[The story is edited to meet
foolsparadise's suggestion. Thank you sir. Your tip made a lot
of sense to me. The changes are in the second chapter (that starts with "The moment Arjun opened the door") and the fouth chapter (that starts with "Though they were not sworn in with any fanfare"). Thank you again. ]
A REBEL, A MOTHER, A WIFE – A STORY Nirmala pushed two logs into the firewood inlets of the clay built cooking hearth, ‘chulo’. Bending her upper body closer to the firewood and tilting her head, she gently blew on the fire that was dying down. Her eyes felt the irritation when she caught a quick burst of smoke from the suddenly ignited logs. Like a music conductor in fast motion, by rhythmically swaying her right hand, she tried to dissipate the smoke, to modest avail.
Denied immediate departure by the only aperture in the kitchen, a small window transversely across the chulo wall, the smoke aimlessly roamed around the room. Teary eyed and a little suffocated, Nirmala needed a breather, so did her lungs. She quickly pulled the logs towards her and removed the iron pan, ‘taapke’, from the left cooking pot-hole of the chulo. Ignoring the dirt that her Sari collected from the clay floor, she slid back without lifting her hip, and sat down on the straw carpet cushion of wheat, ‘gundri’.
While she waited for the smoke to clear up, she sniffed the ghee aroma of maseura curry in the taapke and started to drool over her own cuisine. The temptation was so unbearable that she treated herself by swallowing saliva.
Once the flame ran out of its stamina, she put the taapke back on the same cooing pot-hole for five more minutes. She looked around and grabbed a tall steel cup, the only utensil that was reachable to her, and poured some curry and a piece of maseura into it.
“Arjun,” she screamed, wiping the beads of sweat on the forehead with her blouse.
A boy in his late teen, with a face as blank as a diary of a blind man, walked to the kitchen and stood next to a wooden pillar that supported the roof. “I am here,” he said. The intonation in his voice was as flat. His presence made the pillar look less stiff.
“This smoke,” she said coughing, “Get me that ‘Karuwa’.”
The boy passed her a brass pot with a lady-like curves and a kettle-like spout. She poured some water on her open fisted palm from the karuwa and repeatedly sprinkled on the fire. When the fire was completely put out, she handed him the steel cup and said, “Take a nibble and tell me if it’s done. Saag and rice are ready.”
Arjun drank the curry from the cup before digging out the maseura piece from the bottom. As soon as he took the first bite, he said, “It’s done.”
“Gadhaa, how many times have I told you not to talk with food in your mouth? Don’t do that kind of stuff when you move to Kathmandu. Raman babu makes fun of us even when we are in our best behavior. If you act so boorishly, you’ll become a clown in their house.”
Exposing a traceable shade of despair, Arjun’s face betrayed his reserved emotions when he heard the word Kathmandu. He, however, chose not to verbalize his impulse. Nirmala changed the topic when she saw the stain in his face brought upon by his awareness of future adjustments. “Get me your plate,” she said, consciously shifting to present.
Arjun reached for a steel plate that lay on top of a pile of firewood logs in the opposite corner of the kitchen. Before handing the plate to Nirmala, he cleaned it by pouring down water from the same Karuwa and shook it off to drain the water.
He sat on the gundri on his knees, with his buttocks rested on his heel. Nirmala nitpicked when she saw his posture, “Sit with your legs wrapped, paleti maarera.”
“I can’t. My anklebone hurts.”
The mother shook her head in disapproval. “You should play more, stretch more, make your body more flexible. You need to make friends to play with.”
Nirmala waited for a few seconds for her son’s response. He opted not to indulge her. She shook her head again before grabbing a pot with an arched bottom with her sari tip. She served three big scoops of rice on his plate. When she tried to serve the fourth, Arjun extended his right hand and objected, “There is more on my plate than in the ‘kasaudi’. Give me some saag.”
Arjun had only taken three bites from the plate, someone knocked on the door. “This late, who could this be? Don’t open the door.” Nirmala panicked.
