Sanu and Kamal began to see each other in public. People said that they were “holding hands in broad daylight.” Rakesh became more and more belligerent, and frequently got into fights with boys in the neighborhood. One day Ramchandra discovered a long chain in his son’s room, and when he questioned Rakesh about it, the boy snatched it from his father and walked out of the room. Later Ramchandra learned that the ragtag group he hung out with liked to call itself the Chain Gang.
Goma brooded in the evenings, and the children clung to her, offering her assurance. Ramchandra looked on.
One Saturday afternoon, an argument erupted. Earlier that morning, Ramchandra, on his way to the market to fetch the day’s newspapers, spotted Sanu with Kamal in a nearby tea shop, sitting close to each other, their hands entwined. Apart from the brazen defiance of social decency, it was the glaring lipstick Sanu was wearing that infuriated Ramchandra. His impulse was to go into the shop and pull her out by her ear, but he controlled himself.
That afternoon, after a late lunch, the four were sitting under the garden umbrella. Rakesh and Sanu were talking about an immensely popular Hindi actress when Ramchandra, without lifting his head from the newspaper he was reading, said, “She looks like a prostitute. That’s why she’s popular. That’s what makes young girls like you imitate her.”
Sanu jumped up from her chair and said to her mother, “Ba called me a prostitute.”
Goma’s face changed. “What has come over you?”
“You do nothing to control her,” Ramchandra said.
“I’m not going to be in anyone’s control,” Sanu said.
“Whatever the case, you must not call her that,” Goma said angrily.
Mrs. Pandey, who had been dozing, raised her head, spittle running down her chin.
It was Rakesh who came to his father’s support. “Ba’s saying the truth. San-di has changed. She’s always with that donkey.”
Sanu raised her arm to hit her brother, but Ramchandra grabbed it. “She was with him this morning,” he said to Goma.
“Yes, I was,” Sanu said. “So what?”
“You let her be,” Goma said to Ramchandra. “I don’t need this tension.”
“Ba, don’t make Mother tense,” Rakesh said. “Otherwise...
The threatening tone of his voice was like that of a man. “No one needs me in this house anymore,” Ramchandra said. “I don’t know why I live here.” And he walked away, through the gate, and out to the street.
The sounds of the traffic and of children playing in the neighborhood washed over him. He felt as though someone had just died. He’d started all of this. He’d made this web. He’d created this world of alienation, and now it had trapped him.
He walked until his feet could no longer carry him. Inside Jai Nepal Cinema Hall, he sat on the wall that surrounded the compound. A large poster caught his eye: the hero’s face close to the buxom heroine’s chest, the heroine’s mouth open, as if she were singing. From a nearby shop, a radio blared a tune about true lovers separated by this cruel world.
A teenager came over to him and asked, “Need tickets?” He shook his head. Ramchandra watched the moviegoers buying fritters and drinks from the stands. A woman wearing heavy makeup, her sari tied around her waist in such a way as to bare her midriff, eyed him from a few feet away, smiling. He smiled back, only because he had nothing to lose. As if waiting for this cue, she came toward him. “It’s not a good film,’’ she said, and leaned against the wall next to him.
For a moment he ignored her, but her presence was forceful, pungent. “What’s not good about it?” he asked.
“The dances are horrible.”
Beneath the makeup, her skin was filled with pockmarks.
“They all dance the same way,” he said. “The same gyration of the hips, the same twitching of lips. What about the plot?”
“It’s okay,” she said, scrunching her face. “Too much action.” She said action in English, and seemed to relish saying it.
“What’s your name?”
“Rumila.” She moved closer. “What’s dai’s name?”
He hesitated, then said, “Shrinath.” He knew no one of that name.
“Are you looking for some action?” she said. This time she turned toward him fully so that her breasts nearly rubbed his hand on the wall top.
“How much?” he asked.
“Depends on what you want,” she said. “A hundred rupees for regular. But that depends on what I do.” A man wearing tight trousers approached them. She gestured to him, and he walked away. “You look lonely,” she told Ramchandra.
