The Gurkha's Daughter

by Prajwal Parajuly

  “Don’t worry about it, Munnu.” Dr. Pradhan was placated. “Maybe I will give Mrs. Gurung a hint tomorrow. She won’t be thrilled, but we can’t have this continue. I’ll let her know I saw it happen and that you said nothing to me.”

  That was a very generous offer. But generosity came easily to Dr. Pradhan. She had, after all, taken upon herself to make his wife a woman of the times. Humera had still not stopped her nonsense about working.

  Munnu was changing stations on his radio and scratching his lower abdomen, his hands moving surreptitiously toward his crotch, when a hassled Mrs. Gurung charged at the store.

  “You called my daughter a thief, you kukkur.” Mrs. Gurung almost leapt at him. “You’ll see what happens when you do that.”

  Mrs. Gurung was still in her floral nightgown. No one ever saw her in a nightgown beyond her verandah.

  Munnu Bhaiya was nervous. He tried to smile, but because he was in the midst of chewing paan, the open mouth—a mixture of green, red, and saffron—gave an entirely different effect.

  “Spit that paan out, you Musalmaan,” the woman screamed, a sprinkling of saliva landing on the glass-topped rectangular box her daughter had stolen thousands of rupees’ worth of chocolate bars from.

  Because Munnu always swallowed the remains of his paan, he didn’t have a trash can around. Without a moment’s thought, he spat out the paan remains into his palm.

  “Look at that, you brainless baandar, look at what you do. You people don’t bathe, don’t wash your hands after shitting, and now you spit your paan into your hands. And you then call my daughter a thief? What has my daughter stolen from you?”

  By now a crowd had gathered outside. Most were laborers from the nearby taxi stand. They spent their slow days playing cards, chewing tobacco, and smoking beedis. They also scuttled in packs to where they could find commotion.

  “Oye, the Musalmaan, the nicer one, is in trouble,” someone said. “He called that lawyer Memsaab’s daughter a whore.”

  “Isn’t she one?” another quipped on the scramble there.

  “And now all the coolies are here,” Mrs. Gurung barked. “Don’t you have any work to do, you idiots? You’re also as disrespectful as this paanwalla here. At least as Nepali people, you should help a Gurkha sister. Why does no one beat this dog up? I challenge someone to. A Musalmaan insults Kalimpong’s own daughter, and all you Nepalis do is stand and watch the tamasha. All of you Nepali coolies should be sent back to Nepal if you can’t defend one Nepali’s honor when a Bihari insults her daughter.”

  Mrs. Gurung was hissing now. The prospect of being beaten up enraged Munnu at first and shortly after made him cry.

  “Now cry, you eunuch, you donkey,” Mrs. Gurung continued her tirade, punctuating it with a slap. “This will teach you not to talk about bigger people, you fool.”

  Pulling her shawl closer together to cover up her nightgown, she stormed out.

  Ashamed and fearful, Munnu shut up shop early and narrated the episode to Humera. He eliminated the portion where he was slapped—it was too emasculating—but she’d hear it from someone sooner or later, most definitely from Dr. Pradhan.

  “I am afraid that other customers will think I am spreading rumors about them,” he said as he retired for the night. That would eventually result in losing more customers to the new store—a nightmare.

  He couldn’t sleep. He wished his daughter would cry to keep his mind off the day he had just had. He switched on his color TV and changed channels aimlessly with the remote.

  When his wife finally awoke in the morning, she told him that because he didn’t permit her to take up Dr. Pradhan’s job offer, somebody else would be hired. She said she’d likely ask around for jobs—any job—all day.

  “Any job?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  Munnu had an epiphany.

  Excited, he dressed and ran the flight of stairs to Mrs. Gurung’s house. He apologized to both Mr. and Mrs. Gurung and added that it was probably his wife who had been stealing.

  “Don’t blame your wife,” Mrs. Gurung, far removed from the woman she was yesterday, consoled. “It wouldn’t be stealing if it is her husband’s store.”

  “I didn’t talk to anyone about it, just to Dr. Pradhan.” Munnu was speaking the truth.

