Human relations

The world simmered as Madan looked through the smoke rising from the fire that cremated his mother. After being bed-ridden for illness the doctored called old age for more than a month, she passed away silently god knows at what time. Shweta, her daughter had slept in the same room to be at her service if she wanted anything in the night or if she wanted to go to toilet. When she woke up, her mother’s face was brighter than it had been the other day. She had been brightening every day since last week and could speak. They thought she was recovering. She also recognized everyone then on but still refused to see her husband to whom she had been married for fifty five years. She didn’t allow him to enter the room they have shared for all those years since she got to bed, helpless and pale. No one understood what had happened to her that she denied her husband by whose side she had stood all her life. Hari, her husband had shifted himself to his grandson’s room who had been to hostel and wouldn’t come home for next three months.
It was something no-one understood why Uma behaved so mysteriously yet very cruelly to her husband. If he sneaked into a room when she was being sipped the soup, she would stop the next feed. If he came in her sight she would turn away and just shout ‘Go, Go, I don’t want to see you’. They tried to calm her but nothing would soothe her unless he was out of her sight. When she was in sleep or out of her conscious she would babble about the year of her marriage, how her in-laws treated her and how she could never satisfy her implacable mother-in-law, how she cried before her husband. She would remember the hard times when they suffered a huge loss when their grocery store turned to ashes in fire and how her husband consoled her saying everything will be fine soon. She remembered how once her only son had nearly died of pneumonia and how the witch doctor had advised her that the case was to be seen by doctor. She said how much she was indebted to the witch doctor for saving her son. She would often remember the time Shweta was born and how she loved to dance in the courtyard.
Shweta had been with her since her mother was bed-ridden. She nursed her, ensured that her bed was clean and to be there during her natural urges. More than love for her mother, it was the greed for heaven whose comfort and luxury will be bestowed upon if she cared for her ailing parents, she had dedicated herself entirely to her mother’s service. She has been a devoted protégé of a saint who told stories from holy books and who said he can guide people abode heaven if they listened to him and practiced his preaching. He always told the greatest route to heaven was through the selfless service to one’s parents and there she was on her selfless service. But as she dedicated herself entirely to her mother’s service she had forgotten her Guru, the holy saint. The incoherent monologue of her mother had made her feel that whether she gets heaven or not she ought to take care of her mother because she had undertaken so much pain to raise her and her brother. In this one month she had really fell in love with her mother and only she knows how much she had wished to see her mother back to her normal life. The monologues also made her clear that her mother was not ignoring her father out of hatred, she had learnt her mother still loved her father probably more than she ever did. But she could never know why she was despising him, ignoring him, resenting him.
At the age seventy-three, Hari never resented the wishes of his wife he was married to at the age of 18. He abided by whatever she wanted like a child. He seemed to know the reason behind the changed behavior of his wife. He would watch her hiding behind the windows but his concealment was more from the world than from his wife. If he found her alone asleep he would go near her, moved his wrinkled hand over her forehead as if he were trying to soothe her, as if he were trying to share the agony his ailing wife was going through. If someone came he would just walk away as if he had come to the room casually to pick something. He talked lesser and one would rarely see him without holding cigarette in his hand. He avoided eye contacts with everyone. He would always stay at home not even go out for a walk in evening to meet his old friends to chat about anything. However he continued his morning walk but he returned soon. He was worried but somber. He rarely exchanged words with his son, daughter, daughter-in-law and the house maid.
The day before Mira died, Hari had stolen a look of her but she caught him. This time she didn’t resent, she looked at him with her frail eyes and dropped a tear. He saw it, Shweta saw it and so did Madan his son. May be Mira wouldn’t have resented if he had gone to her, sat by her and held her hand which he had so much wanted all this month but he didn’t. The drop of tear barred him from approaching her. He didn’t sleep that night but he didn’t even go to the room where his wife was. The next day she was dead, he behaved as if he knew it and was actually waiting for it. He had lost his soul the time he knew what was coming.
Shweta was wailing he stood before her and moved his hand over her head where the hair had already turned gray. He didn’t say a word. Madan was sitting by the body of his mother, looking at her holding the cold hand.
