Kaki

Mahesh Paudyal

I happened to sleep till late that morning. The sun had risen long before and the tender rays had spread all over our front yard. Someone’s bike scooted fast and stopped. The rider was none but the son of Brother Balaram, a neighbor to my aunt whom we called ‘Kaki’ with love. To her husband, we called ‘Kaka’.

“Kaki has sent for you. Kaka is serious.”

The errand took me by surprise. It had been four years since I visited them last. Our terms had soured thereafter, and the visits had stopped.

‘When hardship comes, acquaintances count,’ I thought and fumed.

Kaki’s very memory made me cross. She was, for me, a stone that couldn’t smile in joy, cry in pain, respond to emotions, and show sympathies. I had no family relation with her, nor had any other deal. So, I cared little if she cared for me. But the same woman, who had not spared a teardrop when her own sons died, had sent for me when her husband was counting his breaths. It was hardly believable.

When Antaré, her fifth son, had died the previous year, I was the one that had carried the news to her. I still experience a nightmare on recalling the incident.

“Kaki, I am sorry to tell you Antaré is off the twig.”

Oh, I had uttered the sentence with an untellable fear. My lips were trebling, and the heart pounding at an unprecedented speed. I felt as though the weight of the entire world hung from my tongue. It was very natural for me be nervous. I had, in my own lifetime, seen mothers beat their chests and roll on the ground on hearing of their children’s death. I was expecting that Kaki would do the same, and I would find it difficult to console her. Though not a born son, I had been her emotional son in the distant past, and in that capacity, I had seen the softest facets of her hearts, long ago.

For her breast battered by merciless sorrows, and for her heart pegged by innumerable thunderbolts, Antaré and Kanchho, two youngest of her sons, were the only hope! Growing each day like the moon in the bright fortnight, the boys had all promises of caring progenies. It was therefore an extremely awkward situation to break the news of Antaré’s demise to her and face her reactions. I was, however, prepared for the worst of her reactions. I had seen a mother hen attack the predator, when one of her chicks had been stolen.

But what was that I was seeing now? Kaki, who was busy cutting beetle nuts with a sarota in the shop she ran, did not even raise her head. That, for me, was completely unexpected at the moment. It was impossible that she didn’t hear me clearly; there was no crowd in the shop, and no noise to blur my words. If there had been a lot of traffic in the street facing the shop, her reaction would have been probable. But there was dead silence ruling the air. She was inside the shop, and outside, I was a lonesome visitor. I thought, she was in some sort of deep contemplation, and did not get the accursed news I broke. In fact, she had many things to ponder over in life, and I decided to reiterate the news.

“Kaki, Antaré left us; caught in a crossfire,” I said, fear freezing my heart into stone.

No reaction. Head still bowed to the arecas. Hands busy cutting.

Reactions my heart was giving—storming, unstable, terrifying! I was terror-stricken, thinking that the news of a child’s death would pound that heart with a bludgeon, and perhaps her hands will maul me dead, pound my head with measuring stones, and gut my throat with the sarota. I didn’t, however, have an escape. I had thought that from a mother’s heart, newer ripples of love would emanate, and come out flowing like waves in the storm. Grief should rip the soul into gashes, and from there, tears should ooze like a cascade and deluge the entire spectacle. In the overflow, perhaps, the universe would flow, stones thaw, and even the heart of death melt like wax. More, if the news fell into the ears of Uncle who was bed-ridden after his cancerous leg had been amputated, it would take an even more devastating turn.

But Kaki didn’t even care to give me a quick look. This time, I was sure that she had heard me very clearly.

It had been eight years since I started visiting Kaki’s family. But I had never seen her so nonchalant, so insensitive. Though I called her Kaki—aunt—there were times I wanted to call her ‘Mom’. Whenever I reached there, I was accorded a welcome an insider receives in a family. They would always ask me about my well-being and enquire whether I had had my lunch or dinner. My opinions were sought while making important family decisions. But today…

In fact, I had come to the shop with a really heavy heart. The nature of the news I was doomed to carry had made my position very, very awkward. It was a piece of news I could not break in a loud sound—something I needed to utter with extraordinary care and that needed a lot of courage. In a way, I thank Kaki’s insensitivity, for that put me in a safer place, and I didn’t have to face any lava erupting in front of me.

