Mountains Painted with Turmeric

by Lil Bahadur Chettri

  “Well, I was all ready to go before, you know, but how could I leave just like that?”

  “I will take you with me for sure. Whatever happens, I won’t forget.” He was holding Jhuma’s left hand in both of his. She tried to pull it away, but he tightened his grip.

  “You’re mine, Jhuma, no one can take you away from me.”

  Jhuma was trapped in his arms. Although it was a winter’s day, there were beads of sweat on her face. A desperate look came onto her face. She struggled for a long time to free herself, but then her body became limp, and after a moment everything was ruined.

  The soldier told Jhuma that he would be busy in the office until Asar but assured her that after that he would take her to Mugalan. Then he went on his way.

  Jhuma stood up. Her heart was heavy, and it burned with remorse. Today she had been forced to give up the virginity that keeps young girls secure in their status, and now even it regarded her with contempt. Until this day she had had the courage to face society without fear, but now she felt that she had fallen very low. She picked up the load of fodder and set out for home, tying the soldier’s promise into a firm knot in the headscarf of her trust. What else could she have done, after all?

  21

  When she returned home from Sahinla Gharti’s, evening had already fallen. Across the ravine the cicadas were singing their evening arati.66 Jhuma entered the grounds of the house, picked some leeches off her body and tossed them aside, and then washed her hands and feet and went inside.

  The two women finished washing the pots and went to the mill. Jhuma began to turn the millstone single-mindedly. Today Jhuma was very different. She had always been very lively and very keen to sing sangini songs as they milled. She had chattered away to her Bhaujyu. But now she was taciturn. Regret was stamped deeply on her face, and she was immersed in a secret worry. Her body was showing signs that were making her very anxious, but she could not accept that what she feared was true. Her heart trembled, and she abandoned the train of thought that led in that direction. Was it true, or was it not? She had been denying it to herself right up until today, when Maina’s question—“Are you pregnant? Tell me the truth, what is the matter?”—woke her as if from a dream. Thoughts began to course through her brain once more. Gently, Maina pressed her for the truth, and Jhuma told her everything. She told her of her first encounter with the soldier, of how he had stayed in their house that night, of their later meetings at the weekly market and at the swing, and in the end about the incident in the forest. She also said that the soldier was going to take her to Mugalan in Asar and that she had complete trust in him. When she heard these words from the mouth of such an innocent girl, Maina was aghast and made plain her anger at Jhuma’s foolishness. Then she wept for a long time in despair at the log that fate had flung at them.

  22

  Early next morning, Maina burned incense and offered water to the sun, but her mind was not on these tasks, and she was filled with impatience. Dhané had gone out somewhere at dawn. Maina sent for Thuli, and soon the two of them were sitting talking in the storehouse. Maina told Thuli all about Jhuma and said, “Child, you have a friend67 at Limbugaon, don’t you? You have an excuse for going there. That man’s house is there, too, she tells me. Go and confirm this, then come back and tell me. That corpse has really done his worst!”

  “Yes, of course. I will go today. I’ll stay with my friend there tonight, and I’ll let you know before your morning meal tomorrow.”

  “Child, please do take the trouble. It would be best to get that corpse committed to marrying her and make him shoulder his responsibility.”

  “Oh, Bhaujyu, it’s become such a worry for you!”

  “What else can I do, child? If her brother discovers this, he’ll throw her out! When I look at her face, I do love her so.” The tears slipped from Maina’s eyes.

  “Bhaujyu, it’s late. I’ll go and get ready to leave.” Thuli walked back up the hill.

  The next day, when it was time to let the livestock out, Dhané ate some millet gruel and then took the oxen out to graze. Although Maina called her repeatedly, Jhuma would not come to eat, claiming that she was unwell. Nor did she go out to work that day. She sat in the vegetable garden with her eyes fixed on the lane, looking out for Thuli. She waited fearfully for the news that Thuli would bring, wondering what it would mean for her. A lot of time went by, and thoughts began to play in Jhuma’s mind.

