Land Where I Flee

by Prajwal Parajuly

  “Yes, she exaggerates a lot,” Agastaya said. “Better not believe it.”

  “I’m sure not everything she says is exaggerated. Marriage has made Manasa the gutsiest person in the world.”

  Agastaya claimed he felt much better after the momos.

  “The trees outside aren’t running anymore,” he said. “You’d think with age, it’d get better, but it seems to only worsen. Why am I the only one of us who gets motion sickness? I seem to have gotten the bad hair, the bad skin, and the vomiting gene.”

  “And the money-making ability,” Bhagwati countered.

  “No, that’s Manasa.”

  “You and Manasa.”

  “More like her husband now,” Agastaya offered. “Her marriage seems to be the one with the most compromises.”

  This was where Bhagwati would have to bring it up.

  “Not all marriages are like that,” she said. “Sometimes they bring out the best in you. Haven’t you thought of marriage at all? Isn’t it time?”

  “Not for me,” Agastaya said. “No children, no marriage. I hope I don’t have to deal with too many marriage questions once I get home.”

  “Why are you so against it?”

  “Have you seen a happy marriage?”

  “Yes, mine,” Bhagwati said.

  “That’s why you talk so much about it. Are you sure it’s entirely happy?”

  That put a stop to what Bhagwati hoped would progress into marriage chat.

  Years after she had eloped, years after beginning life at the camps in Khudunabari, years after her first son was born, years after her second one was born, about half a year after moving to America, Bhagwati had reopened lines of communication with her grandmother. She had tried making up in the past—when she phoned from Phuntsholing, her call had been hung up on, once by Agastaya and on another occasion by Aamaa herself. The desire to correspond with her family had dwindled greatly after she was moved into the camps. She was stupid about not wanting Aamaa’s help—so many wrinkles would have been ironed out, so much of the limbo that was to characterize their stateless existence avoided.

  With moving to America, and life seemingly prosperous, a new kind of confidence had sprouted in Bhagwati. Now that she was in the golden land, her grandmother wouldn’t question if any of her calls were motivated by financial difficulties. So, one spring day, sixteen years after being dead to her grandmother, Bhagwati took matters into her own hands. Facebook and its intrusive self had already helped heal her relationship with her siblings. Aamaa was the only person with whom things had yet to be mended, and Bhagwati would feel so much more at peace with herself if the repairing of this relationship—the most fractured of them all—happened before her octogenarian grandmother inevitably lost control of her faculties. The encouragement coming from Agastaya trumped the repeated discouragement from Manasa, so Bhagwati called home.

  Aamaa picked up.

  “Hello, it is Bhagwati,” she said, not at all nervous for a person who was greeting another whose life she had ruined.

  Silence.

  “Aamaa, I am in America,” she said. “We have to talk. How long will we continue this way?”

  Silence.

  At least Aamaa hadn’t disconnected the line.

  “You have two great-grandsons. I am the only one among all your grandchildren who has given you great-grandchildren.”

  To this Chitralekha calmly answered: “Those low-caste Damaai grandchildren? I don’t need them.”

  “Say of them what you will, but they are your blood,” Bhagwati said.

  “Polluted blood.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chitralekha said. “The damage has already been done.”

  “And it can never be repaired?”

  “No, it can’t. So, why did you call? Do you need money?”

  “I am in America. The government takes very good care of us here.”

  “Do they have quotas for Damaais there, too?”

  Bhagwati bit her lower lip. “No, we are here as Bhutanese refugees.”

  “Serves you right for not calling home when in need.”

  “I did call you, but you hung up. You taught Agastaya to hang up, too.”

  “Yes, that was before the trouble began.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We are talking now.”

  “Don’t you dream of bringing your half-caste children close to me.”

  Still, it was a start. Bhagwati recognized that as long as she could endure the stings that came from Aamaa more regularly than pleasantries, reconnecting with her grandmother wasn’t as difficult as she’d thought it would be. The digs decreased when Bhagwati said nothing in retaliation. Aamaa thrived on confrontation, but there was no excitement in confronting when her granddaughter accepted every one of her allegations.