“Who is there?” Arjun screamed, before Nirmala finished her sentence.
“We are your guests, open the door,” a calm male voice directed.
“Who are you looking for?” Arjun asked walking towards the door.
“We will talk about that when you open the door.”
The mother and son looked at each other. Arjun opened up his both palms as if to ask his mother, “What now?”
“Open the door,” she whispered, “If we won’t, they will. It’s better we open it.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~next~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The moment Arjun opened the door, four men in camouflage uniform and a matching cap barged into the house. Their face was covered with a black bandana. The Velcro red pentagram clung on to their cap, symbolizing what they represented. Except the tallest man who entered the house after everyone else, no other man had his weapon visible.
Once they were inside, the tall man locked the door by placing and pressing a thick wooden bar between two brackets mounted on the wall on each side of the door. The person in the front, who was the smallest in physique, put a hand on Arjun’s chest and asked calmly, “Who else is in the house, vaai?” Arjun recognized his voice; he was the same man who had asked him to open the door.
“Only two of us live here.” There was not a hint of fear or fidgets in Arjun’s face or in his voice.
“We know that. No guests tonight?”
“We never have guests.” He sounded as calm as his questioner, whereas Nirmala looked frozen in spell. She was so nervous that she had forgotten how to be properly scared.
The short man removed the bandana from his face and looked directly at Nirmala. “Didi, there is no need to fear us. We’re not here to harm you.”
Nirmala lifted her face. The moment she made an eye contact with the man, she burst into tears. “Be calm. The tall one there has a gun.” Arjun walked to his mother and whispered.
“Now you have seen my face, do I look any less ordinary than any Ram, Shyam, or Badri? As I said, there is no need to fear us.” The same man reassured Nirmala.
“How dare you tell me not to fear you?” Suddenly Nirmala was too angry to be scared. “You came to my house; you killed my husband with his own baton, and you have the nerve to call me didi. You murderers.”
None of the men felt any urge to react to her reaction. They let her cry her residual grief away. It seemed they anticipated her to snap. One by one, the three men slowly walked towards her. The tall man stood near the door, occasionally peeping outside.
When Nirmala’s wails and cries eased off to her whimpers, another man removed the bandana from his face and sat down right across from her. He said, “Our party did not kill your husband. The government killed your husband for propaganda.”
“Liar,” Nirmala fiercely responded, unflinchingly looking into his eyes.
“Give me a reason, why should I lie to you? People lie out of fear. At this moment, you see a reason for me to fear you?”
“People also lie out of guilt.”
“Point taken. That said … we have no evidence but our words. If our party was responsible for your husband’s death, we would not be back here. We do not revisit our enemy. We live and die by our principles. I know it is easier for you to mistrust us because our enemies have defined us before we could define ourselves.”
The man spoke with such poise and conviction that Nirmala found herself starring at him inquiringly. She wanted to hear more, but defaulted to restraining herself from revealing her curiosity. “I don’t believe you,” she said; she meant, “Tell me more.”
“We are not the government; we don’t have to lie to you. Be assured that our party is not liable for your husband’s blood. He was killed by his employers. He was murdered to underscore our alleged brutality. By the way, your husband is not the only one.”
He then picked out a clean handkerchief from his uniform and offered her. She chose the water from Karuwa.
“The men who killed your father, were they dressed like these men?” Nirmala asked Arjun after rinsing her face. She had already calmed down; though her voice quivered slightly, its overall inflection fell within her normal bandwidth.
“No.”
“How were they dressed?” Twenty-six months after her husband’s death, Nirmala, for the first time, was asking her son questions in regards to that murder.
“I don’t remember exactly, but they were dressed in regular clothes.” Arjun replied, “They also had their faces covered, but with their muffler.”
“Did they talk like these people?”
“They did not say a word. Just before he took his last breath, buwa asked them: “Why?” Maybe buwa recognized them.”
“What did they do afterwards?”
“One man wanted to kill me too, the other two stopped him. They left here calmly.”
None of the four men interrupted while the mother and the son talked.