‘But the insensitivity—so unworthy of the moment—does not, at all, befit a mother,’ I thought. Kaki was exhibiting something ordinarily considered ‘impossible’.

‘Could it be true that Kaki, whom we all knew as Antaré’s mother, was in fact his step-mother? What if she was one; she should have shown at least some make-belief reaction. O, how callous some hearts happened to be!’ I thought, and fumed from within.

I boiled up again: ‘What a mother! What a heart! Fie to your cruelty! Fie to the dry eyes and the accursed womb!

Yet, I was not being able to excuse myself. I could flay anything in the world, but I had no energy to flay a mother’s love. I had heard people say that a mother’s love was the purest of all kinds of love, the best expression of compassion, and a celestial truth, unsurpassed hitherto.

I stood in a perplexed situation, unable to explain what was happening in front of me. Could it be that Kaki had some reservation with her messenger? Still, the seriousness of the news was not something that allowed reservations and hatred to renew. It was a piece of information that held the potential to whitewash the pastness of everything and announce the immediate urgency of the present.

‘Kaki should not keep quite like this,’ I thought. ‘It’s time for her love to be tested.’

I made a last attempt, conjuring all energy I could: “Kaki, Antaré’s been reported dead.”

“Oh!”

That was the only word Kaki uttered in reaction.

After the faint ‘Oh’, the head, raised only for the cause, drooped again. I didn’t see anything in her eyes. The face showed no emotion at all. I was on an errand; all I had to do was tell the news and quit. She didn’t ask how, why or where. I considered no business telling out everything before I was asked. If the victim’s mother didn’t need the information, I was, after all, a stranger. I left her, thinking that she would later get the official information from the boy’s platoon.

Since then, I had not visited her.

After two years, Kanchho, her youngest son, too died in a road accident. I didn’t, however, go to share the pain. I knew that was a devastating news, and an ordinary mother could be choked to death. Destiny had claimed both the sons, and no support was left for the couple’s old-age days. Yet, sympathies of us, the outsiders, mattered little, when the mother herself remained untouched.

But this time, I was called for. Whatever the past, I was obliged to respond to her call. I decided to go with the errand boy. I still owed some duty to Kaka, if not to Kaki, I thought.

We drove off, and in around an hour, reached our destination. On the way, an evil thought once struck my mind: ‘She’s a spoilt woman. She flinched not when her sons died, but sent for me when her husband was serious. What a woman—needing no son, but so crazy about her man!’ But I instantly regretted.

Kaki I knew for all those years was not as mean as that.

“Kaka is really serious. What shall we do?” asked Brother Balaram as soon as we stopped at Kaki’s front yard.

“We had better rush him to the hospital. What do you say, Kaki?”

Kaki’s eyes were glued to the almost-imbecile body of Kaka. I didn’t get any response to my question.

“Do you have some money with you?”

Kaki turned her eyes skyward. Up there, clouds ran prodigally all over, some patched white, and some crimson. A dog rushed in and started licking the legs of Kaki. She shooed it away and concentrated on the sky once again.

“Kaki, we need some money.”

My plea went in vain. I was cross, and started cursing the woman: “Stone! Money-monger! What worth is the pelf licked from the shop? Do you know the dead people do not have pockets in the shroud, as a Zen master once said?”

Brother Balaram offered to manage the expense. We hired a vehicle and rushed towards the hospital. Before an hour, we returned with the vehicle. Kaka was no more.

We placed the dead body supine on the front yard. The immediate return of the vehicle had sent the news to the villagers. They started gathering one after another.

