Nitya Pandey
Weather in Kathmandu is unreliable. A sunny morning can bring a stormy nighttime and a rainy afternoon can lead to a balmy twilight.
Fortunately or unfortunately, surprises arrive in weather packages. Monsoon. July, to be precise. And it was that time of the day when it was pouring ruthlessly.
Saloni was out for a walk. A certain group had called for Nepal banda. The protesters had given the city a makeover by burning tires, smashing streetlights, vandalizing vehicles, arraying roads and pavements with stones and shutting the place down.
Saloni did not care who had called for the banda or why. She had learned to shrug her shoulders and move on long ago and banda was just one of those things that she was indifferent to. She had no desire to speculate why some people thought it was cool to scream on the streets and get their skulls cracked open like Humpty Dumpty.
Saloni’s father used to watch such riots on the television. But that was before her parents got divorced. Now, she seldom saw him. He had been living abroad ever since the separation. She wondered if he still loved watching the television shows as much as he used to.
Maybe. Maybe not.
“It’s raining cats and dogs outside!” Her maternal granny had given her an exasperated look. Silently, she had put on the headphones and turned on the music. Her sneakers needed a good wash. But they could wait. Right now, she needed to get out of the house.
It was always like this when her mother was in. Mostly, she stayed out of the valley due to work commitments. But whenever she was at home, the house became a combat zone. Actually her mother had never found anything right with her. Perhaps her daughter always reminded her of her ex-husband.
So, blame games were played. Allegation missiles and satire bombs were launched. World War III was fought. Granny played the role of the good old Switzerland.
Saloni shivered. The heavens must have decided to finish their water stock. She threw her hands up in despair. Her faithful brown umbrella was no match when it came to rainy punches and windy blows. She decided to have some mercy on the rickety thing and took shelter at a dhaba.
It was a tiny hole on the wall. There were a few chairs dotted in the outer room. The kitchen was as big as a cabinet. There was a gas stove and some cooking utensils. A mousy girl was peeling potatoes. A kettle boiled merrily while a small woman kneaded flour.
Saloni sat down and took off her headphones. A boy wiped her table with a grimy dishcloth. She took out her Kindle and ordered without looking up, “Black tea with sugar.”
“Didi, chiya!” For the first time, she looked at him properly. He was thin and dark, in early teens, dressed in simple, clean clothes, standing there with a small glass of tea and a big warm smile. Everything that she had ever seen, read, heard of or known about child labor pounded upon her brain like the raindrops outside.
“Thanks!” she smiled. “So, you work here?”
“Yes,” he grinned.
“What’s your name?”
“Aditya.”
“Where do you study?”
“I don’t go to school.”
“What? Why?”
Again, the child labor related scenarios started circling her mind. Or maybe it was poverty. “But aren’t government schools cheap?”
“I tried, Didi. But they are not for me,” he smiled, wiping the nearby table.
“Too much pressure!” he frowned, and pointed at his forehead.
“They mess you up here. Went to a boarding school once. Some kuires put me in there. They spoke angrezi. Gave me fancy clothes and shiny leather shoes. Had to stuff newspapers inside to make them fit. And oh yes, biscuits!”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Biscuits?”
“Yes Didi, chocolate biscuits!”
He swallowed, “Tasty! Sweet! But expensive!”
A month had passed. Saloni had just had another round of discussion with her mother about her ‘ridiculously pink’ hair extensions. She had announced that she would dye her hair purple before banging the door shut. She could still hear her mother scream in the kitchen. Her granny calmly spooled batti for her evening aarati.
Long strings were churned out of cotton balls covered in ash that would be folded and dipped in oil to be burnt as offerings to the deities. Breathing an explicit curse, Saloni shut her laptop and slipped out of the house. It was drizzling. “You’ll get lice!” her granny always warned her. She huffed and opened her umbrella.
The roads were an utter disaster; thanks to the government’s new whim to extend them during monsoon. It was the last Monday of Shrawan. Hoards of women in bright red sarees—their hands jingling with green bangles and their necks decorated with shiny beads and heads glittering with red threads—were returning from Pashupati. It was the day when women fasted and worshipped Lord Shiva.
Aditya looked subdued as he placed chiya before Saloni. “What’s wrong, Bhai? You lost your smile?” she teased. He grimaced. “It’s Maya, my sister…she talked to her in-laws today…You see, it’s her husband’s shraddha, his death anniversary, and they blamed her again…”
Saloni glanced at the timid girl doing dishes. She looked around her own age. Married? Widowed?
“Maya is a child widow, Didi. She was married off at the age of ten. Our elder brother recently died of pneumonia. There were no hospitals in our village. So, he was taken to a witch doctor, a famous dhaami. Our parents were devastated. You know, you can never see the doors of heaven open unless you die with a son standing at your funeral pyre setting fire to your corpse and performing the rituals that follow.”
“Then my grand-aunt suggested that if my parents got my sister married, they would be blessed with a son. Without further ado, Maya was married off. I was born two years later.”
Saloni stole a glance at Maya. Her eyes were puffy and her nose looked cherry red. Her dish-washing seemed mechanical.
