CALMLY FLOW THE CURRENTS NOW

 Ratnamaya is struggling to fall asleep. Out past her yard, the Pikhuwa is swelling steadily. Early in the evening the water grew thick and muddy, brick-red soil and flotsam swirling down the river. She’s been clinging to a suspicion--will the river flood today as well?  Will its currents touch her tiny cottage, her ragged quilt, empty bottles and heavy wine jars? She examined, before going to bed, the cone-shaped stone erected on the bank to measure the threat of the river flooding. The water has been gradually rising. She goes out. Pitch darkness everywhere. The only sound, the deep rumble of the river, makes her heart shudder. Save for that sound, there’s a queer silence. Now the flood is rushing ruthlessly close to the edge of her cottage. She starts to fear, wondering whether to move her things to some other place, safe from the water. But there is no such hurry now. The flood might abate. There is no visitor in her narrow, stuffy cottage tonight. Neither has her sister-in-law turned up. In solitude, in the nocturnal serenity, the sore remembrance of her daughter is becoming stubbornly distinct in her mind.

Yesterday she clutched the decision.  Her daughter asked between sobs, ’Will Papa be back for Dashain this year?’

‘Yes, your papa will be back at Dashain with beautiful clothes for you. Will you put them on?’ she replied, oblivious of the decision.

‘No’, the same lahure’s stern voice had echoed in the air, barking an order, ’You must keep your promise, you must… your daughter.’         Then Ratnamaya thought hard, eyes shut, and frowning. She had found her in the abyss of darkness; around her spread an aching void and ghastly stretch of water. In the womb of all this lies her daughter, simply her daughter.

A wet evening one of such bleak years.  Ratnamaya is alone in her cottage. Dead silence, occasionally broken by the roar of the river, has wrapped up everything. The countenance of her husband, who so thoughtlessly embraced death, leaving behind a daughter on her lap, appears and says, ’Ratnamaya, maybe you’ve forgotten our dancing together in last year’s chandi. I’m still drunk with the bowl of jand you offered me. It was the jand that put me under. I haven’t been able to wake from the intoxication yet, Ratnamaya. But see, how you’re leading a worthless life, having tied your youth to a silver bangle!’

Then it seems to her in the semi-darkness of the evening that a silhouette of someone, having crossed the tumultuous flood in the river, is approaching. Today she’s got a vatful of jand to sell. Who other than the lahure himself can brave the maddening current of the river? But she’s all alone and…

 Yes, that was lahure. After six years in Malaya, he was on his way back to spend six-month-chhutti(holiday). Ratnamaya slaughters a cock and cooks the meal. Far into the night, the lahure empties the vat and stammers drunkenly, ’Can you go without your daughter, Kanchhi? You can go to Malaya. The parting on your head will shimmer again with life.’ She remembers her husband would stammer in the same way, ‘Well, a daughter is born. How do I stay here until the next joins? How can I spend my whole life fishing this way in Pikhuwa? See, the lahure from Malaya!’

The lahure--even her husband would talk of him--is spluttering, Capstan cigarette popped in his mouth, ‘After spending six months at home, I’ll return to the barracks by the same route, dropping in at your cottage. Will it still be here? Winter will have set in by then.’

            ‘In winter the cottage seems to be getting even closer to the riverbed, the river narrows as the water in it is thinned away,’ she says, bringing to mind a vivid image of the coming winter. ‘Then will you go to the barracks with me?’ Lahure speaks with a coarse laughter. But she has gained composure. Her heart goes out for her daughter now.

            ‘I too have a daughter . . .’ he says in a low voice. The darkness outside has thickened. The unceasing roar and whistle of the river hasn’t slackened. The lahure is gazing at her with his drink-reddened eyes. She’s in a trance.

 ‘Feeling sleepy?’ There’s a shift in the matter of their talk. ‘Can’t leave your daughter with your parents? If you do, I’ll feel comfortable. For me too someone else’s blood . . .’

            At length, she falls asleep at the crossroads of enchanting dream and thorny reality.  In the morning, about to take leave of her, Lahure repeats, ‘I’ll return in the winter.  Stay ready if you want to go. But your daughter . . .’

            He walks off, fords the river, going out of sight to the north of her cottage. She feels like letting out a shriek that would echo through the surroundings hills.  ‘O lahure, are you really coming back? I’ll be waiting for you all through the winter. Waiting and waiting.’

