Kashiraj Pandey
A tall middle-aged woman, accompanied by a handsome-looking boy of about six years of age, descends the stairway from the airliner at Kathmandu Airport. It is the daily flight which arrives at lunch time, from Dubai usually bringing back many Nepalese workers along with some tourists. The woman is returning to Nepal with quite substantial savings. However, she has returned after many distressing moments in Qatar when she was forced to leave the country after her visa had expired.
Everybody is in a hurry to reach their destination, some to their long-missed family members and, others, most probably, to hotels. Dilmaya, a lady originally from a remote village, who had left home some ten years ago, and is now returning with her young son, seems lonely and confused. The elegant new clothes and the high-heeled shoes she is wearing make her look younger than her actual age. She is sitting with the boy in one of the farthest rows of the seats, in front of the immigration desk, that are normally occupied only during the rush hours. It seems that she wants to keep away from other people. She neither talks to anyone nor moves ahead towards the immigration counter.
People in the airport come and go; passengers arrive from around the globe, some from Bangkok, some from Beijing, and others from Delhi, Dubai, or Doha. Nothing seems to affect her. Many people look at her and pass by.
“Mamma, Let’s go,” says Mohammed, who is in Nepal for the first time.
“See mamma,…there”.
The boy, poking his mother, points in the direction of all the other passengers waiting for their turn to be cleared by immigration.
The mother replies, “Let’s wait a while. I am not sure where we should head for.”
The boy says, “Everyone has already left and I am hungry.”
Dilmaya unzips her hand bag, takes out a packet of biscuits, and gives them to Mohammed.
“Okay. Here you go!”
“Great,” she says, as she also finds in her bag some water and a muffin saved from the flight. She gives them to the boy, full of her motherly care.
While the boy is eating, she looks at everyone passing by the arrival desk. For her everything around seems so alien and unwelcoming.
“Dilmaya Sharma from Qatar!” calls out a member of the airline. Dilmaya rouses herself suddenly from her dreamy state.
“Yes. Yes. I am here,” she says.
“Oh, you have unclaimed baggage. Yours is the only piece of luggage left from Flight 354. We were wondering what had happened to you. Please come and collect your bags. Two pieces, right?”
“Yes,” she replies.
Dilmaya proceeds further, fills in the arrival form, and passes through immigration. The officer at the immigration counter looks at them, carefully, verifying their documents. She sees the boy’s name, Mohammed, as an odd one when his mother has a Nepali name, Dilmaya. However, the officer finds their documents all in order and lets them proceed unhindered. Then Dilmaya and her son set off to find their way through the baggage claim and customs.
Dilmaya can now relax. “Fresh air and a natural life with people like myself, all part of my own culture,” she thinks to herself.
Dilmaya feels very nostalgic. It is a cool and chilly day today, a typical Nepali afternoon. In fact, Dilmaya and Mohammad are alone and she feels that people are gazing at them. Some people are waiting to meet their friends and relatives and others are waiting for tourists to arrive. No one has had advance knowledge of the arrival of Dilmaya.
“Mohammed, your name is Mohan from today onwards”, she says. You can still call me by the same name, Mamma, but I will call you Mohan. No one ever from now onwards will call you Mohammed.”
“And what about PAPA?”, he asks.
“Listen Mohan”, she replies, “We will not meet him again and we will do our best to try to forget him”.
Flashback:
When Dilmaya left Nepal ten years earlier, she was alone. She had promised her husband, Karma and their two girls that she would return soon with a lot of money. She left her lovely family with the hope that one day she would return and pay off their loans and buy their own piece of land to build a home of their own. Her idea was to work in Qatar as a caregiver for some years and be able to save some money.
All her life in Nepal, she had been a good wife, a mother of two girls, and an honest member of the community. The poor economic conditions of the family were responsible for driving her to go abroad. In fact, it was, in many important ways, against her interest but the established custom of people in her village forced her to think of foreign employment.
After long and deep consideration, the family took the decision together that Dilmaya would go to Qatar to work, and Karma would take care of the two girls while their mother was abroad. Karma had never, himself, been to school but was very devoted and dedicated to working for their children’s future. After Dilmaya departed for abroad, he did his best to raise the girls with every attention he could give them. He fed them well and sent them to school every-day with all the things they needed. Dilmaya would regularly send money to the family, until, that is, she experienced a twist in her life. That evening, Dilmaya had returned to Nepal with ‘her’ son.
Airport (Arrival Gate) — Afternoon
(Back to the present events and we find Dilmaya still waiting outside the gate.)
Dilmaya is bombarded by questions from the taxi drivers asking where she wants to go. Still upset, she is not able to speak. She says to herself, “Should I go back to my own family, to my relatives, or head for some unknown place to find other people to stay with?”
Seeing his mother in a very confused state, Mohan speaks out and says, “Mamma, what are we waiting for here? Let’s go to meet my sisters. Earlier, you said that I have two lovely sisters waiting to see us, didn’t you?”
“Darling! Hold on. Give me some time to think.” Dilmaya replies.
“What mamma? What has happened to you today? I am so excited about meeting and playing with my sisters.”
“Mohan, my dear son, in the same way that I changed your name today, everything has changed. We are neither going to see Karma, nor your sisters. Before we have a new settled-home of our own, we need to go to a hotel and stay there for some days, a place where no one knows us, a place where we two can have our own world, a space for me and a space for Mohan, a place where you will play with me, and I with you, something that we never had before. ”
Then Dilmaya shouts, “Taxi…taxi…! Take us to a moderately priced hotel, will you?”
“It will be 1000 rupees, for the ride. I will drop you at a nice hotel with a very reasonable tariff”, says the driver.
“Okay, let’s go,” Dilmaya replies, as she and Mohan get into the taxi.
[Born and raised in a beautiful, mountainous village of northern Dhading, Dr. Kashiraj Pandey lives in Kathmandu with his family and teaches English at Kathmandu University. He has published a book Writing Power short stories, poems and travelogues both in English and Nepali languages. Dr. Pandey, who considers himself fortunate to have a global exposure in terms of his work, travel, as well as higher studies and networking experiences, is theorizing Transformative Learning with the help of Autoethnographic Narratives in Education, and plans to publish the book by the end of this year, 2020.]