become a
jogi now and go around begging?’
‘No.’
Mother led me into the kitchen. Sister too had become tearful when she
saw me cry, and she followed us in, looking mournful.
When I went to school the next morning, Chandré came along behind
me. He had a swollen face because his father had beaten him last night too.
He had taken away the money and thrown the rice out into the field.
Three or four days later, I was at the Amauri Khola when I saw Father in
the distance, returning home on his bicycle. The setting sun was
approaching Tharu Gaon like a red ember.
I ran home. Beside the path, there were thickets of besharam. I ran past,
touching them on my way. I noticed as I ran past that the crab’s eye had
flowered too. In front of the cow shed there was a tall lac tree, and on the
right side a black mulberry. Father passed between them on his bicycle and
reached the cow shed.
I looked hurriedly for my exercise book and text book, then I lay on my
stomach in the porch, pretending to read.
The bicycle came to a halt in the yard. Father leaned it up against the
grain store where the chaff and husks were stored, next to the front door. I
sneaked a glance at him as he headed for the refuse heap. His boots were
dirty due to the mud flicked up by the bicycle tyres from the puddles and
holes in the road. Father took off his boots and sat down by the midden to
wash off his legs, the sweat trickling down the long bridge of his nose. Then
he climbed upstairs, mopping his face.
After he had gone, I put down my school books. I hid behind the clump
of sleeping hibiscus beside the steps and peered upward. Father took off his
blue waistcoat and hung it on the wall to the right. Then he did the same
with his shirt and sat down on the bed. The bed that stood on the outer side
facing the east was where Mother and Father slept. After he had rested for a
minute, Father began to twiddle the nose of the radio beside him.
A farming programme was on the radio, all about how to get rid of bugs
that attack potatoes…
Then Father walked to the waistcoat where it was hanging on the wall. I
emerged from behind the leaves of the sleeping hibiscus. Father took some
money out of the inner pocket of the waistcoat and began to count it. After
he had counted it, he put it back into the pocket and put the coat on again.
‘Hey, come here,’ said Father.
Fearfully, I ascended the old wooden steps. When I arrived in front of
him, I could not meet Father’s eyes or even look at his face. I just stood
there dejectedly.
‘Have you done your studying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Here, then!’
Father handed me a 2-rupee note. I grabbed it and ran away and, as I
descended the steps, I saw Father smiling. I didn’t like it when Father
grinned, because two of his front teeth stuck out like a ploughshare.
‘Where did you get that money?’ Mother was alarmed. I had entered the
kitchen with the 2-rupee note stuck to my forehead.
‘Father gave it to me,’ I said, twisting my hips as if I was dancing.
‘Give it to me, I will look after it for you.’
But I didn’t hand it over. Instead, I ran straight out of the kitchen and off
to the Amauri Khola.
‘Don’t give him money and spoil him,’ Mother nagged at Father that
evening. ‘If children get everything they want, they turn out bad later.’
 But Father did not respond. He just glanced over at me, and I grinned
back at him.

***

The rains began.

From time to time, the sky took photos of the earth. Water was splashing
everywhere. The Amauri Khola, which shrivelled to the size of a grainstore
snake in the winter, was fattening like a python and taking long deep
breaths.
In the afternoon, it was crazy, as if it was going to wash the bridge away.
As the water rose and reached the sal tree on the bank, Bhagiram Tharu,
who had been sitting weaving his fans under a ragged umbrella of leaves,
jumped up in alarm.
‘This river is going to do something bad!’ he said loudly.
When we heard this, Chandré and I were scared and we ran home.
When the Amauri Khola’s waters swelled like this, someone or other was
sure to get washed away. Who knows where the river took them? Some it
took way down, then tossed them up onto the shore like a ball. Swollen
corpses would be found in the bushes by the riverside or lying on piles of
sand, on their fronts or on their backs. People used to say that the Amauri
Khola took sacrificial victims every year.
If the river went a little madder than usual, it would come right up to our
yard. This year too, so much water was rushing down the river that it
seemed it would reach our house. Perhaps because it had been raining
continually all afternoon, Father came home early. His muddy boots were
by the door. I peeked through the door and saw him near the fireplace. The
raincoat I was wearing had not held off the rain, so my back was completely
soaked. I climbed upstairs, thinking that Father would tell me off for going
out and getting wet in the rain. So, I threw my wet shirt and shorts into a
corner and put on some different clothes. Curled up in my quilt, listening to
the rain falling onto the leaves of the banana tree, I fell asleep for some
time.
 ‘Hey, get up and go and warm yourself by the fire. Where have you been
to get so wet?’ said Father.
I glanced over at him. He was putting a new battery into the radio.
I ran downstairs.
In the kitchen, Parvati was lying on her stomach, blowing the fire, the
soles of her feet dirty with ash. I sat down beside her. My sister was five
years older than me. Whenever I got into a scrap at school, she was the one
who saved me. And at home she was also the one who slapped me every
day. Sometimes she cried herself after she hit me, and I cried all the more
when I saw that.
The smoke was floating up to the rafters of the house which were as
black as an upturned frying pan. White lines of ash had already settled on
Mother’s and Sister’s hair and very quickly, my eyes filled with smoke and
began to sting.
‘Blow harder, can’t you?’ Mother said irritably, wiping away her tears
with the back of her hand. ‘My eyes are streaming!’
‘I’m blowing as hard as I can!’ said Sister, wiping her own red eyes.
The fire sprang to life. Sister lifted her face, which was like bread that
had been put by the fire to dry. Oh, her face was covered in ash! The ash
hadn’t even spared her eyebrows.
‘Why are you laughing, Tharu?’ she shouted when she saw me laughing.
‘She’s called Parvati but she’s turned into Shiva!’
‘No more jokes, or I’ll put this in your face!’ She suddenly pulled out a
flaming piece of wood and I felt its heat on my face.
‘How they quarrel, these children!’ Mother raised her fist. ‘How about I
punch you now myself?’
Mother used to get very short-tempered during the rainy season, and I
just kept quiet. As she cooked the vegetables, muttering to herself all the
while, she looked over now and again at the wall that was becoming wet
with water. Last year, the wall on that side had fallen right down, and that’s
probably what she was worrying about.
‘Go and call your father to come and scoff his food.’ Mother looked at
me. ‘And check to see if the water’s getting in.’
 It seemed that Mother had quarrelled with Father again. I went out
without saying anything. It was drizzling outside. I started up the steps,
holding my hand over my head to keep the rain off. Father was listening
with his eyes closed to the 8-o’clock news in English on the radio.
Up until two years ago, I had always wondered where the radio man
lived. One day, I put my face close to the radio and said something rude to
him, then ran off to the Amauri Khola. Later, I became afraid—what if
Father found out? I was frightened that the radio man might tell Father that
I had insulted him. But when I came home that evening, everything seemed
normal. The radio man was still inside the radio, shouting even louder than
usual—‘Prime Minister Marich Man Singh said…’ I laughed a lot because
the prime minister’s first name meant ‘pepper’. ‘Pepper to put in your tea,’
I said. I still laughed when I remembered it today.
‘Why are you laughing?’ Dhat! Father had seen me. He switched off the
radio.
‘You’re to come for your food.’
Father had been sitting cross-legged, and now he spread out his legs and
got down from the bed. His feet entered the straps of his Hattichaap sandals
like a bull stepping into the yoke of a plough. I went ahead, and Father
followed me down.
The rice had already been served out. A couple of grains had fallen into
the glowing fire and were burning there. As soon as we arrived, its sweet
fragrance made our stomachs feel empty. Father sat down in silence on a
pirka and tipped some water from the pitcher to wash the tips of his fingers.
Some drops fell from his fingers onto the fire and bhutta! A little ash flew
up but vanished in mid-air.
Father never spoke at meal times. I don’t know what he used to think
about. He sat in silence, eating what he was given. He was silent if there
was too much salt. Silent if there was no salt. Silent if the rice was burnt.
Silent if he was given the aubergine tarkari that I never liked.
Mother placed a bronze plate and a bowl in front of him and he began to
eat in a way that meant that only the very tips of his fingers were smeared
with the black dal. Meanwhile, rice was coming out of every gap between
my own fingers. That was how I used to knead my rice. ‘How disgustingly
he eats!’ Mother would say from time to time. But I really disliked the way
my father ate, like a bird pecking up grain with its beak, never enough to fill
the stomach. I carried on eating in silence. When the cow or the ox
bellowed in the cow shed, Father would look askance at Mother.
‘They’re probably soaked because of the leaking cow shed, that’s why
they’re making such a noise, those damned creatures,’ Mother said.
Father carried on as if he hadn’t heard her.
‘This wall’s got so wet it might fall down tonight,’ Mother looked at the
wall.
Father coughed once and said nothing.
‘Oh, why do you never listen?’ Mother became irritated.
Father stared at her, puzzled.
‘The house is falling down. Shouldn’t it be fixed? When the rains begin,
I’m always frightened that it will fall down and we will be buried under it!’
‘I’ll fix it,’ said Father.
‘I’ve never asked for anything in this life. No one even listens to me
when I say we should build a good house.’
‘She tries to cry over nothing, this one. I said I’d expand the Medikal and
the money’s all gone on that.’
‘Always some excuse or other.’ Mother moved a piece of burning wood.
‘Your father-in-law told you to take it away with you, but you didn’t, and
now this happens. If you had listened to him today, I wouldn’t have to be
living in such a leaky house on this unregistered land today.’
‘So, what are you going to do? That’s just how I am,’ Father grinned.
‘You’d have been happier if you hadn’t married me. So, why did you come
away with this old man?’
I looked at Sister and smiled quietly, and she shyly hung her head.
‘It was fine when we still lived up at Ratu. I had my own people there
too,’ Mother’s voice became milder. ‘What bad luck was it that made you a
doctor in the Madhes? These Matera people beg you for medicine, but they
don’t pay us the money.’
‘Now that they know me, it’s harder for them to beg.’
 ‘This habit of yours brings us hardship. People owe you money all over
the village.’ Mother heaved a long sigh. ‘We don’t have any cash.’
After that, there was a long silence. Father picked up the last grains from
his plate. I looked at him and at his protruding cheekbones. Pushing his
dirty plate towards Mother, Father picked up the water pitcher and got up.
His knees cracked as he rose—katatata. He left the pitcher outside, went
upstairs and did not come down again. As Mother was putting rice onto his
soiled plate for herself, I too went outside. A drizzling rain was falling and
from time to time, lightning flashed in the sky. As I hurried up the steps, I
saw Sister coming out too.
Mother’s voice followed Sister out, ‘Check to see if the roof is leaking!’
When I arrived upstairs, I found Father shifting my bed. As I came
closer, I saw that one side of it was soaking wet. Then, in the middle of the
night, it rained so heavily it made a hole in the roof. Mother and Father got
up quickly. Father lit a torch and began to search for the leak. Mother had
pulled my bedding over to a corner of the house where the roof wasn’t
leaking, so I watched from my dry bed as Father ran wheezing to and fro.
Heaving a long sigh, Father declared, ‘We will have to build a new house
next winter!’

***

The sky was as clear as a freshly washed quilt cover. Far away on the other
side of the sky, the clouds coming towards Matera were as bright as if they
had been scrubbed and scrubbed with soap nuts, and then rinsed clean. I
stretched right out on my bed. The joints at the back of my neck had begun
to hurt severely and my head felt as if it had gained five kilos in one night. I
raised my arms towards the roof beam and stretched my bones.
The leaves of the corn, the cluster fig, the guava and the sleeping hibiscus
had become even greener. The day was as bright and clean as a man who
has shaved off his beard and bathed. From my bed, I caught the smell of
mud drying in the sun.
 I opened my mouth so wide my jaws nearly came loose, and out came a
yawn. As I came down the steps, I saw piles of sand in the yard. The
bicycle was not beside the grain store, just its tyre marks were there in the
sand, so I knew that Father was already gone. Mother was in the cow shed,
as always. From around the back of the house, the sounds of the brass bells
round the cattle’s necks and Mother’s murmuring voice reached my ears.
I headed for the kitchen, past the blossoming sleeping hibiscus. Just like
Father, I too liked to drink peppered tea as soon as I got up. As I reached the
threshold, I heard Sister laughing. I was in a hurry to go in, and my right
foot tripped on the step. But then I jerked myself backwards. Sister was not
alone in the kitchen, there was another girl with her too, sitting with her
chin on her knee.
She was the one that Chandré and I called Mamata Didi.
Mamata Didi’s family’s fields and our fields were joined at the shoulder,
and we used the same stream as our source of water. When it was our turn
to draw from it, the stream would dry right up in the middle of the night,
and in the morning only half of our field would be wet. When she saw this,
Mother shouted so loudly that the whole of Matera shook,
‘Who has dammed the stream again?’
One day, Mother found out that Mamata Didi’s father was coming at
night and turning the water that should have been coming into our field into
his own. When Father heard about this, he was furious. After that, the water
never dried up when it was our turn. However, every rainy season, the
boundary ridge of Mamata Didi’s field edged closer and closer to ours, like
a snail. One day, when he had come home early from Katasé, Father cried
out, ‘Why are you moving your field ridge?’
‘Who’s moving their field ridge?’ Mamata Didi’s mother screamed back,
‘Will you complain about nothing?’
Father shook with rage. I had never seen him as angry as this. He
demolished the field ridge and then Mamata Didi’s mother yelled out so
loudly that the whole of Matera shook, ‘The Doctor’s taken our field…’
All the people of the village gathered. It was resolved that it was Mamata
Didi’s people who were at fault, and after that the field ridge no longer
shifted. But from that time onward Mamata Didi’s mother and father spat
whenever they looked in the direction of our house.
Mamata Didi and my sister Parvati were great friends, and when she
came to our house, we were all happy. Father too loved Mamata Didi as
much as he loved Sister. After the quarrel over the field, Mamata Didi’s
parents did not like her coming to our house, but she still visited us in
secret. Mamata Didi studied in class six with Sister; she was roll number
31.
Mamata Didi was the fourth daughter in her family. ‘She was born even
though I didn’t want her,’ her mother would declare loudly every other day.
When her mother was carrying on like this, Mamata Didi would roll her
eyes and a cloudy tear would run down her flour-coloured cheek. When
Teej festival came around, Mamata Didi didn’t get nice new clothes, but
just a blue polyester shirt and a blue skirt that hung down to her ankles,
exactly like her school uniform. Over the year that followed, the thread that
held her shirt buttons on would turn different colours: sometimes red,
sometimes blue. If she lost a button from her skirt, it would be replaced by a
bit of thread. The soles of her sandals wore out, but all she got was new
laces.
From time to time, Mamata Didi’s mother would say, ‘It’s such a pity she
doesn’t elope with someone.’
I knew that Mamata Didi was eleven years old. Her sisters had eloped,
just as their mother wished, and never come back. Sometimes, they sent
letters for Mamata Didi, which the postman passed to her in secret.
Sometimes, they came with money inside them—as much as Rs 20. On the
days when she received money, Mamata Didi would ask our father to bring
her a red ribbon, and he would bring her one and say nothing to anyone.
‘What will you do with so many ribbons, Didi?’ I would ask her.
‘One day, I will hang myself on them and die,’ she would say. She would
fall silent for a moment, then bend her head down to her lap and laugh.
One day, her mother thrashed her, saying, ‘This one’s a whore.’ She
pulled out her hair and threw everything she owned—earrings, bangles,
ribbons—into the fire, where they twisted, melted and burned. Sister and I
searched for her and, when we reached her side, Mamata Didi had been
sitting by the Amauri Khola sobbing for a long while. Dusk had already
fallen; we watched the cows emerging from the clump of attar.
That day, Mamata Didi did not go home in the evening. We went back to
our house through the fields, staying out of sight in case her mother saw us.
‘Go home,’ Mother told her when it was time to eat. ‘Your mother will
surely come here looking for you.’
‘I won’t go!’ Mamata Didi looked as if she was going to start crying
again.
Father was eating, he didn’t speak. And soon, he went outside with his
water pot, then straight upstairs. Soon the sound of his radio could be heard.
Outside it was completely dark. Mother was cleaning the fireplace with a
rag. Feeling the urge to piss, I walked out a little way from the house, and
there I stood to furtively pee. If Mother caught me pissing in the backyard,
she would beat me, but I was afraid to go any further out than that.
‘What’s he like, he pees wherever he chooses,’ she had told me off once.
‘He belongs to the pigs!’
I had just opened the front of my shorts when I noticed a glow-worm
climbing up the densely leafed cluster fig tree. So, I stood there and
watched it as I pissed. Then, as I was on my way back to the kitchen, a light
appeared on the other side of the tree. It was coming towards our house.
Was it a torch ghost? I ran to the kitchen. The girls were chatting quietly,
and I hid myself in a corner.
‘Did you pee in the backyard again?’ Mother looked towards me.
I laughed and the girls laughed too. But then our laughter suddenly
stopped.
‘Doctor, hey Doctor!’ It was Mamata Didi’s mother’s voice.
Mother stopped wiping the fireplace. Upstairs, the radio was switched
off.
‘All right, so you’ve taken our field. Now you’re trying to take my
daughter too?’
No sound came from Father and the cicadas went on making their noise.
Then Father’s face turned red and he jumped to his feet. ‘Why is she yelling
and making the whole village shake?’
‘Hey Mamata, you little whore, out you come! I know you’re in there!’
Shaking from head to feet, Mamata Didi walked outside, dragging her
feet, and we followed her. Mamata Didi’s father was standing there too,
holding a lantern.
Mamata Didi stopped in the doorway. Her mother shouted, ‘Come here!’
Mamata Didi stepped out, hanging her head, and went to stand quietly
beside her mother. Her mother took hold of her hair, which was tied into a
single plait with a thread, and pushed her out into the darkness, hard enough
to make her fall down.
‘If you ever come here again… ! Don’t you even know who your
enemies are, whore?’
Mamata Didi’s mother looked up at the upper storey of the house, where
Father was standing. Then she spat in the yard—thu thu.
‘They are children, they don’t understand things,’ Father said. ‘What
harm does it do if she comes here?’
‘We’ve understood you all too well,’ Mamata Didi’s mother panted.
Father said nothing more.
Mamata Didi was sobbing, but her mother took her by the shoulders and
shook her. ‘If you come here again, I’ll wring your neck!’
Mamata Didi stumbled off into the darkness. Her parents made her walk
in front of them past the cluster fig tree. I looked up and saw Father still
standing there. After a moment, he sat down on the bed. Mother went
inside, muttering to herself and I heard Parvati sobbing. She went in too but
I stayed outside. After a moment, I saw that the lantern in Mamata Didi’s
father’s hand had become as small as a glow-worm, while the glow-worm
that had been climbing the cluster fig tree fell down like a star.
From the next day onward, Mamata Didi stopped coming to school.
Parvati searched for her but could not find her anywhere. Chandré and I
crept into her house, but she wasn’t there either.
One day Father asked Parvati, ‘Isn’t Mamata at home?’
‘She’s gone to her sister’s.’
 ‘Chi! How badly they treated her,’ Mother said. ‘Nobody despises their
own children that much.’
Father did not reply.
‘She was only her mother in name. After Mamata was born, she went
around the village wailing about having a daughter. If she can be brought up
by her sister that will be better, otherwise Mamata will suffer.’
‘Let it be now,’ Father said at last. ‘She’s quick to learn, Mamata.’
‘You think they’ll let her study? Her mother has already started looking
for a husband for her.’
After that, no one spoke of Mamata Didi in our house for some days.
Today, though, she had come back. She was telling Parvati delightedly all
about her sister’s husband and making Parvati laugh.
‘Mamata Didi?’ I laughed.
‘Are you well?’
‘Yes.’
‘At last you’re up, Tharu!’ Parvati made a face. ‘Shouldn’t you wash
your face, chi!’ I smiled bashfully and went to sit by the fire. Sister put the
tea pan on the fire.
I glanced at Mamata Didi and saw that she was wearing a maxi which
smelled of new cloth, printed with green roses. There was no ribbon in her
hair, which fell to the ground in a single plait.
‘Do you know?’ Mamata Didi said shyly, ‘When I’ve passed class seven,
Brother-in-Law says he’s going to take on the responsibility for all my
school fees himself.’

***

One day, when I was riffling through a cupboard, I came across Father’s
citizenship paper. It was as long as a page from an exercise book. In the
photo, Father was wearing a topi, but he did not have his moustache. I liked
moustaches very much. So, I spent the whole day drawing Father a
moustache.
‘Come here.’ I was in the yard when Father called me.
 I climbed upstairs. Oh no! Father was holding the citizenship paper in his
trembling hand. As soon as I saw it, I almost passed out.
‘Did you draw a moustache on this?’
I couldn’t breathe for fright, and I just stood there without saying a word.
‘Do you do bad things?’
I swallowed hard.
Suddenly, Father’s hand slapped my cheek. I squatted down. Then Father
punched me in the back of my neck. Tears came to my eyes but I managed
not to utter a squeak.
‘The kinder you are to him, the more disobedient he gets.’ Father hurried
inside and came out again with a rope. ‘Right, I’m going to tie you up and
chuck you into the cow shed.’
When I saw the rope, I almost fainted.
‘No, Ba,’ I sobbed, with my hands pressed together. ‘I’ll never do it
again.’
Father looked long and hard at me. I was still crying, my breath catching
in my throat. Father sat down on the bed.
I cried until late that evening. When I went down to the kitchen, Mother
jumped straight up in alarm. Sister was startled too.
‘Who hit you to make your cheek so swollen?’ Mother’s face darkened.
I dissolved into a flood of tears, a thin line of snot running from my nose.
‘Who hit you, tell me! I won’t rest until I’ve broken his hands!’
‘It was Ba.’
Mother ran out into the yard and screamed up to him, ‘Why did you hit
him so hard? Have you lost your senses?’
I don’t know what Father said in reply, but Mother hurried upstairs to
him.
Sister came up to me and stroked my hair. Then Mother returned to the
kitchen. She stroked my cheek and said, ‘If you do such naughty things,
what else can he do but smack you? Your father’s citizenship paper is
ruined. You’ve given your father a lot of trouble, son!’
My sobbing ceased. ‘You’ve ruined it, and it’s done.’ Mother wiped away
my tears. ‘Will you ever do such a thing again?’
 ‘No.’
Whenever I woke up that night, I remembered the citizenship paper I had
defaced and, from the very next day, Mother began to put locks on all the
trunks and cupboards. I swore that I would never do such a thing again. But
within a few days, where oh where had that oath disappeared?!
All day and night, I drew moustaches on the photos in my book. Some
moustaches lay flat, others were pointed and climbing upward, some were
twisted and twined like jeri sweets. When I showed them to Chandré on the
way home from school the next day, he almost died laughing.
One day, when I came across Sister’s class six Mahendramala textbook,
my hand really itched. Laughing silently to myself, I added a moustache in
red sign pen to the profiled face of a bespectacled man. The points of the
moustache pointed upwards and the bottom part was as thick as six lines.
‘Mother, he’s drawn a moustache on my book again!’ Sister came
running down to the yard, her feet ringing on the steps of the ladder. Mother
was sitting in the porch sifting through some rice.
‘Wait, so you’ll draw a moustache on a photo of the king?’ Mother
threatened me as she inspected the book. ‘Now the police will come and
take you away.’
My face turned black and blue.
I ran to the Amauri Khola. On the way I met Chandré. He followed me,
shouting ‘Where are you going?’ Beside the river, Bhagiram was
surrounded by the cowherds. I ran towards the river and sat hiding on the
bank where I could not be seen from the path above.
‘Why are you running away?’ asked Chandré as he joined me there.
‘The police are going to take me away now,’ I said in a trembling voice.
‘I drew a moustache on the king.’
Chandré looked at me in fright.
When I went home that evening, Father had already returned. I did not go
in but stood outside.
‘Hey, why are you hiding out there?’ Mother had spotted me. ‘Come
inside.’
 I entered the kitchen, frightened that Father was going to hit me again.
He was sitting with his eyes closed and he didn’t even look at me. Later, I
discovered that he had put a cover on Sister’s book.
For several months I was at peace, but one day I found myself alone at
home. Mother had taken some rice to the mill at Tharu Gaon, whose tuktuk
sound could be heard from the house. Mamata Didi and Sister had gone to
the well to bathe.
I was upstairs and I didn’t feel like reading. The sky was covered by
clouds, and I was covered by melancholy. I wandered from corner to corner.
I felt like rifling through the trunks and cupboards, but locks hung from
them all.
What could I do?
At the head of Sister’s bed, I saw the big medicine carton that contained a
photo of the goddess Santoshi Mata. Santoshi Mata had a long straight
shapely nose and red lips. Once Sister had watched the film Jay Santoshi
Ma on a video at Tikapur and after that she became a Santoshi Mata
devotee. She had stuck a photo of Santoshi Mata into the empty carton and
made it into a shrine. As soon as dusk fell, she would light incense, ring a
bell and murmur as if she was pronouncing mantras.
When he saw this, Father would smile.
I approached the shrine and inspected the photo. When I saw the empty
space between Santoshi Mata’s lips and nose, my hand began to itch, and
near Sister’s pillow I also found a red sign pen. As I extended my hand
toward the photo, the pen trembled. I was afraid—she is a deity, what did I
know, what if she cursed me?
But what would be would be: my hand reached Santoshi Mata’s lips.
First, I drew a red line between her lips and her nose, then a moustache
began to form. It drooped a little and twisted upward like a jeri. Now it was
ready, a new picture. Now Santoshi Mata had become Santoshi Ba. So, I
wrote above the photo—‘Santoshi Ba’. Once I had written ‘Ba’, I thought
of my own father. So I added another line—‘Harsha Bahadur’.
That evening, before it was time to eat, Sister went to the shrine to
perform her puja. I was sitting out on the balcony pretending to read, and
Father had just come home, so he was taking a rest.
‘Ba!’ Sister came out, wearing a sulky expression. ‘He’s ruined my
photo!’
Father jumped up, grabbed me by the arm and dragged me inside. I was
going to get punched again, and I shook with fear. Father peered into the
shrine, and there he saw written,
Santoshi Ba Harsha Bahadur.
I prepared myself for my punishment, but then Father just chuckled and
said, ‘You silly prick!’
I was so stunned and embarrassed I could not speak.
OceanofPDF.com
 THE SECOND DAY

At about half past one that night, Father writhed in his bed again, and his
eyes turned grey. His bed shook as if there was an earthquake. Water
stopped dripping down the saline pipe stuck into his vein; as the needle
shook, blood rose towards the pipe. I seized Father’s shaking wrist.
‘What’s happening?’ Mother jumped to her feet with drugged eyes and
jerked herself towards the bed.
Father’s breathing had become more rapid and his forehead was dripping
with sweat. A storm blew from between his flaking lips. The smell of
medicine and Father’s breath assailed my nostrils—it was exactly like the
smell of rotting fish, and my head span.
The veins on Father’s head had begun to go mad again. He writhed about
terribly, like a goat that has not lost its head even after the third blow.
Mother and I were helpless, as if the wind and the rain had demolished all
the walls of our house.
‘Get hold of his shoulders,’ I said urgently.
Mother groaned and caught hold of both of his shoulders. Father,
meanwhile, was struggling to jerk himself upward.
‘Ba, does your head hurt?’
Father opened his grey eyes wide and nodded. I placed the palm of my
right hand on his forehead and began to press down on the veins, which
were twisting as if they would flick my hand away from his head. They
were as hot as pieces of wood from the fire.
‘Bruset, Bruset,’ Father muttered, ‘Give me Bruset.’
Tears seeped from the corners of his eyes. A nurse heard the noise and
hurried over to us. She sighed and asked us, ‘What’s the matter, tell me!’
‘A splitting headache, he says.’ Mother’s tone was pleading. ‘He asked
for Bruset.’
‘We gave him some earlier. It’s not good to give it too often.’ The nurse
saw the blood rising up the saline pipe and bent over to his wrist. ‘It causes
a reaction.’
She stroked Father’s wrist and the blood that had moved upward sank
quickly down again. I felt Father’s forehead again. The veins had calmed
down a little and Father stopped trying to raise himself. The nurse went
away—swish swish—and then she returned—swish swish. She opened a
drawer, took hold of a syringe, filled it with medicine. She tapped its tip
twice, then stopped.
I caught hold of Father’s hand as he raised it to his head. Twisting his
arm upward, I turned his hand towards the bed. The nurse injected him,
then took out the syringe and wiped the place with cotton. ‘He will be fine
in a moment,’ she said.
About fifteen minutes later, Father closed his eyes. His forehead cooled
and there was no pain on his face, which became as calm as a river after a
flood. Mother sat down hard on the bed and heaved a long sigh. The carers
at the other beds had all been watching us, but now they lowered their heads
and were quiet.
‘Sleep now,’ Mother said, ‘you must be tired.’

‘Hey, get up now,’ I heard Mother’s gentle voice.

My eyes were drugged with sleep and would not open, but the sound of
people beginning to rustle and move wriggled across the lattice of my ears.
All at once my whole body shook and I opened my eyes suddenly. My
mother’s face hung in front of my own. Soft light was filtering in from a
nearby window. So, it was morning! I squatted on the bed like a patient.
 ‘Just watch Father for a moment while I go outside.’ Mother went out,
rubbing her eyes, red from lack of sleep.
All of the carers who had spent the night in the ward with their relatives
had woken up now. They leaned over their patients, asking them things. The
patients’ lips moved slowly in response. Fine, I would let Father sleep, and
I did not get him up. This time even Father’s right leg, which always shook
in his sleep, was sleeping too. I pulled over a stool and sat beside him, and
began to look closely at his face. Jyaa, his cheekbones were sticking out
even more.
Carers were hurrying out carrying jugs, glasses and waterpots; when they
came back in, the jugs in their hands were full of milk or juice. As their
carers fed them spoonfuls of milk, the helpless patients opened and closed
their mouths, like birds that had been shot with arrows.
Mother too returned with some milk sloshing about in a jug, and some
pauroti. The sun had risen early and her forehead was pimpled with sweat.
Mother was completely worn out and, when she came close, she smelt
unpleasantly of medicine. Father was awake now, but his eyes were still
closed.
Mother opened her pointed lips to smile and, as she did so, her cheeks
fell away in wrinkles. Now there were tears mixed into her smile, this
Bajyai who would always smile for her customers in Kalikot. Even when
she smiled, she looked as if she was about to cry.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked, bending low over Father’s face.
‘No.’ Father shook his head from side to side like a child.
‘But you must eat something, don’t you think?’ Mother stood up with her
hands on her hips. ‘How many days have you gone without eating?’
Father stayed silent and kept his eyes shut.
‘Won’t you just drink a little milk to keep your body and soul together?’
I lifted the pillow a little. Mother blew on the milk she had poured into a
glass to cool it down. She sat down at the head of Father’s bed, exhausted.
She touched Father’s lips with the rim of the glass and pleaded, ‘Just take
two sips.’
 Father’s eyes rolled open and, with a trembling right hand, he took out
his two false front teeth. I put them away in a drawer. Father’s Adam’s
apple moved with the effort as he swallowed just two sips, his lips smearing
with milk. Mother put more milk into his toothless mouth, but this time the
milk seeped from its corners, like water dribbling off a wet mountain.
Poor Father couldn’t even swallow milk. He began to cough and choke
continuously. His shoulders heaved, his face reddened and his eyes
streamed with tears. Once the sinews in his neck had stretched, his
coughing ceased and Mother wiped the milk, phlegm and saliva from his
mouth.
Father had had his ration.

‘Go and get yourself something to eat, then come straight back.’
I went outside. My hair, full of dust and sweat, was probably matted, but
I didn’t have the courage to run a hand over it. People were spinning to and
fro outside the emergency ward. Every face I looked at was hopeless and
despairing.
Tui, tui tui. An ambulance was approaching the hospital with its siren
sounding. I threw myself out of the main gate before it arrived. The guard
opened the steel doors and the ambulance went in and fell silent. It must
have been an ambulance like this that brought Father here.
The hotel near the gate was crowded and the smell of puris wafting over
from it made me feel hungry. At a long table outside, some students from
the hospital sat in a row, talking and laughing. One boy in particular was
speaking at length about something in a loud fresh voice.
I headed for the Bijuli Hotel.
The sauni was still grinding her spices as I went inside. The cooker was
whistling and a smouldering fire was giving out smoke. Her husband (the
sauji who was so angry yesterday) was nowhere to be seen.
‘What will you eat?’ she smiled gently.
On the fireplace there was a pile of sel roti, circular deep-fried bread.
‘Sel and tarkari.’
 ‘You came yesterday, didn’t you?’ she asked, setting three sel rotis and
some potatoes and peas on the table.
‘Yes.’
‘Who is sick?’
‘Ba.’
‘Oh, how old is he?’ the sauni asked.
‘Sixty-nine.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she sympathized.
And yes, my father was a sorry man, restless on a bed inside that
hospital, muttering from time to time. The thought of him was making it
difficult for me to chew the sel roti.

When I returned from my breakfast, the first saline was empty. As she
removed the tube from his wrist, the harsh-voiced nurse said, ‘Now take
him to the other ward.’
‘Where?’ I was confused.
‘Upstairs, on the third floor.’ She was reading from a slip in her hand.
‘Room number 206, bed number 13.’
I went out and pulled in a stretcher trolley that was sitting empty outside
the door. I brought it to Father’s bed and looked at Mother.
‘You lift from below,’ I said determinedly. ‘I’ll lift from above.’
I put my hand under Father’s hot and sweaty shoulder, and Father felt it.
‘What’s happened, tell me, what’s happened?’ he muttered breathily.
‘They say we have to move you up.’
‘Why? Where am I?’
‘You’re in Kohalpur, we brought you the day before yesterday,’ Mother
explained through her tears.
A carer from the next bed helped us to get Father onto the stretcher, but I
didn’t even have the presence of mind to thank him. I started pulling the
trolley from the head end and Mother pushed from behind. We were pulling
it down a curving ramp in the hospital that had been made especially for
stretcher trolleys to be moved along. Father’s feeble head sometimes lolled
to the left, sometimes to the right. I stopped the trolley and placed his head
in the middle of the pillow. A pillow was essential when Father laid down.
Room number 206 had no door, so the stretcher trolley slid straight in.
The room was empty. As I pulled the trolley, mopping my sweat, I peered
for a moment out of the big glass window. On the veranda outside, some
pigeons were preening their wing feathers with their beaks. Some clothes
hung from a long string over the veranda; they must have belonged to a
patient or a carer. In the distance, beyond the roofs of the one and two-
storeyed houses, vehicles chased one another along the highway.
‘What are you staring at?’ Mother scolded me. ‘Lift him up, let’s put him
on the bed.’
Father’s eyes were open and he was gazing at the ceiling, where a fan
turned round and round. Mother’s dishevelled hair stirred slowly in the
draught of hot air. I lifted Father by his shoulders, Mother by his legs.
Father writhed as if he thought he was going to pass out.
‘Aiyaa, that hurts!’ Father tossed about. ‘Don’t kill me.’
‘Who’s trying to kill you?’ Mother asked, ‘What is he talking about?’
Then Father was on the stretcher once more. When his eyes turned grey
with pain, my legs went limp.
‘Hyaa, let it hurt,’ Mother said angrily, ‘That’s just how karma is.’
Aiyaayaayaayaa…
With much puffing and straining, we threw my yelling father down on to
bed number 13. Father’s nostrils flared, his teeth chattered, his eyes turned
pale and rolled upward. They looked scared, watery, full of fear.
But now it was my turn to be the coward. Father breathed, ‘I want to go
to the toilet.’
What disaster had befallen us now? Mother looked at me. The toilet was
50 metres away, on a bend of the circling pathway. You could smell it from
20 metres away. How could I drag Father such a distance? I could hardly
take him as he used to take me when I was a child, leading me by my finger
and standing me up on the wall of our yard.
‘Hey, I need to go for a piss,’ Father clasped my right arm tightly.
 The hands of the clock above the head of Father’s bed had stopped at a
quarter to three. A nurse dressed in a long white shirt came, clutching a pile
of papers. Her hair was tied in a bunch. How nice she looked in her white
dress, with her shapely eyelashes and rounded cheeks. On her right cheek
there was a pimple, like the head of a red ant. She peered at Father for a
moment, then asked us, ‘What’s happened to him?’
She sounded like a sweet-voiced bird as well.
‘He says he wants to go to the toilet.’ Mother looked at her with hopeful
eyes.
‘He doesn’t need to go to the toilet.’ She noted down bed number 13 and
Father’s name, and the medication he was taking. Then, as she left, she
chirped sweetly again, ‘Please just wait.’
After she left, I found out her name from a carer. And what a nice name it
was—Narmada! After that, I gazed for a while out of the wide window
above Father’s bed, letting my mind wander. Very soon, a doctor
approached Father’s bed with Narmada behind him. In his hand, there was a
plastic pipe, all tangled up. He appeared to be about 30–35 years of age and
his hair was cut very short. A stethoscope was pushed into the lower pocket
of his long white shirt. His name was Dr Nandan. He was tall, so he had to
stoop down to lay a hand on Father’s forehead. When Father opened his
eyes, Dr Nandan told him, ‘Please wiggle them about for me.’
Father chuckled and made the fingers of both of his hands dance, as if he
was making to tickle someone.
‘No,’ he laughed. ‘I meant your toes.’
There was no movement in his toes. Both legs were completely still. ‘Try
harder,’ he said more insistently, but Father just shook his head.
‘OK.’ He stood up.
He made a sign to Narmada and she pulled round the green curtain that
stood on the steel pole until it concealed the bed from three sides.
‘Please help me,’ she said to Mother. Mother went inside the green
curtain and Narmada stood beside her. She lowered her head and started to
think about something. I peeped in through a gap in the green curtain. Dr
Nandan was stretching out the pipe.
 ‘No, no!’ Father muttered.
‘Oh, what’s he like!’ Mother scolded him, ‘You have to do as they say.’
I heard the sound of things being moved around and of Father panting. I
couldn’t understand what was going on. I looked at Narmada and she
smiled but didn’t say anything. I turned to the window and the pigeons that
had been jumping about on the veranda flew away.
Soon Dr Nandan came out from behind the curtain, mopping his brow.
Narmada hurriedly pulled the curtain back to its place in the corner. Mother
was tying something under the bed. I looked and saw that a plastic pipe
came out of Father’s pants and entered a round plastic pouch. It was this
that Mother was tying under the bed.
‘Please don’t empty the plastic until I’ve made a note of it,’ Narmada told
us.
Father screwed up his face. Like rainwater from the gutter, urine circled
down the pipe and dripped into the plastic pouch. And I heard Father
mutter, ‘Mustn’t piss on myself.’

***

‘Have you peed round the back of the house again?’ Mother shouted
angrily.
I fled upstairs.
Lying on my back on Father’s bed, I gazed up to watch a gecko crawling
along the rafter. Suddenly, someone’s fingers were on my lips. Mamata Didi
was sitting by the head of the bed: she had crept up on me and I didn’t
know how long she had been there. I felt like I was being tickled a little.
‘It seems my little brother has a fever, does he?’ Mamata Didi laughed.
I nodded as if I was her patient. She spread the left palm of her hand over
my forehead. A cool hand on my hot forehead: my eyes closed. For a long
time Mamata Didi’s hands moved around my lips. Now and again the hot
breath from my nose blew onto her fingers. I had fallen asleep.
‘See how this Kumbhakarna sleeps!’ Mother yelled, ‘Hey, go and see if
the cattle have come back!’
 Mother always knew when I had fallen asleep. When I got up after
sleeping in the daytime, the world would seem foreign for a moment. I
twisted my body and yawned. And then I ran swiftly to the Amauri Khola. I
didn’t see Mother downstairs, otherwise she would have shouted, ‘Wash
your face before you go out. You’re like a pig with all your dribbling!’
Panché, the bullock, was chewing leaves from the low hanging branches
of the black mulberry tree, but when he saw me, he stopped and stared for a
moment. Then he rubbed his horns against the tree and bellowed.
Magar Uncle was cutting grass in the field. He wiped away his sweat
with the palm of his hand and called, ‘Where are you off to, Nephew?’
‘To the Amauri Khola.’
‘You’re getting old!’ he laughed, scratching his temples.
I had no idea what he meant by that. So, I ran on.
When I came out onto the street, I saw Khusiram Chaudhari on a bullock
cart, sitting near the neck of the yoke. His old shirt had turned the same
colour as the soil, but a bright smile always danced on his earth-coloured
face. Khusiram had been reared in the care of the Raja Saheb. He had no
parents and so he was rather headstrong.
People used to say that Khusiram was happy, but I had heard that the
Raja Saheb had beaten the poor man’s back with a bamboo cane many
times. Some of the Tharus said that Khusiram went mad from time to time.
He would light a flaming torch and roam about with it, they said. If the Raja
Saheb discovered that he had been out like that at night, he would give him
a sound beating in the morning. He had even tied him up and shut him in a
cow shed for a whole day once, they said. Chandré and I would climb onto
his bullock cart and travel far with him.
‘Where are you off to?’ I shouted to him.
He grinned broadly and said, ‘I’m going to pick jujubes.’
As soon as I heard him mention jujubes, my mouth began to water. I
turned and saw a procession of bullock carts raising a cloud of dust as they
came from Tharu Gaon. Every year, there came a day when the whole of
Tharu Gaon went, singing and raising dust on their way, to Chattiban,
beyond Katasé, to pick jujubes. My face was being enveloped in dust too,
and I ran to the edge of the road. Khusiram watched me, laughing.
‘Why are you laughing?’ I yelled.
Striking the bullock’s rump with a whip made from strips of car tyre, he
shouted back, ‘Because I am!’ Then his bullock cart disappeared in a
whirlwind of dust and moved on.
A little further ahead, an old woman was approaching, carrying a load of
fodder. She had folded up a shawl and put it on the top of her head, then
placed the carrying band on top of that. Her hair was unkempt. Whenever I
saw her, she was nearly always pressed down by a load, and behind her
came a calf, munching the leaves that protruded from the load.
I came closer to her.
The skin of her black face was flaking and soaked in sweat which
dripped down onto the dusty ground. I saw her sweat, and she saw my face.
Then her dry lips moved and she laughed, softening her lips with her
tongue. The calf that was coming along behind her also stopped dead and
shook its body.
Why was everyone laughing?
Were my shorts torn so that people could see my turi? I ran away as fast
as I could. I don’t know where it appeared from, but a puppy ran alongside
me, wagging its tail and making delighted noises. I reached the riverbank
and hid myself behind a yamuna tree. The puppy came yapping and licked
my feet.
‘Are you following me, you mutt?’ I kicked it in the ribs. It ran away
yelping, as far as the stump of the sal tree a little way away. It raised its
right leg there and pissed, then off it bounded again. I bent down and
inspected my shorts, but nothing of the sort had happened. So, I headed for
Bhagiram and found him under a tree weaving a fan. He saw me but
showed no concern. He wound some green thread around a thin splinter of
bamboo and pulled it tight.
I came up to him and saw that his hands were trembling.
‘Uncle, have you seen Chandré?’
 ‘That fucker’s probably gone off and died somewhere,’ he shouted, then
busied himself with his fan again.
After a moment, he turned his cloudy eyes in my direction. Then he
laughed and muttered, ‘What are you trying to do, Parbate?’
The sun had already reached Pahadipur, and the cattle had not returned. I
sat on the bridge and watched the water flowing by below. After a moment,
I saw Chandré on the other side of the river, carrying an axe on his left
shoulder.
‘Hey, where have you been?’ I cried.
‘Off to cut firewood, but I couldn’t cut any.’
He limped to the bridge and looked closely at me, then he laughed and
laughed until he fell on his face. The axe fell from his shoulder and
clattered onto the planks of the bridge.
‘Why are you laughing, prick?’ I was close to tears.
‘Have a look at your face, na?’ he said, laughing and clutching his
stomach.
‘What had happened to my face? I ran to the river. Lau jaa—between my
lips and my nose there was a fat moustache of black soot. Turning upwards,
with its tips twirled like a jeri sweet. I looked exactly like Ravana in the
Ram Lila.
I sat down on my heels and—dharyaat—my shorts split right down the
middle.
Slowly, it dawned on me why Mamata Didi had come to stroke my face
that afternoon. After that, I never dared to draw a moustache on anyone’s
photo again. Moustaches began to seem disgusting and frightening to me,
just like caterpillars.

***

‘Today you have to have your photo taken,’ Mother said to Father one
morning. ‘Please don’t just go off somewhere again.’
I was lying in bed, and I glanced at Father.
 ‘I have to go to the bazaar early today,’ said Father, buttoning his
waistcoat.
‘What is he like? After so many days, Sandipé is coming to take your
photo today. We don’t have a photo of the whole family. And you don’t
have a photo at all’.
Father just carried on smiling.
Sandipé came to Matera two or three times a month. In Matera, everyone
called him ‘Sandipé Cameraman’. His home was at Amaravati and many
people praised him for having earned his own living ever since he was
twenty. When they heard that he was coming to the village, many people
took a bath and washed their clothes the day before he arrived. The next
day, Sandipé would take photos in Keraghari, Bansghari and Toribari. Then
he would return four or five weeks later, bringing the photographs he had
taken. His rate was Rs 15 per photo. Probably because of the cost, many
people only had group photos taken.
Sister and I were delighted to hear that we were going to have a photo
taken. We both bathed, shivering in the cold water. Mother put a newly
washed shirt and shorts on me and flattened my hair down with mustard oil.
Even Father trimmed his fine beard and moustache and polished his cheeks.
Sister was combing her hair.
‘Why have you put on new clothes?’ Mamata Didi asked as she came
towards me, laughing.
‘We’re having a photo taken today,’ I said, bending at the hip like a
dancer.
Mamata Didi sat down in the porch beside Parvati and started to comb
Parvati’s hair.
At about a quarter to twelve, Sandipé arrived, ringing his bicycle bell. He
came from the cowshed side, covered in dust. On his shoulder there was a
small black camera. He stood his bicycle in the yard and everyone smiled to
see him. He looked up at the balcony and said, ‘Namaskar Daktar Sahib.’
‘You’re all covered in dust! Which way did you come?’ Father asked
him.
‘I’ve been to Tharu Gaon.’
 Father came down to the yard and regarded us all. Was he feeling shy,
perhaps? He started to push back the branches of the bell flower that hung
over the ladder to the upper floor. Sister brought some tea, smiling. Sandipé
waited, drinking his tea.
‘You should comb your hair too,’ Mother said to Mamata Didi.
‘No,’ Mamata Didi became shy. ‘Mother will tell me off.’
‘She won’t say anything.’
Parvati forced Mamata Didi to allow her to comb her hair. Sandipé
finished his tea and opened the lid of his camera.
‘You take your photo first,’ Mother looked at Father.
Father went and sat meekly on the field ridge at the edge of the yard.
Sandipé put the camera to his eye and bent his knees. Father placed his
hands on his thighs and sat up very straight.
Then Sandipé said in quite a loud voice, ‘Ready, one two three …’
Father tried to hide his two protruding teeth with his upper lip but the tips
of those teeth still showed a little.
Jhilikka! A sudden flash of light.
After that, Mother and Father stood behind, and Sister and I stood in
front. Mamata Didi stood and watched us, laughing.
‘Now come, you too,’ Mother called her.
Mamata Didi came and stood beside Parvati, and then the photo session
was over. Sandipé put the camera away in its black cover. Father told him,
‘Make two of each please.’
Six weeks later, Sandipé brought the photos. They were very enjoyable
and we spent the whole day looking at them. Sister showed them to Mamata
Didi too. In the evening, Father was looking at them, smiling, and I went up
to him. When Father was happy he would give you anything you asked for.
I had noticed that my schoolteacher wore a blinky watch on his wrist and I
had wanted to wear one ever since, but I hadn’t had a chance to tell Father.
‘Why are you here?’ Father asked me.
‘Ba, please bring me a blinky watch.’
Father looked at me in surprise.
‘Bring me one, na?’
 ‘You don’t know how to tell the time,’ Father laughed. ‘Once you do, I’ll
bring you one.’
‘When?’
He thought for a moment, then he said, ‘If you get to class three, you’ll
know how to tell the time, and I’ll bring you one.’
Hey, I was going to get a watch! I ran off, overjoyed. I spent the whole of
that evening reading class two books.
The next day at school, Chandré found out that I had photos at home. All
the way home he nagged me to let him see them, and, when we got home, I
showed them to him. He looked at them with a bright expression on his face
and from time to time he tittered.
Mother saw us and shouted, ‘Hey don’t touch those photos! They’ll get
covered in fingerprints.’
Chandré and I ran off towards the Amauri Khola. Chandré wouldn’t go to
the bridge because he was afraid that Bhagiram would beat him, so he sat
on the other side of the river, staring into space.
‘My father will never get any photos taken.’ Chandré sounded as if he
was going to cry.
‘My father also said that when I reach class three, he’ll bring me a blinky
watch.’
Lau, I thought Chandré would be pleased when he heard this, but instead
he became even more tearful. That day he kept staring at his withered right
leg. And he said, ‘My Father doesn’t love me. It’s like this because he
wouldn’t get me the injection.’
At school, his name was Chandrakumar Lamichane. But he was
‘Chandré’ to everyone. Once when he did a frog dive into the Amauri
Khola, he came out bearing a real chandrama on his forehead: a halfmoon
on the left side of his brow. Chandré never felt that he had really had a
mother. And his elder brother, who loved him, ran away when he was
studying in seventh class. Before that, his father used to boast, ‘My son is
studying in seventh class.’ After he ran away, he searched for him a lot: if
only he could have found him! Later his brother sent a letter, saying, ‘I am
in Bombay.’
 ‘Where is Bombay?’ I asked.
‘Bombay is even further away than Nepalganj,’ Chandré told me.
Chandré used to walk about with his brother’s letter in his pocket, and
from time to time he would pretend to be reading it. One day, he got soaked
in the rain and the letter turned into a lump and got torn.
‘Corpse, it had his address on it!’ his father said, and he bound Chandré’s
hands and beat him. From that day onward, Chandré became a boy who
picked fights with everyone. He even tried to pick one with me one day.
‘Cripple, would you pick a fight with me?’ I pushed him.
Chandré’s nose flared. His nostrils started going up and down and up and
down. He pulled hard at my blue shirt. Its three top buttons fell to the
ground and got lost in the dirt.
I was blind with rage, and the fist of my right hand struck his nose hard.
As his face went down, his dishevelled hair shook and his topknot swayed,
as thick as a bunch of spinach. Chandré just stood under a blackberry bush
for a long time like this. He did not sway, nor did he cry or shout abuse, but
just stood there dejectedly, with his head hanging down. A frog dived into
the river—chaplakka. Chandré wheezed for a long while. When I saw him
in such a state I felt like crying.
‘Chandré!’ I called.
He lifted his head. His face was covered in blood, as if someone had
come at him with a Holi festival syringe. The blood had run down onto his
shirt as well.
‘Prick!’ he screamed. ‘You’ve given me a nosebleed!’
After that, Chandré did not speak to me for days. He only began to speak
to me again after I stole some grapes for him from Father, who had brought
them from Nepalganj.
His shorts never fitted him around the waist, so he always had to keep
hold of them with his right hand. This meant that whenever he got into a
quarrel, he got beaten. When he threw a punch, his shorts fell straight down
and everyone laughed to see his turi waving about. So, he was afraid to
throw a punch.
He had been given a bloody nose many times.
 Gradually, Chandré gave up fighting. Even if someone came and picked a
fight with him, he would just run away. At school, many started to tease
him, calling him a scabby dog. But however much they called him names,
Chandré pretended not to hear them. He couldn’t go home and tell his father
that he was being bullied either, because his father would just beat him if he
did.
Those of us from Matera who went to Khairiphanta School were
frightened when we reached Amaravati on our way to school. A boy like a
fearsome demon lived there. We all called him ‘Three Heads’ because his
head was longer and bigger than anyone else’s. He studied with us, and he
would always grab our roti and mango chutney and eat it, and snatch away
our new exercise books. Every day, we would be frightened on our way to
school and frightened on our way home.
One day, I was amazed. No sooner had Three Heads snatched Chandré’s
roti from him, than Chandré shouted, ‘Son of a whore! Come on, let’s have
a cockfight!’
I was afraid that Chandré would get another nosebleed today.
Three Heads was much older than Chandré and a complete dunce. He
dragged Chandré out into the field and, when they saw that there was going
to be a fight, the students all came running noisily. I stood there holding
Chandré’s exercise book.
‘Chandré, don’t fight!’ I said unhappily.
But Chandré did not hear me. He wiped away his sweat and stared at
Three Heads with sharp eyes.
The battle commenced. Chandré put both his arms behind his back and
pulled his right leg up. If he stood like this, his shorts would not fall down.
So, he stood there, tottering on his left leg, and Three Heads did the same.
Both of their faces reddened. Suddenly, Chandré jumped up on his strong
left leg and kicked Three Heads in the chest with his knee. Three Heads
didn’t even have a chance to think before he fell over backwards with a
crash.
‘Mother, I’m dead!’ screamed Three Heads. His back struck some pieces
of brick that were strewn about on the ground and he couldn’t even get up
again.
Chandré had won.
All the Matera students clapped their hands, and Chandré beamed. The
sirs had found out that a fight was taking place and were coming with sticks
in their hands. All the students ran away noisily, and Chandré and I ran out
of the school gate.
On the road, I told him, ‘You’re so strong!’
‘So, what if one of my legs is withered?’ he said happily, turning his left
leg, ‘Its strength has moved to this one!’
That day, Chandré and I were exceedingly happy and we went on diving
into the Amauri Khola until it got late. But Chandré’s father found out
about the fight and he came to the river to thrash him. ‘Why do you fight?
Won’t you do as you’re told, you young ass?’
The cowherds who had come to gather in their cattle were watching from
the river banks, and Bhagiram was there too. Chandré shot straight out of
the river, grabbed his shorts and ran off, naked. I climbed out of the river
and watched: he was wiping away tears as he ran.
I too went home fearfully at dusk.
‘Did you run out of school today?’ Father asked me. Sister had already
told him.
I stayed silent.
‘If you run away again, I won’t bring you a watch, understand?’
I nodded my head.
From the next day onward, Chandré and I stayed close to my sister and
her friends on our way to and from school. Three Heads always tried to pick
a fight, but the girls would not let us. The sirs had given both Three Heads
and Chandré a beating. Chandré looked as if he was always frightened.
Once on our way home from school, Chandré whispered in my ear, ‘One
day, I am going to run away to Bombay to see my brother.’

***
‘This is my tree! Bandevi Mata gave it to me!’ Bhagiram was really
shouting. ‘You have no right to this tree!’
A cheerful man who had come down to Matera from Dailekh had sunk
some posts into the ground beside the tree. The old man had already dug
them up twice, but once the whole of Lamichane Basti had taken the other
man’s side, there wasn’t much he could do. Nobody supported him, so, in
the end, he shifted away, closer to the bridge, shivering as he went.
The cheerful Dailekhi brought a tent from Katasé and put it up. He tied
the corners of the tent tightly to pegs stuck into the ground.
‘What are you making?’ Chandré asked him one day.
‘A circus,’ he said, and laughed.
He had arrived with a pack on his back and stayed at a Lamichane house
for a week or two. After he had wandered about the village for a while, he
began to put up posts here and there among the sal trees. He wore an ash-
coloured daura-suruwal and the inner linings of the bottom pockets of his
blue coat were turned out as if they were laughing. When he laughed, a
single black tooth showed on the right side of his mouth like a black lentil.
Once he had put up the tent and made it homely, he hammered a 2-metre
long plank onto two big sections of tree trunk to make a place for people to
sit. And then, one day, he lit his cooking fire. That day, he handed out jeri
sweets he had brought from Katasé to everyone who had assembled, I
heard! From the next day onward, stinging smoke began to fly from his
cooking fire, twisting and turning into the sky, touching each leaf of the sal
tree. Within a week, the cooking place had dried out. Now a kettle was
always being heated on it, its base covered in ash, and soot had already
begun to accumulate on the posts inside.
In the end, Chandré and I realised that this man had opened a shop.
It was not so hard to find fire to light bidis and pipes, and he brought all
sorts of other things to sell too—biscuits, orange sweets shaped like orange
segments, cigarettes, noodles. With Rs 2 from my father, I could fill my
pockets with those orange sweets. The crowd of cowherds gathered there
now, and people passing by on that path stopped to stand and drink tea there
too.
 One day, it was amazing. The shopkeeper had hung a piece of paper on a
post and a few of the cowherds stood there pondering. Chandré and I also
ran to see what it was. On a page of an exercise book, we saw written in
crooked letters:
Tea available here
Rs 2 a cup

Many people started coming to buy things, from Lamichane Basti and from
Patharaiya. The cowherds bought their tobacco there, over and over again.
The shopkeeper was delighted. When nobody came, he just lay on his back
on his cot and closed his eyes. The cowherds sat around the shop playing
baagchaal and laying bets for tea. Many of them stopped attending to
Bhagiram who now sat muttering by the bridge on his own.
When the shop began to do well, the shopkeeper extended the range of
things for sale: sugar, tealeaves, bidis and rice became available too. He
even gave the shop a name and brought a signboard from Nepalganj:
Matera Teashop
Matera, Kailali
Goods available here at their proper price

On the edge of the signboard, there was a picture of a river with a house
beside it and at the top in red letters was written Shubha-Labha—
Auspicious Profit.
Elderly men from Lamichane Basti, on the near side of Matera, and
Tharu Gaon, on the far side, came to chat and drink tea as evening fell.
Sometimes they talked in very loud voices. From time to time, even
Chandré’s father could be seen standing there, spitting out his tobacco. The
shopkeeper talked to all of them, smiling and laughing. But after a few
days, one or two of the elders became angry with him.
‘What did his watered-down tea earn him?’ An old Lamichane started a
rumour. ‘He wasn’t satisfied with that and he’s started selling cannabis
now.’
 The shopkeeper heard this too and after a few days he no longer smiled,
because many of the old men had stopped coming to drink his tea. Even
when Chandré and I went to buy sweets from him, he spoke to us irritably.
But the shopkeeper’s laughter revived as one by one the elders came back
again, and at dusk there was the same loud conversation. Sometimes the
patrons would grab the back of Father’s bicycle as he passed, and stop him
right there.
‘Doctor Saab, I was coughing all last night,’ an old man would say, ‘Am
I going to be seriously ill?’
‘I couldn’t sleep all night either,’ another would say. ‘I had such cramps
in my legs!’
Father would take a pulse, pull down an eye and look into it, inspect a
tongue. He would say something or other to cheer the elders up. To some,
he would promise to bring medicine.
‘You’ve come to live in such an out of the way village, Doctor,’ they
would say. ‘You are an angel of the Lord … hey, shopkeeper, give him
some tea from me!’
And Father would drink the tea, smiling and showing his front teeth.
One day, the elders were talking particularly loudly at the shop. I ran
over, thinking that there might be a quarrel, but it was quite another matter.
‘I’ve been here in this Matera for eleven years!’ The old Lamichane was
in a real lather. ‘If they come here now and tell me to go away, am I going
to go?’
Another of the old men reassured him, saying ‘Don’t worry, Lamichane.
Even if the dozer drives through my chest, I won’t give up.’
When I heard the old men’s conversation, I ran home at high speed. By
the time I got there, I was drenched in sweat and out of breath. As I entered
our yard, I saw Magar Uncle squatting in the porch, his eyes red and watery,
stinking as if he had bathed in beer.
Magar Uncle had come down from Surkhet a year earlier. Father and
Mother had come down from there too, so a relationship had been
established between them. His house was next to the road that led to ours. It
was enclosed by besharams and plastered with cow dung and mud, just like
our cowshed. The walls bore ugly red clay decorations: they looked as if
lumps of wet clay had been just thrown onto them. A few months earlier, I
had seen Maiju, his wife, with a stomach the size of a baby goat. Magar
Uncle was delighted, ‘She’ll get it in two months, I reckon!’
One day, I saw Maiju gnawing on a lump of soil.
‘Nephew, don’t tell anyone about this,’ she told me tearfully, ‘It’s just
that I really feel like eating it!’
Three pigs were the only assets to be found in Magar Uncle’s house.
Sometimes they came up to me to rub their snouts against my calves: long
snouts covered in saliva—disgusting. When she discovered that I had been
touched by a pig, Mother touched a bowl of water against the gold in her
ear, sprinkled it over my body and said, ‘Now you’re pure again…’
‘Sister, you are old residents.’ Magar Uncle was almost suffering a heart
failure, he was so worried. ‘But I am very new here. If I am evicted, where
will I go?’
Mother was sifting rice. When she heard this, she tapped her tray hard
from below and said in a despairing tone, ‘Will the people who come to
knock down the houses ask about who’s old and who’s new, bhai?’
I went and sat beside Mother. She picked up two grains between her
thumb and index finger and put them in a dish to one side. Magar Uncle
was scraping the ground with the point of his sickle, holding its shaft firmly
in the palm of his right hand. As he swallowed his last gulp of tea, his
Adam’s apple bobbled upward. Leaning on his sickle to help himself up, he
just said, ‘That’s how it is, Sister—wherever you go, there’s no happiness.’
He stood up, swaying, and stared into space for a moment. Our eyes met
and I smiled.
‘Right then, Sister, I’m off. When Brother-in-law comes home, I will
come back to talk to him.’ He pressed his palms together in a namaste,
turned and left. The smell of drink lingered around the porch for a long time
after he had gone.
‘Mother, where will we go after they knock down our house?’ Mother did
not reply, but just stared into space for a long time.
 At dusk, the moon was hidden by a veil of dark cloud and Mother’s face
by dark worry. Black clouds were drifting and twisting in the sky and
lightning flashed from time to time. Sister was reading by lamplight and I
was pretending to sleep on my bed.
‘On which inauspicious day did we come here?’ Mother looked at Father.
‘I told you we shouldn’t buy unregistered land, but you didn’t agree.’
‘So, what’s happened?’
‘Didn’t you hear? The government’s going to demolish houses built on
unregistered land.’
‘Who’s she been listening to now?’ Father was irritated, but his eyes
stayed shut.
‘But there’s talk of it all over the village!’
‘Is something true just because of rumours?’ Father murmured.
‘This afternoon, Magar Bhai came here crying about it.’ Mother arranged
her pillow. ‘The worry is eating me up.’
‘The democracy movement is getting stronger over there in Kathmandu,’
Father said calmly. ‘Who’s going to come and demolish my house at such a
time?’
‘Who knows? Disaster doesn’t ask before it comes.’
Father got up suddenly and searched for his sandals, as if he wasn’t
listening. The rain fell in torrents. We began to hear it falling on the leaves
of the sleeping hibiscus. A cold wind blew.
‘We’ve had no happiness since we came down to Madhes.’ Mother stared
into Father’s face. ‘Sometimes we’re afraid of thieves, sometimes we’re
afraid of the government.’
Father put on his sandals. A frog croaked loudly from somewhere, I don’t
know where. Father lit a torchlight and went towards the ladder.
‘What is it like, I’m not allowed to say anything,’ Mother sobbed. ‘So
late at night, and now where’s he going off to?’
‘She’s turned into someone who cries over nothing. I’m just going for a
piss.’
As Father reached the ladder to go upstairs, the lightning flashed, and his
hunched shadow lay back right inside the house.
 ***

‘Oy, come quickly!’ Chandré shouted so loud he nearly tore his throat. He
was standing on the stump of a sal tree, stretching his neck like a vulture to
gaze down the road that led to Katasé.
‘What’s up?’ I yelled.
He dangled his lame leg down and jumped off the stump with the help of
his left leg and hand. As soon as he touched the ground he fell over, then he
got up, brushing the dust from his shorts.
In the distance, we could see a whirlwind of dust as big as a house,
spinning towards Matera. As the dust cloud moved ahead, the trees along
the road disappeared in it.
‘A bhatbhaté is coming!’ I was delighted, because motor cycles only
came to Matera five or six times a year.
‘Yes!’ said Chandré and ran to hide behind a blackberry bush beside the
river. I followed him.
The bhatbhaté stopped at the tea shop. As it came to a halt, the teashop
too was covered in dust. Then it set off again—bhu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu. It came
closer to us and we saw that there were two people on it with kerchiefs tied
around their heads and faces.
The bhatbhaté passed by in front of us at speed. We hid our heads to save
our faces and heads from the dust, pulling our shirt collars up over our
heads like tortoises hiding their heads in their shells.
After a moment the dust settled. ‘Come on, let’s smell the road!’ Chandré
ran out. ‘It makes a nice smell.’
He lay face down in the tyre tracks. I did the same. From the tracks there
came the smell of kerosene, which Chandré and I both liked very much.
As he sniffed the road, some dust got into Chandré’s nose and he stood
up and sneezed. I too wiped my nose and eyelashes. The bhatbhaté had
reached Tharu Gaon: we could hear the dogs and pigs making a lot of noise
there. I hadn’t seen a bhatbhaté for a long time and I was happy. So I said to
Chandré, ‘Come on, let’s go and eat some sweets!’
 Chandré followed me, shaking the dust from his eyelashes. And he said,
‘Tell your Ba to buy a bhatbhaté, na?’
I stopped right there. Chandré was looking at me, grinning.
‘All right. Ba will buy one,’ I said proudly. ‘I’ll give you a ride on it too.’
‘You won’t let me drive it?’
‘Do you know how to drive one?’
‘Yes, want to see?’ Chandré stuck his arms out in front of him and made
his hands into fists, as if he was holding a bhatbhaté.
I nodded.
Bhu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu. Chandré made a loud noise and ran limping towards
the shop, waving his fists from side to side
But before he reached the bridge, he turned back abruptly—probably
because he had seen Bhagiram. When I caught up with him, he fell in to
walk behind me. Bhagiram was sitting rubbing some tobacco with a half-
woven fan beside him. The old man knew we were approaching, probably
because he saw our shadows on the ground. We went and stood close
enough to see the many wrinkles on his face. He turned his hazy eyes
towards us, and Chandré’s face turned blue.
The old man muttered something we could not understand. White spittle
came out of the corners of his mouth, like a buffalo’s, and he clapped his
hands together. Tobacco dust flew into our nostrils and irritated them. It felt
as if snot was going to drip from my nose, then I sneezed and tears ran from
my eyes.
The old man smiled at us.
‘Raam Raam, Dadu,’ I said.
The old man did not reply, but just looked over at the shop and spat. We
headed for the shop. During the afternoons, fewer people came and went
there, though the fire was still smouldering.
The sauji, who had been dozing on a cot inside, resting his head on his
arms, got up. As he laughed, twisting his hips like a dancer, we saw his
black upper tooth. I handed him Rs 2, and he took the money quickly. One
moment later, I had a handful of orange sweets.
 Chandré and I each put a sweet in our mouth and went and sat on the
bench outside the shop, wiping away our dribbling saliva with the backs of
our hands.
Just then, a police patrol arrived at the shop and I thought my heart would
stop beating. My legs seemed paralysed, as if in a dream where I was being
chased by a snake. Chandré’s face, meanwhile, was as blue as if ink had
spilled on it.
They must have come from Katasé bazaar. Usually when we saw
policemen in the distance, Chandré and I would run away, but today we
could not. There were twelve of them—I counted to myself. All of them
had round hats on their heads, like plates. The one who was bringing up the
rear had a gun slung from his right shoulder. When I saw the gun, my body
shivered from head to toe.
‘Can we get some tea?’ asked the fat policeman who arrived first. His
moustache was fat too. The sauji had jumped up, uncertain for a moment,
but now he laughed.
‘Why not sir? Of course!’ The sauji was pleased, ‘How many are you?’
The policeman sat down beside me on the bench and said, ‘There are
twelve of us.’
A pungent smell of sweat came from the policeman’s body, and the
clothing near his armpit had turned black, soaked with sweat. There was
stubble on his cheeks, like a field after the paddy has been cut. He peered at
us as we sat there hanging our heads. I took a sidelong glance at him and
our eyes met. He smiled at me but my face turned black.
‘Are you afraid?’ He put his heavy left hand on my right shoulder and
patted me. My body trembled, like the body of a goat which is about to be
butchered at Dasai. One by one, the policemen sat down around the shop to
rest, like egrets on open ground. Some of them stood looking down the road
that led to our house. One ran over towards a sal tree and pissed against it.
After a moment, the policeman heaved a long sigh and asked me, ‘What is
your name?’
‘Brisha Bahadur.’
‘And how old are you?’
 ‘Er, eight.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Chandra Bahadur,’ Chandré said in a tearful voice. ‘Chandré.’
‘What class are you in?’
‘Class three,’ I squeaked.
The policeman laughed. His breath stank. ‘Right, you have to study hard
and become policemen, OK?’
I just sat there, scratching the ground with my thumb.
The milk tea inside the kettle suddenly came to a rolling boil and the lid
began to fidget. The sauji grinned and picked the kettle up by its handle
with a scrap of cloth. Then he began to pour out the tea into the line of steel
cups and hand them out to everyone, two at a time. They all hurried to grasp
them, then blew on their tea and drank it.
‘Today we are all really tired.’ The policeman sitting next to me put his
empty cup down on the ground. ‘Right then, Sauji, how much does that
come to?’
‘Twenty-four, sir. And where might you be heading for today?’
‘Pahadipur.’ The policeman pulled out some crumpled money from his
trouser pocket. ‘How long does it take to get there?’
The sauji took the two notes, a twenty and a five. ‘You’ll reach in an hour
and a half, sir. And on what business might you be going there?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
All the policemen brushed off the dust that had settled on their clothes
and set off in a sort of line.
‘Sir, your one rupee!’ the sauji shouted after them.
The policeman turned and said, ‘Give those children some sweets.’
Chandré looked at me and laughed.
I kept on staring in amazement at the police who were already some way
off. They were looking at Matera as they went. Gradually, they disappeared
in the dust as they walked on. Beside the bridge, Bhagiram suddenly stood
up and shouted in a loud voice, ‘Bastards, these government pigs are going
to crush the whole village with dozers!’
I shook with fright.
 When I heard what Bhagiram said, my body suddenly heated up as if I
had caught a fever. My ears became hot. My mind screamed—for certain
these police had come to look at our village. At night, when we would be
sleeping, they would bring a dozer and demolish our house.
The first dozer I saw in Katasé was bigger than an elephant and was
yellow. It had huge wide wheels and a huge mouth in front, like a demon.
When it moved, even the road collapsed. It made a noise—ghyaar ghyaar
—that sounded like a tiger breathing.
I didn’t know what to do. I ran home and Chandré followed me. After a
moment, I heard the sauji’s voice coming from behind us, ‘Hey, the
sweets!’
But I could not be stopped.

