*
Narendra dai’s arrival had moved the house into frenzy. By the outer door of the house, beyond the courtyard, the two oxen that had been pulling the cart were free of the yoke, and now had their snouts buried in a wooden trough as they feed on a mush of lentil husks, pressed mustard seeds, water with rice starch and salt. Sannani put her hand on the rump of an ox. The ox’s skin quivered in response, sending playful ripples across its body. The cart driver spoke, “There is no ox comparable to this one in the entire district. The master bought him in Kushesorethan, understand? They glided like an airplane on the Distibot road.”
Patting the oxen for their good work, he continued, “Eat well, Bhadesara.” Then, patting the other ox, he said, “And you, too, Jogendara!”
Confused and lost, we stood in the courtyard, in front of Narendra’s room. I prodded, “Sannani, let’s go inside.”
“I’m scared,” she said.
“But you’re his own sister. What are you scared of?” I asked.
“Why don’t you go in, if you’re so brave!” she snapped.
Narendra saw us outside and called, “Look – I’ve brought you all a football! Come in!”
I ran into the kitchen. Sannani stood in the courtyard, but did not go into Narendra’s room. She seemed as if transfixed by fear.
That day, Narendra gathered all the boys and girls from the village to form a football team. It was a memorable day, we had a lot of fun. We were on our knees next to Narendra, excitedly waiting as he pumped the football with air.
“Sannani! Go and fetch the pump from my bicycle,” Narendra asked. Sannani ran off.
Narendra asked me, “Know how to play football?”
I was petrified to suddenly find myself all alone with him in his room. I didn’t say anything. He went on, “Try pressing the football – see if it’s hard enough. After I fill it with the pump, it will get very hard.”
I touched the football with trepidation. But, the discomfort of being all alone with Narendra dai in his room was unbearable, so I made calling Sannani my excuse and ran out.
Sannani was standing outside in the courtyard. She whimpered, “I broke this nail when I took out the pump from the cycle. He will kill me. What should we do?” She was perplexed.
Narendra yelled from his room, “Sannani! What is taking you so long?”
We entered Narendra’s room in fear. Narendra took the pump off Sannani and started to attentively fill the football with air. Sannani did not mention the broken nail and I was scared until the moment he finished pumping air into the ball and said, “Now – press the ball and see if it is tight or not.” Sannani and I touched the ball together.
Narendra himself picked an abandoned ground for us to play on. The barren field that lay towards the southeast of our village, spread abundantly from the eastern banks of the Koshi and far towards the south. Further east, there spread a big camp of the gentlefolk of Fulkaha – a large mango grove, and beyond that elephant stables and horse stables, a small, quaint looking Ram temple by a pond, with zemindary offices just south of the pond beyond the main gate. Other villagers called that space the Agana and called the residences of the landlords Deudi. From the ground that Narendra had picked, we could see their residences and a small section of the verandah shining in the sun. The ground itself was completely abandoned. We could see pieces of bones belonging to cattle and other animals scattered across the field, some simal and sami trees and below them, bushes of thatch grass and jujube.
“This is a haunted field, isn’t it, Bhatana?” whispered Sannani.
Bhatana’s eyes widened in response.
“Of course! Look around, if you don’t believe it,” added the other children of the untouchable castes.
Narendra, who was walking ahead of us, then said, “Okay, play. I’ll watch.” Then, he kicked the ball high into the air.
“Look! See how high into the sky the ball has gone,” the girls who had come to cut grass there exclaimed in surprise.
Phaguni spoke slowly, “Babu has come as well. He hit it.”
The girls who had come to cut grass shyly turned their back to the field, squatted down and hurriedly started cutting grass with their sickles.
“Hey, Munariya!” Narendra called out, “Give us your basket. We don’t have goal posts. I’ll set it down on one side. Come on! Give it to us!”
