By Geeta Keshary
It’s November, and the tinge of Tihar has turned the air quite festive. Fair-price shops have been opened at places, especially for the festival. They are thronged by customers, as new stuffs have been added to them.
Dashai and Tihar—two big festivals of the year! People observe them with pomp—what if they need to loan money—to maintain the cultural legacy, or to pronounce social prestige. So, everyone is busy shopping, and they have the same remark to make, “O, how high the prices have gone this year!”
This concern apart, the roads are radiant with decoration. Senior citizens, young ones, adolescents and children—all look jubilant, and are hunting for stuffs they cherish.
Prekshya is one in the crowd—roving from shop to shop with a bag in one hand, and the other anchored to her little son’s finger. Ever since her husband was transferred to a village post, the family and the boy Sanu have fallen under her sole care. Her parents-in-law are quite old, and Sanu is still too young to be left to his own care. There’s no one, besides her, to take care of the family affairs. More, when the festivals are round in the air, there’s more work to be done. She needs to quicken her shopping and return home before dark.
But the son is too young to understand the mother’s plight. He is engrossed in the radiance of the marketplace, and is keen on buying his desires and using them instantly. He starts bargaining with his mother: Buy me balloons, lollipops, fire crackers and more. Unless the mother nods, he stands still in the midway, and refuses to move.
And Preskhya cannot brush aside the stubbornness of a five-year old boy. She is forced to postpone other things, and get into buying stuffs for her son—balloons, lollipops and things like that. Once Preskhya even thinks of going and silencing the peddlers, who shout so much and attract the children towards their stalls. But she hesitates, for she knows, the peddlers earn a penny or two doing so, and manage their families. After all, how high do they earn! They are too many and present at every step, and she cannot shout to all. So, she keeps quiet.
“Please let me have that balloon—the one with white and green stripes,” says Prekshya to the balloon-man, as she rummages her purse for cash. The little one points to lollipops on sale on the same stall, and says, “Wanna have that too. Mom, do buy me a lollipop as well; I like it so much.”
She buys him the stuffs and yells, “It’s hard taking you along. Move fast; we must be moving home.” She pulls her son through the impassable crowd. The child obeys, but keeps a slow pace, sucking the lollipop orb and enjoying the taste.
Seeing the child walk so reluctantly, Prekshya remembers her own brother. He was like her son. When Mother scolded him, Prekskya often thought, ‘It’s unwise for Mom to scold him. That’s the way of the children. We, the adults, cannot do so, even if we want.’
So, she does not say anything to the boy. Rather, she leaves him on his own to walk on the pathway, and walks on, stopping only at intervals to make sure that the boy is following her.
At one point, she stops at a shop and scans a ball. It looks quite attractive. So she says, “Honey; look at the pretty ball. Shall I buy it for you?” But there is no answer. She turns back. Lo, the boy is not there.
A sudden chill passes her spine, and she lets a loud cry, “Where’s my son? Where is my Sanu?” She squeezes herself through the crowd and moves back ,along the same route she has reached hitherto.
When no one seems to have any information about the child, see reaches a crowd standing in a half-circle, near Dharahara. “Sanu,” she calls out. A television notice about the loss of a child strikes her mind. This stirs her mind even more.
As she walks away from the crowed, she sees a spectacle that leaves her speechless. No word escapes her lips. Rather, she runs like a whirlwind and reaches her son. She takes him in her arms and cries, “My son; why are you running away like that?”
Sanu points to an infant trying to suck milk out of the breasts of a mother, lying unconscious on the road. The infant takes turns, looking at the onlookers encircling them, and then, returning to grope his mother’s dry breast. The balloon Sanu bought, too is seen near the child. Prekshya has already seen Sanu allowing the child to lick his lollipop.
Prekshya looks at the child, and turns to her son. She says, “Leave the balloon with the child. I will buy you another. We must be moving home now; see, it is already dark.”
Preksya thinks Sanu would not be willing to bequeath his favorite balloon with the child. But, to her astonishment, he wants more than that. He wants to take the child with them. He pleads, “Mom, let’s take him to ours. See, his mother does not wake up. He is hungry, Mom. See how he is crying! He is not even eating the lollipop. It were you who said, not eating anything leads to death. The child can die, Mom. Let’s take him along.”
