Long Night of Storm

by Indra Bahadur Rai

  ‘This is some manner of travelling to the bazaar, without having to walk a step,’ he looks at the grandson and speaks, seeking to address the old woman.

  She pushes the knot joining the ends of the shawl over her forehead, slides her grandson down from her back, still holding him, and makes him stand. ‘He refuses to walk at all, but nags about coming to the bazaar,’ she says and catches her breath. ‘How will I ever reach the bazaar like this?’

  After more chitchat of similar nature he asks what he needs to know, ‘How is life in the village?’

  ‘Son, worries and misery, trouble and hardship come and go. But we can’t stop living,’ she says, as if revealing the mysteries of life itself. ‘Just like a seed in the ground. A seed awakens, sends shoots upwards. But even if a rock blocks its path it doesn’t despair, it doesn’t give up—it refuses to die. It seeks another path. It forces its way out of the ground, somewhere or another. It surfaces to live in the sun and water and air. It stubbornly grows.’

  He sees the condition of the village in the answer. This answer was the sweat-drenched smile on the village’s face.

  He returns from there.

  He carries the grandson now, the child’s legs dangling over his shoulders. The boy is iron-heavy. ‘What does your grandma feed you?’ he asks.

  They part ways after arriving at the bazaar.

  He continues his search for his old clan-home.

  The old clan-home stands yet—it has even gained a new section, joined by a large stairway. A number of smaller, prettier houses surround it. ‘It was built strong, this house,’ he thinks, ‘Why did we worry that it would have fallen by now?’ Strong, bright, mirthful, capable, confident—such is the house.

  No house of his own here—he is staying in a hotel room. He feels dejected, bitter here, standing before his clan-home which stands wide and tall.

  ‘It will not fall,’ he utters.

  He stays for a week.

  Then he returns.

  ‘The green of the mountains is from the water in the rivers. The white in the rivers is from the rocks of the mountains… Am I raining tears?’ he thinks as he watches the mountains and rivers left behind.

  During his lonely return, from an unknown depth within he remembers something a Zen master once said: ‘We face each other all day long, but we have never met. It has been aeons since we parted ways, but never for a moment were we separated.’

  ‘Is life lived within the confines of knowing?’ To whom can he direct his queries? He panics.

  Jaar: A Real Story

  ‘A man may cut his jaar down straight away!’ Thirteen years after the death of Prime Minister Jung Bahadur, who modified this edict, a family of Samri Ghaley Gurungs migrated from Gulmi, to the west of the River Kali, to settle in Amchok, in Region Four of the Eastern Provinces. They had migrated east because their eldest son Rudraman Gurung’s platoon Kali Bahadur was garrisoned in Ilamgarhi, not more than four days away by foot; and they had chosen Amchok because a Darlami Thapa Magar family of their acquaintance had already settled there.

  Under the leadership of general Amar Singh, the grandfather of this Jayvir Thapa had fought the Company, and had quit the army only after Bhimsen Thapa took his own life out of humiliation. And, Shivaman Ghaley, in the Gurung year of the serpent, when he was twenty-eight years old, had fought under Jung Bahadur’s command to retake Lucknow from the rebels. He was missing two fingers from his right hand, and on his cheek was a deep long gash made by a sword.

  ‘How should I address her?’ Jayvir Thapa asked in Khas, their common tongue, while visiting the newly built house of the Ghaleys a week after their arrival.

  Shivaman Ghaley smiled at his wife who stood by his side, then looked at Jayvir and the Thapa wife.

  ‘Call her your sister for now, Thapa! I become your brother-in-law then. Or, call her your sister-in-law, and you can become her elder brother-in-law.’

  Ghaley and Thapa laughed together. The wives looked at each other and laughed. When the husbands laughed their moustaches shook, and when the wives laughed the dense folds of their ten-yard-long gunyu wraps shook.

  ‘The relation between a brother-in-law and his sister-in-law is a difficult one,’ Thapa continued. ‘Heaven forbid if she touches him with the edge of her shawl—they’ll both be forever sanctifying themselves with holy water!’

  The Ghaley woman pulled her shawl over her face and bowed timidly. ‘In the west, where we are from, the two separate peaks of Machhapuchre are called brother and sister-in-law,’ Shivaman explained. ‘Call her sister—that is the easier relation.’