“They failed to notice that the boy was severely ill. He was much older than Maya, a widower, in fact, with no kids. He was suffering from tuberculosis—a disease that was not diagnosed in the village then. He coughed and puked blood. He grew thinner and frailer. The family blamed it on Maya. They even called her a she-devil, a witch…a boksi. One day, he died…Soon, they threw her out like a vermin…”
“Why is the loudspeaker quiet?”
Granny served dinner. “Aama, how old were you when you got married?” The older woman smiled. Her eyes crinkled.
“Fifteen and your Buwa was twenty.”
“Had you ever met him before?”
“Never.”
“And how did you know that he was the right one?”
“Our parents decided that for us, Chhori.” Her granny beamed, “And they were right. We lived happily until the day he passed away.”
Saloni chewed her food thoughtfully. “Do you believe in heaven after death, Aama?”
“I believe in heaven on earth,” Her granny sighed, “Heaven is where happiness is…Look at your mom and dad. Who knew such lovebirds would come to this? Meera was just like you when she was of your age. She met her perfect match in Sanjeev…Perhaps a little too perfect.”
Saloni finished her food silently and put the dishes in the sink where their domestic help would wash them later.
“Goodnight, Aama.”
A pair of ancient eyes followed her up the stairs. Saloni frequented the dhaba and learnt many things about Aditya. They had been living in Kathmandu ever since his father ‘disappeared’ during the “People’s War.” His mother refused to believe that he was dead and continued to wear bangles, vermillion and neck beads. She strictly fasted during Teej without drinking even a drop of water.
“It was fun, Didi,” his eyes twinkled with a faraway look, “Those days, in the village, everybody carried guns. Even the games that were played had lots of fighting.”
“You wanted to carry guns too?” Saloni asked him.
“Sure!” he laughed, “Everybody did! But I was too small and my mother was really protective.”
She took a deep breath.
“Would you carry a gun now?”
He seemed a little taken aback.
“Maybe my father got lost because he carried the gun. Maybe it’s a good thing that
I never did. I don’t want to get lost. I want to be found.”
It was a dull, boring day. Saloni was sitting at her usual table. She finished her tea and stared out the window.
The sky fascinated her as ever. It was vast, infinite. There were grayish clouds floating freely against the blue. At some places, sunlight pierced through them. She could also see odd shapes. There was a cat, a man with beard, a hat and a rabbit.
During the night, the stars and constellations mesmerized her. Her favorite was Sirius, the brightest star. Sometimes she wondered…could the stars possibly define the destiny of those living on earth?
Could they determine hers? Aditya hurried in, nestling a stray pup in his arms. “Didi, meet Chankhay!” She turned around and looked at him.
“I found him two days ago. His mother got run over by a car. Poor thing! But he is so clever! He’s one of my two best friends.”
“And who is the other?” He blushed.
“You.” She laughed.
“I have something for you, Didi.”
He ran into the kitchen and returned with his hands behind his back.
“What have you got?” Saloni laughed. Aditya smiled and thrust a piece of paper into her hands. It was a beautiful charcoal sketch. It showed her reading with her headphones on. She quickly stuffed it in her backpack. She felt something like moisture in her eyes…not much…just a bit.
Saloni had grown fond of the boy. He was poor, deprived, and somewhat stupid for not attending school. But there was a certain charm in him. He was sweet, honest and innocent, the qualities so rare.
He was her personal version of Huckleberry Finn. And she knew what her Huck wanted.
She bought a huge packet of chocolate biscuits. It was the day before Krishna Janmastami, the birthday of Lord Krishna. People were out in groups with masked lakhes symbolizing the demons that would be slain. Music, dancing and celebrations were going on. Every household was getting ready to welcome its baby guest with sweets, fruits, curd, milk and butter. Granny would be up all night singing bhajans and rocking jhulana, the holy cradle. Saloni’s mouth watered as she thought of the delicious malpuwa, haluwa, puris and puwa. The sky was dark and gloomy. It looked like it would rain anytime.
Saloni saw it. The mammoth black monster had huge iron jaws. It roared crazily. She jogged over to the place where the dhaba used to be. There was nobody in sight.
“Aditya! Maya! Chankhay!” she called again and again.
A regular customer stood at the roadside, watching the scene with casual apathy.
“Dai, what happened?”
“They were told to evacuate the place. That dhaba was built on government land. They had no legal documents to prove their ownership. So, they had to let it go. They left yesterday.”
“But where did they go?”
Saloni felt a lump rising in her throat. “I don’t know, Bahini.”
It started to rain heavily, as if the sky wanted to pour its heart to the earth below. The solitary figure of Saloni was the only one that wasn’t carrying an umbrella or hurrying to get under the shade. Slowly, the bulldozer crushed the last fragments of the tiny dwelling along with the packet of chocolate biscuits that she had dropped without noticing.
***
[Nitya Pandey(MPhil. in English) has published short fictions quite regularly in periodicals, and occasionally her essays comprising of literary criticism and writings on general social concern appear. Her creative works are carefully crafted to befit her own concern. She is presently in the US, pursuing her doctoral degree at the Florida State University, Florida.]