Only when Nirmala stopped questioning her son, the third man removed the bandana from his face and sat next to the second man. He reiterated for the most part, what the second man had already told her. To Nirmala, the third man sounded most credible, since he was the least articulate of the three. She believed him, because, unlike the other two, he lacked the eloquence to express half-truths in full sentences.
“Then why are you here?” Nirmala eventually asked the inevitable question.
“We are here for dinner,” the second man replied, “If you’re willing to share some.”
There was enough maseura curry in the taapke. Nirmala started cooking another big dekchi full of rice. While she cooked, the three men talked about their party and its purpose. Arjun attended as an interpreter when she did not grasp some of their lingo. They were so persuasive that, by the time the kasaudi started making the swishing sound of boiling rice, she was more or less convinced that their party had nothing to do with her husband’s death. By the time the rice was ready, she appeared sympathetic to the party she loathed just half an hour ago.
The men ate, as though they were not there to eat, but to participate in an eating contest. The tall man in particular had an appetite of a pregnant whale. Every bite he stuffed into his generously accommodating mouth was as big as a soiled diaper of an overfed baby. When the four ravenous men finished maseura and saag quickly, the tall one relished his last plate of rice with just salt, green chilies, and six slices of uncooked radish.
After eating, the men sat quietly, every now and then, preaching their hosts on how things should be. Distressed by the presence of four strange men that late in the evening, Nirmala cautiously phrased her excuse, “I wish I had enough space for you to stay here overnight.”
“We don’t intend to spend the night here,” the short man replied. He then slyly made an encoded eye contact with the tall man.
The tall man, who had not talked much until then, stood up and said, “Your son is coming with us. He needs to even the score for his father.”
Nirmala turned pale and collapsed on the floor. Arjun ran to her, lifted her head and started to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The short man tapped on Arjun’s shoulder and said, “That is not necessary. Let me.”
When Arjun stood and moved back couple of steps, the short man trickled some water from the steel cup into Nirmala’s mouth. A long minute passed by before she regained her senses.
“Please spare me my son.” When she opened her eyes, she begged, her palms pressing each other and all 10 fingers pointed upwards, aligned toward the tall man’s eyes.
“We are not here to bargain.” The unsympathetic tall man rebuffed her curtly.
“He is just 18. He is going to Kathmandu for his college. He is a very smart kid. He has his entire future ahead of him.”
“You have been a good host to us. You treated us with respect. You fed us. Please don’t make this more unpleasant than it needs to be. We want to leave quietly.” The first man, the most ambassadorial of the four, picked his words carefully.
Nirmala was convinced that they were not leaving without her son. “Then take me too. Nobody wants the revenge more than I do.” She proposed.
The tall man was just about to dismiss her; the short man raised his hand, gesturing him to keep quiet. “How old are you?” He asked Nirmala.
“Thirty-four.”
The man began counting on his knuckles. “So, you had him when you were 15?”
“I was 16.”
“You are a very beautiful woman. I am not just saying it; you sure are an attractive woman. You are still young. Anyone will marry you. You can start a second life, could be a very fulfilling life.”
“Please take me with you,” Nirmala pleaded, “I will do whatever is expected of me. Don’t separate me from my son.”
“We promise you will get to meet him once every six months. He will continue his studies with us.”
“Having listened to you all evening, I want to join your party because I believe your cause.”
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The four men, Arjun, and Nirmala left the house shortly after Two O’clock in the morning. They walked through a narrow alley that spread laterally along a river below. Using their hands to shield themselves from hedges and shrubs, they followed each other’s footsteps on the pitch-dark trail. Their labored silence was punctuated by the rushing sound of the river. As though the lip of the alley at all points was equidistant to the river, the sound remained monophonic.
The third man led the way with a flashlight. He was followed by Arjun, the short man, Nirmala, the second man, and the tall man walked behind everyone else with another flashlight. The men adhered to a distinct pattern to their turn of phrase. When they were at Nirmala’s house, they only talked about their party and its purpose. When they were on the road, they did not talk much, but when they did, they only talked about the road itself. For three hours, “watch out,” was the most uttered phrase.
