Yaraana

by Hoshang Merchant

  When we made love for the last time today, it was nothing like I imagined it would be—almost passionless, uncoordinated and tentative, lacking synchronization. Like those afternoons when neither of us felt ardent, but, thinking that the other did, we would make our best effort. I had dreaded our parting so much that, for fear of the pain, I had withdrawn from him. I suppose he had done the same thing.

  Afterwards, while we were putting on our clothes, I glanced up at the mirror and saw that he was watching me. For a moment our eyes met, then I turned away and continued getting dressed.

  When I left his house, the sky had darkened and I could feel the moisture in the air. I had borrowed Sanath’s bicycle for the afternoon, and, as I cycled along Galle Road towards Sena Uncle’s house, I had the nagging sense that there was something I needed to do but couldn’t remember what. When I passed Buller’s Road, I knew what it was. I stopped my bicycle and wheeled it back along the pavement.

  By the time I had turned onto our road, I could already feel a few drops of rain on my arms. The road was deserted. From the top of it, I could see our house, its black walls and beams visible above the other houses. When I reached it, I pushed open the gate. Something was different from the last time I was there. The house looked even more bare, even more desolate than before. Then I realized what had happened and I stared at our house in shock. Everything that was not burned had been stolen. Whatever had remained intact, furniture, uncharred beams, doors, windows, even the hinges and the rain pipes, had been taken. How naked the house appeared without its door and windows, how hollow and barren with only scraps of paper and other debris in its rooms. I felt hot, angry tears begin to well up in me as I saw this final violation. Then, for the first time, I began to cry for our house. I sat on the verandah steps and wept for the loss of my home, for the loss of everything that I held to be precious. I tried to muffle the sound of my weeping, but my voice cried out loudly as if it were the only weapon I had against those who had destroyed my life.

  ‘Aisa Bhi Hota Hai Kya?’: A Story from Nepal

  Ajay K.C.

  I am a poor boy. Nepal is a poor country. No roads, no electricity even in Kathmandu. No water in villages. ‘No government or is there one?’ as a banner asks. I can read Nepali. I’ve studied till the eighth class. I can write my name and address in English. I’ve been driving tourist taxis for a living for the past two and a half years. I am twenty-two. I look like my father: The nose and chin of an army man and lips of a Hindi film star. His looks were my father’s undoing. He left my mother for another lady when I was two. My mother became a labourer to feed me and my younger sister. Now I feed them. I have no ambition for myself. I cannot return to school. The syllabus has changed. It is an American syllabus for rich kids. The handsomest boys are Newari. You know why they are handsome? Because they are rich. If you are rich, you become handsome. I met a girl but I lost her quickly. She went to the Gulf and never called me. I lost my cell phone. But I still give out my cell number to everyone.

  One day, on Shivratri last year, my life changed. An old man with a fair face, long white hair and a white beard sat in my taxi. He was a guest of the tourist board and I had to show him the Pashupatinath temple. We had to get out and walk past shops to the temple. A small chokkra looked at him and said: ‘Wow! How handsome!’ He felt shy and reached for my hand. I clutched his hand, saying, ‘You are handsome!’ He felt more shy.

  At the temple, he saw the wooden corner brackets: monsters with big dicks, carved out of shining black wood, with red-painted heads. He tugged at my elbow. I simply smiled and walked on. At the burning ghat on the Bagmati river, I showed him the corpse of an old man: white long hair, white beard. ‘Don’t look!’ he said. ‘It’s a bad omen.’ I wanted to stay till that body turned to ash but he would not.

  ‘This bull is like me,’ he said, looking at the temple’s mascot, the Nandi bull. ‘He’s old but once he had sharp horns.’ I smiled again. To the tourist, everything reflects him but to us, everything is us and ours. We offer it to tourists. We need the money. Then we haggled over the price of a linga.