***

The earth was shaking. The birds sitting in the branches of the trees flew up
—bhurrr. The dogs and pigs in Tharu Gaon sent up a continuous din.
The ground swayed. The cowherds who gathered on the bank of the
Amauri Khola to play dandibiyo, sock football and baghchaal ran home in a
hurry. In his shop, the sauji sat down as if he felt dizzy.
Because from Katasé they were coming—dozer after dozer.
They had already reached the far side of the Amauri Khola. The sal trees
along the sides of the narrow road were falling, one after the other. Crack,
crack, crack, crash! Bhagiram jumped to his feet with a half-woven fan
dangling from his trembling right hand and shouted, ‘Today the dozers are
going to crush the whole village!’
They made a noise like wounded elephants, five dozers in a line. They
reached the far side of the Amauri Khola, demolishing the riverbank. Police
carrying guns walked in front of them and behind them. They were the
same police who had gone to Pahadipur that afternoon. The policeman who
had put his hand on my shoulder and asked me questions was at their head.
Chandré and I looked at each other in fright. A cold wind touched my
heart and I felt like I needed to piss. Chandré started to run, limping. I
started running from behind him but quickly caught him up and passed him.
A little further on, we saw that a dozer had arrived at Mamata Didi’s house.
I hid in a clump of besharam trees, and Chandré was nowhere to be seen. A
policeman went into her house, dragged out her father and threw him into
the yard. Mamata Didi and her mother came out crying. The policeman
shouted in a loud voice. I couldn’t hear what he said because the dozer had
already climbed onto the house.
The police pointed their guns at Mamata Didi’s family. Garlammma! The
dozer stood on the roof-pole of the house. Its wheels began to spin. Its noise
made the whole village tremble. The buffalo bellowed and thrashed about
so much it almost brought down its stall. In just one moment, the house
turned into a lump and fell in a heap. A cloud of dust from its walls climbed
up into the sky.
And now the dozer turned its gaze on to our house. I jumped straight out
of the bushes and ran for home. But suddenly my legs went limp, like wet
flour.
‘Ba!’ I tried to scream, but my voice stuck in my throat.
Like a pig that has been speared three times in the neck to kill it, I began
to crawl. My legs dragged along. I puffed and panted.
The lead dozer straightened itself along the road that ran directly to our
house. I was stretched out on that very road and the first dozer came right
up to me. Up to the big toe of my dragging foot. A rifle-toting policeman
was coming along with it.
‘He’s blocking the way,’ a policeman shouted. ‘What should we do,
Saab?’
‘That’s the one who ran off without eating the sweets today,’ said
another. ‘Run him over.’
The dozer moved onto my right big toe.
‘Mother!’ I cried with all my strength, but the sound that came out was
very weak.
I heard a sound like a mouse running into a corner of the house. A yellow
light shone in though my closed eyelids. A cold hand moved on my
forehead.
 ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I heard Father’s thick voice.
‘It must be a nightmare,’ I felt my mother’s hot breath on my face.
I was alive. I tried to open my eyes. The bright bowl of Father’s three-
cell torch shone so brightly into my eyes that I couldn’t see. He switched it
off. In front of my eyes, Mother and Father’s faces hung suspended.
‘What happened?’ Father asked me.
In a cowering voice, I said, ‘Ba, let’s not live here anymore.’

***

The Raja Saheb.

Whenever he passed by the Amauri Khola in his speckled brown coat,
everyone would press their palms together and bow their heads just slightly.
No one had the nerve to meet his eye. Sometimes, he rode past in a jeep: an
old jeep, with a long beak-shaped bonnet and patches of rust here and there.
When he arrived in Matera, the jeep would fart out a lump of twisted black
smoke at the Amauri Khola.
The Raja Saheb sometimes went about on foot, but after the tea shop
opened, he was no longer seen near the Amauri Khola. Once when I was
out walking about, I saw him from close quarters. He had fat red cheeks,
like the apples you could get in Katasé, and the palms of his hands were
thick, like pauroti bread. He had a fat, short moustache, and his moustache
and hair were totally black, like the bottom of a cooking pot. People said,
‘The Raja Saheb, he goes to Nepalganj and gets his hair dyed black.’ When
he walked, the Raja Saheb supported himself with a stick. I had never seen
such a stick anywhere before: it was liver-coloured with a silver handle,
twirled at the top.
He had a big, extensive house in Pahadipur where he lived alone. The
Rani Saheb, his wife, had died ten years ago. He had two sons—they said
the elder one lived in Kathmandu and the younger in Nepalganj. There was
a red creeper flower on the tall gate of his house and inside the gate there
was a large garden. Khusiram used to say, ‘Lychee, jackfruit, pear, you can
eat all you want!’
 And it was true that you could eat as much fruit as you liked. So much of
it ripened, fell to the ground and rotted. The walls around the garden were
taller than I was and covered all over with sharp-thorned cactuses. When I
tried to touch the thick leaves of a cactus, its thorns often drew blood from
my fingers.
There was a mill next to his house. Sometimes when I went to the mill
with Mother, I went to look at the cactus leaves on the Raja Saheb’s walls. I
loved writing my name on their leaves using the thick cactus thorns.
I would write—Brisha Bahadur, Matera.
Once, Chandré wrote his name too—Chandra Kumar Lamichane. Later, I
secretly added ‘cripple’ to it. This made Chandré angry: he picked the leaf
off and threw it away, and after that he wouldn’t speak to me for several
days.
Chandré and I had both climbed that wall and seen the Raja Saheb’s
peaceful house with its tiled roof. Peacocks walked around nodding their
heads, and no sound came from the house except the sound of chickens
flapping their wings and clucking.
‘Did you know?’ Chandré whispered once, ‘They say there’s the ghost of
a Tharu girl in this house! Khusiram saw it once, that’s why he went mad!’
My arms and legs went limp with fear and I fell down, the cactus thorns
scratching me as I fell.
That evening, as he was applying ointment to my scratched elbows and
cheeks, Father told me off. ‘Did you climb a tree again? Do you want to die
young?’
‘I went to look at the Raja Saheb’s house,’ I told him, gasping as the
ointment burned my skin.
‘Haven’t I told you not to go there?’ Father twisted my ear. ‘Will you go
there again?’
‘I won’t, I won’t!’ The tears sprang to my eyes.
Father himself went there from time to time when the Tharus came to call
him. They would say, ‘The Raja Saheb was coughing all last night and he’s
got a fever too.’ Father would put a stethoscope in his bag and go.
‘What’s happening?’ Mother would ask him when he returned.
 ‘The coughing fits have got worse,’ Father would say with a long sigh.
‘He’s all alone, there’s no one there even to heat up some water for him to
drink.’
I heard that whenever the Raja Saheb met Father he would tell him,
‘Don’t worry, doctor, just leave it to me to make your landholding
permanent. I know the right people.’
Of course, all of the permanent land in Pahadipur, spreading as far as the
eye could see, belonged to him—the dozers could never demolish it. More
than one hundred bullock-carts and sixty huts belonged to him, and the
Tharu men and women who lived in them were all his bonded labourers,
Khusiram included. Bhagiram did not go to work because he was old.
They said he had been to Kathmandu twice to meet the king. This was
the king from the book: Shri Panch Maharajadhiraj Birendra Bir Bikram
Shah Dev—the king with the profile, the spectacles and the fat moustache. I
thought that the king in the book and the Raja Saheb, the king of Pahadipur,
had exactly the same moustache.
Khusiram used to say that there was a photograph in the house, of the
king of Kathmandu placing his hand on the right shoulder of the king of
Pahadipur. That might be why people spoke to him with such great
deference. The Tharus were so scared they nearly lost control of their
bladders whenever he came near; they clasped their hands together and bent
their backs, but when he was gone, they insulted him in their minds and
spat on the ground. The Raja Saheb was at the very top of the list of the
Pahadis on whom Bhagiram heaped abuse. Many people would not utter his
real name even if they knew it, and so I had never heard it spoken.
Two days earlier, Khusiram had gone crazy once more. Again, he had
gone off into the forest in the night, carrying a lantern. When he found out,
the Raja Saheb bound his hands and legs and locked him in the goats’ cage
for two days. After that, two Tharus went hurrying over to Katasé and came
back with Father, who brought ointment and medicine to ease the pain.
When they reached the bridge, Bhagiram asked them, ‘Where have you
come from?’
 ‘We’ve brought medicine from Katasé. The Raja Saheb gave Khusiram a
terrible beating,’ one said. ‘He’s got wounds all over his body.’
‘That’s just how he is,’ Bhagiram said in a despairing voice. ‘He’ll get
better soon.’
Khusiram had been lying in his bed for two days. A cowherd said he saw
him picking flowers in the garden, but Khusiram pretended not to see him.
The morning before, the Raja Saheb had been sitting on a log stool in his
yard, feeding wheat to the doves. Khusiram had crept up behind him,
tiptoeing as silently as a cat, picked up a big rock, and crashed it down on
the back of his neck. An old Tharuni who had come to sweep the house
screamed when she saw the Raja Saheb lying spreadeagled, all covered in
blood. One or two people cycled quickly to Katasé to inform the police.
Father had heard all about it in Katasé.
So, two policemen rode to Pahadipur on a motorcycle while others
arrived on foot. The police loaded the Raja Saheb onto a bullock cart and
took him to Katasé during the night. That being so, the people of Matera
only heard about it the next morning.
After this, fear spread through Tharu Gaon and Pahadipur. What would
happen now? Many people were terrified. Sister and I were too frightened
to go to school. That afternoon, Bhagiram stood by the bridge and told the
cowherds, ‘Now the police will go into every house in Pahadipur and kill us
all!’
Chandré and I were very scared.
‘The police will arrest us too,’ Chandré said as he ran for home.
‘Why?’ I was surprised.
‘We used to ride on his bullock cart, didn’t we?’
I recalled that once when we climbed onto his bullock cart, Chandré had
asked, ‘Dadu, are you mad?’
‘They say I’m mad,’ Khusiram had said secretively. ‘But I’m working for
the Party.’
‘What does “Party” mean?’ I’d asked him.
‘If the Party succeeds, I won’t have to work for the Raja Saheb any more.
I’ll build my own house. I’ll marry a girl.’
 Yes, Chandré was right: if the police found out, they would arrest us. So,
I ran home too and hid in my bed with the quilt pulled right over my head.
The police went to all of the Tharu huts in search of Khusiram. They
gave his older uncle, his younger uncle and anyone related to him a good
kicking.
I heard they cried out, ‘We had nothing to do with him because of his
madness, Saheb!’ The police searched far and wide for Khusiram, from the
rivers and channels to the sal forest to distant villages, but there was no
trace of him.
‘It looks like he’s run off to Rupediya,’ many guessed.
The police patrolled around Tharu Gaon for a week. We went to school in
the daytime, so we did not get to see them.
Father came home in the afternoons too, and the tea shop closed early.
‘The Raja Saheb’s eldest son has come, they say, and he’s started selling
everything, is that so?’ Mother asked one day. ‘Now it’s become hard to
live in Matera. You never know who’s going to strike you in the back of the
neck.’
Father did not reply.
‘There was some hope that the Raja Saheb might make our land
permanent. Now even that hope has gone. But you don’t care at all.’
‘How much more are you going to shout about it?’ Father poked a piece
of burning wood in the fire furiously. ‘I haven’t died. I’ll buy two bighas of
land. Then you’ll be able to carry on stuffing yourself with food.’
‘I’m never allowed to say anything! I’ve never been happy since I got
married!’
‘Run off with somebody else then!’
Father jumped to his feet angrily and went outside, and he did not return
until late that night. Mother sobbed all night, and all night, in my dreams,
Khusiram picked up big rocks and chased me.
After this, Mother and Father did not speak to one another for several
days.
Maybe because of the quarrel with Father, Mother tightened the rules of
the house. The examinations were approaching, so maybe it was because of
that too. ‘Just sit there and study, and if you need to go anywhere, ask me
first,’ Mother told me threateningly. So, I sat and studied all day long.
One day, Chandré called me, blowing his whistle, and I went down.
Mother was in the kitchen and we ran off as fast as a windstorm. As we ran
across the ridges of the fields, we could hear Mother’s voice, ‘Now where
have they gone, neglecting their studies, those boys? If you fail this time, I
will know!’
I did not turn back, but I shouted at the top of my voice, ‘First! I’ll come
first!’
‘And I’ll come second!’ Chandré added.

***

‘Purnabahadur Bista!’
‘Jagat Rawal!’
‘Basudev Chaulagain!’
‘Phulba Chaudhari!’
Chandré ripped up some dub grass from the playing field, put it into his
mouth and pretended to chew it. His face was turning blue, as if he had
been stung by a scorpion. Although the sun was hanging up in the sky, I felt
as if it was squatting on my forehead. Sweat drenched my face as if I had
been splashed with water.
Ninety-five students were spread out across the playing field, like scraps
of the question papers and answer booklets of a previous examination. If
anyone spoke, I would die. From far away the sound of the flourmill
reached our ears—tuktuk, tuktuk.
It was Results Day. At school, the sirs were reading out the results. Our
elder sisters’ results were being done in the classroom, the results of
students below class five on the playing field. Karnabahadur Sir had taken
responsibility for announcing our results. Everyone wanted to hear his name
from Sir’s mouth. Sir was turning the pages of a Red Rhododendron
exercise book and calling out the names of those who had passed. I was
already semi-unconscious.
 Oh Lord, may that exercise book never come to an end!
Sir shouted, ‘Aitabahadur B.K.!’
There, even his name has come now. Aite jumped up and spun around.
He laughed like Shiva in that picture, standing on one leg: hehehe! He was
the biggest in our class three—fourteen years old.
Sir was standing on a high bench. He looked at the exercise book through
his powerful glasses; then, after uttering each name, he looked out over the
top of them. A white shirt, brown patterned pants, leather shoes—Sir was
always smartly dressed, with a muffler around his neck. That’s why Sir was
popular with everyone—he never beat us and he taught the class three
subjects. Lifting his eyes from the book, he shouted—
‘Rambahadur Bogate!’
Bogate too jumped up and ran towards the gate. Now ants began to run
along the nerves in my brain. I felt as if my head was swelling, getting
bigger and bigger, too big to support. I hung my heavy head low.
‘We’ve failed, I reckon,’ said Chandré in a disconsolate voice. ‘Sir’s
book is nearly finished’.
‘Our names will be at the end.’ I looked at Sir with great hope.
And then, ‘Yuvaraj Gautam!’
Yuvaraj wasn’t there, so no one got up. Chandré’s breathing whistled like
a river. His lips trembled. He rolled his wet eyes at me and hiccoughed.
Sir shut the book, and I thought my breath would stop. All the students
jumped up and ran dancing towards Sir, because Sir had pulled the red abir
powder out of his pocket. They used to put abir on those who had passed.
There were ten or twelve of us whose names had not come. I had failed.
There now, there goes my blinky watch. I held back my sobs.
Sir was happily putting abir on the foreheads of the passes. The fails
headed for the gate, hanging their heads. Chandré and I just sat where we
were. Sister and Mamata Didi had passed and now they would move up to
study in class six. They came up to us, giggling. They both looked happy
and bright in their sky-blue shirts and dark-blue skirts.
Parvati bent down a little and asked, ‘What happened?’
‘Fail,’ I told her in a dead voice.
 Suddenly, Chandré burst into sobs. His body shook. Mamata Didi put her
hand on his head and said, ‘Don’t cry, my bhai.’
‘Ba will beat me,’ Chandré wept uncontrollably.
‘Don’t cry, I won’t let him beat you.’
This affection made Chandré tremble even more.
‘Study well next year,’ Parvati said, ‘And you’ll pass.’
The girls took hold of our hands and made us stand up and walk. Three
Heads was standing near the gate with abir all over his forehead. Two boys
stood beside him. Three Heads was chewing on a long stick of sugarcane.
When he saw us, he laughed mockingly because there was no abir on our
foreheads. Sister and her friends went out through the gate, giggling and
patting one another. We approached Three Heads because that was the way
we had to go. Three Heads suddenly made as if to strike Chandré over the
head with the sugarcane—whack! Chandré ducked to the right to save his
head. All three of them laughed, sounding like the demons in a radio play,
and making the very school shake—ha ha ha!
‘Passes eat sugarcane!’ Three Heads shouted at the top of his voice.
The two boys who were with him laughed, ‘And fails?’
‘This here …’ Three Heads pointed at his private parts.
Chandré became tearful and glared at Three Heads from red eyes. I
grabbed his arm and pulled him away, and he came along limping. Even
when we had left him well behind, Three Heads was still shouting.
The girls had gone on ahead without us because they were happy to have
passed. Chandré and I were on our own. We didn’t speak all the way home.
Whenever we saw someone on the road, we hid behind a tree: what would
we say if they asked us if we’d passed?
We snuck down via the far bank of the Amauri Khola in case they asked
at the teashop. Dusk had already fallen and the river was deserted. Chandré
and I sat on its rim. The breeze was cold—it was touching us inside, getting
in through the torn armpits of our shirts and up through the gaps in our
shorts. A little way off, the yellow light of a lantern spilled out of the
teashop, and the murmur of people’s voices reached our ears. The sauji had
recently begun to sell sealed bottles of raksi. People said the lights burned
in the teashop until midnight!
Chandré was silent. He knew that tonight his father would thrash him, so
he was unwilling to go home. Even now his lips were trembling a little.
‘Your father won’t beat you, right?’ Chandré looked at me.
I did not reply, but just lowered my head.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, catching hold of his hand.
He said nothing but just got up slowly, and we walked on, brushing off
our shorts. Like dark tree stumps, we were returning home via the bank of
the Amauri Khola, at the hour when the English news comes on the radio. I
was the stump in front, walking hurriedly; the other stump was Chandré,
limping along behind me.
‘Come here,’ Father called me as soon as he saw me.
I climbed up to him with a miserable face.
‘You failed, didn’t you? You didn’t put your mind to it when it was time
to study. Everyone passed, you failed.’
The skin on my face tightened.
Father stroked my hair. ‘I thought that my son would study and become
an important man, but you’re on your way to becoming a cowherd.’
My eyes filled with tears.
‘You have saddened my heart, son.’
I sobbed.
‘All right, off you go. You’ll pass next time.’ Father pushed me gently
away. ‘I’ll bring you a watch next time.’
I went down the ladder wiping my eyes.
‘You’ve made us cry today.’ That was all Mother said.
‘Study well from now on, you hear?’ Sister looked at me, with the abir
not washed very well from her face. ‘I’ll teach you.’
I cried all night. From time to time, I thought of Chandré. His father must
have beaten him badly. If only he had a father like mine—he didn’t beat me,
but he slapped my heart.
Next day, in the afternoon, Magar Uncle told us, ‘I had diarrhoea first
thing this morning. When I went outside, I saw a black shadow going
towards the Amauri Khola. I was scared that it might be a ghost.’ I knew
that this was Chandré, because Magar Uncle said the shadow was limping.
Chandré vanished from the village that very morning. His father searched
all over for him. In Lamichane Basti, in Tharu Gaon, in Pahadipur—
everywhere. Father said he even went to Katasé and filed a report at the
police post.
‘Hey, did Chandré say anything to you?’ Father asked me on the third
day of Chandré’s disappearance. ‘Where might he have gone?’
‘He used to say he was going to go to see his brother,’ I told him.
‘Perhaps he’s gone to Bombay.’
‘He didn’t encourage you to go with him?’
I sat in silence. Father’s face darkened.
‘Someone who runs away from home just for failing once is a coward,’
said Father, tossing a 2-rupee note towards me. ‘A son should not run away
from home.’
After Chandré ran away, Father was very frightened that I might run
away too. Whenever he came back from Katasé, he would look for me
immediately. If I was lucky, he would find me studying. After Chandré had
gone, I didn’t go to the Amauri Khola for several days. Many days later, on
a Saturday afternoon, I met Bhagiram on the bridge near the Amauri Khola.
He set his fan to one side and asked me, rubbing tobacco in his hand,
‘Where did that silly boy go?’
‘To Bombay.’
‘How could such a little boy get to Bombay?’
I couldn’t forget Chandré for many days. Even in my dreams, he seemed
to be calling me. After a couple of weeks, Father went to Nepalganj for five
days. He came home on the afternoon of the sixth day. Because it was a
Friday, I had come home from school early and I was sleeping. I woke to
the sound of his bicycle bell and ran down, wiping the dribble from my
cheek. Father had brought a bunch of grapes tucked into his waistband. His
face was flushed. I went up to him shyly and touched my head to his feet.
‘Be lucky,’ Father said. ‘Is there no one at home?’
‘She’s gone to the shop to get some sugar.’
 ‘Go and get me some water, I’m parched!’
I hurried off and brought a pitcher of water for him. Father drank it,
making his Adam’s apple go up and down. Some water spilled down and
wet his chest. Setting the pitcher down on the floor, he moved his hand
towards his pocket. When it emerged from his pocket, there it was in his
hand—a blinky watch.
‘Come here.’ Father took hold of my left wrist. In an instant, he attached
the watch to my wrist. Father asked, ‘So, what time is it, tell me?’
‘Thirty-five minutes and seventeen seconds past three,’ I said shyly.
‘Go and study.’
I ran off to the attic like a whirlwind.
At meal time that evening, Father told us that he had travelled home on
the same bus as Lamichane Kancha, who told Father that he had seen
Chandré washing tea glasses in a teashop in Nepalganj. When Chandré saw
him, he ran away, limping.
‘I don’t know where he came from,’ the potbellied sauji shouted, ‘I gave
him work, but the little sod ran away again.’
I couldn’t sleep for a long time, thinking of Chandré. From time to time, I
pressed the button on the rim of the watch, and the watch lit up. When I was
looking at the watch, at 12:45:17, Father woke up.
‘How often will you look at your watch? Go to sleep now!’ said Father,
yawning. Then he went back to sleep. I could hear the faint sound of his
breathing.
Here in Matera, there is no one as loving as my father.
OceanofPDF.com
 THE THIRD DAY

The previous evening, a sick boy had become Father’s friend. He was
seriously ill with pneumonia and made a continuous wheezing sound three
beds away. His own father came and went there all day. They had come
from Dang.
The father’s name was Krishna, but everyone called him Krishnaji. I
heard that he was a primary school teacher, so, a pen-clip glittered from the
pocket of his blue shirt. ‘I’ve only got one child. What if something
happens to him?’ he kept saying. His face was very pale.
‘Is this really good enough?’ He kept shouting all morning. ‘Somebody
should come and attend to him.’
After that, someone or other kept coming all day, causing a real fuss.
What do we know? They are actually students, but we think they are
doctors. They come in groups of four or five and ask lots of questions.
What happened to the patient?
How many days has it been?
How much of an improvement has there been?
What have you given him?
They discovered that Father had suffered a paralysis, that nothing could
move below his waist. They all stood around the bed with their heads bent,
and one took a little hammer like a goldsmith’s and struck Father gently on
the knee, asking, ‘Anything, Baajé?’
 ‘No.’ Father would shake his head from side to side.
They read the names of the medicines Father was taking and spoke to one
another in subdued tones. And they consoled Mother as she sat with her
head in her hand, saying, ‘Bajyai, don’t worry, it will be fine.’
After these words of consolation had been repeated time and again, it
began to seem to Mother that they were not doctors who could recognize
Father’s ‘special’ condition. Narmada, who had just arrived, told us,
‘Mohammad Doctor Saab will come. He will make everything right.’
‘When will he come, Nani?’
‘He’s gone to Lucknow,’ she said, as she checked a filled bag of urine
and made a note. ‘He will definitely come in a day or two.’
Then she left. Perhaps because of what she had said, Mother’s face
brightened. ‘I’ll go and get some milk,’ she said. ‘Take care of Father; don’t
leave him for even a moment.’
Mother left and I began to feel dejected. My stomach wasn’t working
well because of the food, the water, the weather and the sleep deprivation. It
was half past one in the afternoon. I looked at Father and saw that he was
sleeping.
I went off to the bathroom and strained on the lavatory for a long while.
Then I went into the next room and looked at myself in a mirror. I could
hardly recognize myself. My hair was tousled and my thin moustache and
beard had grown longer. My body smelled so foul it made me feel
nauseous.
I washed my face and put some water on my hair. Then I came out.
I had barely reached the ward when I was struck by one of Mother’s
sharp arrows. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded.
‘What’s wrong? I’ve been to the toilet.’
‘Your father has eaten up all the medicine.’ Mother looked as if she was
going to tear out her matted hair in despair. ‘When we were in Katasé, I told
him only to take his medicines at the right times. Now what’s going to
happen to him?’
What had happened was this:
 When he awoke to see neither me nor Mother there, Father had called
Krishnaji, who was sitting gloomily nearby. There was no one else around.
Was the patient having a crisis, Krishnaji wondered. He was a helpful man,
so he came over.
‘What’s wrong, Baajé?’ he asked.
‘Give me that Bruset!’ Father pointed to a drawer which was out of his
reach.
‘Why, Baajé?’
‘I have to take it. It’s time. I don’t know where my relatives have gone.’
Krishnaji hesitated for a moment. Should he give it to him or not? Father
told him, ‘Don’t be afraid. I ran a medical store. I know about medicine.
That’s a pain-reducing medicine.’
As soon as he had placed the card of tablets in Father’s hand, Father took
four and chewed them right up. Then the man panicked and, as soon as
Mother came back with a jug of milk, he told her the whole story. Mother
threw herself down in a chair, shaking.
I looked at Father. His lips were grey with the dust from the tablets. He
was completely content. As my eyes met his, he winked at me and gave me
a toothless grin.

The sun was right in the middle of the sky, condensing the shadows of the
pigeons that were jumping about on the veranda. I watched them for a long
time with my mind elsewhere, and when I refocused, I saw that Father had
fallen asleep and that Mother was exhausted. I felt faint as I wondered to
myself how many days we were going to have to live like this in the
hospital.
Dr Nandan would also inform us, ‘When he returns from Lucknow, Dr
Mohammad will tell you how many days it will take for him to recover.’
Rumours about Dr Mohammad could be heard on the ward. He was the
kind of doctor, people said, who knew as soon as he looked at a patient how
long it would take for that patient to be well again. He was an incarnation of
God, they said: one glance was enough for him to tell whether a patient
would live or die. This was who we were all waiting for.
 Dr Nandan came and examined Father. Then he told us, ‘Tomorrow, take
him to Nepalganj and get a CT scan done. Let’s look and see what it
shows.’ Then he went away.
Mother turned to me and said, ‘It sounds like we should take him to
Nepalganj, don’t you think?’
‘I’ll speak to the nurse.’
It was past five in the evening by the time Narmada informed me that an
ambulance would be going to Nepalganj the next morning.

At a quarter to five in the evening, the watchman was rubbing his mixture
of chewing tobacco and lime. His duty was from morning until dusk. When
I was returning from my evening meal, I would see a different guard there.
The night watchman didn’t ask quite as many questions, but even he would
still ask, ‘How’s the patient?’
‘He’s fine now,’ I would try to put him off.
‘Who is the patient?’
‘My Ba.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘A burst vein in his brain.’
‘Oh.’ He tucked the tobacco behind his lower lip and spat. ‘Don’t worry.
I’ve seen many patients get better and leave.’
Would I lead my healthy father out through this very gate one day? I
walked towards the Bijuli Hotel, trying to cheer myself up.
When I returned to the ward, Narmada came after me. She went here and
there all night without sleeping. With another patient in the next bed now,
she was even more tired than usual and, sometimes, as she approached
Father’s bed, she heaved a long sigh. Her room was at the end of a line of
three wards. There was a table in the room over which she sat slightly bent,
reading something. If Father’s head began to pain him, I would hurry to her
and she would lift her head from her book.
I wouldn’t say anything; I would just stand there. But she would
understand. She would slip her red-laced sandals onto her feet and come
along behind me—swish swish. She would place her hand on Father’s
forehead and put a thermometer into his mouth and stand beside him.
Sometimes, she would stroke the palm of his left hand. Then she would take
out the thermometer and say, ‘The fever has gone right down.’
Mother had begun to like Narmada very much. When she saw her, she
asked, ‘Narmada Nani, he will be all right, won’t he?’
‘Bajyai, don’t worry. He will be fine.’
When she’d hear this, Mother would become tearful. She would stand in
the window looking out through a gap in the curtains at the lamplight that
spread across Kohalpur.
At about half past eight that evening, Father became like someone who
was not ill at all, and he listened to our conversation with interest. Mother
and I were sitting on stools. Mother wept grievously as she remembered
Kalikot. There was nothing more than a single padlock hanging on the shop
door, she said. ‘Even though we asked someone to look after the house, will
they really do as we asked?’ she muttered.
Even more than this, Mother was plagued with worry about a goat she
had left behind when it was just about to give birth. She had bought it one
year earlier.
Putting a wet cloth on Father’s forehead, Mother asked me in a
disconsolate tone, ‘Won’t you come to live in Kalikot now?’
‘After my studies.’
‘Why should he come?’ Father asked breathily, ‘Doesn’t he have to
study?’
‘Yes, I suppose he does,’ said Mother, stroking Father’s head. ‘But will
he never return?’
‘He will live where he pleases.’ Father looked up at the ceiling from his
deep watery eyes. Then something occurred to him and he said, ‘He can
think for himself now. He’s studying in Kathmandu, he will have
understood things. What benefit would there be in sending him back to
Kalikot and making him measure out metres of cloth?’
I sat there feeling gloomy.
Father turned to me. ‘Have you learned English, or haven’t you?’
 ‘I’m learning,’ I lied, and stroked the fingers of Father’s right hand. His
gently trembling fingers.

At a quarter past ten, Narmada came. I was leaning on the window and had
fallen asleep. I was dribbling from my mouth without realizing it. Mother
had also fallen asleep with her head on Father’s bed. She awoke with a start
when she heard Narmada’s footsteps. Rubbing her eyes, which were red
with sleep, she sat up. Then she closed her eyes again, as if she had become
dizzy.
‘Has he eaten anything?’ Narmada checked the saline drip and the plastic
bag full of urine under the bed.
‘He refuses to eat. He’s had six or seven spoons of milk. He refuses to
take it with flour mixed into it.’
‘Why?’
‘He says it stinks.’
‘Even though it stinks he should still eat it,’ Narmada said.
‘I told him that too. Look at his arms, how thin and withered they are!
But he won’t agree.’
‘Please persuade him.’
Father was listening to them, and he moved. Then he said in a thin voice,
‘Now I won’t eat any more. I’ve had my share of food in this life.’
Narmada was stumped. She stood there for a moment, then she went
away—swish swish. Mother put her head on the bed and fell asleep again.

***

Mother turned her head to look at Father.

‘His blood pressure’s gone up, the poor man,’ Father told her. He had
come back from examining the Dailekhi Sau and was telling her about it.
‘He started worrying after someone else opened a shop. What’s the point of
worrying—we get whatever is written in our fate.’
‘He’s an honest man,’ said Mother, as she sifted through some mustard
greens. ‘People can’t stand seeing others doing well. They’ve all turned into
saujis.’
 ‘He’s been in bed with a headache for three days, poor thing.’ Father
climbed up the ladder. ‘One day, he’ll have a stroke and die.’
A few days later, a rumour spread through the village that the Dailekhi
Sau had started eating very little chilli or salt. A few days after that, he
appeared in his shop, looking a little thinner. His smile seemed forced too,
but he kept on smiling because on his black teeth, which were like grains of
black dal, he had put some gold. Sometimes when he smiled, he looked like
a man straining with dysentery.
‘The Dailekhi Sau has got himself some gold teeth!’ The old men were
envious. ‘But they probably aren’t real gold teeth,’ they consoled
themselves. ‘He must have just painted them gold.’
Five more shops had been set up around his shop, all of them under
canvas. When the wind blew, their canvases flapped wildly. The Dailekhi
Sau’s own canvas had been replaced by a roof of thatch and he couldn’t
stand the sight of the other shopkeepers. If any of them made even a petty
error, he got straight into an altercation with them. But the entertaining
thing was that while he was envious of everyone, it was actually Uma Didi
that the keepers of the tent shops envied the most.
Uma Didi had a body that looked like it had been bathed in butter, with
smooth arms and legs. When she walked, her backside looked like a milch
cow walking along, and when she smiled, parting lips shaped like orange
sweets, I thought there was no one in the world like her. For this reason,
hers was the stall to go to for many things, from chewing tobacco to raksi.
The astrologer’s wife would say, ‘She sells buffalo meat! You shouldn’t
even drink water if she’s touched it.’ And it was true that the first dried
buffalo meat ever sold in Matera hung in Uma Didi’s shop. Many people
stopped drinking tea there because of the Brahman woman selling buffalo
meat, but now the space they vacated filled with raksi drinkers instead.
More and more new people came. They went into the shop sober and came
out of it drunk. They stood on the bank of the Amauri Khola, pissing into
the river so hard that the water resounded, and muttering incoherently,
‘How gorgeous she is, I must have her!’
 As the number of shops grew, litter began to spread across the riverbank:
empty packets of noodles, biscuits, tobacco. When the discarded cartons got
wet, they began to pile up like horse dung. Many people started cutting their
feet on broken glass while they were bathing in the Amauri Khola, and
many went to Katasé to get tetanus injections. Even I gave up bathing in the
Amauri Khola.
After people started coming from other villages too, Uma Didi had no
time to spare at all. Even when she walked, she had to hurry, saving her
body from the eyes that pierced her from behind. Uma Didi had no father
and, except for her old mother, there was no one else at home. Within two
months of her opening the shop, a gold ring hung from her ear.
In the evenings, a crowd would gather around the shops. The cowherds
who came to gather in their cattle were perplexed to see so many new
people there.
I did not visit the shops very often in the evenings. I had seen Father
inside Uma Didi’s two or three times. Even when I did go, I would peer
over at Uma Didi’s from a distance. If Father was there, his bicycle would
be standing outside. For fear of encountering Father, I would dally for a
while near the shops on my way home from school.
The Dailekhi Sau had begun to organize card games, and a gambling
circle had come together inside his shop. He demanded a share of the
winnings from every game and he sat grinning beside the gamblers. Once, I
went inside to see the gambling den, but he took me by the arm and threw
me out: ‘Children shouldn’t watch gambling, they will get corrupted!’ he
said.
A few months after the shops began to multiply, a man in a black coat
started coming to the shop on a bicycle. Some elders, who had moved to a
different shop after the gambling started, whispered amongst themselves,
‘He buys lump after lump of cannabis and takes it away with him. One day,
the police will send this sauji to jail.’
When such strange and surprising people began to appear, the villagers
stopped sending their children there to buy things. And one day, the place
was given a name—Paal Bazaar, the Tent Market. The bigger Paal Bazaar
got, the more Mother worried. Father never came home on time any more:
it had been several days since he last listened to the 7 o’clock news on the
radio.
When Father came home one evening, Mother flew into a rage. I looked
at my blinky watch: it was forty-five minutes past 7 o’clock.
‘What’s he like, never coming home on time! Do you never think of
anything but Paal Bazaar?’
Father just went on washing his hands and feet.
‘Why do you sit at that Uma’s place? There’s a rumour all through the
village that the doctor’s been seduced.’
‘What’s she saying, this one? Are you out of your mind?’
Sister and I peeped wide-eyed from the door.
‘You have to be told, since you don’t realize it yourself!’ Mother’s voice
became a little quieter. ‘What kind of juvenile behaviour is this in your old
age?’
‘Uma’s mother has taken ill.’ Father went upstairs. ‘I have to take
medicine to her from time to time.’
Mother looked up at him. ‘If there’s a need to deliver medicine, I can
take it there myself.’
That night, Father slept facing the north and Mother slept facing the
south, lying on their sides. Next day, Sister and Mamata Didi were talking
about going to Paal Bazaar and Mother asked them, ‘Why do you need to
go there?’
‘To buy ear studs,’ Sister told her.
‘It won’t hurt you to go a day or two without. I’ll go and buy some in
Katasé.’ Mother pouted in the direction of Paal Bazaar. ‘Don’t go to Paal
Bazaar, there’s a whore living there.’
Sister stamped her foot.

***

The hot sunshine made my head ache. Mother was kneading the laundry,
bending forward slightly, and I was sitting on my heels under the soapnut
tree beside the well.
‘Sister, the house is on fire!’
Lamichane came running across the fields yelling—he who had held a
Satya Narayan puja in his house just three days before. Mother and I turned
towards the Lamichane village, craning our necks like egrets.
‘Not over there!’ he became even more agitated. ‘I mean your house!’
Lau, a cloud of smoke was rising into the sky from the roof of our house.
The cluster fig tree in the yard had disappeared in the smoke, and a section
of the roof had already turned to ash. Mother and I ran towards it in terror. I
felt dizzy, as if my very heart would stop beating. Mother was in such a
fright that she ran across the fields barefoot, with me behind her. Lamichane
lifted a pitcher of water onto his shoulder and ran too. The water splashed
out, soaking the back of his neck.
‘Hurry!’ he screamed again.
By the time I reached the yard, my legs were lame. How could we get
inside? The house was going up in flames, and the rooftree was about to
fall. The inner walls were already burned black. Great clouds of smoke
billowed from the apex of the roof, as if from the chimney of a brick kiln. I
had never seen such a great world of flame before.
Mother lost her senses and just stood and stared. A stream of people was
coming from villages near and far. Some carried buckets, some carried
pitchers. They threw the water on to the fire, but the flames just leaped
higher.
‘Lau, take hold of this.’ Someone put Father’s powerful spectacles into
my hand: his spectacles, with their cloudy thick glass. I gripped them so
hard my hand almost gave off steam. My eyes filled with tears.
Dimly, I saw Magar Uncle dodging the flames and climbing into the
upper room. When he came out again, he held in his hand a half-burned bed
quilt, still smouldering. He threw it down into the yard. Others too gathered
up their courage and followed Magar Uncle’s example. After the quilt, a
cupboard fell to the ground and after that a bed, a sleeping mat, clothes, a
box. Mother and I looked on tearfully.
As we watched, our house burned.
 Late in the afternoon, Father came hurrying home in a lather of sweat. As
he watched, the upper storey was completely destroyed by the fire, like a
jungle of grass being destroyed by a wildfire. As it burned, the smell of wet
thatch spread a long way. Father wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.
‘It’s all over now, don’t worry,’ everyone said as they turned to leave.
Father stood staring for a long time at the house with its upper storey
completely burned out. Magar Uncle patted him on the shoulder as he left
and said, ‘Nephew, the bad omen has passed and you have survived.’
‘How did it catch fire?’ Father asked Mother after a long while, clearing
his throat.
‘Who knows?’ Mother replied, wiping her eyes.
I approached Father slowly and said, ‘Ba?’
Father turned his red, fearful face towards me. I held out his spectacles
for him, hot from my hand. He put them into the top pocket of his sky-blue
waistcoat.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, noticing my gloomy expression.
Sister wept all night. She had returned from the forest to find half the
house already gone. She had heard the news at Paal Bazaar and came
running across the fields. Her Santoshi Mata temple had been destroyed too.
She cried and cried on Mamata Didi’s shoulder. When we went into the
house, as night fell, it was hard to breathe inside. What a pungent odour
there was! Mother made a bed near the kitchen. I don’t know who had
given her the bedclothes. The food had been brought by Magar Uncle. The
cattle were calling from the cowshed.
‘We’ve lost so much.’ Father could barely speak.
‘Don’t think about it too much.’ Mother felt his forehead. ‘What had to
happen has happened.’
After a long while, Father fell asleep. I lay on my side, looking at him.
He was lying on his back, and his chest rose and fell. His mouth hung
slightly open. A rumour had spread through the village that afternoon.
People were saying that the doctor was a pauper now, that all of his
property had been destroyed by the fire, that Rs 80,000 of his cash had been
burned right up.
 As I thought of these things, I felt like bursting into tears. The night was
already very dark and a dog was barking in the distance. As I lay there in
the dark, thinking and thinking, the veins in my brain pulled tight. I began
to see Mother’s and Sister’s faces jeering at me. I recalled Father’s bony
chest rising and falling in haste, his protruding ribs, his watering eyes, his
parched lips.
‘Forgive me, Ba! It was me; I am the one who set fire to the house.’

‘Don’t mess about,’ Mother had told me when she set out for the well
earlier that day. ‘Stay here and study.’
‘Yes.’
She went to the well with a bundle of clothes: quilt covers, pillow cases,
Father’s shirts and trousers, my clothes. Sister and Mamata Didi had gone
to the forest to look for the tongue-like greens that grew there during the
monsoon.
And I was alone in the house.
When I found myself alone at home, I couldn’t restrain myself, however
hard I tried. I went down to the kitchen and ate two mouthfuls of sugar.
Then I put five potatoes to cook on the glowing fire and went back upstairs.
I played jumping around on Father’s bed for a long time. I put on Father’s
waistcoat, then I sat on his bed and gazed into the distance like Father did.
But this was not enough for me. I started exploring the corners of the
house. Mother sometimes used to exclaim, ‘He’s always in a corner, like a
thieving cat!’ There was great profit to be had from exploring those corners.
Sometimes you would even come across a 10-rupee note. But this time,
however many circuits I made, I found nothing but dust and bits of rubbish.
Several of the corners were too dark for me to explore, but I came up with a
solution. In the kitchen, I found a brass oil lamp that Father had brought
from Katasé. A brass lamp is a very pure thing, they say. It is needed for
puja, Father had told me. So, I sniffed at the lamp and shook it, and found
that there was some kerosene in it.
When I put a lighted match to it, the lamp flickered into life and the dark
corners were lit up.
 By the light of that lamp, I saw a black box sitting on top of a cupboard. I
was thrilled to see that there was no lock on it. It used to be kept on the
floor before, and it contained my and Sister’s horoscopes. There was a
rudraksha rosary in there too. I used to dig into it every day. ‘Have you
been touching that box again?’ Mother would shout.
Now I felt like rifling through that box again. I tried to reach it, standing
on the tips of my toes, but I could only just touch it with the tips of my
fingers.
Beside the door there was a heap of Father’s books: Shri Sukasagar, the
Vedas, Shrisvastani Vratakatha, The History of the Kingdom of Nepal,
Gitasar, Shri Krishnacharitra and other fat books. I made a pile of these
books and climbed up on to it to reach the top of the cupboard. I got my
hands around the two sides of the box and pulled hard to bring it forward.
But it only moved a little. I strained at it again and, all of a sudden, the full
weight of the box was resting on my palms. My legs started to shake. If
only I had the strength! But the box fell to the ground with a crash.
The lamp spilled over onto Sister’s sleeping mat and I saw a flame leap
up from it. I hit the fire over the head with Sri Sukasagar, but the fire was
drawn up under it. A burning smell came from the sleeping mat, and smoke
smouldered out of it; the fire hadn’t gone out yet. I spat hurriedly into the
hole in the mattress. After that, I did not have the nerve to go through the
contents of the box, which had spilled out when it fell to the floor.
Everything that had been inside it was scattered here and there. I shook with
fear: I would get a real laundering for this!
After that, I ran to the well. It didn’t take me even two minutes to reach
it.
‘Why have you come here again, leaving the house empty?’ Mother
shouted when she saw me.
‘I want to have a bath,’ I said, running along the ridge of the field.
That spit didn’t put out the fire in the cotton. It climbed up to the roof,
and our house burned right out.
After that, Father didn’t go to Katasé for several days. He went out on his
bicycle, but I don’t know where to. Sometimes he came home in the middle
of the night. The upper storey had been reduced to ashes, so we just slept in
the kitchen. Father had three new sets of bedclothes made and brought them
home.
Once, Father had told us, ‘The forest guards keep coming into the forest.
It’s difficult to gather wood.’ But when the forest guards heard that our
house had caught fire, they agreed to give us two sal trees—I discovered
this when I saw Father looking happy. And every day when we came home
from school, we saw new things arriving: sometimes wood, sometimes zinc
sheets. As we watched, the house became like new again and the zinc sheets
shone brightly on the roof.
‘The roof of the doctor’s house shines like silver,’ the people would say
at Paal Bazaar. I felt proud. Of course, there was no house like ours in the
whole of Matera.
‘La, now the house is just what you were looking for,’ Father said to
Mother one day, laughing. ‘I’ve put a zinc roof on it. Now it won’t leak.’
‘It was good that the house caught fire,’ Mother smiled a few days later.
And gradually everything became all right again.
I drew pictures on pieces of paper and attached them to the wall near my
bed. Sister stuck photos of film heroes and heroines brought from Tikapur
to an inner wall. She made a temple for Santoshi Mata again. Mother was
always smiling and happy and, after a few months, Father had a new photo
of himself made in Nepalganj. He got it enlarged and brought it home.
‘You should hide your teeth you know!’ Mother laughed when she
looked at it.
Father smiled bashfully. ‘What will you do about it? One day, I won’t
have even these teeth in my mouth!’
Father hung the photo of himself dressed up in his waistcoat and Dhaka
topi on a crossbeam upstairs. Your eyes would fall on it straightaway if you
looked up from the yard. When I saw that Father was really happy that day,
I said to him, ‘Ba, buy me a bicycle!’
‘Why do you want a bicycle?’ Father was surprised.
‘To ride,’ I said. ‘I’d take it to school. I could give Sister a lift on it.’
 Father laughed. ‘Well, what will you do? All of your Ba’s money is
finished since the house caught fire. I’ll buy it in a little while.’
‘When?’
Father thought for a moment, then he said, ‘When you pass class five.’

***

The sky was overcast in the afternoon. After night fell, the leaves of the
tobacco plants outside the house began to resound with the rain. The mud
walls gave off a fragrance as they became wet. The firewood was
unseasoned and the kitchen filled with smoke. Mother was cooking up
some gruel for the cattle. She put her face into the fireplace and the flames
crackled as she blew into them, flaring up until they almost touched the
rafters. My shins were facing the fire and they began to feel very hot, so I
shifted back a little.
When the fire began to crackle and spit, Mother said, ‘The fire is really
crackling! Does it mean we will have guests calling on us in such rain, or
what is it?’
Suddenly, I heard a weak, thin little voice calling meow, meow.
‘Where’s that sound coming from?’ Mother looked into the corners of the
room.
Sister glanced around too, but then she went back to her book. I hunched
my back against the rain and went outside. ‘Meow,’ the little sound came
again, from the gap between the grain store and the wall. It was a very
soulful sound. I fixed my eyes on the deep darkness in the gap: if only I
could see! I ran inside and grabbed a lantern.
‘Be careful, if it’s a tom cat it will scratch you!’ Mother shouted.
Even as she was saying this, I shot outside again. The light of the lantern
spread into the dark crevice. The cat made another little sound, then fell
silent. A ray of light spilled out onto its back. Its eyes shone—its hazel
eyes.
‘Meow,’ I called.
 It glanced up at me and tried to retreat further, using its hind legs. I
caught hold of it by the middle of its back and its body twisted slightly. I
pulled it up, holding on to the soft skin of its back, and it wriggled as if it
was being tickled. It was soaking wet, its stripy blue-and-black fur softened
by the rain. Once it had reached my lap, the cat pressed the long, curved,
sharp claws of its front paws slowly into my wrist. Then it looked up at me
from its pale eyes.
After that, the cat went nowhere and over the past nine months it had
displayed a lot of talents. It stayed closer to me than to anyone else; it even
crept into my bed at night and fell asleep, nestled against my chest. In the
mornings, it got up before everyone else and walked all around the house
six or seven times.
At mealtimes, it arrived at the fireplace just like an old Tharu coming
home from a day’s work in the fields. It folded its front legs, rested its chin
on the floor and stared.
‘That cat is very ungrateful,’ Mother told us sometimes.
When the cat first arrived in our house, Mother had estimated that it was
three or four months old. Reckoning that, it would be one year old by now.
One day, Father told us, ‘In a house with a cat there’s no fear of snakes.’
Here in the Madhes, a snake could be coiled up anywhere—in a corner of
the house, on a beam, in a rice-straw stack, in a clump of besharam. I was
extremely frightened of snakes. Every few days, I would have a nightmare
of a snake chasing me in which my legs were paralysed and I was unable to
escape.
‘What kind of nightmare is he having now?’ Mother would exclaim.
Once or twice a year, we would have an unscheduled day off school
because someone had been bitten by a snake. That was why I had become
so afraid of them. Father and Mother knew the places where snakes might
be hiding. When we went to bed at night in the summer, it was the rule that
we should sleep with our mosquito nets tucked under our sleeping mats on
all sides. But when I lay down inside my mosquito net, I was afraid that I
would not be able to breathe. A hairy hand of terror would begin to squeeze
my throat and suffocate me. So, once everyone else had fallen asleep, I
would stick my foot outside the net before I fell asleep myself.
One night, the cat wailed like a baby in arms, loud enough to wake the
whole of Matera, and I awoke with a jolt. When I opened my eyes, heavy
with sleep, Mother had already lit a lantern. Sister had also got up,
disturbed by the commotion.
It was a moonlit night. The green leaves of the cluster fig tree were
shining. Far away in the distance, dogs were barking. The soft light of the
moon spread everywhere.
‘Why’s it making that noise?’ asked Father, shining the light of his three-
celled torch all around him. The cat was standing there with its front legs
slightly bent. I had never seen its teeth looking so long and sharp. In front
of it, a snake had reared right up. When she saw it, Sister screamed, and my
body turned cold like ice. Father levelled the torchlight so that it shone into
the snake’s eyes, which were as deep and dark as black marbles. Its tongue,
as slender as a blade of grass, was pointing towards our bed. Then the snake
suddenly fell down flat, like a snapped tether, and the cat played with it for
a long time, turning it over and over with its front paws.
‘It’s dead.’ Father breathed deeply and climbed down from his bed. The
cat moved away and twisted its whiskers with a paw. Father draped the
snake over a long pole and went downstairs.
‘Today, we only survived because of this cat,’ Mother’s lips were
trembling.
When he returned, Father was out of breath.
‘Where did you throw it?’ Mother asked him. Her hands were still
shaking.
‘I threw it into the field.’ Father lay down in his bed. ‘Go to sleep now. A
snake won’t enter a house where another snake has been.’
After that, the cat became everyone’s darling. In time, it got to know the
whole village. All day, it entered thickets with its fur standing on end, then
leapt straight out again. Whenever Mamata Didi came, the cat snuck into
her lap.
 Mamata Didi laughed. ‘It’s like my little sister! Its eyes are pale, just like
mine.’
When I came home from school, it would suddenly appear near the
cowshed from I don’t know where, to roll about at my feet. I would pick it
up and hug it to my chest with crossed arms. It would lick my chin with its
rough tongue and close its eyes tight. Then it would cry ‘meow’ as if it was
quietly singing a song.
One day, Mother said, ‘It’s more like a human being than a cat!’

***

That Saturday, Sister and I went and stood beside the fodder fig tree near
Mamata Didi’s house. The house was quiet. In the cowshed beside the gate,
white froth was coming from the buffalo’s mouth as it chewed. The birds
who were preening their wings in the branches of the fig tree flew up when
they heard our footsteps.
Crossing the two wooden bars laid across the gateway, we entered the
yard. Its damp surface was covered by a thin layer of moss spread out like a
bedsheet. The green creeper of a bitter gourd was climbing up a dried-out
trellis to one side.
It was dark on the other side of the threshold, and we crept into the house
like thieves. The fire had gone out in the fireplace. A large dirty aluminium
pot sat on top of it, probably containing gruel for the buffalo. Above the
fireplace, there was a row of boxes of oil, salt and spice, and a pile of red
chillies. The walls and rafters were covered in soot. In the corner to the left,
a bed was piled in a heap, folded back towards its head, and in the corner to
the right were a spade, an axe and a sickle. Directly above the axe hung a
large cucumber, ripe and brown. A bamboo ladder climbed up from beside
the fireplace. Some dim light filtered in at the point where it reached the
attic.
‘Mamata?’ Sister called, directing her voice towards the top of the ladder.
‘Huh?’ a low voice came from above.
 Sister climbed up, stretching her calves and taking care not to bang her
head on the rafters. I followed her.
Lord! Mamata Didi was lying on her back staring up at the thatched roof
under a dirty quilt that was patched in places. Her dishevelled hair was tied
back in a bunch and her face was as yellow as the setting sun in winter. Her
eyes were sunken, and their whites were yellow too.
Mamata Didi hadn’t been seen for a week. There had been some rumours
that she had gone to the forest to gather fodder and had come back feeling
ill. She must have been attacked by a masaan ghost, the rumours said.
They said that something jumped right out at her as she passed a sal tree
that was thick with leaves, on her way back from the forest. Her body ached
from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, and that night she was
racked with fever. She shook like a shaman, they said, and her teeth
chattered.
Sister sat at her head, and I sat at her feet. Sister put her hand on her head
and asked, ‘Have you eaten anything?’
‘No, I can’t even eat rice.’
‘Will you eat some grapes?’ Sister pulled the grapes she had brought
from home from the pocket of her skirt.
She placed some of the fat grapes in Mamata Didi’s trembling hand, and
Mamata put them in her mouth. They burst there and their juice dribbled
out to wet her flaking lips. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
But then, did a cold draught get in through an opening in the quilt, or what
was it? She moved a little and wrapped both sides of the quilt around
herself, covering her back. When the quilt opened a little, I saw that she was
wearing a blue shirt, and that her body was all dried up like a creeper trellis.
‘It’s just because it’s so cold,’ said Mamata Didi, her teeth chattering
with cold.
‘Would you like some tea? Shall I make some?’ asked Sister.
‘No.’ Mamata Didi became tearful. ‘Am I going to die, or what is it?’
Parvati choked back her tears.
‘I’ll tell Father,’ I said. ‘Father will make you well.’
Sister bent down to Mamata Didi’s face.
 In a weak voice, Mamata Didi asked her, ‘Write a letter to Mal Didi,
would you? Telling her I’m ill?’
‘Yes.’
When they came home, Mamata Didi’s father and mother saw our
sandals in the doorway right away. Her mother called up from below,
‘Who’s up there, huh? Come down!’
‘I’ll sneak in again tomorrow,’ said Sister, hurrying down.
‘Mamata Didi, get well soon,’ I said, my face turning tearful.
Mamata Didi smiled, wiping her tears, but it seemed to me that she was
crying all the more.
When he had heard everything from Parvati that evening, Father guessed
what the disease was. ‘It sounds like meningitis.’
‘Ba, go and see her tomorrow,’ Sister said.
Father didn’t say anything more; he just sat there with his eyes shut and
his eyelashes trembling slightly.
Early the next day, before he left for Katasé, Father leaned his bicycle up
under the fodder fig tree and stood there for a moment, thinking. Then he
went into Mamata Didi’s yard. I was following him without letting him
know that I was there. I hid near the tree and watched.
Mamata Didi’s father was plaiting a tethering rope. Father went up and
stood beside him. He knew that Father was there, but he pretended not to
notice. He just glanced once at Father, then pulled the half-finished tether
tight.
‘How is Mamata?’ Father asked him.
‘I don’t know. Why, has something happened to her?’
‘Yes, she’s sick!’
Suddenly, the mother came flying out of the house, and shouted, ‘You
don’t need to do anything, don’t come here trying to be like one of the
family.’
‘Let me just take a look at her.’
‘Oh, you’ll look at her, will you? I don’t know how many people have
died after you’ve looked at them! Go away from here! You take people’s
fields like a snake, you’re bloated with greed!’
 ‘Will you never listen to reason?’ Father’s legs were shaking. ‘Your
daughter is dying. Aren’t you ashamed?’
‘And now you talk about shame? Don’t you know when your dhoti’s
slipped off? My daughter is the Lord’s responsibility. What good do you
think you can do?’
Father said nothing more, but just came out. I ran away. He stood under
the fodder fig tree again for a moment, then he picked his bicycle up and
slammed it down onto the ground in anger.
That night, a shaman was jumping around in Mamata Didi’s yard. I was
so afraid of the shaman’s loud cries I couldn’t even sleep.
‘We should send a word to Mamata’s sisters,’ Father said at midnight.
‘Her parents are going to kill her if all they are going to do is summon the
shamans to dance.’
‘Ba, I’ll take her medicine when I go tomorrow,’ Sister whispered, her
breath dry. ‘I’ll give it to her secretly.’
Father glanced at Sister strangely.

Father went to Katasé first thing the next day.

At a quarter past eight, Sister and I were hurriedly eating our rice before
leaving for school when we suddenly heard a conch shell being blown in
Mamata Didi’s house. Birds left the branches of the trees and flew south as
the sound of the conch was heard around the whole of Matera.
We stopped eating, our hands froze.
Sister ran outside like a wind storm, knocking the plate that was resting
on her knees to the ground. I followed her, perplexed. At the edge of our
yard, Mother stood craning her neck like an egret to peer over at Mamata
Didi’s house. Her soot-covered hands were shaking slightly.
‘Mother!’ suddenly Sister let out a scream.
Mother’s legs trembled and she lost her balance. She sat down in the
porch and chewed her lip. Then Sister burst into tears and ran towards
Mamata Didi’s house like a lunatic. As she reached the cowshed, I ran out
after her too. By the time I reached the fodder fig tree, I had become fearful
and my lips were dry.
 In Mamata Didi’s yard, a crowd of silent people were standing in a circle,
hanging their heads. Standing on a high field ridge, Lamichane Budha was
blowing an upturned conch shell, turning it towards the sky and straining
the veins in his throat.
Sister had reached the edge of the crowd but she was finding it hard to
make her way into it. I reached the roots of the fodder fig tree where lines
of red ants were entering. I climbed up the tree and squatted on a horizontal
branch like a sick dove.
Mamata Didi’s mother was lying on her face on the front step of the
house, screaming. The astrologer’s wife sat beside her, holding her head in
her hands, and next to her were some women I didn’t know. My eyes
smarted with a burning sensation and a tiny sob came out of me. Mamata
Didi was at the centre of the circle of people, lying on her back. Her eyes
were shut, the same blue shirt was on her body, and her hair was tied back
in a single bunch. Her round, fair face was peaceful and her plump cheeks
had become sunken. Suddenly, someone covered her face with a white
cloth. Somebody else, I don’t know who, dragged in some green leafy
bamboos. Two people placed Mamata Didi on the ground that the
astrologer’s wife had just painted with fresh mud. As she was lifted up and
set down again, Mamata Didi’s head dangled down.
People had heard the sound of the conch and were coming from all
around, from Lamichane Basti, from Achami Basti, from Tharu Gaon,
hurrying across the fields. The crowd kept growing. Parvati came out of the
crowd, choking back her tears. Achami Budha, who was standing to one
side, seemed to be chiding her. Sister stood by the cowshed in which there
was no buffalo now.
Both of the bamboos were bound together like a ladder. A Tharu arrived
on a bicycle and handed a parcel to Mamata Didi’s father. After a moment
of confusion, he gave the parcel to the astrologer, who unfurled a length of
white cloth like a waistband and attached poles along its length to create the
‘Way’. Eight or nine people grasped the poles, as if they were taking hold of
flags, and the cloth stretched a long way.
 Lamichane Budha went ahead, blowing the conch. The people who were
holding the Way followed him. The ‘Way of Cloth’ stretched from the main
road towards the Amauri Khola. Covered in yellow cloth, Mamata Didi was
lifted abruptly—as if on a ladder to an upside-down residence. One of the
people who was bearing her was Magar Uncle, but the others I did not
know.
The white Way had already gone ahead of us. When it was time to take
Mamata Didi away, her mother screamed once as if her breast would be torn
open, and fell to the ground. As for our mother, she stood a little way off
near a lac tree, wiping her tears from time to time with the shawl she was
wearing.
No one would allow Parvati to follow. They said a girl should not join a
funeral procession. I came down from the fodder fig tree and took up
behind the line of people who were walking along with their heads bowed. I
was the last in line, but I could smell the ghee that was being burned at the
head of the procession.
The people at Paal Bazaar stood and stared, watching the funeral
procession as it passed. Some of them whispered to each other.
A lot of dust flew up when the procession reached the Amauri Khola.
Next to the bridge, Bhagiram was standing in the dust with an unfinished
fan hanging from his left hand. When I reached his side, he was mumbling
in distress, ‘Bandevi took her, Bandevi took her.’ Then the old man joined
the procession too.
After it had crossed the Amauri Khola, the white Way turned sharply into
the forest from the sal saplings.
‘Children, do not come any further,’ someone said, taking my arm. ‘In
the jungle, the masaan will come upon you.’
I stopped there, but I went on watching as the dark forest slowly
swallowed the procession of mourners. Bhagiram, who was following along
behind, was hidden by the sal saplings. I stood on the bank of the Amauri
Khola for as long as I could hear the sound of the conch echoing through
the forest in the distance.
 Father got the news on his way home: Mamata Didi had gone and would
never return. Getting down from his bicycle, he quietly placed a polythene
bag in the porch. It contained bottles of medicine for Mamata Didi. Father
sat until late in a dark corner of the upper floor. When we came home, his
eyes were red.
‘She should not have died so young,’ Father told Mother in a choked
voice. ‘Mamata has gone, leaving the whole village crying, and I couldn’t
even attend the funeral.’
After that, Father sat in silence until late, twisting the radio’s nose. For a
long time, he stared at the cluster fig tree. Mother too sat gazing at Mamata
Didi’s house until well after nightfall.
‘Come upstairs,’ Father called.
‘I feel as if she might suddenly turn up here.’ Mother wiped away her
tears with the end of her sari. ‘It’s always the good people that Death takes
away, thukka!’
Sister lay on her bed as if she had fainted, sobbing from time to time. I
could not sleep at all that night. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw Mamata
Didi’s smile.
The next day, there was a school holiday. Mamata Didi was no longer
there to utter her response to roll number 31, class six. I went to Paal Bazaar
in the afternoon, and there too all the talk was of Mamata Didi.
‘A ghost took her away,’ one was blaming himself. ‘It was an
inauspicious time and a ghost came looking.’
‘She died for lack of medicine,’ another said.
I couldn’t stay long at Paal Bazaar listening to such things. The rice that
was scattered on the road while they were taking Mamata Didi away
yesterday was still there. I went home, walking from field terrace to field
terrace so that I wouldn’t have to see it. I didn’t have the courage to go via
Mamata Didi’s house.
That evening, I was in the yard when Magar Uncle, who had been
wandering aimlessly around in the fields, came towards our house. His eyes
were red and his sandals and legs were smeared with mud. Saliva oozed
from the corners of his mouth and his body smelled very bad. He didn’t
speak to me but just sat on the front step. Sister came back from the
cowshed, stinking with her hands covered in dung. Mother came out of the
kitchen with her eyes full of smoke.
‘You’re really drunk today,’ Mother said dully.
Magar Uncle did not reply. He just twisted his head from side to side like
a bull in a cowshed, and pulled a sour face.
‘Sister, I am a sinner,’ Magar Uncle suddenly murmured. ‘My sin cannot
be washed away.’
‘Why, what have you done?’
Magar Uncle told us. He had dug the pit in which Mamata Didi was to be
buried. Once he had dug the pit, he felt tired, so he went to rest under a
nearby sal tree. Just a moment later, the people who were dragging Mamata
Didi towards the pit arrived noisily, and the pit was surrounded by the
crowd. Magar Uncle ran to its edge. When he saw Mamata Didi in the pit,
his head span, he said. He became so dizzy he had to sit down. By the time
he regained his senses, they had buried Mamata Didi under the soil.
‘You know what, Sister?’ Magar Uncle could not suppress a choking sob.
‘She was still breathing a little.’

That night, Father’s eyes were red. ‘This is a place of ignorant sinners!’ he
thundered.
‘That’s enough, don’t make such a noise!’ Mother grasped his hand.
Father was standing on the edge of our yard. Since he came home from
Katasé, he hadn’t even washed his hands and feet. Mother had told him
right away what Magar Uncle had said.
‘Buried alive!’ Father shouted with even greater force.
Sister had been in bed with a fever all day, and now she appeared on the
balcony, her cheeks streaked with tears.
‘All these people of Matera are dead to me now,’ Father’s voice became
tearful. ‘One day, they’ll bury my own children alive too, thu!’
He didn’t even eat his meal that night, but sat for several hours twiddling
the radio’s nose. It was the first time I had seen my father so angry.
Frightened, I pretended to sleep. Eventually I fell asleep, but at midnight I
was woken by the sound of whispering and saw a lantern burning near the
head of my parents’ bed. Mother was applying a wet bandage to Father’s
forehead. After she had left a piece of cloth on his forehead for a moment,
she would dip the rag in water again.
‘I told you not to shout so much, not to think too much,’ she said quietly.
‘And now your head aches.’
Father did not reply.
‘Is that better?’ Mother asked after a moment.
‘A little better.’ Father swallowed hard.
I lay on my side, watching Father on the next bed without him knowing.
His breath sounded like the flowing waters of the Amauri Khola.
I felt all around the bed with my hands, but the cat that had been sleeping
there until recently was nowhere to be found.

