The wife said nothing.
‘Work the land now! See where your greed has got you!’
‘Go and sleep, quit worrying,’ she finally said. ‘This is how the rains are in July. Can’t be helped—it is the same every year. If a landslide kills us, then we die! What can be done if death comes for us?’
‘You came seeking death. And you’ll find it too.’
By and by, the downpour abated. The wife made her husband a mug of tea.
When the rain let up significantly, even the water falling off the eaves became audible.
He sipped his tea and asked, ‘What time do you think it is now?’
‘Who knows what hour! May be eleven, twelve o’clock…’ she said, and yawned twice.
‘Will it stop now?’
‘It should.’
He stood up after finishing his tea. He must have kicked a pot set to catch rain-drip, because it spilled. ‘Watch your steps,’ the wife said, and brought out a jute sack to spread.
He said nothing.
When he opened the door to the darkness outside and listened, the river Rung Dung roared fearsomely, setting the hillsides juddering. When he thought he heard other noises intermingled with the river’s roar, he imagined the river sweeping with it an entire trunk of a drooping fig, or of the river coloured ochre with the mud from a landslide. The darkness was thick enough to hide his arms.
He returned and, without entering the house, called to his wife from the darkness outside, ‘The torch! Bring me the torch!’
She found the old black torchlight from under the pillow and took it to him.
‘The tin sheets over the cattle-shed have been blown away,’ he said, lit the torchlight, and climbed below the hut. An eye-shaped torch-beam appeared on the wet ground and damp grass.
Kaley’s mother also followed at his heels.
As they entered the cattle-shed, the cow, which had been slumped on the ground, stood abruptly and let out a bellow. Rain dripping from the roof had wet the cow’s back, and its hair was stuck together.
Kaley’s father climbed to the roof of the cattle-shed after collecting pieces of the wind-strewn tarp. He arranged the tin sheets and weighed them down with rocks.
It was still drizzling.
Kaley’s mother searched for and found a large, round rock, slick with algae, and passed it to her husband on the roof. After setting it on the roof her husband said, ‘Go now. It’s started pouring again. I’ll give them fodder and come.’
‘Let’s go together,’ the wife said. She waited.
‘Then you go ahead and give them fodder. I’ll arrange this, and… But who will show me the torch-light? Wait! Wait—I’m almost done…’
And, as she waited, the rain drenched through her shawl and washed over her face. Her husband finally finished and climbed down. They hurriedly set out the fodder and went into the house.
Once more, the rain came pouring down.
By the time they had finished changing out of their clothes they looked ready to act the part of beggars in a drama. They started a roaring fire and began warming and drying by it.
‘Is there tea?’ he asked.
‘Shouldn’t we go to bed?’ a question arrived in lieu of an answer.
‘You sleep. Put on some tea for me.’
Kaley’s mother pulled a blackened kettle and used a mug to draw water into it.
‘Fill it to the brim,’ he said.
His wife did just that.
He was staring at the roof. He stood up, found the twine he had stashed away under the rafters to braid into a rope, and began tying down the roof. He was searching for a place to anchor the free end when he saw the millstone.
‘Bring that to me!’
‘Why?’
‘The wind is the devil!’
Kaley’s mother couldn’t refuse. She rolled the millstone to his feet.
He felt somewhat relaxed after tying the braid of the rope to the millstone.
After throwing a sprinkling of tea-leaves into the kettle, Kaley’s mother climbed into bed.
Her husband was left alone, pondering. Only when the tea boiled over and its foaming water fell into the fire did he startle from this thoughts.
He was making tea when the wind picked up again and something fell on the roof with a bang. A branch of alder? He was utterly terrified.
When the rain and the wind ceased and it became tranquil he climbed into bed without blowing out the lamp.
The radish seeds sowed in the afternoon must have been swept away, he thought. Dykes along the terraces must have crumbled and crushed so many marigold plants. The next day, the first thing in the morning, a channel would need to be cut above the house, away from the wormwood bush.