  Bhagwati tried hard to get her grandmother interested in her children. To an allusion that one of them was just like her in temperament, Chitralekha remarked, “Yes, I don’t want to meet another me. One of us is enough for the world.” To an anecdote about the younger one chewing on his meat bones more enthusiastically than a dog did, Aamaa quickly added, “So, they eat cows? Oh, I forget they aren’t Baahuns.” To a reference about their diminishing Nepali skills, Aamaa remarked, “Caste-less, language-less—all the same.”

  Bhagwati had been castigated enough; eighteen years of isolation was sufficient. She would willingly take this grudging acceptance and the frequent digs about her children. Aamaa wanted her to talk marriage sense into Agastaya, which she was determined to do on this trip. Her grandmother may not have forgiven her, but she had at least started talking to her, and Bhagwati took it upon herself to somehow repay the favor. She was thankful that the anger had waned, even if it showed itself more frequently than she’d have liked. She was grateful her grandmother at least knew that her great-grandchildren existed.

  She had told Aamaa that she didn’t want to brew any tension by bringing Ram to the Chaurasi. When relatives gathered, where pujas took place, when God was involved, a non-Brahmin was discriminated against no matter how accommodating the family pretended to be, no matter how liberal it was. What made it doubly hard was that this was her family. Aamaa had offered no suggestion to Bhagwati’s idea of excluding her husband and children from the celebrations, which in Aamaa-speak (or no-speak) was approval for her granddaughter to leave her family behind in America.

  The real reason for Ram not accompanying Bhagwati, though, was financial. They were bankrupt—five-figure-debt-on-credit-cards broke. During their orientation to life in America, the International Organization for Migration had warned them about the vagaries of debt. What had started as a sincere attempt at establishing a credit history, which they built by militantly paying off every last cent of their credit cards by the month’s end, quickly graduated into their barely being able make their minimum payments, thus making all their accounts delinquent. Ram had language issues—with understanding and being understood—at every job, and that didn’t help smooth their financial troubles.

  Rice plants glistened on the terraced farms to her right. The crop hadn’t ripened enough for the panicles to turn yellow. To the left, their taxi zipped by familiar messages written on rocks: IF MARRIED, DIVORCE SPEED; BE GENTLE ON MY CURVES; ALWAYS ALERT, ACCIDENTS AVERT. Bhagwati looked at Agastaya, who was forcing himself to sleep so he wouldn’t throw up, and wondered what he’d say if he knew that she had been asked not to return to her job or if she disclosed that she had just been fired from the very prestigious position of a dishwasher. “Restaurants and retail” were such great euphemisms for “dishwasher” and “salesgirl.”

  Ram may have wanted to come. A furtive reunion could have been planned with his still-Bhutanese brothers in Gangtok. His siblings had distanced themselves from any anti-monarchy demonstrations and had been proud, if scared, residents of Bhutan, but when they found out about Ram’s move to Denver and then to Boulder, they begged him to figure out a way for them to get out
of the country. They were like others in that way—people who assumed that with a quick flight to the West, your troubles stayed behind in the East. The East was poverty. The West, riches. The East was disparity. The West was equality. The East was problems. The West, the solution to these problems.

  When they reached the spot for which she was waiting, Bhagwati called out her brother’s name. He probably would want to see it, too.

  “It’s still here,” she said.

  They both looked out. Yes, the structure stood where Bhagwati remembered it. The rest stop with its pair of cement benches and tin roof was meant to immortalize their parents, whose jeep had lost control after a collision at this bend and fallen into the river some thirty years before. All the passengers were declared dead. No bodies were found.

  “Do any emotions come up?” Bhagwati asked.

  “No. I don’t have any memory of them.”

  “I hope our children don’t forget us the way we’ve forgotten our parents.”

  “I was three when they died. You were seven. We should be forgiven for not remembering very much of them.”

  Agastaya asked why she hadn’t brought her children, especially as this could possibly be the only time they’d get to see their aging great-grandmother. Bhagwati replied that they’d wanted to stay behind. Of course, that wasn’t the truth. It all boiled down to money.

  “It would have been nice to show them off, wouldn’t it?” she said.

  Their burgeoning Americanization would at least divert the attention from their caste.