***

Sister and I returned to school two days later. Sister broke down in tears
three times on the way to school, remembering Mamata Didi.
At the third bell, I was dropping off to sleep with my face on my desk.
‘Hey Brisha Bahadur, go outside,’ said Sir.
I looked up at the door and saw Sister standing there with a tearful face. I
went out, my head hung low.
‘Come on, let’s go home,’ Sister told me.
I was puzzled. ‘Come on, na? I have a fever.’
I went back into the classroom. I looked at Sir, and he indicated that I
could go. On the way home, Sister did not say a word, but just walked
ahead with me following behind. At about 2 o’clock, we reached the
Amauri Khola and Sister stopped dead. On the far side of the river was the
dense sal forest. Sister caught hold of my hand and said, ‘Let’s go there!’
‘I won’t go there, I won’t!’ I said, shaking my hand free of hers.
Sister caught hold of my hand once more and said quietly, ‘Let’s go once,
can’t we? Just once!’
 Sister’s tearful face won me over. I waded across to the other side
through the knee-deep water covered with patches of scum. Sister followed
me, soaking the hem of her skirt. A narrow winding path took us deep into
the forest. Woodpeckers were pecking the trees—thwaak thwaak. Shaking
with fear, we were swishing our way through the forest which was filled
with desolation and silence. Khatryaakka—a squirrel ran into a bush. The
extensive branches of the sal trees, thick with leaves, blocked the sun like
an umbrella. Only from time to time could a blade of sunshine be seen
descending to the foot of a tree. I felt weaker and weaker.
‘Come on. We must be very close by now.’
In the forest, there were neither cowherds nor cattle, but a sweet sound
like a cowherd’s song was still hanging in the air. A short distance away, a
langur climbed up a tall sal tree, spinning its tail in a circle. It plunged from
one branch to the next.
At last we saw it. ‘There’s the grave, over there,’ said Sister, pointing.
I looked where she had pointed. Goosebumps rose up from my skin, as if
ants were crawling all over my body—that’s what it’s like when I’m scared.
The soil that had been dug up was just the same nine days later, probably
because it hadn’t rained. Between us and the grave, an animal had dropped
some dung. On the grave, there lay some broken red bangles and a dusty
bunch of red ribbons, all tangled together.
I had imagined that Mamata Didi might have emerged from the grave and
might be sitting beside it, spreading out her hair, but she was nowhere to be
seen. Sister couldn’t hold back her tears.
‘Mamata, don’t forget me, d’you hear?’ she said, and she sat down by the
grave and wept.
I cried too. ‘Let’s go now, Sister,’ I said, tugging at her arm.
And we ran home, faster than the wind, as if we were being chased by a
cobra with tonsils full of green poison.
The next day, Sister missed school again with a fever, and I didn’t go
either. Towards afternoon, Sister suddenly came screaming out of her room.
Mother and I were drinking tea in the porch and we were startled.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mother exclaimed.
 ‘Mamata is sitting in the temple!’ Sister ran downstairs, spreading out her
tangled hair. She stood out in the yard, her legs really shaking.
‘Hey, go inside and see what’s there,’ Mother turned to me.
All the strength drained from my body.
‘Go on, you’re strong!’ Mother gave me a little courage.
I climbed upstairs, my legs trembling. It was thickly dark in the corner
where Santoshi Mata resided. A cold chill spread through my heart. I shut
my eyes and kicked blindly in the dark, and the temple inside the carton fell
to the ground. I picked it up so that it hung from my hand like a dead
mouse, and flung it down into the yard from the upper floor. The carton
collapsed and the packet of incense burst. Sunlight illuminated the picture
of Santoshi Mata, and we saw that she was smiling. Mother gathered up
everything that had fallen into the yard—the picture of Santoshi Mata, the
incense, the bell—and stuffed it into a sack.
‘Go and let the Amauri Khola wash it away,’ she said, and I ran off
towards the river, carrying the sack.
‘She’s like this because she’s become weak,’ Father said that evening.
‘She just cries all night and day.’
‘I tell her to stop looking at Mamata’s photo, but she won’t,’ Mother said.
‘All day long she stares at the photo. It must remind her, and she cries and
cries.’
Sister started crying again.
The next morning, Father was looking at the photo too. I got up with a
long yawn, whereupon, lau! Father started to cut up the photo with some
scissors. I just stared. Father regarded the two cut pieces of the photo for a
moment.
I got down from my bed.
‘Come here,’ Father summoned me, holding out one piece of the photo. I
took it and saw Mamata Didi smiling. In the photo, she had been standing
beside us, but Father had cut her out of it.
‘Go,’ said Father. ‘Go and quietly throw it into the Amauri Khola.
Otherwise your sister will just keep looking at it and crying.’
 I put the piece of photo into the pockets of my shorts, quietly descended
the ladder, and ran as fast as I could towards the Amauri Khola.
OceanofPDF.com
 THE FOURTH DAY

I was pushing Father downstairs on a stretcher trolley. He was only very

faintly conscious. That morning, the veins on his head had gone crazy
again. He had panted and panted and then passed out.
‘My back is breaking,’ Father had clenched his teeth.
‘It’s so hard to watch a person in such a state,’ said Mother, and gave him
two Bruset tablets.
The soles of Father’s feet were as hot as if he had walked on fire, and his
forehead was the same. Wherever you touched him, he was as hot as a kiln,
as if a fire was blazing up inside him. I had left a wet bandage on his
forehead for too long without refreshing it: the bandages dried right out in
an instant. Mother kept on damping his legs with water until daylight began
to come in through the window.
Father was still not conscious at dawn, otherwise he would have asked us
where we were taking him. While he was being put on the stretcher, he
struggled a lot and clenched his teeth, as if something sharp was being
driven into a deep wound.
I reached the gate, pulling the trolley behind me, and Mother came along
behind with a bottle of water. By 11 o’clock, the sun had already become so
hot, I felt that I would sneeze. But what else would the sun do in the month
of Jeth but grow flaming hot, after all? By the time I reached the gate,
Father was motionless, like a log washed up on a river bank, though his
fingers were still trembling. Wherever we touched his body, it hurt him, so
how could we put him in the ambulance?
I began to feel giddy, but I could not sit down.
The ambulance driver came and opened the door. He was over thirty
years of age, with curly hair, and wore blue trousers and a shirt the colour of
ghee. He went and stood at Father’s feet and said, ‘Lift him from there.’
Father’s body was becoming heavier every day. When he was placed on
the long seat inside the ambulance, he made a face and puffed twice, and
then he was quiet. Mother took his head onto her lap and sat staring into
space. I sat in silence on the seat beside her.
Tui-tui-tui-tui—the ambulance ran quickly along the Surkhet road. The
electric poles along the side of the road came and went—phwaat phwaat—
and so did the wide open fields and the small houses among the fields. But
nothing I could see through the dirty window of the ambulance could
distract me from Father’s face, blue with pain. It had put reins on me and
was pulling my gaze towards it.
From time to time, Mother dripped drops of water into Father’s mouth,
which opened like a stricken sparrow’s beak as his pointed Adam’s apple
moved up and down. Mother kept on moistening Father’s lips, which were
like zinc roofing sheets from which the paint had peeled away.
‘We’re going to Nepalganj,’ Mother bent down to Father’s ear from time
to time. ‘To get an X-ray of your head.’
In the Birendra Chok in Nepalganj, there was a long line of vehicles,
their horns blaring so loudly the noise almost tore your eardrums. The
ambulance added its tui-tui to the noise of the rickshaws, motorcycles and
tongas, while the statue of King Birendra stood there with its hands clasped
together in silence as the traffic policeman blew his whistle.
Nonetheless, the vehicles slowly began to make way for the ambulance.
Beads of sweat had begun to form on my forehead. A cloud of black smoke
from the truck in front of us wreathed its way towards us and struck the
ambulance windows.
The ambulance was crawling forward, screaming, with a red light lit up
on its head. The motorcyclists in front of the ambulance gave way to it and
stared in through the window. They probably saw a dejected, thin,
exhausted, pathetic old woman, and a youth whose threads of hope had not
yet broken.
I imagined how often Father had walked down this street that was now
melting under the sun, smiling and dragging his Gold Star shoes along. He
would have drunk cold drinks in these lines of decorated sweet shops. He
himself must have given way to an ambulance so many times at this very
junction.
The ambulance took a sharp turn to the right, turned into a narrow street,
passed through a large gate and stopped dead. Above the gate was written in
blue letters ‘Om Hospital’.
I tumbled out, like a rock falling down from a mountain. I found a
stretcher trolley in the hospital and dragged it outside.
The people who were scattered around outside sat talking in hushed tones
on benches or in corners. Some of them peered inside the open door of the
ambulance where Mother lifted Father’s head from her lap, laid it on the
seat and tried to get out of the ambulance. As she stood up, she heaved two
sighs.
The driver shot straight into the hospital and did not return. Mother and I
struggled and strained to lay Father on a stretcher again, with the bag full of
pale red urine dragging along with him. What would happen if the pipe
from this bag was suddenly jerked? Struck with fear, I rushed to tie it to the
bottom of the stretcher.
The door to the room where I had been told the scanner was located was
locked. Several people were crowded around the place where I had been
told to pay the bill. The one in front was making an inquiry through the gap
in the window. I had broken into a sweat as I pulled the stretcher trolley
along the narrow winding pathway, and now the seat was prickling me
under my arms. I pushed the stretcher under a spinning fan and sat down on
a bench attached to the wall.
The rising and falling of his thin stomach and the way his Adam’s apple
was moving up and down showed that Father had fallen asleep. Although
his eyes were closed, his forehead and cheeks were lined with sweat, and
the fan was throwing out hot air that made him sweat all the more. Mother
stood looking here and there. She looked at me and I gestured to her that
she should sit. She sat down meekly beside me.
Our turn came at the counter.
‘It will cost 3,200 to have the scan done,’ I told Mother. She untied her
grubby white waistband, pulled out a round lump of black polythene and
counted out three 1,000 notes and two 100 notes twice, then handed them to
me. I took the notes, pushed them inside the counter and took the bill. A
moment later, Father’s name was announced—Harsha Bahadur—over the
phyaat phyaat noise of the fan.
I hurried to push the stretcher forward.
Father’s head entered the glittering white scanner along with the
stretcher. A man stood beside the scanner wearing a green bandage over his
face and dark glasses on his eyes. ‘It affects the eyes,’ he said carefully.
‘Please step aside.’
Mother and I moved into a corner.
The machine began to work. There was a flash like lightning in the sky
and a multi-coloured light like the spokes of a bicycle wheel spread as far
as Father’s chest. The thin blades of light moved to and fro for a moment,
and then the machine stopped. The man with his face covered indicated that
we should take the stretcher outside and said in a weary voice, ‘The x-ray
will be ready in a little while.’
I dragged the stretcher out and put it back in the same place as before.
Motionless Father, silent Mother, the phatatata of the fan. To escape
from the stuffiness, I slipped outside.
The sun was still blazing so hot I couldn’t look up even a little. The few
trees that could be seen appeared to be dozing. May I die if even a single
leaf moves! I had heard that even the crows fall out of the sky, it gets so hot
in Nepalganj.
I was unsure where to go or what to do. When I saw bunches of grapes in
the shops along the street, I felt sad, remembering how Father used to bring
home grapes from this same Nepalganj when we lived in Matera. I found
Rs 15 in my pocket and bought a quarter of grapes. Then I went back
through the big gate of Om Hospital.
Mother had fallen asleep, leaning over on the bench. Father lay on his
back on the stretcher. The fan was gently stirring the hair around his
temples. His right leg was hanging off the stretcher so I put it back, then I
touched Mother’s shoulder.
Mother jumped and said, ‘What is it?’
‘Grapes.’
Mother plucked a grape from the bunch I gave her and made a face as if
she liked its taste. Then she pulled off two or three more and washed them
down with some mineral water. Moving to Father’s side, she said, ‘Would
you like a grape?’
Father said no, shaking his head.
‘Just have one,’ Mother insisted. ‘They’re sweet!’
Father opened his mouth. The juicy grape fell into it like birdseed into
the open mouth of a chick. Father chewed, running his tongue around his
lips.
‘Will you have another?’
Father nodded and Mother put another one in his mouth.
Right then, a voice came from the counter—‘Harsha Bahadur!’ It seemed
that the X-ray was ready. I rushed to where the voice had come from,
almost at a run.
Once we had the CT scan in our hands, we hurried to return to Kohalpur.
Back in the ambulance, Mother took Father’s head onto her lap and told
him, ‘Now we are going back to the hospital.’
The ambulance sped along Surkhet Road. Peering out of the window, I
saw that the sun had reached the far end of the sky and was creating a
shadow of the ambulance in front of it. And the ambulance was running
along, trampling its own shadow.

***
One day, we were surprised when Father came home in the middle of the
day.
Another bicycle was following his. Father stood his bicycle up in the
yard and I went downstairs. The man who had come with Father also stood
his bicycle up, then he turned to look the house over.
‘Did you study or have you been playing?’ Father asked me.
I hadn’t read anything, so I didn’t reply.
‘Where is Mother?’
‘At Magar Aunty’s.’
‘Go and bring some water.’
I went into the kitchen and brought out a pot of water which I gave to the
new man. He took it, smiled and drank.
‘Over there, from that lac tree to there,’ said Father, pointing. He was
standing in the yard. The man shaded his eyes with his hand and looked
where he had pointed.
‘Come, I’ll show you everything,’ said Father.
Father went to the cowshed and stood before it, telling him things. Then
he walked under the line of tall papaya trees towards the rice field. The man
followed him, looking all around. I stood in the yard and watched: I had no
idea what they were doing. From time to time, Father would stand on a field
ridge and indicate some further point with his right hand. Then the man
would move closer and ask him questions.
Father disappeared behind a neem tree.
After a while, Mother arrived. She looked about her, sighed, then sat
down in the porch as if she was tired. ‘Oh, two bicycles?’
‘Yes, I don’t know who it is that has come, I didn’t recognize him,’ I
said, searching for my sandals. ‘Father’s taken him to the rice field.’
Mother looked at the bicycles again while I found my sandals next to the
grain store.
‘Off you go then, the cattle must be on their way back by now,’ said
Mother, going into the kitchen. ‘He must be a guest. I’ll have to put a pot of
dal on the fire.’
I ran off.
 Lau, what a crowd there was at Paal Bazaar! All of the people were
standing in front of the shops, with Uma Didi and the Dailekhi Sauji among
them, craning their necks and looking towards Katasé. I too went and joined
the crowd. I even saw Bhagiram Tharu there, looking surprised.
An elephant taller than a kunyu tree was striding towards Paal Bazaar,
leaning left then leaning right with its elephant gait. This was the first time I
had ever seen an elephant. A thin man was sitting next to its head,
whistling. He stopped the elephant in the middle of Paal Bazaar.
I was afraid, so I hid behind two other people. And what an elephant it
was! Ears like the leaves of the camel’s foot climber, legs as stout as house
posts, and grey-coloured skin, folded in places and hanging loose in others.
Long, white protruding teeth and deep eyes. The elephant raised its trunk
and its mouth, as long as a paan leaf, opened a little. I became even more
scared. I had heard that if you encountered an elephant, it would press you
down with one foot and then pull at you with its trunk. It would pull a man
in half, they said.
Nervously, Uma Didi touched the elephant’s trunk with the point of a 5-
rupees note. The elephant’s body shivered and it twisted its trunk upward.
Mother! Uma Didi sprang back in a fright, nearly falling over. Everyone
guffawed loudly, and Uma Didi stood red-faced in front of her shop.
After that, people threw notes of one, two and five rupees at the
elephant’s feet. Many quickly touched the elephant’s massive hind legs, as
big as pillars, then went to stand a little way off to observe the spectacle.
The man sitting beside the elephant’s head climbed down carefully, using
the rope that hung beneath the elephant’s stomach as a ladder. His tousled
hair and clothes were full of dust.
‘Ram, Ram.’ He grinned, showing his yellow teeth, and swept up all the
money. When he opened the top button of his shirt and thrust the money
inside, his stomach seemed to swell. He stroked the elephant’s trunk, then
climbed up again via the rope ladder. Waving its little tail, the elephant
strode off in the direction of Pahadipur. Everyone prostrated themselves to
the elephant’s footprints, lying flat on their stomachs. Uma Didi swept up
the soil of one footprint and put it in a plastic bag, and others did the same,
considering it lucky.
The elephant must have reached Tharu Gaon, because the dogs there
began to bark continuously. The cattle had already started to move
homeward, watching the elephant as they went. I thought to myself, if it’s
lucky, then I too should take some soil away, but I was too shy to sweep any
up. I ran off, but once I’d got beyond Paal Bazaar, the shyness left me. I
stood beside one of the elephant’s round footprints and hurriedly
unbuttoned my shirt. I filled the shirt with soil and made it into a small
bundle, then I ran for home, twisting my ribs like a dancer.
‘Inauspicious ghost!’ Mother shouted at me, with a voice like corn
popping in a frying pan. ‘What are you like, walking about naked? Where
have you thrown your clothes?’
I put the lucky stuff down on the ground by the door. Sister laughed when
she saw my bare ribs.
‘They say it’s lucky!’ I laughed. ‘I brought some soil that the elephant
stepped on.’
‘You little corpse, did you have to ruin your shirt?’
Father glanced at me but didn’t say anything.
The fire was flickering in the fireplace. Some grains of rice that had
boiled over from the pot were burning in the fire and the coals at the centre
of the fire crackled. Everything was still and silent, like a tree after a sudden
windstorm has passed. I put on another shirt and went quietly to sit, leaning
back against the wall on the north side.
A few grains of rice were scattered on a brass plate. Father pecked them
up like a bird. Then he rinsed the tips of his fingers over the edge of the fire.
Sitting contentedly on a pirka, he spread his legs wide and turned his shins
toward the fire.
‘I’ve had a look at the house,’ Father said, turning over a dying ember
with the tongs. ‘It seems like the matter will be settled for 75,000.’
What was he talking about? I didn’t understand at all.
‘We should aim for a transaction at the auspicious time on Friday.’
Father looked thoughtfully into Mother’s face.
 Mother had already pulled a brass plate towards her. She cut off a chunk
of rice with a spatula and put it onto the plate. Then she said, ‘At long last
we have a house that doesn’t leak. It’s not right to leave so suddenly’.
‘So, what will you do?’ said Father. ‘The very soil here is full of sin.’
Today, Mother pushed the brass plate towards me. But I was attending
more to what Father was saying than to the steaming rice and vegetables.
‘But it’s land,’ said Mother. ‘It’s wrong to sell it like this. You can’t rely
on a bazaar like that Katasé either. If we have to move, it would be better to
move to Surkhet.’
‘I’ll do some business and buy it after I’ve earned some money. It’s no
use saying that we have relatives in Surkhet. They’ll just take a load of
credit from us. And if we don’t give them credit, they will start to spit at us
the very next day. A businessman shouldn’t do trade in his place of origin.’
‘And can we rely on business?’ Mother looked at Sister and me. ‘If
there’s no business, what will these children eat?’
‘We will educate them. Education is the shelter of a big tree. Whether it
rains or the sun shines, it gives shelter. What would we do with fields? I
can’t even plough anymore.’ Father looked at me. ‘If we keep the land, this
one simply won’t study. He’ll plough the fields, he’ll be a farmhand. When
he grows up, he’ll say his parents didn’t keep anything for him; he’ll just
look after himself. We have to teach him how to walk. He’ll fall over, he’ll
get up, he’ll walk on.’
I bowed my head.
‘Yes, that’s true,’ was all that Mother said.
When it was time to sleep, Father asked in the light of the oil lamp, ‘How
many carts will we need to take our stuff away?’
‘We’ll need two or three, I guess.’
After that, no one spoke again.
But I could not sleep all night. I closed my eyes. How could we leave this
Matera? Earlier, there had been a discussion about what we would take with
us. The black box, quilts and mattresses, pots and pans, citizenship papers,
our astrological charts. Not many things were identified that would be
going with us. My heart was torn. What should we leave? The Amauri
Khola? The cluster fig tree? This house? The cowshed? The papaya trees,
all standing in a row? Panché, the bullock? Lakshmi, the cow? The sleeping
hibiscus in the yard? These birds?
I wanted to take everything with us to Katasé. Everything. But I didn’t
have a bag that could hold it all. The soft light of the lamp was yellow on
the walls. Perhaps the moon had come out to wander around Pahadipur. The
dogs were barking. The cicadas were whistling on the gloomy cluster fig
tree.
I thought. I thought a lot—when we moved, nothing of this would be
going with us. Everything was being left behind.

***

It was the day on which we were to leave Matera.

Because you shouldn’t set out hungry at an auspicious time, we had eaten
very early in the morning: mustard leaves, black dal and fragrant basmati
rice. I swear no one spoke during the meal as we all sat around the fireplace
with steaming rice before us. Panché bellowed from time to time, and when
Mother heard him, her mind wandered.
I went outside with my dirty plate. Magar Uncle was sitting on his heels
in the porch, scratching the ground with the sharp point of a sickle. He
smiled and asked me, ‘Have you eaten, Nephew?’
‘Yes.’
I went and put my plate by the midden, then went back to him. He untied
the sheath from his waist.
‘Come here now. You like this a lot, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, thrusting my damp hands into the bottom of my short
pockets as I stood beside him.
‘Take it with you then.’
I was startled: such a sheath, for me? Tiny thorns of joy sprang up all
over my body, and I moved closer to him. The bitter smell of his sweat went
straight into my nostrils. He held the heavy sheath out to me at waist height
and I took it into my hands.
 ‘This is a keepsake. Now you won’t be able to forget me,’ said Magar
Uncle, laughing.
Father came outside. What would happen if he saw the sheath? I stood
up, clasping it to my chest in fear. As I went up the ladder, the sleeping
hibiscus touched my shin and shook. Upstairs, I shoved the sheath into one
of the bundles of clothes that were lying in a row there so that it could not
be seen.
Down below, Magar Uncle and Father were chatting. From a distance,
their voices sounded like the humming of bees. I looked around the corners
of the house for a moment, lost in my thoughts. Early that morning, Mother
had swept all of the rubbish out of the corners to bring us luck.
When I went downstairs again, the astrologer had arrived and he too was
chatting with Father, holding a steel cup of hot tea in his hand. It was he
who had identified the auspicious moment: ‘Leave on Friday,’ he had said.
‘There’s an auspicious moment at 1.15.’
At exactly 11 o’clock, when the sun was caught near the top of the
cluster fig tree, the astrologer’s wife and Magar Aunty appeared together in
our yard. Everyone was wearing a solemn expression, as if they were about
to cry.
Thapini Aunty also came to the yard from across the fields, her head
covered with a red headscarf. Everyone came and stood right there. No one
spoke; they just watched in silence as Mother went in and out of the house
with tears in her eyes. I peered inside and saw that Sister was re-plastering
the fireplace with mud. Mother came out, carrying the pot in which she
made tea, but Magar Aunty snatched it out of her hand, saying, ‘Hey, give it
to me, I’ll scrub it for you.’
Then Mother went back into the kitchen, her forehead beaded with sweat.
Panché bellowed from the cowshed and Mother rushed out of the house.
‘Somebody go and give it some hay!’ she cried.
In the cowshed, Panché and Lakshmi were stretching their necks as if
they would snap their tethers and striking their horns against the inner wall.
I stood before Panché’s deep black eyes with a huge armful of hay, and he
swung his head from side to side. I spread the hay on the ground where
green flies were buzzing, and Panché began to chew. Three years earlier,
old Panché had been attacked by a tiger in the sal forest. He had come
staggering home at midnight, the white patches on his coat all red and
bloodied. After this, he could no longer pull the plough in the fields and we
had begun to borrow buffalo bulls from Tharu Gaon. So, Panché the bullock
had become old now. Lakshmi still gave us milk, but after one more calf her
milk would dry up. What would she do after we left?
Panché bellowed again. Two carts had arrived beside the lac tree,
throwing dust into the air, with Dhaniram driving the first of them.
I ran home. ‘Aama, the carts have arrived.’
And then everyone was in a great flurry at home. Father and Magar
Uncle went upstairs and Mother and Sister were in the kitchen. Dhaniram
brought the carts to a halt in the yard. Father and Magar Uncle came down,
carrying a trunk that had been burned black by the fire. Dhaniram lent a
hand meanwhile, and Father went back upstairs. I too approached the carts,
carrying a small bundle.
‘Nothing’s been left behind?’ Mother was standing by the old cluster fig
tree.
Nobody replied.
The carts were fully loaded, so Dhaniram wielded his whip and the
bullocks began to walk forward, throwing up the dust. Everyone who had
come to say goodbye moved towards the cowshed. Standing in the yard, I
looked up at the house: how sad and empty it seemed now!
I went to the cowshed without letting the sleeping hibiscus, cluster fig,
belauti, black mulberry, amilo and papaya trees see me. The cattle there
were making a noise.
Lau, the Achami man had arrived. He had come down to Madhes from
Acham, and now he came smartly dressed in his daura-suruwal, carrying an
umbrella on his shoulder. In a voice filled with tears, Mother told him,
‘From now on, the house is yours. We went to great pains to build it, please
take good care of it now.’
The Achami just gazed at it and did not reply.
 Before Mother climbed onto the cart, everyone pressed their hands
together and said, ‘Don’t forget us now, you hear?’ And the tears fell from
Mother’s eyes.
‘Lau ta, Sister, I touch your feet.’ Magar Uncle bent down a little. And to
Father, who was wheeling his bicycle away, he said, ‘Lau, then, Nephew,
you were the only one I ever had to call my own in this Matera. If I live on,
we will meet again.’
Father made as if to laugh, then he jumped quickly onto his bicycle and
moved ahead. I had just begun to climb onto the cart when the cat landed
suddenly at my feet. ‘Aama,’ I shouted, ‘The cat!’
The cat had become very thin and its fur had fallen out in places.
‘Where’s it been all these days?’ Mother asked softly. ‘It’s become a
stranger to us. Leave it, it will be happier here in Matera now.’
The cat fixed its blue eyes on mine and meowed again.
‘It will get lost in the town, leave it behind,’ Mother said again.
I climbed onto the cart. The cat was running along behind, but when the
buffalo gave out a bellow, it shot into a clump of crab’s-eye and
disappeared.
Mamata Didi’s father stood under the fodder fig tree staring at us all as
the cart approached. His eyes met Mother’s and he bowed his head. He had
become thinner, dried up like a fodder fig tree. He pressed his hands
together and said, ‘Have a good journey now.’
Mother returned his greeting but said nothing in reply.
The carts climbed onto the main road, rolling from side to side. Everyone
who had come to bid us farewell fell away behind us—except for the cat,
which emerged from the bushes covered in dust.
‘Aama, the cat!’ I cried again.
Mother did not respond. A dust of sad indifference was blowing about
her face. I dived down from the cart as it lolloped along like a goose. The
cat was running hard alongside us and it looked at me with fearful eyes. I
offered it my arm and it climbed up and clung to my chest.
‘If you are going to bring it with you, then put it in a sack,’ Mother told
me.
 ‘Why?’
‘If a cat sees the way home, it will go back.’ As soon as I heard this, I
searched feverishly for a sack. Dhaniram, who was alert to everything,
pulled a small jute sack out of a bundle which hung from the right-hand
side of the cart, saying, ‘Here, put it in this.’ After I had put it into the sack,
the cat wailed for a long time, but eventually it fell silent, as if it had fallen
asleep.
The cart reached Paal Bazaar. The people there craned and craned their
necks to watch us. Uma Didi cast Father a secret namaste, and Father
acknowledged her without Mother seeing him do so. Beside the bridge, I
saw Bhagiram. A fan he was weaving hung from his right hand, and his
face was as dirty as a dusty leaf. Peering at us from his blue eyes, he
recognized me after a while.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘To Katasé Bazaar,’ I shouted.
He shambled over to the cart. Dhaniram gave the rope attached to the
bullock’s nose a sharp tug, and it stopped dead. Standing beside the large
wheels of the cart, Bhagiram grinned and said, ‘Parbate, I did a lot of good
and bad things to you. But I’m your old uncle, so forgive me.’
I pondered this.
‘Ram Ram,’ he said, looking at Mother.
Mother did not reply. My eyes filled with tears and all of Paal Bazaar
became hazy. Rolling from side to side, the cart crossed the Amauri Khola
bridge. Father was ahead of us, ringing his bicycle bell, and Mother, Sister
and I were in the first cart. The cart behind us was filled with bundles and
packages. Leaning her head on her right hand, Mother sat staring back at
Matera, lost in thought. From time to time, she wiped her nose and eyes.
First Bhagiram disappeared from sight, then Matera and Paal Bazaar.
From time to time, we met people on the road who called Father ‘Doctor
Saab’ and were surprised to be bidding him farewell. The carts were
moving ahead, trampling the stillness of the forests, damp with dew.
Sister was leaning on the left wall of the cart, looking back at Matera,
lost in her own thoughts, as silent as a well. Probably because it was a
bazaar we were moving to, Sister was all neatly dressed in a green kurta-
sarwal, just as she would be for Teej festival, and her hair was tied in a
bunch with a red ribbon. Now and again, a strand of her hair would fall into
her eyes and she would brush it back with her right hand. She saw that I
was staring at her and said, ‘What are you looking at, Tharu?’
‘Nothing at all!’
When we entered the sal forest, the cat in the sack stirred once and was
still again. A whistle burst from the lips of Dhaniram who was driving the
cart in front, and its sound echoed off the sal trees. Then we passed the
track that led to Mamata Didi’s grave and it quickly fell from sight. A bird
of silence had settled on everyone’s lips. It would not fly away and I could
not dispel it.
The wheels of the carts were dragged along, scratching their way
between the sal saplings, and slowly the carts entered the dark sal forest.

***

People used to say that Katasé was a bazaar built on a graveyard. Human
skulls had been found several times during the digging of house foundations
here, it was said: skulls without lower jaws. The Tharus bury their dead, so
people said that these skulls were those of Tharus. The bank of the Jamara
Khola to the east of Katasé was used for their burials. Sometimes, a
Pahadiya who died young would also be buried among the Tharu graves.
And Mamata Didi had been buried too.
Katasé Bazaar: a bazaar filled with folk tales. A bazaar built by clearing
away cutch trees and thickets of jujube trees. A bazaar that had come into
existence by chance. A bazaar into which people poured at festive times
from Khairiphanta, Matera, Pahadipur and Jagatpur. A bazaar frightened
like a forest squirrel by the harsh-sounding horns of buses and trucks.
No one knew who first sank a post into the ground in the dense forest of
Chattiban and named the place Katasé. Even Bishta Budha didn’t know, it
was said, although he was Katasé’s oldest inhabitant. He had built a brick
house as well, of three storeys, and owned a licensed gun that used
gunpowder. And yet even he did not know who sank that first post.
Crowds of people came to Katasé from the distant hill districts of Acham,
Kalikot, Jumla and Gutu to buy their supplies and sell their ghee. Everyone
called them the haterus. Some of them used to declare, ‘I spent seven nights
sleeping in caves on my journey to this place.’
The proprietor of Katasé’s biggest and most popular shop, the ‘Gauli
Cloth Shop,’ had once said, ‘These haterus used to go to Tinkuniya, then
they started to go to Rajapur, but now it’s Katasé they come to before they
begin their journey home.’
Their bodies smelled of a mixture of ghee and sweat, a smell that turned
my stomach. The whole bazaar stank of haterus. Later, I learned that they
came from the hills above Chisapani, which was where the Amauri Khola
came from too.
How many haterus had come to Katasé to trade? No one could say. The
seven alleys of the bazaar were filled with their old shoes, all split and torn
and scattered everywhere. Under the tall sal trees that stood close to the
bazaar, there were piles of excrement and heaps of the haterus’ discarded
shoes with their worn-out soles. The green-cloth boots that came up over
the ankle were called ‘hateru shoes’. Every year, the haterus left wearing
new ones, and the following year they would return, take off their shredded
shoes to buy new ones and throw the old ones away just anywhere.
‘This isn’t a local bazaar at all,’ someone would say. ‘If these Jumlis stop
coming, this bazaar will dry up, just like the others. Haven’t you seen how
things are at Rajapur?’ If anyone began to talk about building a new house
in the bazaar, a lot of this kind of talk would boil up, and everyone would
say with one voice, ‘Why would you build a house here?’ Father was
sometimes unsettled by such talk, and every rainy season, Mother would
curse our leaking tiled roof.
Our house was certainly a rickety one. There were two storeys under a
roof of tiles. On the ground floor was Father’s Medikal. In one inner room,
there were shelves of medicines, and in another a bed for patients to lie on.
The kitchen was on the upper floor, set back to the right, while Father and
Mother’s bed was in the corner to the left. Sister’s bed was by the corner of
the wall adjoining the kitchen, while mine was outside on quite a wide
balcony. The ceiling was rather low: if you jumped up even a little, your
head would hit a rafter.
For the first week after we came to Katasé, Mother was displeased with
the house. ‘Leaving such a new house in Matera …’ she would mutter.
‘And look now, bringing us to such a tumbledown house.’
‘How she shouts!’ Father became angry one day. ‘We’ve only just
moved. We’ll build next year!’
After a month or two, Mother’s anger subsided.
Since moving to Katasé, Father had given up listening to the radio.
Instead, he was taking great pleasure in playing an ektaaré some patient had
brought him. One evening, as he was running his fingers over its strings,
Father made a decision. ‘This house is too small. We have to decide to
finally settle somewhere. I have earned what I needed to earn here in
Katasé. Whatever happens now, I am going to build a brick house.’
Mother listened in silence. She was turned away from me, so I could only
see the back of her neck and could not judge her mood from the expression
on her face. But I was thrilled—at last we were going to have a proper
house!

It was Ramesh who first showed me around Katasé Bazaar.

His father, who ran a vegetable shop next to the police post, was wearing
simple ochre garments when he first came down to Katasé; but after the
vegetable shop starting doing well, he had taken them off as if he was
pulling off a scab. When he came back from Nepalganj the first time,
Ramesh said it was difficult even for him to recognize him. He was wearing
black leather shoes, blue trousers with creases as sharp as blades, a white
shirt that looked as if it would stain if you even touched it, sunglasses over
his eyes and the black kala patthar dye on his hair. When it saw his
changed appearance, the whole of Katasé Bazaar pouted at him and said,
‘They say that you lose your senses when you make money, and here’s the
proof!’
 Ramesh sneaked into our Medikal as secretively as a squirrel and told
me, ‘Give me a syringe, na?’
‘What do you mean, a syringe?’
‘Those things that give injections, you know!’
Plastic syringes had only recently arrived in the Medikal. Before that,
glass syringes that had been used once would be boiled in water and used
again. The job of boiling the syringes like this belonged to Shivashankar.
But now it had become very easy for him: he just used a plastic syringe,
then he threw it away.
Father was not at the Medikal, so I adopted the haughty manner of a
doctor and asked, ‘To whom are you giving an injection?’
‘To a frog!’ he laughed.
Ramesh was slim and short of stature, and his hair hung in locks like a
jogi’s. From time to time, it fell into his face. I gave him a syringe that was
slightly cracked at its base. Just as he was putting the syringe and the needle
into the pocket of his dusty shorts, Father came in.
‘Have you done your studies?’ Father asked me. Then he started to cough
and went on coughing. The veins on his throat stretched and strained, and
his face turned red. Ramesh ran out in front of me and I followed him. I was
amazed: what was he going to do with the syringe?
Out among the loud songs and hubbub of the bazaar, Ramesh asked me,
‘Do you want to know how to give a frog an injection?’
I followed him. Even though it was three months since I came to Katasé,
I had not yet made any friends.
He took me to a pond a little way from the bazaar, near the bus park. The
pond was full of rotting sal leaves, noodle packets and broken raksi bottles,
and its water was cloudy and disgusting. You could hardly call it a pond; it
was more like a pothole full of rainwater. What could smell worse than this
dirty stinking pond beneath two tall sal trees?
But where there were frogs, so there was also Ramesh.
He looked intently into the water for a moment, then he bent down and
caught a frog by its back legs. The frog struggled, its eyes dancing about
like black lentils, and tried to hop away. Ramesh turned to me and grinned.
Holding down one of the frog’s legs with his right sandal, he bent down, put
the needle into the pond and filled it with the scummy water. Then he
tapped the tip of the needle with his index finger and aimed it at the frog’s
hind quarters. At this point, I almost stopped breathing.
Oh god, he planted the needle in the frog’s backside. A hundred ants
stung my buttocks all at once. He pushed the bottom of the syringe upward
and the frog gradually swelled like a balloon. As it did so, it gave out just
one croak. Now there was no movement in the frog, which had swelled to
double its size.
‘Is it dead?’ I was scared.
Ramesh did not reply. He jumped up and brushed off the knees of his
trousers. I kept on staring at the frog in fright. He looked closely at the frog
and gently moved it with his right sandal. Then the frog took a hop and
dived, still swollen, into the pond.
Ramesh looked at me and laughed as if he had shown me some great
magic trick.
Ramesh said this was the kind of thing that made him happy. That day, he
told me that once he had filled all the tomatoes in his shop with kerosene in
the same manner. The tomatoes looked plump, as if they were full of juice,
and they sold extremely well. The next day, however, every tomato was
thrown back angrily into the shop.
When his father found out, he came shaking and red-faced with anger
and slapped him hard around the face. While the slap was so hard that he
didn’t know whether to shit or piss, his father’s sunglasses fell to the floor
and were smashed to pieces.
Nowadays, he couldn’t even look straight at a tomato, and anyway frogs
are two a penny, aren’t they?
‘Why do you do these things?’ I asked him.
‘Because I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up, of course!’

***
The bus park was on the near side of the Amauri Khola, beyond the bazaar.
All night and every night, there was a constant stream of traffic which came
cleaving the darkness from the middle of the dense sal forest. Until late at
night, the hotels sat dozing in wait for the buses and trucks, their doorways
of matting kept slightly open. Inside, in the flickering lamplight, the hotels
never slept.
Signboards declaring ‘Staff Hotel’, ‘That Same Staff Hotel’, ‘That Same
Old Staff Hotel’ hung from the hotels’ foreheads. Drivers and police kept
on coming like lines of ants. Until late at night, they would talk loudly,
gnashing their teeth and banging on the tables, and the jackals in the jungle
would howl along in accompaniment. When I heard the jackals howling, I
curled up under my quilt in fear.
But the police would never come to the bus park, no matter how much
disturbance and fighting there might be. ‘These police take a weekly bribe
from Chauraha,’ Ekraj told me one day.
Ekraj’s elder sister ran a hotel at Chauraha. She had become thin and
tired, but her younger brother, who was just coming of age, and her mother,
who was growing old, both depended upon her.
The mother was an old woman plagued by a constant cough. She would
cough all night, then spend the whole day sitting in the sunshine combing
her shortly cropped hair. Sometimes, she would spend the whole day prising
out the dirt that had accumulated between the teeth of her comb with a
splinter of wood. Ekraj’s father had gone to India and had not returned. His
mother and sister still hoped that he would come back. But Ekraj had no
hope of this. He just told himself—my Ba has died.
Ekraj was a keen reader of the detective novels that came in large
numbers from Tinkuniya, and for this reason his eyes were more than a
little detective too—as sharp and deep as those of a kite. He would know
how many gallons of local mauva raksi had been sold in a particular night
at Chauraha. The seventeen-year-old already knew which of the saujis in
the bazaar had gone down with syphilis, at which location people gambled
for thousands, the extent of police immorality—he constantly related these
things. On one or two occasions, when a crowd was beating up the police,
Ekraj was among them too, holding a sharp stick.
Ramesh had introduced me to him. On that day, he shook my hand and
said, ‘La friend, welcome to Katasé.’
But Katasé did not welcome me very well.
Bhakte’s general store was located in the very first alley of the bazaar
and, because of that, he swaggered about Katasé bazaar very arrogantly.
Many said that Bhakte, who had come down from Palpa, had only
progressed so far because he had married the daughter of Katasé’s biggest
sauji. I had heard people spitting and cursing him: ‘That’s what the newly
rich are like—people who grow from their tips, not from their roots.’ I went
to his shop to try to buy matches once, but he just sprawled back in his chair
and scratched his swollen belly, saying, ‘Do you think I’m a man who sells
matches?’
I told Ekraj about this.
‘He’s a bragging bastard,’ Ekraj said, and told me that Bhakte’s wife was
forever beating him. He spent the whole night massaging her legs, he said,
and sometimes she gave him a hard kick too.
After I heard this, I felt tickled as soon as I saw Bhakte, with his belly
swollen almost to bursting point, and I could not stop myself from bursting
out laughing at him. Bhakte came to realise that this small boy always
laughed as soon as he saw him. Once he even screamed at me, pointing at
his private parts, ‘Why are you laughing, you bastard?’
‘Whether I laugh or dance, what’s it to you?’
He told Father about it and Father called me in rather a loud voice from
where he was sitting among a crowd of patients, ‘Come here!’
I went to him, hanging my head.
Father reprimanded me, ‘Hey, why are you bothering Bhakte?’
I stood there sulkily.
‘Don’t you have to read and write, rather than just walking about with
your shirt hanging out?’ Father clenched his teeth. ‘Go and sit down to
study right now. If you fail this time, I will know all about it.’
I went upstairs.
 ‘You’re nearly ten now. You’re old enough to understand,’ Mother said
gently as she bent over my plate that evening. ‘Don’t go to Chauraha so
much. Chi! If only you could find some better company!’
I did not reply. Indeed, what would I say? I couldn’t part company with
my friends just like that!

***

‘I’ve really no idea what your father is doing,’ Mother began to grumble
day and night.
And this time Father was away for much longer than usual. ‘I’m off to
Surkhet,’ he had said, then he disappeared for two months to who knows
where.
While Father was away, it was the unfortunate Shivshankar Jha who took
charge of the Medikal. He had come to us to learn how to work as a
compounder. At night, he slept on the bed that was kept there for patients to
use. If a patient ever needed it, he would move the medicines aside and
sleep in the other room. He had a beard hanging from his lime-coloured
face and tangled hair with a topknot knotted in two places. He also had a
terrible stammer. Even to say kalam, the word for a pen, he had to strain,
saying ka-ka-ka-lam. I would tease him from time to time, saying, ‘If you
ever read out the 9-o’clock news, it would go on until 11.’ He just laughed,
showing his yellowing teeth.
Sister and I sometimes called him bhakbhake, the stammerer, when we
lost our patience. The Shiva Bidi Depot was next door to our house and we
messed with his name, calling him ‘Shiv Bidi Shankar Jha’. While Father
was away, Shivshankar was the doctor. He dazzled patients by exploring the
corners of their eyes with a three-cell torchlight.
Tightening the skin on his face, he would say, ‘Put out your t-t-t-tongue
please.’
The patient would open his mouth and stick out a tongue that looked as if
it was covered in scum.
‘What’s wrong with me, Doctor Saab?’
 ‘It’s just a f-f-f-fever,’ he would stammer, ‘it’s n-n-nothing more than
that.’
This was how he looked after our Medikal in Katasé alley number 3.
After two months, Father returned at last.
Three porters set down six boxes, large and small, in front of the
Medikal, next to some patients who were squatting there, warming
themselves in the sun. On Father’s head was a Dhaka topi, and on his body
the usual sky-blue waistcoat. Swinging a brown bag from his right shoulder,
Father arrived beside the patients.
‘Namaste Doctor Saab.’ All the patients pressed their hands together.
Shivshankar emerged from the gloom of the Medikal’s inner room, a
three-cell torchlight hanging from his hand. As soon as he saw Father, he
put his hands together, still holding the torch, and said, ‘P-p-pranaam.’
‘Pranaam!’ Father smiled, showing his two front teeth.
I had been sitting disconsolately in the high chair in the Medikal,
swinging my dangling feet. But when I saw Father, my heart leapt with
such happiness I felt as if I would cry. Hurriedly, I bent down to touch
Father’s Hattichaap sandals. Father didn’t say anything but just climbed up
the wooden steps of the ladder. Neither Mother nor Sister were up there so
Father quickly came down, entered the Medikal and talked quietly with
Shivshankar for a moment. The urge to go to Chauraha came upon me
suddenly like a storm, but my feet would not move. They were paralysed,
as if in a dream.
‘What happened to you?’ Father asked me, as he perused a bill.
I tried to speak. If only a sound would come out! My face became hot,
and my earlobes too, and my eyes filled with a hot mist.
‘La!’ Father tossed a 5-rupee note in my direction and I caught it. I
thought of the old Muslim woman who sold parched rice at Chauraha. I
remembered her teeth, red with paan like the roots of a fodder fig tree. Then
my mind clouded over again. Father stood up and came to my side.
Stroking my uncut hair, he asked me again in a soft voice, ‘What’s
happened, tell me?’
 My face and my earlobes felt as if they were on fire and hot tears fell
from my eyes. I could not speak, but a small sob escaped from my lips.
I had failed class four again.
On the day I failed, I ran home along the banks of the Jamara Khola.
Everyone teased me, of course, and Sharmila teased me too when she found
out that I had failed.
‘Why didn’t you study, laddu?’ she said, and ran off.
Sharmila sat on the front bench at school. The last time I failed, she came
third in class three and arrived to sit near my bench. She had a fair
complexion and there was a halfmoon scar on her forehead, just like
Chandré’s. When I looked at her scar, I also noticed a round black mole just
to the right of her deep red lips.
Ramesh, Dammar, Ekraj and Yagya—they had all run off crying ‘pass,
pass!’ Sister too had gone off with the crowd, wearing a big smile on her
face. I, the only one to have failed, loped home along the side of the Jamara
Khola, breaking off besharam leaves full of sap as I went.
‘Have you failed again?’ Father asked me quietly.
I nodded my head.
Father thought for a long time. Shivshankar asked him twice if he would
like some tea, but Father did not reply. A moment later, he wiped down his
bicycle and pressed both of its tyres with a finger. I just sat there, hanging
my head.
‘Get on,’ Father said.
I settled myself meekly on the carrier, my thighs spread wide on either
side.
After we had crossed the bazaar, the bicycle bucked and reared like a
horse over the ruts and holes, and the two sides of Father’s waistcoat
flapped like the wings of a bird. At a big simal tree, the bicycle turned and
headed for my school, along the Jamara Khola riverbank. Soon we could
see the school: it was midday and its zinc roof shone like a stretch of water.
Father dropped me off at the gate, then he went on inside, under the
national flag that hung straight ahead of the gate, and disappeared from
sight. The school was shut, so there was a deep silence.
 The school was surrounded by five layers of barbed wire. Pieces of paper
caught in the wire fluttered in the cold breeze, and the flag that stood near
the navel of the yard was flapping hard in the wind.
I was deep in my own thoughts. A jureli bird suddenly appeared from
somewhere and settled on the barbed wire. Its eyes were like little moles,
and it twisted its head from side to side. For a moment, it preened the
feathers on its wings, then it flew up to perch higher up on the wire.
My mind too became a jureli bird.
I whistled quietly. The jureli turned its head and fixed its beady eyes on
me. I stood as still as a tree stump for fear that it would fly away.
I was enjoying watching the jureli, but suddenly I recalled with a start
that I had failed. I felt a landslide in my chest—two fails in class four. I felt
angry, so I bent down, picked up a clod of soil and hurled it at the jureli—
bhatyaakka. The jureli flew up, over the Jamara Khola, higher and higher
still. If I had been a jureli, I too would have flown away like that. I would
have kept on flying; there would have been no need for me to study.
In no time at all, the jureli had disappeared into the sky.
Far, far away, there was a pale blue hill that touched the sky. The clouds
flew over that hill like white balloons. I had been told that it was at
Chisapani.
I was still gazing at the hill, lost in my thoughts, when I noticed that
Thapa Sir was coming out and had already reached the gate. I didn’t see
him until he was nearly at my side. He was smiling, wearing a hat with a
string that hung down to his chin. I lowered my head.
‘How is it Brisha Bahadur, class five?’
I did not look up or say anything in reply. I did not understand. What was
Sir talking about?
‘Next time, you must pass by studying well. You shouldn’t always pass
just because your father makes you pass.’
I was speechless.
After a moment, Father appeared too and pulled up right beside me on
his bicycle.
‘Get on.’
 I climbed onto the bicycle. Father did not say anything.
A few days later, I was in section B of class five, in the Red
Rhododendron group. On the desk, in front of me, the fragrant new books
were piled up, along with a dozen sign pens. All that remained was for
Thapa Sir, the Nepali teacher, to come at the first bell.
I was promoted to class five because of Father. Everybody believed Sir
when he announced that Brisha Bahadur had not failed, it was just that his
name had been left off the list. When I remembered this, I felt like crying. I
pictured Father’s face as I turned the pages of the Red Rhododendron
exercise book, working forward from the back. I stroked a blank page for a
moment, and then I wrote with a red sign pen:
‘There is no one in this world like my father.’
OceanofPDF.com
 THE FIFTH DAY

Dr Nandan stuck the X-ray onto the board and a light lit up behind it. On
the X-ray sheet, we could see the shape of a head, made up of white lines
like clouds.
‘The blood has clotted just here,’ he pointed to the right side of the head
with a dot-pen. ‘This is what has caused the paralysis.’
The line there was fat and swollen, as if the picture had smeared while it
was being drawn.
‘Will it get better though, Doctor Saab?’
‘Why not? It will do so, sooner or later.’ He looked at me. ‘It will get
better if we can dissolve the clotted blood to get it out.’
Oh! If it gets better, Father will be able to walk about again, making his
sandals slap on the ground like before.
‘How many more days will he have to stay here?’ I asked, remembering
the dwindling sum of money we had left.
‘We must keep him here for some days.’ He ran his pen across his pad.
‘We’ll know after Dr Mohammad has been.’
I climbed the stairs, wondering when Dr Mohammad would come.

As soon as I entered the ward, a harsh sound clawed at my ears. The boy on
the next bed was crying his eyes out, and the Tharu on the bed beside him
was screaming, ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ Yesterday, when we returned from
Nepalganj, his ‘Hey, hey, hey’ had welcomed us right at the door, and he
had screamed all night on the bed near the corner.
‘Chotku, be quiet!’ his carers were telling him.
Whenever Chotku screamed, he scared the boy, who would then start
crying too.
I made my way through the crying and the screaming to reach Mother’s
side. Mother asked me urgently, ‘So, what did the doctor say?’
‘He says he will be well again.’
Father was sleeping.
‘So how long does he say it will take?’
‘He says we will know that when Dr Mohammad comes.’
When he heard what we were saying, Krishnaji screwed up his face. He
had been waiting for Dr Mohammad ever since he had arrived. Three times
each day he would go down and ask, ‘Has Dr Mohammad come?’
‘Why do you keep bothering us like this? He’ll come straight up when he
arrives!’ That was the response he got. For that reason, he cursed the
hospital all day long and shouted, ‘Why would that Dr Mohammad ever
come here?’
We went on listening.
‘He has a private hospital out there. Even if he examines a patient, they
say all he ever does is recommend they go there!’ He paced round and
round the room. ‘Even if he does come, does someone recover from
pneumonia if you just give him cetamol?’
Chotku screamed again, ‘Heyyyy, heyyyy, heyyyy!’ Krishnaji was silent.
Then his expression soured. ‘What bad luck was it that brought him to this
hospital?’
‘Don’t make such a noise!’ the nurse came and told him off. ‘There are
other patients here beside you. Don’t they need to sleep?’
I didn’t like this nurse, the one called Suruchi. She always looked angry:
angry if a patient cried, angry if a patient laughed. I looked at the clock to
see when her shift would end and when Narmada would come.
Suruchi went away muttering to herself, and for a moment everything
was quiet.
 But then Chotku started screaming again, ‘Heyyyy, heyyyy, heyyyy!’ His
elderly mother, who sat beside him, stroked his hair and said, ‘Be quiet, be
quiet.’
Chotku wasn’t thirty yet, but his body was withered and thin. Whenever
he awoke from his sleep, he would suddenly get up in a fright, as if he was
drowning in water. Then he would take a deep breath and scream.
Whenever Chotku screamed, Father became agitated. And when Father
became agitated, we would lose our wits.

‘I won’t eat it, how it stinks!’ Father became restless.

Father didn’t like this flour-milk at all. Whenever he was offered a spoon
of it, he clenched his teeth tightly shut. Mother began to sweat.
‘If you don’t want it, don’t have it then.’ Mother fell back onto her chair.
‘But won’t you just eat some for me?’
Father did not reply. He just ran his hand up and down the stand of the
saline drip without speaking a word.
‘What’s wrong, Baajé?’ We heard Narmada’s voice.
Oh, Narmada had arrived, so now my spirits revived. And today she
looked especially nice, with her hair in plaits.
‘He absolutely refuses to eat anything!’ Mother told her. ‘And even if he
does swallow something, he starts to cough.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, and glided away. I had been sitting in the
window, swinging my legs and watching everything, and now I got down.
Once Narmada had spoken, something would surely happen.
After a moment, Dr Nandan arrived, with Narmada following behind
him. In Narmada’s hand there was some tubing, coiled up like an
earthworm.
Another tube? I was scared.
Narmada pulled the green curtain across and Dr Nandan felt Father’s
forehead. He pulled the lids of Father’s eyes apart and looked into the
corners of his eyes. Then he sighed and straightened himself.
Narmada handed him the tubing and he stretched it out straight. Then he
bent down to hum like a queen bee into Father’s ear, ‘I am going to insert
this pipe into your nose. Then please swallow as if you are swallowing
some food.’
I thought I had died! My limbs went limp and I felt as if I had a cramp in
my legs.
‘No!’ Father twisted his body too.
Mother was standing at the head of the bed and her face reddened. But
what could anyone do? Mother also leaned down to speak into his ear. ‘Do
what he tells you. You have to survive, after all!’
The doctor rubbed some greasy stuff onto the tubing with a white glove
that looked like skin. Now that it was greasy, it gleamed like a tube light.
Then he moved the tubing towards father’s right nostril. My own nose
began to hurt and I felt a sharp pain in the left side of my body. The tube
was thrust into Father’s nose, and Father struggled.
‘Pull it, pull it in,’ Doctor Nandan cried, and the tube went in gradually.
Mother’s face turned blue, mine black. I could not control myself and I
burst out through the curtain. I could not look at the sky that spread itself
outside the window. I thought I was going to faint.
‘Right, that’s done then,’ I heard Doctor Nandan say softly.
Narmada pulled the curtain back and folded it away in the corner. The
tube had gone in through his nose and reached down as far as his navel, as
Doctor Nandan had said.
Mother sat staring into space as Narmada and Dr Nandan took their
leave. I peered at Father. Like dirty rain water from a roof, urine ran down a
curving tube and into the bag that hung beneath the bed, while the tip of the
tube that had been just been put into his nose shook like an elephant’s tail.
That night, Mother poured half a litre of flour-milk and milk into the
tube, just as people pour water into a dried-out irrigation pump.

***

‘Is it right to pour money out like water on whatever you find?’ Mother was
furious. ‘He won’t take care of a bicycle for more than three days!’
 ‘He’s always gazing up at me, hoping I’ll get him one,’ Father told her.
‘So, I brought him one. It’s for them that we go to all this trouble, after all.’
‘I’ll buy you a bicycle when you reach class five,’ Father had promised
me while we were still in Matera. So, I reached class five, and Father
brought the bicycle. The cycle had come from Tinkuniya and was exactly as
I had hoped it would be—a Hero Ranger bicycle, with a black bar and
spokes like sharp rays of sunlight.
I mounted the bicycle, rejoicing, and made a complete circuit of Katasé.
When I reached the sal forest on the other side of town, I took a piss and
came back. That night, I went downstairs three times, afraid that a thief
might have taken the bicycle away.
The next morning, at 9 o’clock, I set off for school on the bicycle. When
I came across children walking along the road to school, I came up close
behind them and rang my bell. Startled, they jumped out of the way like
frogs. Some of them shouted abuse at me when they had got out of my way,
but others shouted after me, ‘Hey, let me ride on it too!’
When I heard this, I felt very proud, because I was the only student in
class five with a bicycle.
As I raced along the banks of the Jamara Khola on my bicycle, the
besharam flowers along the path brushed my cheeks and the cool breeze
fanned my face. The flocks of egrets standing along the banks flew up at the
sound of my bell.
I had never felt such pride and joy. Father’s face kept on filling my eyes
and I made him silent promises: ‘Now I will really study hard. I will not
fail. I won’t give Father any grief.’ As I made these promises, I gripped the
handlebars hard.
Lau jaa! All of a sudden, a piece of wood as long as a hand got inside
one of the wheels, and—dhadhadhad—the wheel spokes snapped, one after
the other. The earth began to topple over: on one side a field bank, on the
other the cold water of the Jamara Khola. I lifted the toppling cycle
upwards to try to regain control, but the front wheel skidded towards the
bank and the crossbar struck a deep blow to my tender parts. I felt dizzy, as
if my scrotum had been laid out on a rock and hit with a hammer—like
castrating a goat. Everything was turning dark—now I had lived for as long
as I was ever going to.
After a little while, I regained consciousness, lying on a bank full of pea
plants sprouting deep green pods. The cold breeze of the Jamara stung my
temples and my right ear was badly grazed; it began to burn sorely. My
stomach twisted and began to hurt. Near my knee, I saw there was a patch
of green scum and soft mud, but before I could brush that off, both my
hands found their way to the place where I was hurting most. And then the
world went dark again: it seemed that one of them had burst. As I felt with
my hand in pain and terror, I could only find one testicle.
An egret flew over the Jamara Khola with its wings spread wide and
settled on a tree stump. It craned its long neck to look at me. I felt as if I
was going to lose my breath. Here there was only one testicle, while over
there were no spokes in the front wheel of the bicycle. At last, I stood up,
and all at once the testicle slid down from somewhere up near my stomach.
Fifteen of the cycle’s spokes were broken, and the front mudguard was
bent too. I twisted the broken spokes around the unbroken ones, and this
much made it work again. I set off for school again, close to tears.
Thapa Sir came to teach the first class, and he began to read out our
names for the register. But my eyes were still full of the image of those
shiny broken spokes. When they glittered in my mind’s eye, the lobes of my
ears became hot and my forehead grew heavy. My bicycle, which had been
brand new until this morning, was all beaten up now. The whole world grew
dim, like a misted window.
‘Won’t you listen?’ Sir twisted the hairs on my temples and gave me a
fright.
For me, Sir’s face was indistinct too.
‘I’m speaking to you,’ I heard Sir’s loud voice. ‘Where’s your attention,
Hero?’
I lowered my head. The sound of fidgeting came from the corners of the
room. Then Sir asked me in a kinder tone, ‘What’s happened, tell me?’
I burst into tears. Showing him my grazed ear, I told him in a tremulous
voice, ‘Sir, I fell off. My bicycle is broken.’
 Everyone in the room burst out laughing.
After the third bell, I didn’t want to stay at school any longer, so at half-
time, I took to my heels and rode off on my bicycle.
At the tail end of Katasé, on the western side where the sun set, was the
‘Sharma Cycle Store’. I called the sauji ‘Sharma Uncle’. There were more
old cycles there than new, with their tyres all split and grinning.
‘Nephew, want some tea?’ Sharma Uncle would always grin as soon as
he saw me, scratching the hair that hung out of his blue topi with its split
rim. As he scratched his hair, a cloud of dandruff would fall on to the
ground.
And today he grinned as usual.
I got down from my wobbly bicycle and parked it on its stand. He had
already come to my side and he scrutinized the new bicycle with covetous
eyes. With his right hand he rang the bell and twisted the handlebars from
side to side, ‘Where have you been to, selling all the spokes of your new
cycle?’ he joked.
‘Ba said to get it mended and bring it back,’ I lied.
I used to get things done in many places by saying ‘Ba said’. As for
Father, he would only find out about it weeks later.
‘La ta, just go off for a nice stroll around and come back in an hour or
so,’ he said, scratching his head, ‘I’ll have it fixed by then.’
I put my hands in my trouser pockets and went off for my stroll. I had
learned from Father how to stroll about with my hands in my pockets.
Next to the Amauri Khola bridge, behind a matting screen in the ‘Pankaj
Hair Dresser Salon’, Pankaj the barber was dozing, surrounded by the
posters of film heroines that covered the salon’s walls, with his head
hanging over the back of a chair. He either cut hair or dozed like this, or put
his mouth to the ear of a customer he had already covered with white foam
and said, ‘Did you know sir? Bishta Sau’s eldest daughter goes into the
besharam bushes along this very bridge every night.’
But I didn’t like it when he said such things.
He had tangled hair and a stubbly beard, and wore a shirt with a grubby
collar. His feet looked like dusty squashes in his down-at-heel sandals. He
spoke from a distance and smelled disgusting when he came close. Chi!
Those scummy yellow teeth. The western corner of the shop, into which he
spat as he chewed his tobacco, had become as filthy as a shithouse.
Disgusting green flies always buzzed around there.
But I went to his shop every evening to look at my face and my hair in
the big mirrors he had hanging up there. And sometimes he would cut the
hair from around my ears for free. Father also came here regularly to have a
haircut and a shave.
The sound of the Indian radio programme ‘Vividha Bharati’ was coming
from a dusty, beat-up old radio that hung from a nail on the left-hand wall.
He was absorbed in a song, so he did not notice me. I inspected my face in
the big mirror for a moment. The sight of my hair annoyed me: it looked
like a dried-out clump of jujube trees. I had shed a lot of sweat while I was
straining to ride the bicycle, and the dust that had stuck to it made my face a
little blacker than my neck.
I exited quickly.
Perhaps because the month of Chait had just begun, the bits of old worn-
out plastic that had been discarded all over the bazaar were being blown
around in circles by the wind towards the Amauri Khola. I went down to the
river to wash the dust off my face.
But was this the Amauri Khola or was it some person suffering from
sugar disease? Why had it dried up like this? The river ran between large
steel nets filled with boulders to prevent it from flooding over into the
bazaar. Pieces of plastic, sacking, cloth and condoms had got caught up in
those nets, and the river was filled with empty medicine, raksi and beer
bottles.
Higher upstream, in the villages, everyone drank the water of this same
Amauri Khola. But the villagers alleged that after toilets were built inside
the houses in the bazaar and connected to this river, several of their cattle
had fallen sick after drinking from it.
Once I had splashed a handful of the river onto my face, I felt revived.
Near the bridge, there were two tall sal trees. When they needed to piss,
all the men from the lower bazaar would go and stand beneath them,
turning their heads towards the tops of the trees. On the ground, meanwhile,
no grass could be seen growing for as far as the patch of urine extended.
‘People have dried up both trees with their pissing,’ the merchants of the
bazaar would joke sometimes. And it was true: nowadays, those trees
looked like tall pillars of cement. I too let loose a yellow stream beneath
those trees, then I sat for a long time on the riverbank doing nothing at all.
As I returned to the bazaar, I saw my bicycle from the bridge, standing in
front of Sharma Uncle’s shop, glittering brightly.
I hurried towards it.
The broken spokes had been replaced by new ones. The bicycle was just
as it had been when I had ridden it that morning. But there was still a mark
in the middle of the crossbar towards the front, where a little bit of enamel
had broken off.
‘Uncle, what’s the time?’ I asked.
He was plunging a bicycle tube into a bucket filled with water to search
for a puncture, but he shook his wrist to look at the watch that hung from it
and said, ‘It’s 4 o’clock.’
It was already time for school to end. I righted the bicycle and got
straight on.
‘I need to get in some new stock,’ I heard Sharma Uncle calling out to
me, ‘Tell your father to pay me without delay.’
I pretended not to hear.
Ringing my bell at some haterus as they boiled up their ghee in the
second alley, I rode quickly down the third.
There was a crowd at the Medikal. With no room for them inside,
patients were sitting on their heels outside, scattered here and there.
Father’s Medikal was doing very well. The three other Medikalwalas in
the bazaar were Father’s sworn enemies. They spread rumours about him in
the bazaar, saying ‘That doctor sells medicines that are past their date.’ If
anyone died in the Medikal, they would go straight to the police post and
file a court case. Poor Father, he would come back from the police post in
silence and lose himself in the pages of Sukasagar.
 Threading my way through the crowd of patients, I reached the stairs to
the house and leaned my bicycle up against the wall of the Shiva Bidi
Depot next door. I glanced inside, hoping not to be seen. Father was shining
a torch onto a bottle of saline, a man was lying on his back on the bed and
Shivshankar was running here and there, his long topknot waving.
‘Hey, you’re home early!’ Father had seen me. ‘Did you run away
again?’
‘The Sir who teaches at the seventh bell wasn’t there.’
I climbed the ladder before Father could ask me anything more. Once I
reached the upper storey, I hurled my book away into a corner as if I was
never going to need it again. And from that same corner, the cat dived over
to sprawl in my lap. I lifted it up to my chest with both hands, and it licked
my chin with its rough tongue and meowed.
Since it had come into the bazaar, the cat had had a hard time. The day
after we arrived, it had leapt about and enjoyed itself greatly, but within a
few days, the scabious dogs of the bazaar had reduced it to a state of terror.
After that, I never saw the cat going down to the street.
Inside, the smoke coming from the fireplace was seeping into the gaps
between the tiles. Two things had not forsaken Mother since she had
entered the bazaar: smoke and a leaking roof.
‘Even now that I’ve come to live in the bazaar, I still have a leaky roof,’
Mother would say during the rains, as thin streams of water leaked in
between the tiles. As the rain dripped into buckets, glasses and bowls,
Mother sat morosely on her bed. Once Father had laid down on his side in
the bed, there was no question of him getting up again. As she listened to
the sound of the rain falling late into the night, Mother would become
vexed by it and cry, ‘Chi! How it leaks, like a pissing dog!’
‘We’ll have to get a tin roof,’ Father would say, turning over.
‘Are you back from school?’ Mother’s voice came from the kitchen.
‘Where’s Sister?’
‘I didn’t have a lesson at the seventh bell. Sister will come in a little
while.’ I peered through the door and went inside.
The cat dived down from my arms and ran in ahead of me.
 Mother was making black peppered tea.
I stood a little way off.
A girl was sitting on her heels beside Mother with her back to me. She
must have been about fifteen or sixteen years of age. Her hair hung down
below the nape of her neck, as if it had been gathered in a hurry. An old
liver-coloured blouse shifted above her waist and a spotted skirt below.
Through the opening between them, I could see skin the colour of mustard
oil, without any blemish. Inside her dhoti, her buttocks spread slightly, like
a lotus flower beginning to blossom, stealing my mind away.
‘She’s going to live with us from now on,’ Mother said, ‘She’s just
arrived today.’
I stared at her and she turned her head to look at me. She had a round
face, a flat nose and dry but shapely lips, and there was a deep blue trident
tattooed onto her chin. She looked at me from eyes that glittered like glass,
and smiled from the corner of her mouth, as if a flower had blossomed on
her lips. I felt even shyer and my face turned red. I don’t think I spoke
another word all that day.
That evening, Mother closed the Medikal early. Shivshankar ate his meal
and went back downstairs, and we ate our meal sitting in a row beside the
fireplace.
‘She will help Mother with the cooking,’ Father looked at Sister and me.
‘Don’t be rude to her. Don’t quarrel with her.’
She looked at me, and I looked away.
Since we’d moved to the bazaar, Father had got into the habit of going
for a walk after his meal, so he went out.
The girl and Sister washed the pots cheerfully. I went to sleep early,
maybe because I was tired from riding the bicycle that afternoon. But I
woke up suddenly to the sound of whispering voices. Sister had moved the
girl’s bed near to my cot.
‘Lie down Baatu,’ said Sister, placing a pillow at the head of her bed. ‘A
ghost comes here sometimes, but sleep and don’t be afraid.’
Oh, so her name is Baatu. I smiled.
 Baatu giggled and Sister went back inside. Baatu glanced at me. I was
looking at her too, opening my eyes a little.
After a moment, I turned over, as if I was already fast asleep.
The leaves on the trees turned green. In the Chattiban jungle, the jujubes
fruited in clusters, and the koili bird kept on asking, ‘Who is it? Who is it?’
as it does when the spring arrives. While the bitter jujubes ripened in
Chattiban in the spring, in the sal forest it was the sweet Indian butter tree.
And from this month onward, the tin roofs of the school got hotter and
hotter. Sitting to study under a tin roof was like arriving in hell, so, at this
time of year, the school opened first thing in the morning.
The table clock that Father had brought from Nepalganj would vibrate
and scream as early as half past 3 in the morning, so, at school, I would fall
fast asleep with my head on the bench. Sir would come and tweak the short
hairs on my temples and I would jump up in a fright, rolling open eyes as
red as those of someone who is drunk on the white thorn apple. Then I
would raise my head and wipe the dribble from my cheeks.
‘Staying awake all night,’ Sir would look at me sternly from sharp eyes,
‘What do you sit there playing with?’
Everyone would burst out laughing, including Sharmila. The Matera
students laughed with particular envy, because I’d become a townie. I didn’t
feel like even talking to them. If I had to share a bench with them, I felt I
would die of shame.
Sharmila teased me a lot, but at half-time, on the first day of Baisakh, she
came and pushed a postcard inside my exercise book, then ran away. On the
front of the postcard, there was a smiling hero wearing a round hat and, on
the reverse, she had written ‘Best wishes for New Year 2050’ in beautiful
handwriting. After that, Sharmila rode on the crossbar of my bicycle many
times in my dreams.
I was unable to say, ‘Come Sharmila, ride with me on my bicycle.’
Sharmila would walk home with her friends, popping the peapods that grew
in the fields along the edge of the road. Sometimes, she walked with Parvati
Didi too. Often, Sharmila would be ahead, and I would ride my bicycle
along behind her, sweating profusely. Sometimes, Sister would spot me.
 ‘Hey Tharu,’ she would yell, ‘Stop following us like a masaan ghost!’
And I would scuttle away, hunching my back like a porcupine.

***

It was a clear day. Scraps of clouds like fluff from a cotton tree could be
seen on the faraway edge of the sky. My armpits steamed in the heat. A
breeze was blowing gently.
On this occasion too Sharmila was ahead of me and I was following her
on my bicycle. Ramesh and Ekraj hadn’t been at school today, otherwise
those radishes would have been hanging from the front and back of the
bicycle and wearing me out.
I slowed the bicycle down.
Sharmila was walking along, giggling with two other girls. I was
watching the hill that hung up in the sky towards Chisapani and feeling
restless. From time to time, sparrows flew up from the clumps of besharam.
Sometimes, the egrets that flew over the Jamara Khola would come rising
and falling like aeroplanes, as if they were going to dip down and touch me.
Suddenly, Sharmila stopped, and the two other girls went on ahead
without her, laughing. I brought the bicycle to a halt, and propped my right
leg on a tree stump.
Sharmila walked into the besharam thicket.
I turned around and saw a group of students way back behind me. I
dismounted, thinking that I would find out why Sharmila had gone into the
bushes. I began to tread carefully like a cat, pulling my bicycle along
behind me.
In the besharam thicket, there was no sound. There wasn’t even a
sparrow. I pushed the leaves aside and peered right in, and there I saw
Sharmila, squatting like a rabbit with her blue skirt rucked up to her waist.
Her smooth thighs glistened among the green leaves of the besharam, and
they seized my gaze. I tried not to watch, but my eyes would not obey: how
sinful they had become! I tried to run away, but my feet were stuck fast to
the ground there. If only they would move forward! My heart began to beat
like a damaha drum, my eyes became as dry as a sal leaf and my breath
began to whistle like a storm in Chait. Thousands of ants began to sting me
below my waist. My lips became dry and I felt as if I was going to have a
fever. I felt like throwing myself into the Jamara Khola.
Suddenly, Sharmila turned and looked straight at me. Her eyes met mine
and her face darkened. What should I do now? I climbed onto my bicycle in
a flash and started pumping the pedals hard. Then I shouted loudly, ‘A
snake will bite you, watch out!’
Before I’d got much further, her voice hit my eardrum like a pellet from a
bow, ‘Stop! I’m going to tell my father!’
I didn’t have the nerve to turn around and look back again. But that very
night, in the soft light of the lamp, I plucked up my courage and wrote:
Respected dear Sharmila,
When I see you, I don’t know how I feel. I cannot live without you.
I love you.

So, I had written the letter, but how would I give it to her? All night, I
wondered whether Ramesh would deliver it for me. Before I went to bed, I
hid the letter somewhere, but when I woke up in the morning, I had
completely forgotten where I had put it.
One evening, a week later, Father had just returned from Chauraha and
had already put his foot on the first rung of the ladder. But then he called
me, ‘Come here.’
I went to his side.
‘Did you write this?’ Father pulled the letter out of his pocket.
I was scared out of my wits. I lowered my head.
‘Baatu gave it to me,’ Father told me. ‘It looks like your writing.’
The letter had been inside my pillow cover. The cover was dirty and
smelled of the mustard oil I wore on my hair. A folded piece of paper had
fallen out onto the floor as it was being removed from the pillow to be
washed. What if poor Baatu had been able to read? But no, she had given it
to Father.
‘Did you write this or did you not?’
 ‘Yes, I did.’ I was feeling dizzy with shame and fear.
‘So, if it’s yours then take it.’ Father held the letter out to me.
I took it. Now Father will give me a slap, I thought, shaking with fear. I
pulled both my shoulders up to protect my cheeks.
But Father’s voice just stroked my face like a flower petal. ‘Don’t write
anything like this again, do you hear?’

