Reeta Tamrakar
Six months passed since Makare’s wife had left the world. She wife was also called Shanti Bhauju.
How fast the days went by? It felt just like yesterday when Shanti Bhauju, looking like a goddess in a red dress, followed Makare everywhere and was full of energy.
Many but not every child of Makare and Shanti Bhauju were present there for their mother’s funeral. Besides them, their neighbors, friends and relatives were also present. I also went there to accompany them. I didn’t want to be present there when I considered Makare’s behaviors but because Shanti Bhauju was a good person I went anyway, subduing my bad feelings for Makare.
Their sons were working with the priest. The aughters and daughters-in-law were making prasad ready. Guests were gossiping, sitting in groups of their. I was sitting at the place where there was enough sunlight. Makare was walking here and there without any perspectives at all.
“Look! His wife is dead. But there is no any bad or regretful feeling. Just look at his face; he does not even looks like he is sad. Oh! What a mean person he is…”
“You’re talking about his face not looking sad. This old man did not even drop a tear when his wife died.”
“Why would he drop his ‘precious’ tears? He must be wishing for his wife’s death in order to bring in another young wife….”
“This old man is no less than a sly person. His poor sons are doing all the funeral works and he is sitting comfortably wearing a new watch, a pair of suruwal-kamij and an estakot. He looks so fresh! Why isn’t his heart melting for that woman who always looked after him all her life?”
Merlin’s beard! What am I hearing, and why am I hearing all these? I made my eyes wider. The speakers were all Shanti Bhauju’s friends.
Is it really like what they said? Isn’t Makare sad because of the forever departure of his life partner? He must be thinking about bringing in a new woman in his life after Shanti Bhauju’s death…Was he really so mean towards his wife? His sons are doing the funeral works. Husbands don’t have to do any work during their wife’s funeral. It is in the holy books of our religion that all the works are done by the children and not by their husband/wife? In that case, what is Makare guilty of?
There is no law which states that the husband should not wear any proper clothes during his wife’s funeral or posthumous rituals. Why, then is he criticized so much?
Makare was my childhood friend. Whatever I heard about him made me feel bitter.
It was just the day before yesterday I had gone to attend the funeral of Niraula Ba from the next village. The way Mrs. Niraula expressed her sadness had surprised me. Who didn’t know about their relationship? She used to send him out of home time and again because she couldn’t solve Niraula Ba’s drinking habits.
Niraula Ba used to take his wife’s behavior in different ways. He used to accuse his wife. Despite being old, his fashionable wife wanted more, and used to send him out of home saying one thing or another.
Oh! The way she expressed her grief after her husband’s death! Everybody gave her their condolence. Everybody felt sorry for her.
Everybody gave her their condolence despite knowing all her tears were crocodile ones. Everybody saw relief on her face after her husband’s deaths but everybody acted like they did not notice it.
“Let’s go Nare, to take prasad.”
I get startled hearing Makare’s bitter voice. My thoughts had taken me somewhere else.
“I have already had my lunch. You go….” I try to avoid him.
“No Kaka…How can you say that? You at least have to taste something.” I could not decline my youngest daughter-in-law’s pleadings and respect.
I am feeling bitter even after returning home. Doesn’t a man, whose wife is dead, feel hurt? Doesn’t he cry just the woman does, when her man is dead? Somehow I don’t like the word ‘widower’. I always call a’ widower’ a single man.
I am surprised. Why is the society so one-sided? The woman whose husband is dead becomes a pitiful character in the society. Why, then, is a man whose wife is dead so much criticized?
How come the society is always male-dominated? Sometimes the society is female-dominated too.
I feel so bad.
God, I am so bored. I am shaken mentally and physically after returning from Makare’s home.
Makare came to my home after years. Though he was my childhood friend, his showy and haughty behavior was always too much for me.
Somehow I didn’t have the feeling and energy to talk to him. I instructed him to sit without speaking and asked him through my eyes about the reason of his presence here. He did understand me.
“I have come here to share my sorrows and happiness with you.” His sentence was short.
“Am I worthy enough to share your sorrows and happiness with?” I asked with my eyes sat acting to be angry.
“I know, Nare. You must be calling me a shameless person inside.”
I was surprised because of his sudden attack of words. I kept on looking at him silently with a deadly look on my face.
“One can feel the pain others feel only after the event occurs to oneself Nare! I understood the pain you have been enduring for the past sixteen years just from the last six months.” He looked pitiful.
My heart felt pain deep inside. But I didn’t let myself mouth the word, “ouch!” I painted a smile on my lips, instead. He got tortured because of my smile. I felt like hugging him but controlled myself making my heart a stone.
“Will you drink a cup of tea?” Suddenly these words came out of my mouth crossing my lips. He looked at me without any expression on his face. I didn’t know what he was thinking.
“Aye! Makare, let’s have tea, shall we?” My hands rested themselves on his shoulders without any warning. He caught my hand firmly and looked towards the floor. Salty warm tears fell on my palms. He himself broke the long silence.
“My luck isn’t strong like yours, Nare!”
I hugged him and without speaking thumped him. And I rested my vision on the empty walls. There, on the empty walls, I could see the reflection of my three children and their mother, my life partner Sunaina.
