“You are 26, Rabin! I don’t understand why we still have to be your caretaker,” she cried.
“Ama, I will be late for work if we start this now,” he implored, looking out the open windows. Rabin had his mother’s whetstone eyes and the square of his chin was neatly framed by the black hair of his goatee. Evelyn liked his goatee.
In the heat of afternoons, when they both sprawled on straw mattresses atop the sundeck of her rented apartment, Rabin would be in his shorts and Eve in her bathing suit, their bare soles looking skywards. Evelyn would roll over on her stomach and turn towards him. Her hands would reach to touch his cheeks. Her pale skin, covered from head to toe with sunscreen lotion and freckles, clashed against the deep brown of his body. The few feet high cemented walls of the balcony hardly hid them from the neighbors’ prying eyes. Rabin would often catch the aunty from the house next door craning her neck while leaning off her rooftop. All that while, her pretense would be that she was counting the number of bitter gourds hanging on the climbers, which camouflaged her own bedroom windows.
“And oh, she called,” Ama said. “Evah-leen wanted to chat with you at seven thirty am.” It was without a doubt that Ama disapproved of Evelyn. In addition, this disapproval was collective, since Rabin’s aunts and other relatives colluded with his mother to make sure that she heard an earful every time they saw Rabin and Evelyn together. “Don’t go out and eat beef in Thamel with her again. Reeta aunty phoned and told me that she saw you going into a beef meat restaurant with an angreji keti. Gori, she is going to spoil you rotten!” she said with a heavy audible sigh.
*
“Rabin, what does Gori mean?” Evelyn asked while running her hands through his hair, glistening under the Saturday sun.
He looked into her sea-green eyes. Her cheeks were burning red and the golden nose ring trembled under her even breathing. She was fragrant from the shampoo, the one they had picked together in the humongous new department store around the corner.
“Don’t be silly Evelyn, you know what Gori means,” he replied with irritation. He didn’t like these conversations. It had everything to do with their differences. Whenever he paid closer attention to how her skin folded around her body, she turned into something else in front of his eyes, – a porcelain doll with her toenails painted black and dark French bangs hanging over her eyes, unrecognizable and abstract. He wanted her to be more than what his imagination permitted, more than just a blur of stereotypes, popular images and fantasies. He didn’t want her to disappear behind the faces of actresses, who he had gawked at for hours in those weekend screenings of Hollywood movies at the American Council.
Once when he was inside Evelyn, Maggie Gyllenhaal popped into his head. He didn’t want it to be that way, it just happened. Maggie’s face just came up and he couldn’t help himself. For two weeks after that incident, he couldn’t look Evelyn in the eye. Sometimes, the guilt was so unbearable that he couldn’t even stand being in the same room as her.
“No, like I know what it means,” she said, pursuing the topic stubbornly. “But I want to understand the connotations. Isn’t fair skin one of the thirty-two prized features of a Hindu woman?”
“Oh, come up Eve! That’s a pretty misogynist and ancient list, you know” he said, grinning. “The list also says that women need to have a waistline like that of a tiger and arms that look like an elephant’s trunk. It does seem like your arm has a strong resemblance to a trunk, maybe that can help” said Rabin, grabbing her arm jokingly. “No Rabin, stop fooling around this. I am always going to remain an outsider to your family members,” she said in a serious and abrupt tone, not responding to Rabin’s efforts to make the conversation lighter. He noticed Evelyn’s shoulders get tensed. “They are the damn harpooners and I am their white whale. They have made it their obsession to hunt me down, see me removed from your life.” She punctuated herself by sitting upright; her hands now lay folded and tucked in the midst of her lap. She was a bundle of fragility and nervous anger in that moment, only nerves. Rabin leaned in closer to her.
“You don’t need to bring Herman Melville into this and make this conversation so allegorical, Eve,” he said, struggling to suppress the glee in his voice and trying to comfort her at the same time. Evelyn drew complex symbolic interpretations from almost everything that happened to her. “And are you honestly comparing yourself to a big albino whale?” He raised himself and grabbed her bare arms from behind. There it was, right under his fingertips, a tattoo on her arm brightly outlined in the clear noon light, swimming in black ink, the writhing blue body of Moby Dick.