  ‘This is our younger girl—we call her Maiti,’ Thapa pointed to a girl barely eleven years old. She was pretty in her black skirt and patterned blouse.

  ‘She is our girl Devi’s age,’ the Ghaley wife said.

  ‘This is my elder daughter,’ Thapa introduced another girl. ‘And we have aptly named her Thuli.’

  Bright-faced and of a proud bearing, she was very pretty to look at. Perhaps the ancient Magar queen who died fighting the Bhotey northerners in Kangwachen looked just like Thuli. Now Thuli stood beside her mother in a quilted shawl from Kathmandu.

  ‘So pretty she is!’ Ghaley’s wife couldn’t contain herself.

  And now Shivaman Ghaley told his story: ‘I have brought here a son and a daughter.’ Thapa was aware of these facts, but he listened patiently. ‘And then there is the two of us, man and wife.’

  ‘Your elder son?’ Thapa asked.

  ‘In the army. He is a lieutenant.’

  Thuli suddenly raised her eyes to look at her father.

  ‘He will perhaps get here any day now—we’ve written to him,’ Ghaley’s wife said.

  ‘Aren’t they also building a fort in Karfok, Baba?’ Thuli asked with a heart that had become overjoyed without a cause.

  ‘Yes,’ Thapa answered his daughter and continued speaking to Shivaman. ‘It is easier for a lieutenant to find leave once the letter reaches him. But it is also not easy. Men of lower ranks can find a lout to take their place and run home in time to thresh new millet.’

  Thapa and Ghaley laughed once more, tickled because they understood the soldier’s dilemma.

  By the time the Thapas rose to leave, Devi and Maiti had become fast friends. Devi had browsed through every room in Maiti’s home, and as her father and sister stepped out to the yard after begging their leave, the two girls were running to see the chautara in a corner of the village. Who would stop them?

  ‘I’ll ask somebody to fetch Devi home—I’ll send her home,’ the Ghaley wife said to the Thapas.

  The Thapa wife laughed. ‘We should make them miteni friends,’ she said to the Ghaley wife.

  Rudraman arrived around dusk two days later.

  From her home higher up on the hill, Thuli saw soldiers milling about in Thapa’s yard and made a guess, and immediately knew that a sort of fear and another sort of joy had found her heart. When she sneaked upstairs to spy from the window, the Indian gooseberry tree in their own fields entirely obscured the view of the house below.

  Maiti brought news in the afternoon.

  ‘Devi’s brother the lieutenant has come. Aren’t you going to see him?’

  ‘So what if he is back? As if he’s worth looking at! How is he?’ Thuli asked her sister as she watched the tailor who sat in their yard, stitching a dress.

  ‘Very good-looking! He is young—not old at all!’

  ‘Did he speak to you?’

  ‘Speak to me? He even gave me braiding ropes! See?’

  Thuli looked at the thick red string ropes in Maiti’s hand.

  ‘These are for a Limbu woman! Men never know what to buy!’

  ‘So? What is it to you?’ Maiti sulked at her sister.

  When night fell, Thuli once more looked at the house below. Many men sat around a fire below the terrace of the house’s yard. She could see children running about.

  The next afternoon, the lieutenant came, holding hands with Maiti and De
vi.

  Thuli was in the kitchen behind the house, so she didn’t realize anything.

  It was only when her mother asked her to cook something that she came to know.

  Rudraman left after staying for nearly two hours. Thuli sat dejectedly, keeping herself imprisoned in the kitchen.

  When Rudraman returned after four days, Thuli found herself suddenly face to face with him.

  Thuli slowly climbed the ladder. Rudraman watched her, immobile.

  Rudraman chatted through the day and left only when dusk arrived. But he threw not a glance in Thuli’s direction.

  Maiti hadn’t lied! He had the face of a hero and a keen pair of eyes. The khaki uniform suited him better than regal robes adorn a king. When Rudraman left, Thuli’s heart sang—O lord! If I could be his wife, I would accept every hardship as joy, and would want no more from my time on earth!

