One of the most prominent and best known writers in the Nepali language, Indra Bahadur Rai is the author of thirteen books—including the novel Aaja Ramita Chha, translated as There’s a Carnival Today—spanning the genres of short fiction, memoir, literary criticism and drama. He is credited with introducing fresh modernist aesthetics, as theory and in practice, to Nepali literature, and also played a major role in having the Nepali language officially recognized by the Indian Constitution. He is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Jagadamba Shree Puraskar and the Agam Singh Giri Smriti Puraskar.
Prawin Adhikari writes screenplays and fiction, and translates between Nepali and English. He is an assistant editor at La.Lit, the literary magazine. He is the author of The Vanishing Act, a collection of short stories.
Contents
The Long March Out of Burma
Mountains and Rivers
Jaar: A Real Story
Thulikanchhi
My Sister
Chaprasi
The Delinquent
In Limbo
We Separated Them
One Among Us
Long Night of Storm
The Ordinariness of a Day
Kheer
Journey of an Ideal
A Pocketful of Cashews
Power of a Dream
Acknowledgements
The Long March Out of Burma
An uninterrupted line of refugees had passed for more than ten or twelve days. The Japanese had advanced along the opposite banks of the Irrawaddy, climbed up from Tangi and reached Lasio. There was a rumour that they had arrived as close as Maina basti. Their neighbour Dhanpad Subba, a pensioned corporal, had taken his family on the road four days ago. Abruptly yesterday, Lieutenant Baghbir Mukhkiya also took off. Everybody was fleeing in hordes. The British had been retreating with their troops, fleeing from Victoria Point and Rangoon and heading for Imphal in Manipur through Mandalay. There was nobody left to resist the enemy. From early in the morning the huddle of people fleeing on foot and on bullock-carts was heading towards the dirt trail to Sumprabung. Not a dog seemed to be coming in this direction; everybody was intent on running away from here.
Jayamaya, all of fifteen years, stepped out onto the shaded verandah of her two-storey house, went back inside and sulked to her mother. She wished she could run away with all the others, and she also felt the fear that underpinned the casual levity of the situation. Subedar Shivajit Rai, sitting at an open window, had been watching the part of the road visible from his house—from dawn until night descended—for four straight days now. In the fleeing crowd were so many faces familiar and unfamiliar. He saw many old soldiers and officers from his platoon whom he had not met in years. If this day were inevitable, if it was known that someday everybody would have to flee, it should have been done earlier than this, in better days. Now he contemplated—he would not have needed to abandon any of his earnings and wealth, the house and the fields. He saw that the tea served by his wife had gone cold, clotted white.
His wife, the Subedarni, was outside, collecting the washing on the lines. He went to the landing outside the kitchen and left the teacup there, returned and called his wife. Subedarni came to him immediately.
‘Subedarni,’ he said in a firm voice but with a tired countenance, ‘gather everything in the house. We must leave too.’
Subedarni continued looking at her husband.
‘If Gorkhas have only until today to enjoy this land, so be it. But, if fortune still keeps us in favour, we will return to Machina and share laughter and joy. Jayamaya…’
Jayamaya was the first among them to tear up, and so she stood next to Subedarni, staring at a spot on the floor.
‘Jayamaya, darling child, if, perchance, something happens on the road to your mother and me, go searching for your brother Bikram. He is a soldier—he won’t perish. His platoon—I know—must have reached Imphal.’
Jayamaya went to her study on the upper floor.
Through the night, with the help of their servants, Subedar and Subedarni bundled together their possessions. There was nothing they could throw away thoughtlessly. But Subedar stubbornly threw away many things. At dawn, the loading of two bullock-carts commenced. U Basu, an old man without wife or children, had agreed to drive his landlord’s family up to the 116-mile mark on the Sumprabung road. Subedarni had heaped the boyish Tham U and his even younger wife with many, many gifts and given them their leave sometime during the night. Apart from the two goats and a wicker basket of chickens that were loaded onto a cart, Subedar called his servants together and told them to take away all the remaining pigs, chickens and ducks.