Ramchandra looked at the poster, at a young girl sucking on an ice bar nearby, at an old crouching man, his hands behind his back, whistling through his toothless gums.
“I can make you feel better,” she said.
“A drink,” he said. “That’s what I need.”
“You don’t need me?”
He wasn’t aroused by her, but he didn’t want to let her go. He imagined she lived in a dark, dingy place, somewhere he could curl up and lose consciousness. “Why don’t we drink in your place?” he said. Then he thought better of it and quickly said, “Forget it,” and walked away. In Naxal, he found a bar and sat there all afternoon, drinking. The alcohol numbed his thoughts, and by the time he left, he felt as if he’d been anesthetized.
At Pandey Palace, dinner had already started, and everyone became quiet when he sat down at the table.
“Where were you all day?” Goma asked. The smell of alcohol must have hit her; she said, “Drinking during the day? What’s come over you?”
He ate without talking. Rakesh stared at him, and Sanu kept her head down. When he was done, he went to his room and lay down. The radio in the kitchen was turned on loud, and the voice of the evening newscaster floated through the house.
All night, he drifted in and out of sleep. Toward morning he woke; his throat hurt. In the bathroom, he vomited into the sink and then lowered himself to the floor. Grabbing the cold porcelain of the sink, he cried for help, but no one heard him. After some time, he came to and dragged himself back to his room. He lay on the bed for a while and got up and knocked on the door to Goma’s room. When she appeared, wide-awake, he said he needed to talk to her.
Downstairs, in the living room, he explained that he needed to move out of Pandey Palace.
“Where will you go?”
“I’ll find a small room somewhere.”
She didn’t ask him why he wanted to move, yet he felt compelled to offer an explanation, “Living in this house is doing something to me; I think I’m losing my mind.”
“Whatever you wish.”
“Don’t you care whether I am near you or far away?” he asked in a weepy voice.
“I do, but you have a will of your own. And if that’s what’ll make you feel better, do it. Preferable to your constant arguments with the children.”
They sat quietly. Ramchandra rolled his tongue around his mouth to drive away the taste of vomit.
“I think Mother is going to leave us soon,” Goma said.
Ramchandra nodded.
“I don’t know what I’ll do then.”
“We have our own family.”
“I mean about the house.”
He didn’t want to ask to whom the house would go. He knew that the Pandeys had an impressive amount of money in the bank, plus a large chunk of land in the outskirts of Kathmandu. He wanted nothing to do with all this wealth falling into Goma’s lap. “I’m going to find a place this morning.” She said nothing; she seemed to be already in mourning for her mother.
The entire day Ramchandra scoured the city for a decent room at a reasonable price. He was astounded by the increase in rents over the past few years. Rooms that had no windows or rooms that looked over garbage dumps cost six hundred rupees per month. In one place, near Baghbazaar, he thought he’d found a room that was not exorbitantly priced until he saw, through a half-open door, the other tenants in the house: two hoodl
ums who were drinking and gambling. He thought of Sanu coming here and immediately crossed the place off his list.
Toward evening, just to delay going back to Pandey Palace, he went to Jaisideval and ended up chatting with the owner of the tea shop. “Something incredible is going on,” Ramchandra said. He’d read about how even some government employees were joining the movement. The engineers of Royal Nepal Airlines had stopped working for several hours. Earlier that morning a “pen down” strike had encouraged government workers across the nation to put down their pens and refuse to work. “Government workers going against the government?” the shopkeeper said. “That is remarkable.”
Suddenly, Mr. Sharma was at the door, and, in an exaggerated gesture of friendship, embraced him. “We miss you here, Ramchandra-ji,” he said. Ramchandra invited him to join him for tea, and they talked.
In the midst of their conversation about the people’s anger at the government, Ramchandra confessed to Mr. Sharma that things were not going well for him, and that he had to move out of Pandey Palace into a place of his own. Mr. Sharma took this news calmly, as if he’d known all along what was happening to Ramchandra.