Now they were on the bank of the river. Mira’s existence was slowly vanishing with the smoke and the world simmered. Madan stood by the fire. He remembered the days in his childhood when his leg was broken after falling in a ditch. When he was alone in the room while his mother was busy in the kitchen, his sister assisting the mother and his father still in the grocery, he used to think what if his parents died. He used to get emotional and would shed tears. He used to feel terrified and orphaned. Throughout his childhood he feared the fact that his parents would die one day. He felt really bad to see his mother’s body turn to ashes but this was less easier than the burden of thought of this moment in his childhood. He thought the importance of his parents had dropped after he got married and especially after his son born. His father sat over a small carpet of straw cross legged. His eyes were focused on the burning body but Madan knew he was seeing something else.
The funeral was finished, the world was same. Hari had shifted to his room voluntarily. He had given up smoking the same day his wife was burnt. He rarely came out of the room. He ate little. He needed tea every next hour earlier but now he behaved as if he didn’t know as if there was something like tea existed in the world. The newspaper lay unopened in his table and his bed looked as if no one had slept in it for a long time.
During his childhood, Madan had watched movies where mother protected their child when they did something wrong from the wrath of their father. Madan thought why showed opposite things. In his life he was more afraid of his mother than his father. His father always protected him and even if Mira chided at the children he shouted back at her. Mira always complained that Hari had spoilt the children. When he returned from school he would go to the grocery store and sit on the lap of his father telling him how was his day at school, telling him the colors of news bags of his friends, how his teachers appreciated his sincerity, how his handwriting was better than that of his friends etc. With the passage of time he became closer to his mother than his father. It was not any intentional decision but it just happened. When he used to come to home from his hostel in city he talked less with his father. If his father came to the room where he was talking with his mother he would just stop talking. He never resented his father but was getting awkward before him, till date he does not know the reason. They did talk about so many things but Madan knew something had changed for ever.
Lately they talked still lesser as if they were neighbors. Sometime they talked about politics, business but there was always uneasiness between them. When his mother resented his father he had wanted to sit by his father consoling him, supporting him but he never did. Hari talked with his daughter-in-law, his wife about almost everything but not with Madan as if he didn’t want to embarrass his son who used to feel awkward before his father.
After the death of his mother, Madan would enquire about his father. He liked to know what his father did in the day, what did he eat and if he liked it or not. He once went to his room but found him lying in bed his face turned to other side. He walked out pulling the door slowly behind him. He knew his father was not asleep but wanted to be alone and he felt more awkward. Once while returning home he saw his father on the rooftop looking at the sky as if he were forming some image probably that of his mother. He had learnt by then why his mother resented his father on her last days. She knew she would die and she wanted to disconnect herself from the world. Had her husband been around dying wouldn’t have been easier, she didn’t want to die with a burden. She wanted to believe that she loved no-one, she didn’t want to care for anyone when she died. He thought his father knew this and that is why he had become a different man.
All his life he remembered his mother asking his father to give up cigarette. She always complained about his cigarette and he listened to her smiling but never gave up. He hadn’t seen a cigarette in his hand from the day his mother had died. Now he believed that his father smoked just to irritate his mother, just to listen to her complaints and just to smile.
Madan’s relationship with his wife had just been fine. They took each other for granted. He always came home tired and they talked little. He had altogether forgotten to notice the color of her saree, the new hair style of hers or her makeup. The frequency of their making love had been dwindling. They made love hardly once or twice and this was just a ritual for them. He didn’t resent her either, he thought its in his nature to get tired of relationships fast. His relationship with his wife was similar to his relationship with his father. Many times he fell to sleep long before his wife came to their room after finishing her choirs and the daily TV programs which she was fond of. When he woke up she would have usually busy in the kitchen. Still they talked almost like any other husband wife, knew each other’s preferences and may be loved each other as well.
He remembered his mother complaining her father failing to take care of himself. She would say ‘only after I die, you will know my value’. She had died and may be his father had come to know her value. Once he saw the door of his father not completely closed, one could peep into the room. He looked into the room, his father stood before a big picture of his wife inside a wooden frame. He was looking into the picture without blinking. Drops of tears rolled down his cheek. Madan wanted to rush to his father embrace him saying ‘Papa, do not feel lonely I am here. Tell me what you want. Tell me what I can do to make you feel better’ but he didn’t.