Prekshya tries to convince her son, “We cannot take him. When his mother wakes, she will look for him. If his father finds us taking him away, he will scold us. He can even call the police, and get us… Come; let’s go home.”
But Sanu is reluctant. He pleads, “Mom, please wake his mother up.” He is quite impatient.
Someone from the crowd yells, “It’s no use trying to wake her up. She’s dead. She’s a corpse.”
Another one moves forward and adds, “You can take the child home. Also prepare for the mother’s cremation. It’s unfair to take the child and leave the mother here. See how the child recognizes his mother, and presses himself close to her? If she were a stranger, why would he be pressing so close?”
More talks are hurled in the air. Another onlooker shouts at Prekshya, “The dead woman must have lent some favor while alive. That is enough to accord her a decent funeral. O, how ruthless a woman happens to be, against another woman? Fie!”
Another man shouts, “It can even be her own husband’s deed.”
Soaked in this rain of comments and speculations from the onlookers, Prekshya perspired all through. She makes no comment but looks around, seemingly trying to understand what the truth is. When no one from the mass seems to be speaking in her favor, he pats her son and says, “What a fix you are dragging me into? What a show you are staging? Will you walk home, or I should….?”
A man emerges from the crowd, comes in front of Prekshya and says, “Woman! Will you honestly take all charge of the dead woman, or we should intervene?”
Prekshya, fixed like a stone, stares at the man’s face, and trembles with rage, seemingly questioning what a civilization it is. Before her anger spills out to another mess, the mass is drawn by the giggling of a man, who sits nearby like a madman, covering himself with a cloak. He laughs so much that he starts crying in the middle, and throwing the cloak away, stands up.
The situation is quite tense. The man’s activities make it even more mysterious. He walks to the dead woman, screens her with his hands, and talks to himself. The crowd is left stunned by the emerging confusion.
The man says, “You don’t need to bother about the woman and the boy. The dead body won’t stink. We, the living ones, have gathered odor more ominous than the odor her dead body could be letting out. We take birth with problems, live as onlookers, and die with problems left behind. This is what you saw today, isn’t it?
“In front of all of you is a dead body, in such a situation. Which human has bestowed enough care upon it? Those thronging to see the spectacles are afraid to let a hand of help. Some others talk as they wish, only to run away from the problem. See! Neither the woman’s deplorability, nor the child’s hapless tears move anyone to pity. See the sea of human that has gathered here; but, there’s no one that cares to ask whether the woman is living or dead.
“We could lift her to a hospital and get treated. But instead of doing that, you are clutching someone like a fish from a pond, and forcing her to be answerable for all this, in a mere bid to wash your hands off the issue. Why aren’t we urged to help? Why are we forgetting that it is help that cements a human’s heart with another human? Humanity, after all, is nothing but reason, help and love.”
He stops for a while and continues, “Human are those, who own such qualities. And in this crowd, the only one to prove these ideas is this child: your son. Love and pity are natural impulses. Do not subdue them under the gaudy guise of civilization. Let’s not render humanity a farce, by beating and silencing this child. Let’s learn to live as humans. Instead of being mere spectators of such shows, let’s learn to act as rational beings. If only all of us had hearts as blotless as this child’s…”
“Humanity would be secured, and no one would be left to watch such spectacles as mere spectators,” adds someone. This is none but the woman, who is lying senseless. She wakes up, and says, “We are staging a street play to test whether humanity is alive. The spectators themselves turned into players and showed us that humanity can still be secured, but we must allow it to grow and foster. We lack the environment for its growth.
“We had just arranged scenes for the play. Meanings started pouring in, on their own. We were shown, that like the environment, the human feelings in us too are being crushed. Let’s prevent it, friends. Let’s become true humans, and learn to love, sympathize and help others.”
In the meantime, a man presents himself between the actors—the man and the woman—takes a recorder out of his bag and asks, “How do you judge this play as: successful or unsuccessful?”
[Geeta Keshary (b. 1940) is a senior novelist and storywriter of Nepal. She also served a term as Member Secretary of Nepal Academy. Her fame rests in a number of fictions and collections of short stories, which include Taranga, Bhumari, Lahar, Kasingar, Saugat, Aawaz, Mukti, Khoj, Antim Nimto, Biswas, Khula Aakash, Nokari, Nishkarsha and Badlindo Kshitiz.]