 All day long Ratnamaya runs amuck, like a lunatic, fords the river and trudges along the bank. She keeps on staring blankly at the river and playing hide and seek with it. She reflects on her husband, who stole into death forgetful of her plight, and remembers the lahure flower⁴ in the yard. Sleep deserts her eyes. With the onset of winter, the Pikhuwa whispers into her ears, ‘Winter has already set in. The lahure will soon be on his way back from his house. But your daughter is…’

            Ratnamaya feels feverish. She feels as if the river has besieged her and is about to wash her away. Days are swiftly passing. Nights are spent without sleep. Fated to bear whiplashes of chills from the hilltop, and sizzling heat of the basin, she has a series of bleak days and nights ahead. How many more days can she live, lured by their talk?  A sense of disbelief for herself develops in her. She cannot do away with herself. Nor can she live to relish the fragrance of life. The idiocy of the situation is that her daughter, who didn’t die along with her husband, has been a hurdle, a high wall, standing stubbornly in her way all her life. How can she jump over this wall?

 The jokes that the lahures cracked in her cottage resurface in her mind. ’You’re awfully pretty, Kanchhi. How can you spend years on this riverbed?  If you didn’t have your daughter, we’d have picked you up long ago.’ Yes, if it hadn’t been for her daughter, she wouldn’t have been here.  The thought that a tiny current of flood of the Pikhuwa is enough to take the life of her daughter obsesses her.

And one night, having hurled her little daughter into the flooded Pikhuwa, she reasons that she made a wise decision; she did the right thing. She is now compatible with her situation. This is the greatest and ultimate truth for her. She is absolutely right. She becomes content.

Next morning, a whirling wave of water whispers to Ratnamaya, ‘I’m back, leaving your daughter in Arun. She is drifting down the river. She will not have to reach Saptakoshi. The Arun will wash her out somewhere on the way.’ And a heart-rending image is conjured up in her mind--an eagle swoops down, plucks out the eyes of her tender aged daughter and soars up in the sky. A black crow lands, pecks at her daughter’s rosy lips and flies back, inflicting wound upon them.

As if compelled, Ratnamaya flounders into yet another thought--she has by no means thrown her daughter into the river. She wandered out to the riverbank, playing. The river washed her away. What could Ratnamaya, a helpless woman, do? What miracle could she perform? She couldn’t do much.

 And thereafter…  Looming in her dreamy eyes is the sturdy, strong-limbed lahure who will fly her overseas to Malaya. She’s intent on going overseas. She is ready to forget the nightmare that, from under the coconut tree, clasped with her own fingers sticky with rubber gum; she hurled her daughter into the Pikhuwa. Her hands and feet grow restless, and a rhododendron blooms in the yard of her belief. The lahure is certain to come. He’ll say reassuringly, ‘You’ve kept your word, Kanchhi. You’ve dismantled the wall in your way.’ Of course she cleared her way to leap forward. She will no longer walk up and down the hill now. She will no longer sell jand. She will ford the river and go away somewhere far, terribly far…

 The winter of her dream approaches. The dream of the lahure grows tall and bushy. A current of the Pikhuwa with Chinamakhule water flows past her with a message--the lahure is about to set off. He will leave Chinamakhule right on Shree Panchami. The soltinees there cannot stop him long, you see. He’ll be back soon.

 But that winter never brings Ratnamaya’s lahure. In the summer she can’t sleep nights. The faces of her late husband and daughter jolt her out of her sleep night after night, ‘You can never sleep in peace now. We’ve snatched your sleep from you, forever, forever…’

 At length, one morning, a wavelet of the Pikhuwa breaks news to her--the lahure from Chhinamakhule has already gone by way of Dungama. He has already crossed the Pikhuwa confluence.  He will never come back to Ratnamaya’s cottage.

 Ratnamaya asks where her daughter went then?  Why did she push her daughter, the only memory of her husband, into the flood?  The currents of the Pikhuwa now glide past her calmly like they did yesterday and the day before as if they have no time to answer her questions.

 Translated by Mukul Dahal

 1. lahure – one who joins British army as a Gurkha soldier, or goes abroad to amass a huge fortune.
2. chandi – a dance that is ritually danced in Rai community at the beginning and at the end of a season as a imitation of nature.
3. jand – a local wine like vermouth.
4. lahure flower – a kind of flower, dahlia