“I mean, Hindus worship Vishnu, the god of whalers.” Evelyn turned around to look at Rabindra’s face quizzically.
*
Evelyn “Eve” Brough, native of Salem, Massachusetts, attended Boston College and got her B.A. in English. There, she picked up an obsession with John Ashbery’s poems. She’d spend hours, cooped up and hidden in the stacks of the humanities library, poring over his poems, while missing lectures and not turning in her essays. It was on a whim that she decided to drop her post-college radio station job in Boston and work for an English newspaper halfway around the world. Richard, her ex-boyfriend, had been sharing stories from his recent adventures on the southern slopes of the Himalayas at the Philosopher’s Bar in Cambridge. They were both leaning against a jukebox – Son of a Preacher Man was filling the room, mostly crowded with students from surrounding universities. After a while, the song stopped distracting Eve.
“Getting to Makalu base camp was the real adventure of my lifetime, Eve,” Rick said loudly. “It was Kathmandu, which was just awful to get stuck in,” he said, careful not to slur his words over the few liquor shots they had taken together. “Fucking claustrophobic man,” he tried explaining. “Surrounded by these glowering hills all the time, missed the open salt water too much.”
But that was the opposite of how Eve had been feeling. It was the open water and her hometown, which she had grown sick of. The harbor, her memories, friends and family, all of them crowded her mind, and jostled with her thoughts. She needed to get away. The sticky salt of sea on her skin and the fishy aftertaste hanging in her throat needed to be washed away with chilled air and cold water from a lost and lonely brook in the hillside. It didn’t take more than two weeks for her to hear back from Abhi Sharma, editor of The Himalayan Post. The daily had agreed to hire her as one of their copy editors.
*
Rabin pushed the door open and stepped out into the hallway. The narrow passage was dimly lit by yellow light from a twenty-watt bulb, hanging naked from the ceiling. There was a calendar marked with the year 2056 plastered on the wall at the end of the corridor. Underneath it on a wooden stool was a maroon telephone set. Fifty-six years ahead of its Gregorian counterpart, the Hindu calendar had laminated pictures of Hindu deities on each flap, lounging and lording over offerings from the devotees. This month it was the elephant-headed Ganesh, with the unbelievable roundness of his gut, gluttonous appetite and broad expanse of his ear flaps. He sat on a plush purple cushion, guiltlessly eavesdropping on all conversations.
“Hello, Abhi-ji?” Rabin spoke into the mouthpiece. “It’s Rabin. Was there something urgent that you wanted me to check on?” he asked.
“Rabin-ji, thanks for calling back,” Abhi spoke from other side. “I wouldn’t have disturbed you this early if it wasn’t an important assignment.”
“Of course, of course,” he replied, rolling his eyes. This was the third morning call he had received from Abhi since the week started.
“I know that the political beat isn’t your thing, but this is something interesting,” Abhi said and waited for Rabin’s response.
“Mhm?”
“A guy called me at home late last night. He said that he is a member of the politburo for the Maoist party,” Abhi took a long swig of what could have been either tea or his morning peg of whiskey. “He is in Kathmandu for a couple of days. It’s supposed to be an undercover visit. I want you to ge
t an interview from him for this coming Monday’s paper.”
“Sure. Where and at what time I am supposed to meet him?” Rabin asked, suddenly excited at the prospect of meeting a Maoist rebel.
“I told him I would send my reporters to Athchowk at eleven-thirty. That’s about two hours from now.” He took another swill of his drink and smacked his lips. “This guy will be wearing a grey flannel shirt. Okay?”
Rabin jotted down the details on the Moleskine that Eve had given him. The frayed skin of his fingers grazed lightly on the ruled pages as he wrote in his curved hand.
“Got it, Abhi-ji,” said Rabin, ready to end the call.