They walked for three hours before taking a 15-minute break at the base of a steep hill, duly named, ‘Thaado Veer’. Since their destination was only the beginning of the path they did not choose, neither Nirmala nor Arjun asked them how far they were from it.
Upon witnessing the emergence of the first pre-dawn light, they started climbing the hill. Once they were at the top, they continued on a ridge trail until they arrived at a camp that was protected by barbed wires. Three young men, who were dressed the same way as the other four, were guarding the entrance with AK-47 rifles. About 150 yards away from the men, on top of a poorly built roofed shelter, flew a red hammer-and-sickle flag.
“Laal salaam, comrade,” said the short man with a pumped fist.
“Laal salaam,” replied two of the three guards. The third guard asked, “Password?”
“Laogai.”
“Laal salaam, comrade.” Though the third guard’s response was late, his was the most genuine and discreet. He quickly opened the gate built with bamboos and wires.
When he saw bewildered Nirmala and nonchalant Arjun in civilian clothes, one of the other two guards asked, “New freedom fighters?”
“Yes, they are new additions to our cause.”
The questioner hailed, “Welcome warriors. This is our war, this is people’s war.” His preset words sounded so robotic and unconvincing that his brainwashing did not seem to have required much washing.
“Write down their names and info,” embarrassed by the awkward exhibition of their party’s catchword, the third guard, who seemed to be in charge quickly handed him the assignment.
“These comrades will take care of you,” the short man told Nirmala. The four men walked away leaving Nirmala and Arjun at the access post.
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Though they were not sworn in with any fanfare, with a new oath came a new name. Nirmala metamorphosed into Comrade Shanti and Arjun was sterilized to being Comrade Barsaat. As days passed by, life as a freedom fighter felt anything but free. They were not given any specific tasks. New recruits like Nirmala and Arjun did not understand how the chain of command was officiated. The orders they received were usually ambiguous and ad hoc. The cost of their uncertainty was compensated by a meager amount of 150 Rupees per month. The mother-son duo quickly learned that their survival was largely depended on their own sweat and toil.
Dress codes were assigned merely for symbolism, not for regulation. Nirmala usually wore kurtaa surwaal with visible red flashes on her kurtaa. Arjun wore pants and shirt, with a symbolic red pin hanging on the right lapel of his shirt.
Neither Nirmala nor Arjun was drafted to the army wing of the party. Combat trainings were only given to the army wing. Though their rubber flip-flops did not quite simulate the imposing reverberation from the soldiers’ boots in an army parade, the PLA cadres marched with swagger next to the UPF members of the party’s political wing.
Most of the women Nirmala met at the camp were half her age. Nearly every one of them belonged to the cultural squad, and they carried an eerily synchronous vision of future Nepal. They were too young to know much on any subject matter or about life in broad-spectrum. Yet, they conveyed identical thoughts on how the future Nepal should be. And they all used exactly the same words, with the same format of facial animation, to express those virtually unreal ideas. Most of the time, they passionately waited for the day when gender equality solved all corruptions, road infrastructures, and drinking water problems. Other times, when they were hungry, they walked behind men cadres from one house to another, looking for food.
Nirmala’s fortunes changed soon. When she first arrived at the camp near Thaado Veer, one of the tasks assigned to her was of rearing goats and sheep. When a sub-regional bureau officer, Comrade Nirman, saw her in the field one day, he placed her in the medical team. She was then trained by International Red Cross. Within weeks, she started treating the injured guerrillas.
Nirmala started moving from one camp to another. Most of the camps were temporarily built, in facilities like local government offices and community homes. In some places where the party had their stronghold, a few camps even resembled a picnic spot. Permanent camps like the one near Thaado Veer, where most of the trainings took place, usually were built far away from the general population.