  “Pretend you’re appalled at how American they are.” Agastaya laughed. “And secretly gloat.”

  Bhagwati was worried about her children’s rapid Americanization. The IOM people had told her to embrace it, to wish for it because it made life easier, but the rapidity with which her children had forgotten about life at the camps scared her and sometimes made her envy them. She was afraid that they, too, like white children, would move out once they were eighteen and only rarely visit their parents.

  Gangtok had grown, expanded vertically and horizontally and recklessly. What Bhagwati remembered as rural was now covered with buildings elbowing one another—shops, hospitals, colleges. The number of new constructions was countered by the number of new cars, all of which whooshed by dangerously close to their taxi. She had left behind a sleepy town and returned to find a place she barely recognized. So much had changed in two decades. She had left when Basnett was in power and was now in an era in which he was totally powerless. Of course, she, too, had changed and grown. She would soon become an American. She was married. She had two children. She had just lost her job as a dishwasher. She had left town a nervous Brahmin and was back here a nervous Damaai.

  •

  To watch Mount Kanchendzonga weaving its magic on the world was one of Chitralekha’s favorite solitary activities. She walked to the rooftop, relishing the slight chill in the air that would grow severe in the next few weeks and saw Manasa observing the mountain, a striped Naga shawl wrapped around her upper body. Her granddaughter looked serene, as though she wasn’t the same person who had just yesterday created a ruckus for want of a clean sheet. Chitralekha lit a beedi with a match, stretched herself, and let Manasa be. Chitraleka was finally bored because what in the beginning had appeared to be her granddaughter’s tranquil face now had transformed into a vapid look, conveying no depth, nothing, Chitralekha coughed and asked Manasa what she was doing.

  “Slept all morning. Just woke up. I was jet-lagged,” Manasa replied. “The weather is beautiful.”

  “When will the others be here?”

  “Tonight. Be nice to Bhagwati.”

  “Don’t spoil such a beautiful day by picking a fight.”

  “I like how I haven’t seen your favorite granddaughter yet. Is Prasanti avoiding me?”

  “No, I don’t think she is,” said Chitralekha, trying to ignore the howling street dogs that would soon participate in a riotous orgy right outside her gate. “You’re so pleasant to her.”

  “I’ll make her work today. I have so many dirty clothes.”

  “Don’t you have washing machines in England? You could have washed them there.”

  “They never come out as clean as when Prasanti wrings them with a man’s might and irons them with a woman’s fastidiousness. I forbid her to use the washer.”

  “That’s just creating more work for her,” Chitralekha said. “She’s already overworked.”

  “Yes, I know. She has to provide you with the entire neighborhood’s gossip. She has a difficult life.”

  “Look at the dark circles under your eyes,” Chitralekha said. “You look old.”

  “Perhaps that’s because I feel old. All I do is take care of Bua.”

  “Here, come closer. Let me look at the dandruff collecting around your eyes.” Chitralekha moved toward her granddaughter and blew a mouthful of beedi smoke into her face. “That’s for being mean to me,” she said, and she laughed loudly enough to muffle the racket the dogs created.

  “Why do you smoke that disgusting thing?” Manasa shouted. “Are you losing your mind?”

  “Would you rather I chew tobacco?” Chitralekha stubbed out her cigarette. “Chew it and spit it out everywhere like your grandfather used to?”

  “At least that’s better than blowing smoke into people’s faces. And who said you’d have to give up one vice to take up another? Don’t smoke. Don’t chew tobacco. They are nasty habits.”

  “Do you think a person can change at a hundred?”

  “You’re still not eighty-four, Aamaa. Stop exaggerating.”

  “Eighty-four. Ninety. A hundred—all the same. There is no way any of you children will live up to that age. You barely eat anything. You may live up to fifty.”

  Prasanti—full of chirpiness, face well-scrubbed, Adam’s apple hidden with chunni, nose studded, hair in ponytail, red kurta as glossy as her makeup—broadcast her arrival with the declaration that it was Diwali and that there should be no quarreling during the festival. “We are celebrating the victory of good over evil,” she said, looking sheepishly at Manasa while handing a cup of tea to Chitralekha. “We know who the good one here is.”

