House of Snow

by Sir Ranulph Fiennes Ed Douglas

  Eternal dynasty. The hows and whens of a royal coup became topics of endless conjecture in Kathmandu. All of us were convinced that it would happen. It almost seemed like there was a Panchayat propaganda hex on us. Our political parties would muddle endlessly, and the king would return to power, claiming that it was for our own good. We did not want a royal coup to happen. But we felt helpless to prevent it. And so all we did, when we heard a fresh round of rumours, was to hunker down and brace for the worst.

  *

  On 30 May, just as the Lauda Air jet lease hearings began at the Patan appellate court, the jet in question flew to Bangkok for routine repairs, never to return.

  The next day, the Maoists set off a bomb at an offset press in Kathmandu, accusing the press of printing “obscene materials”. No one could figure out exactly what printed material had angered them so much. Local UML leaders in faraway Musikot village, in Rukurn District, boycotted the chief district officer’s all-party meeting on the army’s Integrated Security and Development Programme. The country was in a shambles.

  By now my interest in my work was petering out. It seemed to me that fiction couldn’t keep up with our reality. Or I did not know how to make it. My friends were beginning to worry about their career prospects. Non-government organizations could no longer work in the villages without the fear of local Maoists turning against them. The cancellations in the tourism industry were affecting not just Kathmandu hotels and travel agencies, but also village inns and lodges. Businesses were closing. Artists were unable to find clients. The garment industry had declined in the last year, though the year before it had grown by 30 per cent. Eight people died of gastroenteritis in far-western Jajarkot on the last day of May.

  As I walked through the Kathmandu streets late that afternoon, it occurred to me that all I ever did any more was worry. And if the way that Kathmandu’s hip youth ignored their country’s troubles helped nothing, neither did my anxious and burdened attitude. I thought: My life has become so aimless, so desultory, that I feel a compulsion to link it to larger, more compelling collective narratives. I am infusing my experience with an importance that is otherwise absent. I am trying to make my life interesting by linking it to bad politics. I had to do something to lift my mood. I might start by doing something small, I thought, something different to alter my days, or at least this day, or the next few hours. Perhaps being happy required nothing much: no marches or demonstrations, no political action, no grand gestures. Our lives are small, our problems are small, and maybe their solutions are also small.

  On a whim I veered into a tandoori restaurant where my friends and I used to go when we were all feeling more upbeat about life. It wasn’t the kind of place where women went alone – for a price the restaurant arranged girls. Most of the clients that day were male, though at a few tables couples were huddled over tea and snacks. I phoned a friend from there and said I’d come over with some food, and he said all right, so it was a date. I ordered a half tandoori chicken and naan, saag paneer and daal, and asked the waiter to home-pack it.

  As I waited, my eyes fell on a couple at a corner table. The man was much older than his partner, who was another one of those image-conscious young women. She was wearing tight black pants and long, sharp heels. Her face was heavily made up. She could not have been more than 18. The man was in his 40s, the age when men bore of their wives. I wondered whether he was her lover or client.

  As I looked on, something about the man struck me. The width of his back. He was wearing a chequered jacket, and was stooping slightly. I recognized the stoop. He had the same frizzy hair as the psychiatrist I had thought of visiting months ago. Most of his clients were young women who wore defeated expressions. This woman was not like that. She was the kind of woman that even insecure women warm to: bright, unapologetic about her youth, happy to claim her due. The man, leaning into her, wiped away a crumb on her lips. She laughed in a way that was meant to be both girlish and sexy.

  When my home-pack order came, I paid and went outside, suddenly feeling confused. Evening was falling, and the first few cars had turned on their sidelights. My friend’s street was blasted through with the sounds of car horns. The gap-toothed unevenness of the sidewalk frazzled me as I pushed through the crowds.

  I did not enjoy dinner that night. My friend was going through a bad patch, and we talked awhile about the difficulty of finding work, and then we gossiped about common friends. We had dinner, then put on the television news. Once the headlines were over, my friend told me a joke that he’d heard that day.