  In the car, he told me he was abandoned by his father as a child. So I told him my story and our minds met. I took him to the Swayambhu Linga where I had to lie and say he was a Hindu to let him past the guards. I sat with him on the same bench where I had met my girlfriend and told him about her. He said she could be prostituted in the Gulf. I felt very sad. It was then that our hearts met. ‘Everyone is selfish,’ I remarked. He sat silent.

  On the way back, he opened his wallet and gave me four crisp five-hundred-rupee notes. ‘Buy a cell phone,’ he said. Then he said, ‘Wait! Take two thousand in hundred-rupee notes. I don’t need them. I did not spend any money here. I am returning home tomorrow.’ I thanked him profusely and kept shaking his hand.

  I could not sleep that night. Aisa bhi hota hai kya? I told my mother everything. ‘Bring him home,’ she said.

  ‘He leaves tomorrow!’

  At seven, I was at the hotel, my wet hair slicked back after a five o’clock cold water bath in winter. He said I looked like Shashi Kapoor. I only know Salman and Aamir. By 7.30 a.m. we were at the airport. ‘Wait, don’t go!’ I said. ‘Stay half an hour.’

  ‘The love of a friend is also love,’ he suddenly said. I felt shy. I looked vacantly in the near distance.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘At you!’

  He suddenly kissed my cheek. I hung my head down in shame.

  ‘Yes, the love of a friend is also love,’ I repeated.

  Then he was gone.

  As told to Hoshang Merchant

  According to a recent study, sodomy increased considerably in Nepal after the World War. This could be attributed to women-deprived soldiers returning home from war; also, British officers sodomizing Gurkha soldiers. Earlier, sodomy had arisen in Kathmandu when the Ranas released all their concubines and these unlettered women were forced to ply their trade as common prostitutes. This could be due to the aforementioned cashiered soldiers being a part of their clientele: a popular revenge on aristocratic women. K.C. Ajay (whose story appears here) seemed to be aware of ‘boys’ hostels’, as he put it.

  The Chinese soldiers routinely accuse their adversaries, the Tibetan monks, of homosexuality in order to denounce them. The Red Hat and Yellow Hat orders of monks once expected novice monks to ‘serve’ abbots, which included sexual services. The deep friendship of the young Dalai Lama for the homosexual German explorer, Heinrich Harrer, has been expounded in the latter’s Seven Years in Tibet.

  Himalayan Saivism (linga worship) is a great sublimation of the cosmic sexual instinct itself.

  The Country without a Post Office

  For James Merrill

  Agha Shahid Ali

  ‘—letters sent

  To dearest him that lives alas! away.’

  —Gerard Manley Hopkins

  I

  Again I’ve returned to this country

  where a minaret has been entombed.

  Someone soaks the wicks of clay lamps

  in mustard oil, each night climbs its steps

  to read messages scratched on planets.

  His fingerprints cancel blank stamps

  in that archive for letters with doomed

  addresses, each house buried or empty.

  Empty? Because so many fled, ran away

  and became refugees there, in the plains,

  where they must now will a final dewfall

  to turn the mountains to glass. They’ll see

  us through them—see us frantically bury

  houses to save them from fire that, like a wall,

  caves in. The soldiers light it, hone the flames,

  burn our world to sudden papier-maché

  inlaid with gold, then ash. When the muezzin

  died, the city was robbed of very Call.

  The houses were swept about like leaves

  for burning. Now every night we bury

 
our houses—and theirs, the ones left empty.

  We are faithful. On their doors we hang wreaths.

  More faithful each night fire again is a wall

  and we look for the dark as it caves in.

  II

  ‘We’re inside the fire, looking for the dark,’

  one unsigned card, left on the street, says. ‘I want

  to be he who pours blood. To soak your hands.

  Or I’ll leave mine in the cold till the rain

  is ink, and my fingers, at the edge of pain,

  are seals all night to cancel the stamps.’

  The mad guide! The lost speak like this. They haunt

  a country when it is ash. Phantom heart,

  pray he’s alive. I have returned in rain

  to find him, to learn why he never wrote.