  “Silly girl, Dashain is the celebration of good over evil—we just finished it.” Chitralekha couldn’t help laughing. “This is Tihaar, and Manasa isn’t as evil as you think she is.”

  “Yes, have fun with this nonsense, Aamaa,” Manasa said. “And, Prasanti, where have you been all this while? You don’t show your face. You run away when you need to help me with my luggage. Oh, and then don’t get me tea when you know I am here.”

  “No tea for the evil,” Prasanti pronounced in a lilt, which Chitralekha endorsed in a screech.

  Her granddaughter glared at Chitralekha, who stopped once she saw that those murderous eyes wouldn’t soften.

  “Maybe coffee but no tea,” half sang Prasanti before slinking off. “Tea only for the good. Coffee, perhaps, for the evil.”

  “Why do you encourage her?” Manasa asked.

  “She’s funny. She brightens my day.”

  “With such juvenile jokes? How can you find them funny?”

  “You’re so harsh on her.”

  “You have a bizarre sense of humor. Blowing smoke into my face, Prasanti’s silly antics—how can they amuse you so?”

  “I should have told her about the smoke.”

  “You do that, and I’ll double her workload.”

  “Don’t, please. I need her to do some real work this evening.”

  Gangtok was a city of stairs. It also had streets with crater-size potholes, dirt trails, and a slowly widening two-lane highway, but the city was infested with stairs. People preferred stairs to roads. Stairs often took you to the same places roads did. Stairs created short cuts. Stairs saved time. Stairs saved you from traffic. Stairs could easily be built. Stairs were often makeshift. Stairs were economical. Stairs could cut through terrain where laying roads proved challenging because of widths and
slopes. Stairs were ideal for a city situated on a hilltop with so many inclines and declines. Stairs were perpetually wet, perhaps because a maze of leaking water pipes often substituted for banisters. Stairs flourished.

  Chitralekha had never liked stairs. As she became more advanced in years, she dreamed of getting rid of every step in the city. Just a few months before, she had succeeded in reducing the number of these city stairs by converting the flight that led to her house into a proper road, which would increase the value of her property and make certain she didn’t have to walk up and down flights in her old age. She had fought and bribed many an officer, alienated and threatened numerous department heads, and disregarded plenty of city ordinances to get the job done, the worth of which was reinforced every time her car rattled uphill on gravel. Ascending in a car on what felt like her personal driveway still brought a smile to her face—the construction of the road was one of her proudest achievements.

  The beauty of the location of Chitralekha’s home, overlooking the Presbyterian Church, was the easy access to the town square—it was just some stairs and a bridge away. Yet her house was far away from the bustle of city life. Because the cottage was at least five minutes from the main road, no honking cars passed by in their hundreds, a problem that irritated her street-level neighbors. Chitralekha’s was the only cottage in the midst of a jungle of midrise buildings and the only house whose outdoor space rivaled the square footage of its indoors. Ruthwa, her now-forgotten writer grandson, had named it the Neupaney Oasis. It was an oasis, no doubt, with unobstructed views of Mount Kanchendzonga, Sikkim’s guardian deity, which she would soon be robbed of if she didn’t act fast.

  Chitralekha had some serious confrontational work to do today. It wasn’t going to reap her any financial rewards, but she had to accomplish it before the rest of the family arrived. One of her neighbors, a minister, was constructing a building so massive in its scope that it threatened to block the view of the mountain from Chitralekha’s terrace.

  Gangtok was becoming a strange place—everywhere she looked, buildings mushroomed, precariously balanced on small surface areas while their breadth and height swelled frenziedly. Rumor had it that, close by, on the steep, hilly patch that flanked the path to the Palzor Stadium, the land was manpari—inhabited as you pleased. Tiny two- and three-story buildings, therefore, had sprung up to occupy every free square inch of the lot. To an onlooker, a person from the plains, it looked as if a force of nature, maybe a landslide or an earthquake, could uproot the tiny buildings and send them crashing down. Staring back at the construction site in front of her, Chitralekha was thankful that she had her little green space, but what use was a garden when the ugly monolith in front of her was all set to get in the way of her and her mountain?