***

When she saw me, Baatu smiled from one side of her mouth, and when she
smiled, her round oil-coloured cheeks blossomed like a flower. I didn’t have
the nerve to speak to her, and how would she dare to speak to me? It was
already eighteen days since she had come, and I hadn’t uttered a squeak.
The cat, on the other hand, had already become her friend. It played with
her, tumbling about at her feet and making its tail dance like a grain store
snake.
Once Baatu had taken charge of the kitchen, Mother busied herself in the
Medikal. She had already become ‘Daaktarni Bajyai’ to the patients.
The skin of Baatu’s hands was badly cracked because of all the
housework she had to do, and she put oil on them every night. If I came
close to her, the smell of raw oil would come from her loosened hair, and
from her body there rose a wonderful scent. The cracked skin of her heels
had begun to fill, just as the cracks in a field fill up during the rains.
One day, I came back from Chauraha, famished with hunger. I entered
the kitchen to find Baatu rubbing oil into her coppery thighs, which looked
as plump as fat grapes in the light of the lantern. When I crept in like a
ghost, she was startled and pulled her maxi down hurriedly.
The cat, which was walking about around Baatu, came up to me, twisting
its tail. I sat on my heels by the fireplace and the cat jumped up at my chest.
Baatu put some black tea which had already been boiled and stewed back
onto the fire to warm it up. I took a glass of tea outside with me, then
peered back through the gap in the door—would Baatu start rubbing in the
oil again? But she just sat in silence, tending the fire. Perhaps she knew that
I was at the door. And, of course, the cat pretended to be hiding, but its tail
stuck out through the door.
The day after Baatu arrived, Father brought a cot and a mosquito net for
her. Each night, she murmured in her dreams in the bed on the other side of
the room, breathing heavily and hard. Her arms hung down from the bed
and all night her bangles would tinkle. After Baatu arrived in our house, the
jackals that cried all night in the sal copse began to steal my sleep.
I had never slept soundly ever since we moved to the bazaar. Perhaps my
sleep had transferred itself to the cat which was fast asleep, clinging to my
chest. From time to time, it smoothed its whiskers with its right paw even as
it slept. Sometimes, I had the impulse to pull the whiskers right out of that
radish.
When I was woken by Baatu’s sighs in the night, the sound of
Shivshankar snoring in the Medikal shook my eardrums. It was as if he had
a small microphone installed in his throat. Sometimes, even the cat was
disturbed by the noise and it would circle about between the beds.
Every few days, Shivshankar would suddenly cry out in the middle of the
night, loudly enough to crack the few tiles that remained unbroken in the
roof. In the morning, we would learn that a pair of hairy hands had come
out from under his bed and grabbed him by the throat.
Weary and frightened, he would tell us, ‘A gh-gh-ghost was terrorizing
me.’
‘So, don’t sleep on the bed where we lay the patients,’ Mother told him
one day, and he cleared the medicines out of the way and slept on the floor.
But still he did not stop crying out.
Because of all of this, I had begun to feel weary in the day. I did not sleep
very much at night, and I fell asleep on the bench at school. I was afraid
that Sir would eventually pull out all of my hair. People don’t just go bald
for no reason, do they?
The ghost had really begun to harass Shivshankar. For several months
now he had seemed drugged, moping like an old hen, then sometimes he
would become phobic, like a dog afflicted by rabies. He didn’t have the
presence of mind to shave, and his beard had spread all over his face, like
grass on the forest floor. Even the hairs in his nose had stretched down to
tangle with his moustache. His lips looked like dry leaves that had fallen
down into the grass.
‘Bring me a syringe!’ Father would shout.
And Shivshankar would rush over to him, carrying a thermometer.
Finding a thermometer in his hand just as he was about to plant a syringe
into the naked buttock of a patient lying face down on the bed, Father
would go furiously to fetch the syringe himself. Shivshankar, meanwhile,
just stood there and hung his head, like a man found guilty of murder.
Two years earlier, he had come, clean-shaven and sweetly smiling, to
become a compounder in our Medikal. After that, he had turned into a kind
of minor doctor. His dream of opening his own Medikal in Janakpur had
sprouted like a fresh green leaf.
But nowadays, he was in such a state that when he came up into the
kitchen to eat his meal, he just sat in silence on a pirka. Baatu would serve
him his food, and he forced it down as if he was afraid of his own voice.
Once, when Sister saw him eating, she even told Mother, ‘It’s as if he’s
been scared by a masaan from the Jamara Khola.’
‘Well, I don’t know what’s happened,’ Mother exclaimed angrily. ‘As
soon as night falls, your father simply has to go wandering about in the
bazaar. Just ask him what has happened to Shivshankar. He won’t even
speak to me.’
Baatu also told me that once Shivshankar pushed his bowl of dal away to
one side of his plate, then groped around for it on the other side and ended
up pouring a glass of water onto his rice instead.
Whenever he saw Shivshankar, the Shiva Bidi Depot manager’s face
drooped like the leaf of a fern. When Shivshankar appeared in the early
morning, brushing his teeth with a twig, he asked him, ‘What’s wrong with
you these days?’ But Shivshankar just went on brushing his teeth in silence.
‘What on earth is wrong with Shivshankar?’ Mother asked Father. ‘If it’s
a ghost, we will have to have it exorcised.’
‘What rubbish she talks! Why would it be a ghost?’ Father replied with
his nose in a book. ‘It’s simply that his self-confidence has weakened.’
 Every morning, Shivshankar woke with eyes as red and watery as if he
had been crying all night. But then, one day, we discovered the secret
behind why he was so fearful, hopeless and sad.
The waste pipe that ran along the side of the kitchen took a turn as it
reached the drain. For several days, it had been blocked and water had been
collecting in the drain. Green flies were buzzing in the kitchen.
It had been like this for far too long, so, one day, Father put on his boots
and went down into the drain, suspecting that something must be
obstructing the pipe. All he found in the pipe was a spoon that had fallen
down and got stuck, but then he saw the state of the drain …
In the drain, he found a pile of empty Phensidol bottles and, at last,
realization dawned upon him. He had been wondering why the stock of
Phensidol in the Medikal had been running out so quickly. It was a cough
medicine, which some of the boys in the bazaar regarded as an intoxicant. It
was highly addictive: ‘You may lose your life, but you’ll never lose your
Phensidol habit,’ people said. The police had jailed a youth for three days
after they caught him taking Phensidol, and they had told the Medikal
owners, ‘Don’t just give people whatever they ask for.’
The two men who went to clear out the drain came back announcing
proudly, ‘There are 165 of those bottles down there!’ Shivshankar just sat
gloomily in silence on the long bench in the Medikal, like a lamp whose oil
has run out.
‘I never imagined that you would do such a thing!’ Father was in despair.
‘It was a m-m-m-mistake.’
‘Why did you take it, tell me!’
‘I was afraid of the g-g-g-g-ghost,’ he said quietly. ‘I th-th-thought the
fear would go away. Then I got into the habit.’
The next morning, Mother went down to sweep out the Medikal, but she
came straight back up in great alarm and told us, ‘Lau jaa, Shivshankar’s
gone.’
We hurried down to see. Shivshankar’s black bag with the open zip
wasn’t there, and the Gold Star shoes he wore from time to time weren’t
there either. He had sneaked away before the birds had risen.
 His sweater was still hanging lifelessly over his bed, but there was no
longer any colour in the rose design on its chest, which had faded clean
away.

***

A man turned up in Katasé all of a sudden and opened a Medikal to the

right of barber Pankaj’s, beside the lower bridge. When they saw this, all of
the other Medikalwallas were blind with rage. They stalked up and down in
front of his Medikal, casting crooked glances at it.
The man had a belly the size of a small brass jar, and when his short
white shirt rode up on it, his hairy lower abdomen looked brass-coloured
too. Beneath it, his trousers were hooked together very tightly, so that his
fat belly stuck out of their circular enclosure. When he sat down on a chair,
his belly rested on the table in front of him. The fat fingers of his hand,
which was the size of a squash, twirled his moustache, blackened with kala
patthar. His hair was slicked back and was thinning near his topknot, which
was multicoloured, just like a goat’s.
All day, he sat there in his chair, neatly dressed and as calm and peaceful
as if he was meditating. All of his shelves were filled with medicines.
Sometimes, he would switch on his radio set with its two-metre aerial, and
would pause for a particular song, closing his eyes to listen and doze off.
If he ever bumped into anyone while walking in the bazaar, he would
place his squash-sized hand on the shoulder of the person with whom he
had collided and bow his head low, saying ‘sorry, sorry’ in English. He
would generally have to say ‘sorry, sorry’ two or three times every day,
because he walked around looking up at the sky, smiling gently with an air
of pomposity.
He was the first in Katasé to walk about with a strip of cloth hanging
round his neck. Later, I discovered that this was called a tie, and that people
who wore ties could speak English fluently.
‘An English doctor has come to Katasé.’ The talk was popping like
morning corn in the teashop. ‘No need to go to Nepalganj anymore!’
 Patients who came into the bazaar from outside had begun to enter his
Medikal which opened at the very mouth of the road. Rumours began to
circulate all over Khairiphanta: ‘I hear that an old man from Amaravati
went to him with a high fever, and as soon as he felt his forehead, he was
better and went home.’
One day, in the third week of Jeth, he was summoned to the police post.
The Assistant Sub-Inspector, who wore a yellow tika on his forehead that
stretched right down to his nose, told him, ‘They say you don’t have a
licence.’
‘I have a disease-sense though, you know!’ When he grinned, his mouth
went a little crooked.
‘Either bring me the licence or shut down your Medikal,’ the ASI
threatened him.
But he neither brought the licence nor did he close his Medikal. The
other Medikalwallas kept on crying, ‘You’re not allowed to play games
with patients!’
But Father was silent on this matter. Sometimes, he would talk with this
man in English, and the Medikalwallas were as angry as injured hornets
with Father as a consequence. But he wouldn’t give an inch and, eventually,
one day, the ASI declared, ‘He just won’t do as he is told, he’s as obstinate
as Saddam Hussein!’
That was when the English doctor got his name in Katasé—Saddam
Hussein. No one knew his real name, because he didn’t possess a licence.
It was through Ramesh that I first became acquainted with Saddam. That
radish went to his shop too to ask for a syringe. On the day I first got to
know him, he told me a day-long story of how he had once put his hand into
the stomach of an injured, fallen horse in Khairiphanta at midnight and
pulled out a foal. And on that very day he told me, ‘Young Doctor Saab,
you are my best friend.’
After that, I got into the habit of visiting him.
One day, I leaned on a section of the medicine shelf as I was listening
intoxicated to another of his stories, and one of its ribs collapsed. It was a
disaster: a row of medicines fell down like leaves in a storm and scattered
everywhere, but there was no sound of breaking bottles.
All of the medicines were just empty packages!
Saddam flew into a rage and shouted, ‘Don’t touch them, leave them
where they are!’
I realised then that there were no medicines in his shop, just empty
packages. And a few days later, I discovered something else.
When a patient came to him, he would examine them. He would puzzle
to himself for a moment, then say to the patient, ‘All right, let me have
200.’ He would put the money in his pocket, then go inside, as if he
maintained a huge storeroom of medicines within. Then he would leave by
the back door and run like the wind to our Medikal. He would buy the
medicine there, then run back again. Covered in sweat, he would stand
before the patient and instruct them gravely, ‘Take this much in the evening,
this much in the morning.’ Then he would say, ‘Now let me have 250.’
I had been diving into the Jamara Khola a lot those days, and now grey
spots had begun to appear below my ears and on the back of my neck. At
school, many had begun to tease me, calling me a leper. One day, Saddam
noticed the spots and said, ‘What’s that, let me take a look.’
He touched them with his pale fingers, like speckled round squashes. ‘It’s
dubi, the white leprosy,’ he said.
‘Do you have some medicine for it?’
He went inside. I peered in through the curtain that hung over the door
like a worn-out, dirty old petticoat. He took some toothpaste out of a table
drawer, carefully squeezed some into a small empty bottle, then came out
again.
‘Now then,’ he said, clasping the back of my neck tightly. He rubbed
toothpaste into the spots with his index finger. Then he looked gravely at
his watch. After a moment, he asked, ‘Do you feel as if it’s burning?’
I giggled and wiped it off, saying, ‘Chi! It’s just toothpaste!’
Saddam furrowed his brow and his face turned red. He was really angry.
‘It’s not right to spy like a thief!’ he said.
 After that, he would not speak to me for many days. As for me, whenever
I saw him on the road, I would taunt him, saying, ‘Namaste, Doctor Saap.
Do you have medicine for dubi?’ But he would pretend not to see me.
A full month and a half later, when I met him unexpectedly at the bend in
the first alley, Saddam had forgotten his anger. Grasping my hand, he said,
‘Doctor Saap, why be angry? Come, na?’
Some days after this invitation, I found myself at his Medikal. Flies were
buzzing around inside, and he was bent over a fat English dictionary. A
large picture of a Naga that had been stuck to his door for Naga Panchami
had torn and was fluttering in the wind.
He saw me and smiled.
‘Hello, Doctor Saap!’ He jumped up and grasped both my hands. ‘How
are you?’
I didn’t reply, but I laughed. Wiping off the sweat that had transferred
itself from his hand to mine, I sat down on a stool to one side. Saying ‘just a
minute’, he put his head back in the dictionary: he must have been stuck on
some word or other. A monotonous Hindi song was blaring out from the
Chaudhari Radio Service directly opposite the Medikal. Chaudhari himself
was laughing, shaking his right leg, with both hands thrust into his trouser
pockets.
Saddam gestured to him twice to ask him to turn the volume down. The
third time, he bent his fingers and turned them in the air as if switching the
radio off and muttered, ‘Turn it down, yaar!’
If only Chaudhari had understood. He too raised his right hand and
waved as if he was bidding us farewell. Saddam was furious now and he
slammed the dictionary down on the table, raising a cloud of dust.
Then, after a moment’s silence, he asked me, ‘Will you drink some tea?’
‘Yes, sure.’
Some tea arrived from the teashop to the east, as cloudy as the waters of
the Jamara Khola during the rains. Saddam moved the cream that had
gathered on its surface to one side with his little finger and took a slurp of
tea. His eyes closed in pleasure. He often did this when he was satisfied
with the flavour of his tea.
 That day, he told me for the first time that he had come from the other
side of the Mahakali river.
‘Who do you have at home?’ I asked him, staring in surprise.
‘I don’t have a home!’
‘What do you mean?’ I was surprised. ‘Haven’t you married?’
‘I did, but now there’s no one. Doctor Saap, you won’t understand,’ he
said briefly, and smiled. He stared after a sparrow that had settled briefly on
the door then flown away. ‘I’m like that bird,’ he said. ‘Flying here and
there. Tell me, does a bird have a home anywhere?’
I’ve no idea what had happened to Saddam that day. He was about to
give me a long account, but just then an old man came coughing to the
Medikal. He was suffering from coughing fits. He stood close to the door of
the Medikal and coughed so loud that he drowned out the noise from
Chaudhari’s speaker, emitting a gobbet of phlegm. When it saw the phlegm
on the ground, a chicken came running with its wings outstretched and
began to peck holes in it.
‘Daaagdar Saap, Namaste,’ said the old man, turning to Saddam and
pressing his palms together.
I went outside.
A month later, I saw Saddam twice in the bank where a guard always
stood at the door holding an old-fashioned gun. ‘It looks like Saddam has
earned a lot of money and is putting it in the bank’—this kind of talk grew
louder in the teashop.
And then rumours began to spread—Saddam had committed a rape and
was a criminal on the run, the Mahendranagar police were searching for
him. Saddam was accused of murder, the Mahendranagar police were
searching for him.
Saddam was like a pillar with its feet buried deep in the ground, and he
wasn’t swayed one inch by such talk. He started sitting in front of his
Medikal dressed in shiny black shoes, black trousers, a white shirt and a
striped and spotted tie, blowing out the smoke from a cigarette. Meanwhile,
I became scared and I stopped going to see him. And after Baatu came to
our house, I wasn’t so eager to come and go so much either.
 One day, I was on my way to Sharma Uncle’s to get my bicycle chain
fixed, when Saddam saw me.
‘Have you forgotten me since you’ve had that cute girl in your house?’
he said, using the Tharu word for ‘girl’. I saw the blackened gaps between
his teeth as he grinned.
It had been two months since I had come this way. During those two
months, he had acquired black rings around his eyes.
‘Come, na?’ He tugged at my hand. ‘It’s been ages since we had a chat.’
Anger boiled up in me when he referred to Baatu in that way. I propped
my bicycle up and entered the shop.
‘Why are you angry?’ he asked me, laughing.
‘I don’t like you calling her that.’
‘What should I call her then?’
‘Baatu.’
Saddam sat down in a chair and rested his belly on the table. He pushed
the hairs that stuck out of his nose like crabs’ feet back into his nostrils and
carried on talking about Baatu in a way I didn’t like. Baatu often came this
way, he said. Once she looked at him and smiled, he said.
I jumped to my feet.
‘Don’t get angry!’ He took hold of my wrist. ‘I’m only joking!’
I just stood there.
‘Why don’t you like this sort of talk?’
When he saw that I wasn’t going to reply, he stretched his body and
grinned, saying, ‘Doctor Saap, when I was your age, a spark would fly up at
the mere touch of a woman’s sari.’
Then he laughed out, loud and long, like a demon on the radio at Dasai.

***

Hardly three months had passed since her arrival when Baatu began to
sneak up on me and muss up my long fringe which fell over my forehead at
an angle. When she did this, I chased her like a wounded tiger chasing a
deer, and she ran from one corner to another, giggling and tittering like the
ringing string of an ektaaré, her bangles jingling. Then, when I had her
trapped in a corner of the house, she would cover her face with both hands.
Wiping away the sweat running from my forehead and temples, I would
grasp the warm hands that covered her face and hold them fast, and she
would quiver and shrink away from me like a timid flower. Like a kite
swooping down on a chick, I would spread out my arms and enclose her in
them. She couldn’t scream out, but she would struggle to escape, puffing
and panting and becoming as hot as the banks of the Amauri Khola.
As I touched her bare arms with my fingers, hundreds of little
goosebumps sprang up all over them. Wherever I touched her, Baatu would
double over, as if little red ants were stinging her oil-coloured body. When
Baatu touched my forehead on hot days, my body felt cooler, as if I had
fallen asleep on soft leaves on the floor of a forest that was wet with dew.
When Sister went downstairs, irritated because her sums wouldn’t add
up, and the cat went to sleep, resting its chin on the doorstep, I took the
opportunity to say, ‘Baatu, I think I have a fever, please take a look.’
Baatu came to my side. I closed my eyes, which had been inspecting the
cracked tiles in the roof as I lay there on my back. She placed her cool hand
on my forehead and moved her palm downwards. I was flying in the clouds,
even higher than the clouds, then, all of a sudden, I was thrown down to
earth, flat on my back. Baatu had twisted my nose hard and run away,
giggling.
With a nose as red as a clown’s and eyes filled with tears, I screamed,
‘Baatu, today you’re dead!’ and chased after her. The cat jumped to its feet
when it heard Baatu laughing and me shouting; it shook out its tail and ran
after me. When we ran about upstairs like this, dust fell down onto the
heads of the patients in the Medikal below, and Mother came and yelled
from the top of the ladder, ‘Why are you romping about so much? Stop
wearing us out!’
‘It’s not me, it’s the cat,’ I said in a low voice.
Baatu looked at me from eyes as deep as wells and whispered, ‘You’re a
cat.’
 I bent the fingers of both of my hands into claws and advanced towards
Baatu, meow meow …
Baatu threw herself onto the bed on her back, as if she was being tickled.
I buried my fingers in her tender waist. She twisted and covered her face
with the quilt, laughing. Goosebumps the size of sesame seeds sprang up on
her midriff.
When my face began to hurt from laughing so much, I lay on my back
beside her. I looked at the shafts of sunlight that came in through the cracks
in the tiles and watched the spiders sleeping in their webs. And I touched
the warm lobe of Baatu’s ear with my lips and said through my steaming
breath, ‘Baatu, don’t ever leave us.’
Baatu did not say anything in reply. She just swallowed hard.

‘Baatu, why have you never studied? Tell me,’ I asked her. She was
scrubbing the pots under the flickering light of the lantern and I was sitting
on my heels beside her. Baatu tucked a lock of hair that had fallen into her
face back behind her right ear and continued to scrub the pots without
speaking.
The flickering flame inside the lantern flared up and burned more
brightly.
‘What would I do if I’d studied?’
I couldn’t think what to say. Then I said, ‘Well, if you had studied, you
wouldn’t have to do this kind of work, you know.’
She did not reply.
‘Wouldn’t you like to study?’ I asked her again.
‘Yes, I would like to,’ she said, turning her deep eyes towards me,
glittering in the lantern light. ‘But just wanting to is not enough.’
Once, Baatu told me that she was born in Patharaiya. When he found out
that he had a daughter, her father kicked the wall of his hut so hard the pig
squealed out in terror.
Baatu must have been about six years old when her mother, who was
suffering from the kidney-pain disease, with her stomach filling with stones,
suddenly collapsed and fainted while she was drawing water from the well.
When they parted her clenched teeth and poured water into her mouth, she
opened her pale eyes and stroked the roots of Baatu’s hair as she sat
sobbing by her side. She had never spoken all her life, and she did not speak
on this day either. She just packed up her things and left in silence. Baatu
did not even get to shed all of the tears in her heart in sight of her mother’s
face. Everyone just hurriedly picked up the body as it started to turn blue
and took it away. Even now, Baatu didn’t know where her mother was
buried or how to find the upturned bedstead on that Tharu grave.
Baatu’s elder brother Bhaggu was seen at the police post three times a
year—not because he was a policeman, but because he had been caught
riding someone else’s bicycle or leading away someone else’s buffalo bull.
Once a year, he would promise some old Tharu, ‘I will give you my
sister,’ rubbing the blood of a black rooster onto his forehead and swearing
an oath. Then, after he made this promise, he would disappear for some
days, and news would come that he had gone to Rupediya.
When Bhaggu returned from Rupediya, he would come riding a new
bicycle. He would bring barphi and lalmohan sweets for Lekhandas, who
wrote his letters for him, and ask him to write a letter to a Pahariya girl. The
letter writer would write the letter and gobble up all the sweets. But before
the letter even reached the girl, Bhaggu would be seized by her relatives.
The letter they found in his pocket would be read out to the Pahariyas’
‘society’. By a strange coincidence, it was often the letter writer himself
who was seen reading it out. Then they would take the black from inside a
battery, mix it with mustard oil and rub it onto Bhaggu’s face. They would
shave his head all over and make him bow low at the girl’s feet to swear an
oath: ‘Sister, from now on I will never do such a deed again.’
Baatu’s father had a disease of the breath: she said that even when he was
just walking along, he puffed and panted. He worked in the dark of the
night, bringing in logs from the forest in a cart. After the forest had been
reduced to little more than tree stumps, the forest guards increased their
patrols and, one day, when he was fleeing from them, his cart turned over,
breaking his right leg in three places. He decided, ‘I am a sinner. Ban Devi
has cursed me.’
 His broken leg mended, but his broken mind did not.
He had wandered here and there ever since, dribbling saliva, with his
eyes as red as someone stoned on white thorn apple. His face had gradually
turned blue. He could not steal trees from the forest again, so the Pahariya
merchants were not concerned. He wandered around Tharu Gaon all day
and night, carrying a walking stick of thick sal wood with which he would
strike the backs of the pigs and dogs he met on the road. And sometimes he
would scream, loud enough to split the sky, ‘I am going to kill them, they’ll
never get away with it!’
After Baatu came to Katasé, she said, she thought that her father would
surely come after her, waving his stick. But now she looked like someone
who had returned to life from a long coma. Nowadays, she would even talk
to the wind, tease the moon, look into a mirror and smile.
‘No one loves me as much as she does,’ Father said one day, after he had
seen the way she had prepared his favourite jackfruit. ‘I am going to
arrange her marriage myself.’
That day, Baatu was wearing the anklets her mother had given her,
happily making them jingle as she walked. After that, she never forgot to
add Father’s favourite tomato and coriander pickle to his food. As she
walked about the bazaar these days, Baatu began to believe that a Tharu
youth with sharp cut hair, dressed in jean trousers and a jean jacket, would
come from a dream city and take her away to some other Katasé Bazaar of
her dreams.

***

A circus came to Katasé.

The circus had everything: clowns, elephants, tigers, nagins, a ‘Well of
Death’ and black magic. The Jamara Khola riverside was completely
covered by its tents: red, blue, yellow and speckled, looking like colourful
mountains. Long microphones had been tied to every sal tree to advertise
the circus. They screeched out in Hindi all day: ‘Come sirs, come and enjoy
the circus! Shriram Circus in your town of Katasé!’
 ‘How long is it going to go on making that noise, the useless thing?’
Mother exclaimed irritably.
To the shrieking of the mics was added the sound of people’s voices as
they span around on the ferris wheel. As it swooped downwards, all of the
people on it screamed out loud. The circus came from Tinkuniya and stayed
in Katasé for about a month. It showed off its black magic, then it vanished,
as if by a shaman’s spell.
Signboards bearing the legend ‘Shriram Circus’ were hung up
everywhere. While the circus came to the upper bazaar, all that could be
seen in the lower bazaar was bits of discarded plastic blowing about in the
wind. All of the people stayed up at the top end of the town. In the second
alley, there were some haterus boiling their ghee, but even they were
impatient for the ghee to boil so that they could get away to watch the
circus. It was just like Teej festival, when crowds of well-dressed people
came from every village to scream as they rode the ferris wheel. Ekraj,
Ramesh and I spent the whole day sucking cold ices and peering in through
the gaps in the tents. There was no question of us having enough money to
go inside to watch.
Ramesh sneaked in, but he fainted with fear as he watched the black
magic.
‘They cut his head clean off!’ he told us three days later. When the
magician cut off the head of a prostrate man, Ramesh collapsed on the spot,
foaming at the mouth and grinding his teeth.
‘Take that boy outside,’ the magician cried in Hindi, as he displayed the
bloody head inside a square box for everyone to see. ‘Otherwise my spell
will be broken.’ Later, Ramesh told us, shaking his locks, ‘The cut-off head
had its tongue sticking out.’
One day, Ekraj ran inside one of the tents. When he came out, he told us,
‘There’s a Nagin in there, my friends!’ It had the body of a snake below the
neck and the head of a girl above, and rice offerings had been set beside it.
Its tail was waving too. Ekraj had heard that you shouldn’t tease a Nagin, or
she would bite you. But the wretch hardly had the nerve to tease it, in any
event. The girl’s face was bright yellow, he said, and her eyes were dry.
When I heard this, I really wanted to watch the circus show.
One day, as Father examined a patient’s chest with his stethoscope, I
stood beside him, hesitating. Father peered at me over the rim of his
powerful spectacles. I was breathing fast, and I swallowed hard.
‘Ba, give me ten rupees,’ I said.
‘Why do you need ten rupees?’
‘I want to watch the circus.’
‘Have you done your studies?
‘Yes, I have.’
Father pulled a 10-rupee note from his inner pocket and tossed it in my
direction. I picked it right up. As I made to hurry off, I heard Father’s voice,
‘Hey, listen now!’
I stopped dead.
Father was happy, it seemed. He showed his front teeth, like
ploughshares, and winked both of his eyes. ‘Don’t tell Mother,’ he said.
There is no one in this world as loving as my father.
I rushed straight to Chauraha, thinking: I can get two tickets, I’ll take
Ekraj with me too.
‘Hey, Tharu, wait!’ Sister’s voice twisted itself round my feet like a door-
chain. I stopped so suddenly I nearly fell on to my chin.
Sister and Baatu were standing there, holding bundles of wet laundry. If I
ran away with my right hand thrust into my pocket, Sister would
immediately know that I had some money on me today.
‘What’s the matter?’ I snapped.
‘Wait! Where did you get that money from?’ Sister pointed her finger.
‘I’ll tell.’
‘Say that Father gave it to me.’
‘And where are you off to?’
‘To watch the circus.’
‘You’re like a circus clown yourself.’
Sister turned sharply away and I looked at Baatu. Small drops of water
were dripping from her loose hair and the breast of her spotted maxi dress
was soaking wet. Small grains of sand glistened above her eyebrows.
My eyes met hers and she smiled. Without letting Sister see it, she
opened her mouth wide, then slowly closed it, pursing her lips. She was
teasing me, mouthing the word ‘Tharu’.
‘And you’re a Tharuni,’ I said, and ran away fast.
‘What did you say?’ I heard Sister’s voice, loud behind me.

‘Show me your ticket!’ barked the guard at the gate.

The guard was tall with a thick beard. He was standing beneath a photo
of a short red-nosed clown.
Ekraj had bought tickets with the money I had given him. With great
style, he held the ticket out for the guard to see, holding it between his
middle and index fingers. The guard snatched it from his hand and tore it in
half. He kept one half and gave back the other.
Then he opened the way in which he had been blocking with his left leg.
We had only just begun to make our way inside when he warned us bad-
temperedly in Hindi, ‘Go straight in and come straight out. Don’t sneak
about inside.’
Inside, an elephant was walking along a narrrow plank and clowns were
running here and there. A moment later, one of them threw a knife at a girl
who was standing blindfolded a hundred metres away.
I was thrilled. Ekraj poked me gently.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
He winked and put his mouth close to my ear. ‘Let’s go and see the Well
of Death.’
‘We don’t have enough money,’ I hesitated.
‘We’ll sneak in, idiot.’ Ekraj pulled at my arm.
Ekraj ran through the crowd, bent over, craning his neck like an egret. I
too followed like an egret, but full of fear.
Ekraj made me run through the inside of a tent to reach the Well of
Death.
The Well of Death was about 10 metres high. At its top there was a
balcony with ten or twelve people standing on it. The lower part of the Well
was shaking, making the red ants that had been climbing up its walls fall
down. We climbed up the wooden ladder.
At the bottom of the Well, a bhatbhaté was kicking out a cloud of black
smoke. A driver wearing a steel hat was twisting its ears. He looked up, his
face hidden by a black glass visor.
Like a hungry bull tied to a peg, the bhatbhaté began to run in circles:
fast, then faster, then very fast indeed. Like a bull that has broken loose, the
bhatbhaté was blind with fury, and it circled the walls as fast as the wind. I
began to count its circuits—one circuit, two circuits, three, four, five, six
circuits. Lau, I began to feel queasy and my head span. The bhatbhaté I saw
in the near corner suddenly reached the far corner, then the one I saw in the
far corner was suddenly in the near corner.
The balcony started to topple and I gripped hold of its wooden edge very
tightly. The bhatbhaté began to swim upwards, higher and higher, like a
glass filling with water. What would happen if it slipped and fell? What if
the driver landed on his head?
I was terrified.
Having come up so high, the bhatbhaté suddenly went back down again,
leaving us with a face full of smoke that stank of petrol. It reached the
ground and the Well filled with a cloud of smoke. It made a loud noise—
ghyaar ghyaar—and then it fell silent.
Slowly, the smoke thinned. The driver left the bhatbhaté where it was
and walked out, waving his hand.
Ekraj regained his senses and laughed, his face reddening.
‘He’s a Tharu from Pahalmanpur,’ a middle-aged man told us, scratching
his beard. ‘Now he’s become quite a driver.’
A Tharu from Pahalmanpur?
I hurried back down. ‘Wait for me!’ said Ekraj.
The driver was washing his face. He shook out his long brown hair and
sprinkled water on it. He wore pointed black shoes and blue jeans with
black marks on them in places. When he moved his arms, his black jacket
made a creaking sound. He wiped his face with a dirty printed towel. He
had a wheatish complexion, with a flat nose and just a few whiskers. His
eyes were small but bright.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked us haughtily. I lowered my head and
walked away. Ekraj came after me, saying, ‘That dhoti-wearer insulted us.
Shall I take a chain to him?’
I did not reply. I had to go and tell Baatu about him. ‘Baatu,’ I would say,
‘I’ve seen your Tharu. He’s come from Tinkuniya on a motorbike to fetch
you away.’

But I wasn’t able to tell Baatu anything.

I had hardly reached the Medikal when I saw a crowd of people
approaching it from the other direction. I ran towards it.
Father was sitting there playing his ektaaré and he was startled when he
saw a noisy crowd approaching. Four youths were carrying an injured man
like a log, with half of the bazaar coming along behind them.
The Medikal filled up with the crowd, and the youths laid the man down
on the bed inside.
‘What’s happened to him?’ Father asked them.
‘He fell out of a tree,’ one of them told him. ‘We found him there and
brought him here.’
‘His back’s broken,’ another said.
‘He doesn’t have a single tooth in his mouth,’ another added. ‘He went to
collect honey on his own, the bees have stung him all over.’
‘The other doctors refused to even look at him.’ The first youth was
mopping his sweat.
The injured man’s right earlobe was caked with dried blood and his face
was covered in red blisters. Father was perplexed. He told the youths, ‘He
has to be taken to Nepalganj. We don’t have the equipment here. Someone
should send word to his home. I’ll help as much as I can.’
The crowd applauded.
Hurriedly, Father set up a saline drip. Mother ground up two tablets of
Bruset, then she used a spoon to prise open his teeth, which were clenched
shut, and pushed the Bruset into his mouth. She had dripped a few drops of
water in too, she said.
Gradually, the crowd thinned away. It was already half past nine in the
evening. So far, Sister had not come downstairs; she had just descended to
the bottom rung of the ladder, then gone back up, looking tired.
The Bruset worked, and the man’s feeble cries of pain ceased. Father’s
sweat cooled too and disappeared from his face. The man’s agitation eased
and his chest began to rise and fall slowly.
‘Why are you still fidgeting about?’ Mother spoke quietly to me. ‘Go, eat
your rice and go to bed.’
Mother sat down on the chair, weary and worried, wiping her face with
the end of her dhoti from time to time.
I climbed upstairs.
Baatu was also wilting from going up and down to look at the injured
man’s face. The fire had gone out in the fireplace and only the cinders
remained. One or two of them glowed for a moment, then went out. Sitting
on a pirka, Baatu served me some warm rice.
The cat came quickly out of the west corner of the house. It must have
been hiding there, afraid of the crowd in the Medikal, but now it came and
sat quietly beside me. Once my stomach was full of rice, I pushed my dirty
plate away. As I got up, my eyes met Baatu’s. I couldn’t decide what to do.
I could not say—Baatu, I’ve seen your Tharu.
Sister was already fast asleep. I lay down on my bed, and the cat came
and attached itself to my chest. But then, a loud rumbling noise make the
cat jump to its feet and leap down from the bed. My eyes were heavy with
sleep; they opened and then closed again. My eyes were burning. When I
had wiped away the saliva that had run out of the corner of my mouth to
plaster my cheeks, I looked over at Baatu’s bed. But Baatu was not there.
Perhaps because it was the middle of the night, the quiet sound of
indistinct voices was coming up from below. I pricked up my ears to listen
and thought I heard the sound of someone sobbing downstairs.
What had happened now?
 The cat reached the ladder and leapt right down from the top rung to the
bottom. I went down to find some people talking in hushed tones outside
the Medikal. It was difficult to recognize their faces in the pale light of the
moon—it was a sickle moon that was moving west across the tail of the sky.
Dodging the people who were sitting there on their heels, I crept inside.
Mother was standing in the corner with a stethoscope in her hand, and
beside her stood Baatu holding some water in a pot. Father stood at the head
of the bed.
A woman was sobbing at the patient’s feet, covering her head with the
end of her sari. From time to time, she blew her nose loudly. She looked
exhausted from her weeping, and the sound she made was like water
dripping from the eaves after a downpour of rain has come to an end.
The patient was absolutely still. He had been covered with a sheet. The
saline tube curled up to enter the bottle, but the bottle was only half empty.
I looked at Baatu. She understood the expression on my face and turned
her eyes up towards the ceiling. I understood what she was telling me: he
had died.
Drops of dew had begun to fall from the sky. The dew fell like this at
dawn, wetting the tiles, so the sleep one enjoyed at dawn was very sweet.
As the eastern sky brightened, the darkness was dispelled.
Before the sun could reach Katasé, a bullock cart arrived with three men
on it. Behind it there came a fourth boy on a bicycle.
The bullocks came to a halt in front of the Medikal and the men sitting on
the cart raised themselves on both arms and walked unsteadily inside. Some
of the people sitting outside jumped up to welcome the new arrivals. One of
them spoke quietly to Father for a moment, while the others stood beside
the weeping woman in silence.
In the end, they had to take the body away, of course. The four of them
lifted the corpse with great effort. Why was a dead man so heavy? The
weeping woman got up and sat dejectedly at the feet of the corpse, which
now lay on its back in the cart. She wept, with the end of her sari covering
her face.
 The old man was greying at the temples. His eyes were as red as if he had
been crying for years. I gathered that he was the injured man’s father. He
pulled a bag wrapped in plastic from the inner pocket of his waistcoat and
began to untie it.
Exhausted through lack of sleep, and upset by the death of his patient,
Father indicated that there was nothing to pay. The old man wasn’t sure
what to do for a moment, but then he put the little bundle back into his
pocket.
‘I did what I could,’ Father told the old man quietly when it was time for
the cart to leave.
The old man did not reply. He just seemed to offer Father a namaste with
his limp hands.
The cart set off, swaying from side to side and filled with silence. Those
who had attended took up behind it. The cart turned at the second alley and
disappeared behind Paras Sunar’s gold shop.
Father stood there, his back straight, watching it go. He gazed for a long
time in the direction in which it had gone. Then he became restless, not
knowing whether to sit or stand, where to go or what to do. His eyes were
heavy with sleep.
‘Go and lie down,’ Mother told him, looking outside. ‘You did what you
could. Don’t think about it too much.’
Father climbed the ladder to the upper floor in silence.
Baatu wrapped the sleeping mat in a sheet and brought it outside. Then
she plastered the floor with fresh cow dung. Mother touched a pot of water
to the gold in her ear and sprinkled it all over the Medikal.

***

At last, it had come to pass. The thing we had always feared.

The rumour spread throughout Katasé Bazaar—Doctor Harsha Bahadur
had killed another patient. Father heard the rumour too.
‘The wounded man was fine. He died because of the wrong antibiotic.’
The other Medikalwallas were spreading this rumour too. It seemed to me
that such petty things would not touch Father, but the very night he heard
the rumour, Father’s head began to ache. Mother put wet bandages on his
forehead continually for two days.
Father looked sad and hopeless for several months.
After that, Father, who was always to be seen in the Medikal, began to
disappear to who knows where. He would place a thermometer under a
patient’s arm, then disappear before it was time to take it out. When Mother
found out, she would pull the thermometer out and move about the Medikal
fuming with anger. If she saw me, she would exclaim, ‘Go and find your
father, he might have died somewhere!’
Patients huddled around the Medikal all day, sighing long and loud. They
waited for Father, turning and craning their necks like egrets. If they had to
wait, they were prepared to wait all day; they wouldn’t even look at another
Medikal. ‘There’s no other doctor like this one,’ they would say.
But where oh where was Father, neglecting such patients?
I wandered the alleys looking for Father every day, like a piece of plastic
blown around by the wind. One day, I found him sitting with his legs
crossed one over the other, chatting in the tea shop by the Chauraha pipal
tree. At the teashop, there was a gang consisting of the bank manager
dressed up in shirt, trousers, coat and scarf, the ASI from the police post,
with his yellow tika from his forehead to his nose, and Bishta Budha, his
eyes dimmed by old age.
The teashop sauji was not going to be outdone by them and he sat there
dressed smartly in his daura-suruwal. He had sneaked into Katasé and now
he was proud to say that he sold 200 cups of tea a day.
‘I’ve bought a she-goat for you sir,’ the sauji would gossip to a customer.
‘Yesterday, she had four kids for you sir.’
‘Are the kids mine or the goat’s?’ one customer or another would joke,
red-faced.
Because he always added hajurko, ‘for you sir’ to everything he said, he
had already been dubbed ‘Hajurko Sauji’. One day, a signboard was hung
over his shop:
Hajurko Teashop.
 Often, when I reached the teashop to call Father home, tea and pauroti
would be forthcoming. ‘Will you drink some tea?’ Father would ask me.
I would just stand there in silence.
‘Give him some tea,’ Father would say.
As I was eating my bread and drinking my tea, Bishta Budha came back
from his circuit of the town, grumbling, ‘That Rathour has really played a
trick.’
And then he turned to the bank manager and asked him, ‘Will the bank
move to Lamki just on his say so?’
Rathour’s home was in Lamki. They said he had several bighas of land
there. It was said that he was always telling the Katasé saujis, ‘Come to
Lamki, there’s going to be a big bazaar there.’ That was why Bishta Budha
always poured abuse on him. But the bank manager would not say anything
on the matter, he just sat there tight-lipped. Bishta Budha’s hand trembled
as it gripped the handle of his stick, ‘Doesn’t this Katasé need a bank?’
‘It does need one for you sir,’ the sauji added his voice to the chorus.
‘There’s so much money in this bazaar for you sir’.
Father chuckled, toying with the glass of tea in his hand.
As we walked back, I would go ahead and Father would follow behind.
The people we met on the way would offer Father a namaste, but Father
was not sufficiently aware of this to return their greetings. He just moved
his lips silently.
When Father arrived at the Medikal, Mother would shout at him, ‘So
much grief you have given us!’
Father pretended not to hear her. He would just feel the patients’
foreheads without speaking. After this, Mother would be quiet.
And it wasn’t only during the daytime that he would disappear; Father
also began to vanish at night. Sometimes, patients would come at night and
it would be my duty to search for Father.
While Father could be found at the teashop in the daytime, at night time
he would be at the Kali temple next to the police post. I would have much
preferred it if I hadn’t had to go looking for him at night, because to get to
the temple, I had to go via the path that also led to the cremation ghat. I
didn’t walk along that path, I ran. Ordinarily, only one or two of the bazaar
people visited this temple. But on Ghatasthapana, the first day of Dasai
festival, a big crowd would gather there, because on that day the police
fired their guns, led a black goat around the bazaar and sacrificed it at the
shrine. At other times, the police hung their vests and shorts out to dry on
the barbed wire that surrounded the temple. When I saw the big idol inside
the temple, of Kali with her tongue sticking out, it scared me.
And the pujari was even more frightening than the idol, with his hair
hanging in long locks, his beard and moustache, and his fearsome eyes
shining out from beneath the red tika that was daubed all over his forehead.
The jogi had come from India five months earlier to live in Katasé. He told
people, ‘The Goddess told me in a dream to come and live here.’
I had heard frightening things—that such jogis rendered children
unconscious and sent them to India to be sacrificed. Sometimes, I felt very
angry with Father: why did he have to consort with such a person?
When I entered the yogi’s hut, he would ask me in Hindi from behind a
cloud of smoke, ‘Child, will you eat some prasad?’
‘No.’ It seemed likely to me that it would have something mixed into it.
Father was always annoyed as soon as he saw me. ‘What are you doing
here?’ he would ask.
‘Mother’s calling you.’
And Father would meekly follow me home.
One day, I told Mother, ‘I won’t go there anymore. It’s frightening.’
Then, one day, Father brought a rudraksha rosary and hung it up in the
western corner of the Medikal. At first, Mother laughed at it. But then,
when Father wasn’t there, she told me, ‘I’ve no idea why your father has
got it into his mind that he wants to become a jogi.’
Father had caught the wandering disease. Once, I wondered all night—
why wasn’t Father at ease these days? I never saw him laugh any more.
One day, Saddam arrived as dusk was falling and saluted Father. I was at
the top of the ladder, and he jumped up as if he was trying to touch me and
made me laugh.
‘How are you sir?’ He sat down on a stool next to Father.
 ‘I am fine.’
‘I’ve heard that you’ve started being a jogi,’ Saddam laughed and
plastered back his hair.
‘The Baba talks about dharma and karma,’ Father smiled. ‘My mind is
not under my control. When I meet him, I feel happy. That’s why I go
there.’
Saddam nodded his head.
The silence spread for a moment, then Father asked him, ‘How is your
Medikal going?’
‘I can hardly say it’s going well.’ Saddam crossed his legs. ‘The other
Medikalwallas are demons. You and I should stick together. The whole
bazaar is like that. People are not educated. They walk about with their
trousers held up by selfishness. Sometimes I get really fed up. I left the
whole of Nepal behind to come to such a place.’
‘It’s all a game of fate,’ said Father.
I descended the ladder and reached Saddam’s side. He turned his head to
look back at me and reached back over his shoulder to give me his hand,
saying, ‘La, do me the good.’
I took his hand shyly.
‘Go and say we want tea,’ said Father.
I ran up the ladder.
Baatu made some tea and I brought it to them. Father and Saddam
stopped talking about whatever it was they were talking about. Saddam
thought for a while, toying with the glass in his hand, and said, ‘A bazaar
like this won’t have a long lifespan. I’m a wandering jogi, I’ll go
somewhere else. With a water pot in one hand, ash on my brow, bam bhole,
hahaha!’
Father mixed his smile into Saddam’s laughter.
‘The other day, the other Medikalwallas came to me, saying that we
should bring a case against you sir.’ Saddam became serious. ‘They ran
away when I waved my fist at them.’
Father sat pondering this.
 Saddam looked at Father more seriously and said, ‘I told them—“You are
not God and neither is Harsha Bahadur. Do you think I don’t know that you
knew that man was going to die when you sent him to Harsha Bahadur?”
They conspire against you.’
‘That’s why I sometimes wonder why I came into this profession.’ Father
put his glass of tea down on the ground. ‘I think I may do something else,
but nothing else will come.’
Saddam put his glass down too.
‘Don’t worry. For as long as I am here, you need not concern yourself.’
Saddam stood up. ‘If you quit the Medikal, to whom would I run for my
medicines? Hahaha!’
Father also got up, putting on a brighter expression.
‘And why don’t you ever come to mine?’ Saddam asked me, winking his
right eye. Then, turning to Father, he said, ‘OK, good evening sir. The
people of this bazaar named me Saddam, so I have to maintain Saddam’s
honour. Let’s see if anyone can hatch conspiracies while I’m here!’
‘What’s your real name?’ the question slipped straight out of my mouth.
‘Good question,’ Saddam said, laughing. ‘It’s Birsingh Dhami.’
‘Dhami?’
‘Yes, Dhami, hurr hurr hurr!’ Saddam leaped about like a shaman for a
moment, with his stomach wobbling and his hair falling down into his face.
Then he left, plastering his hair back again with both hands. When he had
gone a little way, he started whistling.
‘Why are you grinning like that?’ Mother asked Father. She had just
come back from the bazaar and was surprised.
‘Saddam’s just left,’ Father scratched the stubble on his chin.
‘He’s surprising,’ Mother laughed. ‘Absolutely amazing! The other day,
he bet someone that he could drink 2 litres of milk. Then he went all round
the bazaar vomiting.’
Mother picked up the glasses and headed for the ladder. Father sat there
and thought for a moment longer. Then he smiled to himself again.
OceanofPDF.com
 THE SIXTH DAY

When she returned from taking a bath in the stinking hospital bathroom, a
little of the weariness and fatigue on Mother’s face had been washed away.
Water dripped from her thin loosened hair. She went out onto the veranda
with some washed clothes over her arm and spread them out along a tightly
stretched length of string. For a moment, she stared absentmindedly at the
vehicles running along the Mahendra Rajmarg a short distance away. I also
stared absentmindedly in the same direction. These days, we both had the
disease of staring absentmindedly.
‘Go on, you take a bath as well,’ said Mother, coming inside. ‘You smell
really bad.’
I went off to the bathroom with shirt, trousers and towel over my
shoulder. When you saw the bathroom, you knew that this was a
government hospital. The bathroom stank terribly. People had even pissed
in the place where you took your shower. Mother had left shampoo and
soap in a small niche in the wall. I stood like a tree under the jet of water.
The water ran off my body and down through a hole in the corner. It washed
away my fatigue and drowsiness and the restlessness of my body, and wet
the ends of my dishevelled hair. The palms of my hands and the soles of my
feet, which had been burning up through lack of sleep, became cool. I was
like a kakakul bird, which may drink only raindrops, flying up in agitation. I
wanted a thorough soaking.
 Dhyaak-dhyaak—someone banged on the door.
‘Who is it?’ I asked.
No answer came, and I heard somebody walking away. Hurriedly, I put
on my jeans and T-shirt. I made a pretence of washing my dirty trousers and
shirt. My body felt lighter as I came out. When I went back in through the
door, I noticed an old man lying on his face to one side. There was a worn-
out old coat on his body and his breathing sounded like the flow of a deep
river. He hadn’t been there when I went into the bathroom. Perhaps he had
only recently come. He was sleeping on his side on bed number 3, next to
the door. In the hospital, you never knew who was sleeping and who was in
a coma.
I passed the old man and reached the veranda, where I spread out my wet
clothes beside Mother’s. For a moment, I peered out at Kohalpur, which
spread far into the distance. Far away, I saw patches of green in the broad
fields. They would be erased later and replaced by cement, like patches of
itchy dry skin.
‘Hey hey hey!’ screamed Chotku, and I was startled. A sleeping boy
screamed and Nurse Suruchi came running. I ran inside too.
Chotku was struggling like a fish tangled up in a net. He would rear up
suddenly, then fall back down. His mother was weeping beside him. Three
people who had come to attend to him were grasping him hard by the
shoulders.
Father also became restless, and the saline tube tightened. I caught hold
of his hand and held it tightly, afraid that the blood would move up the tube
again.
Mother placed her hand on his forehead, saying, ‘Lie down, lie down.’
‘He makes such a noise,’ Father grimaced. ‘It really frightens me.’
Dr Nandan came running in and turned towards Chotku’s bed. The boy
beside him went to sleep, hiccoughing quietly.
Chotku was never still all day long. I went to his bedside once, but came
back feeling scared. He had lifted himself right up, clutching his flanks. His
teeth were clenched and his eyes were grey. His body had turned as yellow
as a leaf.
 That evening, a doctor had some blood brought for him, because his
blood level was too low. An old Tharu brought it in. Two pints of blood
were hung up on the saline stand. The doctor attached a tube to his right
wrist and the blood began to drip into his vein. One of the carers stole a
glance at us, then untied the handkerchief that was wrapped around his head
and draped it over the packet of blood to conceal it.

‘Go and get some juice,’ said Mother.

I had fallen asleep on the chair and I was startled.
‘Give me some money.’ I forced myself to get up, and my knee joints
cracked.
Mother untied her waistband and took out a note. I saw that the wad of
notes had dwindled because of Father’s additional medicines.
Mother gave me a 100-rupee note and counted the rest of the money.
‘How much is there?’ I asked.
‘Eleven thousand three hundred.’
‘What’s the matter, is there no money left?’ Father asked. ‘How many
more days do I have to stay here?’
‘I should have brought a bit more. I wasn’t thinking straight, I just
brought what I found. The other saujis told me to take lots of money with
me.’
‘The pain below my waist has gone now. I think I will be better soon.’
Father closed his eyes. ‘I treated so many people for free when I had my
own Medikal, the merit I gained from that will work for me now.’
‘All right, don’t think too much about it.’ Mother wore a dispirited
expression.
As I was bringing in some apple juice in a mineral-water bottle, the gate
watchman was drinking kat tea from the teacart to the side. I didn’t want to
find myself in front of him. He was an idiot, and he talked all sorts of
rubbish. He was always trying to get closer to me. Once he told me, ‘Your
face is exactly like my younger brother’s, you have a dimple in your right
cheek when you laugh.’
 His younger brother worked as a ticket-seller on a local bus between
Butwal and Narayangadh, he said. If he told him to come home, he said, he
would reply that he would come when he had earned some money. Rubbing
some chewing tobacco in his hand, he told me, ‘Whenever I see you, I think
of my younger brother.’
Why the hell should I care?
So, I was walking along trying not to be seen, but he spotted me and
shouted, ‘Hey bhai, come and have tea on your way!’
‘I’ve just had some,’ I hurried on.
‘How’s your father?’ He caught up with me.
‘He’s better,’ I said shortly, and ran inside.
There was a big crowd of sweating people in the doorway of the
emergency ward. Another bomb had exploded in Dang: some kids had been
playing with it, thinking that it was a ball. One had died right there, and one
had reached the hospital but didn’t seem likely to survive. As I entered the
crowd, I heard someone say, ‘His right hand was hanging off like a leaf.
The bomb turned his face into a sieve.’
If I see blood, I feel faint, so I ran on up the stairs. The old man beside
the door had turned onto his other side.
‘What have you brought?’ Father asked. Mother had raised the upper
section of the bed a little.
‘Apple juice.’
‘Oh, if only I could taste it!’ Father said. But then he flashed Mother a
smile. ‘But if I don’t have any, you’ll scold me, so feed me as much as you
like.’
Seeing Father cheerful made me feel better. Mother wet his dry mouth
with a spoonful of juice and Father licked his lips, savouring it. ‘It tastes
good,’ he said, ‘Give me some more.’

***

‘Some more daal,’ said Father, pushing his bowl towards Baatu.
Baatu gave him two ladles full.
 After a long time, the opportunity had come to eat together with Father
again, because he had given up wandering about the bazaar at night. We
were all huddled around the fireplace. Mother glanced at Father from time
to time.
Suddenly, Sister pointed at me and said, ‘Mother, do you know who he
can’t live without?’
I was puzzled.
Mother laughed and said, ‘Who? Tell me!’
‘Sharmila. That’s what he wrote in the letter.’
I blushed red with shame. Even Father smiled at what Sister had said.
‘Goofy!’ I said to Sister, furiously. This is what I called her when I was
angry with her.
‘Who are you calling goofy?’ Father snapped.
‘The one with the goofy teeth, who else?’
Father’s face reddened, and it looked even redder by the light of the
lantern. Baatu turned away and giggled and Sister couldn’t think what to
say.
‘This one just says the first thing that comes into his head,’ said Mother,
looking at Father, wide-eyed with surprise.
Father ate his meal in silence.
But I couldn’t sleep all night after that; I felt sore at heart. Father’s teeth
stuck out and I must have hurt his feelings. It was a mistake, Ba. I didn’t
realize, I didn’t mean it.
One week later, Father was preparing to go to Nepalganj. He made a list
of the medicines he had run out of. Lists of other things for the house were
also prepared. As he got ready to leave in the early morning, Mother,
standing beside him, said, ‘Bring him some Julie shoes; he has his heart set
on them.’
And it was true that I had had no peace of mind since I had seen some
speckled Julie shoes in red, blue and green in Katasé. In my dreams, I
marched round and round the bazaar in my Julie shoes.
‘Come here now,’ Father called me.
 I went meekly up to him, splashing about inside like a water pitcher filled
with hope. Standing in front of my father, I bowed my head. In his hands,
there was a piece of string.
‘Undo your sandals!’ he told me.
I pulled my feet out of my sandals and he bent down at my feet. Hey, the
hairs on his topknot had turned grey! Father measured my feet, with their
overgrown nails and dirty ankles, from the heel to the big toe. So that he
wouldn’t forget the length, he snipped off the rest of the string with scissors,
muttering, ‘The ass, he doesn’t even wash his feet, this one!’
Once Father had screwed the string up into a ball and put it into the top
pocket of his waistcoat, Mother shoved me by the shoulder and said, ‘Go
and wash your feet.’
When I returned from washing my feet, Father was already on his way.
We watched him go for a moment, but he didn’t turn around.
Six days later, Father returned from Nepalganj, bringing Mother a sari
and Baatu and Sister printed maxis. And two pairs of Julie shoes for me.
Father took them out of a big carton and threw them in front of me. My
heart toppled about like a banana leaf: should I put on this pair first or that
pair?
I looked at Father with eyes of joy. He looked at me and smiled. What a
neat smile he had! I had never seen him smile with such delight.
That evening, Father had difficulty swallowing his food.
Mother told him, ‘Take out your teeth to eat, na?’
‘Let it be. The teeth move about. It’s difficult at first. But afterwards you
get used to it.’
I looked at Mother, uncomprehending.
‘You called him goofy,’ said Mother. ‘Now you see, he’s come back with
two different front teeth.’
I looked at Father shyly and he winked at me and laughed.
The next day, Father was standing on a stool knocking in a nail over the
head of the doorway. I was about to get onto my bicycle to go to school, but
I stopped for a moment. Father got down. He had had a new photo taken.
Now this new photo hung over the door, rectangular like a blackboard.
Father was smiling in the photo and his teeth didn’t stick out any more.
Now his smile was really neat. Pleased, I sat down on my saddle.
No one in this world has a smile like my father’s.

***

Saddam has eaten one and a half kilos of jeris!

Saddam has drunk two and a half litres of raw milk!
After this kind of talk began to be heard in Katasé, Saddam stopped
coming to our Medikal. I had seen Father at Saddam’s Medikal several
times, but he had also given up going there several weeks ago.
Saddam’s belly was growing bigger all the time. An over-inflated balloon
will burst, but Saddam’s didn’t! Why had he become so lazy? I wondered.
He had begun to gather up the hair that grew down the back of his neck and
twist it into a bun. He didn’t have the sense to get it cut at Pankaj Barber’s
shop next door. His hairline was full of scurf; if he touched it, it would all
fall down—bururu. Dark rings had spread themselves around his eyes,
which looked like an eclipse of the moon. And how long could it have been
since he last polished his black leather shoes? The mud of the night before
was still there drying on their soles the next morning. And if he bumped
into someone on the road, he had even given up saying ‘sorry’.
I had no idea what had happened to Saddam. He wandered round and
around Katasé madly, like Shiva in the Swasthani story. Sometimes, I
noticed bits of dal caught in his moustache. In his Medikal, there were more
raksi bottles in the inner room now than there were medicine packages
outside. The majesty of the ‘English doctor’ was peeling away from
Saddam’s body like bark from a tree.
People joked that the English doctor couldn’t digest money, just as a dog
cannot digest ghee.
And then the downpour of patients in his Medikal reduced to just the
occasional scattered shower. The rumour that he had ground up some coal
and given it to a patient, pretending that it was medicine, had spread all the
way to Pahadipur.
 In the second week of Pus, Katasé hung up a mosquito net of fog and was
numb with cold. It was so cold that blood stopped flowing and froze in the
veins. But there was a special pleasure in staying bundled up inside a quilt
throughout the winter day. No need to go to school either.
After the cold weather began, Father spent the whole morning dozing by
the fireplace with his chin in the air. He would sit there lost in thought with
his eyes shut tight. In the afternoon, when there were no patients, he would
wrap himself in a blanket and bury his head in a book. From time to time,
he would think of something and chuckle to himself.
The fog had blocked out the sunshine. Would this whole day go by
without us seeing the sun at all? When you walked about, the cold of the
bazaar’s alleyways crept up from the soles of your feet to tingle in your
head. And where would you go in such spine-numbing cold?
Ramesh came running and found me on the ladder. He brushed back a
lock of hair that had fallen into his face. I went down and he told me
urgently, ‘Saddam has taken a bet, let’s go!’
‘Where to?
‘Amauri Khola!’ and he ran off.
I glanced into the Medikal and did not see Father there. I pushed the
bicycle a short distance, then I jumped onto it. After I’d gone a little further,
Ramesh jumped on behind.
The fog had spread over the Amauri Khola like rising steam, but the
crowd of people on the bridge were oblivious to the long lines of snot
dangling from their noses. Now and again, they looked at one another and
exchanged grins, and as they breathed, their breath hit each other’s faces
like smoke. They all stood there with their numbed hands thrust into their
armpits and their teeth chattering. Ramesh and I joined the crowd and our
breath began to fly up like smoke as well.
At the bridge, I heard that Saddam had been boasting in the teashop. ‘I
can tie a ten-kilo rock around my neck and stay under water for fifteen
minutes,’ he had said.
‘Don’t bother with the rock,’ Radio Chaudhari had replied excitedly,
‘Just submerge yourself and show us!’
 So, Saddam had promised to show us today that he could stay under
water for fifteen minutes.
Looking down from the bridge, I saw Radio Chaudhari, sitting on his
heels.
And Saddam?
He was completely submerged in the water. The top of his head was
floating there like the hairy bark of a coconut. The water was still, but
bubbles of water were rising to the surface next to his head. Chaudhari was
staring fixedly at the watch on his arm. Sometimes he stood up, sometimes
he sat down.
Suddenly, it was as if a bomb had exploded in the still water. Saddam
leapt up from beneath the surface as if he would collide with the sky. His
face was all screwed up and his hair hung down to his moustache. He ran
for the bank as if a crocodile was pursuing him. Jyaa, he was only wearing
Hanuman shorts.
Saddam flung himself down on the sandy bank like a log washed up by a
flood. His eyes were shut, and his breath rasped in his throat. His belly was
a pair of bellows: it blew, then shrank, then blew. After he had listened to
Saddam’s breath rushing more loudly than the river for a moment,
Chaudhari announced, ‘Seven minutes!’
Had Saddam lost the bet?
Sounding like an asthmatic, Saddam shouted, ‘If there is another real
man here, let him stay under for seven minutes!’
But Chaudhari had won the bet. Saddam’s lips trembled, blue with cold,
and his legs went on shaking like the legs of a leaping horse.

Saddam was in his Medikal. I had just got home from school and had come
out to walk around the bazaar.
‘How are you, Doctor Saap?’ he jumped to his feet and asked me as soon
as I entered.
‘Fine.’
The empty medicine packets that lined Saddam’s Medikal were covered
in a thick layer of dust. If you touched one, your finger left a mark on it.
 Saddam seemed rather tired and fed up.
‘So, Doctor Saap,’ he asked me, sitting down in his chair, ‘How are your
studies going?’
Does anyone fail an examination once they have learned the art of
writing a cheat sheet in tiny letters, and then folding it up and looking at it
in the palm of their hand? ‘They’re going very well,’ I told him.
‘I also studied hard when I was your age. I never failed. First! I always
came first!’
He never failed, he said. Was he kidding me?
‘It was because I got so clever that I wasn’t able to study beyond class
ten, hahaha!’
‘So, how is it that you know English?’
‘You just have to drink a peg or two, then you know everything.’ He
laughed, showing me the black gaps between his teeth. Then he stroked his
moustache and told me, ‘A white woman came to Dodhar, she’s the one
who taught me.’
By ‘white woman’ he meant an Amerikan, I understood. Amerikanis like
that came to Katasé sometimes to hand out Jesus books—they’d give them
away for free.
The Amerikani didn’t only teach him to say ‘Good Morning’, ‘Good
Afternoon’, ‘Good Evening’ and ‘How Are You’ in Dodhar; she had also
taught him how to put his lips to her eyes, lips and forehead. ‘I was good
looking then,’ Saddam told me proudly. ‘She used to call me handsome.’
I laughed.
‘Don’t you believe me?’ he grabbed my right hand.
I didn’t know how to respond.
‘Come, I’ll show you my handsome photo.’
He jumped to his feet, pushed the dirty door curtain to one side and went
in. I followed him. Clearing his way through the medicine packets that were
scattered everywhere across the floor, he reached the bottom rung of the
ladder. I was unsure whether I should go up or not.
‘Come, na!’ he said, standing halfway up. I made my way through the
packages, reached the ladder and climbed up.
 There was only one window upstairs. It was a small window, only big
enough for one head to stick out of it, with a sheet of white plastic nailed
over it. A dim light came in through it. The roof must have leaked a lot in
the rains, because tiny rays of sunlight came in through the chinks and
spilled into the corners.
Saddam’s bed was spread out on the floor. A stinking sleeping mat, a
quilt that was torn in places with the down sticking out, a stained pillow,
bits of paper strewn on the floor beside the bed and a coat and tie hanging
from a nail in the wall. Beside the pillow, there lay a long black bag covered
with dust.
Saddam squatted down beside the bag. It was difficult for him to sit like
this because his thighs were so fat. He opened the bag by pulling its zip. I
also squatted down and peered inside it. Saddam took out two shirts and put
them on the pillow and then some folded papers. He pushed some small
plastic packages to one side inside the bag, then pulled out a black plastic
package and opened it.
‘La, look.’ He looked once at the photo, turning it towards the light that
came in from the window, then handed it to me with a grin. In the black-
and-white photo, a young Saddam was smiling: he had plump cheeks, long
hair, a tie around his neck and sharp eyes. Yes, it was true that Saddam was
handsome!
He handed me another photo. This one was in colour. It showed the
Amerikani squatting on a rock with a walking stick in her hand, a bag on
her back, her hair tied in a plait and blue eyes. She looked as if she was
tired. Her smile was fun too.
‘This is her, the one who taught me English.’ Saddam snatched the photo
from my hand and looked at it again by the window, squinting. He smiled
as he regarded it, biting his bottom lip.
Many years ago, this Amerikani had come to Dodhar with three other
Amerikanes to preach about Jesus. Her bag was full of books. On their
covers was a picture of a man who had been hung up, with nails hammered
into his wrists and feet. They said that if that man with his long beard and
thin body touched a blind man’s forehead, the blind man would be able to
see. He was the Amerikanes’ god, and when he heard this, Saddam was
amazed and thought it was fun. He was at that kind of age, just turning 23,
when such things are great fun.
Saddam was as cunning as a squirrel, and he started going about with
them. He knew the village paths and streams, and they needed someone like
him. The Amerikani was delighted to see Saddam, who knew all the short
cuts and could help them to get about quickly. But she didn’t like seeing
Saddam talking with gestures as if he was deaf and dumb, so she taught him
to recite the ABCD whenever they sat down to rest.
When she found out about it, Saddam’s nineteen-year-old wife went back
to her parents, taking their three-year-old son with her, and never returned.
The son, whom he had taught to say ‘Father, I love you’ in English, never
returned either. How would a small son know the way?
People began to spit at Saddam, saying, ‘He’s been seduced by a white
woman and sold his religion.’ They wouldn’t let him into their kitchens and
he was banned from touching the water at the spring. After all of this,
where could he go?
The Amerikani said she would come back for him, but she never
returned. And so, Saddam quit Dodhar early one morning and never went
back. Where he went after that he did not want to recall. Just in time, he
learned the profession of recognizing medicines and on the strength of that,
he had come to Katasé in his old age.
As he recalled his story, Saddam’s face became gloomy and yellow like
the sun at dusk, and his eyes became wet. After we had gone down the
ladder again, Saddam took hold of both my hands and said, ‘Doctor Saap,
my son would be about your age by now.’

***

It rained heavily in the second week of Asar.

The tiles on the roof cracked even more. The little rivers that began to
run down the alleys washed the bits of plastic, the haterus’ shoes and the
smell of rotten soil all the way to Khairiphanta.
 The Amauri Khola and the Jamara Khola that ran down the two sides of
the bazaar had swollen greatly. The sinful rivers were demolishing their
own banks and taking them away. The corrugated zinc of the Shiva Bidi
Depot rang irritatingly with the sound of the falling rain all day. The sirs
had given us a big pile of homework for the rainy season holiday, but I
never did homework. Sir could slap me or, if he went further, he could turn
a pen round between my fingers—that was all fine with me. It just kept
raining all day, but even so the heat made me sore in all the folds and
crevices of my body. It burned me too from time to time.
Small rivulets of water had begun to fall everywhere: onto quilts and
sleeping mats, onto books and into the fireplace. Faint rain stains had begun
to appear on our bedding. And Mother’s complaints grew louder and louder,
‘See how it leaks? It’s disgusting, like a pissing dog.’
Thundering clouds as big as mountains jostled shoulders with one
another, and sparks flew. Even the day grew dark and at dusk the hail came
down so hard it stripped the leaves from the trees. The rainy season had
never come so crazily before.
What patient would come in such rain? So, Mother had locked the door
of the Medikal by 4 o’clock in the afternoon. And now she was running to
and fro upstairs with a bucket and a pail in her hands. Sister and Baatu were
doing the same. Mother would place a bowl beneath one source of leaking
water and another leak would spring up beside it. When she saw this,
Mother sat down on the cot as if she had become dizzy.
The cat, which had been running about trying to dodge the lines of water
that kept falling on its wet back, was no longer to be seen. Mother would
run over there to stop a leak, then Sister would run to the same place, then
Mother would run over here, and Sister would run to the same place.
‘Go over there. We keep banging into one another!’ Mother shrieked.
The bowl in Sister’s hand fell to the floor. She stamped her feet and sat
down hard on the cot, looking as if she was about to cry. Lau, the pillow
had become very heavy. When Sister noticed that her hand was wet, she
cried out, ‘Even the pillow is soaked!’
‘Dog’s piss,’ Mother stamped her foot. ‘I’ve never found happiness.’
 The rain soaked the walls and began to seep inside. We began to smell
the wet soil in the walls. I really liked the smell of wet soil.
There was no sign of the rain easing off.
In the soft light of the lantern, Baatu cooked black dal and rice. Father,
who had gone out with an umbrella with all its ribs broken, had not returned
even at dusk.
‘Where can he have got to in such rain?’ asked Mother before she
swallowed her first mouthful of food. We kept quiet. The soaking wind that
blew in through the cracks was wetting my neck and arms. I was afraid that
the water would leak onto my steaming plate.
Baatu chose a dry corner to lay out my bed, on the western side of the
house, and I covered myself with a warm dry quilt. As I snuggled up under
the quilt, my eyes immediately became drowsy.
I was scared awake by the sound of lightning striking the sal copse—
chadadada dhyangg! Perhaps one of the trees in the forest had been split
asunder; perhaps the centipede in the tree fork had been killed. I had heard
that lightning always strikes the tree that has a centipede in it. Meanwhile,
my sleep had been interrupted, and the cat was not in my bed.
‘Meow,’ I called, but the cat didn’t leap in from anywhere.
I went to the kitchen, rubbing my sleepy eyes. Mother, Sister and Baatu
were warming their hands on the flickering fire in the fireplace.
‘Where’s the cat?’ I asked.
‘I’ve no idea where it’s gone,’ said Mother. She was even angrier than
usual because Father hadn’t come back yet. I was disconsolate, and Mother
told me, ‘Go and sleep, it will probably come back tomorrow.’
I lay there thinking for a long time, bundled up in the quilt—where might
my cat be, soaked to the skin and shivering?
The next day too it went on drizzling all day, but the roof had stopped
leaking. I slept late and, when I came out, I saw Father’s boots beside the
ladder and noticed that the mud on the heels had dried. Well, Father was
home, but what about my cat?
I searched the kitchen and every corner of the house, but I didn’t find it. I
heard a noise coming from the roof—could that be the cat? I climbed up
onto the zinc roof of Shiva Bidi Depot and craned my neck towards the roof
of our house, and there I saw two men, both soaked to the bone. They were
covering over the roof with a thick sheet of green plastic. That was why it
had stopped leaking.
From the top of the ladder I looked up at the sky and saw some even
more frightening black clouds lowering there. If they fell, would the rain
ever cease? These drizzly days were very tiresome—you didn’t even feel
like leaving the house. As you walked along, your sandals threw up mud
that spattered you all the way up to the back of your neck. But if you stayed
at home, your head just throbbed with pain.
Sister was propping her soaking wet books up against the inner wall. The
writing in her exercise book had swollen and its letters had become fat. The
book was all floppy with dampness. Oh, my own books must be the same, I
thought, and I hurried off to look at them. They had grown fat too. The
pages of my exercise book, which had no cover and was filled with
pictures, had turned blue with smudged ink.
I also opened my own book shop on the other wall. But one wall was not
enough. There was only one dry wall left. Was it mine or Sister’s?
‘Go over there, Tharu,’ screamed Sister, shoving me aside with her
shoulder.
‘This wall is mine,’ I challenged her.
‘Throw your useless books in the river.’
So, she’d call my books useless, would she? Right then! I hurled one of
Sister’s books outside. It flew like a bat and landed in the drain, where the
water was running high.
‘Why did you throw that, you dog?’ Sister swung from my tousled hair
and my scalp burned with pain.
Mother came upstairs with the book hanging from her hand like a dead
bat. ‘He threw it!’ said Sister, close to tears now. ‘He’s gone mad,’ said
Mother through clenched teeth, and punched me on the head with her fist. I
sat down hard.
Did the men who were spreading the cover on the roof really have to
come down at this point? They saw me getting punched. My eyes filled
with tears but I couldn’t cry. One of them laughed and waggled his head
when he saw the expression on my face. I sat sulking for half a day after
that.
But after Baatu had stroked the aching roots of my hair, I eventually
cooled down. She put a glass of tea into my hand and laughed. One gulp of
the pepper in the tea warmed up my chilled blood.
After I had finished the tea, I wondered how things might be in the
bazaar and whether I should go out for a walk. The broken-ribbed umbrella
hung there grinning at the top of the ladder, while at the bottom I saw
Father’s black boots. I pushed my feet into them.
I crept downstairs and peeped into the Medikal where I saw Father with
his head down, reading something. I slipped behind his back and out into
the bazaar. Although the boots were too big for me, I didn’t find it hard to
walk in them. A light rain pattered on the umbrella and I walked on,
splashing my way through puddles of water which glinted like mirrors.
Most of the shops were shut in the second alley.
When I reached the crossroads, I was uncertain which way to go.
‘Chauraha is very busy when it rains,’ Ekraj used to say. ‘You can sell 72
litres of raksi there.’ Ekraj would be there, pouring out raksi from a
jerrycan. But I didn’t like the smell of raksi—it caught in my throat and
made me feel nauseous. Should I go to Chauraha or should I go to
Ramesh’s? But at his place, it would stink of onions and tomatoes that had
rotted in the rain. And if he followed me, he would get wet, and so would I.
So, should I go to Saddam’s?
I headed for Saddam’s. The rainwater had heaped up piles of sand in
every alley. Walking across the sand in Father’s boots, I turned towards the
lower bazaar. The door to Bhakte’s shop was half open, and I could see
nothing inside except darkness.
Saddam’s Medikal was shut too. Where could he have gone? Despite the
heavy rain, people were sipping tea at the nearby tea shop. I saw Chaudhari
in the crowd there, but not Saddam.
I headed for the bridge. The Amauri Khola was flowing muddily, right
over the top of the bridge. I was afraid to go any nearer because I had heard
that floods like this washed pythons along with them. Such a frightening
flood—might it have a python in it? My body shivered with fear and my
heart beat quickly. Little thorns pricked up on my wrist and my chest.
Where could Saddam have gone? I stood in front of his locked door for a
moment on my way back. Rain began to leak down the stem of the umbrella
and the rain sounded louder as it beat upon it. The torrents of rain became
thicker. I went home, splashing through the water and thinking, ‘That radish
Saddam must have gone off to drink raksi somewhere.’
Father was standing at the door of the Medikal, watching me as I
approached. He snatched the umbrella and said angrily, ‘Shouldn’t you be
reading and writing? I’ll give you a thumping!’
I took off the boots without hesitation and Father put them on.
‘They’re full of water again.’ Father thrust a fist towards me but it didn’t
reach my head. I became as dark as the sky. Father looked up at the sky and
muttered something. Then he opened the umbrella suddenly like a pair of
wings—bhyaatta—and went out. The rain washed his footprints away.
That night too the cat was nowhere to be seen. At midnight, I awoke
suddenly and groped about here and there, but the cat wasn’t there. Where
should I go to search for it? The rain was drumming on the roof of the
Shiva Bidi Depot.
After three days, the sky opened again and was absolutely clear at last.
The sun returned, bringing with it stifling heat, and it dazzled the eyes that
had been fogged for three days, making me feel as if I would suddenly
sneeze.
The stinking drain had filled up with sand. The bitter smell of urine and
raksi in every alley used to make me dizzy, but the rain had washed it all
away. In the sal copse, the leaves had become green and soft after their
bath. Sand was piled high on top of the bridge. The number of people in the
bazaar began to increase. All the shopkeepers were opening their doors and
piling up their damp stock on the front steps of their shops.
Pankaj the Barber was wiping a mirror that had got wet and was steamed
up. Sharma Uncle had spread out some new bicycle tyres in the sun and
Chaudhari put out a long line of radio sets. Damp sacks of sugar and flour
were standing in front of the teashop, but in Saddam’s Medikal, right next
door to it, not even a window was open. Saddam had not been seen running
off to the besharam bushes with his waterpot to do his toilet that morning.
Even at midday, Chaudhari and the teashop owner said Saddam must still
be fast asleep.
I had gone towards Saddam’s searching for the cat, looking into the
nooks and crannies of each alley. I wondered if it might have gone into
someone’s shop, and I peered inside them all. I was very irritated—where
had the cat gone? As I went home, I became very anxious.
‘Mother, the cat’s lost,’ I said, close to tears.
‘Ah, it will come back.’
Father was sorting through the medicines and taking out the wet ones.
Whenever he put his hand on one and found that it was soaked, he
grumbled loudly. When he heard me, his hand stopped moving. He saw that
I was sad and said, ‘Isn’t the cat in the house?’
‘It’s lost,’ I said.
‘Have you looked everywhere?’ Father peered into the corners of the
Medikal.
‘Yes.’
‘It was found in rain like this,’ Mother said kindly as she looked toward
me, ‘And lost in rain like this too.’
I squatted down on my heels.

