House of Snow

by Sir Ranulph Fiennes Ed Douglas

  So what was Nag Pokhari, then? It wasn’t the pathetic pool in front of me, covered with scum and algae. It wasn’t the cartoon cobra with a goofy expression and forked tongue, peering archly from its capital. It wasn’t the clogged jets ejaculating lamely from the reservoir’s corners. It wasn’t the benches, or the lotus, or the little temple by the entrance gate. It wasn’t even the snakes themselves, assuming that any still lived here.

  This domain of the nagas, this Snake Lake, was nothing less than a double-edged allegory for everything ecstatic and horrific about the prospect of liberation. The nagas and their domain are mythic metaphors, warning buoys on the unexplored waters of our psyches. Lacking sufficient wisdom, or the proper training, we plumb these depths with fear and awe: The transition from bondage to freedom, no matter how one approaches it, has a terrifying aspect. We are suddenly responsible for ourselves.

  Our best shot, our only shot at liberation, lies within the liquid mystery of our own bodies. It’s lurking in our depths, dozing in the silt, slithering between the smooth black fingers of the lotus roots, coiled between our legs. Until we plunge in, with a torch in one hand and a flute in the other, we’ll never charm it awake.

  Ramana watched with amusement as, with a halting prayer, I poured the offering onto the algae-rimed surface of Snake Lake.

  KARNALI BLUES

  Buddhisagar Chapain

  Buddhisagar Chapain is a Nepali writer. He is best known for his novel Karnali Blues.

  Purnabahadur Bista!

  Jagat Rawal!

  Basudev Chaulagain!

  Phulba Chaudhari!

  Chandre ripped up some dub grass from the playing field, put it into his mouth and pretended to chew. His face was turning blue, as if he had been stung by a scorpion. Although the sun was hanging up in the sky, I felt as if it was squatting on my forehead. Sweat drenched my face as if I had been splashed with water.

  Ninety-five students were spread out across the playing field, like scraps of the question papers and answer booklets of the previous examination. If anyone spoke I would die. From far away the sound of the mill reached our ears: tuktuk, tuktuk.

  Results day. At school the Sirs were reading out the results. Our elder sisters’ results were being read out in the classroom, the results of classes below Grade 5 on the playing field. Karnabahadur Sir had taken responsibility for announcing our results. Everyone wanted to hear his name from Sir’s mouth. Sir was turning the pages of the Lali Gurans exercise book and calling out the names. I was already semi-unconscious.

  Oh Lord, may that exercise book never come to an end.

  Sir shouted, “Aitabahadaur B.K!”

  There, even his name has come. Aite jumped up and spun around. He laughed like Shiva in the photo, standing on one leg: hehehe! He was the biggest in our Class Three. Fourteen years old.

  Sir was standing on a high bench. When he looked at the exercise book he did so through strong glasses. After he said each name he looked out over them. A white shirt, brown patterned pants, leather shoes – Sir was always smartly dressed. There was always a muffler around his neck. That’s why Sir was popular with everyone – he never beat us and he taught the class all three subjects. Lifting his eyes from the book he shouted –

  Rambahadur Bogate!

  Bogate too jumped up and ran towards the gate. Now ants began to run along the nerves in my brain. I felt as if my head was swelling and getting bigger and bigger, too big to support. I hung my heavy head low.

  “We’ve failed, I reckon,” said Chandre in a disconsolate voice. “Sir’s book is nearly finished.”

  “We’ll come at the end.” I looked at Sir with great hope.

  And then, Yuvaraj Gautam!

  Yuvaraj wasn’t there, so he didn’t get up. Chandre’s breathing whistled like a river. His lips trembled. He rolled his wet eyes at me and hiccoughed.

  Sir shut the book, and I thought my breath would stop. All the students jumped up and danced and ran towards Sir, because Sir had pulled the red abir out of his pocket. They used to put abir on those who had passed. There were ten or twelve of us whose names had not come. I had failed. There now, there goes my blinky watch. I held back the sobs.

  Sir was happily putting abir on the foreheads of the passes. The fails headed for the gate, hanging their heads. Chandre and I just sat where we were. Our sisters had passed. They would move up to study in Class Six. They came up to us, giggling. They both looked fresh in their sky blue shirts and dark blue skirts.