In the beginning, Nirmala did not figure out why Comrade Nirman was so generous to her. Except her face, she did not have any other qualifications. But as soon as he started to visit her frequently, she understood his motive. She did not know how to shun him. He was both powerful and nice. She liked him as a fellow rebel, but beyond that, she had already chosen to be a mourning widow for the rest of her life.
The awkwardly romantic Comrade Nirman did not give up easily. Though he longed for a little insurgent romance, he did not always choose romantic topics to share with her.
“I think for the women at the camps, the worst thing is going to the toilet,” Comrade Nirman said on one occasion, and without giving Nirmala enough time to be uncomfortable, he added, “I know of at least three women, who fled the camp just because of the toilet situation. I can’t help you much there. You will have to use the field like everyone else. But if I find some toilet papers in our stock, I will bring a roll for you. It feels much better than the regular paper.”
Comrade Nirman was always eager to lend a hand to Nirmala. When he could not literally lend a hand, he would still offer a roll of paper.
Nirmala, with the help of some other top-level officers, made sure she was not separated from her son. Mostly, they worked either in the same camp, or in the nearby camps. Arjun soon became one of the prized recruits. He was smart. Not only he could read English newspapers and pamphlets, most often, he even understood what they meant. Besides, he was mechanically handy. The news of Arjun’s aptitude spread quickly and no less than a District Military Commissions head, Comrade Toran, personally put him in charge of Weapons Repair Unit. That was one of the more coveted jobs at the camps.
Nirmala and her son started living the lives that her husband, who was a Police Constable, never envisioned for his family. When she did not pause to ponder her life in time units, Nirmala was at least content to be together with her son. But when she did, she woke up in the morning more sleepy than when she went to bed. Once, while treating a 16-year-old combatant with gunshot wounds in the leg, she slapped him on the face, screaming, “What are you doing here? This is not your fight. You should be preparing for the SLC.” Fortunately, the other two attendants in the room were as merciful.
Arjun never showed any emotions. In the vein of his own self in the outside world, he was without a friend inside as well. Despite his civic shortcomings, owing to his diligence and intelligence, other rebels who worked with him trusted and respected him. As a repair technician, having had access to guns, he started learning and enjoying practice shootings. For the first time in his life, he had developed a hobby. Though Nirmala wished for some other diversions, she was happy that he had found something that he enjoyed.
Nirmala sometimes wished her son was not as protective of her. She did not understand why he did not trust anyone in the camp. He always accompanied her when she went to bathe. He would wait hiding behind a huge boulder while she bathed in a creek nearby. When they stayed in temporary camps, he would guard her while she slept. Sometimes she craved for some privacy from her overprotective son.
~~~~~~~~~~~~next ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For more than an hour, the rain was pouring down in torrents. There was no hint of nature unclogging the dark clouds that had blanketed every inch of what used to be a dry blue sky. Comrade Reshma was completely soaked from head to toe. As she helplessly ran for the shelter, the synthetic soles on her shoes cost her sense of balance causing her to slip.
Sparked off by a womanly bashfulness, she quickly stood up and looked around. Only when she did not see anyone, she turned her arm and examined deep bruises on her right elbow. The raindrops on impact only worsened the pain on her gaping wound.
“It must hurt,” Nirmala said, gently applying Neosporin ointment on Comrade Reshma’s wounded elbow.
“Saying this hurts will be an insult to my eyes that have seen far worse.”
“You are a soldier?”
“I used to be one. But then I also used to be a wife, a daughter, a sister. I can’t claim to be any of those now. So I guess, I can’t claim to be a soldier either. When we willfully give up, we lose the title, don’t we?”
For the first time since she left home, Nirmala heard what she always wanted to hear—a rational person talk rationally. In the camps, she had only heard rational people talk irrationally, or irrational people talk the only way they can. She pulled her chair next to Comrade Reshma, and levering herself on her elbows, she looked up to her face and whispered, “Are you unhappy here?”
“I am unhappy. It’s not a question of here or there,” Comrade Reshma replied, and then pointing to another corner of the room, she summed up, “I am unhappy here, and if I walk over there, I will be unhappy there.”