“By the way, why don’t you ring up that American girl and take her with you! She needs to get out in the city and understand a few things about this damn revolution,” Abhi added. He hung up without waiting for Rabin to respond.
*
Athchowk was a well-known intersection where eight roads converged. It belonged to the old part of Kathmandu, littered with narrow lanes and numerous courtyards. Houses built a few centuries ago still stood around the roundabout, while the families within them separated and scattered. Everything seemed to swell and breathe together towards the sky. At the center of the chowk was a stone pillar, on top of which there was a king’s statue, kneeling on his left knee with his hands joined in prayer. On his right shoulder perched a golden bird, ready for flight.
“Rabin, remind me the story about that bird you had told me?” Eve asked, turning towards him. She was wearing one of her best sun dresses, with a light yellow silk scarf neatly tied around her head. The large flower prints on the fabric made her stand out even more. A bit outrageous for a supposedly clandestine meeting, Rabin had thought when he picked her up in the morning, but she was a marvelous distraction.
*
They had just arrived at the chowk. After his conversation with Abhi, Rabin had called up Eve to tell her about the assignment. She was glad that the editor had finally come around to throw something real her way. It was becoming tedious to be cooped up in the office all afternoon, correcting misplaced modifiers and educating Nepali English language reporters about subject-verb agreements.
She had been to Athchowk with Rabin once before. Their trip had been a part of a more usual routine that Eve and Rabin had established some weeks after meeting in the office. Once the newspaper had been put to bed, Rabin rode his scooter over to Eve’s place. From there they would shoot off into the extending darkness of the evening. They would ride past books shops of Putali Sahar, climb through the steep hill of Ganaune Pokhari crowded with hoarding boards, and wind through clean residential neighborhoods of Laxmipath to speed past the blinking traffic lights near the Narayanhiti Museum. Kathmandu is a different chapter of a story during the night. Every now and then, Eve would lean in and whisper how much she loved being on the wheels with Rabin. She would place her hand near Rabin’s heart and lost in the heady mixture of the scooter’s speed, her chin on his shoulders and the warmth from her hand, Rabin’s heart-beat would run ahead, skip and outpace the motor of his scooter.
One evening they had ended up in Ason, the medieval architectural core of Kathmandu, with its puzzling narrow lanes that snaked in and around for miles. They had been successfully lost for hours and didn’t even bother to ask for directions. The scooter ran out of gas right about when they reached Athchowk. It was close to midnight and there wasn’t much life out in the streets. Under the yellow glow of towering street lamps, they could see the sleeping bodies of beggars huddled under old jute bags, piled together with some mangy dogs near the pillar.
This afternoon, they were waiting a little further away, under temporary awnings made from bright blue plastic tarpaulins. At the base of the pillar sat several middle-aged women, the ends of their sarees covering their neatly combed hair drenched in mustard oil. One of them lighted up Khukuri, and passed around the smoke, while few others were chewing away at beetle nuts. In front of them were bamboo baskets full to the brim with bottle-green spinach, cilantro, radishes and mustard greens. There were pyramids of clementine and orange, the sticky pulp from heaps of jackfruit, gourds and melons coated the dusty ground. Ominous clouds were hovering in the sky; the hawker women uncovered their heads and stared patiently skywards.
One of them asked the other, “What do we do if it rains this afternoon?”
Her conversation partner, with her gaze fixed on the clouds and lips pursed downward with a frown said, “Khai, what to do? I have not sold a single thing today.” A quiet audience to this conversation was the king’s statue, sitting on top of the pillar for centuries and worshipping his city, with the bird as his only testament for a glorious prophecy.
“They say that on the day this golden swallow takes off from the king’s shoulder,” Rabin paused, “this city’s people will be ready for self-rule.”
“You mean, Nepali democracy version 3.0,” Eve chimed in happily and expecting Rabin to acknowledge her wit and knowledge of Nepali history. “It’s wild that some fifteenth-century authoritarian king of Nepal had thought of such a modern concept like self-rule,” she added.