  “It’s a little indecent,” he said, slightly embarrassed. Then he went on. “There was a man on a crowded bus, and he was standing with his hands like this.” He cupped both palms, and said, “No matter how much the bus jolted him around, the man wouldn’t change the position of his hands.” He smiled in anticipation of the joke. After a while, the people around began to notice this. Every time the bus stopped, all the passengers would reach for a railing or a chair back to hold onto, but this man would just balance himself with his legs, never changing the position of his hands.

  Now one of the passengers on the bus was a policeman, who thought, this man is a Maoist. He’s got explosives in his shirt, and the detonator is in his hands. Otherwise why would he keep from touching anything even when the bus turns?

  So the policeman followed the man when he got off the bus. Even on the streets, the man kept his hands cupped. The policeman was sure he had found a Maoist. As they neared a police post, he arrested the man.

  “But even after he was arrested, the man wouldn’t stop cupping his hands. The police thought, This man is a hardened Maoist, we’ll have to beat him into confessing. So they took him straight to the investigation cell. But before beating him, the inspector said, Now we’re going to beat you, but you can avoid that if you just tell us why you’re holding your hands like that.”

  My friend’s face was flushed with glee. I was smiling along expectantly. Holding up cupped hands, my friend said, “And then the man said, Sir, this is the measurement of my wife’s breasts. I was going to buy her a bra!”

  My friend burst out laughing, and I also laughed, because it was silly, the man walking around with cupped hands. But my friend found it unusually funny. “It was just a man going to buy a bra!” he hooted, and began laughing so hard that he had to bend over to be able to breathe.

  He was still bent over, his shoulders shaking, when I stopped laughing, and I looked at him, doubled up, convulsing, making a sound halfway between a sob and a squeal, and I realized that I hadn’t seen him laugh this hard for a long time. He had been low for months on end now. When he lifted his head again he was still laughing, and his lips were stretched thin, his teeth were showing and his eyes were sparkling with tears. He looked like someone I didn’t know. “A bra!” he sputtered and bent over once more.

  I laughed, uncertainly, to keep him company, but I was also thinking – for my mind was merciless – why was he laughing so hard at a joke that wasn’t that funny? How rare laughter had become in our lives.

  For his sake I should have laughed longer, but my breath would not carry false emotion. My mirth died completely.

  “A bra,” my friend said again, weakly, then he finally sat up, and for a while we remained as we were, both facing the television, which was on sports news. My friend wiped away some tears and I smiled at him, but inside, I was pierced with sadness at the meagreness of happiness in our days.

  I stayed on a while, as my friend made a few good-humoured remarks about the sports news. But the sadness inside me kept growing till I could no longer bear to stay on. “I’ll go,” I said, and I left him still watching the news.

  *

  Barely 24 hours after this, King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah and his entire family succumbed to the massacre at the royal palace.

  FROM GODDESS TO MORTAL

  Rashmila Shakya and Scott Berry

  Rashmila Shakya was Royal Kumari from 1984–91. Having graduated with a Bache
lor of Information Technology degree, she works for a private company as a software developer.

  Scott Berry is an American author. His notable works include A Stranger in Tibet.

  The Living Goddess Kumari is a Supreme Goddess... and She does not undergo any lessons or teaching. She also does not have any playmates. Her caretakers keep a watch on her day and night.

  From, Siddhi B. Ranjitkar:

  Kumari, the Virgin Goddess

  Very little light comes in through the traditional, carved wooden windows of my bedroom in the morning. They face in towards the courtyard, so there is little sound either, even though the square outside by this time is full of the honking of early morning rickshaws, the swish of the long brooms of the sweepers, the bells of the temples and the chanting of priests. I hear only the vaguest echoes of all this, as I see only the palest reminder of the sun. But no one ever has to wake me up. I look forward to opening my eyes every morning and seeing all my dolls looking at me, for I have arranged them around my bed the night before.