“You miss your family?” Nirmala simplified the complexity in Comrade Reshma’s response. She was too happy to find someone willing to admit of being unhappy.
Comrade Reshma looked into Nirmala’s eyes. When Nirmala reciprocated, their four eyes moistened in unison, condoling and consoling each other. Even before a drop of tear fell out of their eyes, they sensed they were on the verge of earning a rare friendship.
In the weeks that followed, the friendship grew more meaningful and stronger. They were not dreamy enough to fancy where they wanted to be, but they silently agreed where they did not want to be. Then, when they were together, they did not even mind being where they did not want to be.
Theirs was a friendship built not in the preparation of hopes, rather, by means of exempting hopes. They never dwelled on their past to make the present feel gloomier. And they never made a contingent plan for the future, because it required untying knots to their past and overcoming constraints to their present.
When they felt like laughing, Comrade Nirman’s antics served as the source of their material. When they wanted to cry, they shut their ears and listened to each other’s eyes. And, when they wanted to argue, Arjun was the source of conflict; while the mother complained how detached her son was, Comrade Reshma played his advocate.
Then one afternoon, out of the blue, Comrade Reshma surprised Nirmala. “I don’t want to risk what we have by asking your story, but if I have your ears, I will share mine.”
“Will it make me miserable?”
“No more than you already are.”
“Will you make me cry?”
“I am sure you have seen and heard worse.”
“Ok then. I don’t know why my heart is pounding.”
“Let me surprise you first … I have a college degree. I used to be a teacher.”
“I knew you were educated. The way you talk, the way you say things, you sound educated. You sound nothing like me.” Nirmala stopped when she noticed her friend attune in the mode of a storyteller. As soon as Nirmala stopped, Comrade Reshma began.
“The moment I saw his picture I didn’t like him. He was not ugly, but he looked cold and intense. I had never seen a forehead that unhappy. I wasted no time to say no. But my parents insisted. Our ‘lami’ insisted. His mother insisted. So did he, I heard. He was a lawyer who hated losing. I was a teacher who hated failing persistent students regardless of how weak they were.
“It was a miserable marriage. He did not care how to be a woman’s man. He had pampered himself so much he did not understand ‘no’. In the middle of the night when I was deep asleep, or when I was down with 100-degree fever, he always got what he wanted. On the night of ‘Teej’, after I fasted the whole day for his longevity, he came home late in the night and he got what he wanted. I will never forget how that alcohol breath felt inside my mouth after 22 hours of fasting.
“Then when he had a peg too many, he beat me. Every time he hit me, he reminded me how I made him feel when I first rejected him. He held a grudge so strong I felt he married me for revenge. Until I knew him, I didn’t know hate could be such a sincere passion.
“Nine months after we were married, I accidentally found out he was secretly working for the party. He confessed. Then he used his macho tactic to threaten me, by vowing to harm my parents if I opened my mouth. A month later, two men knocked on our door late in the evening. They told him he was outed by a snitch. We packed and left that night.
“He did not need to, and nobody in the party wanted to waste a lawyer, but he chose to be a soldier. Only I knew why. He had a personal vendetta to settle with an inspector he knew. He dragged me with him to become a soldier. We were trained along with 15, 16-year-old kids. Many were younger than my students. You have seen the quality of people here; they made him a Battalion Commissar as soon as we finished the training. In the very first clash he led, he was shot in the head. He died hardly 10 paces away from me.
“When I saw him die, I felt an odd vibe in my spine. I felt tickled, not stung. I forgot to grieve until I saw a cadre curiously starring at me. To pretend to mourn for that man was as tough as being abused by him. What a quirk of fate! I came here to fight alongside my enemy, against the enemy I did not have. Every time I put on my guerilla fatigues for the drills, I’d tell myself, I should be wearing this when I am alone with him.”
Comrade Reshma did not stop there. She told Nirmala many other incidents and tales with no morals but many regrets. Nirmala held her breath until Comrade Reshma finally said, “I have listed my life’s inventories. You want to trade?”