“You should talk to our landlord,” Mr. Sharma said. “He’s having trouble finding a tenant to replace you.”
“When so many people are coming to the city?”
“He’s asking such a high price for that dump. What do you expect?”
“I can’t pay what I used to. I won’t even be using the children’s room.”
“Talk to him,” Mr. Sharma said. “He was telling me he realized now what a good tenant you were. I’m sure he’ll be glad to have you back.”
“It may only be temporary.”
“Don’t tell him that.”
Ramchandra found the landlord in his house, a block away, watering the tomato patch in his garden. He came over when he saw Ramchandra at the gate.
“Everything all right, Ramchandra-ji? What a pleasure to see you.”
Ramchandra asked about the apartment, and the landlord expressed his dismay at not finding a tenant. “Why? Are you planning to come back?”
“Only me. But I can’t pay what I used to.”
The landlord thought for a moment. “How about if you rent just one room? I’ll cut the price in half. But if I find a tenant for the other room, you’ll have to share the kitchen and everything.”
Ramchandra didn’t like the idea of living with a stranger, but he had no choice.
The landlord shook his hand with enthusiasm. “I’m glad you’re coming back.”
He moved the following day. Since he had to transport only his belongings, and some pots and pans, he did it in one trip in the Pandey car. No one but Rakesh seemed troubled by his departure, and even he tried not to show it. “When will you come to visit?” he asked defiantly.
“It’s not as if I’m moving to another city,” Ramchandra said. He reached out to pat his son’s head, but the boy ducked and moved away. “I’ll come by every few days. How about you coming to see your old friends at Jaisideval?”
“Why should I? They probably don’t remember me.”
“Of course they do. You had good friends. Bastola, Gainey.”
Rakesh looked wistful, but only for a moment. Sanu didn’t even come down to the driveway.
“Make sure you eat at home,” Goma said. “Don’t eat in restaurants. You’ll get sick.” The same servant who had cooked for him before would come by in the morning to prepare his meals.
Back in the noisy apartment in Jaisideval, Ramchandra felt disoriented, as if he’d never lived here before. Yet, at the same time, everything was familiar: the crack in the wall that resembled a lizard, the loose hinge in the kitchen window, the creak of the floor as he walked from room to room. He peeked into what had been the children’s room, and wondered how it would feel to wake in the morning and find someone else living there.
Since the servant wasn’t coming today, he opened his bag and took out the packets of rice and dal that Goma had packed and took them into the kitchen. He looked out the window to the courtyard, and there was Mr. Sharma, elbows on his windowsill. When Ramchandra’s meal was ready, he took his plate to the window overlooking the street. The food tasted good, and he ate slowly, watching the activity on the street. The tea shopkeeper stepped out briefly to stretch, looked up at Ramchandra, and waved. Ramchandra smiled with his mouth full. For now, he didn’t want to think about anything, about Goma or the children, about Malati, about what was happening in the city. He wanted to sit right there, enjoying the view of the people on the street. This was home.
But his newfound serenity was shattered a couple of hours later, when the shopkeeper knocked on the door, saying that Goma was on phone, calling about an urgent matter.
When Ramchandra reached Pandey Palace, tension hung in the air. Mrs. Pandey was gasping for breath through lips that had turned blue. She’d been brought down to the first floor, where she lay on a cot, her lips moving as if in prayer. She had refused to be taken to the hospital. “Now it’s time for me to go to heaven, to reunite with my Lord,” she’d said in a faltering voice. Whether Mrs. Pandey meant God or her departed husband wasn’t clear.
Goma held her hand. Mrs. Pandey’s eyes fell on Ramchandra, and she raised a trembling hand. He knelt beside her and took her hand. Her eyes rested on his face and then turned toward Goma. Holding their hands, Mrs. Pandey died moments later.