By then, we had already started running around breathlessly, kicking the ball willy-nilly, not really caring whether we had a goal post or not. Perhaps I couldn’t run very well, because I felt that the ball never really got under my feet. It was as if Sannani and the untouchable children had taken possession of the ball. Nevertheless, there was no shortage of enthusiasm among us; we kept chasing after the football. At times, Sannani would kick the ball towards me and say, “Here! Here! Kick it! Kick it now!” But by then one of the untouchable children would pick it up and kick it in another direction. Sannani would get angry with them. Sometimes, Sannani would grab the ball with her hands and place it on the ground in front of me, and I would kick it with all my might.
We tired quickly. There was still some light left in the day. Drenched in sweat, I said, “Enough for now. Let’s play tomorrow.” Sannani picked up the ball and pressed it in the nook of her right arm and her chest.
The girls who had been cutting grass stopped their work and surrounded her. “Sannani, let us see what a football looks like,” they said.
They each took the ball one by one and played with it, pressed it and said, “Wow! It’s so light. Air! It’s filled with air.” Phaguni put the ball on the floor and with one hand pulled her dhoti above her calves, swung her leg and kicked the ball. Everyone laughed in delight.
“Where did Narendra dai go?” I asked, remembering him.
“He left a while back,” Phaguni responded. She smiled and continued, “Munariya said she wouldn’t give him her basket. She said, ‘Don’t I have to cut grass today?’ Babu said ‘The better grass is over on the southern side, green grass.’ And she asked, ‘Where?’ The girl doesn’t know her place. Babu responded – ‘Over there, beyond that cottonwood forest. Come with me, I’ll show you.’”
Rampiyari turned her head towards the south and yelled, “Hey Munariya! We’re going home! If you want to go, hurry up!”
Munariya didn’t answer from any direction.
As the sun set, we all went back home. The grass-cutters also headed back to their own homes, as did the others, the untouchable children, Bhatana, Parema, everybody.
“Today was a lot of fun,” Sannani said.
“Sannani, can I keep the football in my room?” I asked.
That was how our village got a football team out of Narendra dai’s efforts. He would make us bows and arrows, slingshots and mud pellets; and during the months of September and October, he would head over to the dam with his kites, telling us, “Come along! Watch me fly kites. In Lucknow they hold this in high esteem.”
But we could never get close to Narendra dai. We were scared, felt something akin to dread.
That day, Narendra dai had come out ready to go somewhere. He was wearing a long white kurta whose arched neckline didn’t button on his chest, but instead was fastened with a knot on his shoulder. His hair falling on his neck in curly locks, the lower tip of his Shantipuri dhoti tucked into the right pocket of his kurta, his well-folded dupatta falling from his shoulders to his thighs, and his freshly polished pump shoes. There was no one else in our village, even the district, who had such a clean and refined look. That’s why the babu sahibs from Brindakatti and Fulkahi considered him their equal and invited him during festivals. Mother and Gauri Bhauju were sitting on a rug on the porch by the kitchen and cutting vegetables for the evening meal. Gauri Bhauju was the only constant help mother had with her daily chores. Maharani was after all a daughter who had come home; Junthu Nani would be too busy laughing and socializing with the men in the living room; my aunts would mostly be too busy with their own domestic chores, and even if they foun
d some free time, they would sit with Kaptanni Ama and draw wicks in one of the corners of the balcony where Kaptanni Ama would sit and recite the Mahabharata or Ramayana or some scripture or the other. Gauri Bhauju was the only one who didn’t have any household chores of her own, and therefore she could help mother all day long. She and mother would continuously talk whether they were making leaf platters or cutting vegetables. Mother was the only one who could confidently command her to do something – “Gauri, do this, do that...” Gauri would set forth wordlessly and, after finishing her chore, would return and sit next to mother to help her with whatever she was doing.