“Well, more like seventeenth century,” Rabin corrected her. “You know, this country has always had its share of wise men and storytellers,” Rabin spoke more to himself with self-conscious pride. “But none of that wisdom stays, except in fables and mute statues,” he trailed off.
*
Just then they heard a commotion headed their way. The hawker women hastily started to collect their produce and run into the doors around the chowk, gateways to labyrinthine alleys and walkways. As they hoisted up the mats on which the vegetables had been piled, several melons and jackfruits rolled onto the ground. Some spilled out and fell off the bunched mats, to split open on the ground.
Eve could see flickering flames dancing several feet away. Many of those walking about stopped and stood. Everyone’s eyes seemed to glaze over, not in fear but in a kind of unwavering expectation.
“Rabin, what on earth is going on?” Eve asked anxiously.
“Oh, it’s the mid-afternoon masāl julus,” he replied, his nervousness fixing him to the spot.
“Wait, is this the infamous procession I have heard about from every reporter at the office?” she asked.
The first masāl julus had happened in the summer of 2055. It started as a group of ten student youths, who wore black coveralls and blindfolded themselves. Each carried a burning torch in broad daylight and walked silently through Kathmandu’s streets. The number of procession goers had gone up recently. No one knew where this group congregated and to where it finally dispersed. The photojournalists had tried their best to predict the site of the upcoming processions and had repeatedly failed at it. The black mass was ephemeral, as it never lasted more than ten minutes. This one heading towards Athchowk seemed substantial in size. There were about fifty men and women, their lips pursed together, leading one another silently through the streets. The naked soles of their feet padded over the dusty asphalt, and made sounds like when the snow falls on a quiet winter day. The flame under the blazing sun and their grave faces would startle just about anyone who saw them. Motorbikes, cycles, auto rickshaws and taxis had all parked themselves, quietly giving way to the procession.
Eve stood there overcome with fear as the blindfolded procession marched past her. Their flames threw translucent shadows on the ground and the heat from them smacked the bystanders on their faces. She turned towards Rabin but like hundreds of others who had lined up in the street to witness this ritual, he was spellbound. She on the other hand was just plain scared.
A bell tower struck the mid-hour reminder in the distance, and the quietly walking bodies tore the blind folds, their serene eyes staring ahead of them. And then, these bodies bolted into whatever alleyways they could jump into. The whites of their eyes, and orange flames hurled past Eve and Rabin in a blur, within seconds there was not a single torch in sight. The tension in Athchowk expanded and then dissolved. The traffic res
umed itself with fury and silent spectators returned to their original pace, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. It was at that moment when Rabin’s face relaxed, that Evelyn understood what Rick had meant when he used the word “claustrophobic” to describe the city.
“Rabin, are you alright?” she asked, recovering from her own anxious thoughts and paying attention to his vivid face.
“Wasn’t that something?”
“Yeah...”
“That was something...” he sighed and leaned against the closed metal shutter of a storefront.
“Yeah...”
CHAMOMILE
Byanjana Thapa
Byanjana Thapa was born in the south of Nepal, but brought up in Kathmandu, New York City and Geneva. She has loved English literature ever since she can remember, and has been writing since the age of ten. Her short story Chamomile was shortlisted for the Writing Nepal 2013 competition, and her poems have been published in many anthologies. Byanjana has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and is currently pursuing her Master’s. She lives in Teaneck, New Jersey, and writes regularly on her blog thewriterispresent.blogspot.com.
Juhi was in town. It had been a decade since her last visit, and who knew when the next one would be? She wanted to see Shagun at any cost. They made hasty plans to meet at Hotel Annapurna, in the café that overlooked the pool. “One o’clock,” Juhi had decided. She had a meeting afterwards. “So many years.” Fifteen, exactly.
Shagun was running late. On a last-minute whim, her daughter Aditi had wanted to be taken to a school friend’s house. The babysitter did not know where the baby’s diapers were. The minutes slid by, pushed faster by the painful inching of Kathmandu traffic.
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