THE CHHINDIFUL¹ OF SKY

Maane wakes up all at once and examines the sky within the room. A beam of sunrays have entered through the lattice window. The small window in the west wall is close. He feels dead tired. His throat is parched and it has caused an itchy feeling. How will he present himself again at home today? Why does raksi² lure him whenever there is a rupee in his pocket? He reaches for the pocket while lying  still in bed. There he finds a one-rupee-note, spared. He gets up and moves to the adjoining room.
‘Sani Didi…!’
Sani Didi is brewing raksi. He hears a continual gurgle of water being shifted. Maane feels like watching it on end. Sani Didi yells out, ‘Hey Jethi! Do fetch some water right away. Here, I have to have one more go.’
‘Sani Didi! Don’t you have some warmed-up raksi? The hang over is much too unbearable.’
‘Wait, I have to have two more distillations.’ She flashes a faint chuckle. Maane looks at Sani Didi’s face carefully. Middle aged. Crimson cheeked. Small ear-tops on both earlobes. She looks as if she is in her prime. Maane feels like flirting with her.
‘So, Sani Didi, aren’t you planning again to have a settled life with a husband?’

She breaks into a chuckle with a faint anger in it. Maane is amused. Then again he grows apprehensive of his wife. What will she tell him today? Yesterday evening he had walked with ten one-rupee notes to by some rice. He dallied here instead. ‘What might have my wife and kids eaten? What a culprit I am!

Gore’s Amma³ must be thinking: he must turn up now. How to survive buying a maanaa⁴ of rice for seventy five paisa! I had urged to buy some corn grain. We could be a bit more sparing with it. The corn meal provides energy for longer time too. Why is he not turning up? Might be, corn is not available. The children are almost starving. Each of them had a millet cake in the morning.

Outside it has begun to drizzle. Time of monsoon. Corn leaves are rustling in the wind. A narrow chhindi. A faintly glimmering lamp. Gore’s Amma is brooding. Gore, as if weeping, says, ‘Amma, Ba⁵ isn’t back?

‘Must be coming. Wait a while.’ And begins to suckle her small daughter she is holding on her lap. She can’t get any milk and lets out a shrill cry. It is a somber sight. There would be milk in her breasts if she had enough to eat. All that has entered her body is water. Gore’s Amma feels like weeping. Always the same! In this damned place I’ve never got cloth enough to cover myself and food to my fill.

Maane gets a bit drunk. He gets up half heartedly. Soon he is on the road. Narrow and filthy road. Dogs bark at him. He is shaky inside. He finds himself like a dog. He doesn’t rebuke them. Nor does he fly at them. His shadow too is moving with him. He feels growing restlessness in him.

‘How many times might the little one have turned blue out of crying? Poor Gore! Never gets enough to satisfy his hunger, let alone his mother. Myself, I have no worry. Drink raksi and loaf about. Back home they must be starving to death.  Hard-managed ten rupees went into a single gulp. How can he say that he drank so much raksi? All nine rupees! How can he manage it again? Better not to present himself to Gore’s Amma. Someone like Dhane is coming towards him from a distance. Sure enough he is Dhane. He calls out to him, ‘Hey Dhane!... Do come here!’ Dhane pretends that he hasn’t heard it at all and tries to move on. Maane yells again, ‘Dhane!’ Then Maane approaches him. His eyes too are a little red. Maane thinks: ‘Dhane too is drunk. Is it only me to do it?’ He gets a little courage. ‘Hey Dhane! Can you lend me a little amount?’ He, however, knows Dhane too is a penniless fellow like him. Still he asks for it. He looks blankly at Maane. Dogs are constantly barking somewhere away from him. Waves of emotion are surging up from Dhane’s mind and drift towards the river of Maane’s life. Dhane sinks in it and comes up on the surface. Floats and again gets submerged. He looks up at the sky. Clouds are scattering. The sun is yet to break through to spill its warm rays into the damp part of human lives. Damp quarters of our lives.
‘Come on. Why don’t you speak, Dhane?’
‘Don’t you already know?’ Dhane finally says.
‘If you do have, lend me. I’ll hand it back tomorrow by all means.’
‘I swear by my life. I don’t have any.’ Then he moves on.
Maane is left dumbfounded. He doesn’t know where to go. Why did he drink raksi yesterday? Raksi at Sani Didi’s. What is there in it, in a bottle of raksi?  A drop of warmed up raksi. A tumbler of fresh raksi. He stops and turns back. He begins to walk on the way he came. Sani Didi’s house comes in view; it draws closer and closer in Mane’s eyes. He stealthily steps into her house and climbs up the stairs without stamping his feet. She eyes at him in bewilderment.