Over the next few days, after Mrs. Pandey had been cremated and the mourning period was under way, friends and relatives came to offer their condolences. Ramchandra held Goma’s hand, and she reciprocated with a squeeze, until some word triggered a memory, and she’d disengage her fingers. Ramchandra moved back to the apartment, and Goma and the children stayed at Pandey Palace. At times, he wanted to tell her, “The reason we moved here no longer exists, so why not come back to Jaisideval?” But something about her face told him that he would be rebuked for that suggestion.
The days went by in a haze. Government officials were fired for expressing support for the pro-democracy movement. The king announced the dismissal of the government and nominated a prime minister who had a reputation for being softer. That did not prevent the massacre that took place in front of the palace one day. Antigovernment demonstrators had marched from the city grounds toward the palace, clapping hands in unison above their heads. The police fired tear gas. People ran into the Tri Chandra campus and battered the police with bricks. A few hundred feet in front of the palace, agitators vented their wrath on the statue of King Mahendra. They hung a garland of shoes around its neck, broke its crown. The police fired. People collapsed to the ground. In the stampede, those trying to escape left their shoes and sandals behind, so the road looked like a flea market for used footwear.
One morning Ramchandra woke to loud voices in the courtyard. Bleary-eyed, he went to the kitchen window. Below, some young men were shouting obscenities and punching and kickmg Mr. Sharma, who, wearing only his dhoti, was trying to ward off their blows and was crying for help. A small crowd had gathered to the side. Ramchandra rushed down the stairs in his pajamas. In the middle of the staircase, the loose board gave way, and he hurtled down, his head crashing on the floor at the bottom. But it was the pain in his right ankle that made him sob. It was twisted badly and already turning blue. But there was Mr. Sharma, so Ramchandra forced himself to stand, his hand on the wall for support, and hobbled outside.
One of the young men was holding Mr. Sharma from behind while others pummeled him. The man’s face was bloody. “Call the police,” Ramchandra shouted at the crowd and tried to pry off the arms of the man who was holding Mr. Sharma, even as his own leg was burning with pain. “Why are you beating this old man? Don’t you have any shame?”
“This old man, this baje, touched our sister,” one young man said. “We’ll kill him.”
The man holding Mr. Sharma let him go, and he collapsed to the ground. “Save me, Ramchandra-ji! Please save me from them!”
Ramcha
ndra knelt beside him, wincing as the pain shot from his leg to his hip. He looked up at the young men. “What happened?”
One of the men’s younger sister, barely fifteen, had come to fetch water at the tap early this morning, thinking there wouldn’t be a line. Mr. Sharma had come down and yelled at her, then pushed her to the garden, where he touched her breasts and tried to kiss her. The man got angrier as he related this to Ramchandra, and his feet flew up and landed on Mr. Sharma’s face. Mr. Sharma fell to the ground, clutching his face, howling.
“Enough, enough! You can’t beat someone like this,” Ramchandra said.
“What? And he can go around molesting little girls? Are you like him? Is that why you’re defending him?”
“Enough,” Ramchandra said. “If he did it, he’s learned his lesson.” It took a while for him to placate the men, but he finally did, and they left, though not before threatening Mr. Sharma that they’d gouge his eyes out if he even looked at their sister again.
Holding Mr. Sharma’s arm, Ramchandra limped up the stairs to his room, where he applied some iodine to the cuts on Mr. Sharma’s face.
“I think my nose is broken,” Mr. Sharma said. “And something is wrong in here.” He pointed to his stomach. “It hurts so much.”
Ramchandra wet a towel and began cleaning the man’s face. “I’d better take you to the hospital.”
“No, no,” Mr. Sharma said. “What will I tell the doctors?”
Ramchandra looked at his own ankle. It was swollen. “Why didn’t you think of that when you took the girl to the garden?” His voice was cold.
Mr. Sharma looked up at him. “Ramchandra-ji, I...” And he began to weep.
“Control yourself,” Ramchandra said.
Mr. Sharma kept weeping.
The Guru of Love Page 25