Brother Balaram broke down into tears. I bit my lower lip, and tried to say something but words betrayed me. Kaki had no one in this vast world to take care of and share the time ahead.

Someone blew the conch, and more people poured in. There was no relative; all were acquaintances from the neighborhood. Every eye watered to the brim. Kaki’s eyes were fixed on the sky, above the western horizon.

Kaki had lost her husband. Sindoor had been wiped off her hair, and the last ray of light from her life had receded. But why was she so apathetic? Why didn’t her heart flinch or flicker? Why were the lips locked so firmly? Was that marriage treachery?

We the mourners set out for the bank of Narad Ganga with the dead body. Kaki followed us. Her very sight made me cross with madness. I thought, ‘Why should you be going? Was the dead man any of your kiths?’

No living son was left, and there was no one from family relationship. So, we found a boy from the same gotra as theirs and readied him for the last fire. The boy got ready for the act. As a pundit chanted his mantra, the boy encircled the pyre with a burning wick in his hand. The mourners, all moved to their cores, stared with forlornness and grief. Their faces were painted with deep sorrows and sympathies. “Life, after all, is nothing but an illusion,” said Brother Balaram to me, as we prepared ourselves to watch one of our dearest relatives subsume into nothingness.

I keenly observed the face of Kaki. The eyes, fixed on the sky until a while ago, were now glued to the dead body on the pyre. I was besieged by a sudden gush of sympathy: ‘Kaki, you have no one left with you now!’

My earlier anger had receded and I was calm. In fact, if Kaki had no love left in her heart for her man, why would she walk hitherto, barefoot? Yet, I asked Brother Balaram, “Shouldn’t she be crying? I see no single drop of tear in her eyes.”

“Not always necessary. Say she’s great; she can hold tears which we all cannot,” said Brother Balaram. I was forced into deeper contemplations: ‘O, how much her heart could be burning! How could we know the real world of her inside—something that was stopping her from crying! Those who talk express themselves share the pains and attain catharsis of the same. Those who do not are seldom understood.’

But who was stopping Kaki from talking or crying?

I was cross again. Again I saw red everywhere.

But who had cut Kaki’s heart open and seen the wounds? Only seen facts do not make up the whole of reality.

I cooled down again.

The boy torched the pyre from the mouth of the corpse—as the ritual demanded—and soon, flames cloaked Kaka. I turned towards Kaki. She was standing there—unmoved, imbecile and apparently unfeeling.

Fire rose in flickers, and the flames almost touched the sky. Kaki swooned a little. More flames rose, and she moved nearer to the pyre. Other mourners watched the development with fascination.

“She has gone mad. Watch her; she can jump into the flames,” warned Mrs. Karki, a neighbor.

I was startled. Could it be true that she was mad? I had seen the mad ones gibber a lot. That man, Robin—oh, how much he chattered! When Buddhiman was reported to have gone nuts, he scaled across the streets, singing in the highest of his tenors. But Kaki had uttered no word for the last many, many years. No, she couldn’t have gone mad. But, should every mad person be necessarily gibbering?

The pyre was all but flames now from all the directions. Kaki was now quite near to the burning corpse. Mrs. Karki shouted again, “Young men, stop her for moving further. See, the mad woman is about to jump into the flames.”

Lok and Mani, two young men, volunteered to stop her. Lok had hardly touched her when Kaki gave him a powerful kick and sent him rolling on the stony bank of Narad Ganga. She moved further inward and was now at a burning distance. She stood erect with a start, looked at the flames for some time with strange blankness and wailed out in a deafening pitch, “Aah! I’ve no one left now!”

The more the flames rose, shriller grew her cry. The mourners were rendered speechless. No one dared to console Kaki. I looked at her with looks of wonder; there were tears in her eyes—real tears, flowing down in torrents! In fact, I saw a flooded river there.

As she wept, she started uttering some words too: “All’s gone; all’s gone! Off you are now! I’m undone; I am killed.”

Kaki cried for a long, long time. The pyre was reduced to cinders. Nothing of the corpse was left on the river bank now.