  “Why is she late? This is just like Thuli! Wherever she goes, she never comes back when she says she will. She will be chattering away to her friend, or perhaps she couldn’t find the soldier. Did he lie to me when he told me he lived at Limbugaon? Has he already gone to Mugalan? But no, he wouldn’t deceive me, he was not that sort. Why would he leave without me?”

  Jhuma tired of the long wait. She was just making her way inside when she heard Thuli panting in the lane below and saw her coming slowly along, sweating profusely. Anxiously, she went down to the alley to meet her.

  “Aabui! How late you are, Thuli! I was looking out for you for so long my eyes are sore!” Jhuma embraced her.

  “What could I do? I wanted to be quick, but it took longer than I thought.” Thuli wore a gloomy expression. “You’ll hear whatever I have to tell you soon enough, why are you so anxious?”

  Jhuma was alarmed to see Thuli looking so grave. The two of them reached the garden, and Thuli made as if to enter the house, but Jhuma caught hold of her hand and drew her aside.

  “Where are you going? Tell me right now—what happened?” Jhuma made her sit down.

  “Where is Bhaujyu?” Thuli asked.

  “Leave Bhaujyu out of it, tell me first! What happened?”

  “What can I tell you, sister? How can I tell you?”

  “What do you think I am? Do you think I am afraid? Whatever happened, just tell me about it and don’t hide anything. I can bear it.” Jhuma braced herself.

  “It’s a complete disaster. You did what you did, and you trusted such a corpse of a man you didn’t even know. They say he left in Phagun.” The words came mechanically from Thuli’s mouth.

  For a moment Jhuma could see nothing. Then it was as if she was seeing everything only dimly in the distance: the big rock in the vegetable garden, the alleyway, Thuli, and everything else. In her ears there rang the sound of many faraway voices. After a long while she heard Thuli call her name, and it was only then that she jumped and said “Yes?” Everything seemed like a dream to her. Thuli linked her left arm with Jhuma’s right and asked, “Kanchi Didi, what should I say to Bhaujyu?”

  As if resigned, and only half-conscious, Jhuma replied, “Tell her the truth, Thuli. It’s not something we can hide. We’ll have to tell her in the end anyway.”

  23

  Thuli went indoors, but Jhuma remained sitting in the garden. When she heard from Thuli that the soldier had left in Phagun, Maina was beside herself. She could not tell whether she had been buried beneath the earth or was still above it.

  Maina was only seven years older than Jhuma, but she was not merely Jhuma’s sister-in-law; she was her mother, too. When Maina first stepped into this house, Jhuma had been a small motherless girl. It was Maina who had brought her up, who had reared her. Jhuma had learned everything from her. Although she had been parted from her mother when she was small, Jhuma had not been deprived of a mother’s love.

  There is no mother who is not distraught when she considers a daughter’s sad plight. For a devoted, simple-hearted woman like Maina, the crisis that had arisen in Jhuma’s life, the calumny that would now be heaped on her husband, and the stain that would now mark a family that had never bowed to anything before were not petty matters. Perhaps she would have been less worried by the prospect of everything they owned being taken away from them than by the threat of damage being done to the unblemished honor of their line.

  Injury is the root cause of anger. The blow that Maina’s heart had suffered made her angry, and she decided that Jhuma was responsible for this whole
affair, that Jhuma carried all the blame. This was not wholly true, of course, but there were enough facts to support it. In the simple course of events, Jhuma was innocent, but when one approached the secret that lay behind it, it was impossible to say that she was entirely guiltless.

  Jhuma’s simplicity and weakness had enabled the soldier to commit his crime. When women want something, they do not try to assess it critically. They run along a ravine of certain belief without looking either up or down, and they have no inkling of the pit that lies in wait for them. At this stage they do not have brains; their hearts are like machines that simply want to take and possess.