His parents’ happiness knew no bounds when his son was born. He would never forget how their eyes had shed tears of happiness in the passage of hospital. They said that was the happiest day of their lives. His son Mohit grew in the lap of his grandparents. They got him everything he wanted. They protected him when he committed mistakes and Madan and his wife reproached him. He thought his son was being spoilt by too much love and he had decided to send him to the boarding school. He resented going to boarding school. He hated to stay away from his grandparents. His mother cried all the day when Mohit was sent to boarding school, his father had lost the color of his face. He had taken away the happiness from their life and he felt guilty for it. He however was ready to live with guilt than to see his son being spoilt.
Today after seeing his father standing helpless before the photo of his mother he had made a decision. Next day he rang to the boarding school asking if he can withdraw his son from the hostel and dropped him to school everyday. It could have been difficult but the Principal had been his childhood friend who agreed. He just wanted to give life to his father who was already broken. Next evening he brought Mohit back from his hostel, Mohit ran to his grandfather who embraced him as if a falling man holds the only twig as a support. He cried for the first time after the death of his wife. It took a lot of effort for Madan to hold his own tear. That night he made love to his wife without thinking when did he made love last time. This was no ritual, he reclaimed his lost love.

Contradiction

Sirish held the book that had been lying there for more than a week, lying on his dusty table one of which leg was broken and was supported with bricks. When he held the book in his hand, the ashes of cigarette fell to his foot. He didn’t remember who had brought the book in his small shack. He had not read anything for a long time but he didn’t like the smell of the book and dropped it as if he had caught something filthy and abominable. He realized what he had done just now and smiled, it was a smile of self contempt because he had realized he had been in the same trousers for more than a week, his shirt stink. His smile said the book was far better than his body, its smell was a fragrance before the odor of his body.
He had been an unsuccessful writer, then a successful writer, then a lost writer and finally the discovered writer. He had been introvert since he can remember himself. He does not remember having any friends since thirty years, now he was thirty eight years of age. He had a friend in his primary school and Gaurav was his name. He was really very fond of Gaurav. Once when he was eight he woke up scared and shivering. He had a nightmare. He saw two tall men with long white hair clad in long white gown. Their face was expressionless but scary. They were dragging a child by his arm and the child was crying, get him out of the men’s hold. Sirish couldn’t identify who the child was but he knew he knows the child. They were now very far and the child turned to Sirish, his tears had dried in his face but it was very bright face. It was Gaurav. Sirish woke up scared. Next day Gaurav didn’t come to school, the other day the school was closed because Gaurav had died the day before. He had died in his bed and no one knew what had happened to him. Since then Sirish has no friends. Even after thirty years he remembers the dream clearly, he still fears it. He can see that bright face with tears dried on the cheek.
He loved writing, he had been writing for a long time. He didn’t know in his writings he talked to Gaurav, his only friend who was still alive in his thoughts in his sub-conscious. The dream and the event that followed had brought permanent changes in his life. He grew up without any interest, without affection for anyone and indifferent to everything. He had a brother who was two years older than himself and who was too good in everything. He spent all his childhood scribbling things and tearing them fearing someone will read them. He loved reading, books brought before him the world he wanted to see but he feared. He grew up writing stories that always had tragic end, that spoke of loneliness, of vagaries of life, of sadness etc. His parents thought he had no future and were really worried. Once his parents thought about talking to him seriously about his intentions, his objectives and opinions, obviously he won’t speak. He was sixteen then. His father got irritated and yelled ‘you will be able to do nothing, always be a burden, you are sickeningly hopeless’. The next day he left his home without saying a word to anyone.
He wandered around the heartless city of Kathmandu hungry and tired. He worked in a small tavern as a call boy. The owner was a strongly built man and a gay. One day the owner tried to seduce him and he ran away. He worked as a newspaper boy, running with newspaper. Once he showed his stories to the man from whom he bought his newspaper. The man liked it and said he would talk with the publishers if his stories could be posted. His story was published next week and since then he has been writing stories, articles, poems for different papers. Whatever he got was enough to pay for his food, rent, ink and papers after all he never wanted to live a lavish life. He never made any opinion about lavishness, it simply didn’t exist for him. He hated writing in newspapers, magazines, he hated his readers if they ever existed but he had to live.
