Parashu Pradhan
[Translation: Mahesh Paudyal]
Mané wakes up from sleep with a start, and scans the sky extending over his one-room apartment. A few rays of the sun have entered through the window. The small window on the left is closed. He has the feel of complete exhaustion and weariness. His throat is parched with thirst. How is he to show his face at home again? What’s going wrong with him every day? Why is he drawn to the alehouse as soon as some bucks fall into his pockets? He feels the pocket of his shirt while still lying. All he can find is a single one-rupee note. He gets up slowly and moves into another room.
“Sister Sani!”
Sani is busy brewing alcohol. The sound of water being added to the liquor reaches out to him. Mané is interested in watching Sani add water to her extract. Sani shouts on her own accord, “Jethi, bring some water here. Hurry up. I have to do yet another shot now.”
“Sister Sani! Can I get a shot, a hot one? I still have the hangover,” says Mané, slowly.
“Wait for a while. I have two more water shots to do.” Sani displays a short smile. Mané has a glance of her face. She is in her middle ages. Her cheeks are rosy, and a pair of small studs decks her ears. To a great extent, she looks like a girl of minor age. Mané is inclined on teasing her. He asks, “How’s everything, Sani? Won’t you love to marry again?”
Sani grins in derision. Mané derives a sense of joy. He has yet another fear in mind: What would Gore’s mother tell him at home in the evening? He had left home yesterday with ten identical currency notes to buy rice, but is stuck here. He doesn’t know what his wife and children had for dinner. What a scoundrel Mané is!
Gore’s mother must be thinking, ‘He will return in a while. It is not easy to afford rice worth fifty paisa a mana[1]. So, I have asked him to buy some maize seeds too. Maize porridge is quite nutritious. Why then is he late? Could it be that he didn’t buy maize? The children are awfully hungry. All that they ate in the morning was a piece of millet bread each.’
It has started drizzling outside. It’s rainy season. The maize-leaves are rustling. All they have is a single-room apartment. There is an oil-lamp that sends forth dim light. Goré’s mother sits brooding. Goré implores her in a dejected voice, “Mother, hasn’t father come home yet?”
“He is reaching. Wait for a moment.”
Then, Goré’s mother turns to suckle the little daughter in her lap, but no milk comes out of her nipples. The girl cries in fits and starts. A deplorable situation pervades the apartment. She could suckle, if she had eaten well. She has had nothing but water. She breaks down into sobs. Same has been the story of her family always. They have never been able to afford a pair of meals and decent clothes.
Mané is slightly inebriated now. He gets up from his seat, albeit with reluctance. He soon comes out into the street. It’s a narrow road littered with garbage everywhere. The dogs bark at him. He considers himself a dog too. So he doesn’t scold the dogs, nor does he strike at any of them.
Mané’s shadow is on the lead. The internal layers of his mind rattle among themselves. ‘How many times could the little girl have cried, turning her lips blue? And Goré? He never gets to eat a stomach full. What to talk of Goré’s mother! As for me, there’s no worry. I can drink and move about. Maybe, they are dying at home. Those ten rupees procured with great difficulty… I finished nine of them all in a shot! It was too much that I drank today. But the nine rupees I have got to make up is not a joke. I had better never show up my face to Goré’s mother, if I go home empty-handed.’
Mané sees a man walking toward him at a distance. He thinks it is Dhané. In no time, the man comes quite close. Mané yells, “Dhané! Come here, quick.”
Dhané keeps his pace, appearing not to have heard anything. Mané shouts even louder, “Dhané! Dhané!”
Only now, Dhané comes near to him. His eyes also show a certain degree of redness. Mané thinks he is drunk as well. ‘I am not the only one,’ he reassures himself.
Mané knows that like him, Dhané is a man who seldom has a penny in his pocket. Yet, he is inclined to ask for some cash with him. Dhané stands gawking at Mané incessantly, without blinking his eyes. They can also hear a dog bark at a distance. Save for those sounds, the road is quite tranquil. Dhané’s thoughts, like waves, reach out for the river of human life. He dives, floats out, and dives again. He looks at the sky. The clouds are fast disappearing. The sun is yet to move. Yes, the sun is yet to move toward the shaded aspects of a twentieth century man. Toward our shaded parts, toward those streets and junctions…
“Dhané, tell why you won’t speak to me.” Mané mauls the grave stillness there.
“You have no idea…!” This is Dhané, opening his mouth for the first time.
“Give if you have. I will return as it is, tomorrow,” Mané says, gathering all his plaintive moments.
“Devil may claim me if I have.”
He then takes his way and disappears.
Mané is left blank like a country lad that has come to town to see a fair. Where could he go? He sees no way out. Why did he drink in the first place? The drink can wash up all his helplessness, his empty and hungry bellies. What is so magical about that small cottage? What lies there inside the alehouse? What lies dissolved in the liquid inside that bottle? In this entire creation, all he needs is a drop of hot liquor. In fact, he is himself a glass of liquor.
He returns along the same street he had taken before. Sani’s home gets nearer to his eyes each second. He sneaks into the house silently and climbs upstairs stealthily, without letting the staircase make any noise. Sani gazes at him with wide eyes.
“Why are you here, Mané?” she asks. Her eyelashes appear quite agile.
“Sis…ter Sa…ni,” Mané stutters, down with fear.
“What do you want?”
Many doubts spring up. Many trusts crumble. “What amount do I owe you for yesterday’s…?” “What’s that you corpse are telling?” Sani forces a smile.