Ramesh’s father sat looking in despair at a heap of wet rotting onions and
tomatoes. I had been heading for his shop, but the smell of rotting onions
made me dizzy. So I stood a little way off. I saw Ramesh sorting through
the rotting onions, pushing a lock of hair out of his face. He saw me too,
and I gestured to him that he should come over to me.
‘I can’t!’ he gestured in reply, ‘Ba will beat me.’
‘All right, so just bury yourself in your rotting onions!’
Making my way through the puddles in the alleys, I reached Chauraha.
The whole place stank of rotting onions and was soaking wet too.
 Ekraj was spreading out a wet quilt and a sleeping mat in the sun. When
he saw me, he yelled, ‘We had a river running through Chauraha this time,
dost!’ He always addressed me using the Hindi word for ‘friend’.
After the water that had accumulated in Chauraha dried up that morning,
he told me there were baby fishes jumping in the street, like maize kernels
jumping in a frying pan. And there was a dead water snake hanging up like
a rope on the roof of the tavern. No one could sleep in Chauraha during the
rains this time, he said. Lack of sleep was hanging in everyone’s eyes, just
like that dead water snake.
‘Let’s walk about,’ I said.
‘I can’t, dost,’ Ekraj said before going back inside, ‘I have to dry out
these clothes.’
Where could I go on my own? The veins in my head had started to ache
after three whole days at home.
The sun was sinking, turning red on the far side of the sky, but still
Saddam’s door was shut. Would anyone have news of him in the crowded
teashop next door?
Chaudhari told me that Saddam had been seen blind drunk and swaying
from side to side in front of his Medikal during the second day of rain. He
had swayed and fallen over, but Chaudhari couldn’t go and pick him up
again because he had no umbrella, he said.
‘He was shouting curses,’ said the teashop owner, scratching his private
parts. ‘I’ve no idea who he was angry with.’
Saddam’s door didn’t open the next day either, but several doors did open
onto the mystery in the bazaar. A rumour had already started that Saddam
had taken advantage of the rain to run away. How could you trust a man
with no name or place? Along with this rumour, saujis claiming to be owed
money by Saddam sprang up like mushrooms. The English Doctor had run
away, defrauding the whole of Katasé—that’s what everyone said.
‘Why would such an honest man run away?’ Father said that night. ‘He
must have gone somewhere! There are plenty of people in this bazaar who
suddenly turn into saujis in the middle of the night.’
I wondered long into the night—could Saddam truly have run away?
Saddam was found near Khairiphanta six days after he disappeared. His
body was tangled up in a clump of besharam about a kilometre from
Katasé. The river had tossed him up like a ball. Someone who went there to
set up fishing poles had spotted a corpse floating in the river. Half of Katasé
bazaar hurried over, including the police. Ramesh and Ekraj were in the
crowd too. I propped up my bicycle and stood a little way off and, when
they saw me, Ramesh and Ekraj came over.
Saddam was lying face down in the water. His head looked like a
coconut. The police pulled him out of the river and laid him down in the
grass next to the bank. Saddam was swollen up like a balloon, and his face
was as blue as spilled ink. The little finger of his left hand and the lobe of
his left ear were missing. Many supposed that they had been eaten by fish.
Saddam was already as dead as a stone.
I went up close to look at him. Both of his eyes were open, but they were
cloudy, as if a spider had spun webs in them. Frightened, I hid behind
someone: it was as if Saddam was looking at me.
I went and hid at the back of the crowd.
Saddam stank like a carcass. Some people covered their noses with their
arms, some with handkerchiefs. Green flies were buzzing in his nose and
mouth. Five one-thousand notes were found in the inside pocket of his blue
trousers, all softened by the water. In his back pocket, there were several
100, 20 and 10-rupee notes and a few coins and, in the right front pocket,
there was a cigarette, soaked and crumpled into a ball.
The police made a note of everything, then began to strip Saddam of his
clothes. I found it hard to watch and I began to feel dizzy, as if I was going
to vomit. After Ekraj said he was going to stay there, Ramesh and I left for
the bazaar on my bicycle. My eyes were full of images of Saddam.
I was pedalling the bicycle fast, afraid that Saddam would suddenly
emerge from the besharam thicket and ask me, ‘Doctor Saap, where have
you been?’ My eyes were full, my mouth was dry and my stomach was
hurting. Ramesh and I entered the bazaar via the bus park without going
anywhere near Saddam’s Medikal.
‘The poor thing. Such ill fortune,’ Mother said that evening.
 ‘He came from one place, we don’t know where, and died somewhere
else,’ said Father. ‘I don’t know if his family will ever get to know. His soul
would have found peace if he’d died in his own place.’
After a moment’s silence, Father told us that there was Rs 75,000 in
Saddam’s account at the bank. The manager was very agitated about this
and didn’t know what to do.
He got drunk, slipped off the bridge and died. That’s the report the police
had made, he said. Saddam didn’t mean anything to anyone. But I shivered
all that night, wiping away the tears that ran from my eyes. Whenever I
closed them, I saw Saddam’s face and heard him saying, ‘I’m like a bird—
bhurrra bhurrra. Tell me, does a bird have a home anywhere?’

***

I hadn’t slept all night because of my longing to go to Chisapani.

In the morning, Father was drinking tea in the kitchen, and I told him,
‘Ba, today I’m going to Chisapani.’
‘Why do you have to go to Chisapani?’ Father glanced quickly at me.
‘To see the bridge.’ I scratched the ground with my thumb. ‘Everyone
else has been.’
Father took a slurp of tea and swallowed it. Then he threw me a twenty
note that he had just taken out of his waistcoat pocket and I nearly jumped
for joy. I grabbed the note and held it tightly in my fist. Just as I was
leaving, Father said, ‘Listen, don’t wander off the path, and come back
quickly.’
‘All right,’ I said quietly and went downstairs.
Mother, who was dusting medicine bottles in the Medikal, also gave me
Rs 10. ‘Don’t spend too much,’ she told me.
So, I had Rs 30, and I went to Chauraha jumping about like a young goat.
Ekraj was waiting for me impatiently. It was he who told me, ‘Dost, they
say the Prime Minister will come to inaugurate the bridge.’
Ekraj had been impatient to set out since early that morning. If we
arrived late, we wouldn’t get in—there was going to be a terrible press of
people there. We needed to get to stand in the front before the crowd had
grown too big, otherwise we wouldn’t get to see the prime minister close
up. Glasses had been smashed during a discussion of this prime minister in
Ekraj’s tavern the night before. Table legs had been broken too. That’s why
it seemed to Ekraj that the prime minister must be an important man. And
the radio mentioned his name a hundred times a day: ‘Prime Minister
Girijaprasad Koirala said this, Prime Minister Girijaprasad Koirala said that
…’ According to Ekraj, the prime minister ate his rice with a golden spoon.
Large groups of people had left Katasé for Chisapani first thing that
morning: Sharma Uncle, Bhakte, the bank manager, Omé, everyone. The
ASI had been in Chisapani for the past three days.
It was as if a great fair was taking place at Chisapani. People walked
along chattering excitedly, scaring the monkeys that sat up in the branches
of the trees with their noise. They wanted to see the Karnali bridge, a bridge
taller than a mountain. If you looked up at the top of the bridge, your hat
fell off, I had heard.
Ekraj and I were walking along quickly.
‘Dost, the Amauri Khola goes to Katasé from here,’ Ekraj told me.
I stopped to look and for the very first time, I saw the Amauri Khola
splitting from the Karnali where it led up to Matera. Where the rivers parted
there was a bank of boulders bound with wires. The wide blue rushing
water of the Karnali foamed and became cloudy after the Amauri Khola
entered it as it reached Matera. Otherwise how peaceful the Karnali was! It
shivered and shook gently when the wind stepped lightly onto it before
passing on its way.
How wide was the Karnali? It was wider than the eyes could contain. It
escaped from the rims of your eyes and ran off into the distance.
Sometimes, the breeze that blew along it would scatter sand into your
eyelids. It made my eyes prickle, but still I had to sit on the bank and watch
this Karnali.
Like the white egrets flying along on the other side, the Karnali too had
to fly up to touch the shoulders of those hills that stood along its banks.
They had no colour in them; it had all faded away completely.
 ‘Let’s hurry, dost,’ Ekraj startled me and the spell was broken. After
midday, the wind had begun to blow as if it would blow the hills away. We
had to reach still further up from where a faint smell of oranges was coming
down towards Katasé.
‘Dost, everyone has gone already,’ shouted Ekraj, standing between two
huge boulders. His voice echoed off the boulders to reach me.
Ekraj and I ran.
Like a kite, a helicopter circled the hills of Chisapani—bhatatata. What a
loud noise it made, as if it would bring down the hills! It turned when it
reached the hill I could see from Khairiphanta, the one that looked like an
old man laughing.
A huge crowd of people ran towards the bridge, most of them haterus.
The police stood at the entrance to the bridge, sweating hard as they pushed
the crowd back. Wherever you turned there were people. I got caught up in
the crowd, panicked by the smell of its sweat, the helicopter circling like a
kite above my head. I found it difficult to breathe. One person’s elbow
shoved me backwards. My earlobes began to burn as they were scraped by
one elbow after another. First one elbow pushed me, then another, and I
found myself ejected from the crowd.
The helicopter settled onto the ground on the far side of the bridge,
making dust fly up into the air. Its noise, which was so loud it had almost
been splitting the hills, shut down. The sweating crowd parted, then came
together again. I stood on top of a tall rock. Lines of people stood on the
other rocks around it, craning their necks to see to the other side of the
bridge, and I did the same.
Where was Ekraj?
Ekraj was nowhere to be seen in the suffocating crowd. Was he pressed
inside it or could he have gone ahead? Later he would tell me a mixture of
truth and fiction.
‘Look over there!’ shouted a thin, tall man standing on top of a high rock.
‘Did you see the prime minister?’
I stretched up, standing on tiptoe.
‘Seems like he’s gone to look.’
 All I could see in that direction was a mass of people’s heads, like black
lentils, which all seemed to be swaying. Suddenly, a faint sound of applause
began to come from the far side of the Karnali. As it grew in volume and
reached the crowd on the near side, that crowd began to applaud too. One of
the pairs of clapping hands was mine.
Then the heads on the far side shook and moved to the far end of the
bridge where they could no longer be seen.
The bridge had been inaugurated now, and a jeep drove across it for the
first time. The applause was so loud it made my ears itch. The white egrets
on both sides of the river were startled into the air, and they flew up and
turned into clouds.
The prime minister made his way back to the helicopter.
The noise of the helicopter came again—bhutututu—and the dust flew.
The helicopter circled over the shoulders of the hills and disappeared
behind a high mountain. The crowd dwindled away like dust and the police
who had stood there sweating now squatted down beside the bridge. Ekraj
emerged, drenched in sweat and straightening his dishevelled hair. He
hesitated for a moment.
‘Oy, Ekraj!’ I cried.
He grinned when he saw me squatting like a langur on top of the tall
boulder. I hurried down, nearly slipping on the way.
‘Did you notice, dost? The prime minister was wearing gloves,’ he told
me. ‘When he took them off, his hands were as white as milk.’
Could he see gloves on the prime minister’s hands from so far away? I
was hardly going to believe that!
There were fewer people beside the bridge now, and the few that
remained were regarding it with wonder, sometimes looking up and
sometimes down. How tall its pillars were, Babai! If you looked up at them,
the sun dazzled your eyes. The bridge lay there stretched out over the river.
From the very next day, buses and trucks would be crossing the Karnali on
it. I gazed across it one more time.
The road that joined the bridge on the other side turned by some tree
saplings where it was blocked off. I suddenly recalled Father telling me that
the road went to Nepalganj.
‘Do you know where that road goes, dost?’ Ekraj too was looking over to
the far side, shading his narrowed eyes with his right hand.
‘To Nepalganj.’
‘No, dost, if you go straight, the road leads to Kathmandu.’
Ekraj watched the road for a while, lost in thought, and I did the same.
Then Ekraj lowered his hand. ‘Dost, do you know? The prime minister lives
in that Kathmandu, they say!’

There were lines of haterus in Chisapani, the bazaar was congested with
them. Having watched the prime minister, they were returning to the bazaar,
gesticulating and talking loudly. Signboards hung on most of the huts in the
single street bazaar, which looked as if they had been written by hand. Most
of them were hotels in which meat and fish hung in rows over smouldering
fires. There was a strong smell of raksi. The plastic sheets fastened to the
roofs had split and were flapping in the wind like birds’ wings, making an
irritating noise.
Worn out hateru shoes were scattered all over the road, where grinning
rocks studded the ground. The wind that blew strongly from the Karnali
was blowing the smell of ghee and oranges towards Katasé. I realised that
many haterus were returning from Chisapani.
‘Dost, that’s Sharmila’s father’s shop over there,’ said Ekraj, pointing to a
line of cloth shops to our left as we reached the centre of the bazaar. There
was a big crowd of haterus there. They were inspecting some decorated
velvet cloth which they had spread out on the street. They felt it with their
hands, then put it to their cheeks. I had at last discovered a secret:
Sharmila’s father had begun to live in Chisapani, running a shop like this.
So that was why Sharmila also had to come unprotestingly to Chisapani
during the school holidays.
The story of my love letter had spread through the school and all across
Katasé, and Sharmila had found out about it too. One day, at half-time,
when I was lying on my stomach to drink some water from the pipe at
school, she shouted from very close behind me, ‘Just you wait, I’m going to
tell my Ba!’
After that, I kept out of her sight for many days.
What would happen if her father saw me now? I couldn’t walk for fear. It
was as if I had a snake wound around my legs. I clasped Ekraj’s hand
tightly and squeaked, ‘Let’s go home now.’
But Ekraj refused to go home until he’d eaten an orange, and he blew a
whole Rs 30 on oranges.
By the time we set off for home, the sun had already reached the far
corner of the sky, so we ran as fast as we could.
‘Hey, don’t run like that, you’ll fall down flat on your chests!’ someone
called from a group of people who were on their way back to Katasé.
Although we heard them, we paid no heed because darkness had already
begun to spread through the forest.
Ekraj delivered us to Katasé as if we were being blown along by a storm.
Father was tightening the strings of the ektaaré, and he saw me. I was
tired. Father noticed this fondly and asked me, ‘So what did you see in
Chisapani?’
‘I saw the prime minister.’
Father laughed and did not question me further.
What I had actually seen was haterus’ shoes all over Chisapani and little
more. But I couldn’t tell him that.
Next day, there was much talk of the bridge in the teashop.
‘There’s no other bridge like it in Nepal,’ one said, waving his glass.
‘They say there’s no other bridge like it in the whole world, for you sir!’
the sauji related what he had heard from others. ‘Now trade is really going
to pick up in Chisapani, for you sir!’
‘This is what they mean when they say that even a man with a goitre is a
hero in a country of deaf mutes,’ said Bishta Budha, shivering. ‘Have you
seen the other bridges of the world? How do you know it’s so big? Can a
bridge make trade pick up, you silly prick?’
Sweat ran on Bishta Budha’s face. I finished my tea and pauroti quickly.
If there was going to be a fight what would I do? ‘Give him two cups of tea
and two pauroti a day,’ Father had said, so I went there twice a day without
fail to drink milk tea. Father had told me, ‘Drink your tea there and come
straight home. Don’t go to Chauraha. That’s not a place for children.’
I set my glass down on the fly-buzzing table and stood up.
‘Why are you getting angry, for you sir?’ the sauji squeaked. He was
worried that his other customers might be put off. ‘It’s just something that
other people have told me, for you sir.’
‘You listen to what other people say and you sell them tea,’ Bishta Budha
calmed down, like a storm blowing over, and muttered, ‘If trade picks up at
Chisapani, what will you be selling here?’
The sauji’s face reddened and he said nothing more.
The other customers were silent. Who dared to contradict Bishta Budha?
Everyone waited to see if he would say anything else, but he just left,
mumbling incomprehensibly. Chasing away the flock of ducks that were
scattered around in front of Salim Musalman’s pot shop, he entered the
second alley and disappeared from sight.
‘He has a brick-built house in Katasé. Let him worry about the bazaar
moving away,’ exclaimed the sauji, as if he had just woken from a coma.
‘But what do we have to lose here? I’ll just move to Chisapani. I’ll sell tea
there instead.’
I ran home.

***

One day, a TV antenna appeared on the roof of Omé Sau’s two-storey brick
house.
Omé ran a big grocery store on the first alley, from which even Bhakte
bought things. You couldn’t get betel nut or coconut seeds anywhere else.
Omé had come down to Katasé from Tinkuniya, and when he brought home
a TV, his social standing increased greatly. From time to time, a flock of
crows could be seen competing with one another to sit bravely on the
antenna which was shaped like the yoke of a plough.
 It was Omé who had brought the first generator to Katasé too. The
electricity was shared out along the first alley—Rs 300 a month for each
bulb. At dusk, the first alley was brilliantly lit, and the flying insects that
came into Katasé from the sal copse collided with the lights and died. A
growing crowd of people had begun to gather at Omé’s to watch TV.
‘The bastard only lets girls in,’ Ekraj told me, fuming.
The TV was a fourteen-inch black-and-white. Rather more often than
actual faces, what you saw on it was bright shining dots. As you watched
the faces, they swung from side to side and stretched up and down. And
then there came the sound of interference and the signal being lost—
jhirrrra jhyaarrra.
Omé wore a half vest because of the heat. He sprinkled powder that
looked like flour over his neck and upper arms. When the TV lost its signal,
he shouted in Hindi, shaking the gold chain on his chest, ‘Go and see what’s
happened!’
Then someone clambered up to the roof and shouted down after a
moment, ‘A crow, there’s a crow sitting on it.’
Omé screamed angrily, ‘Shoot the bastard!’
As the crow flew off it, the antenna shook all the more and the faces
bounced around the screen. Then we saw a boy and a girl who looked as if
they were dancing beside a river. Their voices sounded far away. The boy
moved his lips close to the girl’s.
Jhirrrra jhyaarrra jhyaarrra
‘Motherfucking crows!’ Omé got up angrily and stamped his foot. After
that, there was no more TV watching. Omé scowled and shouted, ‘What are
you watching, sitting there? Will your father pay for you?’
We left meekly, but when we got downstairs, Ekraj kicked the door hard
with his foot—gadyaamm. And then again—gadyaamm. Dogs came
barking out of the corners of the alley.
‘Who’s that motherfucker?’ Omé stuck his head out of the window and
shouted so loudly that it shook the whole of Katasé bazaar.
But Ekraj was no less than him. He just opened his trousers and showed
him his privates, then ran away. I ran after him too. After that, our TV
watching was over forever. I gave up even being seen near Omé’s shop.
Father told me off too, ‘Don’t go out at night!’
One day, Ekraj told me that every night he went and pissed on the door of
Omé’s shop.
Omé had brought the TV and the generator to the first alley, but all the
noise was in the second, because the one-storeyed house that was the Gauli
cloth shop was being demolished and replaced with a new building. The
Tharus and Tharunis who carried the bricks and sand sang all day long, and
Gauli Sau smiled as he watched the deep foundation of his house being
built.
I had heard that Gauli Sau was building the biggest house in Katasé.
Gauli might have begun to build a house, but Father was not far behind
him.
As the faded day was ending, Father came home, his sandals slapping on
the floor. I had just come downstairs from gambolling with Baatu, and
Mother was down in the Medikal. Sister had reached class ten, so she went
to tuition classes now because she was slow at English and Maths.
Father was holding a long sheaf of folded papers in his fist and wore a
bright and cheerful expression on his face. Spreading the papers out on the
table, he called to Mother to come and look at them.
‘What have you brought?’ Mother came, brushing the medicine bottle
dust from her hands.
‘House plans.’
I reached Father’s side before Mother did. On the paper, there were lots
of boxes drawn in pencil.
‘Four rooms downstairs. The Medikal in this big room. This small one is
a storeroom. Patients’ beds in the two other rooms.’ Father moved his
gently trembling hand from one box to the next. There were four rooms in
the upper storey too—one for me, one for Sister, one for Father and Mother,
one for a kitchen.
‘But where will Baatu sleep?’ I asked straight away.
‘Baatu will sleep in the kitchen. And anyway, she won’t live with us
forever.’ Father folded the papers and tied them with red thread.
 The sunflower blossomed on Mother’s lips.
My mind raced like a horse and I went to see Ramesh. I had to tell him
about Father building a proper brick house.
I wanted to tell Ekraj too, but Ekraj had run away to Lamki a week ago.
The Katasé police were searching for him. This was because Omé Sau had
filed a complaint at the police post, ‘Saab, the motherfucker’s turned my
shop into a shithouse.’
Ekraj wouldn’t be seen in Katasé again for thirty-five days, because he
knew that after thirty-five days the complaint would no longer hold.
Within three months, Gauli Sau’s house was completed. I heard that lots
of people felt dizzy when they looked down from its roof. Gauli Sau could
be seen on the roof of his house in the evenings. He soaked the walls of the
house with water to seal the plaster.
On the ground floor of the house, a big doorway was still gaping wide.
He was going to install a big steel door there. In Nepalganj, they called it a
‘shutter’, Father said.
Gauli Sau went to the Hajurko teashop in the afternoons. I would usually
be there at that time. He didn’t smile very much and looked serious.
Someone had started a rumour in the bazaar that he had spent two lakhs of
rupees building his house. Two lakhs? Many bit their tongues in surprise
and envy, and Gauli Sau became even more grave after that.
After the house was finished, the number of people who greeted him on
the streets grew from ten to a hundred, but he would never return their
greetings. Gauli Sau had always smiled and talked with everyone, so why
had he become so aloof?
‘He must think that no one is as rich as him, for you sir,’ Hajurko Sau
joked one day.
Gauli Sau became more and more solemn.
Then one day, there came a big surprise. Gauli Sau was standing in front
of the door of the bank with Father beside him. I was behind Father, and
Bishta Budha was standing nearby. Fingering the end of his colourful scarf,
the bank manager announced, ‘We have been trying to remain in Katasé.
But what can you do when the order comes from above?’
 Bishta Budha looked tense and angry. The silver handle of his walking
stick was like a cock’s comb, and he was gripping it hard. The group of
people was silent. All of them must have been thinking, ‘Now where will
we go to store our money? Tikapur or Nepalganj?’ But news came to the
police post every day of people being robbed at night towards Pahadipur,
Bhagatpur and Patharaiya. Fear shook like a leaf in every face.
‘So, does this mean that the bank doesn’t want Katasé’s money?’ Bishta
Budha cried, ‘Can anything happen just on that Rathaur’s say-so?’
The manager didn’t respond. The guard stood there, puffing his chest out
even wider. That stupid guard, if he gets in amongst a crowd of children, he
stares threateningly at them, the evil man. He had done the same to me too,
so I hid myself behind Father.
In the end, the bank moved after fifteen days. It had come to Katasé just
two years earlier. Now the white brick building in which it had been housed
stood absolutely empty and crowds of children began to run about on its
roof playing guccaa and khopi. Who was going to stop them? The big
chested guard was no longer there.
Most people went to Tikapur to open new accounts; Father was among
them. This was when I discovered that we had Rs 4,75,000.
Gradually, the hateru shoes stopped piling up in the alleys of Katasé, and
the haterus themselves stopped coming down from the hills. A rumour
spread that the haterus were all going to travel no further than Chisapani.
Sometimes a few would come, as if they had lost their way. But they had
merely come to settle old accounts.
‘How can I say that I will come next year, Sauji?’ the Meth would say,
pressing his palms together in farewell as he departed. The Meth was
considered the cleverest in a group of seven or eight men. He had to take
decisions for the whole group in an emergency, or whenever the need arose.
If this was what the Meth was saying, the saujis realised, the haterus would
never come again.
Many saujis had opened branches of their stores in Chisapani for the
haterus’ convenience. But now many of them had even begun to declare,
‘What future does even Chisapani have? The haterus have started going
back up to their villages from Gutu, even further up.’
After the haterus stopped coming down to Katasé, several of the bus
routes were altered. The buses started running only from Chisapani to
Lamki and from Lamki to Tikapur. The only bus that ever came to Katasé
now was an old wreck with no headlights, and trucks would only come if
someone was bringing goods in.
They said Rathaur had 10 bighas of land in Lamki, next to the Highway.
He wanted to build a new bazaar there and was trying to sell off building
plots, according to Bishta Budha.
Of course, the road linking Katasé with Tikapur via the Mahendra
Highway remained uncompleted, and the grass began to grow back over it.
The carts the Tharus drove to Chattiban to pick the jujubes created huge
potholes which filled with so much water when it rained that frogs began to
dive into them. The thread of everyone’s hope that the road would be built
stretched longer and slenderer, and eventually it snapped.
The road got more and more worn out, with grass spreading across its
cheeks like an old man’s ragged beard.
And then, one day, Gauli Sau suddenly burst into tears in Bhakte’s shop.
I entered the crowd to watch him giving Bhakte’s spying eye the slip and
went to stand behind Father. One or two men were irritated by my pushing
in, but they just looked at me and said nothing.
The day was ending as usual, with the yellow rays of the sun leaking off
the roofs of the houses and down into the alleys. People crowded together
to watch Gauli Sau crying. Gauli Sau swayed as if he was going to fall out
of his chair, wiping his eyes with his hat. I was amazed to see him weeping.
Why would such an old man cry?
‘That’s enough, don’t cry now.’ One of the men patted Gauli Sau’s
hunched shoulders.
‘It’s all targeted at me, this closing down of the bazaar,’ Gauli Sau said
tearfully. ‘What will I do with my house?’
Again, no one spoke, and Gauli Sau just sat there wiping away his tears.
 ‘Gauli Sau cried a lot today,’ Father told us that evening. ‘What can he
do, now that he’s built such a big house?’
‘Is the bazaar going to become completely deserted?’ Mother looked
disconsolate.
‘Well, a bazaar like this shouldn’t come to an end just like that,’ Father
turned to Mother. ‘But if it flies away, people will just move on.’
‘Let’s go to Surkhet.’
‘Not now.’

The number of patients in the Medikal decreased. And even if someone did
stray into the Medikal, they probably wouldn’t find Father there. I would
have to search every corner and bring him to them.
Father would come into the Medikal and examine the patient without
showing any real desire to do so. Indeed, Father had begun to be afraid of
examining patients. His hands were shaking badly as he stuck a needle into
a patient’s arm and pushed in the medicine.
‘Eyaaa!’ the patient cried out in pain and Father’s hands shook all the
more.
‘What happened to you, Doctor Saap?’ The patient asked, wiping away
the blood that smeared his arm. ‘Before, I never felt a thing when you gave
me an injection!’
And Father said, ‘I can’t give injections. My hands shake.’ Within a
month, the patient came back with his arm infected in the place where
Father had injected him.
The glass in Father’s spectacles had grown ever thicker, and this made it
difficult for him to place the needle. But if he didn’t bring out a syringe, the
patients were never satisfied. However much medicine they were given,
they would still say, ‘You have to use a needle, Doctor Saap!’ But how
could the business prosper if everyone who was given an injection
developed an infection in their arm? This question had begun to sting
Mother like a scorpion.
One evening, the fire was dying down in the fireplace and Father’s face
appeared yellow under the soft light of the lantern.
 ‘My hands shake when I’m giving an injection,’ Father said. ‘But the
patients are never satisfied if I don’t give them one.’
‘Is it due to weakness?’ Mother asked.
‘It’s my age.’
I looked at Father, and it was true that wrinkles had begun to develop
around his eyes.
‘It seems that fate has begun to lead us in another direction.’ Father was
in despair. ‘It seems that this profession no longer suits us.’
‘But what will you do if there’s no Medikal?’ Mother was alarmed.
Putting his spectacles away in his pocket, Father said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m
not dead yet.’
OceanofPDF.com
 THE SEVENTH DAY

Narmada,
How well you care for him and nurse him,
My father.
You don’t just look lovely, your manner is good too.
What do you know of how happy we feel when you come?
You are …

You are … What could I write after that? I gazed at a fly buzzing in the
window for a moment. Then I watched a bird hopping about on the veranda.
I felt stressed. What should I write next?
Ah, now I’d thought of something.
You are Nightingale.
Something I’d studied in my course came in handy for the first time.
Nightingale was the same kind of nurse; she served the patients excellently.
‘What are you writing?’
My heart thumped into my mouth: Narmada was at my side. She must
have noticed how red my face had become. I shut the door of my exercise
book and closed the latch of my pen.
‘Oh! It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing much.’
She went towards Father. Narmada and I still hadn’t had a proper
conversation—I was too much of a coward. I was afraid that she might
force it from me, she might snatch it out of my hand and read what I had
written about her. I looked around the ward. Krishnaji was watching, and he
smiled when our eyes met.
Narmada looked at the medicine bottles that were heaped up around
Father’s pillow. The medicines smelled really bad. She counted the tablets
and capsules. Then she wrote something down on a piece of paper and
handed it to me. ‘Get him this,’ she said.
I took the piece of paper and stuffed it into my trouser pocket.
Outside, the sun was hot. Most of the patients fell asleep after midday.
Their carers had gone out to stroll here and there and the ward was quiet.
The fan was turning—phatatata—and the green curtains on the windows
were fluttering gently.
Mother had gone to drink tea; I had just returned from eating a bellyful of
meat and chiura at the Bijuli Hotel.
The day was passing at a snail’s pace. It was hard to pass the time. Even
the hand of the clock was having to force itself to move.
Father was lying on his back and thinking about something, his eyelids
moving gently. His lips quivered too. Since the day before yesterday, he had
started murmuring as he thought. After he had been mumbling for a while,
he asked, ‘Who are they?’
Mother and I looked towards where he was pointing, but all we could see
was the junction of the ceiling and the wall.
‘Who is it?’ Mother was scared. ‘There’s nobody there. What could he
have seen?’
‘They’re sitting there,’ Father said breathily. He had begun to get out of
breath too. What things did Father see, what things?
‘Who’s that standing to the side?’ he asked again.
If only there had been somebody there!
Mother and I were at our wits’ end.
Narmada felt his forehead and checked the dripping of the saline. I had
forgotten now how many salines he had had. Since he arrived, there had
always been a saline hanging there. Dr Nandan had told us, ‘If he gets
dehydrated, his head will hurt more.’
 Narmada bent down to check the bag filled with urine, made a note and
said, ‘Tell Bajyai to throw it away.’
Narmada’s duty begins after the fat, hoarse-voiced Suruchi with the
wobbly stomach leaves. As soon as she arrives, she goes to every bedside,
looks attentively, makes a note and says something.
‘Have you fed him anything?’ she asked, standing before me.
‘Mother has gone to get him something.’
Then she swished away. And I opened the door of my exercise book to
read the poem I had written earlier.

‘Bajyai?’ Narmada said that evening, ‘There’s a phone call for you.’
She had a pile of papers in her hand. I had fallen asleep, leaning up
beside the window, and now I woke with a start. I wiped the dribble from
my lips, then wiped my hand on my trousers.
Who could it be?
Mother too had fallen asleep with her head resting on the bed. With a
sour expression on her face, she said sleepily, ‘Who is it, Nani?’
‘Parvati, she says.’
Oh! I felt like standing on one leg and dancing. But I hesitated—what
would Narmada think of me? Mother’s face brightened and she hurried off
behind Narmada.
What would Sister be like now?
Father had gone to sleep that afternoon after we had fed him a glass of
black dal and had not woken yet. Chotku hadn’t screamed, nor had the old
man beside the door coughed. Krishnaji hadn’t got into a panic, because his
son hadn’t had an asthma attack. Everything was fine.
Jyaa! Mother returned in tears. I also felt a pang in my heart. Wiping her
eyes with the end of her sari, Mother came to the bedside and said, ‘Go, she
wants to talk to you as well.’
Father woke up. As I reached the door, I heard him say, ‘Why is she
crying again, this one?’
‘Tharu?’ Sister’s tearful voice came out of the telephone receiver. How
hoarse she sounded.
 ‘Yes.’
‘How is Father? Tell me the truth.’
My Adam’s apple began to hurt like a boil. A salty taste came into my
mouth and my eyes became dim. Narmada was sitting in a chair nearby,
reading a book. I couldn’t cry there, holding the receiver beside her.
‘He’s a little better.’
The telephone whistled momentarily. Sister couldn’t ask anything further,
nor could I say anything. I couldn’t hold back my tears, which began to
sting my eyes.
‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ said Sister, weeping.
And with that she put the phone down. I stood there holding the receiver
to my ear with the dialling tone still going tututu. Narmada glanced at me. I
hid my eyes and wiped them with my shirt sleeve. When I put the receiver
down, my hand was shaking.
Hey, hey, hey. Chotku had gone crazy again, his voice was filling the air.
Narmada ran to the ward.

***

It had stopped working, my bicycle. My dream of a Walkman got brighter

and brighter just as my bicycle became more and more broken down.
Gradually, patches of rust had begun to develop on it, like patches of
termites settling on a tree. Its bell hung limply from its handlebars, like a
dead mouse.
The saddle had been slashed with a blade by someone at school and was
splitting apart in three directions. The bicycle made a horrible noise if it had
to climb up even a gentle incline and the chain slipped off all by itself
wherever it liked, particularly when I had raised myself up off the saddle to
push the pedals hard to go uphill. Then my testicles would come down hard
onto the bar. If only I could have given Sharmila a ride on it, even as the
new bicycle was wearing out like this! I felt regretful all of a sudden. I felt
like wandering along the banks of the Jamara Khola singing a song all
alone.
 Later, I discovered that you didn’t have to sing songs in your own
unmelodious voice, because a Walkman would sing them for you.
Chaudhari had brought some new Walkmans and lined them up in his shop.
I liked the red one best, the one that was as neat as a hand.
I visited Chaudhari’s shop every day. I looked over to Saddam’s shop
when I went there, but I had been slowly forgetting him, and after a year my
memory of his face had become hazy. Chaudhari didn’t talk about Saddam
very much either. Instead, he pushed the Walkman’s earphones into my ears
and played me songs. The Walkman had already stolen my heart away. One
of those Walkmans set out in a line under the glass counter was mine. I was
going to buy it, I was! I clenched my fists.
‘How much does it cost, a Walkman?’ I had already asked.
‘Five hundred,’ Chaudhari grinned at me as he connected up the red
wires inside an opened-up radio set, ‘Do you want to buy one? I’ll give it to
you for 450.’
What should I say? Yes, I wanted to buy one, but how could I tell Father?
One day, I’ll dare to, I thought to myself. Every day, after school, I arrived
at Chaudhari’s shop in terror. What if someone had bought the red Walkman
and taken it away?
How could I tell Father that my heart was set on it?
A big doctor came to Tikapur. Once the news got around that he had
installed an X-ray machine in his Medikal, we saw only the occasional
patient in Katasé. Father would spend the whole day with his head in some
fat book, or sometimes he would lie on his back on the Medikal bed. Father
used to think a lot. One day, the jogi at the Kali temple quit Katasé and
went away. ‘Kali Mai told me to go,’ we heard he had said.
At the Hajurko teashop too there was the same talk of the bazaar drying
up.
The zinc roof of the Shiva Bidi Depot was crackling under the hot sun of
Bhadau. The breeze blew into the forest of cutch trees and came back all
hot and thirsty. When the little ants of the sun began to bite the creases of
my body, I went down to the Medikal. Baatu wasn’t upstairs; she must have
gone to the river. It had become hard to sit under the hot tiles of the roof.
 There were no patients in the Medikal. Father was lying on his back on
the bed and appeared to be asleep. Both sides of his waistcoat were bundled
up under his back, probably because the buttons had fallen off. I could
never guess whether Father was sleeping or thinking. Even when he was
asleep, his left leg would quiver.
I went to his side and stood there for a moment. But how could I ask
him? Father suddenly opened his eyes, probably because he had heard my
tense breathing. Should I run away, hiding my tail like a dog who has
entered Katasé for the first time?
‘What’s the matter?’ Father’s loud voice split my courage right down the
middle, just like a banana leaf.
‘Ba!’ I said, ‘Buy me a Walkman!’
My Father’s face showed no reaction, perhaps because he had just woken
up. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Why do you want a Walkman?’
‘To listen to songs.’
Father laughed and swung both of his legs down from the bed. He
stretched and took a long yawn.
‘You can listen to songs later,’ said Father, looking into my watering
eyes. ‘You always fail, so study well.’
A Chinese date thorn planted itself in my heart and pricked me. How
could I tell Father ‘I’ve learned how to steal a cheat sheet, I won’t fail any
more’?
‘Go and study,’ Father said and lay down again. I stood there for a
moment more. But Father’s chest was rising and falling gently.
Then I ran off to Chauraha. There wasn’t much going on there, just dogs
sleeping everywhere. Some of them jumped up and shook their backs,
making the dust fly. Ekraj’s hotel was deserted too. Buffalo meat hung in
strips over the fireplace, black with soot, while a fire flickered beneath
them. Ekraj was sitting sulkily beside a steaming kettle of milk tea, like a
solitary egret by the Jamara Khola.
He had disappeared and gone to Lamki for nearly a month and a half to
evade the thirty-five-day police notice, and now that he had returned, he
seemed to have lost his wits. When he came back, his sister struck him over
the head with a piece of firewood, right there in the middle of Chauraha,
and after that he wasn’t seen outside very often. The day after he came
back, he told me, ‘Dost, there are such big shops in Lamki. Let’s go to
Lamki too.’
I squatted down beside him. Drawing a flower in the fireplace with a
cinder, he grinned and whispered in my ear, ‘Dost, there’s a Ram festival in
Jagatpur today. Shall we go?’
The songs and dances of the Ram festival only happened once a year, and
it was fun. There would be a disco competition with the boys of the village.
I was keen to go, but I hesitated for a moment. Jagatpur was over 20
kilometres away, and the road passed through a jungle. And then there was
the fear of Father’s heavy fist landing on the back of my neck.
‘No, if Ba found out he’d beat me,’ I said.
‘Let’s go, dost!’ Ekraj peeped inside, didn’t see his sister and said,
‘Yagya, Ramesh, Sunil, Ratan, Purna, they’re all going! Disco dancing is
fun!’
The evening sun was making its way across the dense jungle of Chattiban
towards Jagatpur. I put on my second pair of multicoloured Julie shoes
which I had been saving for just such an occasion. I pulled a waistcoat onto
my body, which was becoming skinnier as I grew taller. The waistcoat was
speckled like a tiger’s skin, and it had been sewn by Father too. I plastered
down my unruly thatch of hair with some water.
Mother and Baatu were chatting quietly as they watched a pot of rice
boiling over the fire. I slipped out behind their backs like a masaan ghost
and descended the ladder like a cat. Halfway down, I peered into the
Medikal but I could not see Father there.
Then I ran as fast as I could.
I raised my foot to kick the back of a dog that was pissing on the wall.
When my Julie shoe struck it, the dog yelped and jumped aside. Then, when
there was some distance between us, it began to bark.
I ran like the wind to Chauraha. Who can stop the wind?
Purna, Ekraj, Yagya and Ramesh had arrived at the bar-pipal tree, but
where were the others?
 The Hajurko teashop was a short distance from the bar-pipal tree. If you
leaned to one side and looked out of the teashop, you could see everything:
the bar-pipal, the drain and the people standing there. Had Father gone to
drink tea there? I stood behind the dense foliage of the bar-pipal tree to hide
myself.
Sunil emerged from the mouth of the third alley. He had a bangle shop in
the first alley which was known for selling a lot of bangles while breaking
very few, and he was ten years older than us. The heftiness of his muscular
arms and thighs gave us a lot of courage. He came up to us carrying a big
round sack and asked, ‘Hasn’t Ratan come yet?’
We twisted our heads towards the fourth alley—that was where Ratan
should emerge from. Ratan’s father was a master tailor and he sewed
waistcoats for my father. Ratan wasn’t happy about that, but what else could
his father do? That was all he knew. Ratan was skilled at break dancing,
twisting his hips, jerking his head like an injured bull and making the dust
fly. Who could have a wedding in Katasé without Ratan dancing in it?
Lau, Ratan appeared. His lower lip turned outward because he had spent
so much time rolling tyres about as a boy. It looked very ugly, as if he had
been stung on the lip by a wasp. He laughed, stretching his mouth wide, and
came leaping over to us like a horse. Then he twisted his hips and cried, ‘I
am a disco dancer!’
Whenever the gang gathered like this, Sunil would always have to be the
gang leader. Ekraj didn’t like this. On this occasion too Sunil was chosen as
the dada and Ekraj sulked for a while. But then, showing us the bicycle
chain he had wound around his waist, he angrily said, ‘Someone’s going to
get to eat this chain today.’
Sunil didn’t pay him any attention.
So, in the end, our eagerness to go to see the Ram festival merged with
our craze for breakdancing. In any dance competition between village boys
and bazaar boys, we boys from the bazaar had to win. And if Ratan danced,
who else would ever win? So many times, blood had flowed from his fat lip
while he was dancing—and so many times Ekraj had hit whoever had
elbowed Ratan in the lip over the head with his chain. Without Ekraj and
Ratan, our gang would be incomplete.
Sunil walked ahead of us. To get to Jagatpur, you had to go along the
banks of the Jamara Khola via Sisaughari. Even before we reached the
river, my blood had heated up. I could fell a mere tree with one blow of my
fist, I thought. Everyone else was in the same excited mood, and from time
to time they flexed their biceps.
Something stirred in the round lump of sacking that Sunil carried on his
hip like a water pot as he walked ahead of us. Everyone saw it, but no one
asked what was inside.
As its water dried up, the Jamara Khola looked like a disappointed river,
with rocks everywhere, dry sand wherever you looked and half-burnt logs
discarded after dead bodies had been burned. The river became a cremation
ghat here, and the sound of the cicadas made it even colder and more
frightening. I kept to the middle of the gang for fear of it.
Then the cremation ghat was behind us and we were walking along
beside the barbed wire fence of a nursery where a thousand rosewood trees
were being reared. Sunil turned back to us and grinned and, at the same
time, the lump of sacking that was wriggling on his hip made a sound. The
same question came out of everyone’s mouth and fell onto the ground:
‘Where did that duck come from?’
Sunil just kept laughing and didn’t speak. He set the wriggling bundle
down on the ground. ‘Kaae, kaae,’ the duck cried again, piercing the
silence of the river.
‘I brought this friend along so that we could have a party,’ Sunil told us.
He said the duck had been sold to him by a man in Khairiphanta for Rs 40
that morning.
Everyone believed him. Ramesh stood beside me shaking his locks: even
he was amazed. Sunil opened the mouth of the sack and out by its long
straight neck he pulled the duck, with its white wings folded back. As it
hung in the air, the duck’s twisted wings loosened, and it flapped them
vigorously.
 Then Sunil buried his teeth in the duck’s neck, and its head fell to the
ground. The pointed beak slowly opened, then closed. Poor Ramesh stepped
back, his face turning blue.
Ekraj gathered up some bits and pieces of firewood and Sunil set fire to
them with a cigarette lighter. Then he dangled the duck over the flames,
holding it by its feet. The duck’s bright feathers looked as clean as if they
had been washed with soap nuts, but when they burned, they turned into
blobs like small black lentil grains.
The duck was not very large, and I got a leg as my share. The leg spread
out into a round lump at one end. Mixed with soil and smoke, the meat had
a strong flavour, but it tasted good enough. Some of its fibres stuck in the
gaps between my teeth and made them uncomfortable. I went down to the
Jamara Khola, scratching at the gaps between my teeth with a splinter of
wood.
When I came back up from cleaning my teeth, I saw Paras Sunar running
towards us. He had spotted the smouldering fire and his gang standing
around it. He was running as if he would traverse the earth itself, and
everyone yelled when they saw him spreading his arms wide as he caught
up with us. He stopped to catch his breath, then he was perplexed when he
saw the fire that had just gone out.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, wiping the sweat from his brow with
his forearm.
‘To Jagatpur,’ said Ekraj, making his eyes dance. ‘Dost, come with us!’
Paras was uncertain.
Suddenly, I saw the police: mounted on bicycles, they had turned off the
main road and were heading straight for us. My lower abdomen swelled,
my breath dried up. Was I going to faint? I was as frightened as a deer that
has fallen into a tiger’s mouth.
Purna was clever: he leapt straight over the barbed wire of the nursery
like a monkey and disappeared like a rabbit among the rosewood saplings.
Everyone else had the same idea, but one of the police shouted, ‘Don’t run
away! We’ll shoot you!’
 My legs became limp, as if I had contracted polio, and my eyes clouded
over.
‘Bastard duck thieves!’ shouted a policeman, quivering with fury.
Then the police dragged us away to the police post. I was silent, like a
calf walking along in front of the jaagaa, the Indian man who comes to buy
up the cows for slaughter after their milk gives out. From time to time, my
lips trembled. Once we reached the Kali temple, my legs gave out on me
through shame and fear. ‘Not walking?’ A policeman pushed me so hard I
nearly fell to the ground.
Before we even reached the police post, the rumour had spread through
Chauraha—a bunch of thieves has been arrested! A crowd of people stood
at the gate of the police post to watch the spectacle. As I arrived at the gate,
I saw with my clouded eyes that Sister was amongst them, and Sister’s
friend Shanti Didi too. Sister called out to me, crying, ‘Tharu!’
I thought I was going to burst into tears. I choked back a sob and said,
‘Sister, don’t tell Ba!’ She surveyed the crowd with forlorn eyes, searching
for someone who could get me released.
‘They’ll turn into dacoits after this.’ It was Bhakte’s voice. ‘ASI Saab,
don’t let them go.’ Bhakte was taking his revenge on me.
Shaking the long topknot that hung from the back of his head, ASI Saab
gave the order that each of us should be given a slap. When the cane stick
struck my thigh, it raised weals on my skin. Ekraj and Sunil squatted on the
ground, unable to bear the pain.
‘Throw them into the cell,’ the ASI Saab roared like thunder.
Stumbling like a new born lamb, I entered the police station, helpless and
terrified. Even two hours later, no one had come from anyone’s home.
Then, long after night had fallen, Paras Sunar’s father came in a state of
great agitation. When he knew that his father had come, Paras hid himself
in a corner. How could he show his face to his father?
I was next to the barred iron gate and I could see that Paras’s father had a
tiffin box in his hand. The policeman we saw all day in Chauraha stood
beside the door with a twin-barrelled gun hung over his shoulder. ‘What’s
that you’ve brought?’ he asked.
 ‘Meat and rice.’
‘What, meat?’ The policeman’s voice became thicker and hoarser. ‘Your
son has already gobbled down eight ducks today.’
I was scared and I looked at Sunil. He grinned and hid himself in the
darkness. The radish had already eaten seven ducks. All I got was a leg
from the eighth one.
Paras’s father turned back.
In the northern corner of the cold, dark, dusty cell, three jerrycans were
stacked one on top of the other, each of them full of urine. Every now and
again, someone would stand up to piss. How much does one piss from fear
and anxiety? The smell of stale urine penetrated my nostrils. How could I
breathe?
A policeman came inside carrying a length of wood. The whole bazaar
knew him as the sergeant. He wore a white half-vest, pale blue trousers and
sandals, and his dark face was covered in scars where his pimples had burst.
He spat continuously, with a wad of chewing tobacco tucked inside his
upper lip. His hair was short and stubbly.
‘Get up and stand up in line!’ he shouted.
The line formed. Who would he beat first? The policeman surveyed us
all. It was poor Ratan.
‘Hey Lippy, come here.’
The policeman started striking the bare soles of Ratan’s feet with the
piece of wood. Ratan fell over as if he was unconscious and twisted like a
wounded mouse.
‘I have an old account to settle with you,’ the policeman said, pulling
Ekraj by the short hairs on his temples. ‘So, you’ll piss on people’s doors
then run off, will you?’ He poked him in the stomach with the wood, then
he untied the chain from around his waist and whipped it across his thigh.
‘So, you’re the gang leader, are you? Carry a chain, do you?’ Then he hit
him across the back with the chain too. Ekraj leapt like a horse, then
squatted down.
‘And you, longhair?’
Ramesh fell to the ground after two blows from the piece of wood.
 Now it was my turn. How he looked at me! He grabbed me by the short
hairs on my temples, and I squirmed.
‘How old are you?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Prick, my cock’s bigger than you are. Go stealing, would you?’ He
struck me on the back and arm with his stick, and everything went black.
The police had beaten the bare soles of my feet and they had begun to
swell. My thighs were sprained from being made to squat and stand one
hundred times, and when I got up to piss, my legs splayed out like a cow
giving birth.
When I woke up at midnight, I heard Sunil sobbing. He was twice our
age, so he had been given twice the beating; and when the police told us to
tell them who stole the duck, we had all pointed at him.
At about 8 in the morning, Salim Musalman came. The duck had been
his, it turned out, and it was he who had reported the theft. He gave us a
look of hatred as we stood there in an exhausted line, then sat down in front
of the ASI and muttered, ‘Saheb, all of those ducks were my children.’
‘So, what should we do now, tell me?’ the ASI asked him.
Before he could reply, Bistha Budha arrived too, walking unsteadily with
the support of his stick. He abused us twice, then ordered the police, ‘Don’t
just release these assholes and let them get away it.’
The police post was surrounded by five lines of barbed wire, and inside
the wire there were great heaps of leaves. We had only just squatted down
to start picking up these leaves, some dry and others rotted by dew, when
the whole school started coming towards the police post, like leaves blown
along in the wake of a storm. Which blabbermouth had spread the news?
The students reached the police post and stood around the barbed wire in
a great crowd, watching us. I couldn’t even look up. They all began to shout
like vultures, ‘Duck thieves! Duck thieves!’ Ekraj glared at them, but why
would they care?
Just picking up the leaves was not enough, and another punishment was
meted out. The police made us crawl 200 metres there and back on our
knees. As I crawled, my trousers split at the knee and the grazed skin on my
knees began to burn. If anyone fell over as they crawled, the crowd burst
out laughing. We had become circus clowns with red noses.
My Julie shoes split, my waistcoat came undone, a deep wound was
scratched into the tender surface of my heart.
In the end, we stood before Salim Musalman and repeated, ‘From now on
we will never steal a duck.’ Then it was fifty more squats and stands. When
you squatted, you had to press the earth down, when you stood up you had
to lift up the sky.
I emerged from the police post shaking and trembling. Sister came crying
to gather me up and take me home. I hobbled along as if I was walking on
legs made of wood. There were some patients in the Medikal, and they
looked at me in amazement. Mother put on a face like a withered leaf and
shed many tears. ‘Well, you’re such a hero, son,’ she said sarcastically.
I held back the sobs: let my tears fall if I have any left! Father came
hurrying out of the Medikal. He regarded my shredded clothing and
wounded body for a moment, and his face turned red.
I was unable to speak. My voice caught in my throat like phlegm.

***

After they had sung the national anthem, the students all tumbled into the
classroom with me among them, squeezing through the crush in the
doorway. I sat at a bench in the third row, but no sooner had I sat down than
I saw it written on the blackboard:
DUCK THIEF
Who had written this on the blackboard? There were about 80 students in
that class, and they all read out the words in unison: duck thief! Ramesh
came in too, brushing his locks aside. There was an empty seat next to me,
and he slipped in quietly and sat down. Everyone roared with laughter, and I
noticed that the village boys laughed particularly loudly. Ramesh didn’t
understand at first, but when his eyes fell upon the blackboard, he knew,
and he sat there dejectedly.
 If Ekraj had been there, he would have put them all right, but Ekraj didn’t
come to school lightly. In fact, when would he ever come to school now?
He had even told me, ‘Dost, from now on, I’m going to the Lamki school.’
Even a month later, things had not got back to normal. Whenever the
wound began to heal, someone else broke off the scab. Ramesh and I were
isolated in the class. I had already realized that no one else wanted to sit
with us. We were just two boys on a bench with room for six. We two
thieves sat miserably among the eighty holy jogis; it was enough to make us
cry.
Suddenly, a song rang out from a corner of the room, set to a popular
tune: ‘Thieves, thieves, let’s eat a duck together.’
‘Don’t tease them so much!’ It was Sharmila who suddenly shouted this,
jumping up from the far corner. She was sitting at a bench in the fourth row
in the opposite line, under the window. Outside the window, a bitter gourd
was just about to bloom.
Then Madan jumped to his feet too, for it was he who had sung the song.
Three months earlier, Ekraj’s chain had struck him above his right eyebrow,
and there was still a long white scar there. He looked at Sharmila and
laughed shamelessly, ‘So why did your husband steal the duck?’
The whole room laughed and clapped its hands.
In the midst of this applause, Karnabahadur Sir entered the classroom—
the sir who taught Nepali. He put the duster and chalk on a chair next to the
blackboard. Opening the register book, supported by his left hand, he said
in a loud voice, ‘What’s all the noise about?’
Nobody replied. I glanced over at Sharmila. She was hanging her head
dejectedly. She might even have been crying. The friend who sat beside her
was shoving her with her elbow, probably telling her not to cry.
Sir read out the roll numbers from the register. I said ‘Yes Sir’ in a
determined voice, Ramesh said ‘Yes Sir’ in a sickly voice and Sharmila said
‘Yes Sir’ in a tearful voice. Sir finished registration and put the register
down on a chair. Taking hold of the duster, he looked over the rim of his
powerful spectacles and cast his eye around the room.
 ‘Why are you all crammed onto the back bench?’ Sir noticed our empty
bench and pointed at those who were sitting squeezed together on the bench
behind it. ‘Come forward and sit down.’
‘We don’t want to sit with the duck thieves!’
Sir flew into a rage and whirled around. Pointing into the corner with his
duster, he shouted, ‘Who said that?’
No one spoke. It was so quiet you could have heard an ant walking past.
‘You young asses! You haven’t even learned how to wash yourselves
after you defecate.’ Sir clenched his teeth, ‘But you’ve already become
people who create disharmony in society.’
Sir erased ‘duck thief’ from the blackboard with one stroke, then pointed
the duster into a corner. ‘Hey Madan, do you think I don’t recognize your
writing? Stand up!’
Madan jumped to his feet with a sullen expression on his face.
‘Are you going to write that again? Shall I tell them who stole Rs 20
from his father and ran away?’
‘No, I won’t write it again,’ Madan replied weakly.
‘Everyone makes mistakes when they’re children,’ Sir muttered, writing
on the blackboard with his chalk. ‘Is there a child that never does wrong?’
Meanwhile, Sharmila glanced at me, bright eyed, and my mind became
cool.
The second class was Maths. It was forbidden to call it ‘arithmetic’
because this was ISc Sir’s class. ISc Sir had long slanting hair and his left
eye always looked as if it was going to dive out of its socket like a frog.
Behind his back, everyone called him Wonky Sir. He too behaved as
wonkily as his eye. Sometimes, he would put a pencil in the gap between a
student’s fingers, make the student clasp it, then spin it round and round,
and he certainly knew how to thrash a student too. When it became known
that he had passed his ISc, he was dubbed ‘ISc Sir’ all over Khairiphanta,
and he was proud of the new name. He was short of stature, and when he
walked in a hurry, he looked like a running calf. He always gave out
homework, but the next day there were always many who hung their heads
before him. Therefore, he spent half of his time beating students. He would
check on our homework as soon as he entered the classroom.
‘Everyone, show me your homework,’ he ordered.
Ramesh had done his homework and he showed him his exercise book
without hesitation. Then Sir came to my side like an angry elephant. My
heartbeat sped up and I stood there, hanging my head. Suddenly, the hair on
my temples was pulled right out, and I was dead and gone. My temples
burned as if they were being sucked by a thousand ticks.
‘Where’s your homework, hero?’ Sir bellowed.
I said nothing.
‘Been out thieving?’ Sir twisted the hairs. ‘Not doing homework?’
And then Sir let loose the last arrow from his bow, aiming it right at my
heart. ‘Tell me now, what was duck meat like?’
The class erupted with laughter. And then it fell silent.
I fell back onto the bench, like a bird shot by an arrow.

***

A red sun hung over the flag as it flapped in the wind. It was always like
this at the end of the school day. It was as if a faint red colour had been
scattered across the sky. The clouds were filled with it too. Sister stood at
the gate, alone. In her blue skirt and blue shirt, she was as pretty as the
morning sky.
She must be standing there waiting to go home with me.
Sister never told me off after I was released from the police post. She
never quarrelled with me either. I had begun to really love her.
‘Let’s go,’ I said as I approached her.
Sister smiled, but her smile did not seem quite right. She brushed away
the hair that had fallen into her face and I saw that her lips were trembling
slightly.
‘I’ll come later,’ she said. ‘You go ahead.’
Was this really Sister’s voice, so hoarse and hollow? What had happened
to her?
 Ramesh was throwing stones at the barbed wire, and he beckoned to me
to hurry up. I walked on, watching my shadow as it stretched out in front of
me. I don’t know why, but for some reason I felt I should turn and look
back. Should I or shouldn’t I?
Then I heard Sister’s voice, ‘Tharu, wait!’
I stopped walking and my long shadow stopped too. Sister came up to
me, almost running, with the scent of the mustard oil on her hair. She took
hold of both my hands. Her palms were warm. Then she looked deeply into
my eyes and said softly, ‘Don’t give Father and Mother any grief.’
I stared at her, perplexed.
‘Study well, don’t fail,’ said Sister, and then it seemed as if she was
going to cry. Had the ghost of the Jamara Khola got hold of her? She gazed
into my face for a moment longer, but I could not look into her face. I just
looked here and there. She stroked my tousled hair and said, ‘Go now.’
I stood still.
Then Ramesh shouted, ‘Oy!’
Sister spun around and walked away, almost at a run. When I turned back
to look, she seemed to be wiping her eyes as she went. A little way off, I
noticed Shanti Didi watching from where she was hiding behind the wall of
a house. I would ask Sister why she did this when I got home that evening.
I ran off to join Ramesh.

‘Dost, we should beat those mothers with chains,’ Ekraj fumed as he stirred
a piece of burning wood in the fireplace. ‘That Madané will come to
Katasé.’
I had been telling Ekraj about how Madané had shamed me at school that
afternoon. Who else could I tell, after all? Ekraj’s mother was coughing
hard from a corner of the room inside. His sister was going in and out,
smiling. Some contractors from Lamki had come to stay in the inner room. I
peeped though the crack in the door and saw a potbellied man there
laughing coarsely.
This was the contractor who was going to search for some land for
Ekraj’s sister in Lamki. That was clear from his talk. Ekraj didn’t like the
way he laughed and called his sister ‘Sauni’. Even worse, when the
contractor got drunk and started stretching the word out, saying ‘Saauu-
niiii’, Ekraj sometimes told me he felt like bringing a chain down on his
forehead.
‘That Madané travels home from school on a cart and he comes this
way,’ Ekraj told me his plan as he placed a black frying pan on the fire. ‘I’ll
grab hold of him, you punch him, dost.’
It would be great to beat him up like this!
Ekraj inspected his fingers which were black with soot where he had
caught hold of the pan. Then he rubbed his thumb down the middle of his
forehead to apply a black tika and said, ‘Dost, we have vowed this.’
‘We have vowed this,’ I agreed passionately after Ekraj had rubbed his
thumb on my forehead too.
‘Saauu-niiii,’ the contractor called hoarsely from inside. ‘Where’s our
sekuva?’ And another added, ‘Roast the sekuva with a bit of love, eh?’
Ekraj shook the burning log vigorously and the fire blazed up. A lump of
ash attached itself to a piece of meat hanging above the fire. Ekraj pulled
off a chunk of meat and said, ‘Dost, you go now. We’ll speak tomorrow.’
I jumped up. But while I had been squatting there, my right leg had gone
to sleep and it ached as I hobbled home. As I did so, the memory of
Chandré gripped me tightly for the first time in a long while.
‘Where have you been?’ Mother’s harsh voice struck me in the forehead
so hard I nearly fell down on my back from the top of the ladder.
What had happened to Mother? Why was today such a day of bad
fortune?
I went to Mother’s side. She was sitting on her heels on the threshold
with both palms pressed to her temples. Her eyes were as red as the setting
sun, as if she had been crying all day. She wrung her nose from time to time
with the end of her sari.
‘Sons and daughters haven’t given me happiness since the day they were
born,’ said Mother tearfully. I couldn’t meet her reddened eyes. But her
gaze was fixed on my forehead now. ‘What’s that you are walking about
with, rubbed onto your forehead? Go and wash your face!’ she shouted.
 I went into the kitchen to wash off Ekraj’s vow. Inside, Baatu’s face was
as dried up as the bank of the Jamara Khola. She was sitting on a pirka
staring into space, a lantern flickering by her side.
My eyes met Baatu’s. She beckoned me over and I put my ear to her lips.
She breathed warmly into my ear, ‘Sister’s run away to get married.’
Oh mother! So now at last I understood. Baatu told me that Father had
gone off in a hurry, dragging my old bicycle, to search for Sister. She had
never seen him in such a rush before, she said. In his confusion, he had put
on odd sandals and left his spectacles behind. He had even left behind his
two front teeth which he had taken out to clean. Where could my father
have gone, toothless and weak-sighted in his despair? Who had Sister run
away with? In which direction had she gone?
I too went and sat in a corner. My hands went to my head all by
themselves.
The loud sound of something being dropped dispelled my drowsiness
immediately: Father had come home. I was afraid to get up, and I lay there
as if I was asleep. But I strained my ears to hear what was going on inside.
The soft light of the lantern spread into the deep darkness outside.
‘You didn’t find her?’ Mother’s tearful voice.
‘Who knows where she’s gone? I searched the whole of Khairiphanta.’
Father was out of breath. ‘How could I find her?’ he puffed.
Mother sobbed.
‘I wanted to educate her some more,’ Father said faintly. ‘She was like an
elder son; she has deceived us.’
Mother’s sobs grew louder.
‘Don’t cry,’ Father said in a tearful voice. ‘For us, she is dead now.’

After Sister left, Father and Mother seemed to be in despair. Tears glistened
in the corners of their eyes. Father’s cough worsened and, like the banks of
the Amauri Khola, his face wore away even more. Because of this, Father
would gulp down half a bottle of cough medicine in one go.
From time to time, Mother would cry, ‘What’s he like, you should take
medicine properly!’
 Father could be found in the Medikal all day long. Sometimes a patient
would wander into the Medikal as if they had lost their way, and Father
would take hold of their wrist. He would inspect their tongue, then say, ‘Go
to Tikapur, it will get better. I can’t do anything.’
Father’s hands had begun to shake even more, like a spider’s web in a
breeze. When he stood up, he placed his hands on his knees and rose
slowly, as if with a whole lifetime of tiredness. Sometimes when I was close
by, I heard the cracking of his knees.
One day, Shanti Didi told Mother secretively, ‘There’s no need to worry.
The boy is well educated. An MA pass. He’s in the postal department. His
home is Bardiya. He is in Mahendranagar now.’
After that, we discovered that Sister had arrived in Tikuniya via Tikapur,
then in Mahendranagar via India. After he had heard the whole story, Father
would say in a despairing voice, ‘I wanted to educate her well. But she
chose her own path.’
After that, Father dusted off the ektaaré and began to play it and took no
interest in anything else. Dust had begun to accumulate on the plastic
sheeting spread over the heap of bricks and the pile of cement beside the
ladder. Flocks of crows would come and go, leaving their excrement all
over the plastic. Inside the Medikal, iron rods and planks of fresh sal wood
were everywhere, filling the room. The smell of melting resin from the
planks made me feel nauseous. What would be done with them now? Father
had gone to so much trouble to pile them up there for three whole months.
‘The wood’s begun to rot,’ Mother said one day. ‘Aren’t you going to
build the house?’
‘What’s the point of building a house here?’ said Father, lifting his eyes
from the book he was reading. ‘The bazaar’s coming to an end.’
‘Wherever we go it’s the same,’ Mother flew into a rage. ‘I can’t stay
here for another rainy season watching the leaky roof again.’
‘So, what will you do? Wherever we try to build a nest, fate just drives us
away.’
‘I’m not leaving here or going anywhere else. I can’t spend my whole life
wandering around searching for a roof that doesn’t leak!’
 ‘She always looks for reasons to quarrel.’ Father lost his temper too. ‘Just
let me think.’
But Father never thought. What difference was there between Father and
an old dove who has circled the world, then built its nest in a cluster fig
tree?
Some of the bazaar had set its sights on Lamki, others were trying to go
to Chisapani. Where should we go? Was Father not able to take us
anywhere? Had Father’s wings been paralysed? I was restless—weren’t we
going to leave?
They would all leave, one by one. They would all build new houses and
start new businesses. Mother used to say that many people did not
remember their last dream of the night. That’s how they would forget—like
forgetting their dreams.
As I went on thinking like this, I resumed my old habit of rifling through
boxes.
One day, I went through Sister’s box. It was filled with sarwal-kurtas to
be worn at festivals, all put away neatly folded and smelling of camphor.
There were other things too: earstuds and rings, red lipstick, postcards of
heroes and heroines inscribed with best wishes for the new year. Among
them, I found Sister’s diary. On its cover there was a sticker in the shape of
a rose and inside were page after page of her and her friends’ photos.
Life spins like a potter’s wheel. Who knows where we end up? We lose touch with friends.
Will we meet again or not? The emotions you write in this will later be my friends. When I
am an old grandmother, I will turn the pages of my diary. And I will remember this time
of the past. I am sure my friends will write their hearts’ feelings in this.

Your friend,
Parvati

In her signature, I could only make out the initial ‘P’.