  I’ve brought cash, a currency of paisleys

  to buy the new stamps, rare already, blank,

  no nation named on them. Without a lamp

  I look for him in houses buried, empty—

  He may be alive, opening doors of smoke,

  breathing in the dark his ash-refrain:

  ‘Everything is finished, nothing remains.’

  I must force silence to be a mirror

  to see his voice, ask it again for directions.

  Fire runs in waves. Should I cross that river?

  Each post office is boarded up. Who will deliver

  parchment cut in paisleys, my news to prisons?

  Only silence can now trace my letters

  to him. Or in a dead office the dark panes.

  III

  ‘The entire map of the lost will be candled.

  I’m keeper of the minaret since the muezzin died.

  Come soon, I’m alive. There’s almost a paisley

  against the light, sometimes white, then black.

  The glutinous wash is wet on its back

  as it blossoms into autumn’s final country—Buy it, I issue

  it only once, at night.

  Come before I’m killed, my voice cancelled.’

  In this dark rain, be faithful, Phantom heart,

  this is your pain. Feel it. You must feel it.

  ‘Nothing will remain, everything’s finished,’

  I see his voice again: ‘This is a shrine

  of words. You’ll find your letters to me. And mine

  to you. Come soon and tear open these vanished

  envelopes.’ And I reach the minaret:

  I’m inside the fire. I have found the dark.

  This is your pain. You must feel it. Feel it,

  Heart, be faithful to his mad refrain—For he soaked the wicks of clay lamps,

  lit them each night as he climbed these steps

  to read messages scratched on planets.

  His hands were seals to cancel the stamps.

  This is an archive. I’ve found the remains

  of his voice, that map of longings with no limit.

  IV

  I read them, letters of lovers, the mad ones,

  and mine to him from whom no answers come.

  I light lamps, send my answers, Calls to Prayer

  to deaf worlds across continents. And my lament

  is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

  to this world whose end was near, always near.

  My words to go out in huge packages of rain,

  go there, to addresses, across the oceans.

  It’s raining as I write this. I have no prayer.

  It’s just a shout, held in, It’s Us! It’s Us!

  whose letters are cries that break like bodies

  in prisons. Now each night in the minaret

  I lead myself, guide, mad keeper, up the steps—

  I throw paisleys to clouds. The lost are like this:

  They bribe the air for dawn, this their dark purpose.

  But there’s no sun here. There is no sun here.

  It rains as I write this. Mad heart, be brave.

  I want to live forever. What else can I say?

  I’ve found a prisoner’s letters to a lover—

  One begins: ‘These words may never reach you.’

  Another ends: ‘The skin dissolves in dew

  without your touch.’ And I want to answer:

  ‘Send your cries to me, live, if only in this way

  Be pitiless, lost letters, you whom I could not save.’

  Story

  Bhupen Kakhar

  Manjri had just finished college for the day and was walking towards the bus stop. Suddenly, she was shoved by a male arm. She turned to look: It was Manoj. Her book of good thoughts fell from her hands into the dust. She was about to weep. Manoj was stunned. He picked up the book and while returning it to her, his eyes fell on the following sentences:

  Be a good girl

  Lead a good life

  Choose a good husband

  Be a good wife

  If wealth is lost, nothing is lost

  If health is lost, nothing is lost

  If wealth is lost, nothing is lost

  But if character is lost, everything is lost

  Manoj began begging forgiveness for the little accident and said, ‘Your priceless book has been dragged in the mud. As a way of making up to you for my mistake, I’ll copy the whole book out in a new notebook for you. I understand how much you would value such a book because I too keep a similar book of good thoughts.’

  But Manjri had forgiven the well-built Manoj already. She said enthusiastically, ‘I’ll forgive you only on one condition. Give me your book of good thoughts and let me copy out the moral precepts to follow in life. Gandhiji and Vivekananda have spoken so inspiringly! To my mind, this Aryan renaissance is more precious than gold.’

  Manoj said, ‘The heroes of the novels of Ramanlal Desai are my ideals. Well-built body, hand-washed khadi, and an interest in music.’