Kaki woke up from her place, looked left and right, and came and stood by my side. I caught her hand and said, “Kaki!” She gave me her hand. After all, those were the same hands that caressed me with love some nine years ago. Oh, they were like my mother’s hand. They had the same tenderness. Kaki!

After the rites were over, the mourners took bath in the river and got ready to return. Kaki and I too cleaned ourselves and walked with others, homewards. She was not shedding a drop of tear now. All she was doing was walk, pacing up with others, without a word.

I was irate again. I wanted her to mourn more, and weep more. She was facing unimaginable darkness, and was standing without any support. The little tears she shed would not suffice. I thought, ‘The play is over now. You had to show-off to the mass, and you did that. Why should you be crying anymore?’

We reached Kaki’s home. Cherry had blossomed in the front yard, and a tantalizing fragrance emanated from the boughs. The mourners left one after another, leaving a word or two of ritualistic sympathy. I and Brother Balaram made Kaki sit on a mat at the porch, and started planning for the thirteen-day ritual.

“Bhai! There’s hardly anyone that cried as much as Kaki did in life,” Brother Balaram said to me. His voice was full of pity.

“I knew her ever since she was a child. Her parents married her off when she was fourteen. Fire blazed their home, and nothing of their possessions was spared. She went from house to house with the fringe of her shawl spread, begging stuffs. Two sons and a daughter born in consecutive years, added to her plight. When they came of age, cholera and such other minor, preventable diseases, claimed them one after another.”

His lips trembled and his sobs almost smothered his throat. I came to know, three kids had died before Antaré and Kanchho were born. Brother Balaram bit his lower lip and turned skyward, trying to screen the recalcitrant tears from me. I do the same whenever I am moved to tears and I have to hide them.

“While he was still a working man, Kaka caught cancer. The little saving they had now went away for his treatment. And that too went all in vain.”

Brother Balaram melted again. I wanted to fish some more secrets from him.

“I saw creditor come and stage their carmagnole at their yard almost every day. How much tear can human eyes hold? If it flows every day, the eyes go dry sooner or later. Blow after blow, when a heart is battered by hardship every day, it goes tanned like leather, and it pains not, even if you prick it with a pin’s eye.”

I didn’t say anything in reaction. I could neither nod, nor refute.

“They had hoped that recruited in the army now, Antaré would earn and clear the debts. But he was killed in an encounter, you know. You were the one who broke the news first, weren’t you?”

“I was,” said I and remained mum for a long time. I didn’t like to recall the day. I wanted to forget the shop and the setting. It was a traumatic thing.

“When Antaré’s corpse was set ablaze, she had wept in the same manner. We rushed her to the hospital when she fainted. She came round only after she was given two cylinders of oxygen.”

I recalled the face of Kaki I had seen that day, and compared it with Uncle Baralam’s report. The two were set apart by a universe. I concluded: ‘I never understood Kaki!’

“Kancho died not many days after he started driving a truck. Kaka was relegated to bed soon after. Relatives came and shared the pain for some time, but when hardships linger, hearts turn nonchalant, you know. Some even remarked, ‘The witch ate up the whole family.’”

‘There are many mothers we have not understood at all,’ I thought.

“Today, she emptied all her tears. She will never again shed them, perhaps. No more tears are left in her eyes, I think,” said Brother Balaram, and went into a long spell of silence. Far away, the hills stood nonchalantly. I was busy forcing my eyes to imprison all the teardrops that had lined up on my eyelids.

Later, I told the story to my uncle. He said, “Impossible! Impossible! It’s film-like: all kids dying in a row, and the husband following! Like a tale-tell! Can a mother help crying, when her sons die? And, do tears ever deplete? I congratulate you for your creativity, but I beg your pardon. It’s a lie, out and out.”

I had no words to counter his allegations. In fact, I also consider film-like tales hard to believe. But I can say only one thing for sure: Brother Balaram is still alive!

 —o—