Early in the morning, Subedar’s pair of bullock-carts joined the long line of carts trudging northward.
Because it hadn’t rained for many days now, and because of the tread of the carts that had already passed, the Sumprabung road was full of dust, but, unpaved as it was, the road was wide enough for the carts to pass with ease. Jayamaya was in the first cart, sitting with the old man U Basu. Subedarni watched her home, her fields, fodder trees and fences recede, and began to sob. But the Gorkhalis who had already spent many days on the road were duelling with boastful songs, telling jokes and laughing.
The Subedar—with his large arms, broad nose and long eyes on a fair, attractive face—wearing a faded vest atop a white shirt and a pair of khaki trousers, carrying a gun, and slung over his shoulder, a Burmese bag, walked behind the pair of his carts.
It was the last week in April. Even as they walked, the sun became fierce overhead, but a scatter of clouds also showed. The long line ahead, which seemed empty in places before, was now a thick swarm as far away as the eye could discern. By the time they reached about 6 miles away from the house Subedarni had stanched her tears. On the other cart, Jayamaya showed the old U Basu the large clearing where the entire village had gathered just a year before for a picnic; somewhere close by, she told him, was a fountain of cold water. Subedar had climbed onto a cart two carts behind his own, and was chatting with the elderly Harka Ram.
‘Where are your son and daughter-in-law?’ Subedar asked loudly to the old man who was about to doze off on the cart.
‘Eh?’ The old man leaned in with his ear and opened his eyes wider.
‘Son, daughter-in-law—where?’ Subedar asked again, also gesturing with his hands.
‘They must have left for Manipur from Chin Hill… No news,’ he said, and stared into the distance, lost in thought.
Hearing their raised voices, Garjaman Limbu said from the cart ahead of them:
‘Everybody saved their skins a long time ago, long ago. Only those of us from Machin got caught in the melee. People of Rangoon and Akyabali reached Chittagong a year ago. My in-laws from Mandalay are already in Manipur. We are the only stragglers. Whoever believed those dwarves would reach all the way here? But, no worries, Subedar Saheb—we will reach there too. If we can ford the Takab-Ka, there’s nothing to fear.’
Garjaman Limbu, an infamous hothead in his erstwhile platoon, whipped the bullock on the left.
‘Yes, we have to go across…but I am worried it might rain and make the river swell,’ Subedar turned to look at the sky. And, indeed, there was a profusion of clouds there, as if each had been busy calving more clouds.
‘Where will you head once we reach India?’ Garjaman, looking ahead, merely inclined his head to ask Subedar behind him.
‘Where will you go?’ Subedar threw back the question.
‘I’ll go directly to Darjeeling. I have family there,’ Garjaman said.
Subedar hesitated to give such an answer. He had travelled to Bhojpur from Burma only twice, to visit his grandmother—once eleven years ago, and again eight years ago. On the second
visit his infirm old grandmother had passed away. Shivajit had considered his old country. He had realized that livelihood was the toughest of all there, and therefore had decided never to return to Nepal.
‘Perhaps I will also settle there,’ he finally replied.
It started pouring all of a sudden and out of nowhere. Subedar found a tarpaulin and blankets from among the bundles and gave them to Jayamaya and Subedarni to cover themselves. Rain chased sun, and sun chased rain, and a thick rain fell.
Jayamaya, hooded under a blanket, searched for a rainbow.
After another two and a half miles, the rain stopped and a clear, pale evening fell. Beginning at the head of the convoy, carts halted for the night. Bullocks were unyoked. As the dark of the night thickened, the roadside became lined with campfires.
And, once more, Subedarni wanted to cry.
Everybody took out rice to cook. The sizzle and crackle of cooking. Some finished boiling the rice. Some even whisked smooth their dal. Somebody had brought along a tin of homebrewed beer. Subedar received a portion.
In the night, with his gun for a headrest, Subedar remembered the 224-mile long Sumprabang road, and remembered the past and the present of his own life.