This is what Sister had written in black ink, without any crossings out or
corrections, beneath a smiling photo of herself on the first page of the diary.
She knew that writing in any other colour would fade away.
I put Sister’s diary under my pillow, planning to read more later.
 As for her sarwal-kurtas, I could see that Baatu was keen to try them on.
One day, she secretly put one on, hiding in a dark corner. How did she
look? I had never seen Baatu look so pretty. She walked about in a printed
green sarwal-kurta, jingling her anklets, and asked me, ‘How do I look?’
‘Pretty, really pretty,’ I blinked my eyes.
She spun herself around, giggling. I hung from her hip like a child,
pressing my cheek to her soft round buttocks. She stretched herself forward,
and I fell down onto my knees.
From that day onward, Baatu would put on Sister’s sarwal-kurtas
whenever she thought there was no one in the house.
‘Baatu!’ Mother told her one day, when she suddenly caught sight of her,
‘Don’t wear those clothes.’
Baatu didn’t reply. She just stood there looking disconsolate. Nor did I
dare to say, ‘Mother, let her wear them. She looks so nice in them.’
‘It reminds me of that whore,’ Mother said in a tearful voice, her lips
trembling. ‘If she wanted a husband, she should have told us. Instead, the
whore went away and made us cry.’
Before the sun set, Katasé itself looked as melancholy as Mother’s tear-
filled eyes. There was very little noise and the shops closed their doors
early. Dogs lifted their legs and pissed on those doors with relish, then ran
away. In the alleys, there were only stray remnants of the haterus’ shoes:
here a sole, there a scrap of green fabric.
In the evening, I didn’t have the nerve to go to Chauraha because I would
have to return though deserted alleys. There was darkness everywhere, as if
something would suddenly jump out at me from a corner. So, in the
evenings, I stayed with Baatu. While she scrubbed the pots, I sat beside her
holding up a lantern and pouring water from the jug. As the sound of
Mother and Father’s talk drifted over from the Medikal, I told Baatu stories.
She loved listening to stories. By the time I came to the end of the story of
Sunakesra Rani, there would be tears in her eyes. To cheer her up, I would
recite a verse like this:

A garland of gold to the listener

 A garland of flowers to the teller
This story will go to Heaven …
… And when I am telling it to Baatu
It will come right into my mouth!

If this was not enough to make her smile, I would show her a strand of her
own hair. In the soft light of the lantern, she would not see it until I held it
up close to her eyes. I would tell her, ‘Look, this is my Sunakesra Rani’s
hair.’
‘Oh, let me see,’ she would put the hair into her damp hand, and it would
become lank.
‘Recognize it?’ I would laugh.
‘But this is mine!’ she would suddenly laugh.
I would take an opportunity like this to grab hold of Baatu from behind.
Clenching my teeth, I would say, ‘You and no one else are my very own
Sunakesra Rani.’
When I held Baatu tight, she was not able to push me away. She drew
long, long breaths, as if she had developed a high fever, and I would
become drunk on the strange fragrance of her hair: absolutely drunk, like
Shivaji in the Swasthani story.
‘Don’t just play with her,’ Father chided me one day. ‘Teach her to read
and write in her spare time. If she doesn’t know how to read, she will
always suffer.’
So, from that day onward, I began to teach Baatu the alphabet.
Baatu showed an interest in this too. Within three months, she had
become a reader. And, one day, she wrote her name in crooked letters:
‘Baatu Chaudhari’.
I showed Father the page. Father read it with pleasure.
‘Come here,’ he called her.
Baatu went to him.
‘You’ve learned to write your name. Learn how to write a letter too. You
won’t be with us forever. You will write us letters.’

***
After patients stopped coming to the Medikal, I became even more restless
and bored. I couldn’t resist messing about with a stethoscope or a BP
whenever I came across one, so they were worn out long before they should
have been. When Father wasn’t there, I furtively drummed my fingers on
the net of the stethoscope—dhyang dhyang. If I put the tips of the
stethoscope into my ears and moved my finger over the netting, it sounded
like a great storm blowing, and I liked that very much.
The BP was fun for a different reason. When I wound it around my arm
like a plaster cast and pumped the air in, the BP inflated like a volleyball.
Eventually, it was as hard as a rock. When the needle of the clock hanging
on the other vine reached 250 or 300, it agitated to and fro, and the BP
gripped my arm extremely hard. Blood couldn’t flow through it: the blood
higher up stayed up, the blood lower down stayed down. My arm hurt
badly, as if a boil had erupted on it. I would leave my painful arm like this
for two or three minutes, then I would let the air out quickly. The hand of
the clock span around again, my arm became lighter, and blood ran through
the veins once again. At this point, I would close my eyes in pleasure. It
was as if pus was pouring out of a painful boil. Ramesh was addicted to the
BP too. If Father was out and the chance arose, he would say, ‘Hey, bring
the BP!’
Ramesh would puff and pant loudly when his arm was hurting—chu chu.
But then Father would shout, ‘Hey, are you playing with the BP again?’
‘We haven’t touched it.’
‘Do you think I don’t know?’ Father would say, ‘Play with it again and
I’ll give you a thumping.’
I stood there in silence, hanging my head.
One day, I was having fun, with the stethoscope pushed into my ears,
when Ramesh came rushing in, his lips moving rapidly. I could not hear
what he was saying because I was enjoying listening to my own heartbeat. I
took the stethoscope out of my ears and asked him, ‘What? Say it again.’
‘They say we’re moving to Lamki tomorrow,’ Ramesh repeated, pushing
away the lock of hair that hung down to the bridge of his nose.
I pushed the stethoscope back into my ears.
 He moved his lips again.
‘What did you say?’ I pulled the stethoscope out of my ears again.
‘Ba’s bought this massive house in Lamki.’
‘How many rooms?’
‘Four rooms, the front door is even more massive!’
‘Shutters?’
‘Of course not.’ He spread his arms wide with open palms.
‘What, then?’
‘An iron door.’ He took a long breath with his hand on his hips. ‘Even a
thief couldn’t break it.’
That was just the kind of house Father had said he would build. I felt a
pang in my heart and I fell silent. When would I ever have a room in a four-
roomed house, with a huge photo of a film hero pinned to its wall?
‘What are you listening to?’
‘An ant singing.’
‘Really? Can ants sing?’ He looked at the stethoscope as if he didn’t
believe me at first. Then he pushed his hair back from his forehead and
thought about it.
‘I’ve only just heard it for the first time,’ I said.
He bit his lip and asked me, ‘What was it singing then?’
‘That song from Maine Pyaar Kiya. “Dil Diwana Bin Sajana Ke
Manena”.’
‘Let me listen to it too.’
I put the two tails of the stethoscope into his ears. An ant was walking
across the table beside us. I put a piece of paper in front of it and it stopped,
uncertain how to proceed. This was my chance to place the netting of the
stethoscope in front of it. Ramesh frowned. I gestured to him, asking, ‘Can
you hear it?’ He shook his head and grimaced.
If the ant sings, he will hear it though!
‘Heeheehee, listen to this!’ I brought my index finger down hard on the
net of the stethoscope—dhvaang! It must have been really loud in his ears
because he covered both of them with his hands and sat down on the
ground, screaming, ‘You’ve killed me, my ears have burst!’
 Tears came from his eyes, poor thing. For a long while, he sat there
wiggling his fingers about in his ears. I sat down in a chair, laughing and
clutching my stomach.
‘What if my ears had burst?’ Ramesh snapped at me as he wiped his
eyes.
‘You’d have wandered around Lamki deaf,’ I said, laughing. But inside I
felt sad—oh, so he was really going!
‘Anyway, I came to get a needle from you, give me one, na?’ he said,
after he had regaled me with facts about Lamki for a while. The Medikal
was already dark, but I groped about and found a needle with a broken base.
He stuffed it into his trouser pocket.
‘I’ll go now, or Ba will beat me,’ he said, hesitating.
I pretended to smile.
He went out into the dark alley but returned a moment later. His face was
covered in sweat. His bright eyes met my misty ones.
‘Come to Lamki, we’ll meet up there.’
That’s all he’d come back to say, and he ran off.
I got up late the next morning. All night, I’d been chased by a snake.
Nowadays, my legs had started to become lame when a snake came after
me. Baatu disturbed my sleep all night with the jingling of her bangles and
then came in the morning to pull my hair. Today, I looked at Baatu from
eyes heavy from lack of sleep and told her, ‘Don’t come and pull my hair in
the mornings!’
She was standing there with a glass of tea and said, ‘Here, have this tea.’
Once the glass of hot tea had passed my tonsils and reached my navel, a
yawn broke my mouth open, then moved on. During the night, I had slept
awkwardly on my pillow and the right side of my shoulder was too painful
to move.
Father was sitting outside the Medikal with his head in a book. I ran to
Ramesh’s shop.
‘Where’s he running off to now, when it’s time for school?’ asked
Mother.
But I didn’t turn to look back.
 But oh, Ramesh had already gone. The shop was gaping wide open, its
floor covered with rotten tomatoes and potatoes. A hen and her three chicks
were pecking at a pile of dirt. My heart turned as cold and empty as
Ramesh’s shop.
Ramesh’s father was the first to up and leave Katasé. After that, it just
got worse: everyone left, one after the other. Katasé couldn’t hold them.
Pankaj the barber went back to Rajapur. Sharma Uncle went to Lamki.
Hajurko Sau went to Chisapani, Bhakte to Lamki and Omé Sau to Lamki
too. As for Radio Chaudhari, he said, ‘I’m off to my own village,’ and went
to Bhagaraiya.
When it was time for him to depart, Gauli Sau stared at his half-built
house with his eyes filled with tears. I had never seen such a lifeless face.
He sniffed and wiped his tears away with his hat.
‘It will be as it is written,’ said one of the half a dozen people who had
come to bid him farewell. ‘There’s no point hanging around just because of
the house. You have to keep the business going.’
Three trucks containing his possessions had already crossed the Amauri
Khola, so Gauli Sau was in a hurry. He regarded Bishta Budha, who stood
beside him in silence, with red eyes. Hoarsely, he told him, ‘Please take
care of my house.’
‘Don’t worry, Gauli Sau,’ Bishta Budha grasped his stick tightly.
‘Katasé’s days will return.’
Gauli Sau headed for the Amauri Khola with an empty heart, as if he was
completely exhausted.
I went back, following Father. Father was completely silent, like a dried-
up river.
‘Everyone’s starting to move away,’ Mother said that night. ‘Are we
going to end up alone in this bazaar? I can’t even sleep properly at night
anymore.’
‘And do you think I can?’ Father sounded gloomy. ‘I don’t know what
kind of curse has fallen on Katasé. It’s going to be completely finished.’
‘Right, let’s sell everything and move to Surkhet.’
 ‘Wait,’ said Father, sinking down onto the bed, ‘Let’s wait and see where
our fate takes us.’

***

After that, a procession of trucks and carts left Katasé every day, like the
lines of carts coming back from the jujube harvest. Bishta Budha wandered
in circles around Katasé, muttering, ‘They’ve earned what they earned, and
now they’ve gone.’
And, one day, Ekraj went away too. How many possessions did he have?
One corner of the truck hired by the contractor was enough. His mother and
sister had already seated themselves beside the driver. When he had loaded
the last bundle into the truck, he told me, ‘Dost, see you in Lamki.’
The truck had already started its engine, throwing out its black smoke. In
Ekraj’s shop, there was nothing left but the smoke-blackened walls. I didn’t
know why, but they had even demolished the fireplace. There are iron rods
in a fireplace—perhaps they had pulled those out and taken them away.
I stood beside the truck. As he climbed into it, Ekraj took my hand and
said, ‘Right then, dost, I’m leaving now.’ I felt restless and I looked down at
the ground.
‘Dost!’
Ekraj called again and I lifted my heavy head. Ekraj was hanging from
the door of the truck. Over the revving of its engine, he shouted, ‘Don’t be
afraid of that Madané!’ Then he unfastened the chain around his waist and
flung it in my direction. As the chain hit the ground, a puff of dust flew into
the air. Waving his left hand in the air, he cried, ‘Dost, hit him with the
chain!’
My throat tickled but no sound came out of it. The truck started off,
scaring the dogs. Its black smoke spread darkness before me. I don’t know
why, but I didn’t have the courage to pick up the chain.

In the afternoon, Baatu’s elder brother came to see her, that same Bhaggu.
He arrived just as I sat down at the top of the ladder. He stood his bicycle at
the bottom of the ladder, beside mine. It was a faded red Hero Ranger and it
was in an even worse condition than mine. He was wearing a shirt from
which all the colour had fled, and blue trousers, creased in places. There
were sandals on his feet and his toenails stuck out like the peaks of cap
topis. His hair was dusty and dishevelled and his beard thin and stubbly. He
saw me sitting like a langur monkey at the top of the ladder and saluted me
with a namaste. This was the first time in my life I had ever received a
namaste.
‘Bhaggu, you’ve arrived?’ Father’s voice came from the Medikal.
Did Father know that he was coming?
Bhaggu went into the Medikal.
When she returned to us from her home after the last Maghi festival,
Baatu told us that her brother had mended his ways. He was working in a
big house now. Sometimes, he played Gabbar Singh in a Nautanki show
and knew all the dialogue: ‘These hands, give them to me Thakur!’**
Sometimes, when he drank beer, he got into brawls, once or twice a year.
Last Tihar, Baatu had gone to give Bhaggu his tika. Parvati Didi had
taught her how to apply it to his forehead. And Bhaggu had walked all
around the village showing it off.
Baatu was inside boiling the tea when I went in. She was humming a
song very quietly as she drew a picture with a piece of charcoal. I pounced
on her, like a tiger pouncing on a goat. It gave her such a fright she nearly
knocked the tea pan over. She was furious, ‘You never get any better!’
‘You’re the one that knocked it over!’
Baatu didn’t reply. I wanted to tease her again, but her startled face
remained gloomy.
‘Listen,’ I said, standing up.
‘What?’ she raised her deep eyes to look at me.
‘Your brother’s here.’
‘Bhaggu?’ she became as agitated as a goat kid, jumped to her feet and
pulled her maxi straight. She tidied her hair and spun around saying, ‘How
do I look?’
‘Just like a film star,’ I laughed.
 Bhaggu was sitting on a stool beside Father. Baatu said he was twenty-
five but he looked as if he had already passed forty. His temples were
sunken and there was dejection in his eyes.
I stood beside his right shoulder.
‘So, you’ll come tomorrow, will you?’ Father’s face suddenly fell.
‘What to do?’ Bhaggu smiled, as if he was constipated and straining.
‘She’ll have to go one day or another.’
‘She was like a daughter,’ Father cleared his throat, ‘I’d hoped to give her
a nice send-off.’
‘What to do?’ Bhaggu sighed. Baatu came down the ladder with a glass
of tea in each hand. Bhaggu saw her and stopped talking.
Was Bhaggu talking about Baatu getting married? My heart went cold.
Baatu gave Bhaggu and Father their tea. As she did so, she peered at
Bhaggu, but Bhaggu couldn’t meet her gaze; he just looked out at the street.
He slipped his right forefinger inside his upper lip, pulled out a wad of
tobacco and flung it into the street. Then he spat and took a gulp of tea.
For a moment, a long silence spread.
‘What kind of bazaar is this now?’ Mother came muttering, ‘You can’t
even get an onion.’
Bhaggu gave Mother a namaste. Mother’s face darkened as she returned
his namaste, wiping away her sweat with the end of her sari. Then she
glanced at Father.
‘He says he will come tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Mother was taken aback. ‘Hey Bhaggu, she isn’t just your
sister, she’s our daughter too. Who are you trying to pass her off to?’
Bhaggu lowered his head.
Baatu understood what was going on. Her face turned as dark as a
monsoon sky and her lip trembled. She stared at Bhaggu from tear-filled
eyes and Bhaggu stared at the ground.
‘I will not get married,’ she said, stamping her foot. Then she flew up the
ladder. Bhaggu finished his tea and set the glass down on the floor. He
stared at Father and Mother for a moment, unsure of what to do.
 Then he pressed his palms together. ‘Right, I’m leaving now. I’ll come
tomorrow morning.’
‘She’s your sister, after all. You will have thought carefully about this!’
Father stood up.
Bhaggu offered his namaste again but he did not look in Baatu’s
direction.
He walked over to his bicycle, paused as he thought of something, then
pressed down a pedal with his foot, mounted the bicycle and disappeared
down the dark alley.
The sound of Baatu sobbing could be heard over the roar of the Amauri
Khola all that night. It seemed to come from deep within the very river
itself. She wept, doing her best to stay out of the yellow light of the lamp in
the kitchen.
‘Let’s not send her away like this,’ Mother’s voice was soft. ‘She’s only
just of an age to start taking pleasure in things.’
‘What can you do? We will suffer an ill effect if we don’t go along with
this.’
‘I am fond of her; I can’t give her up. She will stay another year or two.
Then she’ll understand things, and she’ll choose her own path.’
‘But it doesn’t seem there will be a place to stay in Katasé now.’ Father
glanced at Mother. ‘Where will you take her off to?’
‘We’ll take her wherever we go.’
‘Don’t you get tearful now too,’ Father said, just a little sharply. ‘You
shouldn’t always be so sentimental. They will all leave us one day. Your
own daughter’s already gone.’
Mother’s lips trembled.
Baatu wept more loudly.
‘Don’t cry,’ Mother said tearfully, ‘What will happen is what is written in
your fate.’
Father picked up some grain and stood up, like an old bird. That night,
Baatu scrubbed our dirty pots for the last time, weeping. She plastered the
cooking place with fresh mud and cleaned up the midden. Then she sat
morosely beside the fireplace, rubbing oil into her hands and feet.
 On the further cot, I was unable to sleep for a long time. Far away, a
jackal cried in the sal copse and a dog barked in the bazaar.
On the nearer cot, Baatu couldn’t sleep either. I heard her bangles
jingling.
Sometimes, I would climb into Baatu’s bed at midnight and snuggle
down with her like a cat. Baatu knew I was there but she would pretend she
did not. I would listen to her heartbeat all night and touch the warm softness
of her lips. Her lips would tremble gently. But today, I don’t know why, I
could not even turn towards her bed.
I hadn’t even been able to speak to her since the evening. When she
looked at me with welling eyes, I felt weak and limp. How could I tell her,
‘Baatu, don’t go’?
Lying on my side with my back to her, I watched the soft light of the
moonlit night from empty eyes.
Baatu sighed and moaned all night. I tossed and turned all night, like a
fish tied to a fishing line, hanging in the wind.

‘Aren’t you going to school today?’ Mother asked.

‘No,’ I told her.
The sun had risen on Katasé with its usual brightness and splendour.
Shafts of sunlight spilled into the corners through the gaps between the roof
tiles. Those corners had been cleaned by Baatu first thing in the morning.
And early that morning, Baatu had come with her hair damp and unfastened
from her bath in the Amauri Khola. Her eyes were as deep and dark as a
dried-up well.
Before 9 o’clock, Baatu stuffed her clothes into a bag. That brown bag
had belonged to Parvati Didi. She had walked round the whole of Katasé
and inspected a hundred bags before she bought it. I was standing beside
Baatu, watching her. Some of her clothes hung out of the bag, and she was
stuffing them back in, murmuring.
‘Baatu!’
‘What?’
 Mother came to stand beside her with Parvati Didi’s sarwal-kurta
hanging from her arm.
‘Put this on.’
Baatu took the clothes and stroked them in silence. Once she had put
them on, she looked just like Parvati Didi hurrying off to school: exactly the
same.
Father was down in the Medikal. Would he think of Sister when he saw
Baatu?
Baatu made her preparations. She ran here and there in case she had
forgotten something. For a moment, she stood still with her hand on her hip.
‘Baatu, come here,’ Mother’s face was sad. ‘I’ll comb your hair.’
She went to Mother and sat down beside her. Mother put oil into the roots
of each and every hair and combed out every tiny knot and tangle.
When I heard a dog barking loudly in the alley, I ran out and sat at the
top of the ladder.
A cart was coming.
Bhaggu sat at the front of the cart. Behind him there were some other
people whom I had never seen before. Dogs ran ahead and behind, trying to
startle the bullocks. But why would a powerful bullock be put off by a
scabious dog? They strode onward. The boy who was driving the cart gave
the rope in his hand a sharp pull. The bullocks felt the jerk in their nostrils
and stopped in front of the Medikal.
Bhaggu jumped down hurriedly from the cart. Today, he was a little more
smartly dressed. He gave a namaste to Father, who was standing outside the
Medikal. Two other middle-aged Tharus also got down. Their cheeks were
a little sunken. They both looked as if they were coming to Katasé for the
first time. Wherever their eyes went, they looked surprised, and they stared.
These men too bowed their heads slightly and gave Father a namaste.
I went down the ladder, two rungs at a time.
One of these middle-aged men had come to be Baatu’s bridegroom.
Bhaggu introduced him, his brother-in-law who was older than him. He
was sitting on the long bench beside the other Tharu. I stood next to him
and noticed that he stank of chewing tobacco. The hair above his ears and
temples was turning grey. He wore blue trousers and a white shirt covered
in stains with a bulging shirt pocket. I ran my eye furtively along the rim of
the pocket: jyaa, it was tobacco.
I also noticed his sandals, tied with red laces. He put his right foot up on
his left thigh. There was a deep restlessness on his face and, from time to
time, he glanced nervously from side to side. Whenever his eyes met
Father’s, he pulled a sudden grin, showing his teeth.
His name was Jogiram Tharu.
His age: more than forty.
Bhaggu told us, ‘How can we know our age?’
Jogiram’s wife had died giving birth to a fourth child four years ago.
Jogiram had four fields of his own in Pahadipur in which he grew potatoes.
He was very well thought of at the Sahu’s. Bhaggu said that it was he who
had got him a job there. Sometimes, Jogiram took the venom out of
snakebites. He was a jogi, just like his name, and had no vices at all. The
young Tharu lads were not to be trusted these days. They quarrelled with
the Sahu from the big house. They wouldn’t look after Baatu. Jogiram was
perfect, saheb.
‘You must have thought it through’ was all that Father said.
Jogiram grinned again. He must have been thinking that the matter was
settled.
Father told me, ‘Go upstairs and tell them.’
I ran up the ladder, two rungs at a time.
‘Baatu, he says to come down now,’ I said, out of breath.
Baatu wiped away her tears. Mother had combed her hair really
beautifully and into it she had plaited a red string with a bunch of wool. On
her forehead was a tikuli like the dawning of the sun.
‘Go now,’ Mother said in a tearful voice. ‘Come back to see us
sometimes.’
Baatu’s soft sob struck me in my heart. She picked up her bag smartly
and moved towards the ladder. I followed behind. She went down one rung
at a time. Then she stood before Jogiram. Jogiram stared at her with a
crooked eye. Bhaggu glanced at her too.
 ‘This is Baatu,’ Bhaggu said.
Jogiram didn’t say anything. Baatu learned now that this was her
husband. I stole a glance at her and saw her face turn blue as if poison was
spreading through it. Baatu’s eyes had already become empty of all
emotion. This must be what eyes are like when dreams have left them.
Baatu had left them behind her upstairs—those dreams she had after she
came to Katasé, and now she stood here in silence. Or else she was saying
to herself, ‘This is not the Tharu husband I dreamed of.’
Mother came with some red tika powder in a plate and spread out a mat.
‘Come here,’ Father sat down on the mat and called Baatu. ‘This is how
your leave-taking is going to be.’
Baatu wiped her eyes and sat down before Father.
Applying the tika all over her forehead, Father told her, ‘Be always
happy, may happiness always dwell in your home. Do not cry when you
have troubles—people have contempt for tears.’
Baatu shivered.
Father took two envelopes from his waistcoat pocket. ‘In one of these is
your earnings, in the other is some money for an offering. Keep it safe.’
Baatu took both envelopes.
Mother could not say much while she was applying the tika, She just
said, ‘Don’t forget us. Come often, consider this your natal home.’
Baatu embraced Mother bodily. Mother wrung her nose with the end of
her sari.
‘You apply the tika too,’ Father looked at me.
I kneeled in front of Baatu but I could not look her in the eye. As I took
the tika powder into my hand and extended it toward Baatu’s forehead, my
hand shook. When I touched her forehead, a lot of the powder fell out of my
hand.
After that, Father and Mother gave tika to Jogiram too. Jogiram bowed
his head and gave them a namaste. Mother stood beside the Medikal with
her hands on her hips, lost in her thoughts. For a moment, silence spread
through the Medikal. The stirring of the bullocks and the buzzing of the
green flies cut softly through the stillness.
 ‘Right, we must go now,’ said Bhaggu, jumping to his feet, ‘Otherwise
we will be late.’
Jogiram and his friends stood up. Baatu put the envelope Father had
given her into the outer pocket of her bag and fastened the zip.
‘Here, take this too.’ Father gave Baatu a small piece of paper. ‘Our
address is on this. You have learned to read and write a little, so write us a
letter.’
Bhaggu looked at Father in surprise.
When it was time to climb into the cart, Baatu touched Father and
Mother’s feet and Mother stroked her hair. As she climbed up, Baatu
glanced at me. But my eyes were full of tears and I hid them.
Then the cart crawled away.
The scabious dog that was sleeping on the corner of the alley stretched its
legs and got up to run after the bullocks, barking. The cart reached the bend
in the alley and Baatu turned to look back as the cart passed behind Paras
Sunar’s closed shop. Then it was gone. Father sat down hard in his chair
and Mother just stood there. My legs were shaking, but they picked
themselves up and made me run. The cart had reached the first alley. I
followed it, hiding myself between each wall along the way. Baatu wiped
her eyes from time to time with her scarf. Did she or did she not see me
following hopelessly behind, hiding behind every wall?
I stood on the rickety bridge over the Amauri Khola, watching the cart as
it receded into the distance. Tumbling and rolling and throwing up dust, it
entered the forest and disappeared from sight.
That dust must have been full of bits and pieces of dreams, because it did
not clear for a long time.
OceanofPDF.com
 THE EIGHTH DAY

It was time for Sister to come—why hadn’t she arrived yet?

Since early that morning, I had been fluttering about like a jureli bird,
sometimes going down, sometimes coming up, sometimes watching the
vehicles running along the highway.
What would she be like now, my sister?
Mother said, ‘She’s a merchant’s wife. Her arms will be fat. Her cheeks
will be plump.’
‘Has Parvati come yet?’ Father asked us from time to time.
It was two years since Parvati visited Mother and Father in Kalikot. I was
in Kathmandu at the time and could not see her.
Father and Mother had forgiven her now. ‘Whatever happened, she’s our
daughter. She left of her own choice. She’s happy.’ That’s what they
thought.
Sister had phoned me that time. ‘There’s no trade. They only have one or
two pieces of cloth left. Father and Mother just sit in the shop. If I had
known I would see them like this, I wouldn’t have come. I’m finding it
difficult to even swallow my food.’
I just listened.
‘Are you going to go on enjoying yourself in Kathmandu, or are you
returning home?’
I hadn’t spoken to Sister again after that.
 Because Sister was coming today, Mother wet a towel and wiped down
Father’s mouth, eyes, head, forehead, chin, throat—everything. Father
wanted to wear his two front teeth, so Mother cleaned them with a brush
and put them in his mouth.
Mother came back with some milk and told me that she had been
watching for a long time, shading her eyes with her hand to look up towards
the monument that stands in the middle of Kohalpur’s central crossroads.
She had been staring into the distance as far as her cloudy eyes could see. If
she saw a rickshaw in the distance, she must have been thinking, ‘Is it
Parvati?’ She came back when the sun began to make her head ache.
After a moment she told me again, ‘Go and look, maybe she’s got lost
somewhere down there.’
I ran towards the gate, passing through a crowd outside the emergency
ward. There was a different guard at the gate and he did not ask me
anything.
A black shadow appeared in the distance on the road which was shining
like a lake. As it drew closer, I could see that it was a young woman in a
rickshaw. The midday sun was hot and the soles of my feet were burning.
As I looked into the distance and the sun shone down on me, my nose
tickled as if I was going to sneeze.
I narrowed my eyes.
And, oh yes, it was Sister.
The man pulling the rickshaw was drenched in sweat. His body was
glistening with it.
I raised my hand.
The rickshaw went around me in a circle, then stopped.
Years ago, my sister, as beautiful as the sky, had gone far away, wiping
away her tears. Years later, and with a much bigger body, she came close
again, wiping away her sweat. Her cheeks were covered with dark
blemishes.
Sister found it hard to recognise me with the stubble that had appeared on
my face after nine years. And I had got thinner too. But at last she knew me,
and she smiled.
 I bent down to touch her feet. She laughed, pulling one foot back and
away from me. I blushed and did not know what to do.
‘Here, grab this.’
Sister gave me a black plastic bag. It was heavy and smelled of apples
and oranges. I went ahead and Sister followed me. Her sandals went pit-a-
pat as she walked.
‘How is Ba?’
‘He’s a little better.’
‘Truly?’
I pretended not to hear.
As soon as she saw Sister, Mother covered her face with the end of her
sari. She was crying, I knew. I leaned up beside the window. Although she
could hide her twisted face as she cried, Mother could not conceal her tears.
Sister fell on her face at Mother’s feet and Mother’s lips trembled.
Sister got up, wiping away her tears, and said, ‘Mother, don’t cry, na?’
The other carers, worn out and exhausted, were watching, staring at us
from the corners of the ward. I could not meet anyone’s gaze. My heart
began to fall like a yellowed leaf, and I could not catch hold of it. I just kept
watching Mother and Sister from the corners of my eyes.
Sister went to Father’s side. She stopped. She could not hide the shaking
of her body. She stared at him, with a tube in his nose, a tube in his wrist, a
tube for his urine.
‘Ba?’ she called.
Father opened his eyes wide. His lip curled and his eyes became wet. I
turned away to the window to conceal my own welling tears.
‘Daughter, you’ve come.’
When I heard Father’s voice, I turned my head. Father took hold of
Sister’s right hand. His cheeks were trembling. Sister could not speak.
‘I thought I would die without seeing you,’ Father clenched his teeth as
he began to speak.
Sister sat down on the stool beside him. She covered her face with her
scarf and began to sob.
 ‘Take courage, na?’ Mother wiped Father’s eyes with the end of her sari.
‘He is going to get better, don’t you think?’
Father twisted his neck from side to side and moved restlessly.
Gradually, the dark cloud that was covering our faces cleared away.
‘How is the grandson?’ Mother asked.
It was a year and a half ago that Sister had a son.
Sister told us: my nephew could smile, he tried to talk, he was plump and
fat. If you switched on the TV, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. We were
delighted.
‘So, will I die without even seeing my grandson’s face?’ Father wept
uncontrollably.
Mother heaved a long sigh.
Sister showed us a photo of my nephew holding his arms up to the sky.
Mother brought it up very close to her eyes to look at it. Then she held it in
front of Father’s eyes. Father’s eyes had become cloudy.
‘I can’t see a thing,’ Father said, ‘Get me my glasses.’
Mother searched anxiously through the bag that had been shoved under
the bed. I tried to help her.
‘Go over there,’ she shouted.
Mother scattered clothes smelling of sweat all over the floor in her hurry.
‘If only I’d had the sense,’ she muttered, ‘I forgot them, they’ve been left
at home.’
Father brought the photo close to his eyes, then moved it further away.
He moved his trembling hand around in front of his face. I could not bear to
watch his suffering, so I went out on to the veranda.
Chotku screamed, ‘hey hey hey!’ The child next to him was frightened
and began to cry. Chotku was soaked in sweat and he was kicking his legs
up in his bed. The carer who had been sitting gloomily beside his bed until
now caught hold of him. The saline tubes were pulled tight and the stand
was shaking.
‘Hey hey hey!’ A nurse hurried over.
‘Don’t let go, hold tight,’ she said.
 She pulled out the saline tube. Chotku clenched his teeth and his body
shot upwards.
‘Chotku, hey Chotku, be quiet. Sit quietly,’ his father shouted into his ear.
The nurse ran out of the ward. The old man who was lying face down on
this side of the door woke up and began to cough hard.
I looked at Sister and saw that she was startled, as if a landslide had
suddenly occurred on a peaceful hill. She looked fearfully at Mother.
Mother was bending over Father’s face.
‘Who’s that screaming?’ Father was agitated.
‘A patient over there.’
‘But why is he screaming?
‘I’ve really no idea why.’
And it was true that we didn’t know what had happened to Chotku. A
doctor rushed in and began to fill a syringe with medicine.
Chotku fell silent but Sister was still agitated. She could not speak for a
long while. She just sat staring out through the half-open green curtain.
The old man near the door went on coughing for a long time. There was
no one beside him to comfort him. In the night, I had seen someone’s head
leaning on the old man’s bed, but we never saw anyone at his bed all
through the day.
Ahung, ahung, ahung—the old man went on coughing. It was difficult for
us to talk over his coughing. Sister looked over at him in silence, then she
turned to Father. After a long while, the old man gave a final khvaakka and
fell silent. He was still lying face down.
Sister began to get ready to leave, saying that her baby son was alone at
home. I went to accompany her to her bus. We did not speak on the way. A
bus from Nepalganj arrived at the Kohalpur memorial, packed full of
people. This was the last bus for Surkhet and it would be difficult for Sister
to get onto it. She stood there for a moment. If she got on this bus, she
would be travel sick too.
‘Didi, hurry up!’ the young conductor shouted.
Sister tried to tell me something; her lips trembled. After a moment she
told me, ‘It doesn’t seem like Ba will survive.’ She came straight out with
it.
I did not reply.
‘Did you not notice how white his teeth were?’ Sister was in floods of
tears now. ‘The teeth are white like that when someone is about to die.’
I could not speak.
‘Bring Ba to Surkhet.’
Everyone was watching us from the windows of the bus. They were
surprised to see Sister crying like this. I bit my lip to stem my sobs. Sister
climbed up into the bus, wiping her eyes with her shawl. As I watched with
burning eyes, she moved inside. Once the conductor had given his two
thumps on the side of the bus, the bus set off, releasing a cloud of black
smoke.
I sat down hard on a nearby rock. The sky had fallen right onto my head.
Dodging the rickshaws’ bells, I reached the hospital gate. The guard had
already changed.
‘Where have you been?’ asked the guard.
He was standing there with his hands in his trouser pockets. Inside the
collar of his shirt, he wore a spotted handkerchief. My tongue was dry and
my throat was choked, so my voice did not come out.
He asked me nothing more, so I trudged inside.
There was a crowd in front of the emergency ward. Another injured
person must have been brought in. I didn’t feel like looking in that
direction. I kept remembering Sister’s face. Lifting my heavy feet, I began
to climb the stairs.
What had happened now? A doctor, Narmada and several other people
were standing around the bed by the door. The old man was lying face
down and appeared to be clasping a pillow to his stomach. I hurried over to
Mother’s side. Mother was sitting on a stool, staring over at the old man.
Mother told me: Narmada had come at her usual time to make her circuit
of the ward. She asked everyone how they were, but she didn’t speak to the
old man because he was lying face down. On her way back, she stopped
beside him for a moment. His face had turned blue.
‘What’s happened, Nani?’ Mother asked her.
 She stumbled over to Mother and whispered in her ear so that Father
wouldn’t hear. ‘Bajyai, he has died.’
It seemed to Mother that his life must have left him with that final loud
kyaakka that afternoon.
The old man went in secret, no one knew.
We were afraid that Father might find out about it. They say, you know,
that if someone dies in the next bed in a hospital, the other patients are
demoralized. But Father was asleep, and this fear reduced a little.
Having made a note on a piece of paper, Narmada and the doctor
departed and the crowd of people who had been standing there went back to
their own beds. Only a tousle-headed boy remained at the old man’s
bedside. He must be a relative. He closed the staring eyes of the old man
who was now lying on his back and pulled the sheet over him. He brought a
stretcher trolley and with a struggle he lifted the old man onto it. Then he
pulled a worn-out bag from under the bed and placed it near the old man’s
feet.
There was no emotion on the boy’s face. He was concentrating on
arranging the stretcher. Had anything been missed? He looked here and
there. Then he took a long sigh and began to pull the trolley. All the carers
were staring, and Krishnaji was watching too. We saw that a shoe was being
dragged along by the stretcher trolley. Its lace had become entangled with
the rear wheel.
‘Hey bhai, whose shoe is that? You missed it.’
He bent down to look. He pulled the lace tight and detached the shoe,
which he placed beside the stretcher. He gave a quiet sob, as if it was stuck
in his throat.
Then at last he burst out, ‘It’s my Ba’s shoe.’

***

We no longer came across worn-out shoes in the alleys. Nor did we see
dogs lying there, twitching in their fitful sleep. They must have gone off to
Khairiphanta or Amaravati or somewhere. The aroma of boiling ghee
vanished from the alleys. Even the sun that rose over Katasé was insipid.
The class six examinations were drawing near and we were approaching
the ends of our lessons in every book. My English, Maths and Nepali books
were torn off at the back and lacked their final chapters. Mother was furious
when she saw this, ‘He’s thirteen years old. He still rips up his books,
thukka!’
But I thought to myself: I’ll easily pass. There was a custom that you’d
still be passed even if you failed two subjects.
Sometimes, when I arrived in Chauraha, I would see a beaten-up old bus
arriving in the bus park, almost completely empty. The only people in the
bus would be those who were planning to move somewhere else. The
smoke that rose into the air over Katasé thinned, cleared and came to an
end.
Just about every week, I would see another shop that had closed. So
many of the locks that hung from the shop doors had already begun to rust.
How many months was it since Father last went to Nepalganj? It was
increasingly hard to remember. The enamel on the ‘Harsha Medikal Hall’
signboard had flaked away until all that remained was ‘Ha-sha—dikal’.
Father didn’t even make a new signboard. The Medikal looked toothless,
like an old man’s mouth. Many of the shelves were empty and many of the
medicines were out of date. Father and Mother didn’t have the energy to
sort them out. I wondered—would we be the only people living in Katasé?
And then I would have nightmares, and when I got up in agitation, the cries
of the jackals that had come into the bazaar would grip me by the neck. I
thought that ghosts wandered the deserted alleys throughout Katasé these
days. Now they would come looking for us.
On my way to school, I met very few students, and those I did meet I
didn’t know well. Nor did I feel like getting to know them. My bicycle tyres
were grinning wide, but Sharma Uncle, who would have mended them, had
already left Katasé and gone away. So, I ran to school, and ran back.
Sharmila had gone to live in Chisapani. ‘I’ll only come back to take the
exams. When I’ve passed, Ba will send me to Nepalganj to study,’ she said.
 Madané knew that I was on my own now. He had threatened me, saying,
‘Wait, I know when you leave school.’ For that reason, I never stayed for
the whole day of classes. I would come out of third or fourth class to piss,
and then I wouldn’t go back, but run away.
I would throw stones at the egrets that sat stretching their necks beside
the Jamara Khola. The egrets would fly off towards Chisapani—bhurrrr—
and I would run after them.
One day, I was running to Katasé so fast that my chest was burning. I had
run off during the third class. There were no clouds in the sky, just burning
heat. That day, I realized at last that Katasé was completely deserted in the
afternoon, like a cremation ghat.
At the tail end of the bazaar, there were two shops left where you could
get fresh vegetables. They belonged to someone from nearby Jagatpur, so
they were open. Otherwise they would have closed.
Only one or two doors were open in each alley. The saujis would only
come out if you called. Outside the doors there were dusty chickens calling
kvaaar, khaaarr. I realized then what a desolate sound it was—that kvaaarr
khaaarr from a chicken in the emptiness.
That day, I stopped and stared when I got home. A line of eight carts was
standing outside the house. Why so many carts—the most I had ever seen in
front of our Medikal? I was amazed. And there were nine people there too.
They were loading sacks of cement onto the carts from a pile in front of the
house. Cement dust filled the air, entered my mouth and tickled my throat. I
covered my nose with my arm and reached the ladder. Mother was sitting
halfway up and watching everything. She saw me but she didn’t ask why I
was home so early.
Father was sitting on the bench, bent, sweating over a calculator. Beside
him stood a man with a belly as big as a damaha drum. He had a cheerful
face.
Once all the sacks of cement had been loaded, the men started throwing
bricks into the next cart. The one on the ground threw up the bricks, the one
standing in the cart caught them and placed them in a pile. After that, they
loaded pillars into the next cart, rods into the next and planks into the next.
Eventually, I understood: Father had sold the whole lot.
‘We shouldn’t have sold it like that at a loss,’ said Mother, wearing a
disconsolate expression after the carts had gone. ‘We went to such pains to
collect all that stuff together.’
‘We would have got even less for it if we’d sold it later.’ Father pushed
his glasses into the side of his waistcoat.
That very day, the carts dragged away my big room, Mother’s non-
leaking roof and Father’s brick-built house. All night, Father and Mother
talked quietly in the lantern light.
Three times I awoke with a start that night, and three times I saw Father’s
slender shadow where it stretched outside in the lantern glow.

‘I’ll make a trip to Surkhet,’ Father said one day. ‘We can’t go on living
here.’
‘I’m the one who told you to go there, a long time ago!’ Mother laughed
happily for the first time in ages.
So, Father went to Surkhet, like a bird that comes down to Madhes from
the mountains to escape the cold. That day, he had with him two pairs of
trousers, three shirts, one brush, one toothpaste, his powerful glasses hung
around his neck like a garland, one pair of Gold Star shoes, a Dhaka topi on
his head, a skyblue waistcoat and a possibility, a hope, a tender young
dream that was putting out green shoots again.
I did not know how many days Father was planning to spend in Surkhet.
I bent to touch his feet and he placed his hand on my forehead: ‘Study well.
Don’t fail this time.’
I did not respond.
Father picked up his bag.
‘Look for a plot near the bazaar, if one can be found,’ Mother said
wearily.
Father strode away without replying. He did not turn back. Once Father
set out, he never looked back. He used to say, ‘If you turn to look back,
your attachments will trap you and you won’t be able to go.’
 After that, Mother and I were at home alone for the first time. The
occasional person from the bazaar would come to buy Bruset for a
headache or Sitamol for a fever, but the door to the Medikal was invariably
half shut. We worried about what we would do if someone came who was
truly sick.
In the evening, it was me who locked up the Medikal. It looked very dark
and filled with silence. When I saw the dense darkness in its corners, I
thought that the souls of dead people must be hiding in it. Whenever I went
to lock the door, my heart would swell with fear. If a mouse ran out, I
would almost faint in terror.
But I couldn’t say to Mother, ‘Mother I’m really scared. I’m too scared to
even go into the Medikal.’
I thought: I am the son of this house; a son should not be afraid.
Sometimes, I regretted not bringing back Ekraj’s chain. That would have
given me courage.
And, on top of all this, sometimes Mother would scream out in the
middle of the night—uhummmmm! I would coil up in fear when I could no
longer bear it. I would call to her, ‘Mother, what’s wrong?’
Mother would wake up. After she had gulped down a whole pitcher of
water, she would declare, ‘Jyaa, what a nightmare I’ve had!’ Mother began
to have nightmares every night.
When I went back to Chauraha after a while, I saw that all that was left
there was a handful of raksi shops. Sometimes drivers and contractors
would come from Lamki. They would beat on the tables, dance and make a
noise all night, then go back early in the morning. I didn’t have the courage
to walk the whole way around the bazaar. My eyes would fill with the faces
of the shopkeepers whose shop doors were shut now with garbage piled up
outside them. Sometimes, I would spend the whole of the day sitting on the
roof of the Shiva Bidi Depot, staring at the southern edge of the sky. I
would try to guess how long it would take the distant clouds to reach
Katasé. Sometimes, I would sit on the Amauri Khola bridge staring like a
sad egret—I remembered Bhagiram, who wove fans on the banks of this
same river. Would he still be there now, or had he died?
 The people who occasionally crossed the bridge saw the condition I was
in.
‘Babu, whose son are you?’ someone would ask me.
‘Dr Harsha Bahadur’s.’
‘Don’t sit by the river by yourself like this. A masaan will catch you.’
Sometimes, I would bump into Bishta Budha as he walked about
muttering to himself, usually at the bend in the second alley. He would stare
at me with huge eyes from behind his thick-power spectacles, and I would
not know what to do. Then he would recognize me and ask, ‘I haven’t seen
the doctor, where is he?’
‘He’s gone to Surkhet.’
‘Oh, does that mean that the doctor is leaving too?’ He would grip the
silver handle of his cane. Then he would stride off towards Chauraha,
dragging legs shaky with old age. The sound of his persistent coughing span
around in circles in my ears.

Dasai came in silence, in silence Mother applied my tika, and in silence I

received it. Ah, we had never had a Dasai like this before! Mother cooked
sel. As she cooked it, she sobbed quietly to herself, missing Sister and
Father.
At Tihar, Katasé used to be ablaze with candles. In the dense sal forest,
boys from the bazaar would set off potato bombs and launch rocket bombs.
The police would pursue them but the boys would run off in another
direction and set off more bombs. All night, rocket bombs would be
exploding in the Katasé sky. But this year nothing happened.
On the morning of Kag Tihar, the day we feed and worship the crows,
Mother complained, ‘What’s it like, there’s not even a single crow!’
Mother cast her eyes around every corner of the sky. Her eyes had
become weak very quickly. The smoke of a kitchen weakens your eyes very
early in life, they say. ‘Look and see,’ she told me, ‘Are there any crows?’
If only I could see one!
One week after Tihar was over, a band of crows did come to Katasé.
They sat on the roof of the house and called continually. ‘Crows tell us
news. We have to be able to understand.’ That’s how it seemed to Mother.
‘Tell good news, good news,’ Mother said in a loud voice. One or two
took to the air in fright, then returned to alight on the roof again.
Father came back that very day.
I saw him on the other side of the bridge above Chauraha. He came
carrying a heavy bag. This time he did not have a Dhaka topi on his head.
Kicking my heels up like a horse, I reached his side. He laughed when he
saw me. I bent to touch his feet.
‘Where have you been?’ Father asked me breathily. Drops of sweat were
sliding down his pate, which was bald up to his topknot.
‘Just out for a walk,’ I said, and tugged at the bag in his hand. He must
have been tired, because he surrendered it to me easily.
Carrying the bag, I marched ahead of him.
Mother had seen Father in the distance too, and she hurried down the
ladder. Father took a long look at the Medikal while Mother bent down to
touch his Gold Star shoes.
I rifled through the bag to see what was in it. There was a shirt that
smelled of sour sweat with a dirty collar. A strange smell was coming from
the bag.
Father was exhausted, as if he had come walking down a long road. He
lay flat out on the bench. At the bottom of the bag, I found a bag of walnuts,
and I started searching for a rock to break them open with.
‘Hey, they’re daante,’ said Father, lifting his head a little. ‘Just bite them
with your teeth.’
‘Where did you bring those from, daante walnuts?’ Mother was amazed.
That night, Father told us everything. He had set out for Surkhet but he
had been delayed in Chisapani for a day. He met a group of haterus who
were heading for Katasé. They told him, ‘Sauji, go up there instead, many
Katasé saujis have gone up there.’
All along the banks of the Karnali, Father had walked and walked. And
he had reached Kalikot. Several traders from Katasé had gone there and
become Katasé saus.
 ‘The weather there is cold,’ Father said, ‘My stomach recovered after
drinking the water for seven days.’ Once he reached Kalikot, it seemed to
him that it would be like heaven once a road and vehicles had reached it.
Because of this, Father was minded to open a cloth shop in Kalikot.
I was amazed. A cloth shop?
‘So, let’s go to Kalikot now,’ Father said.
‘He never listens to what I say. Chi!’ Mother clutched her head. ‘Go to
Kalikot, he says? No, I will not! Shouldn’t we go straight to Surkhet? What
has he got against Surkhet?’
‘Do you think Surkhet’s the same as it was when you left it?’ Father said
calmly. ‘The price of land has risen so much you cannot even touch it. We’ll
go there after we’ve earned some money. When I came here first, I came
with nothing, although Father told me to take my share. Now there’s no
question of going back there with empty hands. My younger brothers are
like strangers now. They’ll say: eldest brother has just come with nothing.
We only have one life, let us travel about. My brothers say their elder
brother is like a Raute, a nomad. If I had sisters, we could go, even if it’s
just to see their faces; but I don’t. They’ll treat us with contempt if they see
your empty earlobes. We cannot buy a house in the bazaar, and it’s not right
to rent a house in your own place. If we go to Surkhet, we have to climb up
a hill to get there, and it’s just the same in Kalikot. I see great possibilities
there. There aren’t many shops and it looks like custom will be good. The
further you are from your own people, the more their love will grow. Let’s
stay in Kalikot for one or two years, then return to Surkhet if we have
earned some money.’
‘When are we going to earn anything? It’s time for Death to drag us
away. We can’t be satisfied with what we have, and what we have will get
used up. I’ve never seen anyone going up into the hills to measure out
metres of cloth.’
‘Look, we could have gone to Tikapur, but there are already big doctors
there,’ said Father. ‘Now Lamki is shining because of the highway, but for
how many days we don’t know. Chisapani is not going to thrive, it will just
dry up.’
 Father was about to go on in this vein, but Mother suddenly stood up and
walked away.
Father sat staring into space.
Even that night, as we ate our food, Mother went on complaining and
Father went on listening.
‘I have arranged everything there,’ Father said when it was time to sleep.
‘We will make a good living. I just can’t run a Medikal anymore.’
Mother was still discontented.
‘Look, I accept that I have not done what you wanted me to.’ Father was
in despair. ‘Now accept what I say this last time. Let us live in Kalikot for
six months, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll go down to Surkhet.’
‘All right, six months then,’ Mother said in a low voice.
As for me, I wondered all night—where on earth is Kalikot? What will it
be like there?
I had many questions, but only one answer: the Karnali comes down
through the hills from Kalikot. That same Karnali splits and becomes the
Amauri Khola, it comes to Katasé and then goes to Matera.
All right, let’s go to Kalikot. The hills have called us.

***

It was a Wednesday in the second week of Mangsir. Katasé was enveloped

in fog first thing in the morning. Even houses 5 metres away looked
indistinct, and the bazaar was deserted. All that could be heard was a sound
of persistent coughing that came from the second alley and travelled around
the other alleys: the cough was Bishta Budha’s.
My stomach was very cold and empty too, just like Katasé. From time to
time, it rumbled and churned until I thought I might vomit. That morning, I
thought hard about what I should take with me.
‘Don’t pack too much,’ Father told me, ‘Or you won’t be able to carry it
all.’
I stuffed four shirts into the bag, and two pairs of trousers too. There was
one pair of shoes, but they were very dusty. If I put them in the bag, the
shirts would get dirty. What should I do?
‘Don’t put those in, we’ll bring them with us later,’ Mother said, glancing
over at me as she rolled out some dough.
What about my books? They were from class six. Just yesterday, Father
had brought me the class six pass certificate, so now I would get new
books. I looked at the pile of my and Sister’s books on top of the cupboard,
but I did not reach up for them.
I had imagined taking many things, but now I couldn’t find any of them.
I saw the sheath that Magar Uncle gave me when we were leaving
Matera, hanging on the wall in a corner. I really liked it when I was in
Matera, but I didn’t like it any more. So, I just left it behind.
As I ate four rotis with a chutney of garlic, chilli, tomato and coriander, I
kept on thinking—what had I forgotten to take? If only I could remember!
Father was already dressed and ready. He told me, ‘Hurry up, or you’ll
delay the porters.’
Father said that he had eight loads of cloth and iron piled up in
Chisapani. Half had been brought from Nepalganj, half had been bought
there in Chisapani. The porters had come the day before yesterday and were
getting ready to set out with the loads today, he said. I was to climb the
steep hills with those porters.
Father and Mother had some things to do in Surkhet, they said. Then they
would travel to Kalikot by helicopter and reach there before I arrived.
When it was time to leave, I looked at my rickety old bicycle. All of its
spokes were rusted, its bell hung limply like a dead mouse and its saddle
was badly frayed. The bicycle looked like a collapsed bird’s nest.
‘Let’s go,’ Father said.
‘Walk well,’ Mother cautioned me softly. ‘Don’t walk along the edges of
the paths.’
Once I had left, I would never return to Katasé, I knew. Why did I feel
such regret? I felt sick in my stomach again.
I bowed down at Mother’s feet.
The cold empty alleys had not woken up yet, and now they never would.
If this Katasé searched for me as it dozed, I would not be here. I was
walking away behind Father, through the alleys where my heart had been
poured out. There was no one at Chauraha. The solitary pipal tree that stood
beside the tube well had grown even older. There used to be a big crowd at
the tube well first thing in the morning. But now the tube well was silent, as
if it was waiting for someone’s hand to come and work it again.
Lamps flickered in a few of the Chauraha hotels. All of the hoteliers must
still be asleep, so no one heard our footsteps. Father walked ahead, his
sandals slapping on the ground—phatyaak phatyaak. From time to time, he
turned to look behind him and I pretended to run. As we walked along the
edge of the Amauri Khola, startled frogs dived into the water, one after the
other. I remembered that Ekraj, Ramesh, Purna, Yagya, Ratan and I used to
dive in just like that.
The forests I used to ride around in on my bicycle were silent and full of
stillness.
I walked on, leaving my footprints.
After a long time, we saw the peaceful blue Karnali in the distance
through a gap between the trees. That was how I left Katasé, early one
morning …

Eight porters were waiting for us.

They were wearing new shoes on their feet. A strange smell came from
those shoes.
One middle-aged porter was walking up and down. He wore a patched
coat and his short hair was dishevelled. His eyes were deep-set but bright
and, when he smiled, wrinkles appeared on either side of them. An innocent
smile played on his lips, which were blackened with soot from smoking
tobacco in an earthen pipe. He was the Meth, and it was he who would
deliver me to Kalikot.
‘Jarilal,’ Father told him, ‘Take care of him and make sure he doesn’t get
left behind.’
‘What are you saying, Sauji?’ Jarilal laughed as he tightened his load.
‘Do you think I’d leave him on the road and go off somewhere without
him?’
 He cupped his right hand and held it in front of his mouth as he spoke to
Father. Jarilal always did this when he was surprised.
I inspected the seven other porters. Their bodies smelled of dried sweat
from their journey down from the hills. I was going to have to travel for
seven days with these smelly people. Would I have to sleep with them too?
My head began to spin. I had also discovered one other thing: in many
places on this road there was no hotel, and we would have to sleep in caves.
The eight loads were ready. A porter received Rs 30 for each kilo he
carried to Kalikot. All of the loads were between 50 and 60 kilos in weight.
The porters carried salt for themselves in addition, and 5 litre jerrycans of
kerosene hung from their baskets. Some of them had bought bangles, glass
beads and tikulis too.
‘Right then, Sauji, we’ll be off now,’ said Jarilal. Pulling the straps of his
load over both shoulders, he staggered to his feet with the basket. As each
porter bowed slightly to him and uttered the greeting ‘jadau’, Father
returned their namaskars uncertainly.
I shouldered my bag. I was just a little nervous.
‘Come here now,’ Father called me.
I went to him meekly.
Father took three 100-rupee notes from his waistcoat pocket and placed
them in the palm of my hand. I stuffed them into my trouser pocket without
speaking.
‘Only spend it when you need to.’
All right, so I touched Father’s sandals.
‘Don’t feel sad that your Ba has sent you away,’ Father told me. ‘I have
sent you on this road so that you can know your own way, do you
understand?’
I nodded my head to affirm that I did.
The porters set off like a line of ants, with the kerosene splashing about
in the jerrycans they were carrying. Smoke issued from the hotels to the left
and right of the path. The women standing beside the clouds of smoke
watched the porters from silent eyes as they started out on their long
journey.
 ‘Eat here before you go!’ one of them called.
‘Not today, Sauni,’ the porters strained, ‘I’ll come and eat the next time
I’m here.’
As we walked along beside the Karnali, I suddenly saw a girl coming up
the hill carrying an aluminium water pitcher on her hip. Behind her, a
breeze shook the Karnali, sending ripples across its blue surface. I stopped
on the side of the path. The girl wore a sarwal-kurta with a blue pattern like
supari flowers. She walked for a moment, then paused to rest for a moment.
I looked at the porters: they were walking slowly and I could catch them
up in two leaps, I reckoned. What did it matter if I halted for a moment? I
thought I recognized the girl. Could it really be her? She stopped once
more, seeming tired, and looked up. Had she seen me? Then she climbed a
bit further and looked up again. My eyes narrowed, as they do when I look
into the distance. The girl climbed a bit further. Dhat! It was Sharmila!
I waved my hand.
She took no notice. But when she came nearer, she laughed and said, ‘I
was wondering who that soldier was, but it’s you!’
Her hair was tied back in a plait. As she came nearer, I could see beads of
sweat on her brow like dewdrops on grass. She set her pitcher down on a
rock, taking care that it did not topple over, then tidied her hair and wiped
away her sweat.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, wiping her red cheeks with both
hands.
‘To Kalikot.’
She stared at me. ‘Off wandering, are you? When are you coming back?’
‘I won’t come back now.’ I couldn’t look into her eyes. I looked at the
water shaking in the mouth of the pitcher. And I told her, ‘I am leaving
forever.’
‘Oh.’ Her smile seemed to shrink and drop down and away towards the
Karnali.
I looked for the porters and saw that they had moved on quite far ahead.
Then I turned back to Sharmila. She was still looking at me. Her sharp eyes
collided with mine and I was wounded.
 ‘Are those your porters?’
‘Yes.’
The breeze gave a voice to our moment of silence, and some dust blew
our way. Sharmila quickly placed her right hand over the mouth of the
pitcher; she was clever.
‘Don’t forget me when you get there, even if you turn into a Jumli, you
hear?’ She gave a quick laugh.
‘I won’t,’ I said, forcing out the words.
The porters were far away now. My stomach hurt. What should I do?
‘Go now,’ she told me.
I glanced at her sad face. I felt like throwing my arms around her for the
last time and crying, and the lobes of my ears grew hot. The skin of my face
was tightening and my voice stuck in my throat like a fishbone. I walked
on, my eyes on the ground.
‘But listen.’
‘What?’ I turned around.
How lovely it was, that smile that bloomed on her lips!
‘Tell me truly—how was the duck meat?’
Jyaa! I felt tickled. My mind cleared like a clearing sky. I felt shy, but
this time I felt no anger at all; I was really amused. Feeling myself blush, I
shouted back, ‘Bitter and tasteless, what do you think?’
Then I just ran. I ran as fast as I could, without looking back. This I had
learned from Father.

We had been walking for six days, following the Karnali all the way.
Sometimes we stayed in cow sheds, sometimes in caves. For the first day or
two, I couldn’t understand the porters’ language and I was at a loss, so
Jarilal explained the things I didn’t understand. On the first day, I developed
a high fever. Jarilal cooked rice and fed it to me, but I refused to eat it at
first. Jarilal chided me. ‘What are you afraid of, Sauji? Who’s going to see
you eating the things I’ve touched?’
And so I ate it. And that night Rané gave me the new green blanket he
had bought for himself, for me to wrap myself in.
 For six days, I had been walking behind Parimal. His load was the size of
an elephant and weighed 55 kilos. It was a load of quilts, that’s why it was
so huge. People we met on the road looked at his load in amazement, and
this made Manipal jealous. His load looked smaller, but it actually weighed
65 kilos. When we walked, he was always at the very back. Whenever he
got the chance, he would taunt Parimal. ‘Why are you so pleased with
yourself? Your load’s no bigger than my wife’s arse.’
Now again, I was walking along behind Parimal. We were on a downhill
stretch of the road. And what kind of downhill? One that made you dizzy: it
went down for 50 metres, and the path was full of small rocks. The blue
Karnali could be seen far below, beneath a copse of trees. If you slipped,
you would fall straight into the Karnali. So, my legs were shaking, and the
slope was one on which my feet could easily slip. The joints of my bones
were aching. I knew neither how to walk uphill nor down. You could walk
up a hill however you chose to—that was fine, but the downhill pulled you
towards it.
How could I descend such a terrible slope? I was agitated. There were no
tree branches or roots to grab hold of, and in places, water was springing
forth. What trust could be put in wet soil?
I did not dare to walk upright. Parimal chuckled and winked at me. ‘Oh
god! What sinful slope is this?’ he said. ‘It’s going to take our lives away.’
If only I could talk!
If this was how Parimal felt, when he had run this way several times
before, then what about me? A deep silence imposed itself upon us. The
other porters were behind us and there was nothing to be gained from
waiting for them. We had to go on, and Parimal sat right down. Dragging
his load along behind him, like a tractor pulling a trolley, he began to crawl
down the slope. He stopped for a moment, looked up to me and called, ‘If I
slip, grab hold of me, Sauji!’
I had no idea how I would hold onto him if he were to slip. He moved
ahead, and a rock, dislodged by his foot, tumbled down in a cloud of dust
and fell into the Karnali.
 Parimal moved on, dragging his load. I too sat down and started to move
ahead, my legs shaking uncontrollably.
‘Oh Sauji, take care!’
He must have been afraid that I would slip.
But then, jyaa, Parimal’s feet slipped! His load toppled over. My eyes
shut themselves.
‘I’m falling, pull me up Sauji!’ Parimal screamed.
What could I do?
At first, the load fell towards the Karnali, pulling Parimal along behind it,
and Parimal was dragged off the path. Dust flew up as rocks pulled out by
the load tumbled down into the Karnali. I fell on my back on the path and
the hills began to spin before my eyes. As he fell staggering down the hill,
Parimal managed to release his load from his back and grab hold of a cleft
in the rocks. The load tumbled down, hit a rock and burst open. Quilts
spread themselves all around, adorning the head of every rock.
‘I nearly went then,’ Parimal said with a grin, ‘But I got my breath back
in the end.’
He looked at me from eyes that were grey with fear. Then, from above
my head, there came a tremble as if an earthquake had started. I looked up
in terror: Jarilal and the others had dropped their loads and were running
down towards us.
Parimal’s desire to always be ahead had fallen into the Karnali. Everyone
spent several hours bringing up the quilts and retying the load. And after
that, Parimal always walked further back in the line. The palm of his right
hand and his knee were badly shredded. In places, the skin had been torn
away and the red flesh grinned out. He hobbled when he walked. After we
had walked along the Karnali all day, moving from one bank to the other,
leaving striped shoeprints behind us, in the evening we saw tall hills in the
distance, their heads touching the sky.
‘That ridge is where we have to get to. We’ll reach it tomorrow.’ Jarilal
pointed out the top of a hill as he set his load down in a wide meadow
studded with the ashes of old campfires.
 I peered at it, narrowing my eyes. The hill wore a hat of snow and the
evening sun was scattered all over it like vermillion. One or two scraps of
cloud were tinged with its colour too. From the breast of the hill, a snow
river was falling like a thin stripe, and near its navel, the roofs of houses
shone like tiny bright grains of sand. Father and Mother must have already
arrived there by now. I gazed up at it for a long time.
From the same hill, a cold wind came to stroke my body, and I shivered.
‘Sauji, eat your rice,’ Jarilal said, looking at me.
‘I won’t,’ I said, pulling a face.
The fever had increased my aversion to food. As soon as I saw rice, I felt
nauseous. There was a suspension bridge at the place Jarilal had chosen for
us to eat our morning meal. On the other side of it, there were twenty or
twenty-five houses and, on this side, there were six or seven. We were
going to have to cross the bridge.
The sauji had torn up a noodle carton and attached it to the outside of a
pillar of his house. On it was written in red signboard pen, ‘Khulalu Hotel’.
A fire was beginning to smoke inside the hotel, which had a roof of wide
stones. An infant stream ran past the front of the hotel, hurrying to join the
Karnali a little way off. I sat down to rest outside the hotel, on a bench
which was merely a plank resting on top of some rocks.
‘We won’t get anything up on that sinful hill,’ said Parimal, squatting
down to smoke a cigarette. ‘We’ll eat our fill here.’
The hill, with its plump stomach sticking out, was in front of us. It was
covered in rocks. In a few places, there were patches of green and small
trees, but that was all. After one more day, we would step onto its head.
The hotel sauji was delighted. He was running here and there, making the
sagging seat of his trousers dance. He went to the spring and brought water
and rinsed off some mustard leaves. As he was separating out their stalks,
he asked, ‘Whose loads are these?’
‘A Katasé sauji’s.’
‘And who is this bhai?’ The sauji looked at me.
‘He’s the Katasé sauji’s son,’ Jarilal told him as he pulled a piece of
burning wood out of the fire, placed it in his pipe and puffed. ‘Coming to
Kalikot for the first time.’
As he wrung out the bottom of the bundle of greens, the sauji looked at
me and smiled. I felt proud.
The midday sun was directly over the Karnali. When they had eaten, the
porters set off in a line. When we crossed the bridge to the other side, we
found flies buzzing in the verandas of the houses and heard children’s
voices in the distance.
I ate two packets of raw noodles, then put my mouth to the spring. I don’t
know how much cold water I drank. My stomach swayed from side to side
as I walked.
The porters were minded to reach the top of the ridge that very day. I was
at the very back of the line, with Parimal hobbling along in front of me. The
older his injuries from the rocks grew, the more painful they became, he
said.
In a corner of a house, an old man was holding a ball of sheep’s wool in
his hand and spinning a top beneath it. He sat on his veranda, staring at the
porters. I peered at the old man, and he looked just like Bhagiram. How
could he look so identical? Father used to say that in the world there were
seven people with the same face.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, just as Bhagiram would, ‘Where are
you headed for?’
‘To Manma,’ replied Parimal, taking his first step up the steep hill. As he
stepped upward, the tendons in his calf stretched so hard they looked as if
they would burst through.
The old man watched me walking along behind.
Even after I had walked past him, I kept turning around to look back.
Because I kept stopping, I fell far behind and below the porters. Parimal
was way up above me. Puffing and panting, I ran up the hill. I caught up
with Parimal and stopped to catch my breath.
‘We’re going to Kalikot, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, we are, Sauji,’ Parimal stopped.
‘So why did you say we’re going to Manma?’
 ‘Kalikot is the district,’ he told me rather loudly. ‘We’re going to the
district headquarters town, Manma.’
Headquarters? I didn’t understand. But I pretended that I did.
Lau, we had reached a police post, one with stone walls. A policeman
stood there holding a twin-barrelled gun, his face concealed by sweat and a
beard. There were two single-storeyed buildings. All over the wall, clothes
were drying—trousers and shirts, shorts and socks. It was only the wall,
painted black below and sky-blue above, that made it look like a police
post.
‘Where are you coming from?’ the policeman asked.
The porters set their loads down in a row along the top of the wall.
‘From Chisapani, sir,’ Jarilal wiped away his sweat and heaved a long
sigh.
‘What’s in the loads?’
‘Cloth.’
‘You’re not carrying any raksi?’
‘Why would we be carrying raksi, sir?’
‘La, open up the loads.’
‘There’s nothing there. If you do this, you’ll make us late, sir.’
‘Open them, open them,’ the policeman said. ‘I have to do my duty, you
know.’
The policeman began to inspect the loads, opening up each piece of
cloth. As length after length was opened up at great speed, the cloth piled
up on the wall. Each porter looked on, then opened up his own load as his
turn came around. They were all fuming with anger, but what could they
do?
It took nearly an hour and a half to repack the loads again.
Once the police post had disappeared behind the curve of the hill, Jarilal
became furious. If he had paid a hundred or two, they would not have had
to open up the loads, he said. But he didn’t pay the money, so it took all that
time.
He was still grinding his teeth as he walked across the suspension bridge
over the Karnali.
 ‘Those militaries just waste our time,’ he fumed.
The bridge hung from thick steel cables, and it was swaying badly. I
turned sideways to squeeze past the three porters in front of me, and I ran
ahead.
‘Don’t run like that, Sauji!’ Jarilal cried, ‘The bridge will throw you into
the Karnali.’
But by the time his voice reached my ears, I had arrived on the other
bank. I stood there watching the peaceful blue Karnali.
On Jarilal’s orders, the porters rested in a line at the bottom of a hill that
was so steep it looked as if it was going to fall onto their heads. They lit
their cigarettes and tobacco and the smoke began to climb up the steps in
the hill. Sharp rocks stuck out of the hillside, as if the bones of a dead
buffalo were piled up there. Moss filled the crevices. Poisonous snakes lie
coiled up in such crevices, they say.
The porters were tired, their lips as dried up as this hill.
Manilal and Rané had gone with an empty jerrycan to search for water,
and now they came back. There was a spring fifteen minutes away from the
path, they said. And it was the last one on this route.
‘No more water until we reach the ridge,’ Jarilal told me. ‘Drink some
here, Sauji.’
I took the jerrycan from Manilal’s hand. I gulped down water, soaking
my neck and my chest. The noodles in my stomach began to swell.
‘The sun’s so hot, how great it would be to eat some gottaa sweets with
that water!’ Rané was looking at the basket he was carrying: there were
some gottaas in there, I knew. I looked at Rané’s sunken temples. They
were covered in sweat and his lips were as dry as the Karnali’s sandy banks.
The poor guy had given me a new blanket when I was down with fever. I
told him, ‘If you want one, please take one out and eat it.’
They all looked at me, taken aback. I stood there with my hands thrust
into both trouser pockets.
‘What are you telling me, Sauji?’ Rané was unsure what to do. ‘What
will your father say when he finds out?’
‘Go ahead and eat some! I will speak to Ba.’
 ‘How can that be right?’ Jarilal pondered this and looked at Rané. ‘The
sauji will cut our money.’
When he heard talk of his money being cut, Rané hesitated. He
straightened a jerrycan and gulped down some water, with his lower
abdomen going up and down.
Some mules were coming down the track, throwing up a cloud of dust.
They must have thrown down their loads at the headquarter town, and they
felt liberated. They ran along, tossing their manes. From time to time, they
snorted, and their noses rang—syaar-syaar. The little bronze bells hanging
from their necks were ringing—ting-ting.
We were on the edge of a steep cliff when we encountered them.
Fearfully, I stood back on a large rock on the cliff side of the path.
‘Don’t stay on the edge, Sauji,’ Jarilal yelled at me. ‘If a mule hits you,
you’ll fall!’
I ran across the path and lodged myself in a crevice in the hillside.
The mules ran past in front of me and went on down the hill. Further
down, Jarilal and the others were giving way to them by clinging to the
hillside like lizards. The mules passed by them, without pressing them into
the hillside. The boy who ran along behind them whistling went down the
track with them too. All that could be seen amid the cloud of dust was his
cap topi, and pretty soon that disappeared too.
Jarilal and his men resumed their upward climb. And soon we saw the
headquarters, absolutely peaceful, with the roofs of its houses shining like
lakes.
I sat down to rest for a moment.
The porters caught up with me, rested briefly, then moved on. They were
not speaking, just panting like the breeze. I overtook them and went on
upwards. The porters stretched out along the path as they watched me. I
took two more steps but then my head span, so I sat down. I felt as if a fire
was burning on the top of my head, and my throat was so dry that when I
swallowed, my Adam’s apple moved up very slowly. If I could only find a
spring of water, I would drink it dry!
I ascended the steep path, straining as I went.
 As I reached the top of the overhanging hill, a cool wind touched my
sweating brow and I felt a little strength returning to me, as if I had drunk
glucose water. Ahead of me, a shrine nestled among some thick thatch
grass, with trees standing all around it. Although it was the shrine of a god,
it was merely a big pile of rocks decked all around with coloured flags and
bunting, a place that inspired a sense of awe. At this point, we had
completed three quarters of the climb, the porters said. I made as if to bow
to the god, then rested on a broad boulder under a tree. One after the other,
the porters came up from the hell below and ascended to the earth.
‘These are crab apple trees, so we can rest,’ said Jarilal, propping up his
load in a cleft in a rock. ‘So now Sauji, you will get there today.’
‘Where is your house?’ I asked him.
Jarilal pointed down to the shrunken Karnali far down beneath us to the
north. On the hillside beyond it, there were houses that looked like rocks.
‘That’s my village there, Serijiula,’ he said. ‘No chance of reaching it
today.’
I gazed at it.
What a desolate place at the foot of those hills! It was from here that the
haterus came to Katasé. To one side, the Karnali went on further and further
up beyond Serijiula. Up there, some snow-capped hills were faintly visible.
We set off again, with me in the lead this time, and very soon I had reached
the top. Above was the mound of another hill. The wind had begun to blow
with force, and my shirt began to inflate like a balloon. The wind was
blowing up from beneath us.
I sensed that someone was calling me and I saw Jarilal looking up and
shouting to me. The porters had sat down again. I strained my ears and the
wind brought his voice to me faintly.
‘Sauji, you go ahead,’ Jarilal was saying. ‘We are running late.’
I hesitated for a moment. Should I go on alone? Well, what would be
would be, so I set off.
At first glance, it looked like a hill that I could traverse in two leaps, but
as I walked on, I grew weary and began to drag my feet. The thickets of
thatch grass and thorns beside the path were scratching me all over, and my
body began to sting as I sweated. As I lifted my foot to take another step
upward, my head span, so I stood still for a moment. I looked at the hills
standing bare in the distance. I looked at the clouds that flew above them,
spreading wide. What would happen if I collapsed in a faint on this hill? I
felt afraid, and I looked back down the hill, but the porters were hidden
beneath its brow and I could not see them.
Two boys were sitting enjoying the breeze on a hill at the top of a flight
of a hundred steps. The cold breeze stroked every crevice of my stinging
body, as if to wake me up.
‘Oh, you can hardly walk, can you!’ said the dusty boy who sat there on
top of a boulder with his legs spread wide. I guessed that he was about
eleven years old.
‘No,’ I said, running my tongue over my dry lips. ‘Can’t I get some water
here?’
‘No chance,’ said the other boy sitting on the rock, ‘You’ll get some
when you reach the hospital.’
‘Where’s the hospital?’
‘Just up there,’ said the boy, pointing straight up the hill.
I sat down.
‘Where have you come from?’
‘Katasé.’
‘Oh,’ said the boy with his legs spread wide. ‘So, you’re the Katasé sauji,
are you?’
I did not reply.
‘We couldn’t walk any further either,’ said the other boy, who was
leaning on the wall and looking at my shoes. I saw that they were wearing
green sandals with red laces and worn-down heels.
I didn’t reply to this either.
‘We have loads to carry though,’ he said, pointing to some baskets
concealed behind a raspberry bush. ‘We set out at sunrise.’
‘Are you going to Manma?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he laughed. ‘Anyway, we’d better get going, or the sauji will be
angry.’
 After a short rest, I asked them if I could walk with them. ‘You go
ahead,’ they said, ‘We’ll come along behind.’
On the brow of a brick-built building, I saw the words: ‘District Hospital,
Manma, Kalikot’. To the east of the hospital stood two other buildings, but
the place seemed deserted. I put my mouth to a spout at the edge of a level
expanse of grass and gulped down some water. And then I began to run,
because the path ahead was level. And the sun had begun to set, so I was in
even more of a hurry. Ahead of me stood the large buildings of the district
headquarter town. My legs ached as I ran up the 136 steps to the town.
And, at last, I set foot in the district headquarters.
Right in front of me stood a statue of King Birendra, with his hands
clasped together. Beside the wall that surrounded him, boys were noisily
playing carrom while, to the left, there were heaps of oranges and apples
with a crowd of people around them.
I was keen to know where our shop might be. There was just one alley in
the bazaar, lined with shops on both sides. It stretched eastwards from the
king’s statue, and I headed in that direction. There was a crowd of people at
the entrance of every shop along the way, so it was hard to peer inside any
of them.
I walked onward meekly.
Suddenly, a hand came from behind me and grasped my right wrist. All
of my weariness died at that moment—the hand was Father’s.