At the age of twenty-six he thought he had a story that could be converted into a novel. The plot could not be a story, it had to be a novel as there were so many incidents and required so much detail. It took him two years to complete his three-hundred and fifty eight paged novel. When he ended it, he had a feeling of triumph, he didn’t know what had he earned but he knew it was the most wonderful day of his life. He had fallen in love with what he had written, he had fallen in love with the character. It was a story of a revolutionary, who believed in what he fought, for whom he fought. He believed whatever his mentor was doing was for the global cause for the entire man kind unless he discovers how his mentor had misguided him to rise to power. He thought he had presented his character better than anyone had did in the books he had read. He thought it was his revolution. He wanted to show it to the world, for the first time he wanted to get atop a hill and yell at the world about his triumph. He took the manuscript to a publisher who he knew for a long time now and who seemed to have appreciation for his work.
Everyday he would plan how he would make his meeting with the publisher an accident and where should he find him. For over a month he met the publisher more than fifteen times yearning to hear something from him. He always had this stern look and cold smile in his face. He was let down. He had given up hopes. One evening he was sitting on his bed watching a spider knitting its web when a young boy came telling him the publisher wanted to see him. His work was published. 500 copies were printed. A year later they said the book couldn’t be popular. A newspaper had a rave review saying the author was naïve and the plot was too weak. His hatred to the world against the people only grew up. He sought support in alcohol.
Three years after the book was published, it had only sold 200 copies. Four years back, an interview came in a newspaper. The title was hearty tete-a-tete with the national litterateur Mr…. One of the questions asked ‘what do you do in your spare time?’, his reply was ‘I prefer reading books among other things’.
‘What are you reading these days?’
‘Diary of a Professor’
‘Can you name few books you have really appreciated?’
The answer to that question changed Sirish life. The national litterateur mentioned Sirish’s book as one of his favorite. Next week the publisher printed thousand more copies which was sold within three days. The newspaper carried reviews according to which the book was the jewel in contemporary literature; it was simple yet very touching. People wanted to meet him. Press wanted interview, they wanted to know about his background, his source of inspiration. He ran from one place to another before slipping into Indian border. He stayed there for two years, his books were creating waves. It was already awarded few prizes and had become a best seller. They now had the book in university syllabus. He was again a waiter in an Indian hotel, cleaning dishes, scrubbing floor. They found him few months later after his picture was published in a magazine.
Corporate people who produced films came to see him when he refused to see them in posh hotels and restaurants. He was back in Kathmandu in his shack. He didn’t want to write, he had forgotten to hold a pen. Alcohol had weaken him. No-one gave filthy job to a celebrity writer and he was fighting with hunger. Corporate people were pressing him to give them the copyright. They wanted to bring some changes, fit a woman in the character’s life, add some love making scenes. He knew his character will die if film was made the way they wanted it. The novel was the only earning of his life, only thing that made him feel like a human not a filthy insect. He couldn’t see his work being raped but hunger bit him hard and he succumbed. The day he signed the agreement he lost sleep, the dream he had seen at the age of eight was back if he closed his eyes. They gave him less than half of the money they had agreed to pay. He didn’t care, he thought whatever he had could keep him alive for two years and he didn’t expect to live after that. The dreams haunted him again and again but the child didn’t turn his face toward him the way he had done thirty years back. The film released. The character he had portrayed as strong, confident was converted into a chocolate looking young man, who sang songs with his lover. The lover didn’t exist in the novel. He felt his stomach shrink when he saw the hero giggling with his friends, talking about girls, making love. He didn’t watch the complete movie. After a long struggle he fell asleep, there was the same dream. There were fringes in his face, he was scared. This time the boy turned his face, it was the face of eight year’s Sirish. He woke up shivering, drank a glass of water. He feared to go back to sleep but he hated to remember the film. A week later the neighbors complained foul smell coming from his shack, they broke in and the dangling body of Sirish greeted them. It was pale, the eyes protruded and his tongue drooped.