  Once I have greeted them, I make the long trip to my own bathroom, around a corner, up the steep stairs to the next floor, and down a passageway, where I find my red towel and red toothbrush. Already others are stirring, and I know that when I get back to my room Fufu, or “father’s sister” (whom I think of as my mother, even though she really is my father’s sister), or possibly one of her daughters Durga or Sita (usually Sita) will be there to help me dress and put up my hair. Dressing is something I can do well enough by myself as long as it is not a festival day, but I enjoy having my hair combed out and put up, even though it is pulled so tight that sometimes it hurts.

  “Hold still, please Dyah Meiju,” she warns as she pulls it up into a bun on the top of my head, and then puts a red ribbon around it. “Now for your aajha.” She carefully applies kohl around my eyes, and then in two sweeping curves to above my ears. I will not be able to rub my eyes all day. With her right thumb she puts a red tika on my forehead between my eyes, and I am set up for the day.

  By now it is breakfast time. I always enjoy breakfast because it is a meal I can share with others. Meals including cooked rice are considered special, so I must eat them alone on a raised platform in my own kitchen in the back of the palace. Since breakfast is only tea and deep-fried bread there is no restriction on where I have to be or whom I have to eat it with, and as a result it is an informal and enjoyable affair.

  “Dyah Meiju, your teacher is here!” a woman’s voice calls. That must mean it is 9 o’clock, for the teacher arrives from the school next door at that time. After finishing my tea, I go back to my room where he is waiting. The building is now astir with children getting ready to go to school.

  “Dyah Meiju, the priest from the Taleju Temple has arrived,” comes another voice. “It is time for Nitya Puja.” This is always done around 9 a.m., but since the exact time is not important, sometimes – if the priest is late – my lesson can begin before the puja.

  “Which one?” I call out.

  “The young one.” The one who gets on my nerves. The Acahju, or chief priest, is a dignified, elderly man who commands respect by his manner, so that there is no question of any nonsense with him. But the younger, stouter, priest, seems always to be irritated about something, and frequently loses his temper with everyone, except me of course.

  I see one of my playmates hurrying by in her school uniform, and point to the stairway where the priest will leave his puja bag after taking out the items he will need. She smiles back in understanding. Not only does she have to do whatever I want her to do, but this is one of our favourite, often repeated, games. As soon as the priest is in the puja room with me, she will hide his bag.

  I go into the room called the Singhasan, the one with the golden window looking out onto the street, and sit on my golden throne with seven nagas protecting me while the priest sits on the floor offering red powder, rice and flowers to my feet, and lighting small lamps, as he worships the human embodiment of the goddess Taleju for about fifteen minutes. This puja also includes the indistinct chanting of secret mantras and the performance of secret mudras, or hand gestures. Since not even I am allowed to know these, he covers his hands while performing the gestures. He will not offer me a tika, for he is allowed only to touch my feet. Only the women of the family are allowed to give me tika. Though the same ceremony is repeated every morning, and I no longer pay attention, I never get bored or fidgety, but simply sit there in my stony-faced way. I know that I am a goddess, that this is the way a goddess is treated and this is the way she behaves.

  I know that I probably won’t start my lesson now, for this is the time when worshippers usually come, and for the past week the same woman and her son have been here. The boy is about 6 or 7 years old, perhaps 2 or 3 years younger than I am, but he has still not begun to speak, and his mother has brought him every day in the hopes that I will be able to cure him. Most of my devotees have children with problems, particularly illnesses, so that I know I am important to children. I also have no doubt that I will be able to help him. Of course the mother does not ask me directly for what she wants, nor do I speak directly to her. Instead I remain seated on my golden throne while she pours a small amount of water from her left hand over my feet into her right hand then drinks it. She repeats this, but this time offers the water to the boy who also drinks it. In the distance I hear with satisfaction the priest fuming and shouting about thieves and missing puja bags, but I force myself to concentrate on the task at hand, for it is my duty to try to help the boy to speak.