  Parvati Didi bent down a little and asked “What happened?”

  “Fail,” I told her in a dead voice.

  Suddenly Chandre burst into sobs. His body shook. Mamata Didi put her hand on his head and said, “Don’t cry, my brother.”

  “Ba will beat me.” Chandre wept uncontrollably.

  “Don’t cry, I won’t let him beat you.”

  This affection made Chandre tremble even more.

  “Study well next year,” Parvati Didi said, “And you’ll pass.”

  Holding our hands, our sisters got us up and made us walk. Three-Heads was standing near the gate with abir all over his forehead. Two boys were beside him. Three-Heads was chewing on a long stick of sugarcane. When he saw us he laughed mockingly, because there was no abir on our foreheads. Our sisters went out through the gate giggling and patting one another. We approached Three-Heads. That was the route we had to take. Three-Heads suddenly made as if to strike Chandre over the head with the sugarcane, whack! Chandre ducked to the right to save his head. All three of them laughed like demons on the radio, making the very school shake – hahaha.

  “Passes eat sugarcane!” Three-Heads shouted at the top of his voice.

  The two boys who were with him laughed, “And fails?”

  “This here...” Three-Heads pointed at his private parts.

  Chandre became tearful. He looked at Three-Heads from red eyes. I grabbed his arm and pulled him away, and he came along limping. Even when we were well past him, Three-Heads was still shouting.

  Our sisters had gone on ahead without us because they were happy to have passed. Chandre and I were on our own. We didn’t speak all the way home. Whenever we saw someone on the road we hid behind a tree. What would we say if they asked us if we’d passed?

  We snuck down via the far bank of the Amauri Khola, in case they asked at the teashop too. Dusk had already fallen. The Amauri Khola was deserted. Chandre and I sat on the edge of the river. The breeze was cold – it was touching us inside, getting in through the torn armpits of our shirts and up through the gaps in our shorts. A little way off the yellow light of a lantern spilled out of the teashop. The murmur of people’s voices reached us. The Sauji had recently begun to sell sealed bottles of raksi. People said the lights burned in the teashop until midnight!

  Chandre was silent. He knew that tonight his father would thrash him. So he was refusing to go home. Even now his lips were trembling a little.

  “Your father won’t beat you, right?” Chandre looked at me.

  I said nothing, I just lowered my head.

  “Let’s go,” I said, catching hold of his hand.

  He said nothing but slowly got up. We walked on, brushing off our shorts. Like dark stumps, we were returning home via the bank of the Amauri Khola at the time when the English news comes on the radio. I was the stump in front, walking hurriedly, the other stump was Chandre, limping along.

  “Come here,” Ba called me as soon as he saw me.

  I climbed up with a miserable face.

  “You failed, didn’t you? You didn’t put your mind to it when it was time to study. Everyone passed, you failed.”

  The skin on my face tightened.

  Ba stroked my hair. “I thought my son would study and become an important man, but you’re on your way to being a cowherd.”

  My eyes filled with tears.

  “You have saddened my heart, son.”

  I sobbed.

  “All right, off you go. You’ll pass next time.” Ba
pushed me gently away. “I’ll bring you a watch next time.”

  I went down the stairs wiping my eyes.

  “You’ve made us cry today.” That was all Mother said.

  “Study well from now on, you hear?” Sister looked at me, with the abir not washed very well from her face. “I’ll teach you.”

  I cried all night. From time to time I thought of Chandre. His father must have beaten him badly. If only he had a father like mine – he didn’t beat me, but he slapped my heart.

  Next day, in the afternoon, Magarmama told us, “I had diarrhoea in the morning, and when I went outside there was a black shadow going towards the Amauri Khola. I was scared that it might be a ghost.”

  I knew that this was Chandre, because he said it was limping.

  Chandre disappeared from the village that very morning.

  His father searched all over for him. In Lamichane Basti, Tharu Gaon, Paharipur, everywhere. Ba said he even went to Katase and filed a report at the police post.

  “Hey, did Chandre say anything to you?” Ba asked me on the third day of Chandre’s disappearance, “Where might he have gone?”