  “She’s a gossipy woman, Munnu,” Mrs. Gurung said. “After her daughter’s death, she’s been looking for some purpose in life. She loves drama. That’s perhaps why I reacted so badly.”

  “I hope Shraddanjali doesn’t know I falsely blamed her.”

  “No, she does not, Munnu.”

  With a spring in his step, he rushed to the store.

  The next day, Shraddanjali appeared at the shop with a bear—the smallest bear, the kind young women these days attached to their T-shirt sleeves.

  “Isn’t it your daughter’s birthday?” she asked Munnu while joining her hands together for him. “I’ve brought this Chui-mui for her.”

  “Hello, Bahini, it is a week from today,” he said.

  “I have a little present for her. Where is she? Oh, and why don’t I take a Wai Wai and a Maggi? You know the servant’s not home again. And could you pack them up, too? Everyone thinks I’ve been eating so much. I don’t want them to talk too much about me.”

  She was rambling. He knew what that meant, but he was prepared today.

  “You didn’t have to buy a birthday gift for Albeli.” He smiled.

  His smile extended all the way to his eyes, forming tiny creases. There was a very slight twinkle, too.

  His wife would arrive at the store any moment now for her second day of training. She had mastered the calculator pretty fast for someone who had never used one. With the two of them in the store, he didn’t have to work as hard as before, and the counter was never unmanned. He had made one last effort to convince Humera to abandon the burqa, but she wasn’t going to lose it. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t be able to see through it.

  A FATHER’S JOURNEY

  Notebook in hand, Supriya lazily stretched her tiny legs across the sofa and onto her father’s lap, struggling to align the slash of her Nepali words with the lines on the paper. She ignored the blare of the TV and the sound of her mother’s knife rapping the cutting board. Occasionally, she’d stop tapping her feet and glance at the screen to ask her father, Prabin, if what he was watching was funny or sad, brushing off her mother’s reprimand not to get distracted.

  After dinner, Supriya and Prabin headed up the terrace and through the narrow spiral staircase into the makeshift crow’s nest—a semiconstructed room with French windows, a yet-unpaved floor, and two bamboo chairs—to savor half an hour’s view of Gangtok before darkness shrouded it.

  “Look at the priest’s paunch,” Prabin said, pointing to a slouched figure slinking through the crowds. “It’s getting bigger and bigger.”

  The priest returned everyone’s greeting and paused to make small talk.

  “Yes, he’s a fatty,” Supriya said with a giggle. “He must eat a lot of laddoos.”

  “That he does. Who can resist laddoos? Even I eat five of them in one sitting.”

  “You should become a priest, then,” Supriya said, and then serious, she asked, “Why doesn’t that beggar we see on our way to school become a priest? Then he wouldn’t have to beg for food.”

  “Well, to be a priest, one needs to be a Brahmin, like us. Not everyone can become a priest. The old man there is a Brahmin—look at him; he has been scratching his butt for three minutes.”

  “Does that mean he’s stingy?” Supriya asked, acknowledging her father’s observation with a smile but straying away from it.

  “What do you mean?” Prabin questioned.

  “Aren’t all Brahmins stingy?”

  “Do you think we are stingy?”

  “No, I don’t think we are, but we have another Brahmin in class, and my friends say she’s a stingy Brahmin. ‘Lobhi Baahun,’ they call her.”

  “Your classmates are six years old. They s
houldn’t be talking about all that.”

  “But Pooja is stingy. Last week, even Ms. Lhamu scolded her for not lending her eraser to Denka.”

  “All girls are stupid, Supriya,” Prabin said with a deliberate edge in his voice.

  “I am not stupid,” Supriya retorted. “Ms. Lhamu is not. Mua might be, but my friends are not, and we are all girls.”

  “See, not all girls are stupid. Not all boys are strong. Not all Brahmins are stingy.”

  “I am stronger than Ramesh although he’s seven.”

  “Not all old people are slow. Not all Bengalis are intelligent. Not all Brahmins are stingy.”

  Supriya didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Who among my friends are Brahmins, Bua?”

  “What is Avasti’s last name?”

  “Pradhan. Avasti Pradhan.”