  Since it is a weekday, I hope that there will be no more worshippers so that I can finally begin my lesson. The teacher has only been coming for the last year, and every day our lesson is interrupted in this way, but I have discovered that learning can be fun, and I want to catch up with my playmates, all of whom go to the Nawa Adahrsa School next door in Basantapur Square. “One more worshipper this morning, Dyah Meiju,” says Taba, the man whom I regard as my father.

  Actually I am ready for this one because the family of the supplicant has paid for everything necessary for a chemma, or forgiveness puja and Taba has made all the arrangements, having first asked me if there was anything I would particularly like. A pale and ill-looking young man comes into the room with his family and looks at me hopefully. I know that I will be able to cure him if I want to, though since he is not a child, I am not particularly interested.

  It seems he has unwittingly got himself into trouble with me. It is not the first time I have seen him, for he is a journalist who came to do a story about Kumari. It happens all the time and I always enjoy these visits because I get to hear yet again the stories about the Goddess Taleju and King Jayaprakesh Malla, or of Prithvi Narayan Shah dreaming of Kumari just before he conquered the Kathmandu valley. It is not that this young man actually wrote anything bad or untrue, but when the article appeared, his picture was inset above mine. Although I was entirely unaware of this, it was apparently enough of an insult to Taleju Bhawani as personified in me, that the poor man began vomiting blood. This puja is to ask my forgiveness so that he will be cured. No wonder he looks anxious. If I do not accept his puja, I can make things even worse for him. I have heard the story of an elderly priest who offered water to my predecessor, who stared hard at him before condescending to drink it. He died on the way home.

  I am first offered chocolates and the red toy car I had requested. More importantly I am offered sagun, which consists of a boiled egg and a dried fish which are placed in my left hand, and a silver tumbler of raksi, the strong distilled spirit of the valley, which I hold in my right. Each of these items I touch to my lips to show that I accept the offering, to the visible relief of the young journalist. The raksi burns my lips pleasantly.

  There was no question of my not accepting his puja. Though children are the only ones I really care about, I have no hostile feeling towards anyone, not even the irritable priest whom I enjoy tormenting, and am happy enough for him to be cured.

&
nbsp; At last my long-delayed lesson can begin, though by now it is nearly 10 o’clock, the time when my teacher always leaves. I go back to my bedroom and sit opposite him on the floor with a small table between us. He is a very old man, tall and thin with thick, black-rimmed glasses that seem almost an extension of his black Nepali topi. Like the priest, he is dressed in the traditional Nepali Daura Surwal. He is not very energetic, or, it would seem, very interested in the lesson. But in a way I am lucky to have him at all for there is a belief that it can serve no purpose to attempt to teach a goddess, who by definition already knows everything. There is an even more discouraging legend that anyone who tries to teach a Kumari will die. But he does not seem afraid. In fact he hardly seems conscious.

  “Not much time,” he grumbles in Nepali in his thin, wheezy voice. My families (both of them) speak to me in our Newari language of the Kathmandu valley. Since I had started Kindergarten before becoming Kumari I had made a start in Nepali, as all school children do. The old man is a Nepali teacher, and this cannot help but be useful to me, but he is expected to teach me other subjects like English and Mathematics as well. “Would Dyah Meiju be so good as to multiply 17 times 14?” he asks.

  “Two hundred and thirty-eight,” I answer mechanically; hoping he will come up with something a little more interesting. His mathematics lessons consist of making me memorise the multiplication tables up to 22. My eldest sister Pramila, who visits me occasionally, but not often enough that I feel really close to her, says he should be giving me word problems, whatever they are.

  “Yes, well that’s good,” he mumbles, sounding as if he is about to fall asleep. “Now, would Dyah Meiju kindly copy out these English words?”

  I open my notebook and copy out a few words, taking special care to reproduce them exactly in all their elegance, for the letters are beautiful and exotic to me. “What do they mean?” I ask. He looks blank. “Are they really words? What do they sound like?”