  Manjri said, ‘The inspiring anecdotes from Jankalyan and Akhand Anand, religious discussion and duties towards elders: Whatever of it we can follow, we must follow. The sacrifice of the political martyrs for the nation is my life’s ideal.’

  Manjri and Manoj became best friends after this incident.

  Manjri was also interested in art. She composed natural landscapes out of cardamom shells, leaders’ likenesses out of straw, and women gossiping at the well out of rice and moong dal. Manoj was surprised and awed by Manjri’s art.

  The college was to celebrate Gandhi Jayanti. The principal had not notified the rules for the cleaning of the college. Manoj was nominated as the student representative by the principal. There was to be an exhibition of Gandhiji’s books and photographs in the evening.

  At the function, a variety programme was arranged. Mimicry regaled the students. At last, Manoj took the stage. His Taiso-koto music received four encores. The principal inaugurated the exhibition after Manoj’s performance.

  The cynosure of all eyes at the exhibition was a life-like portrait of Gandhiji. It was so real it seemed about to speak at any moment; compassion in the eyes. It was signed Manjri Manjumdar. The noteworthy thing was that Manjri had painted this portrait with her own blood. She had poked a compass-point into her finger and drawn blood. Then she had mixed it with other colours. When the principal came to know of this, he gave her fulsome praise before the students. Moreover, it was awarded as the best exhibit.

  When Manjri went to receive her prize amid deafening applause, a line of a film tune kept running through her head:

  Tumhi ho mata, pita tumhi ho

  Tumhi ho bandhu, sakha tumhi ho

  You are father and mother

  Comrade and friend

  The next day, Gujarat Samachar carried her photo under the title, ‘Colour of Blood’. The news report especially noted Manjri’s self-reliance and forbearance.

  The day after that, Manoj said while congratulating Manjri, ‘Manjri! My father Manilal has seen your photo. He has also sent his congratulations and asked you to tea tomorrow e
vening.’

  Manjri said, ‘I drink neither tea nor coffee. They are harmful to health, but if you can make a caffeine-free decoction for me, I’ll surely visit.’

  When Manjri and Manoj went the next day to see Manilal, she took special care to wear her favourite blue khadi saree, tied her hair in a bun at the nape with great care, and put a small red dot exactly at the centre of her forehead.

  As soon as he saw Manjri, Manilal exclaimed: ‘You look like an apsara in your blue saree. You’re more beautiful than your photograph!’

  Saying that, he tied the mogra garland he had specially bought for her in her hair. Sensing the fragrance of her hair, Manilal asked, ‘Manjri, what hair oil do you use?’

  Manjri laughed and said, ‘Since childhood, I have used Brahmi oil. It guards against hair loss and makes the hair silkier.’

  Manoj returned from the kitchen carrying the decoction and the tea.

  Manjri and Manilal thereafter talked of religion and incidents inspiring self-sacrifice. Manilal gave Manjri two books on moral science. Shyly, Manjri thanked Manilal profusely. When Manoj went to see Manjri off at the bus stand, she said, ‘I liked Mani kaka as much as I like you. He, too, is interested in religion as much as I am. I was very pleased to known him.’ Manoj, too, felt happy at their first meeting.

  As is natural Manoj and Manjri’s friendship resulted in love. As soon as college was over, they would sit in the park for hours talking about books. They both agreed that good reading made for one’s moral progress. A characterless person was a monster in a living inferno. One evening as they sat copying beautiful thoughts into their books, Manjri’s pen slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground. When Manjri bent down to pick up her pen, Manoj noticed that her saree had slipped from her bosom, travelling the shape of her firm breasts. Manoj was tempted and he looped his fingers into Manjri’s. Manjri felt his sudden, warm touch. That night, Manoj experienced a wet dream. From then on, whenever he met Manjri, he was only interested in her hair, her clothes and her heaving breasts. He could not discuss religion any more. Every moment, he yearned for her touch. If by accident, she touched him, he would tremble with delight. Manjri noted Manoj’s changed behaviour.