“You are such a liar. You promised you won’t make me cry.”
Minutes later, Nirmala found herself sharing her story. Until her husband’s murder, hers was a happy story that included a loving husband, and, though aloof, a very smart son.
Comrade Reshma was shocked when she heard Nirmala’s husband was a police constable. “I have never come across a policeman’s family here. This is very strange.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~next ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Laal salaam,” Nirmala pumped her fist when she saw three male cadres waiting for her. Like a fist of a frustrated mother running after her four-year-old, Nirmala’s thumb, instead of being on the top, hid beneath her clenched fingers. A palpably feminine feel to her salutation bared no pride; instead, it displayed a trace of shame.
That night, the three male comrades, Nirmala, Comrade Reshma and Arjun were working as motivators, walking from house to house, preaching and convincing people. They called themselves propaganda activists. Party members carried that task on a part-time basis. Some did it because they believed in their cause, for others it brought free dinner.
After a long night, the six people decided to split into two houses. Nirmala, Comrade Reshma, and Arjun stayed at a house of an old couple in their late sixties. The other three men, after giving Arjun a pistol for protection, went to spend the night in another house.
Arjun took the empty bedroom of the old couple’s grandson in the upper floor. Nirmala and Comrade Reshma slept in the room downstairs.
Panic-stricken, Nirmala woke up late in the night when she felt a hand inside her Kurtaa. “What are you doing?” She whispered when she realized whose hand was feeling her.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Comrade Reshma repeated, her voice trembled with fear, guilt, shame, and passion.
“This is wrong.”
“I know. Why do you think I am almost crying here? I know this is wrong, because at this moment it just feels right.”
Nirmala did not make any effort to remove Comrade Reshma’s hand from inside her body. She chose the words instead. “You are confused. For god’s sake, this is not what you want.”
“I am wrong, but I am not confused.”
“God meant it to be between a man and a woman.”
“Men don’t get it. They don’t know how to touch us, when to touch us, where to touch us. They don’t even know when not to touch us. They go by their schedule. For them, it’s all about pleasing themselves, not us. For the first time in my life, I am not faking. Feel me. I am feverish.”
“No, I won’t feel you. What gives you an idea that I will? This is wrong. You are my only friend in the whole world. I feel like my sister is desiring me. I want you to remove …”
Before Nirmala could finish her sentence, the room lit up when someone quickly opened the door. Standing in the door was Arjun with a lantern in his left hand and a pistol in his right hand. Comrade Reshma’s hand was still inside Nirmala.
“This is not what you think it is.” Nirmala started crying when she saw her son starring at them.
“You whore! You let everyone’s hand inside you.”
“Paagal Gadhaa, what did you say? Alachhini Baulaha, where did you get that idea? You will rot in hell for calling me that word. Pisaach!”
Arjun fired two shots. His target-shooting practice worked. He did not need to waste another bullet. The blood from Nirmala’s and Comrade Reshma’s open skulls completely soaked their pillows.
~~~~~~~~~~~~next ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Devoid of hobbies and friends, or any other resources to redeem his doldrums, the 16-year-old Arjun lay on his bed in silence—playing ‘who blinks first’ contest with the ceiling. His mind was floating away from the vicinity of where his body lazed in stillness. He seemed wishing for his present to move forward, except, in his eyes, there was neither an impression of nostalgia of the past nor any haste of anticipation into the future.
When he felt, there was no self-curing therapy to his ennui, he bent his body and grabbed one of the three tennis balls from underneath the bed. He started tossing the ball to the ceiling every 10 seconds. The ‘thud’ sound the ball made soon blended with the monotony of the room, failing to distract him from reminding himself that he is the source of his boredom.
A small picture of King Birendra hung across from Arjun’s bed on the wall that separated his room from his parents’. When he got tired of hitting the ceiling, Arjun threw the tennis ball against the wall. The ball landed an inch away from the king’s picture. Moments later, in a perfect slow motion, the king’s picture fell down to the ground, on top his school uniform.