  Unable to restrain herself, Maina went outside and began to hurl abuse at Jhuma. The fire in her heart came out of her mouth in flames: “What will happen when your brother finds out? You’ve rubbed soot in all our faces, where can we hide them now? Tomorrow, when word gets out, all the villagers will spit on you, and then where will you hide? It would be better for you to die before that happens; now you have no choice but to die….”

  Maina went on shouting like this without pause, and she shed a flood of tears, but Jhuma paid no attention to anything else she said. That single phrase had lodged itself in her brain: “Now you have no choice but to die.”

  All that day it went round and round in her head. She thought to herself that there really was no alternative for her. She had been terribly misled. Tomorrow the news would spread through the whole village. Then the friends who once embraced her would abhor her. Voices would surround her, saying “Sinner! Sinner!” If Maina, who had loved her like a daughter until yesterday, could wish her dead, how would others behave? Could she endure all that? And she remembered the soldier and the love she had declared to him, and her heart asked her a question: “Was that love?” The answer came back: “No, that was merely youthful impulsiveness. It was just a momentary pleasure.” Her faith in the soldier shattered like a mirror, and hatred took its place. Today she realized that her soul had been sullied, and she hated herself. Again and again her own heart told her, “You deserve to be punished. You are a sinner.”

  “And what will be the penance for this?” she wondered. Then she remembered what Maina had said: “Now you have no choice but to die.”

  24

  Only the first quarter of the night had passed, but the whole village was already silent. It was the rainy season, the season of labor for those who depend on the fields. All day they are constantly busy, each with his own tasks. The four quarters of the night are the time for them to rest. Wearied by their days of work, they eat, drink, and lie down, and then they go to travel abroad in the heavenly realm of the goddess of sleep.

  Every living being in the village is wrapped in the pleasurable embrace that nature provides, but there is no sleep in the eyes of one of the flowers of human society. Her soul wrestles with remorse and the admonitions of her conscience.

  Haay, conscience! You are the grandeur of human society. Only with you can the standard of human society be raised. You are the herder who guides humanity along, but there is no real joy in being driven by you. Or let us say that you are not used for satisfaction or for peace. You deride the past and then tear it into shreds that you scorch in the fire of regret. You point to the future and constantly make us afraid. And you are always busy unearthing the mistakes of the present. You spread wings of hope and aspiration, and you send educated people flying in search of a happiness that continually moves away. But who has ever met with peace and joy?

  A dark night, and darker still because clouds have filled the sky and covered the stars. The whole of nature wears a black cloak. The darkness and the silence make this night a frightening one.

  Then the main door of a small house opened and slowly closed. A white figure68 came out into the yard and could be seen making its way quickly toward the main path. The path forked at Bagedanda. The lower fork went to the next village; the higher led to the forest. The figure paused where the path forked and turned to look back. Then it left the lower path and went quickly along the path that led to the forest. A fierce wind parted the clouds a little, and a few stars appeared. After walking for a while along the path, which cut through the middle of the jungle like a white line drawn across a slate, the figure left the path and headed for the fields. Taking to the field ridges, it crossed the fields and arrived at the Ragé cliff, where it stopped still.

  Ragé cliff was the name given to a rocky precipice that must be thousands of feet high—looking down from its summit made you giddy. Many cows, oxen, and people had fallen from it and liberated themselves from the world. At its foot, many souls had freed themselves from the bonds of life and taken rest. The old folk said that an Old Woman of the Forest lived on these cliffs. They said that sometimes on new moon nights she would put on white clothes and come out onto the hillside at midnight to dance, making the bells on her anklets jingle. But no one who had ever set out to look for her had ever come forward to claim a sighting. Once, several of the young dhami boys of the village had gone there on a new moon night to watch the Old Woman dance and had waited all night but seen nothing. Instead, whether it was by chance, because they had missed a night’s sleep, or because they had been chilled by the dew, several of them became ill afterward. Then the story spread through the village that the Old Woman had found them. Because of this, the herders did not often go that way, even in the daytime, for fear of the Old Woman.

