Bharat Chand
A fishing net hung on the wall of the Dev’s veranda seems unused for long, when observed from outside. Monsoon is the time for fishermen living in hilly region to get busy. People of Bangshalla seem busy, fixing their teeps—fish traps—at different junctures of small brooks, forming a sort of pond by building a boundary wall and leaving one of its sides open so that the teep could be fixed underneath the outlet of the running water. The torrent of water running into the teep neither lets fish to come out through its base, nor escape through its mouth. The base of the teep is completely tied with the rope, leaving nearly no space between one wood and the other. It makes a cone-shaped structure. The word teep is made up of woods with a height of one to two meters in length.
Dev, an unlettered man, has fixed his fishing trap near to his house. He visits it every night thinking that fishes could be trapped at night rather than at day time—following a local myth that says so. Sleepy during these three months—Bhadra, Asoj and Karktik—the task is regularly irregular for him as he needs to wake up once in nearly two hours’ time interval to check whether his fishing trap is replete with fish. The possession of a torch that accommodates four batteries held under his pillow followed by a long stick kept near his reach are his tools for the nights before he departs to look for fishes hopefully trapped his teep. It is also high time he kept eyes on the youths of other villagers making secret visit to the fishing traps fixed by others to steal fish.
The relentless visit during nights for about a week to the trap he had fixed yielded a few fishes. He got frustrated for his strenuous efforts in the entire process. The meager amount of fish yielded raises so many questions in his mind: Why haven’t the fishes fallen into trap? Has something gone wrong with the trap? Has the fixing of it gone wrong? Has somebody been accustomed to stealing the trapped fishes from it?
The nights pass by, leaving these questions in his mind. No solutions have come to his mind, as the questions keep striking him for long.
The fishing net he owns has not caught fishes to his expectation either. He makes a general guess that it could be due to the youths fixing fishing trap at different junctures of the brooks. No sooner had he thought of mulling over the condition he was passing through than he heard a sound calling his name, and looked around to find who he was. It was Ramwa, his confidante, who usually came to his tea shop to sip tea early in the morning. They had an exchange of greetings and discussed about the confrontation that went between Rita and Lila over the issue of cutting grass, as Lila without permission, had cut grass from the land of Rita, which ended up with the calling of police for its settlement.
They change the topic and descend on how the business on fish have been fairing. Desperate in work, Dev laments that he has made a mistake by not joining people leaving the village for Pithauragarh, a close India city near its border with Nepal in the far- western part of the country. Dev had thought he would get the chance to stay with his family and make his ends meet by selling fish besides selling tea at his tea-shop. None of the businesses is running well. The long village road he had to commute along had reduced his income sharply.
Leaving the village along with others in the name of seeking a job outside of the country as many do, drives Dev towards an alternative thought when he feels that fishing and selling tea would not help run his familial life. He goes to Kathmandu and applies for the job for Qatar with the help of acquaintance pursuing his study at University level. The agent in Kathmandu makes an arrangement of job as a factory worker for which he has to pay 85,000 NRS. The company he is joining, however, does not charge even a single penny. Strangled with the heavy load of debt one year ago, he is working so hard as per the order of the contractor, not as per what was signed in his agreement paper. Survived by his two children aged 12 and 8, wife and father and mother, he has much responsibility to take care of them as the production from the field is not satisfactory. He is kicked out of his company lately citing the reason of Covid-19 crisis. Half of the money yet to be paid to the master on higher interest rate at village is the headache on one hand while the utmost wants of meeting family members especially father suffering from Asthma problem is on the other. Neither does he know the date of his revival to Nepal nor has his pocket full to pay extra amount for travel fare to return home. Company, irrespective of salary has only provided basic food to him.
Repenting the value of living and doing work in the village has been his daily routine and quite often misses those surreal experiences he had passed with his family and friends. A television set fixed at the corner of his room hasmainly become his friend and always switches TV channels airing news on Nepal for two reasons; one, he cannot afford the cost of travel being levied by travel agencies, second, he does not have money if got tested positive on Covid-19 to stay on high priced hotel made for people arriving in Nepal. Additionally, he makes genuflection each day for his entire family staying in Nepal for no bad omen lurking on the millions of people through the Covid-19 virus.
[Chand is an M.Phil. in English from Pokhara University. He writes short stories. He is associated with the Kathford International College of Engineering and Management and Kathmandu College of Management, Kathmandu.]
Nice short-story.