  Rudraman frequently visited over the next twenty or twenty-five days of his leave. Jayvir was mostly at home. When he wasn’t, Rudraman chatted with the Thapa wife or with Thuli and left. He told tales of meeting forest-dwellers like the Chepangs and the Kusundas when he was garrisoned in the fort at Sindhuli. Then he would scare them by speculating that his garrison may shift to the malarial swamps of Jhapa and Morang. Thuli would sit and listen to Rudraman and her mother talk.

  One day, Rudraman cornered Thuli and said:

  ‘I have to get back to Ilam. Tell me if I should return soon or not!’

  Thuli stood quietly, unable to say anything.

  Rudraman leaned close to Thuli and brought his nostrils close to her dark hair, as if to breathe in the fragrance of her body.

  ‘Are you shy?’ he asked. ‘Let’s do this, then: should I stay away too long, or not? Just say, “Don’t!” If you say that, it’ll help me return soon. Otherwise, I may not return for a long while.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Thuli said softly.

  When the time came, Rudraman returned to Ilam.

  Maiti and Devi had become inseparable. On some nights the girls ate at the Ghaleys’ and spent the night there. Sometimes Devi didn’t go home for two, three days on end, engrossed in her games, and stayed with the Thapas. The girls would clean the entire house together, make offerings to the household gods, finish chores neither girl ever chose to do on her own. When he saw the girl from the family above the hill lay claim to his home, Shivaman was touched by a strange joy and would laugh with his wife. Both families discussed their daughter’s friend.

  Thuli scolded Maiti a few times.

  But, perhaps Rudraman would have had more success if he had tried rolling a boulder off the Tilkeni cliffs to block the Yogmai river.

  And, one day, musicians of the tailor caste came to the yard and played their shehnai pipes. Platters were stitched out of fig leaves. Maiti and Devi became miteni friends. It was as if Dashain had arrived just for the pair. Devi gave Maiti a green woollen shawl along with the rupee coin bearing Queen Victoria’s head that Rudraman had given her; as memento to her miteni, Maiti gave a Mahindra Malla silver coin and a stole of printed English cloth.

  ‘You are mitenis now—don’t take names when you call each other. You are one soul now, sworn to each other,’ Thapa told his daughter.

  ‘And for these daughters we have become one household,’ Ghaley said to Thapa. ‘Our families may not intermarry, or it’ll be counted incest, and such children be chased away. We’ll mourn and celebrate as one family. Our children are now siblings.’

  ‘I accept the ways of the ancestors,’ Thapa proudly proclaimed before witnesses invited by his family.

  Nobody saw Thuli cry, but everyday everyone saw her reddened eyes.

  Late in November of the same year, Thuli was married off to a Ruchal Rana Magar who had just been awarded the headgear for his new rank, decorated with a chain and a moon insignia of gold. Since Harshajit Rana was the son of Thuli’s eldest aunt, he lay his traditional claim to marry her.

  When her father-in-law and brother-in-law returned to Dhor in Region Three of the western provinces around the middle of December, Thuli had only her husband’s elder sister for company. She was forced to rely upon the servants to see to all household chores. All responsibilities fell upon her.

  Devi and Maiti often visited Thuli’s new home with gifts from home. They stayed the day and returned.

  ‘Don’t you two ever fight! If you fight and end your friendship, I’ll kill myself! I won’t live…’ she often told her sisters.

  ‘She picks fights, but I always make up,’ Devi would say.

  ‘You’re the one who fights,’ Maiti would return the blame.

  One day, Thuli asked her sisters:

  ‘Is there news of brother returning?’

  She had been yearning to ask the question, but she lived in dread of the answer.

  ‘Which brother?’ Maiti asked instead.

  ‘Devi’s elder brother. Isn’t he brother to all of us now? Stupid girls!’ Thuli scolded.

  ‘Oh, you mean our lieutenant brother?’ Devi said. She gave Maiti a conspiratorial look. ‘Thuli, don’t get mad if I say something? Maiti and I always wonder how good it would have been if you and our lieutenant brother had been married! Thuli, have we upset you?’

  Thuli could say nothing in reply.

  ‘Some time in May it will be a year since our brother went away. He will return,’ the girls volunteered.

  Forests shed their foliage and faraway trails showed like twisted straw. Again, one by one, all the trees in the forest regained their green. After the winds of mid-March lost their fury came a few quick showers in May.