  “No, she’s not a Brahmin. Raghav Neupaney’s daughter—what’s her name—is a Brahmin.”

  “Richa. But Richa is a Christian. She goes to church. Can Christians be Brahmins?”

  “She was born Brahmin. Her family converted midway.”

  “Oh, so even I can be a Christian if I want to?”

  “Yes, you can. You can choose to be a Christian or even a Muslim, but why would you? No one can become a Brahmin unless they are born a Brahmin.”

  “Are we better than everyone?”

  “Yes, we are the best, the very best. You should be proud you were born a Brahmin.”

  “How is one born Brahmin?”

  “Your parents have to be Brahmins, their parents have to be Brahmins, and their parents have to be Brahmins. And their parents and their grandparents and their great-grandparents.”

  Supriya pulled her sweater tighter around her. This had been the coldest October in years.

  “So if Avasti and I get married, will our baby be a Brahmin?”

  Before Prabin could figure out a suitable answer, his wife, Khusboo, called from downstairs. It was time for Supriya to go to bed.

  Early the next morning, right after she woke up, Supriya headed to Prabin’s room and snuggled up to him for a few minutes. She did this every school day. Khusboo left for her morning lectures before anyone rose.

  “So what did you dream of?” Prabin asked her.

  “I don’t know,” Supriya said groggily, the edges of her lips trying hard not to betray a smile. “Ghosts.”

  “The scary ones or the sari ones?”

  “This one was different. She wore a sari, but her face was scary.”

  “That means she was a clown, not a ghost. Or it was a two-in-one ghost.”

  “Except this one said she would eat you.”

  “What did you ask her to do?”

  “I told her you were old and unhealthy. Mua was juicier. She could eat her.”

  “You naughty girl. Wait until I tell Mua. Now get up. It’s time to brush your teeth.”

  “Why don’t I get my bed tea like you do?”

  “Because only grown-ups drink tea.”

  “But at Dolma’s place, when she said she wanted to drink wine, her father said she wasn’t old enough to drink wine, so she should stick to tea.”

  “Dolma will probably get a mustache soon, like your friend . . .” He searched for the name.

  “Resha. Your memory is worse than Mua’s. I am the smartest in the family.”

  “Yes, that’s her name. Will we brush now?”

  “I think Resha is a boy. Her parents must have wanted a girl, so they dress her up as a girl.”

  “And what makes you think a six-year-old boy would have a mustache?” Prabin asked, getting up, and tugging at the edge of his daughter’s blanket.

  “Yes, how would I know?” Supriya said, following Prabin to the bathroom, where he had already squeezed out the toothpaste on her brush. “I don’t play with any boys but Ramesh. And Ramesh is like a girl. I beat him at rubber band twice.”

  They walked to Tashi Namgyal Academy, about a kilometer uphill, hand in hand, immersed in deep conversation, oblivious to the world around them, forcing onlookers to smile and acknowledge the inadequacies of their own relationships. Prabin returned someone’s greeting with barely disguised irritation. It was obvious to the greeter he was disrupting something serious. The daughter smiled and looked up to the father when she talked. She listened with rapt attention when he talked. She laughed when he said something. He laughed louder at her jokes. The townspeople would have paid money for a snippet of this conversation. It was a beautiful picture: Prabin, tall, fair, aquiline-nosed, and Supriya, fairer, smiling, always happy, her cherubic face straight from a children’s catalog.

  “But the kurta Ms. Lhamu wore yesterday was pink,” Supriya said through a gap where most of her teeth were until recently. “I told you she always wears pink on Thursdays.”

  “Yes, but wasn’t it her birthday yesterday?” Prabin said, shifting the weight of Supriya’s backpack from his left shoulder to right. “I thought she’d wear her birthday kurta.”

  “Yes, because adults buy new clothes on their birthdays like you and Mua always do.” Supriya laughed. “You always buy new clothes.”

  “Maybe we should start buying clothes. Look at my track pants. Do you see a hole?”

  “Are we becoming poor, Bua?” She was serious. “Is that why you don’t buy new clothes?”

  “No, no, remember how I’ve told you about the various properties we have? And the bookstore? And Mua’s job? And the rent from the Kaiyas downstairs. We are not poor.”