Sunaina! She was pretty as her name sounds. My lover. My love. The one who made my family completed, and improved me and my family. But karma took her away from me.
Ah! What a painful moment it was. The flames slowly swallowed her in front of my eyes. And I couldn’t even do anything. I even forgot myself in that painful moment. I was forgetting myself for her and three young, innocent flowers who were searching love from me.
My life and house were a total mess because of her death. If I were to tell the truth I was like a mad person.
I came to the present only after Makare moved a bit. My thoughts had taken me far away. Don’t know why he thought I’m luckier than him. But how?
“Why did you say so? What’s happened to you?”
I waited for his words. I felt his words returning from his lips back to where they had been playing for a while. I looked at him; sadness had filled his expressions.
Six month! It’s only been six months since Shanti Bhauju died. His wound is still raw; that’s why he must be behaving this way.
I keep myself still and controlled.
“Look, Makare! Don’t act as if you only feel the pain. You have to look at others too. Who is there in this world who hasn’t felt any pain? Tell me.” I don’t think my words affected him. He looked still the same.
“Once you are born in this world you have to die. Neither you nor I can stop it from happening. Be strong Makare; be strong!” I start giving him all the lectures.
Well even I couldn’t be strong the way I was telling him to be. I felt my wife’s absence every time I breathed. Though I stuffed my pain deep inside during the day to take care of the children, at night I felt devastating. I used to stare at her side of the bed. Those days were terrible for me.
“You still aren’t feeling better? What has happened to you? Come on; tell me!”
Don’t know what pain he was feeling. I gazed at him. The deeper my stare grew, more uncomfortable he became. He got up from his chair and went towards the western corner of the veranda and seemed gazing at the setting sun.
“They say old widowers are so rough.” I felt a painful strike listening to Mahili, my second daughter-in-law’s words.
“Really? Maybe. After our mother-in-law’s death I feel our father-in-law’s looks strange. How will we stay in this house once our husbands leave for work?” The heart that felt weak after the second daughter-in-law’s word gt badly torn, after hearing the youngest daughter-in-law’s words.
Oh God! What was I hearing? I shut my ears. The ones I loved as my own daughters were talking such nonsense. Oh God! Was I really alone in the world after my partner’s death? I was tortured just like a fish taken out from water. I got to listen to those things right after my wife’s funeral works were over. How unlucky I was!
“Mmh….How to take care of Buba now?!” I heard Mahili’s voice.
“Yes…It would have been easy only if Mother-in-law was present with us. A lonely father-in-law…” Kanchi left her sentence unfinished.
“What are saying? Aren’t Father’s hands and legs working, making it difficult for us to take care of him? You just have to talk with him, cook and feed him. That’s it.” I heard my second son saying this.
Kancha, the youngest one, was quiet. The eldest one was still in a foreign country. He didn’t come, saying he didn’t get leave. My ears were still there and very sharp.
“It’s not that easy. How will we give condolence to that soul whose wife is dead? We can neither talk sitting together. nor can we go to his room at night when he says he’s in pain.” Mahili presented her reasons.
“Then what should we do? Leave our works and stay at home to look after Father?” said, Kancha speaking in an irritated voice.
“Who has told you to do that? We can take other measures.” My heart also raced with my ears after hearing Kanchi’s words.
“What measures?”
It’s again Kancha’s voice. There is silence after that. It felt like it was the silence before a big storm hit us.
“Now-a-days, we can find old-age homes facilitated with complete medical facilities.”
My heart started shaking hearing Mahili’s solution.
“Are you saying we should keep Father in those old-age homes? Don’t talk nonsense.”
My heart felt warmer after hearing Mahila’s words.
“What’s wrong in this, Daju? Only two of us will be here. Who will Buba talk with? There, he will find friends of his own age. He will find spending time easier. He can come home at times.” Kanchi’s words cooled my heart’s warmth.
“This thing is impossible now. Close this topic. We may talk about this after Aama’s funeral works are over. Buba is intelligent. He knows how to behave with his daughter-in-laws,” Mahila said.
Makare breathed heavily. Oh! He was filled with troubles only. His wound was so painful. How would he live apart from his family? If it was taken away from him, all his joys of life would ill vanish.
Makare didn’t feel his home like his home anymore after that day. City didn’t feel like the city at all. The road also seemed endless. All his hopes had died.
Makare faced dishonesty and bad treatment, when he was old. His daughters-in-law marked each and every move of his in a negative manner. The rope slips off even when one tries to live.
Makare was right. My luck is stronger than his. What he witnessed in six months of his life as a loner is something I haven’t faced even after sixteen years.
“Don’t take tension about future. You know tension takes you to your graveyard. Such days may not occur. Think positively.”
I knew my words were very too small, compared to his sorrow.
Makare went home after igniting some fire inside me. He must have slept feeling weary. But where is my sleep? It’s missing from my eyes.
[Translated from Nepali by Nityodita Bishta]
[Tamrakar is a storywriter based in Itahari, Nepal. Her published works include Tusarapat, Anam Paridhi, Samweg and Drishya–Paridrishya.]