  “He used to say he’d go and see his brother,” I told him, “Perhaps he’s gone to Bombay.”

  “He didn’t encourage you to go with him?”

  I sat in silence. Ba’s face darkened.

  “Someone who runs away from home just for failing once is a coward,” said father, tossing a two rupee note toward me. “A son should not run away from home.”

  After Chandre ran away Ba was very frightened that I might run away too. Whenever he came back from Katase he would look for me immediately. By luck he would find me studying. After Chandre had gone I didn’t go to the Amauri Khola for several days. After many days I met Bhagiram on the bridge near the Amauri Khola one Saturday afternoon. He set his fan down to one side and asked me, rubbing tobacco in his hand, “Where did that silly boy go?”

  “Bombay.”

  “How could such a little boy get to Bombay?”

  I couldn’t forget Chandre for many days. Even in my dreams he seemed to be calling me. After a couple of weeks Ba went to Nepalganj for five days. He came home on the afternoon of the sixth day. Because it was Friday I had come home from school early and I was sleeping. I woke to the sound of his bicycle bell and ran downstairs, wiping the saliva from my cheek. Ba had brought a bunch of grapes, tucked into his waistband. His face was flushed. I went up to him shyly and touched my head to his feet.

  “Be lucky,” Ba said. “Is there no one at home?”

  “She’s gone to the shop to get some sugar.”

  “Go and get me some water, I’m parched!”

  I hurried off and brought a pitcher of water for him. Ba drank it, making his adam’s apple go up and down. Some water spilled down and wet his chest. Setting the pitcher down on the floor, he moved his hand towards his pocket. When it came out, there it was in his hand – a blinky watch.

  “Come here.” Ba took hold of my left wrist. In a second he attached the watch to my wrist. Ba asked, “What time is it then?”

  “Thirty-five minutes and seventeen seconds past three” I said shyly.

  “Go and study.”

  I ran off to the attic like a whirlwind.

  At meal time that evening Ba told us that on his way back he was on the same bus as Lamichane Kancha. He told Ba that he had seen Chandre in a teashop in Nepalganj. He was washing tea glasses there. When he saw him he ran away limping.

  “I don’t know where he came from,” the potbellied Sahuji shouted, “I gave him work but the little sod ran away again.”

  I couldn’t sleep for a long time, thinking of Chandre. From time to time I pressed the button on the rim of the watch, and the watch lit up. When I was looking at the watch at 12:45:17 Ba woke up.

  “How many more times are you going to look at your watch? Go to sleep now!” said Ba, yawning. Then he went back to sleep. I could hear the faint sound of his breathing.

  Here in Matera there is no one as loving as my Ba.

  NOTHING TO DECLARE

  Rabi Thapa

  Rabi Thapa is a writer and editor based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He is the author of the short story collection Nothing to Declare and the editor of the literary magazine La.Lit (www.lalitmag.com). Rabi’s writing has appeared in Outside Online, Profil, Indian Quarterly, Himal Southasian, The Cricket Monthly, Live Mint, Mumbai Mirror, The Sunday Guardian, We Are Here and The National. His short biography of Thamel, Kathmandu’s famed tourist zone, is due to be published in November 2016, and he is now working on a book on Nepal’s environment.

  Nothing to declare. His father had grumbled about all the food his mother had packed into the suitcase – Nepali fruit drops, pastries and caramel rocks. “You know how they check everything these days. I’m sure you can buy all this in London anyway!” His mother had looked up from the suitcase wearily and shook her head. “No Raja, you don’t get these things in London; Karki’s son told me so. You can get those Indian sweets but not these. It’s not the same! Think of how our son is going to enjoy them when he’s over there...” She paused, her shoulders drooping of a sudden. Bikram, sensing his mother’s sadness, broke in loudly: “Don’t worry Mamu, I’ll tell them it’s Nepali Ayurvedic medicine – instant cure for homesickness! And if they give me hassle I’ll just bribe them with some!”

  Well, there hadn’t even been any officials at customs. Everybody just rolled through with their trolleys. What kind of security was it?