Some time after the Third Burmese War, his father had arrived in Burma for the first time after joining the Burma Military Police. He had been stationed for three years at Putaw, an outpost at the terminus of this very road, where he had died. When he was in the army Shivajit had travelled to every corner of the Southern Shan province. Among those in his platoon who could swim clear across the Irrawaddy was Shivajit, and only four other men.
Morning came early in the jungle.
Bullocks were put to the yoke again. The departure was full of more bustle than the grim march the day before. Duets were being sung since the morning. Jayamaya had joined that crowd. Wilful young boys wanted to shoot down any bird that settled on the crowns or branches of trees. If they hit a mark, they would stop their carts to go into the jungle to search for it. Nobody had any fear. Everybody was laughing. It seemed the journey of a merry migration—it seemed as if they were travelling from Burma into India for a picnic.
‘Is your name Jayamaya?’ A beautiful, thin boy who had had to abandon his studies to be on the road, and who had been blessed with his mother’s tender face, asked Jayamaya.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘My name is Jaya Bahadur,’ he said.
Ten miles later they stopped for the night. Garjaman’s cart had been left behind because his bullocks were exhausted.
‘If our bullocks keep up this pace for another five days we will reach the 116-mile mark,’ Subedar told Subedarni. ‘We should then abandon the main road and head east towards Sumpiyang. After that, in about two weeks at the most, we will reach Ledo in Assam—there will be plenty of motor cars and trains after that. Today I’ll kill a rooster, all right?’ Subedar tried to bolster Subedarni’s courage.
It thundered and rained all night. A thousand leaks breached the leaf shelter overhead. Drenched in the rain, Subedar took the tarp above the cart and threw it on the roof of the shelter; a fire had to be kept up all night. Nobody could find sleep that night.
The road had turned muddy the next day. The bullocks couldn’t pull the cart. Rain clouds still filled the skies. Flu was rampant in the camp. Many became rain-soaked and fell ill.
All along the road carts had broken down and provisions had been jettisoned. They couldn’t even advance by four miles.
Subedar had wanted to give the bullocks some rest on the next day; but an old fever returned during the night. They had no medicine, so Subedar decided to overcome the fever by abstaining from food.
In the morning there were many more carts that couldn’t continue. Old man Harka Ram died in the night in his little hut. Those who wanted to leave left in a hurry; those who were resting prepared to bury the dead.
Sometime in the day Jaya Bahadur brought two pills of Aspro. Shivajit took them and slept through the day.
The sun came up again the next day. They spread their blankets over the carts and got the bullocks moving.
As they journeyed farther along the road, the number of people camping by the roadside to tend to their sick also increased. On the next day they encountered four mounds of freshly dug earth.
Those who were fleeing on foot were dying like flies.
Thereafter, all thoughts and worries fled Subedar. Everything appeared mundane.
It took them seventeen days to reach 116 miles. None of the companions with bullock-carts remained with them, and they had no recollection of when they had found the new friends who remained.
Arriving at the open spaces of 116 miles, everybody came to their senses!
There remained only a narrow trail leading towards Sumpiyang, up and away from the road. Carts couldn’t navigate that trail; all possessions had to be carried. Gurkhas sat around, confused. Many had started the uphill climb. Only food and the most essential goods could be carried. Strewn over the jungle below the road were boxes, utensils, coats and jackets, bottles—abandoned and scattered. Chickens and goats outnumbered people.
Planes circled overhead, retreated.
Subedar Dhanpad Subba, who had reached a day before and was resting, cooked rice for everybody, slaughtered chickens, even presented to his guests a dry chutney with chimfing. Somehow, it felt like home.
Subedarni and Jayamaya awoke early the next morning to the sound of Subedar shooting off his gun. He had made three bundles of stuff, and was now shooting at everything else—the gramophone, the box of chinaware, the stack of records, the wall clock, the trunk, and the large copper water jar…
Somebody shot a bull. The bull carried its bloodstained shoulder and ran quite some ways before collapsing to the ground.