Had he slept at all? When he awoke, the storm and rain roared at a fiendish pitch. As if to blow the house away—picking it in jolts. The wind was howling through and the rain thrashing on the trees around with a frightening roar.
He woke his wife.
‘It is blowing hard outside, Maili! What should we do?’ She had hardly been able to respond when the entire floor of the house shuddered and juddered…
‘Get up! Something’s wrong!’
He grabbed the torch and went to open the door. His wife came and stood behind him. When he shone the torch and looked carefully he saw that an edge of the yard had crumbled and slipped. A mulberry tree slowly tipped over and fell with the landslide.
‘What are we going to do now?’ she cried out of fear.
‘Go! Wake the kids,’ he commanded his wife, shouting over the din of the rain. When his wife left, he turned off the torchlight and stood at the threshold, watching.
And, gradually, through the rain and the fog, he imagined he saw the faint light of a new dawn approach. A mature rooster kept under a bamboo basket inside the house crowed to dispel any doubt—Kukhuree-kaan! Kukhuree-ee-ee-ee-kaan!
In the morning, as Kaley’s mother walked to the bazaar with a bamboo tub of milk, her husband, who was routing the floodwater with a spade, yelled to remind her, ‘Nails! Long nails—don’t forget! We have to nail everything down through the day!’
‘If it keeps raining hard, don’t send Kaley to school,’ she said and climbed the hill. A side of the hill on the way had fallen across the road. She didn’t see any of the folks she usually met on the way.
After about an hour and a half, she arrived at Moktan’s, near the court. They usually took half a litre of milk. While she was measuring out the milk, the young, pretty wife showed kindness and said, ‘Come and sit inside. Drink a warm cup of tea before you leave.’ Kaley’s mother shut her umbrella, stood it by the door, and went inside.
‘What a storm it was last night!’ she said. ‘We haven’t slept a wink.’
‘We haven’t either,’ the young wife said. ‘The storm banged this window all night—ghitik-ghitik, ghitik-ghitik. I just couldn’t sleep. What a nasty storm it was!’
‘Was that all?’ Kaley’s mother, dark of face and full-bodied, approaching forty years of age, said dismissively. ‘The wind nearly blew away our house. What do you have to worry about here? You don’t have the fear of landslides here. It swept away all of our yard. Now it is about to take the house. The rain is no excuse for us—we can’t leave the cow hungry; we have to run about to find it fodder. We can’t sleep through the day just because we couldn’t sleep in the night…’
‘We are safe only in name,’ the young wife said with sympathy. ‘The roof leaked and drenched all the clothes, all the books. And the power goes out just then…’
‘No, no; compared to us, you have no fear. See, if it begins raining, my mind begins to worry what might have happened at home while I am away. The wind knocked down all of our maize crop, it left nothing standing…’
Kaley’s mother left to deliver milk elsewhere.
‘We brought this misery upon ourselves out of a greed to work the fields,’ she increasingly felt in her heart. ‘Otherwise, we were living comfortably in the bazaar. There was
a salary at the end of each month, and it had somehow been enough. The children had their school close by, it was no trouble to fetch water, the roads were good and convenient. There was no fear either of storms or of landslides. We invited this trouble upon ourselves for nothing by greeding after land.
‘I haven’t had a moment’s rest since we bought the land. Fingers sliced by sickles, palms cracked by dung and dust—it is embarrassing to show ourselves before others. I can’t leave home even for a day—any wish to visit farther afield is impossible. I’ll have to grind away just like this until I die.
‘And this slow grind to death—is it for this meagre living, to be so poorly fed and clothed? And, what really have we to eat and wear? We have to hide our food out of shame of being seen, and we are ashamed to stand alongside others in these rags.’
In her heart raged a gale of many angry thoughts.
Soon she reached the house of the constable to deliver milk.
After she knocked on the glass pane of the closed door and announced, ‘Milk!’, a young girl in a dirty frock came to receive the milk. As she was pouring out the usual litre and half of milk, the constable’s wife shouted from inside, ‘Grandma! Please bring an extra three litres tomorrow to make rice-pudding!’