Arjun got up from his bed to hang the picture back on the wall. He was surprised to see a folded paper poster of a Hindi movie ‘Hum Aap ke hai koun’ right behind where the king’s picture hung. As soon as he felt the poster with his fingers, he deciphered its function on that wall. It was glued there to hide a hole in the wall.
Coerced by his teen curiosity, Arjun could not help but tear the movie poster with his fingers. His mind did not immediately derive the rationale that he would be peeking to his parents’ bedroom because of his act. He realized that only after he peeped through the wall and saw his parents in their room.
Arjun saw his father, Gopal, being amorous with his wife, Nirmala. Like two copulating cobras, their legs were wrapped around each other. His right hand was inside her blouse, while his left hand caressed her exposed buttocks. He heard them moaning softly.
Arjun quietly picked the king’s picture from the floor and hung it back on the wall. He walked to his bed, put a pillow over his head and lay on his stomach. When the sound of his heartbeats interfered with his wishes to be quiet, he stood up and walked to the kitchen.
He came back to the room with a sickle in his hand. He reached underneath his bed and grabbed the two remaining tennis balls. He put all three balls on the floor next to each other. He held the sickle by placing its handle between his right big toe and the middle toe. Then, one by one, he shredded the balls with the sickle.
When Arjun was 13, a Norwegian tourist had given him those three tennis balls in a tightly sealed plastic can. Three years later, the balls looked as new. It took him only minutes to cut them into dozens of pieces.
That night he pretended to be sick and did not leave his room. Nirmala served him the food in his room. When she tried to feel his forehead to check for fever, he did not let his mother touch him.
The next day, Gopal came home around 6:30 in the evening. He put his baton behind the door, removed his uniform cap, unbuttoned his grey khaki shirt, and walked to the kitchen to freshen up. Nirmala was not at home. A self-taught seamstress, she was helping subba’s wife sew curtains for her new house.
Right next to ‘agenu’, in the middle of the kitchen floor, was a rectangular basin that served as sink. There was no tap or faucet attached on the wall, only a drain that channeled used water. Gopal squatted down on his toes in front of the basin, inserted his index finger on his lower jaw and removed spit tobacco, ‘khaini’, from his mouth. He poured some water on his hand from a plastic mug and started gargling. He turned back when he heard footsteps behind him.
Arjun hit Gopal on the head with his baton so hard that Gopal fell on the floor. He hit his father on the head three more times; each blow was harder than the previous one. Soon the entire kitchen floor was filled with Gopal’s blood.
Before he took his last breath, Gopal looked at his son in shock and asked, “Why?”
Arjun starred at his father’s dead body for five full minutes. He threw the baton on the floor and calmly walked outside. Once he was outside his home, he started screaming like a mad man, “Amaa, they killed him with his own baton. Amaa, they killed him with his own baton.”
Arjun ran all the way to subba’s house screaming the same words again and again. By the time he reached subba’s house, 17 people, curious to know the details, were running behind him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~next ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Arjun did not pause to argue himself why he was running. He did not seem to have the desire to escape the verdict, or the vigor to confront the motive. Yet, for an hour and a half, he was panting, moaning, and running, as if he knew of a destination for repentance where sins diluted into due karma. His blood-soaked shirt resembled one of a busy butcher on a busy Saturday morning. The sweat, however, had completely wiped the blood on his face that splattered from Comrade Reshma’s and his mother’s skulls.
When he finally stumbled into a pile of bricks, tripped and fell, he sat down on the ground with his legs wrapped around each other. His anklebone did not seem to hurt him. “Whore,” he whispered, “You let everyone’s hand inside you.” He repeated the words again and again. He stopped upon realizing that the repetitions did not assemble themselves into the truth. He sat in silence for a minute when he saw a path from where he could escape.
He stood up and put the muzzle of his gun to his chin, and slowly moved his pointing finger up and down on the trigger. He closed his eyes and asked himself, “Not to be born normal, how is that my fault?”
Last edited: 16-Oct-07 09:38 PM