‘Why did you kill it?’ Subedar shouted at the shooter.
‘Why should I leave it for the enemy?’ the shooter asked.
‘Do that again, and I’ll shoot you.’
The man lowered his eyes when he saw Subedar’s fury.
They turned U Basu back from there, and as many others attempted futilely to get their bulls to carry loads on their backs, Jayamaya, Subedar and Subedarni picked a bundle each and started uphill. The mother and daughter were also leading a goat each.
After climbing up a hill, when he looked to the heavens, Subedar saw billowing dark clouds congregated as if to ponder a grave and momentous decision. Even the slim gaps between the darkest, meanest clouds were filled with clouds just a lighter shade of darkness. Even the earth had caught fright of the impending rain; motes of dust had turned cold and heavy. Tree-tops swung and frightened crows flitted about. A small bank in the north of bright clouds was dashed with streaks of red and yellow. Above it a large sweep of dark clouds, the shape of a limbless man, lumbered forward slowly, and as if reincarnated, gained the form of a gigantic bird.
Occasionally they stumbled across clusters of a handful of houses in new clearings in the jungle, but, other than that, there was nothing to do but to trudge forward through this unending hell. A narrow path had been cut by the tread of people marching through it; otherwise, on both sides was thick jungle and dense undergrowth. After walking in this manner for thirteen days, they reached a jungle so immense where no bird chirped and no beast was seen. There, everybody felt that even birds and beasts needed the assistance of humans, that even they could survive only as long as they received human support, and that even they were scared of the bleakest wildernesses.
It was impossible to walk with cramped calves but nobody had the courage to rest for a day; everybody persisted upon dragging themselves forward. There is love for the ailing mother: after the son carried the mother for an entire day, covering just two miles, the son also fell sick. It had been raining every other day. Damp clothes had been torn to ribbons by the foliage. But the convoy continually forged forth, absent of any logic, knowledge or inspiration.
When they reached Sumpiyang they found a flat trail and everybody hea
ded north east instead of going towards the village of Sakhen. They encountered the dead, strewn everywhere. There were even more of those who tended to the ill. Subedar asked:
‘How long have you been tending to him?’
‘Nearly a month now, sir,’ the soldier answered.
‘What will you do now?’
‘I must wait, sir.’
How many more hearts could he assuage by asking such questions? Now Subedar walked on without acknowledging even those whom he knew. After six days they reached Maikhon. They had climbed over many tall mountains to reach Takab. On that day, Subedar’s family walked for about a mile and a half and rested early.
Walking alone and carrying only a pouch with little possessions, Nandu arrived in the evening. Subedar knew him. He asked Nandu to sit for a while.
‘Alone?’ asked Subedar.
‘There was a friend,’ he said. ‘He fell sick, at a place five days away from here. What could I do? I carried him for a day. And then I fell ill myself. We found an abandoned godown and stayed in it. I tended to him. I don’t know for how long I looked after him, waited for him. We had finished the rice. I asked people on the road for rice and kept looking after him. And everybody kept leaving—walking away, escaping. Fewer and fewer people were on the road. I thought through the night…’
‘And?’ Subedar asked.
‘In the morning, I said to my friend—“I will fetch some rice.” I came out. Didn’t return.’
Subedar lowered his eyes. ‘It isn’t your fault,’ he said. He silently considered everything for a moment. He repeated emphatically—‘It isn’t your fault.’
After seven more days of walking, Subedarni developed a fever. The rice was gone. For many days now they had been eating one meal of thin gruel. Subedar had lost weight, and was reduced to half. Jayamaya added her mother’s bundle to her own burden. Despite the fever Subedarni walked by herself for an entire day. Everybody leaned on a bamboo cane in each hand. With the night the fever peaked. She began babbling incoherently. A rumour had reached them—a government depot had been set up in Takab to distribute medicines and rice. Subedar thought it wise to get his wife to Takab, and so he fashioned a strap with a shawl and carried Subedarni on his back.
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