After wavering for a moment for some reason, she told the young girl to carry her message. ‘Tell her there won’t be enough to spare. It is getting impossible to give everybody their share. Then there is the storm… I don’t even know if I’ll come tomorrow. Tell her to find it elsewhere…’
The constable’s wife must have heard her, because now she came to the door, looked at the wet clothes on Kaley’s mother, and said, ‘Please, do bring it! Where else will I go looking for milk in rain like this? Please bring it! Only because it is Deepak’s birthday…’
‘Won’t be enough!’ A tired and bitter utterance emerged from her core. She watched the constable’s wife—how clean were her clothes, how fair the face, how pretty the hands! Her husband lives in comfort. There are beds and couches all over the house, and wardrobes full of sarees. Doesn’t need to touch soil or mud, doesn’t have to fear gale or rain.
‘Won’t be enough. And, if it keeps raining like this, I won’t come tomorrow.’
‘Do you want us to drink black tea all day long? What are you even saying! Please bring it. No matter what—just bring it!’
Kaley’s mother said nothing, climbed down the steps and headed towards the bazaar.
And, as she walked alone, she muttered to herself, ‘No! This mad insistence to live in constant fear of landslides and storms and toil over two acres of land, two crops a year, to make a living, is to push the family towards murder. I’ll sell the heifers and the two milk cows all together for a lumpsum. Even if it is in a small room rented for five or six rupees, I’ll live in the bazaar itself. I could sell greens and vegetables at the chowk—just like Thuli’s mother does. Husband knows carpentry, and he knows masonry. If not that, he’ll find work as a watchman. I’ll bring up my two children in ease. I’m not going to live amid such desolation anymore…’
She felt reassured after being able to make the decision. The aches in her feet disappeared. She didn’t care that the rain wet her.
And, buoyed by a sudden joy, she went towards the snacks shop on the main street. She bought roasted peas and grams worth two annas and put it in her bag. She asked a tailor woman who had come to the shop to buy green peas, ‘Is there an empty room around where you live?’
‘No. Why? Was there a landslide where you live?’
‘No, I am looking for a place around the bazaar. Somewhere close to water taps. Between ten and fifteen rupees to rent.’
‘There is one room,’ the gaunt tailor woman said. ‘A Madhesi was paying twelve, excluding the two rupees for electricity. He has left. I can let you know tomorrow.’
‘I’ll come to your place. I’ll come around this time.’
She walked towards Maalgodam, safe under her umbrella. She needed to deliver milk to two more places before returning.
When she reached B. B. Gurung’s verandah, she saw that a crowd had gathered there since early in the morning—a few of them even stood outside, under open umbrellas, talking. She walked around the back to deliver milk. She couldn’t tell what had happened. Something must have befallen either the husband or the wife; they were childless. The fat wife walked in and out of the house all day, smacking her slippers on the floor, sometimes reaching farther into the bazaar, cradling her white cat, Nini. The husband had a dry-cleaning business on Ladenla road.
‘What happened? Why is there a crowd here?’ she asked the woman from next door who came to collect the milk instead.
‘Nini’s mother fell in the night. She’s unconscious. Still hasn’t come around.’
‘Where did she fall?’
She heard the story:
The cat was locked out during the big storm of the night. It must have meowed so much, but the rain didn’t let it be heard. When the rain abated a bit, they searched for the cat. They searched outside, they called out to the cat, but it didn’t come. When she went down the steps to search, Nini’s mother’s shoes slipped, and she fell down on the road. They rushed to fetch the doctor, but the doctor didn’t arrive soon enough. She still hadn’t regained consciousness.
‘And all for a lousy cat!’ Kaley’s mother muttered softly. ‘Isn’t this the cat?’
The white cat sat in the warmth of the stove, licking its fur.
She couldn’t abruptly rise and walk away. She continued to sit on the doorsill.
As she sat there, she saw the husband come out of the house crying. She heard—the woman had died.
‘How absurd!’ she muttered to herself, and slung across her shoulders her bag with the container of milk.