  Thuli was about to enter the house in the grey of a dusk after gathering a little cow dung on a leaf when she decided to go to the dhiki rice-press to see if the workers had finished hulling rice. The servant women had already gone, leaving behind hulled grain along with flattened husks from making beaten rice. Was someone drawing firewood from the woodshed? Thuli went to see.

  Seemingly a man of the wild, Rudraman stood by the shed. As Thuli tried to run away in fright, he blocked her way with a strong arm.

  ‘I will not kill you,’ he said, grave and cruel. ‘I’ll ask you something. Tell me the truth: Do you like your husband? Did you marry willingly or no?’

  Wide with fright, Thuli’s eyes rattled.

  ‘Answer me!’

  ‘I married willingly. After your family and mine became avowed kin, I married willingly,’ Thuli found the courage to speak, and after speaking, she felt her fear drain away.

  ‘That kinship came later—I have a much older relationship with you,’ he spoke through gritted teeth but in a voice on the verge of tears.

  Thuli looked tired enough to fall to a heap and sit.

  ‘You’ll have to elope with me, or I will murder your husband. You will choose one of us. Listen—tomorrow, at this hour, I will come for you.’

  Rudraman sped away from the shed. Hanging from the waist of his khaki uniform a long army khukuri swayed behind him.

  Thuli fainted. But—it must have been the pain from hitting a piece of firewood as she fell—she immediately regained consciousness.

  Later in the night, Harshajit applied a salve of herbs to Thuli’s head.

  ‘I wish I had died. But you would have mourned me,’ Thuli said as she watched her husband. How trusting and kind was her husband! ‘But, if I have my life now only to hurt you later…’

  ‘What nonsense are you talking?’ Harshajit lovingly chided her.

  Thick veins writhed around his arms, as if those broad, gleaming veins pulsed thickly with love and kindness and hatred.

  ‘No, I want to say these things to you tonight. Don’t be cross. None among us holds in their hands the life they desire. Somebody, something arriving from an unseen corner ruins it. And life is just that—which has been ruined by others, and whatever remains in the ruin. When others strike and break something whole, the splintered remains is life.’

  ‘For me life is the absence of cowardice,’ Harshajit said. He was pr
oud of his lineage that had been elevated from Thapa to Rana after three generations of his forefathers had found valorous deaths on the battlefield.

  Thuli studied her husband.

  ‘Come home before sundown tomorrow. Will you?’ Thuli asked.

  ‘Before the sun sets these days, the moon is in the sky. I will return then. But why?’

  ‘I want to do a small puja.’

  ‘Keep the best bits of the puja offerings for me. And set aside lots of it.’ Harshajit laughed as he walked away from the bed.

  Harshajit left in morning wearing his blue uniform. Thuli had diligently polished its chains.

  It was a small puja, but it took nearly the whole day. They slaughtered a freshly weaned goat kid for everybody to eat. She made the Brahmin widow who cleaned and plastered the house everyday wait through the day. When everybody left, Thuli took her favourite blouse from the trunk and gave it to the widow. She called the family tailor’s wife and gave her another blouse.

  She sent the servants to dig new potatoes from the field. A cow had fallen sick—she fed it herself. On her way home she found a tall pole, which she carefully arranged into the fence.

  But, throughout the day, she didn’t once glance in the direction of the woodshed.

  The sun was about to settle behind the hills.

  And now Thuli went to her sister-in-law and asked:

  ‘Amajyu, since I have come to your home, have I made you and your brother happy? Or have I failed?’

  ‘You are the bright light of our fortune, buhari! Why do you ask this?’

  ‘For no particular reason,’ she said, and stared at her sister-in-law.

  Harshajit had returned—his footsteps were heard. Thuli went to him.

  After carefully putting away his uniform, Thuli brought him water. Then she fed him meat from the puja. She saw how rapidly darkness had descended outside. After lighting lamps in every room of the house, Thuli climbed down and went outside to the woodshed.

  The shed was quiet. An occasional sound from the kitchen and the dim flicker of the lamp in the niche on the outer wall of the house reached here. Her bangles clinked when she walked into a stack of firewood; a figure squatting in a corner abruptly stood.