I discovered that Manma was really just the name of the lower village. The
name of the bazaar was Khandachakra.
The bazaar was on the narrow shoulder of a hill, with a sheer drop on one
side and a sheer drop on the other. What a difficult place! I heard in the tea
shop that the headquarters had been in the lower village previously. A
political leader had moved it to this difficult place, intending to relocate it to
Raaskot at some later date. But then, when it became known that King
Birendra was going to visit, a statue was made in a hurry. After that, the
headquarters remained here, because it wouldn’t have been right to move a
statue of the king.
 A man dressed in a long woollen coat informed me that Khandachakra
was once the capital of King Mallaibam, and that after that king came here,
travelling from India via Raaskot, he had reigned in Khandachakra for
many years.
Even now, remnants of Mallaibam’s palace could be found at the western
end of Khandachakra: there were mortars for rice-husking and small caves
under the boulders. The palace had collapsed in an earthquake and had
become like a cave. In and around the site of the old palace you came
across rocks and boulders that bore faint lines, footprints and depressions.
Mandiré showed me everything. ‘There were a thousand people working
there in those days,’ he told me. ‘A hundred people husking the rice, all at
the same time.’
Mandiré and I got to know one another at the Panchadeval Higher
Middle School. The school was quite far away: it took half an hour to walk
down to it, and two hours to come back up. Father took me over there the
very next morning and got me enrolled in class seven.
The school had a zinc roof. Sometimes, this was bent upwards by the
wind and there was always a fear that it might fall in. Next to the school,
there stood a big pipal tree. Mandiré told me that the sirs took the students
into its shade when the heat of the zinc-roofed building afflicted them in the
summer.
Three days after I enrolled, the sir who taught us Nepali came into the
classroom holding his nose. I had been feeling nauseous for some time, and
all of the nearly sixty students were holding their noses too. The smell was
coming from Mandiré’s head: everyone guessed this but no one said it out
loud. I too looked at his head and saw flies buzzing around it.
He wore a sarwal below and a shirt above, and on top of his shirt a red
sweater with ragged armpits. His hair covered his ears, which looked like
rabbits hiding in a thicket.
Sir took a long sigh and asked, ‘What’s that smell?’
‘Mandiré’s head,’ half the class replied.
Mandiré looked gloomy.
 ‘Hey Mandiré, tell us,’ Sir was laughing. ‘What have you rubbed onto
your head that smells so bad?’
‘It’s ghee,’ Mandiré replied.
‘You should put oil on your head. You’re putting ghee, you radish?’
Then the whole class roared with laughter, me included.
‘Go and wash your head, then come back.’
Mandiré got up and went straight out. He returned at last at fourth bell
with his head washed and dried. But still the smell had not gone away,
though it was less strong now.
It was on that day that I got to know Mandiré as we climbed up the hill
on our way home. I wasn’t walking very well and he was behind me. On
our way home, he told me that he always came first in the Birendra
Running Shield, a 300-metres race.
He said he wasn’t friends with the other boys. They called him by the
English name they had given him—Templey.
Later, I discovered that his house was on the eastern side of the bazaar,
and that he didn’t have a father. He looked after his lonely widowed mother,
and came to the bazaar every morning to sell milk and greens.
There was a big water spout in front of his house. So, my friendship with
him had its advantages: I got to bathe, and when I went there to bathe, I got
roasted soya bean and corn as well. Every morning, he came to the bazaar;
then, in the afternoon, if he got the chance, he would appear in front of our
shop and secretly beckon me out.
After that, he took me all over the place, in and around the bazaar, and
told me all kinds of interesting things. He taught me the local language and
gave me ‘training’ to run up and down the hills.
One day, he took me to the top of the high knoll that stood at the eastern
end of the bazaar. A stairway with 175 steps had been built up to its summit
where there was a huge boulder, as big as a house, called Rani Dhunga. He
taught me to sit up there and watch the bazaar beneath us.
‘They say the queen used to sit on this boulder and comb her hair,’ he
told me. That same queen—the wife of Mallaibam.
 At dusk, we could see the sun setting in the west, beyond the slender hills
standing in a line, and the Karnali, twisting with the hills, going to Katasé.
Sometimes, Mandiré would sit up on top of Rani Dhunga and gaze far into
the distance, and I would do the same. Where on earth had Father brought
us to?
The bazaar began at the place called Pratima, where the king’s statue
stood. As per the seasons, oranges and apples piled up there. On both sides
of the bazaar, the Katasé saujis had their shops, six or seven in number. The
hotels began a little further up. Most of their signboards bore the legend
‘Provision for Fooding and Lodging’. Then, further up, there was Bishnu
Tailors, followed by Sundar Nai’s hairdressing saloon. Sometimes, the
barber would boast, ‘I didn’t just come up here any old how, I came at the
CDO’s invitation.’ Further up, there was a line of Khamba hotels and then a
chautara, a bench built around a tree, at the end of the bazaar. Next to the
chautara was the vegetable shop of Pande from Taadi, which had a water
spout beside it.
Facing it, there stood the office of the District Administration where
every day there was a line of people who had come to collect their rice
coupons. To the left was the District Police Office, with an armed
policeman standing at its gate. On a knoll to the left of the police post was
the District Development Committee’s office and next to it was the chaur, a
small open grassy space where, in the evenings, the police played volleyball
with the local youths. Sometimes, the bouncing ball would fall onto the roof
of the police post. Above the chaur was the District Court, and above its
head the Rani Dhunga. That was what the district headquarters amounted
to. If you went out of the town to the east, you came to Taadi. Mandiré said
his uncle’s house was in Taadi. Between Pratima and the chautara, there
were four water spouts where either Mother or I queued up for water after 4
o’clock.
Our shop was in the middle of the bazaar on the right-hand side. Its
shelves were full of goods: it was a new shop, after all! And business was
good. Everyone who had gotten into quarrels over credit in other shops
came to ours. And our shop sold all sorts of things: lengths of cloth,
sandals, shoes, sugar, gottaa sweets, cigarettes—everything you could need.
For the first two or three months after our arrival in Kalikot, Mother and I
were confounded by the customers’ language.
‘Bajyai, do you have chattis?’
Mother was nonplussed. Never had she done this kind of trade before!
‘What’s he asking for?’ Mother turned to me.
He must have come from India, I guessed; he must be asking for chaddis.
So, I showed him various kinds of underpants.
‘No, not those!’ the customer laughed, and pointed at the pile of sandals
instead.
Inside the shop, there were two rooms. Father and Mother were in one,
and the kitchen and I were in the other. There was a window in the right-
hand wall of my room, but no window in Father and Mother’s. The plastic
sheeting over the window flapped all night in the wind. Sometimes, I would
wake with a start and curl myself up in fear. Mandiré had told me, ‘Did you
know, sometimes a ghost with a white turban roams about this bazaar on a
horse? If anyone looks him in the eye, they drop down dead on the spot.’
In the mornings, a helicopter arrived, nearly blowing the roof off. It
would cross the hill ridge to the north, then turn sharply to land on the
helipad. Then the whole bazaar would run to the helipad, some just to
watch, others to collect their deliveries. Sometimes, things would arrive for
us, and Father would run over there too.
The helipad was at the western end of the bazaar, on top of a knoll.
People climbed up there, puffing and panting. There would be nothing but
dust at the helipad which was covered with a layer of stones. As it landed,
the helicopter’s blades twisted up the dust and sent it into the sky. The
branches of the crab apple tree next to the helipad shook wildly and many
people hid behind it. The helicopter came two or three times a day, carrying
rice for the food office and stock for the shopkeepers.
Everyone queued in the narrow courtyard of the District Administration
Office for the rice brought by those helicopters. Each person was given a
coupon for 5 kilos at a time, so everyone from each house had to line up. I
had already queued so many times, clinging to other people’s buttocks in
the stifling heat. I found it suffocating. And the people who came from the
distant villages smelled so foul, I thought I would be sick. Even the notes
and the oil-soaked citizenship papers they carried stank if they came close
to your nose. If you got hold of a coupon after queueing all day, you then
had to run to the Food Office. And there would be a queue there too.
‘Chi! What grief we suffer,’ Mother would fume as she came home after
queueing all day long.
Father would either stay quiet or go out into the bazaar.
‘What kind of place has he brought us to now, way up on this hill ridge?’
Mother would shout all night. ‘Enough, let’s not stay here any longer! Let’s
go to Surkhet!’
If only Father would reply! But he just sat in the lantern light with his
head in a book.
I was restless too. Up on this ridge, there was nothing to have fun with.
In the teashops in the mornings, the officials would joke, ‘This ridge is like
a jail. There’s a drop on this side, and a drop on that side. Where can you
go?’
Mandiré didn’t just take me around the bazaar, he showed me the forest
too. When he went to cut firewood, I would go with him. Walking me
through silent forests of box myrtle, rhododendron and pine to the east,
Mandiré took me to Kaule Khola. A damp dewy forest, with pine needles
caught trembling in the spiders’ webs. It was great fun to walk there. On the
cliff above Kaule Khola, men were cutting up pine trees with saws. Mandiré
picked up the bits of bark and wood splinters they left behind and put them
in his basket. From time to time, he shouted, ‘uiiiiiii’, making the whole
forest tremble, and his cry echoed around the clefts and ravines of the hills.
When the months of Phagun and Chait came around, the forests flowered
red with rhododendrons, and Mandiré taught me to eat their flowers. If you
broke open the base of the flower and bit into it, your mouth filled with a
pungent juice. I developed a taste for this in time. And when the box myrtle
ripened, Mandiré made us walk far and wide through the forest. Sitting up
in its branches, we ate myrtle berries all day. We hung from the branches
like monkeys, making monkey noises.
When the month of Asar arrived, the forest became quite different. The
rain poured down all day, and fog enveloped the entire forest. Down in the
bazaar too, even people close by could hardly be seen, as if the clouds had
come down from the sky and covered everyone up.
I liked this kind of weather very much. When it felt cold because of the
rain that fell day and night, people began to walk around the bazaar with
their hands tucked into their armpits. Then, when the rain cleared, my lord!
The heads of the hills looked as if they had drawn quilts over them. The
head of Chuli Malika to the east was covered in snow. Wherever you
looked, you saw snow.
Gradually, I began to enjoy living in Kalikot.
One day, in the last week of Mangsir, I came home early from school.
The uphill climb wore me right out. Mandiré had to go to his uncle’s at
Taadi, so we could not waste time on the way.
There were no customers in the shop. Mother had gone out somewhere
and Father was in the shop, writing something. One man sat inside the
counter watching him, another leaned on the outside of the counter. I went
inside the counter and sat beside Father. Father wrote something on a
cheque and signed it, then handed it to the man beside him.
The man took it with a smile and pushed it into the inner pocket of his
coat.
‘Right then, Baajé,’ he said, putting on the black shoes that were beside
the counter. ‘Now I’ll go to the bank. I’ll see you later.’
‘If any problem arises, I may have to trouble you again,’ said Father.
The man ran off to the bank.
‘Sauji, why did you give him so much money?’ asked the man leaning on
the counter. I too had seen that Father had given him Rs 1,50,000.
‘I wanted to, so I did.’
‘He’s not very trustworthy.’
‘I haven’t just given it to him for no reason,’ Father said, laughing. ‘I’ve
bought the house’.
 ‘Oh, I see!’ said the man, then he left too.
I was perplexed. Father looked at me for a moment, then he smiled and I
felt shy. Father was happy, I could tell this from his manner.
‘Want some tea?’ Father asked.
I ran towards the tea shop.
‘Wait a minute!’
I stopped. Father was standing in front of the shop.
‘Ask for samosas too.’
OceanofPDF.com
 THE NINTH DAY

‘Who’s that sitting up there?’

‘There’s no one there!’
‘Don’t you see him?’ asked Father, agitated. ‘He’s watching me!’
Father closed his staring eyes.
‘I don’t know what he’s seeing,’ Mother muttered, turning to me.
I had slept the night propped up beside the window, and Mother had
spent it with her head on the bed. Father had not stirred all night, his head
and lower body had ceased to pain him. Now he became agitated as he
muttered. He was adding things up on his fingers so hard it looked as if he
might break them.
‘What are you calculating?’ Mother asked him.
‘It’s nothing.’
It would be better for him not to be adding things up like this, it seemed
to me, because it affected his brain when he thought too hard. Dr Nandan
had told us this and Narmada said so too.
The sun reached the middle of the sky and the shadows outside the
window shortened. Suruchi, the nurse with the harsh voice, came and asked,
‘Has he been given anything to eat?’
No, we hadn’t given him anything at all.
Quickly, Mother brought apple juice and a glass of daal. The thick vein in
Father’s temple was throbbing and swelling as if it would burst. It had
fattened like a leech. Mother stroked it for a moment. But as soon as she
bent to tip the rim of the glass into the feeding tube, Father struggled,
‘Don’t put any in, I won’t eat it.’
‘Shouldn’t you have some?’
‘Hey you whore, I told you not to!’ Father clenched his teeth.
I stood there in silence.
‘He never gave me any happiness, chi!’ Mother sat down on the stool
gloomily. I stared at her, close to tears. Her cheekbones were sticking out,
and the skin of her face was creased everywhere, like clothes that have been
wrung out and dried.
Suddenly, Father made another assault on her pain. One of his tubes
came loose and fell to the floor like a dead snake, hitting the wall on its
way. We looked at Father in fright: there was no longer a tube in his nose.
‘Lau, put it back in here!’ yelled Father, rubbing his nose.
We did not speak for a while. Black marks began to circle in the rims of
my sleepless eyes. The young boy cried, cutting through our silence.
Chotku screamed. A doctor and a nurse ran to his bed and gave him an
injection. Chotku slept. Mother went off to eat without a word, and returned
in silence. I also chewed a sel roti in silence. The sauni at the Bijuli hotel
didn’t ask me any questions, nor did I tell her anything.
Father slept for a long time. When he woke up, his eyes were filled with
water. He glanced at Mother as she sat staring into space beside the bed.
‘Look, I gave you a lot of grief, didn’t I?’ he said, bursting into tears.
‘But watch now, when I die, I want to die in your lap.’
I shivered.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Mother. She placed her hand on his
brow; Father was forgiven.
At about half past two, the ward suddenly stirred. All the carers shook off
their dejection and jumped to their feet. A gleam of hope appeared in their
eyes.
Suruchi rushed into the ward. ‘Dr Mohammad is coming,’ she said. ‘Get
all the paperwork ready.’
 Krishnaji’s face brightened. With a trembling hand, Mother began to
unfold the notes that had been stuffed into the drawer. Even onto Father’s
face there fell a ray of sunlight from the window.
A line of students filled in, all dressed in white. Ahead of them came Dr
Mohammad. Dr Nandan was coming in too, attached to his right shoulder.
Dr Mohammad was slightly stooped with age and his head was as
hairless as a newly born baby’s. The watch on his arm glittered brightly. He
wore a white shirt with blue stripes, blue trousers and black shoes.
He headed straight for our bed, followed by his entourage. Mother and I
stood by the window. We watched eagerly: what would he do now, Dr
Mohammad?
Dr Mohammad, Dr Nandan and the students surrounded the bed.
Dr Mohammad examined Father closely.
Father raised a trembling hand to touch his forehead in greeting. Dr
Mohammad must have been older than him, but there was still a keenness
in his face and on his lips a smile like a child’s. Dr Nandan murmured close
to Dr Mohammad’s ear and Dr Mohammad inclined his head to listen. Then
he extended his right hand, in which all the veins were visible, towards
Suruchi. ‘Give him the papers,’ she told us urgently.
Mother gave a hurried namaste and handed over the papers. Dr
Mohammad glanced quickly through all the slips. He looked at Father’s
face intently, then held his hand out to Suruchi again. She placed a small
hammer like a goldsmith’s into it and the students took two steps back. Dr
Mohammad leaned over slightly and gave Father’s knee a gentle blow.
Dr Nandan bent down and asked, ‘Anything?’
‘No.’ Father turned his head slowly from side to side. Dr Mohammad
handed the hammer back to Suruchi and moved on to Krishnaji’s bed.
Krishnaji stood up to welcome him.
‘Doctor Saap?’ Mother was agitated.
Dr Mohammad stopped and turned back towards her.
‘So, will he be well again?’ her voice shook.
He did not reply but made a sign to Dr Nandan, who hurried over to us
and said impatiently, ‘He’s only just examined him, we will know later.’
 Within fifteen minutes, Dr Mohammad had finished his round of the
ward and exited with his entourage.
For a moment, the ward was filled with silence.
Then, shattering the silence, Chotku screamed out loud in his bed.
‘I’ll kill you, you fucker!’ he yelled, and he went on yelling for a long
time.

Some badness had shown up in both of Chotku’s kidneys one year earlier,
and his father had taken him to Lucknow for treatment. The carers who sat
glumly around Chotku’s bed did not know why his kidneys had turned bad.
He didn’t even drink beer, they said.
After he returned from Lucknow with his health restored, Chotku used to
spend the whole day in the forest with the buffalo. He used to bring
firewood home in a cart. Sometimes, he went to Nepalganj to watch a
movie. He had also started selling vegetables. According to the seasons, he
planted cauliflower, onion, tomatoes, potatoes and ginger in two katthaas of
land. His kidneys had cost him three katthaas: that was how his father
thought of it.
Ten months earlier, Chotku had married, too. His uncle had found a girl
for him, and he’d received a bicycle as dowry. He used to sit his wife on the
crossbar and take her to Nepalganj to watch movies, even in the stifling
heat.
But one month after the wedding, Chotku began to suffer from giddiness.
He gave up riding his bicycle and its chain began to rust. He no longer
flirted and joked with his wife, but spent the whole day languishing
miserably behind his hut. He could no longer see things in the distance. ‘I
can’t see far away things,’ he would say, ‘My eyes have become weak.’
Black marks appeared around his eyes, and his face took on a bluish tone.
Sometimes, his abdomen swelled right up in the middle of the night. He
would take Bruset and this would make him better. After that, he would
spend the whole day in bed.
Ten days ago, Chotku staggered out into his courtyard and collapsed,
foaming at the mouth. I don’t know what his father thought. He didn’t
speak, he said, but spent the whole night sitting beside his bed. Since that
day, Chotku had begun to weep like a cat—‘hey, hey, hey’.
His father and uncle laid him down in a cart and brought him to the
hospital the very next day. After one night in the emergency ward, he
arrived beside us looking like a skeleton in a science book.
After he had been at the hospital for five days, Dr Nandan told them,
after a muted conversation with Dr Mohammad, ‘Take him to Lucknow
before the day is over or he won’t survive.’
This made Chotku scream out all the more. He knew his father had no
money and that he would not be able to reach Lucknow in a day. Just before
this, he had already declared, ‘Mother, I think I’m going to die.’
His mother had told Mother all of this as they sat on their heels together
in a corner. Mother had asked her in her own Tharu language, ‘What
happened to your son?’
All through that day, Chotku yelled, ‘I’ll kill them, I’ll kill them.’
I don’t know what the doctor told Krishnaji, but he sat there the whole
day stroking his young son’s hair.
That evening, the rattling sound from Father’s throat began to worsen.
Father tried but he couldn’t clear his throat and his fever rose to 105. Even
Narmada was alarmed when she came to examine him.
‘What’s happening to him now?’ Mother was nearly fainting.
‘Don’t be frightened, Bajyai,’ Narmada told her.
But was she not right to be afraid? Father’s Adam’s apple began to shake
as he choked, and he waved his arms about in the air. The rattling in his
throat grew louder, like the volume being turned up on the radio, and
exploded in our ears like gunfire.
After going here and there for a long while, Narmada brought Dr
Nandan. He looked tired, and he yawned when he sat down beside Father.
‘It seems he is short of oxygen,’ he said after he had examined Father.
Narmada hurried away to get an oxygen cylinder, which she strained to
drag towards us. The doctor covered Father’s mouth and nose with a mask,
which gradually clouded with Father’s breath.
 ‘Don’t worry,’ said the doctor in a voice heavy with sleep. It was a
quarter to eleven when he left. Narmada followed him, but came back
quickly. She handed me a slip, saying, ‘Bring it quickly.’
Mother looked at her with a question in her fearful eyes.
‘Bajyai,’ Narmada said, ‘It seems that Baajé has pneumonia.’
‘He was sure to get pneumonia after being given this saline day and
night,’ Mother said angrily, squatting down. ‘How many more problems
now?’
Now Father’s pneumonia and breathlessness would worsen if he was
continued to be given saline. But if the saline was taken away, his head
would ache very badly. What kind of trap was this that Father was caught
in?
There is no one in this world as wretched as my father.

***

Father was happy because he had bought the house, but if only the house
had been a good one! As soon as there was a downpour of rain, the water
leaked right in. Everything began to get wet.
‘Mother, the rain’s getting in,’ I shouted from upstairs.
Mother hurried up to me.
The wall was streaked with water. Little streams of water dripped
ceaselessly down from the broad stones that covered the roof. As she
hurried into the room, Mother’s head collided with the door and she fell
down. Should I laugh or what should I do?
‘Hey, what are you laughing at?’ Mother was angry. ‘Feel this—is it a big
wound?’
Dodging the drips, I went to her and felt her head. Jyaa, a bump was
coming up, a really hot bump.
‘What’s it like, wherever we go we have a leaky roof!’ Mother exclaimed
tearfully. ‘You should think carefully when you’re buying a house. Should
you just do what you like? Chi!’
If Father had been in the shop, he’d have heard this, but he wasn’t!
 ‘What are you staring at?’ Mother pulled herself to her feet. ‘Go and get
a bucket.’
I went down the little ladder which was held together with nails. Even
this was not to be trusted; it too might break one day.
I came back up from the shop with several buckets which began to ring
constantly as the water fell into them. A sack of sugar had got so wet, it was
useless. Mother put plastic sheeting over all the other piles of stock.
If it was like this during an untimely shower, what would it be like during
the rainy season?
And what was the house like? It really had only one storey, because you
could hardly call the upper floor a storey. It was four feet high near the
door, but it sloped down towards the back, where Father had stored the
boxes we brought from Katasé.
When you went up to the upper floor, you always banged your head on
the door and got a bump on it. And your hair would catch on it and get
pulled out. The people who had lived in the house before us had clearly also
banged their heads many times, because there were long hairs caught in the
gaps in the roof. Now it was my and Mother’s turn to get our hair caught. If
only Father would come up here sometimes, but, after he’d banged his head
once, he did so only rarely.
And the roof looked as if it could fall down any time. Sometimes, we
came across pink earwigs up there, and so many times the customers
themselves had killed them. After we moved to this house, I slept upstairs
for a week, but after we began to find earwigs, Mother said in a tone of sad
resignation, ‘Don’t sleep up there anymore.’
Father had pulled a big cupboard out from the back of the shop space and
placed a bed behind it. From the side window of the shop, I could see a
distant range of hills. In the dry season, I watched fires burning on the hill
ridges until midnight: it looked as if lines of people were walking on them,
bearing flaming torches. I could see the distant Karnali at the foot of these
hills and in the middle of the night I thought I could hear the sound of its
flow. Later, I realized that this was not the sound of a river but the sound of
the wind, which made the plastic sheets tied to the roof flap noisily.
 When the sky was clear, I watched the moon moving over the topknots of
the hills until late at night. I remembered Katasé, and the memory of Sister
gripped me hard. And when I thought of Sharmila, I stayed awake all night.
Sometimes Mother noticed this. ‘Hey, go to sleep,’ she would call drowsily,
‘How restless you are!’
Mother would hear even the slightest sound I made, because she and
Father slept just on the other side of the cupboard. My sleep was often
disturbed by Father’s coughing too.
At the back of the house there was a small room which was used as a
kitchen. There was a little hole for the smoke to escape through, but most of
it didn’t go outside and it smouldered into the shop instead. Mother worried
that the smoke would spoil the cloth in the shop. She also worried that when
the rainy season began the walls would collapse: there was already a fine
crack in the right-hand wall, which had been filled in with pebbles.
‘Fall down?’ Father would say, ‘Stone houses aren’t so weak.’
And the landlord had told him, he said, ‘This wall cracked five years ago;
it won’t crack any further. There’s no fear of the foundation sinking either.’
One night, after Mother had been complaining long and loud, Father said,
‘Don’t worry, next year we’ll have to pull this house down and build a new
one.’
Father had already worked out how much this would cost. ‘I’ll bring the
cement and steel rods from Surkhet,’ he said.
There was no toilet in the house. Several times, I had fallen on my back
in a thicket while I was going down the hill behind the house, dodging the
nettles. My body was covered in nettle rash. It got better after mustard oil
was put on it, but how many times the nettles had slapped me in the face I
could not say. So, Father had said that when he built the new house, he
would also build a toilet.
Despite all of this, Mother remained totally unresigned to living in
Kalikot. Sometimes, she would tell us, ‘If we fall sick, we’ll just die here.
The hospital doesn’t even have a doctor in it. We must go down to Surkhet.
What would we do if one of us was sick and the helicopter didn’t come?’
 But Father didn’t worry about such things. Sometimes, he would chat
away to us in the soft light of the lantern, saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, the shop
is beginning to do well at last. I think we will prosper on this soil. In a few
years, the road will get here and this place will turn into a heaven.’

The lantern was flickering. Father sat leaning against the shelves. In his lap,
he had a wad of rupees that he had counted out that evening.
Mother and I came in from the kitchen.
I sat on my heels beside him. Mother locked the door from the inside and
placed a pot of water on the counter. She sighed; she must have been tired.
‘How much?’ she asked, sitting next to Father.
‘1,80,000.’
Mother smiled.
‘The helicopter comes tomorrow,’ said Father, putting on his spectacles.
‘I’ll have to go tomorrow. What things do we need?’
Mother surveyed the shelves and thought for a minute. Then she looked
at the shelves again.
‘Make a note of this, or you’ll forget.’
Father pulled a pen from the top pocket of his waistcoat and turned the
page of an exercise book.
Mother called out a list, and Father’s pen began to run across the page:
Two lengths of velvet, printed
Blouse cloth, dark red and light green too
Sarwal-kurta pieces, printed
Three lengths of trouser cloth, blue
Quartered sheets, twenty-five
Winter’s coming, so twenty 2.5 kilo quilts
gottaa sweets, 50 kilos
One carton of leaf tea
Two sacks of sugar
Goldstar shoes, fifty pairs above Number 18
Woollen gloves, forty pairs
Pressure cookers, 2.5 litre ones, twenty
 Machine thread, five boxes
Mustard oil in half-litre packets, seven cartons
Salt, 2 quintals
Noodles, twenty cartons
Buttons
Half a kilo of pepper

Mother made him take down a list of nearly fifty items like this. The dogs
of the bazaar had begun to bark and from time to time the police marched
past, their boots going garap garap on the ground. My eyes were drooping,
but I did not want to sleep.
Once the list was complete, Father yawned and pushed his spectacles up
onto his head to wipe his eyes. Then he turned to me. ‘What about you,
what shall I bring you?’ he asked.
What could I say?
‘A radio,’ I said.
Father laughed when he heard this, and his cheeks wrinkled up.
‘Oh, a radio, sure!’ Mother was annoyed. ‘Bring him a jacket. It’s going
to be bitter here in the winter.’
‘What sort shall I bring you, tell me?’
‘A leather one, black,’ I said.
Early next morning, Father wrapped the money in some plastic, tucked it
into his waistband and was ready to go. At half past eight, the helicopter
flew over the roofs of the headquarters. Father left half a glass of black tea
undrunk and made for his bag. The people of the bazaar were already
running towards the helipad as Mother hurried in from the kitchen.
Father waved at me and I picked up his bag. Mother bent to touch
Father’s feet.
‘Please look at house sites around Surkhet,’ Mother said as Father was
leaving.
Father did not reply.
I went ahead.
 After it had unloaded the traders’ deliveries and rice for the Food Office
onto the ground, the helicopter shut its back door. The white foreign pilots
pulled on their cigarettes as they watched the happy people examining the
helicopter. All of them were tall and wore sunglasses, and they took
photographs of the scene.
The police were pushing the crowd back behind the barbed wire. I did
not dare to go forward because a policeman was standing in the way,
holding a list of names. He only let people through after he’d checked their
names. Father’s name was on the list, so he took the bag from my shoulder
and went inside the barbed wire. In the rush, I didn’t even get the chance to
touch his feet.
Father joined the line of people boarding the helicopter and climbed in.
For a moment, I saw his Dhaka topi moving here and there through the
round glass window of the helicopter, and then he was hidden.
Bhatatata—the helicopter’s long blades whirled around, and the dust
flew up. I hid behind the crab apple tree. The helicopter lifted off into the
sky, span around and became a kite.

***

Jarilal stood in front of our shop for a moment.

I was bending down below the counter, so he didn’t see me at first. When
I stood up, he saw me and grinned. He was carrying a large bundle. He
looked older; the hair on his temples was whiter than before.
‘Are you well, Sauji?’
‘Fine.’
He sat down on a stool beside the door and put his bundle down. Then he
wiped away his sweat with a grubby hat that was split in places.
‘Is Baajé not in the shop today?’ he asked, after he had cast an eye
around the shop.
‘He’s gone to Surkhet. It’s been two weeks now.’
‘So, where has Bajyai gone?’
 ‘She’s in the kitchen,’ I said, coming out from behind the counter. ‘Shall
I call her?’ He didn’t reply, so I ran to the kitchen.
‘Mother, Jarilal’s here,’ I called, peering in through the hole in the wall
that the smoke came through. It was extremely smoky in there. Mother’s
voice came faintly from the hole along with the smoke, but I did not
understand what she said.
‘She’s coming,’ I told Jarilal, seating myself on the counter.
He just kept smiling and didn’t speak. He didn’t talk a lot. These days, he
didn’t carry so many loads either. Six months earlier, he had gone to
Chisapani and when he returned, he told us, ‘Chisapani’s dried up too now.
Mules are carrying any trade that might still be going on. Our days are
over.’
It was only him and his wife at home. The son was in India. Sometimes,
he said, ‘My son is sending money, that’s what we live on.’ He had a field
which he said was more rocks than soil.
There’s soil in Jumla Dailekh, but only rocks in Kalikot … he had sung
this song to us once.
When Jarilal came to the headquarters, he took away cloth from our shop
on credit, then came back three or four months later to pay us off. Everyone
in Serijiula who took credit from our shop had been introduced to us by
Jarilal. He took responsibility for it, and collected the money and brought it
to us from time to time.
Once when Father had stomach pains, he brought us a piece of musk
from I don’t know where, and Father’s stomach was fine again. That was
why Father had begun to give him credit. Sometimes, Jarilal brought
walnuts for me, and millet flour and red rice for Mother.
This was his first visit for three months. He had aged a lot over that time.
I stared at him, and he noticed it.
‘What are you doing?’ he smiled at me. ‘Are you going to school or not?’
‘I’ve reached class eight.’
Mother came with glasses of tea. Jarilal grinned and greeted her with a
namaste. She gave him a glass of tea, which he took after some hesitation.
 ‘You haven’t been around for many days,’ said Mother, going back into
the shop through the counter.
‘I’ve had no work here, that’s why,’ said Jarilal, putting the rim of the
glass to his lips. ‘But now I’m here to get some rice.’
‘Did you get any?’
‘Why would they give me any, those leprous sons of widows?’
And it was true that others took more than their share of the rice in many
Village Development Committees. Mandiré had told me, ‘Those sons of
widows are giving it all to the hotel keepers.’
This time, Jarilal had got no more than 10 kilos of rice, and this was why
his bundle was small. Every time he was given short measure like this, he
would go home with his rice, fuming, ‘It can’t go on like this forever.’
Jarilal finished his tea and sat holding the empty glass, unsure what to do
next.
Mother understood and said, ‘It’s fine, you don’t need to wash it.’
He placed the glass on the stool.
‘Bajyai, there’s no money this time,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ll bring
some next time.’
‘Just say if you want to take anything with you.’
Jarilal chose two packets of salt, some number 32 Gold Star shoes and
some pieces of steel to make a sickle. He packed them up and I made a note
in the accounts book:

Jarilal Tiruwa, Serijiula.

salt-shoes-iron—total Rs 473.

‘All right, Bajyai,’ said Jarilal, picking up his bundle. ‘So, those lepers
wouldn’t give me my rice. I’ll be back again soon.’

Twenty-six days had passed, but Father had not returned and Mother had
begun to despair. Last night she muttered, ‘What is that man like? Wherever
he goes, he just disappears. He should at least phone us. There’s no news of
whether he’s alive or dead.’
Father had a bad habit of never phoning us, wherever he went.
 Whenever the helicopter came, Mother would immediately tell me, ‘Hey,
go and see if Ba has come.’ I would run to the helipad and hide behind the
crab apple tree. If only Father would come!
After exactly twenty-eight days, Father returned. He had brought a lot of
stuff: eleven bundles. His face looked as black as black, maybe because
he’d been burned by the sun.
Porters brought the bundles and piled them up in front of the shop. Father
was weary. He pulled off the towel he carried on his shoulder and fanned
himself with it for a moment.
‘Go and bring me some water,’ he told me after I had touched his feet. He
seemed even more out of breath than usual. I ran to the kitchen.
Mother was plastering the cooking hearth. I called from the door,
‘Mother, Father’s back!’
I poured some water into a pot from the pitcher and ran back up.
A moment later, Mother came out, wiping her hands with the end of her
sari. When she saw Father, she smiled and touched his feet.
‘That’s a lot of stuff!’
‘I brought more because I thought I might be slow to go again,’ said
Father, tipping water from the pot into his mouth. His Adam’s apple moved
up and down. The cold water he had gulped down must have reached his
stomach, and he wiped his lips with his arm in satisfaction.
We sat around the fireplace until late that night. Father told us how hot it
was in Nepalganj. He had been there to buy stock too. In Surkhet, he
reached an agreement with a merchant who had been willing to offer him
credit.
‘Did you look at a house site too?’ Father didn’t answer Mother’s
question, but just smiled.
Mother’s face fell. Father had brought as much stock for the shop as he
had money to pay for.
‘What’s he like?’ Mother sounded tearful. ‘You should save some of the
money, you know.’
‘The shop is running well, we needed more stock,’ said Father, poking
the fire.
 Mother fell silent for a while. The plastic sheeting on the roof went on
flapping for a long time.
Early next morning, Father opened up all the bundles and piled up a
mountain of stuff in front of the shop door. The other shopkeepers watched
in amazement, many with expressions of envy on their faces. Mother pulled
a face too—one of anger.
‘What’s he brought? These small shoes won’t sell!’
‘Who’s going to buy such a faded dhoti?’
‘These half-litre cookers simply won’t go.’
The more bundles Father unpacked, the more Mother complained. Father
didn’t respond, but just went on sorting out the stock. I rushed about taking
lengths of cloth into the shop.
From the sixth bundle, Father took out a small box and handed it to me. It
was a box for a radio! I tore it open in a hurry, put in a battery and pulled up
the aerial. The sound of interference came from the radio.
‘Don’t switch that noise on now,’ said Mother irritably.
I put the radio on the counter and went back to my job of moving the
stock inside.
A leather jacket was hanging from Father’s hand.
Hey, hey, a leather jacket?
I put on the black shiny jacket, and Father smiled. Passers-by grinned at
me too. I felt very proud.
In another bundle, there was another enjoyable thing too: a signboard.
Father lifted it up and regarded it for a moment. Its edges were a little
dented. He stood it on the counter and several passers-by stopped to read it.
Even Mother smiled when she saw it.
That evening, Father hung the signboard from a nail above the door.
Then he stood out in the street for a moment to read it:
Shri Krishna Traders
Khandachakra, Kalikot

***
The second week of Pus. The drizzle and thick clouds of the past three days
made it even more heart-shakingly cold. I slept until late that morning.
Mother had already come and shouted three times, ‘Hey Kumbhakarna,
up you get!’ A cold draught came in through the window gap and my head
was aching badly. I got up and yawned, and my breath came out like smoke.
As soon as my body emerged from my quilt, my heart trembled with the
cold.
I opened the window and saw that the hills had wrapped themselves in
quilts of snow. The wind that blew in through the window made my lips
tremble and my teeth chatter. For as far as I could see from the window,
there was nothing but snow. I had never seen such snow.
The sky was still clouded over, with snow falling as light as cotton wool.
The branches of the trees were bending under piles of snow. As I looked at
their branches, they looked to me like white rabbits.
I went out, dragging my freezing legs. I had already put on the leather
jacket. Father was in the shop, wrapped in a blanket with his head down
reading something. He looked up at me.
I went outside. All of the roofs were covered in snow and the road was
concealed by it. People were standing in shop doorways watching the snow
fall. Sometimes, they caught it in their hands. A couple of officials ran past
the shop in the direction of Pratima, wearing sweaters under their jackets.
Their breath was as cloudy as smoke. Cameras hung from their gloved
hands.
I stood in front of the shop with my hands stuffed into my armpits. A
cold draught was piercing every nook and cranny of the house and the wind
was moaning.
‘It’s nine years since snow like this last fell on the bazaar,’ the nearby
shopkeepers were saying.
I stood for a long time watching the snow piling up like sugar and salt.
Three policemen ran towards Pratima dressed in thick jackets. Now and
again, they picked up fistfuls of snow and threw it at one another.
‘Don’t stay out in the cold like that,’ Father told me.
I ran into the kitchen.
 The kitchen was full of smoke. Mother was making tea on one fire and
heating snow on another.
‘Why are you heating up snow?’ I asked her, sitting on my heels beside
the door. As I sat down, a cold draught chilled my buttocks.
‘To drink,’ said Mother, laughing. ‘Won’t you have some?’
‘Chyaa, does anyone drink snow?’
Mother poured hot tea into a glass. I took it hurriedly and gulped it down.
There was too much pepper, it burned my throat.
When it snows, the pipes all freeze up, she said. Until the snow melted,
there would be no water from the pipes, so Mother had started melting
snow. The melted snow water was going to be enough to wash the pots, but
for our drinking water we would have to find a stone spout, she said.
‘Bring us some water today, you hear?’ Mother instructed me.

‘Hey Mandiré!’
I called to him from the doorway. Inside, the house was full of smoke.
The courtyard was full of snow and the pepper plant nearby was covered in
snow as well.
‘Who is it?’ Mandiré called. ‘Come inside.’
I put down the 20-litre jerrycan I was carrying and went in, shielding my
eyes against the smoke. Mandiré laughed when he saw me. The poor thing
was battling against the smoke. There was a large cooking pot on the fire.
‘It’s kundo, broth for the animals,’ he said.
The inner walls of the house were smoke-blackened. There was a ladder
inside the house to go upstairs, and the sound of coughing drifted down it
from above. It must be Mandiré’s mother who was coughing. His father had
fallen into the Karnali eleven years ago, when a zipwire river crossing
snapped. It was the rainy season and the Karnali had washed him away,
never to return. Mandiré didn’t even hope to see him again.
‘I’ve come to fetch water,’ I said, squatting down beside the fireplace.
‘But even the spout has frozen.’
An icicle was hanging from the waterspout a hundred metres from
Mandiré’s house. He pushed some pine wood into the fire and told me to
wait.
I looked all around me. Beside the fireplace, there was a pile of clothes
and a heap of old books with torn covers. One lay open: he had been
reading it, perhaps.
He staggered out, carrying the steaming cookpot which he held with
ragged old cloths on either side. Then he called from outside the door,
‘Come with me!’
Mandiré gave the ice, which was frozen into a shape like a walking stick,
a hard whack with a stick. It broke away and the water began to flow. ‘La,
fill up!’ he told me.
The steaming water poured into the mouth of the jerrycan. Mandiré
stared up toward the peak of Chuli Malika for a moment. It was shining
more than it usually did: from time to time, the sun glinted through the gaps
in the dark clouds, and the snow shone so brightly it dazzled the eyes.
The jerrycan was full. I picked it up with my right hand, but it was so
heavy it almost broke my wrist. I put it straight down again.
‘Can’t you carry it?’ Mandiré laughed.
‘I didn’t balance it right.’
So, I lifted it again and began to climb back up the hill—slowly, for fear
of slipping in the snow. The wind was so cold I felt as if my ears were
going to freeze. The fingertips of the hand in which I was carrying the
jerrycan began to hurt badly too.
‘Wait, I’ll come too.’ I had already climbed a short distance when
Mandiré called to me, then ran home. I stood and waited. The wind kept on
slapping my cheeks and my stomach ached.
Snow had fallen on Manma too, a little further down. The field terraces
were all hidden beneath it. I was beginning to be chilled by the strong wind,
when Mandiré came back out, wearing an old blue coat, split at the armpits,
a woollen hat and a scarf around his neck.
‘Well well,’ he pulled the jerrycan from my hand. ‘Shall I carry it?’
I could not refuse him.
And Mandiré ran up the slope over the snow.
 People were scattered all over the bazaar, and wherever you looked, you
saw a camera. Mandiré delivered me to our shop, dodging the people taking
photos and the boys throwing snow. The shop was crowded with people
who had come to buy film reels for their cameras. Father and Mother didn’t
have a minute to spare.
‘Have you brought water?’ Mother asked, peering out from the crowd.
‘Yes.’
Mandiré greeted Mother with a namaste.
‘Go and have some tea,’ she said, and I ran to the kitchen with Mandiré
close behind me. My body revived when I drank a glass of tea.
Putting his glass down on the ground, Mandiré threw me a glance.
‘Don’t go loitering about,’ Mother told me as soon as she saw me out in
front of the shop again. ‘The cold will get hold of you.’
‘I’ll be back very soon,’ I said and ran off. Mandiré had already gone
ahead.
Mandiré took some of the snow that had piled up on the chaur at the
District Development Committee and made it into a ball. Then, piling one
ball on top of another, he built an amazing snow house. He smiled as he
regarded it, putting his hands to his cheeks. In Katasé, we used to build
houses of sand. I also set to, and after half an hour, I had built a house, but I
was chilled through.
‘Oy Templey!’ teased the snow-throwing boys from a distance, ‘Built a
temple?’
‘Pricks!’ shouted Mandiré.
These boys were always trying to pick fights with us, and they taunted
us, saying that we had come to Kalikot because we couldn’t get food
anywhere else. I didn’t want to get into a fight with them.
Then it began to snow once more. My shoes were made of cloth and they
were soaked and heavy. Even my socks were making me numb with cold.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Mandiré ran off and I ran after him.
When we turned to look back, we saw that the houses we had built had
been destroyed.
My stomach twisted and ached that night. A bitter wind was coming in
through the window. I could hardly control myself. I lay on my face,
clutching my pillow, and tears came from my eyes. Should I wake Mother
at midnight?
‘Uhuhuhu!’ I cried.
‘What’s the matter?’ Mother had woken up.
‘My stomach hurts!’
A shuffling sound, then a lantern was lit and Mother came in with it. I
was lying on my face, clutching a pillow to my stomach.
‘Is it hurting very badly?’ Mother asked, stroking my hair.
I nodded.
‘I told you not to play in the snow, but you ignored me,’ Mother sighed.
Then the right side of my stomach twisted again, as if I was going to piss
myself. ‘Uhuhuhu!’ I cried again.
‘Is it a bad illness, I wonder?’ Mother’s face looked grave in the
lamplight.
‘What’s happened?’ Father asked.
‘He’s dying of stomach ache.’
Father shuffled in too. He had put his spectacles on. His eyes had become
even weaker.
He felt my stomach, which was twisting more and more. When he asked
‘Does it hurt badly?’, my eyes became hot, then misty.
‘I told you we should not stay here,’ said Mother, sniffing back tears. ‘We
only have one, what if something happens to him?’
‘But he cries for no reason, this one.’
‘They won’t open a Medikal for us at this time of night,’ muttered
Mother, taking my head onto her lap.
Father just stood there for a moment without saying anything.
‘Uhuhuuu,’ my stomach got worse again. Even my inner ears began to
hurt, and I writhed like a wounded mouse.
‘Get me a torch now,’ Father’s tone was urgent.
‘Must you go out so late at night?’
‘Yes, I think I have to!’
 Father went out. The Medikal was near Pratima. How would Father fare
in this cold? I felt angry with myself: this was all because I had played out
in the cold. How cold my feet had been! Now I felt as if I was going to
break apart in my middle and I writhed and sobbed.
‘Don’t cry,’ Mother said, and she sobbed too. ‘It’s your Father who
brought us up onto this hill ridge.’
Father returned quickly with a syringe. He opened its point and planted it
in my buttock. ‘You’ll be all right in a minute,’ he said, stroking my hair.
Then I took two Bruset tablets with some water that Mother heated up
and brought in a hurry. Soon, it seemed as if the pain was lessening. I
remained with my head in Mother’s lap. Father stayed awake and sat there
bundled up in his quilt.
‘Let’s not stay here any longer,’ Mother kept saying.
Father coughed twice but did not reply.

***

It was the second week of Phagun. Father returned from Surkhet after an
absence of fifteen days. Six bundles of goods were unloaded from the
helicopter. Father got down too, looking thin and worn out. I hid behind the
crab apple tree to dodge the dust thrown up by the helicopter, and I saw his
Gold Star shoes, blue trousers, white shirt and sky-blue waistcoat. There
was no hat on his balding head, probably because the weather was warm.
There was some short hair still left on his nape, like a line of frost. On his
eyes, there was a thicker, even more powerful pair of spectacles. The string
tied to their base dangled around his neck.
Father looked exhausted. He stood for a moment looking up at the cliffs.
I ran to him and bent to touch his feet.
‘Is Mother well?’ he asked, running his tongue over his dry lips.
‘Yes.’
He smiled. I don’t know why, but these days, he no longer put in the two
false front teeth. So, when he smiled, his toothless mouth didn’t look nice at
all.
 The porters started picking up the loads.
‘Carry it carefully,’ he told one of them sharply. ‘It’s breakable stuff.’
The porters went ahead and Father followed them. I came along behind
him, carrying his bag.
By the time we reached the shop, Father’s breath was rasping in his
throat. His chest was congested and he was unable to clear the phlegm from
his throat. At the shop, he sat down, leaning against the cupboard. I brought
him some water. Father drank it, took a long breath and wiped the sweat
from his brow.
Mother came from the kitchen bearing tea.
‘I don’t think I’ll be able to make any more trips,’ said Father, taking the
glass of tea. ‘I nearly passed out three times in Surkhet.’
Mother’s face fell.
‘In that case, I’ll go to buy the stock from now on,’ she said.
‘I don’t think you could do it.’ Father turned to me. ‘I’ll go for a few
more years. After that, he can go.’
Me? Why would I ever do such work?
‘What we have is enough for us old ones,’ Father smiled. ‘Now he will
make his own share and live off it.’
After Father had closed his eyes to rest, Mother began to open up the
bundles, and I went to help her. I staggered inside with the lengths of cloth.
When she opened the fourth bundle, Mother was amazed: there was a
harmonium in it.
‘What’s he brought now?’ she asked.
‘A harmonium.’ Father peered over, stretching his neck. ‘There’s a
sewing machine in another one.’
‘Chi! Who’s going to buy that?’
‘I haven’t brought it to sell, I brought it for myself,’ Father laughed. ‘So
now we can sew our own clothes, and it will be easy to pass our days too.’
I set the sewing machine down in front of him, straining to carry its
weight. With a piece of cloth, he wiped away the fine dust that filled the
holes in the machine. When his right hand fell upon the little wheel joined
to the back of the machine, the machine made a noise—khatkhat. Father
had also brought some machine oil in a small plastic bottle, and he filled its
various holes and ducts with it.
‘Go and get me your torn shirt.’
I hurried inside and searched through my clothes. I found a shirt that had
split apart at both armpits. When I came back out, Father was threading the
needle of the machine with trembling hands. I handed him the shirt.
The neighbouring shopkeepers stood outside their shops, watching Father
in surprise. From time to time, they laughed, showing their teeth.
Mother came and stood beside Father.
Father spread the split shirt out on the lower surface of the machine,
muttering, ‘How did he split this?’
The machine worked—khatkhatkhat. The arm, which was well on its
way to splitting into two strands of cloth, was joined again in an instant.
Satisfied, Father snipped the thread with scissors.
‘La!’ the shirt was tossed in my direction.
Mother went to the kitchen laughing.
In the evening, the sound of the harmonium and Father’s voice resounded
through the shop. Once or twice, I chased away the crowd of children that
gathered to listen, but although they ran away, they always came back
again. They were enjoying watching this amazing thing that filled with air
from its back and made a noise from its front.
In the evening, the DSP and the CDO Saab, who had come out for a
stroll, stopped in front of the shop with their entourage of guards. Father
saluted them with a namaste.
‘You’ve brought a harmonium, Baajé!’ the DSP, who had a fat
moustache, smiled.
‘Yes, I’m old and it’s hard to get through the day,’ Father laughed too.
‘I’ve brought it to help me pass the time.’
‘Where on earth did Baajé come from to run a business up on this hill
ridge?’ The DSP walked on, muttering, ‘Now it looks as if even harder days
are coming.’
Father was all set to reply, but the DSP had already gone.
 That night, after Father had eaten his food and pushed his plate toward
Mother, he announced, ‘From now on I won’t eat any fish or meat at all.
You can eat it.’
‘Why, what’s suddenly so wrong with eating meat and fish?’
‘I’ve become a Krishna Pranami.’
Mother was really irritated when she heard this. Even I found it hard to
swallow my food.

***

‘Maoists!’
As soon as you switched the radio on, it blared out this word. Up until a
few days before, the word had been heard from time to time, but now its
sound had become unbearable. Wherever you went in the bazaar, you heard
the same talk. The Maoists have robbed a police post. The Maoists are
terribly powerful, they say. They run from cliff to cliff. All day, they reside
in the forest; then, at night, they attack the police posts. There are Maoists
in Kalikot too, they say.
Even the police were going about more warily. The CID, who everyone
knew, was busy all night, and all morning the CDO and the DSP held
meetings. Mandiré told me all this. I did not know where he was getting his
information from.
‘Yesterday, there was a torch procession at Battis,’ he told me, ‘And a
slogan march at Pakha.’
Officials, businessmen, police, teachers—everyone was talking about the
Maoists. ‘They’ve demanded 30 per cent of our wages,’ said the teachers
who came in to the headquarters from distant villages.
‘Wherever we go, there’s no happiness to be had,’ Mother declared
tearfully in the kitchen one day.
‘What’s happened now?’ Father said irritably.
‘Maoists, Maoists, they say. Now they say they’re not going to let us
bring our stock to the headquarters.’
 ‘Is it true just because they say so?’ Father retorted. ‘Things will calm
down after a few days.’
But where was the calm that Father spoke of? All of the traders’ mouths
were dry with fear. Now most of the business people who had come up to
Kalikot to trade regretted their decision: ‘Where have we come to get
trapped?’ they asked themselves. And it was true that even if they decided
to leave, they would have to collect their dues first, because they had given
credit to people all through the villages.
One day, there was a great uproar at the headquarters. All of the police
from the post ran down the hill to Rengil and everyone’s eyes filled with
dread. Father rushed to switch on the radio. From the 3 o’clock news we
learned that a pipe bomb had gone off in the forest above Serijiula. The
DSP was leading the patrol and he had been killed.
Father sat lost in his thoughts for a long while without speaking. I ran to
the kitchen and told Mother, ‘The DSP’s been killed at Seriujiula.’
Mother went out and gazed over at the Serijiula ridge. What should I do?
I also started to feel agitated. That night in the kitchen, Father and Mother
hardly spoke. I too swallowed my rice down in silence.
‘Let’s not stay here, eh?’ Mother said. ‘The DSP’s been killed. How can
we stay here? Let’s go to Surkhet.’
Father did not reply.
‘Let’s just take whatever we have and go to Surkhet.’
‘The business is here. We’re owed so much,’ Father said dejectedly. ‘And
who would buy the house? We don’t have any cash at all.’
Mother said nothing more after that.
Suddenly, a dog jumped into the doorway, coming out of nowhere.
Mother watched in terror and my heart turned as cold as snow.
After this, the name of Kalikot could be heard in every news bulletin on
the radio. A rumour went around that the Maoists were planning to attack
the headquarters. The sirs were saying the same thing, so we couldn’t go to
school. The SLC examinations were imminent, but the sirs had never taught
us well. All day, they just talked about the Maoists in their classes. The
maths teacher Khusilal Sir’s cheerfulness disappeared from his narrowed
eyes, which looked frightened now. He had always thrashed anyone as if he
was thrashing an ox when their sums didn’t add up, whether they were a
girl or a boy, but suddenly he gave up his beatings.
‘Long live the Maoists!’ someone wrote in red enamel on the school
wall.
One day, on the way home from school, Mandiré told me a lot about the
Maoists as we rested under the crab apple tree. He said that there had been a
meeting of the Maoists in Bharta and that they had decided to attack the
headquarters.
My legs began to shake.
‘Did you know, this is the one headquarters in Nepal that the Maoists
can’t attack? Look, na? Whichever side they come from, it’s steep uphill.’
And it was true. Even if the Maoists came from Bharta, they would be
seen in the distance. When I heard this from Mandiré, a little of my courage
returned.
‘Where will you go to study when you pass the SLC?’ Mandiré asked
me, changing the subject.
‘Kathmandu.’
My dream of going to Kathmandu had been inspired by the smartness of
the Kalikot boys who studied there. If you went to Kathmandu, you became
someone who knew and understood things.
‘And what will you do when you pass?’ I asked Mandiré.
‘Oh, I’ll study here.’
‘And if you fail?’ The sirs had drawn up a list of those who might pass
the SLC, and Mandiré’s name wasn’t on it.
Mandiré just laughed.

A new DSP came to Kalikot. He was rather severe in nature. One day, he
passed our shop while Father was playing the harmonium, but he paid it no
attention. After he arrived, the police raided many of the hotels in the
bazaar, but found nothing.
Two weeks after the new DSP’s arrival, a helicopter came four times,
delivering two hundred soldiers. They marched from the bazaar to the
District Development Committee office, their boots ringing on the ground.
They had belts of bullets around their waists and big guns in their hands and
they carried large packs. They took no notice of the people who stood in
front of the shops watching them go by.
In the end, the army set up tents in the forest above Rani Dhunga and cut
down the trees there. When you looked up from the bazaar, you could
always see the head of a soldier pointing his gun towards the bazaar from
behind a wall of sandbags. After the army came in force like this, the bazaar
began to seem a little calmer. Most of the shops closed early in the
evenings. Ours would close at 7 o’clock. After the shop was shut, Father
played the harmonium and sang holy bhajans in a soft voice. The bhajans
were all about Krishna and Radha.
But all day, Father worked at the sewing machine, sewing all kinds of
things. Once he even made a shirt from blue cloth and went smiling to other
tailors’ shops wearing it. But it was badly made, with creases under its
arms.
‘What’s he like, wasting all the cloth?’ Mother exclaimed angrily. ‘Has
he lost his mind or something?’
Father laughed, pulled off the shirt and threw it away. That was the day I
noticed that all the hair on his chest had turned white.
Father walked around the bazaar two or three times a day and the rest of
the time he sat in the shop going khatkhatkhat on the machine. But the
sound of his machine began to be drowned out more and more by the sound
of boots marching past as the army increased its patrols.
Then the police issued an order: ‘Please close your shops at 6 o’clock.’
What was there to do after the shop closed at six? Father composed an
increasing number of bhajans and the sound of his harmonium filled the
bazaar until late at night.
At 8 o’clock one night, Father was singing a bhajan while Mother and I
sat watching him. Somebody knocked on the door, and Father stopped
playing.
‘The shop’s shut!’ Mother called.
 More knocks, and then someone hammered hard on the door with their
fist.
‘What’s the matter, we’ve already told you the shop is closed …’
muttered Mother, opening the door.
Outside, there was a large number of police. My heart turned cold.
‘Baajé, don’t play the harmonium,’ said a policeman holding a bright
torch.
‘It’s only bhajans I’m singing,’ Father forced a grin.
‘From now on, don’t play anything.’
‘We can’t even sing bhajans?’ Mother shook with anger.
‘Don’t play means don’t play,’ the policeman said in a loud and
threatening tone. Then he moved on with the rest of the police.
‘Are they the rulers now or what? Can’t people even play bhajans?’
shouted Mother, slamming the door.
‘Let it go,’ said Father. ‘I won’t play anymore.’
After that, Father never played the harmonium again. It was stored away
in the inner room and dust began to gather on the plastic sheet Mother
threw over it.
All day, Father pored over his creditor’s book, calculating how much we
were still owed. After he had finished his calculations, he would heave a
long sigh. Then he would get hold of the sewing machine again and it was
khatkhatkhatkhat. Rs 1,75,000 were still left to be recouped, but several of
the people whose names were in the creditor’s book were no longer seen at
the headquarters. Every night, Father was anxious and agitated. If only he
could play his harmonium!
‘What is making you so restless?’ Mother asked him one day.
‘Oh, maybe it’s just because I’m getting old that I feel worried all the
time. What you say might well be right. Maybe it would have been better if
we had never come here.’
‘But come we did. Don’t worry now, these are bad times, and nothing is
right.’
That day, Father didn’t sleep until late.
 One day, Mandiré told me, ‘Now the Maoists aren’t going to allow
people to come into the headquarters from the villages.’
And it was true that the crowd of people at the headquarters had thinned.
At Pratima, there were fewer vendors with their baskets of apples, oranges,
bananas, saag and vegetables. If you went to Pratima now, there would be
little more than dust blowing in the wind. The helicopter that circled the
roofs of the headquarters every day was lost too. Sometimes one came, but
more often than not it was the army that got down from it, instead of rice
and deliveries for the shops. I also heard that the helicopter now delivered
soldiers to the other districts too.
Even before dusk had fallen, the army patrols came by, banging their
boots on the ground. The shop door had to be shut before the patrol arrived,
and at night we sat up until late, just staring into space. I stopped listening
to the radio. How much news do you want to hear of people being killed?
After some days, it became difficult even to go outside for a piss. A
rumour spread that if you did, you would bump into soldiers hiding in the
gaps between the houses.
One morning, Khamba Sauji of the Salleri Hotel told the tea shop that
one night he had heard the sound of something moving about on his roof
and had climbed up to see what it was. And Mother! There was a soldier
hiding up there!
‘Who’s there?’ the soldier had demanded.
‘It’s Khamba, sir.’ Khamba was frightened out of his wits.
‘Shut up and go back down,’ the soldier said angrily. ‘Or you’ll get shot.’
The police who spent the night around the District Development
Committee office with their guns loaded and aimed called out ‘Uiiiiiiiiii!’,
maybe out of fear.
Meanwhile, the soldiers muttered, ‘Chi, what a noise the police are
making! They should sit in silence. If they make a noise like that, the
Maoists will know where they’re hiding.’
In a few months, the news came that the Maoists had cut the three
suspension bridges that gave access to the headquarters.
One day, after a long absence, Jarilal turned up at around nine in the
morning.
He was just the same, but this time he was carrying a basket. He wore
green shoes split near the big toes and a dusty waistcoat with bulging
pockets on top of a brown sweater. On his head, there was a black peaked
cap, with his dishevelled hair poking out from underneath it. Father was in
the shop, bent low over the sewing machine.
‘Baajé, are you well?’
Father lifted his head from the machine and smiled when he saw Jarilal.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re using a sewing machine?’ he asked.
‘Do you need anything sewing?’
‘No, Baajé. If I could just get something to eat, that would be like
heaven.’ Jarilal gestured at his clothes, laughing. ‘I’ll wait for God in this
same shroud now.’
‘Where are you coming from today?’
‘I came yesterday to get some salt,’ he said, indicating the empty basket
that stood beside his knee. ‘I sold two loads of bananas at Pratima.’
He riffled through the basket and pulled out five or six big bananas,
which he gave to me. ‘Taste these, Sauji, taste these. They’re as sweet as
gottaas.’
Mother came from the kitchen. Her face lit up when she saw Jarilal.
‘It’s been a long time, where have you been?’ she asked, returning his
namaste.
Then Jarilal told us that it was difficult to get to the headquarters now.
The ‘sons of whores, Maoists,’ would not allow it, he said. And at home it
was very difficult too. Every night, someone or other would come and they
had to cook rice for them. ‘Come and join us,’ the Maoists told them. ‘It
can’t go on like this.’ Even Rané ran away to India the other day.
‘Rané’s gone?’ Mother was annoyed. ‘He owed us money!’
‘Don’t worry, Bajyai,’ Jarilal told her. ‘He said he would send the money
from India. I’ll take responsibility for that.’
 Jarilal had brought some money he had raised for us in Serijiula. He
handed over a fistful of rupees bundled up in plastic. Mother smiled and
counted the notes, many of which were creased, torn and smelly.
‘You haven’t brought us much.’
‘That’s it for this visit,’ Jarilal frowned. ‘I’ll bring more next time.’
He said he had to get back to Serijiula that evening. He chose a calico
shirt, sugar and tea, two packets of salt and 2 kilos of iron, saying he needed
to make an axe.
‘You never know when we may die,’ he said. ‘Get me a pressure cooker,
so we can taste some rice cooked in that before we do.’
Mother gave him a 1.5 litre cooker and showed him how many whistles it
took to cook meat and how many to cook rice.
Jarilal packed everything into his basket and Father made a note of it all
in big letters in his accounts book.
‘All right then, Bajyai.’ Jarilal offered Mother a namaste, with the basket
hoisted onto his back. ‘Those Maoist whores have cut the bridge at Rengil,
who knows what they’ll do next?’
It was half past nine and I had to go to school, so I followed Jarilal as far
as Pratima. On the way there, he cheerfully gave namastes to several
traders.
‘Off to school?’ he asked me when we reached Pratima.
‘Yes.’
‘Study, Sauji, study. You go to school.’ Hurriedly, he said, ‘All our kids
go to India.’
Then Jarilal set off down the hill towards Rengil, and I set off down the
hill to school.

***

The sirs had written up on the blackboard the questions that were likely to
come up in the SLC this time. They reckoned these questions would come
up, because they had not come up in the SLC last year.
 Mandiré and I copied them down in our exercise books, then went up to
the bazaar. All along the way, someone had written ‘Long Live the Maoists’
in chalk on the rocks. When he saw this, Mandiré told me, ‘Did you hear?
Now the Maoists are going to do a programme in our school.’
My heart swelled with fear. I ran up the hill, panting.
It was half past five in the evening. A crowd of soldiers were running to
Pratima. I was searching in a book for the answers to the questions I had
copied down at school because I was planning to cheat. When the soldiers
ran past the shop, I didn’t know what to do.
A crowd of people was following the soldiers, and Mandiré was among
them. When he saw me, he came into the shop, already out of breath.
Swallowing so hard that his Adam’s apple went up and down, he
whispered, ‘Today the army has caught some Maoists. They’re bringing
them in.’
My legs trembled.
‘They’ll have reached Pratima by now,’ he said, and with this he ran off
like the wind.
I ran to the kitchen where I found Mother and Father talking quietly. I
called to them from outside, ‘The army have caught some Maoists! They’ve
reached Pratima! Should we shut the shop up?’
‘Why should we close the shop?’ Father asked.
But I rushed to close the shop, my heart racing. Then I climbed to the
upper floor and hid behind the signboard.
The sun had reached Accham, so the sky to the west was red. A cold
wind stroked my body as a commotion broke out in the bazaar. I craned my
neck to look out over the signboard.
Some soldiers were marching towards me with their guns levelled, and a
crowd of people followed in their wake. Lau, I saw the bent head of a
Maoist at the centre of the ring of soldiers. I stood up a little to see better as
the crowd drew nearer.
As the soldiers passed the shop, the crowd arrived in front of it. All the
local saujis stood in front of their shops, craning their necks to see the
Maoist. The Maoist was walking bent over, with his head hanging low. His
hands were tied behind his back with a rope.
When I saw the crowd, I felt bolder, and I came out from behind the
signboard. I couldn’t see the Maoist’s face, but then he looked over at our
shop and I thought I was going to piss myself.
Oh Lord, it was Jarilal! My lips and mouth went dry.
Jarilal’s face had turned blue and there was a wound on the back of his
neck. When he left us this morning, he was carrying a basket, but now he
was empty-handed. Other onlookers were also confounded—they could not
say anything. The crowd crawled to the chautara like a snail. I felt sick in
my stomach, and I sat right down.
When I went down, I found Father and Mother standing in front of the
shop which they had already reopened. Mother looked tearful, and Father
dejected.
They sat in silence in the lantern light until very late that night. I sat
staring into space.
‘Go and study, the exams have come,’ said Mother.
I lay down on my bed.
‘Could Jarilal be a Maoist?’ Mother asked Father.
‘Of course not. They just …’ Father said nothing more.
I tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep. Jarilal’s face filled my eyes.
This was the first time I had seen a Maoist.
On the way home from school the next day, Mandiré told me that the
army had beaten Jarilal all night long. Jarilal had screamed so loud the
forests shook. Yesterday, they found a cooker bomb, a pipe bomb and some
letters on Jarilal, he said. When Jarilal encountered the army patrol on the
path down to Rengil, he ran away. He had sustained the injury to the back
of his neck when he slipped and fell on his back.
Early that morning, the CDO and the DSP had met Jarilal. He had been
forced to confess to them, ‘Yes, Saap, I am a Maoist. Yes, we were planning
to attack the headquarters.’
‘What will they do to Jarilal now?’ I asked tearfully.
 Mandiré looked down. The others returning from school were beneath
and behind us. Birds were flying into the crab apple tree. Mandiré wiped
away the sweat that had run into his face as he ran up the hill, then he put
his mouth close to my ear and said, ‘They’ll take him into the forest secretly
and kill him.’
That night, I told Father and Mother this. They did not speak when they
heard.
We heard that in the last week of Chait, Jarilal’s wife came weeping to
the army camp. But they did not allow her to see him, and she went home
weeping again.
Two days later, in the evening, Father worked out how much money we
still had to recoup from Serijiula. It came to Rs 21,600, and Jarilal still
owed us Rs 7,365.
‘The others will pay it back some time or other,’ said Mother. ‘But we
don’t even know whether Jarilal is alive or dead. What shall we do?’
Father thought for a moment. Then he picked up a red pilot pen and
crossed out Jarilal’s name.
OceanofPDF.com
 THE TENTH DAY

From 10 o’clock that morning, Father’s chest began to sound like a damaha
drum, and his voice was drying up. He spoke breathily, but even that sound
was obstructed by the mask that was sitting over his face. Even if he said
something, we could not understand it.
From time to time, his eyes opened, but they looked like a gloomy dried-
up river shore. His right hand slid up and down the stand of the saline drip.
Mother was frightened and she went to the bathroom time and again. Each
time she returned, she sat down at the bedside with a sigh. She sat there,
staring out of the window and mopping drops of sweat from Father’s
forehead with the end of her sari. From time to time, she dripped some
water into Father’s dry mouth, and again and again she muttered in a
dejected voice, ‘They gave him saline, and he got pneumonia. Was this the
right thing for them to do?’
Even when it got to 12 o’clock, we were not hungry because Father had
not eaten anything at all since the day before. Since the pneumonia, the
saline had been reduced. For this reason, Father’s urine was pale red as it
swirled down the tube, and as it accumulated in the polythene bag, it looked
like cloudy gutter water.
At a quarter past twelve, Father became agitated. He was trying to tell us
something. A rasping sound came from his throat, but we could not
understand him. It seemed that he was trying to get some words out with a
breath that was being held back by the phlegm and mucus in his chest.
Mother quickly removed his mask.
‘Tell me clearly,’ said Mother, stroking Father’s head. ‘What are you
trying to say?’
I bent close to Father’s mouth.
‘Don’t keep me here,’ Father said, his breath smelling foul. ‘Take me to
Surkhet. I want to see my grandson’s face.’
Then Father’s rasping and rattling resumed.