  The figure looks down from the edge of the cliff and thinks, “Before I was born, they say, an ox named Ragé fell and found rest at the foot of this cliff. That is why everyone calls it the Ragé cliff.” And today this figure, too, is weary: it wants to sleep at the foot of the cliff, never to wake again. It needs a long rest. It no longer has any strength left to bear the slaps and blows of society. No longer can it struggle against a society that just looks on as it is beaten and weeps. Breaking its stream of thoughts in midflow, it rises and goes to stand at the edge of the cliff. It looks once at the sky and says who knows what. Then, just as it closes its eyes tightly and is about to throw itself down, a pair of strong arms grips it firmly.

  25

  When Maina came downstairs early that morning, tears were streaming from her eyes. Sobbing with fright, she went to Dhané’s side. Dhané was already awake, but he lay there with his head on his hand, his elbow resting on his chaff-filled pillow. Somewhat surprised, he asked, “Oh no, what has happened? Why are you crying so early in the morning?”

  “The child is not in her bed. I thought she’d be outside, but I can’t see her anywhere.” Maina was overcome with worry, and her voice was choked.

  “Is that something for you to cry about? What does it matter where she’s gone? She’ll have gone out somewhere or other. She’ll come back again, won’t she?”

  “You don’t understand. She is not herself at all. She’s gone far away, I’m sure of it!”

  “What is she up to, then? What’s happened that she should go far away for no reason?”

  “Well, what can I say? I’m just about dead with fear.”

  “Why? What have you discovered? Tell me!”

  Fearfully, Maina told him all about Jhuma. She also told him how she had shouted at her the previous day. Once he had heard everything from Maina, Dhané was not especially surprised that Jhuma had gone missing, nor did he show any sorrow. Having suffered so many blows of fate, he had become hard in a certain sense. Now there was a stain on his family’s reputation, and the world would mock them. This was certainly something of a blow, but his greatest sorrow was that he had been unaware of his sister’s condition although she lived right there in his house. Before Maina told him, he had not had the faintest idea.

  A question occurred to him: “Whose fault is this? Is it Jhuma’s? Yes, of course it’s her fault!” But his limited intellect would not accept this. After a moment he thought, “No it’s not; it’s my fault! I wasn’t able to get her married when I ought, and now all this has happened. If I had had the money to get her married or if y
ou didn’t need money to marry a girl off and I didn’t have to fill the bellies of this whole village at a wedding feast, I would not have had to witness this day. The fault is mine. It’s the fault of my poverty, of my helplessness. It’s the fault of the fate that has made me poor and of the Creator who wrote my broken fate!”

  “The Creator? Is it the Creator who writes our fate?” Today for some reason his small brain was pursuing arguments that were full of hidden revolutionary facts. “Why would fate be so biased? The laborers who wear out their bones in sweat cry out for flour, while those who gather up their bones to suck have other pleasures. Is this what fate really is? No, the Creator is not so unjust! Fate is made by human arrangement. Fate depends on the good order of society, on cooperation in society, on the chances and facilities you can get in society.” Today, if he had had even the smallest opportunity, if his society had cared to understand his plight, would his labors not have borne fruit? If society had not been so ready to mock Jhuma’s small misdemeanor, would she have left the house today in such desperation? Was the fault hers alone? Was it not the fault of the soldier, who had taken advantage of an innocent girl to gratify his desires? But it is the helpless girl and her family who are punished by society. This was the sum of Dhané’s argument with his conscience. Today his heart was rebelling.

  Again and again Maina wept and begged Dhané to search for Jhuma, but Dhané showed no concern. He answered her bluntly and then was silent: “If she is dead, we will hear of it. There’s no need to search for her.”