That day, with nothing to do, I found myself next to mother and Gauri. Kaptanni Ama had just dragged Sannani up to the balcony. This would happen occasionally when Kaptanni Ama would find her daughter’s rustic ways unbearable. She would drag her away, smooth her tangled and matted hair with oil, and rake her hair with a thick comb – with something of an angry demeanor. Sannani would start protesting in her nasal tone, “Ouch... Don’t pull my hair Kaptanni Ama!” In response, she would get a whack on her back. Sannani would start crying while Kaptanni Ama would scold and reprimand her, and continue muttering to herself. It would take a long time to comb Sannani’s hair – after a long battle of complaints, fights, crying and scolding, perhaps Kaptanni Ama’s anger would gradually dissipate and the severity of Sannani’s protests would also cool. By then, Sannani would look nice and clean – her hair, combed and oiled, would be smooth and slick, it would get tied in the back with a thin red ribbon. Her face, hands and legs would also get washed. Kaptanni Ama would collect the hair that Sannani had shed, spit into it and roll it up into a ball and, getting up, she would then throw it off the balcony. Sannani would take that opportunity to make her escape; I would be waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
Whenever Kaptanni Ama grabbed Sannani’s arms with purpose, I would run away in fear. I felt like I was an accomplice in all her crimes because I was always invariably involved in all the things that Kaptanni Ama would scold her for – wandering around the gardens and fields, picking and eating raw fruits in the sun, bathing in the Koshi, stealing produce from other people’s gardens and fields (in other words, doing everything you possibly could at that age). Once Sannani was pulled away, I would walk around with nothing to do. That was how I had ended up where mother and Gauri were cutting vegetables. I wasn’t really having any fun there. At that very moment, Narendra came out of his room looking very well put together. He bent down to save his head from hitting the roof and came down from the porch. The moment Gauri saw him in the courtyard, she abruptly got up and went into her room by the kitchen. Narendra looked happy. He casually asked mother, “Sani Ama, what you cutting?”
Even before mother answered him, he was already asking me, “You play a lot of football no?”
Feeling uncomfortable, I got up and ran behind the kitchen, towards the waste pit. There, I stood next to the wooden partition and waited for Sannani.
Around then, Narendra asked again, “Sani Ama, why don’t the kids like me? Why do they stay away from me?”
Mother answered while cutting vegetables, “Narendra, you couldn’t become a family man.”
I peeked at them through the fence.
“Why? Am I not a part of the family?” Narendra asked. He had one of his feet resting on the edge of the porch.
Mother responded, “You are a member of this family, but not a part of it. Your relationship with your father... Let us leave that aside. Your relationship with you wife... With such a relationship, do you think you will be able to find the warmth of the family hearth? A neglected wife keeps her husband outside the boundaries of family life.”
Mother was about to say something else, but Narendra spoke with some anger, “Stop scratching at the same thing all the time. I don’t like hearing any talk about her. She does not exist for me – you all need to comprehend this truth. Let us not raise this issue again.”
It became awkward for mother. Narendra was not her son; he was only five or six years younger to her. Perhaps because she didn’t have the authority to get angry with him, she spoke softly. “Then you, too, should not talk about love and affection, Narendra. Don’t say that you can’t understand the way that children perceive you and don’t flock to you. Don’t you see, the humanity inside of you has dried up?”
“Why?” Narendra asked thoughtfully, “Can one’s humanity only be judged through the relationship one maintains between husband and wife? Don’t presume that the husband-wife relationship is a natural relationship.”
Mother smirked and retorted, “Well, is it natural to wander around acting like Krishna among the village girls?”
“Who said I...”
Cutting him off, mother continued, “Please, Narendra, don’t try to trick me. Who doesn’t know in this house about Munariya and you...”
Narendra yelled, “Sani Ama, if you can’t understand something, you shouldn’t waste your breath by going around and giving your opinion everywhere.”
Dusting himself off and adjusting his dupatta by gently tugging at its frills, as he habitually did, he got up and spoke to end the discussion, “Sani Ama, you can only see the world as a wife, because of which you can only see a small portion of it. There are many things that you have not seen, many things that you don’t understand.”