At about 1 o’clock, Chotku’s father and uncle came back. Early that
morning, they had left with dry faces, now they returned with faces
drenched with sweat. But now they were accompanied by a Tharu woman,
her face covered with a shawl. As soon as she entered the door, she hurried
to Chotku’s bed, and as soon as he saw her, Chotku tossed himself about
like a half-castrated goat. He sobbed, then screamed loud enough to tear his
throat open, ‘Fuckers, I’ll kill them!’
I glanced towards Chotku’s bed. He had ceased yelling for a moment and
was sobbing quietly.
I realized that the Tharu woman was his wife. Now she sat with Chotku’s
head in her lap, applying oil to his hair. The ward filled with the smell of
mustard oil, and the poor woman wiped away her tears from time to time.
Chotku’s father and uncle were ill at ease. Distressed, they kept coming
in and out of the ward.
Now they came in again.
‘Has anything been arranged yet?’ asked Mother, who was sitting on her
heels in the corner.
‘No,’ the father trembled, holding on to the saline stand.
Chotku heard his father’s shaking voice. He raised his buttocks from the
bed, then fell back and screamed, ‘I’ll kill them!’
Hurriedly, the wife pushed him back down and said something in his ear,
and Chotku became calm. Her hair was oiled and tightly combed, and she
wore no jewellery in her nose and ears. As I gazed at her, I remembered
Baatu. She too had wept silently like this as she was leaving. Where would
she be now? What would she be doing?
‘Hasn’t Narmada come?’ Mother’s voice broke into my thoughts. A
different nurse had come to the bedside. This was the first time I had seen
her on the ward.
This nurse was tall with long hair. ‘She won’t be in, it’s her day off
today.’
This was a disaster. Not only Mother but I also felt that if Narmada was
here, Father would be well looked-after.
The nurse looked at the pale red urine in the polythene, then she looked
at the clock attached to the oxygen cylinder. ‘Have you given him anything
to eat?’ she asked Mother.
‘It’s useless, he won’t eat.’
‘Please try,’ said the nurse, and went on her way.
Mother opened Father’s mask. He regarded her from desolate eyes and
she couldn’t meet his gaze.
Mother tipped a bottle of syrup towards Father’s mouth. ‘Well, swallow
some of this, won’t you?’
Father opened his mouth, just as a newly-born chick opens its mouth in
its nest. His Adam’s apple went up and down and a rasping sound came
from his throat.
Father wanted to swallow the medicine, but he was unable to. The
medicine we pushed down his throat came straight back up again in an
instant. Father twisted his neck from side to side. He was unable to say
anything. I saw fine lines of tears coming from his eyes and I turned away
towards the window.
‘Where’s he gone, that doctor?’ Mother cried. ‘Go and call him over.’
I rushed for the door.
I saw Dr Nandan immediately, outside the door of the emergency ward.
He was mopping his sweat with a white handkerchief.
I rushed over to him. He was startled to see me looking so desperate,
drenched in sweat with my lips trembling. Perhaps he recognized me as the
son of the old man who rasped and rattled in bed number 14.
 ‘Doctor Saap?’ I said in a shaky voice, ‘Ba can’t swallow his medicine.’
‘Is it right for a son to be so frightened?’ he said, ‘Calm down.’
‘It’s become really difficult for Ba.’
‘Oh …’ Dr Nandan’s face darkened. ‘Who lives at home?’
‘Just Mother and me.’
‘In that case …’ he couldn’t speak for a moment. My heart pounded.
Then he told me, ‘Your father’s lower body hasn’t stopped hurting; it has
died. His body is dying and its dying is working its way upward. If your
Father wants to go to Surkhet, then take him there. Fulfil his wish to go to
the place of his ancestors. Sometimes, a patient can fight an illness better in
their home environment.’
I fought back the tears.
‘Now it seems that we won’t succeed, even though we try.’
‘Is Father not going to live?’
‘It will be hard for him to live now; he’s nearing the end. It may be today,
it may be tomorrow.’
I sat down on a bench nearby.
‘Don’t cry, take courage,’ the Doctor stroked my head. ‘This is the way
of the world, everyone goes. Go and fulfil your father’s final wish.’
I thrust my head between my bent knees.
‘You are a son, and you should not give up hope like this.’ Dr Nandan’s
voice softened. ‘Pull yourself together.’
I wiped my tears and tried to get up, but I couldn’t.
The doctor took hold of my arm and pulled me to my feet. I began to
walk away unsteadily, but then the doctor took hold of my right arm and
told me, ‘Don’t cry in front of your parents. Your mother will find it
difficult and it will make it hard for your father to go.’
I found it hard to climb the ladder. My feet grew more tired with every
step, as if I had altitude sickness. I was short of breath. The sleeves of my
shirt were drenched from wiping away my tears. With every stair I
ascended, a picture of Father span in front of my eyes. What would Mother
and I do without him? If he was not there, to whom would I show my
happiness? Before whom would I cry when I felt sad? Who would build
Mother a house with a watertight roof?
One teardrop fell on each and every stair.
As soon as I entered the ward, Mother asked me in despair, ‘So you
didn’t find a doctor?’
I couldn’t speak and I just stood there for a moment. I took a long breath
and gathered the courage just to say, ‘Let’s take Father to Surkhet.’
Mother thought this over for a long time without speaking. I simply
couldn’t tell her why the doctor wasn’t coming. I gazed over at the window.
Two birds were preening their feathers with their beaks and fluttering about.
They were happy and lively, because their father was not sick.
‘In that case,’ Mother wiped her eyes, ‘Go and phone Sister.’
I jumped to my feet, walked out and ran down when I reached the
staircase.
The watchman was nonplussed when he saw me approaching the gate in
a state of hurry and despair. He was at the gate giving someone directions.
Perhaps he realized that my eyes were red from crying, not because of the
sun.
‘Isn’t Father any better?’ he asked.
I averted my eyes as I walked past him in silence, and he didn’t ask me
anything more.
The lights were already lit in the shops and the news was on the radio; it
must have been 7 o’clock. People sat on chairs outside the shops cooling off
the heat rash of the day.
In the shop with the telephone, the sauji was tapping away on a
calculator. I picked up the receiver, put it to my ear and dialled the number.
After six or seven rings, it was picked up.
‘Sister?’ I said.
‘Oh, is that Brish? What is it?’
‘Sister, we are bringing Father tomorrow.’
Sister did not reply. The line was breaking up.
‘Sister?’
‘Shall I tell Uncle?’
 ‘Yes, tell everyone.’
I put the receiver down on the sound of Sister’s quiet sobbing.
We would take Father to Surkhet, but how? Now a new hill began to
press down upon me. Half of his body would only drag along. How could
we take him there on a bus? What could we take him in?
‘Take him in a jeep,’ the guard suggested. ‘It would cost 3,000. I know
someone with a jeep. Shall I call him for tomorrow?’
We had a total of 4,000 left.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘Call him.’
‘At what time?’
‘At five in the morning.’
The guard hesitated. ‘They won’t allow it until after ten,’ he said.
‘There’s paperwork that has to be done.’
I stood there, not knowing what to do. The guard was still looking at me.
Something occurred to him and he threw me a thread of hope. ‘As you
wish, bring him to the gate. I will open it for you.’
I ran inside.

***

I stood stock still.

‘Are you going to pass?’ Father asked me on the final day of the exams.
‘Yes I am.’
Father smiled gently. And I remembered the cheat sheet I’d used: it had
been absolutely correct. It had been a great advantage for me that I knew
the police in the bazaar. The policeman who was guarding the exam room
bought things on credit from our shop. On the day of the maths exam, the
policeman who was guarding the door put three cheat sheets on his desk,
saying, ‘Lau, the cheats have arrived sir.’
Once I had copied it out, I passed the cheat sheet to Mandiré, who was
having heart failure on the bench behind me. I pushed it along the ground to
him with my foot. Poor Mandiré had been out to piss three times already.
Others were copying out the cheat sheets their brothers had thrown in
through the windows. Cheat sheets were flying about the room like bats.
Meanwhile, the sirs were sitting outside, adjusting the numbers to make
sure that their own students would pass.
Fearfully, Mandiré copied out the cheat sheet too.
‘I’ll pass for sure.’
He had breathed these words to me on the final day of the exams, wiping
the sweat that was pouring off him with his arm as he climbed up the hill.
The other schoolboys were celebrating as they added up their marks from
the seven days of question papers.
‘In first division.’
Whenever anyone’s marks added up to more than 420, they screamed
with delight. All the students were as lively as parrots that have flown from
their cages. They were weaving dreams of going to study in Surkhet,
Nepalganj, Kathmandu …
‘So where will you go?’
Mandiré asked me this after the other students had all disappeared behind
the uppermost knoll. We were under the crab apple tree. Turning my chest
towards the cold breeze that was blowing up from below, I said, ‘To
Kathmandu.’
Mandiré was quiet for a while.
‘And you’re going to study here, right?’
‘Where else can I go?’ said Mandiré, stirring the dust with a sandal
whose laces were about to snap. ‘I’ll study here. After I’ve passed class
twelve, I’ll become a clerk at the District Development Committee.’
A clerk?
What an amusing idea! I didn’t want to ask any more. We stayed for a
long time gazing down at the glistening Karnali. I was tormented by the
memory of Sharmila. She must have taken her exams too.

After I listened to the SLC results coming out on the 8 o’clock news, I
couldn’t sleep.
Mandiré couldn’t sleep either. Early next morning, he circled our shop
three times. Having not slept all night, I was fast asleep at dawn and I only
got up at nine.
‘Hey, how long are you going to sleep?’ Mother shook my shoulder
roughly. ‘Mandiré keeps coming by. Go to the telegraph office quickly.
Would you sleep on the day the results come in, you inauspicious one?’
And yes—there Mandiré was, sitting on a chair in the shop. His legs were
shaking slightly and his face was gloomy.
‘Let’s go!’ Mandiré hurried me. ‘The queue will be longer later on.’
I drank my black tea and ran to the telegraph office, with Mandiré behind
me. Father was on his way back from Pratima, walking with his hands
behind his back.
‘Where are you off to?’ he asked.
‘To the telegraph.’
‘Did you note down your number?’
I showed him my palm, the ink hadn’t quite dried yet.
Then we ran on. When I turned to look back, I saw that Father was still
watching me. Oh, it seemed that Father was anxious too.
‘Come after half an hour.’ The operator was squatting there brushing his
teeth, his mouth filled with toothpaste froth. He spat from time to time and
there was a pile of froth on the ground in front of him.
‘Take a look right away, na?’ said Mandiré. ‘We won’t get a turn later
on.’
‘Not before 10 o’clock.’ The operator spat again. He was a pompous
man, he had come from Butwal, they said. ‘This district wouldn’t function
without me’ was one of his boasts.
‘There’s not enough solar,’ he said, working the brush around the corners
of his mouth once again. ‘Shouldn’t I charge it up? We’re going to need the
telephone all day today.’
So, we had no choice but to wait for thirty-five minutes. And the clock
moves slowly at a time of crisis. What should we do now?
‘I’m going for a piss.’ Mandiré was frightened.
At long last, the door of the telegraph opened at half past ten. All of the
bazaar’s students had come by now, and there was a crush and a crowd. We
were at the front. Occasionally, the crowd would try to rush forward. The
students had begun to perspire with fear and from the heat. The sweat
tickled my nostrils and eyes, but I did not wipe it away because I was afraid
that doing so would erase the symbol number I had written on my palm.
The operator was sweating too. It was the month of Baisakh and the sun
was hot, and then of course there was a crowd around this, the only
telephone in the district.
At long last, the operator began to turn the register’s pages. Taking the lid
off his pen, he asked, ‘What’s your symbol number?’
‘0062279I.’ I looked at the numbers written on my hand; the sweat was
beginning to erase them.
‘And yours, Mandiré?’
Mandiré pulled a scrunched-up scrap of paper from his trouser pocket
and read out the numbers that were written on it in blue ink: ‘0062280J.’
He noted this down and rechecked. Then he told us, ‘Go, and come back
in half an hour.’
We went outside.
Another boy went in through the door, his face blue with fear. In
Kathmandu, there were two or three people who looked up everyone’s
numbers. Mandiré had told me this earlier.
Our lips and mouths began to dry up. It was as if our bodies were
withering away completely.
‘I’m going for a piss,’ Mandiré said again.
We went behind some bushes on the slope near the helicopter pad and let
flow tiny slender streams of yellow urine. I glanced at Mandiré and saw that
his legs were shaking. Then, like a dog twisting its spine, he shook his
whole body and sprang out of the bushes.
The sun blazed hotter and hotter as it made its way across the head of
Chuli Malika. Its heat didn’t merely dry up your lips, it dried up your spirit
too. Maybe it was because of my fear that I could feel something slithering
about in my groin.
When we returned to the telegraph office after wandering around for a
while, the atmosphere had completely changed. The operator had noted
down the numbers and quite a few had already discovered that they had
passed. They were screeching like the jackals in the sal tree copse. One by
one, the students went in through the door and came skipping back out.
Mandiré cast me a fearful look: the poor thing was afraid to go in. I went
inside and found the operator in a complete lather. I pointed to my number
in the register.
‘Second division,’ he told me with a smile.
I was so shocked I leaked some urine.
I flew out like the wind and screamed at Mandiré, ‘I’ve passed!’
Startled, Mandiré gave me a constipated grin. The others standing outside
whooped along with me.
Mandiré crept inside fearfully. He didn’t emerge for a moment. Then out
he came and stood in the doorway, looking at the crowd. At the top of his
voice, almost splitting the sky, he yelled, ‘First division!’
The crowd was stunned. No one else had got a first division this time.
Staring at them standing there speechless, Mandiré didn’t know what to do
for a minute. But then everyone applauded loudly enough to make Chuli
Malika shake. And one of the pairs of clapping hands was my own.
Mandiré and I were flying like the wind, we were so delighted. I reached
the shop in two great leaps and Mother saw me coming from a little way
off.
‘I’ve passed, I have!’ I yelled at her. Dhat, Mother was crying. She wiped
her eyes with the end of her sari. Father came out of the shop too. There
were two customers inside, and they also grinned when they heard me. I
went up to Father, shaking with delight. Father smiled toothlessly, and I
beamed back at him too.
‘Well done. You’ve made me happy,’ Father said.
I noticed right away that his blue-veined hands were trembling, and he
thrust them into his trouser pockets.
‘And what about Mandiré?’ Mother asked.
Mandiré grinned and shouted loudly, ‘First division!’
Then he ran away.
That day, the whole bazaar was filled with talk of Mandiré. Wherever he
went, a crowd would gather. ‘He studied hard, he got a first division, now
his days of sorrow are over,’ people declared. Mandiré had already been
round the bazaar three or four times. The DSP Saap even called him into the
police post and put abir on his forehead. ‘Mandiré, now you’ll become an
Inspector!’ he said. Mandiré related this to me later,
The bazaar was full of talk and chatter because of the results. In Manma,
a total of eighteen students had passed and thirty-five had failed. Mandiré
and I ran in circles between Rani Dhunga and the helicopter pad, our lips
trembling with joy. When evening fell, Mandiré went home, saying he had
to milk the buffalo.
Father wasn’t in the shop, so I went into the kitchen. Mother was so
happy she was dancing like a peacock as she cooked me my favourite
vegetables: potatoes, cauliflower and tomatoes.
‘Want some tea?’ she asked.
I shook my head from left to right.
Soon, Father came stumbling down to the kitchen with a black polythene
bag hanging from his hand.
‘What have you brought?’ Mother narrowed her eyes.
‘It’s meat.’ Father put it down in the doorway. ‘For you to eat.’

***

‘Really, you want to go to Kathmandu?’

Mother’s face fell. The flickering yellow light of the lantern fell across
her face.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Everyone else is going.’
Father said nothing when he heard this. He seemed to be pondering
something as he leaned with his eyes closed against a store cupboard that
was well on the way to being empty. From time to time, his eyelids
flickered. His folded legs were trembling.
‘So, what’s this about going to Kathmandu?’ he murmured at last.
I hung my head.
‘There are good campuses in Surkhet,’ he said, picking up the lantern and
placing it in his lap. ‘You’re clever. Study to become a lawyer.’
 ‘No, I want to go to Kathmandu.’ I was on the edge of tears.
Half of the boys in the bazaar had already left for Kathmandu just the
other day. ‘We’ll see you there when you come,’ they had told me.
‘Why do you have to go to Kathmandu?’ Mother became angry. ‘If you
go to Surkhet, you’ll be close by. We are old now. Shouldn’t you look after
us?’
I didn’t reply.
‘If you go to Surkhet, it will be easy for us to come and see you too,’
Father said, looking at me seriously. ‘Your mother can’t travel by bus; it
makes her vomit. So how will she come to see you, tell me?’
‘I’ll come home at Dasai!’
‘You’re our only one. It’s you we rely on,’ Mother sobbed.
‘Would I be leaving forever?’ I said angrily.
‘Who knows, mightn’t you forget us?’ Mother tried to smile but her eyes
were wet.
‘You’re old enough to understand.’ Father uncrossed his legs and spread
them wide. ‘Understand this: what would you do in Kathmandu? Students
can study anywhere, so study in Surkhet.’
For a moment, there was silence.
It was the third week of Asar and it hadn’t rained for two weeks. In the
afternoon, a black cloud gathered over the head of Chuli Malika and now
rumbles of thunder could be heard from time to time.
The bazaar was deserted. If a dog ran down it at 9 o’clock in the evening,
we were scared out of our wits. From time to time, the army or the police
marched through, stamping their boots.
Whenever the clouds thundered, the lightning flashed through the gap in
the door. Mother and Father sat staring at one another for a long while after
our conversation. I just sat there hanging my head. My legs had gone to
sleep from sitting for so long, and they ached.
I wiped my eyes.
‘Don’t cry,’ Father said. ‘Does such a big person who’s passed his SLC
cry? Now learn to be practical. I haven’t said I won’t help you to study.
Study as much as you like—I will help you, but don’t keep insisting on
going to Kathmandu.’
‘No, I’m going to go to Kathmandu.’
‘Don’t speak so rudely,’ Father said.
‘I’ll run away.’
‘If you want to run away and desert your old mother and father, then go
ahead,’ said Father, looking away. ‘This is my final decision: you will not
be allowed to go to Kathmandu. You depend upon me. You have to do as I
say.’
Outside, the rain was falling—taptaptap.
Mother’s eyes were on the alert. ‘Is that the roof leaking?’
‘It doesn’t matter, let it leak. Who do I have to look after here anymore?’
Father ran his hand over the top of his head.
Then there was another long silence.
‘Go and sleep,’ Mother told me at last, in a sad voice.
I jumped up. My legs had gone to sleep and become limp, so I dragged
them along behind me. Mother and Father stayed up late, I could hear their
murmuring voices. I couldn’t sleep either. I knew that I couldn’t just run
away and leave them. I also knew that I couldn’t kill my dream of going to
Kathmandu.

***

The rain had only just stopped falling.

The streets of the bazaar had all turned to mud, and rainwater had
collected under the broad stones of the road too. These stones were laid
unevenly, so that if you stepped onto one of them, the water underneath it
splashed up onto your legs. I had lost count of how many days it had been
that clouds had covered the head of Chuli Malika. The sal copse too was
constantly obscured by a fine mist.
That’s what that first week of Saun was like.
It had been pouring since early morning, so where could I go? Even
leaving the shop was no pleasure. I was sitting inside grumpily, wrapped up
in a blanket. Even my ears were cold.
The rain eased off at a quarter to eleven, and as the clouds parted, a
slender ray of sunshine attached itself to the inner wall of the shop like a
gecko.
At that moment, Mandiré came hurrying into the shop. He was wearing a
coat, its shoulders soaking wet. His hair hung wetly over his ears like the
jamara seedling of Dasai. The corpse had even got his eyebrows wet.
‘Did you hear?’ he asked, putting his hand on the counter and pulling it
up to come inside, ‘The marksheet has arrived, they say.’
‘Really?’ I threw the blanket aside.
‘Just half an hour ago. Khusilal Sir took it away with him, they say.’
‘So, let’s go!’ I said.
‘Go like this?’ Mandiré showed me the mud that his sandals had
spattered all up the back of his trouser legs. He must have been thinking: I
got a first division, I should go looking smart.
‘That doesn’t matter, you’d only get muddy again on the way,’ I said,
fastening my shoes. ‘Let’s go straightaway, before the others find out.
Otherwise, we’ll have to queue up.’
‘All right, let’s go then,’ he said, pausing only to wash some mud off his
trousers with water from a puddle to one side of the shop. Father and
Mother were in the kitchen. I put my mouth to a small hole in the door and
said, ‘Aama, the marksheet’s come. I’m going to school’ and I ran off.
The rain had turned the hills around Manma green, as if thousands of
parrots had spread out their wings. The leaves of the rhododendrons and
box myrtle trees were soft and new.
As we ran down the hill, a light rain began to fall again.
I was keeping to the rocks as I ran to avoid the leeches. Mandiré was
ahead of me. From time to time, he looked back, and then he stopped to
wait for me, standing on a rock. His face had become very red.
‘I hear Head Sir has gone to Sarlahi,’ he told me.
‘So, who will sign the certificates?’
‘Khusilal Sir has replaced him, I believe.’
 I ran on, avoiding the bushes along the side of the path. This time,
Mandiré followed me. He was slithering about because mud had got into his
sandals.
‘Who in the bazaar will you show the marksheet to first?’ Mandiré’s
voice came up from behind me.
‘To Ba,’ I said, stopping. ‘And who will you show it to?’
‘To the DSP Saap,’ he told me. ‘He says he’ll make me an inspector.’
A cold wind blew a scrap of mist towards Manma and we followed along
behind it.
Lau, a crowd had already gathered at the school. Nearly every student of
Manma was there, and all of them were dry. Only Mandiré and I were wet.
And many of them had already got their marksheets. They stood around
in groups reading out the numbers to each other. No one even noticed that
we had arrived. Two boys came out of the office. Both had failed, so they
were clutching their marksheets and looking downcast.
I peered in through the door.
Khusilal Sir was sitting there with the marksheets spread out on a table in
front of him. I offered him a namaste from outside the door. He lifted his
right hand and beckoned me in.
‘Good, second division,’ he said, pulling out my marksheet and handing
it to me. ‘Where will you go to study now?’
‘To Kathmandu,’ I said, taking the marksheet from him with trembling
hands.
Vaah, I came out looking at my marksheet with my face aglow. Mandiré
put on the same expression and went inside.
‘Well, what marks did you get?’ a student asked, pulling the marksheet
out of my hand.
‘Three hundred and fifty-eight’.
That was not enough information for him, so he began to read the marks
out aloud:

English 48
Nepali 50
 Mathematics 32
Science 56
Education 60
Economics 52
Health Economics 60

‘Only 32 for Mathematics?’ He curled his lip contemptuously and thrust the
marksheet back at me. But I just chuckled to myself. Would I have got even
that many marks if the police hadn’t given me the cheat sheet?
The boys had begun reading out another marksheet. I joined the crowd in
case it was Mandiré’s, but it was someone else’s.
Where had Mandiré gone? I couldn’t see him anywhere. Was he in the
office? I peered inside and saw Sir making a note on the register.
‘What are you looking at?’ he turned towards me, narrowing his eyes.
‘Isn’t Mandiré here, sir?’
Sir looked straight into my eyes, and I wilted a little.
‘Are you Mandiré’s friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then come here.’
I went to his side.
‘Don’t tell anyone else this now.’ Sir looked disconsolate. ‘It turns out
that Mandiré has failed.’
I suddenly felt dizzy.
Sir explained it to me. Those who checked the marks had looked at the
wrong number. Mandiré had passed only three subjects: English,
Mathematics and Science. After he looked at his marksheet, Mandiré had
been unable to swallow his tears. He had started shaking all over.
‘Go and console Mandiré,’ Sir told me, turning his attention to the
register again. ‘He was crying when he left.’
I rushed outside like a windstorm. Standing at the centre of the school
yard, I looked up the hill and saw Mandiré running away as fast as he could.
From time to time, he disappeared behind the raspberry bushes that stood
along the edge of the path.
 He never stopped and just kept on running. Now and then, both of his
hands went up to his face: perhaps he was wiping away tears.
Mandiré was never seen in the bazaar after that.
‘Mandiré’s gone to his uncle’s.’
‘Mandiré’s hiding at home.’
‘Mandiré’s run off somewhere, who knows where?’
A lot of rumours like this spread through the bazaar. Another rumour also
spread: that the DSP Saap had discovered that Mandiré had failed and was
looking for him too.
‘The poor thing, he was such a good boy. Where can he have gone?’
Mother said one evening with a sad expression on her face.
I searched all over for him. I even went to his house one day. His mother
wasn’t there, she must have gone away somewhere too. The door was
locked. Green flies were buzzing in the porch and the buffalo bellowed
loudly from the cow shed behind the house.
The next time I went there, I encountered his mother. Her hair was
dishevelled and her cheeks as wrinkled as a quilt cover. I could clearly see
the veins of her hands, which were like swollen leeches. A ring hung from
her nose and she wore a pale old red velvet blouse with dark red patches in
many places and a spotted calico skirt. She must have been about fifty-five.
Her toenails and fingernails had grown long. She was sitting on her porch
weaving a basket, and her trembling hands were full of cane splinters.
‘Who are you?’ she regarded me from cloudy eyes. ‘Are you a friend of
his?’ She tugged at a cane until it came tight.
‘Yes, I am. Where has Mandiré gone?’
‘I heard he was in Haudi. He doesn’t have the same luck as you. Ah, my
poor little soldier, he must be crying.’
‘When’s he coming back?’
She stared into space and her lips trembled. ‘I don’t think he will come
back now. He’s become a Maoist.’
A Maoist?
I felt weak in my legs and arms and I didn’t know what to do. I ran away
across the ridges of the fields feeling chilled inside, like people are chilled
by their own sweat.
The news that Mandiré had become a Maoist spread through the bazaar.
Father and Mother had heard it too. Three days later, Father told me, ‘Your
heart is set on Kathmandu. So, go to Kathmandu.’

***

I was leaving for Kathmandu the next day.

Anil from Baratu village had found a room in Kathmandu. He phoned
and told me, ‘The rent is 1,200. It will cost you 600.’
I told Father this and he said he would send 2,500 each month for rent,
food and college fees.
‘Why do you have to give him so much?’ Mother complained loudly.
‘Other people send their sons for 1,500, I’ve heard.’
‘Let it be,’ Father peered at me over the rim of his glasses and smiled. ‘If
he doesn’t have money in his pocket, a son won’t feel sure of himself.’
It must have been past half past twelve at night. A draught was coming in
through the window and it was making my ears feel cold. The plastic sheet
fastened over the window flapped like the wing of a wounded bird, and I
was equally restless.
Early that evening, Father had seemed to be in despair in the shop, and
Mother had been tearful. The lantern burned joylessly.
‘Eat at the proper times.’ ‘Always go to the campus.’ ‘Don’t sleep late.’
‘Don’t roam about.’ ‘Keep good company.’ ‘Phone us on Saturdays.’ Father
and Mother kept on telling me these things. I vowed to myself that I would
do everything they asked. I would never give them any grief. I would be a
good son.
The helicopter was coming at half past eight the next morning and the
police had already noted down my name. Krishna Dai from the bazaar had
taken responsibility for delivering me to Kathmandu. Nobody was going to
be able to prevent me from going to Kathmandu now. I should have felt
happy, but I was feeling a sharp pain in my heart, I didn’t know why.
 The army had marched past the house only recently, their boots ringing
on the ground. After they had gone, Mother sighed gently. The poor thing
was very agitated.
‘Wash your clothes regularly,’ she told me.
Mother knew that I was careless with my clothes. She was very afraid
that her son would go to the campus with a filthy collar. All evening, she
kept parcelling up things for me: kidney beans, a litre of ghee, the blanket
that Father always used, two pieces of light blue cloth to make a pair of
trousers and a shirt.
I had secretly hidden photos of Father and Mother in my bag. I’d taken
that old photo of Father with his teeth sticking out.
Father said, ‘It’s the city. He will come back wiser. We have to educate
him.’ I looked at him intently. His cheeks were wrinkled and the hair on the
nape of his neck had turned white. He became short of breath if he walked
even a short distance. He said his legs ached all through the night and
sometimes Mother would get up in the night to massage them.
How would I leave my father?
And Mother’s hair was becoming thin, like an old broom. When she
smiled, wrinkles appeared around her eyes. Her stomach had withered away
and her blouse hung loose on her. I had seen her talking to herself when she
was alone, and sometimes she heaved long sighs. Who knows what she was
fretting about!
How would I leave my mother?
Father and Mother were just worried that their son would go to
Kathmandu and never return. Would I become so heartless? Would I just
abandon my father and mother up on this ridge without a thought?
I turned on my side to face the window from which the cold draught was
coming and clenched my fists. I would study a lot, and then I would return
home. I would look after Father and Mother.
‘After I’ve studied, I’ll get a salaried position. I’ll look after you,’ I told
them that evening. ‘Mother will always have meat to eat.’
‘By the time you start earning, all my teeth will have fallen out,’ Mother
laughed. ‘So, I don’t know how I’m going to eat meat.’
 ‘So just eat bananas,’ I laughed too. ‘You won’t need to chew them, you
know!’
Father chuckled briefly when he heard this too. That was the most
cheerfulness he could muster, and afterwards he was serious for a long
while. He just sat in silence, thinking I don’t know what.
I shut my eyes as tightly as I could, and they filled with Father’s
hollowing face. How ever would I be able to sleep tonight?
I woke with a start to the sound of the helicopter and hurried to throw my
quilt aside. The daylight was already coming in through the windows.
‘Hurry up!’ Mother came rushing in too. ‘The helicopter’s arrived.’
Mother had some tea in her hand. I took it and drank down one gulp,
which burned my tonsils. Would I be able to get such tea in Kathmandu?
‘Enough, leave it,’ said Mother when she saw me hurrying to drink my
tea. I handed the half empty glass to her and got down from the bed.
‘Isn’t he up yet?’ Father came in too.
He was in a hurry. Seeing how pale his face was, I suddenly felt I would
cry. I put on my clothes in a hurry.
Krishna Dai was standing at the door.
‘Hurry up!’ he shouted.
Some of the people from the bazaar were hurrying towards the helipad. I
began to feel queasy in my stomach.
Father hurriedly placed a bag in front of the shop. That was all I would
have to take with me: a bag and two bundles, one containing beans and
ghee, the other a homespun blanket. I didn’t know what to do next, so I
grabbed a toothbrush.
‘What now?’ Mother hurried.
‘I’m going to brush my teeth.’
‘There’s no need, brush them there.’
I pushed the toothbrush into the back pocket of the bag.
While I was tying my shoelaces, Father took 9,000 from the cashbox. He
handed it to me when I stood up again.
‘Don’t spend it on things you don’t need. Keep a note of what you
spend.’
 I pushed the notes into my front trouser pocket.
‘Let’s go!’ Krishna Dai was impatient.
I picked up the bag, Krishna Dai took one bundle and Mother took the
other.
‘Come here now.’ Father took the Seiko 5 watch from his wrist. ‘Put this
on.’
I held out my left hand and Father put the watch on my wrist. Then he
placed his trembling hand on my head and told me, ‘Phone us when you’ve
arrived.’
My throat became very sore then, and I bent down to touch Father’s feet.
Krishna Dai hurried off. I followed him, and Mother came along behind
me. When I had gone a little way, I turned to look back. Father was still
standing there outside the shop, like an old hill.
On the path, I met many people I knew, who bade me farewell, saying,
‘Study well’.
At the helipad, a policeman was checking the list and letting the people
who were going down to Surkhet through. ‘Hurry up!’ he said as soon as he
saw us.
Krishna Dai hurried inside the helicopter, carrying one of the bundles. I
looked at Mother’s face. It was covered in sweat and her hands were
shaking slightly.
How could I leave her, tell me?
I was leaving Father and Mother for the first time like this, like a piece of
colour leaving a rainbow. I bowed down to touch Mother’s feet. She ran her
fingers through my curling hair and said, ‘Go well. Don’t forget us.’
I felt giddy: would I forget my mother and father somehow? My eyes
became foggy and, when I stood up again, I couldn’t see the sunflower on
Mother’s lips.
The helicopter staggered up into the sky. I looked down, resting my head
against the glass of its window. The helicopter ascended, climbing up on the
rungs of the clouds. Below me, I saw Mother covering her mouth with the
end of her sari as she looked up into the sky. Standing under the lonely crab
apple tree, as sad as the tree itself.
 ***

‘What have you been doing?’ It was Father’s voice on the phone. ‘Have you
been studying or not?’
‘I’m studying.’
‘I sent money, did you get it?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Will it be enough or not?’
‘It will be enough.’
‘Your mother said she would come to talk to you too, but she couldn’t. I
had to wait a long time for my turn as well.’ Father sounded sad. ‘She is so
anxious all the time.’
I didn’t reply.
The phone whistled and the connection weakened. Maybe it was cloudy
in Manma. Whenever it was cloudy, there would be interference on the line,
and sometimes it was hard to understand what was being said. Father
coughed and went on coughing for a moment. His face must be turning red
at this moment.
‘You didn’t come last year.’ Father’s wheezing got worse. ‘Come this
time if you can get the helicopter. We miss you badly.’
‘All right.’
‘The Maoists have cut all the bridges. You probably wouldn’t be able to
get here on foot.’ Father started coughing again. ‘Come a little sooner this
time, or you won’t get a helicopter.’
I went on listening.
‘There’s no business these days. We’ve no savings left either. Get some
little job or other if you can. You’re old enough to understand now.’
‘Yes.’
‘Right, so now there are other people in the line for the phone. Phone us
if you get the chance.’
‘Yes.’
‘Right, I’m putting down now.’
 A click—khatryaaka—and then the tone—tyu-tyu. Father had put the
phone down. I stood for a moment holding the receiver. The landlord was
sitting in a chair nearby, reading a newspaper, and he glanced at me. I
replaced the receiver and went back down to my room.
I threw myself down onto the bed. The memory of my parents began to
harass me. The whole of Manma Bazaar spun around, filling my eyes.
The landlord was very grumpy and demanded the rent on the first day of
each month. Sometimes, money wouldn’t arrive from home for six or eight
weeks. Because he was sometimes late in sending it, Father had started to
send money for two or three months at a time. If someone phoned who had
come bearing money for me, the landlord came to call me from my room
with a smile on his face. He didn’t care so much about any other phone
calls.
A phone call would come within a few days of the money being sent. It
would be either Mother or Father on the phone. When it was Mother, I
would talk for a long time. But with Father, I don’t know why, I was unable
to speak at all.
Three years had passed since I came to Kathmandu. At last, I passed the
IA. I was set back in English, but I passed all the other subjects easily.
Sometimes, I reproached myself: it was only because I had cheated so well
that I was having to study in Kathmandu now!
Every day, nothing but bad news appeared in the newspapers in
Kathmandu. On days when there was news from Kalikot, I read the paper,
then sat and pondered over it. I knew there was no trade going on at the
headquarters these days.
The people who came to bring me my money told me, ‘Baajé has become
an old man. Bajyai has become thin. There’s no business, and she is
worried.’
They told me other things too. Nowadays, there was a curfew in force
from 6 o’clock, and you couldn’t go outside after that at all. They used piss
pots at night and emptied them in the mornings. Whenever I heard such
things, I wandered around Ghattekulo in a state of agitation.
 When I went to Manma the year before, everything was fine. All of the
students who were studying in Kathmandu came together to form a group
and we reached Manma on foot, climbing up to the Haudi ridge together.
After we reached the chautara, many people in the bazaar welcomed us,
saying, ‘La, the students have come home to celebrate Dasai too!’
I was in a great hurry to reach the house, and I met Father on the road
itself. He was sitting with his legs crossed on a chair in front of a shop. I
saw him from some way off. He was wearing that same blue waistcoat.
As soon as he saw me, he said happily, ‘Oh, you’ve arrived?’
I bent down to touch his feet.
‘Be lucky,’ he stroked my hair with his thin hand.
‘La, your son’s come home, Baajé,’ the sauji of the shop laughed. ‘He’s
turned into a fine young lad.’
Father smiled his toothless smile. He hadn’t put in his front teeth that
day.
Father went ahead, his sandals slapping on the ground as he walked, and
I followed behind him. He walked more quickly than he usually did.
‘Your son’s come home, Baajé?’ people asked him on the way, looking
closely at me.
‘Yes, he has,’ Father told them.
Seeing me coming, the saujis of the neighbouring shops came out
looking happy. Mother came hurrying out too and, as soon as she saw me,
she wiped away her tears.
That night, I sat by the fireplace and told them all about Kathmandu, just
like a young bird that has flown for the first time and is giving an account
of the sky. Father and Mother sat there beaming all night, like old birds
sitting around a nest.

***

‘Phone call for you!’ the landlord’s daughter called down from upstairs.
It was the third week of Pus, and Kathmandu was numb with cold. I was
still sleeping. I looked at the watch on my pillow and saw that it was half
past eight in the morning.
‘Who is it?’
‘Your sister.’
Sister? Suddenly, I felt weak in my arms and legs. I hurried upstairs. The
landlord’s daughter had put the receiver down next to the table and gone
away. I picked it up.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Tharu?’ I heard a hoarse voice. ‘Do you know who this is?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Who is it then, tell me?’
‘Parvati Didi.’ I spoke softly and my hands shook. My ear was hot
against the receiver.
‘You haven’t forgotten me then?’
I said nothing.
‘Do you know where I’m calling you from?’
‘No.’
‘From Kalikot,’ Sister told me.
My heart kicked me in the chest.
How many years was it since we last met, Sister and I? It seemed like
only yesterday that she ran away wiping her tears. What would she be like
now, my sister?
She began to tell me her news. They were in Surkhet these days. Brother-
in-Law had bought a house there, so Sister and Brother-in-Law would live
in Surkhet from now on. Brother-in-Law was in the postal division, he lived
in Mahendranagar at the moment. Once he had the house in Surkhet, it
would be easy for him to come and go.
Sister had visited Katasé a year after we left and found the town empty.
An old woman who was running a tea shop at Chauraha told her that the
doctor had moved to Kalikot. Sister had burst into tears and cried for a long
time. But Brother-in-Law had consoled her and told her not to cry, and that
he would go to Kalikot.
Now, at last, after eight years, Sister had reached Kalikot. She and
Mother wept together all night on the day she arrived.
 Then Sister asked me, ‘And tell me now—why haven’t you come home?’
‘I couldn’t get a helicopter.’ I was afraid I might start to cry.
‘It took us a long time to get one too,’ she replied. ‘Are you never
coming back, or what is it?’
‘I’ll come after I pass my BA’.
‘Look, don’t just stay in Kathmandu like that.’ Sister’s voice became
tearful. ‘Do you know or don’t you? Last year, Father collapsed in the street
when he went to Nepalganj to buy stock.’
My heart chilled.
‘And there’s only one or two lengths of cloth left in the shop now. Father
and Mother just sit there. I find it hard to swallow even a mouthful of food
here.’
My eyes were stinging.
‘Father’s mortgaged the house with the bank. He will never pay it off if
there isn’t any trade. He says his stomach hurts all the time. Mother’s got so
thin with worry she’s going to die.’
My vision misted over.
‘Look, everything Father earned is finished. Father just thinks and thinks
all night and day. His blood pressure has gone up too. If anything happens
…’
Sister sobbed, and my eyes filled with darkness. I was finding it hard to
stay on my feet.
‘Look …’ Sister was trying to speak again. But I could no longer hold
back my sobs, and hot tears fell onto my chest.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Sister, though she was crying herself. ‘Mother says she
will come and talk to you this afternoon. I sneaked out in secret to call you.’
I couldn’t hear anything more after that. It was as if my ears had closed
up. After a while, I don’t know how long, Sister put the phone down.
I went back to my room and wept bitterly. Father’s and Mother’s faces
spun round before my eyes. All day, I lay weeping in my bed, waiting for
Mother to call me. But no phone call ever came.
Later, I found out that the headquarters’ only telephone had ceased to
function. The Maoists had demolished the Bharta tower.
 Now that there was no phone connection, I didn’t even get to hear
Father’s and Mother’s voices. And it was as if people had stopped coming
to Kathmandu from Kalikot, so it was hard to get any news at all. Just now
and then, by chance, some money and a sliver of news would arrive with
someone: Baajé and Bajyai are well, they would tell me.
Some months earlier, Father and Mother had gone down to Surkhet,
seizing the opportunity when a helicopter arrived in Kalikot, and had
returned to Kalikot the same way. They called me from Surkhet, but I
wasn’t in my room. The landlord told me about it later.
It was early in the month of Phagun. The second year BA exams were in
Baisakh, two months later, and I was busy preparing for them. As soon as
the exams were over, I would go to Kalikot, I told myself. There was a
ceasefire, so I had made up my mind that if I didn’t get a helicopter, I would
go on foot.
During the last week of Phagun, a letter came from Father, flying in like
a bird. With it there came Rs 7,000. I was near the clocktower when I
received the letter. Rup Bahadur had brought it for me, but he was in a
hurry, so he left me as soon as he had handed it over. Joyfully, I reached
Ghattekulo in three strides and tore open the brown envelope. On a piece of
thin paper inside, Father had written in blue ink:

Auspicious blessings to our son Brisha Bahadur from us, his mother and father. Here, the
entire family is well. May the Lord always keep you well there.
Here, the situation is fine nowadays. Since the situation is good, come home for Dasai
holiday time. Apply yourself well to your studies. All of the other news is good so far.
As soon as you receive this letter, send us all the information about yourself. Business is
as normal. We don’t get any news from Surkhet. The phone is not working. There is no
new news.
Harsha Bahadur,
Father.

I read the letter twice, then three times. I could see Father’s toothless smile
and the sunflower of Mother’s lips in my mind’s eye. I folded up the letter,
replaced it in its envelope and pushed it under my pillow. That night, after a
long time, I slept soundly. I slept as if I had laid my head in Mother’s lap.
 That was Father’s last letter.
When I returned to my room one evening, in the first week of Jeth, I
found a note sitting on the lock of my door:
Go to Kohalpur Teaching Hospital straight away. Daddy is ill—there was a phone call at
2.30.

I spent the night tossing and turning, like a sparrow that has been struck in
the breast by a clay pellet and fallen to the ground.
OceanofPDF.com
 THE LAST DAY

‘You can’t take him away before 10 o’clock.’

‘Why not?’
‘Have you paid up?’ the nurse asked.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know how much we owed the hospital.
‘Do what you have to do in the morning,’ the nurse said irritably. ‘Now
go.’
She went back to reading the file that was lying open on her table. My
hands sweated in my trouser pockets. I remained standing in front of her,
but she wouldn’t raise her head from the file or look at me at all.
I slunk out and headed for the ward. It would have been different with
Narmada. Why hadn’t Narmada come today?
It was a quarter past midnight and the ward was completely still. Was
Death hiding in its corners?
That afternoon, Mother had massaged Father’s legs with some mustard
oil that Bhaggu’s mother had given her. She believed that massaging them
increased the blood circulation. ‘Why didn’t I have the sense to think of this
before?’ she muttered from time to time.
How could I tell Mother as she doggedly massaged Father’s legs that
Father’s legs had died? Now they were like the branches of a broken tree,
completely lifeless.
 Chotku was asleep. Krishnaji was asleep too, resting his head on his
son’s bed. That afternoon, he told me, ‘Why would you get any treatment in
a place like this? I’m taking my son to Lucknow.’ There were tears in his
eyes.
Chotku’s relatives all squatted in a line in the corner, dozing. Chotku’s
unfortunate wife sat glumly with Chotku’s head in her lap. She did not
speak, but wiped her eyes from time to time.
Father’s wheezing and coughing broke the deep silence. I stood near the
window and watched him, my heart very full. I couldn’t meet Mother’s eyes
as she sat exhausted at his feet, her head drooping from time to time. I was
afraid that my eyes would express the thoughts I was hiding in my heart.
Half past twelve is an unlucky time, everyone says. At precisely that
hour, the rasping and wheezing of Father’s breathing increased in volume. It
was as if a wounded tiger was standing at the door and growling. Father
tossed and turned and made the bed shake, waking Mother from her
exhausted silence. Father’s eyes opened: the water in them had all dried up
and they looked huge.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mother asked, stroking his brow. ‘Be still now.’
Father raised his left arm, which had been swelling up since that
afternoon. He indicated his oxygen mask, which was clouded with his
breath.
‘Are you trying to say something?’
Father nodded his head up and down.
Hurriedly, Mother opened the mask and pushed it up onto his forehead.
I bent down to look into Father’s face too. He regarded me with eyes that
were sunken and deep, like a well. I felt dizzy. Father opened his mouth but
no voice came out of it, just more wheezing and rasping.
He tried once more, but still it was the same wheezing and rasping sound.
That wasn’t going to work, so Father opened his mouth wide and pointed at
it with the thumb of his right hand. Mother and I looked at each other in
alarm.
‘What, water?’ Mother tried to guess what he wanted.
That wasn’t it either. Father twisted his neck from side to side.
 What was Father saying? Mother didn’t understand. She sat down,
defeated.
Then Father pointed at Mother and waved his fist over his mouth.
‘Does he mean his breath pump?’
Father nodded his head up and down. It came to me in a flash.
‘Go and bring one then!’ Mother threw a 500-rupee note towards me in
haste, and I grabbed it.
‘Bhai?’ I heard Krishnaji’s voice as I reached the door. ‘Get the nurse to
write you out a slip, otherwise they won’t give you one.’
The nurse regarded me drowsily and said, ‘I can’t write you a slip
without asking a doctor first.’
‘Father says so,’ I became insistent. ‘Please write one.’
‘Just because your father says so?’
Wasn’t she going to do as he asked?
‘My father’s a doctor too, you know!’ I was shaking with anger. ‘Will
you not do as a dying man asks?’
She was taken aback when she saw my anger. But then, when she saw
my tears falling, she wrote out a slip in blue ink, in English:
Inhaler.
I ran to the pharmacy like the wind. In the milky light of the pharmacy’s
tube light, the boy was giggling, with the telephone clasped to his ear. He
glanced once at me, then indicated that I should wait a minute. I pushed the
slip under the glass.
Five minutes went by, and the boy was still laughing on the phone. I
began to feel giddy. I thumped the window with my fist, not caring whether
the glass broke, and the boy looked at me in annoyance and alarm. Then I
slammed my hand down on the slip. He put the receiver down on the
counter and glanced at the slip, then tossed a packet and some change in my
direction.
I flew back up the stairs, three steps at a time.
As soon as I came in through the door, the nurse came after me. I gave
the packet to Mother. Mother took out the pump and placed it in the palm of
Father’s shaking left hand. He grasped it and Mother opened his mask.
Father shook the pump hard, then pressed it to his mouth. He filled his
mouth with air as if he was pumping up a bicycle tyre. After he had pumped
for a long time, his breath began to come more easily. The wheezing and
rasping stopped completely.
‘La, that’s done it!’ Krishnaji jumped to his feet.
A rainbow of happiness appeared on Mother’s face. I went to lean against
the window, glancing at the nurse. Father tossed the inhaler to the side of
the bed, like a soldier in a film throwing his gun away when the war is over.
The nurse, who had been watching all of this, left the ward without
saying a word.
For a long while, Father breathed easily, without coughing or wheezing.
Then he took Mother’s hand and muttered, ‘Don’t keep me here, take me to
Surkhet.’
Mother heaved a long sigh.
The nurse had come back into the ward and she stopped in her tracks
when she heard what Father said. I looked at her imploringly, and she stared
back at me. It was as if she felt guilty when our eyes met.
‘Please come with me,’ she said.
I left the ward, following behind her like her shadow.
‘It won’t be right for me to do this.’ She sat down in the office chair and
placed her hands on the table in front of her. Her fingers were trembling
slightly.
I was still standing there.
‘Take him early in the morning,’ she told me. ‘I will pretend not to see.’
My eyes brimmed with tears. She smiled sadly at me.

The jeep’s headlights shone brightly under the light of the moon. Its engine
revved twice, then fell silent. I reached the gate in a state of great agitation.
I peered outside, holding on to the bars of the high iron gate. The guard
and another tall man were holding a whispered conversation.
‘Dai?’ I called him.
‘Oh, it’s you?’ he shone a torchlight onto his watch. ‘It’s a quarter to five.
Go and bring him now.’
 I ran back inside.
I reached the third storey, dragging a stretcher trolley I had found lying
empty outside the door to the emergency ward. Mother was zipping up her
bag.
‘Has the jeep come?’ she asked me.
‘It has,’ I replied, taking a deep breath.
The nurse hurried into the ward but did not say anything. She was
probably very sleepy. She came yawning to Father’s side and switched off
the oxygen cylinder.
Father’s striped shirt was missing several buttons and was rucked up at
the back, where it adhered to his sweaty back. His empty stomach had
shrunk back to his spine. His chest rose and fell, covered in its curling white
hair.
His ankles were slippery with sweat and the veins of his arms and legs
had disappeared because they had swelled up so much. If you pressed a
finger down on his skin, the depression you made lasted for a long time.
The mark made on his wrist by the saline drip had vanished too. Father was
silent and appeared to be sleeping.
Mother bent down to whisper into his ear. ‘We’re going to Surkhet now,’
she told him.
Father’s closed eyes trembled slightly.
Mother had placed Father’s blue waistcoat next to the bed, intending to
put it on him. Now she stood there looking at me, holding it in her hand. I
went to the head of the bed and tried to raise him by his shoulders, but I
couldn’t manage it. The nurse assisted me too, but his shoulders would not
rise. Krishnaji was awake, so he too came and put his hand to Father’s
shoulders, which we were then able to raise just a little. Mother took that
opportunity to put the waistcoat on him.
Mother had stuffed the bag full with as much of our luggage as she could.
Father’s Gold Star shoes and the bottles of medicine and tablets would not
fit in, so she wrapped them in a black polythene bag. Inside a drawer, she
came across Father’s two false teeth and couldn’t decide what to do with
them. So, I took them and put them in my trouser pocket.
 I too pulled my own bag out from under the bed. It was covered in dust,
and I brushed it off.
With a great effort, we managed to place Father onto the stretcher trolley.
The urine tube stretched tight, what should we do with that?
‘Take it with you,’ the nurse said. ‘You’ll need it on the way.’
Mother was holding her bag, and now she picked up the polythene bag
too. But how would I pull the stretcher on my own? Krishnaji saw the
problem and he took hold of the back of the trolley. ‘Go on, bhai, I’ll help
you to take it downstairs.’
As we departed, Mother and I both looked back at the bed to make sure
that nothing had been left behind.
‘La ta, have a good journey,’ said the nurse.
I looked around the ward as we left. Chotku and his relatives were all
asleep. We made our way downstairs.
‘Bhai,’ the guard came up to me. ‘He says you must pay the rent for the
jeep in advance.’
I turned to Mother.
Mother undid her waistband rapidly and pulled out the money. First, she
counted it twice, then she held out three 1,000-rupee notes to the driver.
‘What to do?’ said the driver. He folded the money four times and pushed
it into the inner pocket of his trousers, then he opened the door of the jeep
with a creak. The jeep was an old one, and it had two long seats to the left
and the right in the back. The driver put the bags on the back seat.
‘You get in first,’ I told Mother.
Mother went and sat meekly on the long seat to the right. Her legs shook
as she climbed in, and the driver supported her.
Eventually, the three of us lifted Father up. ‘The pipe is stretched tight!’
Mother cried. So, Krishnaji and the driver held on to Father while I picked
up the bag of urine. A moment later, Father’s head was in Mother’s lap and
his body was lying along the seat, absolutely motionless. As we picked him
up and put him down again, the rasping of his breath became much worse.
The driver slammed the door shut.
 ‘La ta,’ said Krishnaji, peering in through the window at Mother. ‘That’s
just how it is. Travel well.’ And he turned on his heel and walked away.
The driver started up the engine and opened the door on the other side of
his seat.
‘La ta dai, we’re off now.’ I pressed my hands together to bid the guard
farewell, but he did not respond. I climbed into the jeep and pulled the door
shut.
In the jeep’s side mirror, which stuck out like a ear, I saw the hospital
receding into the distance until it was hidden by a turn in the road. The jeep
ran shuddering along the street that stretched out ahead. At that very
moment, I realized that I had left behind the exercise book that I had shoved
under Father’s bed. Would Narmada find it? Would she read the poem I had
written about her? Would she realise that it had been written by that old
Baajé’s scrawny son?
‘We’re on our way to Surkhet,’ Mother leaned down to speak into
Father’s ear.

Some soldiers were standing a short distance away. We had reached

Chisapani. The jeep stopped for checking 100 metres short of where they
stood. I had heard people say that they gave you a lot of grief during the
checking. Now let’s see how much they will give us! The darkness was
caught up in the forks of the trees and saplings on the edge of this dense
forest reserve. It was too dark to see a person’s face, even from a short
distance.
A soldier approached the jeep. Meanwhile, the driver ran towards the
soldiers.
A short distance away, there were some small bunkers with roofs of zinc
sheeting. There was netting in front of them and piles of sandbags to each
side. To the left of the road, a soldier stood on a watchtower, pointing a gun
at us. Over there, the driver pushed his hand inside the netting. Over here, a
soldier marched up to the jeep. The barrel of the gun slung over his
shoulder was pointing downwards. A three-celled torchlight glittered in his
hand.
 ‘Where are you going so early in the morning?’ he asked, peering in
through the window.
‘To Surkhet,’ I replied.
‘What’s in the jeep?’ He pushed his head in through the driver’s window.
‘A sick man.’
‘Oh.’ He looked at Mother’s face through the middle window, then at
Father, whose breathing was becoming laboured again.
‘What’s in the bag in the back?’
‘Clothes,’ said Mother. ‘And some medicines in the polythene bag,’ she
explained, clearing her throat.
‘Where have you brought the sick man from?’
‘From the hospital,’ I told him, and after this, he didn’t ask anything else.
A moment later, the driver came running back to the jeep, his back
somewhat hunched.

‘Will you drink some water?’ Mother leaned down over Father’s face.
When I heard her voice, I turned my head. I saw that Father’s left arm
was draped around Mother’s neck like a garland and that she was
supporting his head with her wrist. Father’s head shook with every shudder
and jolt of the jeep.
Mother opened the mineral water and tipped the bottle towards Father’s
mouth. Father parted his flaking lips just a little and his Adam’s apple
moved slowly. A sound came from his mouth, as if hundreds of leeches
were hiding in his throat.
The jeep sped onward. The driver was silent. From time to time, he
looked into the broad mirror hanging in front of his forehead to see behind
us. In that same mirror, I could see Father’s swollen arm hanging around
Mother’s neck.
We reached the beginning of the climb to Surkhet, and the jeep’s engine
began to labour. Beneath us, I could see the Bheri river and its banks. I
don’t know why, but the hills, the river—everything was silent. In the
distance, a thin sliver of light appeared on the horizon.
 The birds that were pecking at the ground along the sides of the road flew
up in fear when they heard the noise of the jeep.
‘We’ve reached Harre,’ Mother announced.
When I turned to look back, I saw Father’s gently shaking head.
Most of Harre’s shops were closed. The jeep sped on, scattering flocks of
chickens all over the road. I looked behind me again, and this time I saw
Father’s hand moving gently over Mother’s forehead, eyes, ears and lips,
his eyes still closed. Mother was silent. Sometimes, when I looked into the
back of the jeep, my eyes met hers and she just stared back at me.
I wound the window down a little. The cold breeze of dawn stroked my
neck. In the end, it reached my heart and made it cold. My eyes were heavy
with exhaustion. Even as I leaned my head against the window, I dropped
off to sleep. Father’s blue waistcoat, flapping in the beeze, and his toothy
smile ran across the rims of my eyes. I woke up with a start and saw that we
had reached Chinchu Bazaar.
‘My stomach’s empty,’ the driver said, bringing the jeep to a stop. ‘I must
eat something.’
Smoke was issuing from a teashop beside the road, and the driver made
for that. Mother couldn’t even sit in a bus; it always made her sick; but this
time, for whatever reason, she was silent. She didn’t feel like eating
anything, she said. But I took after the driver, because I too had begun to
feel nauseous. As I sipped some tea, I looked at the clock on the wall and
saw that it was a quarter past seven.
The driver was consuming his tea and biscuits in haste. I finished my tea
quickly too, then I ran back to the jeep with a glass of hot milk. Mother was
gazing at Father’s face, lost in her thoughts.
I handed her the glass.
‘Will you drink some milk?’ Mother asked rather loudly. She knew that
Father was becoming deaf. Father nodded his head almost imperceptibly,
like an ant shaking a blade of grass. Mother wetted his cracking lips with
milk and his scummy tongue crept around his lips.

‘We’re nearly at the Bheri bridge,’ Mother announced.

 The tall pillars of the Bheri bridge could be seen a short distance away. I
looked back and saw that Father’s neck and forehead had begun to sweat
profusely. The road was dusty and the dust was flying about, so I wound the
window up. There were potholes all over the road and the jeep began to
rock about. Father’s head shook to and fro and his breathing became noisier
still.
Then Father became agitated, as if he was feeling suffocated. The hand
he had been moving about on Mother’s face now moved about on the glass
pane of the window, like a fly imprisoned in a glass.
‘I think he’s finding it difficult,’ Mother said, frightened. ‘Open a
window!’
The driver was trying to avoid the potholes. I leaned over the back of my
seat and stretched my arm out above Father’s malodorous body to reach the
window. I lowered the glass and Father stuck his hand out of the window.
Father’s hand began to sway in the cold wind, like a leaf swaying as it is
borne away down a river.
There was a very bad pothole coming up ahead. The driver tried carefully
to manoeuvre the jeep around it, but he failed, and the jeep crashed into the
hole and swerved. I grabbed the seat hard. As the jeep righted itself and
went on, I heard Father exclaim ‘Ukka!’
When I turned around to look, I saw that green foam was coming out of
his dry, toothless mouth.
The jeep picked up speed once more.
After a moment’s silence, I heard my mother utter a choking sob. ‘La.
He’s gone.’
I could not say a word. I felt an acute pain in my chest. Darkness spread
before my eyes.
The jeep stopped suddenly and the cloud of dust it had been leaving in its
wake caught up with it and covered it. I looked at Father’s face: it was
calm; there was no agitation, no suffering, and his eyes were closed. A
trickle of tears fell from his right eye to create a slender stripe across his
face. Mother pulled his arm back inside from where it hung shaking out of
the window, and it fell into her lap like a branch cut from a tree.
 A large tear fell from Mother’s left eye and fell onto Father’s throat. Her
eyes filled with stillness and her face became as hard as a stone.
I looked at the driver. He was looking out at the Bheri bridge in silence.
The trees along the roadside were silent too. A deep silent stillness was
swallowing the jeep. No longer could we hear Father struggling for breath.
A moment later, a young sun rose in the sky, while an old sun set in
Father’s face.
Choking back my sobs, I said, ‘Let’s go on.’
The jeep shuddered back into life.
The jeep crossed the Bheri bridge.
I went blind: I couldn’t see anything we were passing on the road.
Sometimes, when I looked behind me, I saw Mother shaking Father’s head
as if she was trying to gently wake him from his sleep. His head had
become rigid, and it could not be moved very much anymore. The more I
looked behind me, the blinder I became.
Suddenly, the jeep braked and came to a halt, screeching like an injured
dog, and I emerged from the dark tunnel of thought I had been moving
through. We were on the main road that led to Birendranagar. Mother had
turned into a stone, otherwise she would have announced, ‘We’ve reached
Dhuliya Bit.’
If you went up the hill from this Dhuliya Bit, you would reach Ratu,
where even now a remnant of Father’s footprints might be found. It was
along this very road that he had gone down to Matera.
The driver looked into his side mirror, and then he panicked.
Two soldiers were running up from behind, panting heavily and blind
with rage. As soon as he reached its side, one of them kicked the jeep hard
with his boot—ghadyaama!
‘Shall I shoot him?’ The other one levelled his gun at the driver.
Then the first one kicked the jeep again and screamed, ‘Why didn’t you
stop the car, motherfucker?’
The driver’s face turned blue with fear. He had been driving the jeep at
top speed and he hadn’t seen the soldiers as they flagged him down from
the roadside. He began to plead with them.
 ‘What’s in the jeep?’ one of them asked, kicking it again.
The driver gestured towards the back seat and one of them flew over and
wrenched the door open.
He saw a thin woman who had turned to stone, in whose eyes there were
no tears, and in whose lap there lay an old man who had just taken leave of
his loved ones. From his trousers there protruded a tube in which some pale
red urine had collected.
The soldier hesitated. Then he slowly closed the door.
He looked sad. Then, after a moment’s silence, he said quietly, ‘Go
carefully now. This is what life is like.’
Now it was as if Father was waiting for us further up the road, as if we
had to meet him there. That’s how the jeep went now. Fast. Very fast. F-a-s-
t.

***

When I was small, I asked Father, ‘Ba? Where does a dead person go?’
Father switched off the radio and thought about this for a moment.
‘Come here.’ He sat me in his lap and showed me the moon smiling in
the sky. ‘Look up there.’
I looked at the moon.
With his stubble rubbing against my cheek, Father told me—
A person who has died, goes up, and up, and further up still. He goes up
higher than the moon. He sits in Bhagwan’s lap, just as you are sitting in my
lap now. You know how you cry sometimes? He never cries like that. He
never gets any sorrow. He is always happy.
Do you understand?
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 Translator’s Afterword

I first read Karnali Blues in 2011, four years after it was published, and I
was entertained and moved by it in a way that I had never been by a novel
in Nepali before. Five years later, my own father died and I found myself
standing in Brisha Bahadur’s shoes, consoled by what I recalled of his story.
There are many different kinds of love in this world, and many books have
been written about all of them. But here we find the love between a son and
his father articulated for the first time in such a setting.
The events of Karnali Blues take place in the small bazaar towns of
Matera and Katasé in the district of Kailali (part of the lowland belt known
as Madhes, some 250 miles to the west of Kathmandu) and in the town of
Kalikot in the hills to the north. Most of the literature published in the
Nepali language over the past hundred years has emanated from
Kathmandu, and most Nepali writers have taken their capital as the setting
for their fiction and a primary reference point for their poems. But this book
is very different. Even when Brisha Bahadur moves to Kathmandu to study,
it is clear that he is now out on the margins of the story, whose central
narrative continues to unfold elsewhere.
The reader is drawn deeply into Brisha Bahadur’s world: a backwater
district of a country that is about to undergo radical social, political and
cultural change. We share his dreams, his games and his mischief, his loves,
his hopes and his fears. His father is kind and idealistic; his mother is kind
too, but also often frustrated and irascible. We meet the wealth of characters
who surround him: the schoolmates, shopkeepers, tea sellers, teachers,
policemen, porters, drunkards and rogues of his childhood and the staff and
patients of the hospital where his father lies dying. We encounter the
workings of caste, class, ethnicity and gender on which so much scholarly
ink has been spilled. But now they are there implicitly, expressed in purely
Nepali terms, seen through the eyes of a boy.
The population of Kailali is mixed. Indigenous Tharus live alongside the
hill people, known as Pahadis or Parbates, who have been moving down to
the plains in growing numbers over the past fifty years to open up newly-
cleared forest lands for agriculture. Brisha Bahadur’s family belongs to this
Pahadi community, which dominates local commerce, trade and politics and
forms a majority in the small bazaar towns of the district. The Tharus live in
much humbler circumstances in their ancestral villages. Often, they are
bonded labourers, indebted and bound to feudal Pahadi landlords for life.
Many of the Pahadi characters of the novel clearly regard the Tharus as
inferior to themselves. This is a tension that has led to considerable political
unrest in southern Nepal in recent years, as the people of Madhes assert
their right to fairer levels of respect, representation and opportunity in
Nepali national life.
First in Matera and then in Katasé, Brisha Bahadur’s father runs medical
stores during what appear to be the early years of Nepal’s restored
democracy after 1990. Many of the local shopkeepers’ customers are bands
of villagers from the hills of western Nepal—haterus—who make the
arduous journey down to the lowlands at regular intervals each year to sell
products such as ghee, and to stock up on staple foods and essentials such
as shoes. Later, the pattern of trade changes as new transportation routes are
established across the plains and new settlements spring up from the fields.
Katasé’s once-bustling bazaar falls quiet, its customers now going
elsewhere. The family moves to Kalikot, where Brisha’s father opens a
general store. But his attempt to establish a new business there is thwarted
by the outbreak of the civil war between the Nepal Communist Party
(Maoist) and the armed forces of the Nepali state.
The narrative of Brisha’s growth from boyhood to maturity is skilfully
interwoven with an account of his father’s last days in a hospital ward in
Kohalpur which eventually brings the book to its poignant close.
Although Karnali Blues presents itself as a novel, it contains many
elements of autobiography. Just like Brisha Bahadur, the author too grew up
in Kailali, relocated with his family to Kalikot and went at last to study in
Kathmandu. But the narrative also departs from the author’s own personal
and family history in many important regards and incorporates episodes that
are either loosely modelled on real events or wholly fictional.
The language of the novel could hardly be more different from the high-
flown, Sanskritized, syntactically convoluted Nepali of much modern
literary and media discourse. Its sentences are typically very short and its
language is that of ordinary speech. But this does not mean that it is always
easy to understand or translate it. Buddhisagar is a highly original writer: he
invents metaphors, coins phrases and makes references that are opaque even
to Nepali readers from other parts of Nepal, and uses words that do not
appear in standard Nepali dictionaries. Many of his characters are made
more memorable by the ways in which they speak standard Nepali—
pompously, or with a stammer, or with a verbal tic—and the class and caste
identity of characters is also revealed by their language: the Dalit porter
Jarilal and his comrades, for instance, speak a heavy Western dialect of
Nepali. Other characters, including Brisha Bahadur’s mother, are marked by
their rustic, guttural style of speech. The Tharu characters of the story,
including old Bhagiram, the weaver of fans, and Baatu, the girl for whom
Brisha Bahadur feels his first stirrings of sexual desire, all speak the local
version of Tharu. Buddhisagar himself had to translate this and the porters’
speech into standard Nepali for me before I could understand it fully.
Ten years ago, I decided that the world’s twenty-odd million speakers of
Nepali should not be allowed to keep such a book to themselves and
resolved that, one day, I would translate it for the wider world. I would like
to record a debt of thanks to Anar Basnet and Krishna Pradhan for helping
me to resolve some of the knottier translation problems presented by this
text, and to Mark Watson for his help with botanical names. Buddhi and I
are also most grateful to first Ananya Bhatia and then Rea Mukherjee for
steering us through the publication process. Most of all, I thank
Buddhisagar himself for trusting me with this task and for sparing many
hours of his time to work painstakingly with me through the first draft of
the translation during the Kathmandu winter of 2017–18.
 All errors of translation and interpretation are, of course, nobody’s fault
but mine.

—Michael Hutt
Tring, England, September 2021
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*
Sauji or sahuji: a (male) shopkeeper, business-owner or merchant. Sauni:
a female sauji, or a sauji’s wife.
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*
A reference to the Hindi film Sholay, in which Gabbar Singh is the villain.
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 THE BEGINNING

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This collection published 2021

Copyright © Buddhisagar 2021
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Jacket images © Anubha Jain
This digital edition published in 2021.
e-ISBN: 978-9-354-92389-0
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