After reaching the watchman’s house, measuring out a quarter litre, and after pouring out a splash for the baby girl who brought a cup, Kaley’s mother slumped on the empty sack laid out on the floor.
The watchman’s wife took off the boiling tea from the stove, put the milk on, and asked, ‘How is it around your place? The storm must have wreaked havoc, must have ruined everything…’
Kaley’s mother was lost in thoughts; she didn’t respond.
The watchman’s wife said again, ‘There is no danger here in the bazaar, no fear. But in the tea gardens and bustees, I know how difficult it is, what sort of destitution. That is why our fathers settled in the bazaar.’
Now, recalling some strength, Kaley’s mother said, ‘Peril and calamity are everywhere. Yes, the storm ruined things, but we will fix everything now—it is nothing impossible to do. We have our own home, a cattle-shed full of cows. A field, and in the field some thirty or forty groves of bamboo, gooseberry and fig trees, and cucumber vines reaching the skies. How much more ruin can a storm bring? See, I have to rush now, get home and rebuild.’
And, after hurriedly sipping the tongue-scalding hot tea, she reached the bazaar to buy the nails.
And, to herself, she muttered, ‘It is already very late. Kaley’s father is going to kill me today!’
The Ordinariness of a Day
‘Y ou’ve sown the radish seeds very sparsely,’ I said. I was loosening the tamped down earth with a piece of dry bamboo. ‘But the shower from the other day has sprouted them all.’
I had trampled down a clump of long grass growing on the edge of the terrace to sit on. She sat on a bag from which I had finished sowing bean seeds. We were resting. The long terraces immediately below us were full of new radishes—they already showed new leaves in pairs and threes through the recently hoed soil.
‘The rain swept away some seeds, but our hen also doesn’t let any seed sprout,’ Maya said. ‘The mother of nine chicks always climbs down here.’
‘Yes, she does…’
‘If I don’t watch her even for a second, she digs up the entire hillside.’
‘Isn’t it hot today? The sort that ripens the corn?’
‘We’ll recoup the cost of th
e seeds,’ Maya was still talking about the radishes.
‘What did I just say?’ I pretended to be angry.
‘What else? You said it was sunny today, that the corn will ripen.’ Maya laughed feebly.
‘Let the sun shine like this for another week,’ I said. ‘All our corn will ripen, the cucumbers will grow bigger, the tree-tomatoes hanging from their branches will get colour.’
‘Both of my brooding hens will hatch their chicks, I’ll have finished getting the potatoes dug up, and the beans you have planted today will have sprouted,’ she added.
‘Dashain will be just a month and a half away, we should finish buying new dresses for the children by then, I’ll have received my salary, and bought your honour your Kanjeevaram sari.’
Maya laughed. ‘See—they’ve finished planting,’ she pointed.
At the top of his fields some distance from us, Sanbir’s father rested to roll tobacco in a leaf. He must have finished planting the saplings.
‘Everybody should have a small jungle of his own. Not because he can gather fodder from there for his cow and the firewood for his stove. But because the neighbours are bound to ask, and so he can be giving. And they’re bound to steal, and so he can pretend to shout at them. That’s worldliness. Thick ears of maize will grow there; let our children see them and be awed. Ainselu berries will smother their thorny branches; let the neighbours swarm for a taste.’
‘It’s been two days since the sun has come out like this,’ Maya said.
And, indeed, the sun was out in all of its glory; it brought warmth all around, making the air muggier with each climb down to the next terrace. The breeze was hugging the stream in its uphill climb, shaking cardamom, tiger grass and maney leaves. On this side, the tall stalks of maize screening us from the breeze each carried a pair of maize ears.
‘We have a good harvest of maize this year,’ I said. ‘Even rats and crows will come to feed on it.’
My eyes reached all the way to the lowest terrace.
‘The householder’s is the most superior of all the dharmas, our grandmother used to tell us. Even sadhus and sages have to beg to eat, but the householder feeds everyone, from man to the gods, from the birds to the mice.’
Long Night of Storm Page 12