A promise to my daughter

The rain has stopped drumming the roof. The cacophony is back in the street. The day was just regular, boring and hot. I mother of two watches the street with indifference. The street has been same except there are new shops, new buildings and new structures on its side. The sun is same, it still rises in the east completes a semi-circle every day and vanishes to the west. The sky has been same, the drops of rain are same in all these years but still they appear so different. I have come to terms with a life of a housewife now. When I see my daughter cackle and recite her little innocent dreams I feel pity, my childhood has passed to my daughter. I see her living my childhood, the experience of living a life and being a mere spectator to it is a different experience altogether. I have long forgotten the excitement, the curiosity, the dreams of a girl in her early teens but I know they exist. I cannot feel them but I can identify them. My ambition was never expensive in the shallow life of my village. I just wanted to be a teacher, a school teacher because when I was growing up that was the only thing an educated human could do. They said there are doctors and engineers but by the time I saw one the dream of becoming a teacher had grown its root deep and wide. Every day when Sabitri miss came to our class I would place myself in her position, scribbling words in the blackboard, walking across the classroom holding books in hand, telling stories and explaining poems. I felt excited when I would see myself checking the home-works of the students and threatening them with sticks. In home we played school-school and I either had to be teacher otherwise I wouldn’t play. My friends used to get agitated by my stubbornness, so did my brother who also wanted to be a teacher in those games but I would never let anyone steal my role. Finally I started depicting the character and body language of the teacher so well that I never required to quarrel anymore to get my beloved role. Whenever the children played school-school, they would look for me. Knowing I was irreplaceable I would throw tantrums, tell them I have no mood or I have some other works to do and they would frown at me, call me arrogant but still did everything to persuade me. In those games I was living my dreams. I believed a day will come when I will be inside a real class, among my real students giving the real lessons. In those games I was actually practicing for that day. When I played the role of a teacher I forgot I was in a game and assumed it was all real, my friends used to get surprised. They said I might be taken by the rebelling groups for staging the programs they called ‘awareness campaign’ but that would not hold me back. Back then Sabitri miss had started using glasses which meant I had to have one as well. My Grandfather found me one from his old wooden box, it was only frame but I was fine with it.
To be a teacher one had to study get to bigger classes so I labored hard and I was a bright student. Those were similar days except I lived in village and I didn’t know one can choose from so many career options. When I passed the SLC(tenth standard) I was seventeen and I had topped my school. When the results were announced I was very happy, though the school-school game had stopped lot earlier, I still cherished the dream of becoming a teacher. I came home soaked in excitement after hearing the results. Everyone who met me on my way home was surprised and wanted to know what made me so happy but I wanted to tell my parents first. I thought my parents will be delighted with the news. At home I found my parents already in a happy mood I thought somebody else had already told them and cursed that person. Even then I told my father in no lesser excitement but it had little effect on him. He told me he had one another good news. I was married to the son of a local landlord, two months later. They never let me work, they said women from good background didn’t work. I knew it was not a matter of honor, it was the matter of doubt over women. Generations after generations after serving the family, after raising the children, after devoting herself to the dominant husband, after abiding by his unjust regulations women are still under strict scrutiny of the society. Its not the matter of honor, they fear their wives, their daughter-in-law might run away with somebody else or sleep with a stranger. They said people will have a subject for gossip, I knew they felt insecure themselves.
I remember my own growing up, the day when I had come home running to tell about my results. I can see an innocent, delighted girl in sky colored shirt and navy blue skirts with red ribbons tying her hair, hopping through the mustard fields to reach home as fast as she could. I can see the pieces of shattered dreams when her father told her about the marriage. When I was running home, I didn’t have the picture of my mother in my head. She never existed for us, we (me and my brother) were never given to her, she was never a family member of our huge joint family of uncles, cousins, and grandparents her position was no better than servants. I grew up without knowing what the dreams of my mother were when she was a child herself, I grew up without bothering if she had had the meal, if her health was fine. I never felt it was necessary to tell my mother about my success and failure but that day I had cried on her lap. She had said generation after generation women lived the same life and faced similar hardships.
Life is not fair always but for women like us its always unfair. I hope my daughter need not share my fate but I still worry. The children who had hidden inside the small shops, under the verandah and roofs of the houses to protect themselves from rain are back to street. Among those kids I see my Shraddha holding the hand of her brother; I can see her waving the other hand to me. I wave back to her. I used to play teacher in my childhood games, she plays nurse and I hope unlike mine she becomes a real nurse one day and for that I will fight the family, the society if necessary. Though my father crushed my dreams he did one good thing, he didn’t stop me from going to school due to which I could complete the ten class. The education has given me courage to raise my voice for my daughter. One day my Shraddha will be a nurse, I am sure because I her mother promise that.