Mother had some very strong thoughts about this. It would be difficult to find another person who was so staunchly on the side of wives in our society. She was ready to speak her mind. But, Narendra had clearly ended the argument and was already walking away.
TIME, YOU ARE ALWAYS THE WINNER (SAMAY TIMI SADHAIMKO VIJETA)
Bānīrā Giri
Dr Bānīrā Giri is a Nepali poet, author and scholar. She has published three volumes of poetry and two novels: The Prison and Unbound. Giri was the first woman to be awarded a PhD by Tribhuvan University for her thesis on the poetry of opalprasad Rimal. She teaches at Padma Kanya Campus, a women’s college in Kathmandu and participates regularly in literary conferences in Nepal and internationally. Her work has been translated into English and Hindi.
Snatch me up like an eagle
swooping down on a chicken,
wash me away like a flood destroying the fields,
fling me from the door
like my daughter carelessly sweeping out dirt.
In infinite wilds I lead
a solitary life.
just a naming ceremony,
set aside, forgotten;
even in the Rāmāyaṇa, Lakshman.’s line
had first to be drawn
before Sītā could cross it.1
Time, you are always the winner,
I bent my knee before you
like Bārbarik faced by compulsion,2
like King Yāyati faced by old age,3
I fell prostrate like grandfather Bhīshma
before the arrows from your arms.4
Touch my defeated existence just once
with your hands of ironwood;
how numb I am,
how hard to grasp, how lifeless
in the presence of your strength and power.
You spread out forever like the seas,
I rippled like the foaming waves,
you blazed up fiercely like a volcano,
I smouldered, slow as a forest fire.
You are power, wholly embodied,
ready to drink even poison,
we follow – my fellows and I at a party,
we descend on a wheel of birth and death,
bearing bags full of gifts,
gifts of alcohol and oxygen,
blood and cancer,
tumors and polio.
My grandson will be born
with sleeping pill in his eyes,
his potency already dead,
needing no vasectomy.
Perhaps he will be born as a war,
embracing every cripple,
perhaps he will be born as a void,
to replace the meaningless babble
of revolt, lack of faith, and being.
Perhaps he will even refuse to be born
from a natural mother’s womb;
Time, you are always the winner:
revealed like a crazy Bhairava,5
keep burning like the sun,
keep flowing like a river,
keep rustling like the bamboo leaves.
Upon your victory,
I will let loose the calves from the tethering post,
fling open the doors of grain stores and barns,
hand over my jewels to my daughter-in-law,
and lay out green dung, neatly,
around the tulsī shrine.6
So snatch me up like an eagle
swooping down on a chicken,
wash me away like a flood destroying the fields,
and, like my daughter carelessly sweeping out dirt,
sweep me from the threshold with a single stroke,
sweep me from the threshold with a single stroke.
1 This is a reference to an event in the Rāmāyaṇa epic.
2 Bārbarik is mentioned in Hindu scriptures such as the Skanda Purāṇa. He lived his whole life under a curse, inherited from a previous life, that he would be killed by Vishṇu. He was therefore compelled to worship various deities to preserve his life (Vettam Mani 1975, 107).
3 Different versions of the story of King Yāyati are told in the Padma Purāṇa and the Vishṇu Purāṇa. Both, however, agree that his amorous disposition and infidelity to his first wife brought upon him the curse of eternal old age and infirmity from his father-in-law. Dowson [1879] 1968, 376.
4 In the Mahābhārata wars, Bhīshma took the side of the Kauravas on the condition that he should not be called upon to fight against the warrior Arjuṇ. Goaded on by another warrior, however, Bhīshma attacked Arjuṇ and wa pierced by innumerable arrows. When he fell, mortally wounded, from his chariot, the arrows that filled his body held him above the ground. Dowson [1879] 1968, 52–53.
5 The Bhairava is a fearsome emanation of the god Shiva who figures prominently in the religious iconography of the Kathmandu Valley.
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