  “You called them Kaiyas.” She laughed. “Bad word, bad word. Uneducated word.”

  “Oh, sorry, I shouldn’t have.”

  “So are we arabpatis then?”

  “No, we aren’t billionaires.”

  “Crorepatis?”

  “Not really.”

  “Lakhapatis? Millionaires?”

  “Maybe.”

  By now she was in stitches. “Hajarpatis?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Ha, ha. Even I am a hajarpati. I have 8,900 rupees in the bank. That’s almost 10,000. I wouldn’t be a lakhapati if I had 10,000, right?”

  “No, you would need ten more 10,000s for a lakh.”

  “Ten? Okay. The math they teach at school is so easy. My friends don’t even know of five-, six- and seven-digit numerals.”

  “And you know everything, don’t you?”

  “Well, I am smarter than everyone. I think I am smarter than Mua, too.”

  “I wonder how hurt she’d feel if she found out we talk about her,” Prabin said in all seriousness.

  “But she won’t. Unless I tell her about it the day I get mad at you.”

  “Why would you get mad at me? What do I have to do for you to get mad at me?”

  “Oh, you never know,” Supriya said with feigned exasperation.

  When they reached the gate of Tashi Namgyal Academy, where two of her friends waited for her, Supriya took the backpack from her father and clung to his leg in a gesture of mock emotion they both loved. She then asked him if he would pick her up. He’d always say he wouldn’t but Mua would, and she’d contort her face in hurt before heading to her waiting friends. It was a recurring routine.

  His bookstore on MG Marg, a rented space a stone’s throw away from where they lived, made a huge profit and, although he had two efficient and honest helpers there, he liked being at work early in the morning. During lunch, one of his servants arrived with his lunch box and daughter. Khusboo picked his daughter up from school, fed her at home, got her changed into something frilly and sent her to the store with the servant. Father and daughter then spent time reading books, looking at pictures, and talking. Supriya sat on a stack of hardcover encyclopedias holding court with the two helpers and anyone who was in the store. When the math involved wasn’t too taxing, Prabin asked her to handle change as the customers smiled indulgently and said a word of praise or two. He was too busy to read a Hans Christian Andersen story to her today, so she took over and read the book out loud, occasionally stumbling and pausin
g, again ingratiating herself with the customers with a showmanship that improved with each passing day.

  “How is she?” he asked his wife when she finally came to the living room after what seemed like hours.

  “Asleep.” Khusboo looked exhausted.

  “I had no idea she’d grow this fast.” He had difficulty holding himself back.

  “She’s a girl. It happens to all of them.”

  “But only yesterday she was cuddling with me. She was a little girl.”

  “She’s a woman now. We both need to get used to it.”

  “Did you think it would happen this early?” He was tearing up.

  “Yes, she’s twelve. I was a bit worried she hadn’t had it until now. Wasn’t your mother married at fourteen?”

  “You could’ve warned me.” A pause followed every word.

  “I thought you already knew. You told me she had stopped coming to your bed in the mornings, and you also sat as far from her as you could when watching TV. I thought you knew.”

  But Prabin hadn’t. Had he known, the knowledge would have helped him prepare for this in some way. He hadn’t given his daughter’s coming of age much thought, and he hadn’t expected it would affect him the way it did. He was angry with himself for letting a perfectly normal biological process bother him.

  The snuggle routine, which started with Supriya’s heading from her bed and jumping into his early in the morning, had stopped a year ago, heralding a new phase in their relationship. The hugs, kisses, and easy physical comfort graduated to high-fives, thumbs-ups, and a spatial awareness Prabin hadn’t quite noticed evolve.

  Wanting to clear his head, Prabin went to the top of the building and tended to flowers in earthen pots. The orchids and azaleas were in full April bloom, and the crow’s nest, with its recently added marble floor and rug, was more of an oasis to him than ever before. Looking down four stories—the remaining three floors were below road level—he was filled with a sense of accomplishment. A momentary happiness enveloped him when a picture of Supriya taken during her naming ceremony brought him to reality. He realized he had barely exchanged a word with his daughter the past few weeks.