Mané mentally draws the calculation: nine rupees! Nine rupees! He tries to collect the guts to speak, but cannot. He stares as different shots of liquor are dispensed out in tumblers.
“I need some loan. Didn’t you get me, sister?”
A thin layer of gray cloud engulfs the open sky over his mind.
“What did you say, Mané?” Sani asks, feigning ignorance. Rice is getting boiled in her pot. Mixed with it is the sound of ripples coming from Mané’s speech. A plate of hot rice, a cup of nettle soup…That’s the only thing he needs.
“If you mean cash, I don’t have any.” “Sister, you are joking.”
“What will you do, Mané? Everyone sees my income, but who sees my expense? I have to buy five manas of buckwheat, which too is very rare…”
“We all have our own worries. My wife and children are hungry at home…”
Mané draws a long sigh even as he gets up from there and says, “Sister, allow me to lie down here for a while.”
Mané lies supine on the floor. On the ceiling are wood flecks smoked to glittering blackness. There’s nothing but soot in the sky above his eyes. He is unable to take a nap.
When the dusk deepens, Mané goes out. The grocery shop is in the same direction, further away from Sani’s home.
‘How about drinking a little more, worth half a rupee only? It’s raining outside. Oh, what a habit I have! But then, it erases sorrow. How long should one stay worried?’ he thinks.
Mané cannot quench his thirst for liquor with any amount of it. Oh, his thirst! He forgets Goré’s mother, even as he submerges inside the drink tumbler. Then he sleeps, too deep to feel anything else. Sani’s grave eyelashes also try to call up some sleep.
The day has waned, but it’s still quite hot outside. From the small window, some cold air flows into the room. Mané wakes up. He feels better now. His ears are ringing with a melodious resonation coming from the clanging of utensils being scrubbed in the other room. He stands up. ‘I must go home, come what may. I cannot always loiter outside…’ he thinks.
But Goré, his mother, and the three-month old child sleeping on her chest are hungry to their bones…How can he look at those crispy lips, that mouth mad with hunger? With what sort of eyes can he face them all?
Goré’s residence is an empty enclosure in the ground floor. He has not paid the rent yet. It has been long since he got any job as a construction labor. Since he caught malaria, he has not been able to go down to the plains to work as a porter.
Mané outdoes his mind and comes out into the street. Darkness soon casts its spell over the landscape. Waves, both of hope and despair, rise and fall in his heart. He is afraid lest his wife should attack him with a piece of firewood. That has become her habit. What could he do at the moment? He is beset by the images of his children writhing in hunger…
There are shops around him. He pays dejected looks on each of them, and moves. Those nine bills, each worth a rupee, appear in his mind and in front of his eyes, fluttering. They were notes he had procured after selling his wife’s only nose-ring. Poor thing! That was the only thing he had brought home as dowry, or say as wealth or anything one loves to call it, from his wife’s parents. Yes, that only nose-ring!
It’s evening time now. Palpitations increase their pace in Mané’s heart, sending spines that prick him. They are thorns, many in number. From the street, he steps into the yard outside his home in a clumsy gait. It’s all dark inside. There’s no movement anywhere. From the door-holes, he peeps in. Some dying fire appears dimly glowing at the fireplace at the farthest corner. He stops his breath and listens! It seems, everyone inside is dead. He is seized by an apprehension: ‘Has everyone starved to death?’ He shivers.
Gathering some courage, he slowly pushes the dilapidated door inside. The door makes a noise louder than necessary.
“Goré, where’s your mother?”
“Mo…ther!”
“Yes. Where’s she?”
“She went out.”
“When will she come back?”
“No idea.” There’s grimness in Goré’s voice.
“What are you cooking?”
“Potatoes.”
Goré picks a pair of tongs and presses the round things inside a pot.
“Not cooked yet? Is that potato?”
“Don’t know. Mother has asked me to eat when it’s cooked.”
Mané can see his son’s face slightly. It appears grim and forlorn in the dim light. All he has on it is a faint hope: the thing in the pot will get cooked, and he will have something to eat. It will get cooked! I will eat! It will be ready and I will eat! That’s all…!
Mané picks the tongs and presses the thing inside the pot. It’s extremely hard. He fishes it out. Lo, it’s a stone — the pestle. When will this stone ever be cooked? He sees that Goré’s mother has tried to keep Goré living by tying him to a sort of hope. Goré’s mother: she’s a blessed soul!
Mané has tears in his eyes. Stone…a pestle! Why couldn’t he collect the courage to buy something and bring home for the one rupee he had in his pocket? If left that way, Goré will surely die.
Mané abruptly goes out of the room. Before leaving, she says, “Goré, you wait for a while. I will bring you something to eat.”
He takes a couple of steps forward. Standing at a distance is the clear silhouette of a woman, clasping a small baby. Mané takes no time in telling who she is. He tries to feign a stranger, and walks ahead. He is forced to stop by a sunken voice: “Goré’s father! Did you hear me?”
The baby cries, and continues to do so.
Goré can see a pair of shadows. Inside the cottage, a dim fire continues to flicker. Oomph, that’s Goré’s dimming hope! Mané is seized by bouts of emotion gushing from within.
“Stop crying, my child,” says Gore’s mother, trying to console the baby. The girl breaks into worse sobbing.
In her sunken voice, Goré’s mother says, “My nipples have no milk. No one else allowed her to suck.”
She draws in a long breath and takes a deep sigh. Mané says in a forlorn voice, “Your breasts spew no milk. They are dry, like a barren land. How can milk come from them, Goré’s mother? How will it come?”
***
[1] a mana is about half a kilogram of weight