  The guy at passport control had given Bikram the onceover, though. Thank god his visa was in order. After all the trouble it had better be! But it didn’t help to have a green passport. As soon as he’d seen it the official, who looked like an Indian, had asked him if he had any family in the UK. He did have an uncle in Reading but his friends in London had told him not to mention family. So he said no, he’d come to do a degree in computing at the University of Greenwich. The official had peered at him closely – he’d probably been pulled here by his own family in the first place, and look at him now – then stamped his passport. Clack! He was through.

  Heathrow was really big and noisy. As soon as he wandered out the doors he felt as if he were being sucked into its chaos. He felt disoriented – all kinds of people milling about in all directions, bumping into each other and laughing and hugging and shouting. Where the hell was Raghav? He’d said he would be here to pick him up when had spoken to him before he left Nepal. Bikram manoeuvred his trolley over to where he saw some phone booths. But he didn’t have any British money on him. There was a money-changing counter just past the phones.

  “Oi! What’re you doing, mujhi?”

  Bikram wheeled around at the sound of his best friend’s voice. Raghav stepped up to him grinning, all shaggy-haired like he’d never seen him before.

  “So you got here finally! Welcome to the UK, hai? They didn’t stop you at immigration then, seeing your thief’s face?”

  “You look like a terrorist from somewhere, look at this guy’s hair, like a jogi. Your dad would skin you if he saw you!”

  The two friends clapped each other on the back and laughed their way through the huzzbuzz of the terminal, oblivious to the crisscrossing of the world’s peoples around them.

  Less than half an hour later, they were out of Hounslow Central tube station in west London. Bikram grimaced as they bumped his suitcases along the pavement. “Hey, it’s cold here man, is it always like this or what?”The autumn sky was bruised and heavy and a persistent wind snaked cold fingers around their necks.

  Raghav smiled ruefully, drawing his jacket around him. “England, this is England. If the sun shines it’s like a public holiday and people run around naked. You’ll get used to it. You brought warm clothes like I said?” Bikram nodded, looking around the narrow street they were on.

  London seemed distinctly ordinary. Identical low white houses with brown tiled roofs lined the street on both sides, fronted by raggedy patches of grass and concrete. Cars wer
e jammed into the short driveways and parked on the street. Scarecrow trees stood disconsolate over faded piles of leaves occasionally whipped up by the wind and scattered over the pavement. They had passed a shop selling vegetables in boxes right outside the station and all he’d seen around were blacks and Indians. He’d even seen a poster for a Hindi movie on a wall. He supposed it was a poor area. What did they call them? Ghettos. “Hey, is this a ghhheh-toe or what? Wherever I look I see hapsis and dhotis. The kuires don’t live here?”

  Raghav laughed mirthlessly. “Why would they? They live in Notting Hill, like in the movie. This is Zone 4 – it takes an hour by tube to get to the centre.”

  “OK, so this is a ‘remote area’ then? Do we have Maoists here as well? Huh?” Bikram sniggered and slapped his friend on the back. Raghav started to speak but his words were swallowed up by a thunderous roar above them. Bikram stopped and looked up, slack-jawed. A huge plane was lumbering past right above their heads, shredding the doughy air with its screaming engines. “Machikne,” he shouted. “Where’s that plane going?”

  “You’ll get used to that as well. You can see them lining up – six or seven in a row – to land at Heathrow.” They stopped in front of a house that looked like all the others. “OK, here we are...”

  A little while later, sitting around the small, plain living room with cans of beer, Bikram felt as if he were back home – just like it was when he used to ride over to Raghav’s place for a smoke and a drink. Of course Raghav didn’t have this massive TV and sound system in his room back in Kathmandu. His parents were a little on the stingy side; it was a wonder they’d forked out the money to get him started here. But the TV looked out of place in the humble dimensions of the space it dominated, its sleek hi-tech contrasting with the off-white walls, frayed carpet and worn, shapeless sofas.

  “At least I’m independent now,” Raghav declared, waving his free hand around for emphasis. “Not that living in London you can save anything working in a store. Whatever it is, it’s better than just rotting away in Kathmandu. Congratulations hai, you made it to the UK!” He drained his beer and stood up. “You finished with that?”