Story

[This story was written lot earlier but I found it on my disk and here I am posting it. Its attributes as per MS word suggest this was created on January 12,2008]

It was not a different day. The dry rays of sun had not been able to evaporate the existence of the all dews shed by the night on the leaves of grass. Those dews were twinkling on the heart of the shivering grass that had born under the shades of the hill and the trees. No one could say for certain if those grasses could be proud for being able to hold the tears of night on their heart. It cannot be said that the sun was kind for warming the shivering earth in the middle of January; it was only its routine. Had it been kind in winter, it should not have squeezed the sweat out of every living entity in the summer. That narrow path had been trailed by uncountable people and that took different people to different places, if it had taken plural men to same destination, it was not its intention. It has no intention of its own. Many men, women and children have walked over its heart and all it has done throughout the generation is to watch them on their face while they walked through their hearts. When that path was built that is not in record, who walked that path for the first time no one knows. That path has overheard so many stories, so many conspiracies, so many laughters. It knows the stories that no one else knows. It have stayed helpless when people have been robbed, when chastity of women have been blotted, when sweats of the loaders have irrigated its infertile land. In its lifetime it has seen many wells being built, many sheds been built for passers by, many mobile shops being in service. No one has those accounts except for the path itself.
Raghu Sapkota is not a regular visitor of this path. When others offices enter from village to city, his office had done opposite. It had been two month when the school where he worked had been shifted from Trishuli Bazar to a haunting place in Deurali. He hadn’t even moved his family of three to the new place. In trishuli bazaar he and his wife often gets work in the morning, evenings which had little simplified their struggle to keep living. If he moved to this sleepy place he knew there won’t be any additional work apart from school. He was just a sweeper in the school for ten years. From ten years he has been a wage earner. They do not have his name in the office attendance register. If sometime he cannot make to work he would have to sleep empty stomach. Many times his wife went to school for him when he was busy in other profitable work or if he had been unable to go to school. He had been asking the school management to make him permanent worker or adjust his wife for some work. Since he came to the school, the school has seen four principles. He has repeated his woes to each one of them. All of them had said, they would talk with the concerned authority but they never remembered except for one. Janak sir had even talked with the visitors of the Education Ministry and Education Board about him. He had even written one or two letters to the authority but to no avail. The current principle was more cruel than butcher. He cared for no one. Raghu had to wash the new principal’s clothes but he never gave him a penny not even for the soap. Raghu disgusted himself for being worthless and to forget that he was a regular visitor of Parvati’s hotel in the evening and mostly he went home soozled. He used to fight with his wife and beat her regularly. His rather docile wife would only sob but once she back fired and hit Raghu with a log for which he had to get twelve stitches. Since then he has not raised his hands.
Raghu hadn’t woken up in a good mood today. He didn’t remember any nightmare and he hadn’t drank too much yesterday. He woke up to a sad day. His six years old was sleeping by his side and he raised his head to see his wife lying over a thin mat in the ground. Because of cold she had pulled her knees to bring them close to her hand. Her hair was scattered over the tattered pillow. Already torn rug was stitched at many places. He felt pity. He cannot remember when he last slept in a warm bed. But he never cared because the booze heated him. He looked at the innocent face of his daughter and kissed her lightly. She moved but then hid her face in his chest and went back to sleep. He thought what wrong did this little girl had done that she didn’t even have a warm clothes for the winter. He remembered she had been asking for the ‘chappal’ for more than a week. The one she wanted would cost forty rupees. Day before yesterday he had some money and had thought he would buy the slipper for his daughter but while returning home, his friends dragged him at Parvati Place and when we went home he had only twenty rupees which he gave to his wife. He slowly moved his hand over the hair of his only child. She didn’t move this time. While having meal he noticed his wife’s blouse was having really tough time to hide her chest. She would pull her torn shawl to hide it. It only made him feel bitter.
He set out for school in his usual time. It took him an one hour and half to reach the school. He could have ridden the bus but it took ten rupees, so he walked. He could have gone through the road but it would take him more than two hours. It seemed it is only he who remembered the forgotten trail. When he reached the school, the headmaster asked him to bring some money from the bank handing him a cheque. He had to go to bank twice every month. Once in the first week to get the salary and in the middle of the month for miscellaneous expenses. He has always done that. Every time he had to go him to bank they gave him twenty rupees extra as travelling expenses. He would still walk all the way to bank. The bank was near the place where he lived. He went to bank and withdraw money. It used to be forty thousand but since last month due to some reason the government had sent no money this time it was seventy six thousand four hundred and thirty two. He counted the money properly and left the bank. Others would have feared walking this empty track with such sum of money but Raghu didn’t realize something could happen.
He was lost in thoughts while returning. His eyes were in silent talk with the worn out path. He remembered his wife’s blouse, he remembered the innocent face of his child. He remembered her request. He loathed himself. He blamed him for all those miseries. He even cursed god for keeping closed eyes. He had heard everyone’s day will come but he was already thirty five and no good day had come for him. His first wife had died of labor pain as he didn’t have money to take her to Kathmandu. Even his second wife had given birth to two dead children before she gave birth to Maya six years back. He had silently blamed himself for all those things. One cannot say drinking was his way of punishing himself or forgetting the sorrows. Many people yelled, shouted, talked when they drank but Raghu would hardly speak when drunk. He seemed to be in introspection once drunk. He was thinking he must have committed some sin in his past life that he had such a miserable life but he could not resist from feeling sorry for his daughter. She learnt to speak very late. Even today she does not talk much with others but when its him, she would tell him so many things about the grocer’s five years daughter. She would tell him how beautiful was her new dress, how beautiful was her doll. He never understood why she never asked him for new dress, new toys. It was not her age to understand destitution. She is much matured for her age he used to think. Then he remembered that she had requested for the ‘butterfly slipper’, she had made any request after a long time. He couldn’t even remember when did she last make any request. His heart became heavy for not being able to buy even a forty five rupees slipper. His consciousness reminded him something and then he tried to feel his pocket for the money. The money was there and he returned back to his thoughts. He thought I am carrying money of which I will get nothing. I have served the school for ten years and it has given me nothing, my life is only worsening.
‘What if I ran away with this money?’.
‘I will go home and take Gayatri and Maya and escape to Kathmandu.’
‘Gayatri’s sister is in Biratnagar and her brother in law has a grocery shop there. They are doing pretty well. He can help me start my own business with this money.’
‘But what have the school teachers done for me. Why should they suffer and after all it is a crime, a theft?’
‘They have not done any good to me either.’ He thought.
He remembered few months back they had gheraoed the headmaster’s office to give them additional allowance as they had worked even after school hours for exams and other purpose. They didn’t remember even he had worked late. He had made tea for them for the whole week. He had fetched lunch for them. He didn’t get any additional allowance.
‘If they don’t think for me, why should I worry for them?’
‘What if I get caught?’
‘If I don’t take risk there would be no gain as well. I need to take risk this time. Even god wants me to take risk. I am not cheating any sages, they are money hungry bastards. They care for no one. How cruelly they beat small children for not doing home works. How do they pour their wrath over the poor children?’
‘If I get caught I would believe god punished me if I escaped, I would think the teachers have been punished for sins which only they know.’
His paces were slowing down. He again dipped his hand inside his pocket, the money was still there. Just then he remembered his poor father. His father worked for a landlord in Chitwan. His life was not better than his own. His father had five children to feed. His mother washed clothes and dishes of the landlord while his father worked in the fields. Sometime he couldn’t see his father for days during the harvest season. Once the landlord had severely beaten his father for not reaping the field in time and the wind had destroyed the harvest. His father could not move his hand properly after that. Once the landlord’s house caught fire and a huge property was destroyed. His parents struggled hard to get the valuable things out of the house. The landlord had two servants one was his father and other was Ram Bahadur Ghimire. His father returned all those saved property to the landlord but Ram Bahadur went missing for more than five years. Many things were lost. Many ornaments, they said only cash of five thousand was lost. Those days with fifteen thousand one could buy more than five hundred bighas of land with five thousand. Later Ram Bahadur emerged suspiciously and he bought many acres of fertile field and build a huge house. Raghu’s father died of due to lack of medicine. His mother had died much earlier. He has not seen his siblings for a long time now.
Once during dashain, the landlord’s daughter lost her new clothes and everyone blamed his mother. They had saved some money for dashain which they spent to buy clothes to the landlord’s daughter though his mother was not guilty. They spent that dashain without good food. Two months later the lost clothes was found. The landlord’s didn’t even pay back their money.
Generation after generation they had been exploited. ‘May be its time for me.’ Thought Raghu. He strengthened his heart and returned. He had no property and the place where he stayed was not his own. They had a stove, a plastic bucket, few utensils and clothes as their own. Even the bed was not their own. At 3:00 PM people had seen his family from the window of a bus that was to go to Kathmandu. Raghu and his wife had small box each and a bag when they were seen. That very day a report was written in the Police Station.
Now its been a week, Police has been trying to locate Raghu but no one knows where he has been as no body knew if he had any relatives anywhere.