Maane lies down staring at those soot stand chirpat⁷. The sky in the room was clouded with soot. He is unable to sleep. Yesterday evening he had walked out to buy some rice. Walking past Sani Didi’s house, drops of rain began to patter. ‘Get me a drink for a suka⁸. What a habit! Even if briefly, it relieves from suffering. Why live only with tension?’ Bowls of raksi too cannot slake his thirst. The image of Gore’s Amma is blurred in the bowl. What a deep slumber he is in! His eye lashes heavy with sleep.

The day is drawing to a close. It is hot outside. A gust of wind enters the room through the narrow window. Mane wakes up. He feels quite refreshed. The incessant clatter of pots and pans in the adjoining room echoes in his ears. He gets up. I must go home whatever may befall. Always loafing about….

Gore, his Amma and her flabby, malnourished breasts, the three-month-old baby daughter. How can I see those dried-up lips and hunger squeezed mouths? With which eyes will he see this all? Is he able to go there? His rented room is in that Chhindi. O god! He hasn’t paid the rent yet. It is long he hasn’t got work. He has stopped going to madhesh⁹ever since the outbreak of malaria there.

Maane comes to the road against his will. The sun is waning. Hope and hopelessness both are printed in his heart. He fears if his wife chases him with a fire wood in hand. That is what her habit is. What else could she do? Poor devil! Troubled by emaciated faces of her kids… Maane walks on throwing plaintive glances at the shops by the road. Those nine one-rupee notes do flash before his eyes. The notes he earned by selling the bulaki (nosering) of his wife. The only thing the poor devil had when she came to him from her parents’. Call it a dowry or her wealth or anything.

Evening falls. His heart begins to beat faster. It is as if a number of thorns and sharp arrows are aiming at his heart. He unwillingly walks up the lane and reaches the Chhindi. It is pitch dark and without a sign of life. He peers through the hole in the wall. There is a faint glimmer of fire in the corner. He holds his breath to listen. But it is quite as if none is alive. He wonders if everyone starved to death. Trembling, he summons courage to open the old, broken door. The door creaked loudly.

‘Hey, Gore! Where’s Amma?’
‘Amma…’
‘Yes, where….?’
‘Gone out…’
‘Hmmm…When does she come?’
‘Dunno’ Gore’s voice is shaky.
‘What are you cooking?’
‘Potato, Gore attempts to push tongs through the object in the pot.
‘Not cooked? Is it a potato?’
‘Dunno, mother has told me to eat it after it is cooked.’

Maane reads Gore’s gloomy, vacant face by the scanty light of the fire. Writ large on it was a vague hope: I will have it after it is cooked; it will be cooked and I will have it.

 Maane lifts the tongs and seeks to pierce the object with it. But it is stiff and hard. He fishes out the object from the pot. My goodness! It is  lohoro, a stone. When will the lohoro be cooked? His mother has intended to make him live with a hope. Great! Gore’s mother! Tears well up in Maane’s eyes. Why didn’t he have guts enough to buy something for a rupee? Gore will starve to death. ‘Hey Gore, wait a minute. I will come with something to eat.’ He moves a few steps ahead. A woman with a baby in her arms stands still in the darkness in front of him. Maane recognizes at once. He seeks to move on pretending that he hasn’t recognized her. A voice fixes him standing there. Gore’s Ba! Hey Gore’s Ba! The baby lets out a cry- chyaa..haan….And keeps on crying. The waning fire in the Chhindi is glimmering. Ugh! Gore’s threadbare hope! Maane is in the verge of tears.

 ‘No, no, don’t cry, dear.’ Gore’s Amma tries to pacify the baby. The baby’s cry becomes louder. She speaks in a cracked voice, ‘There is no milk in her breast. Didn’t anyone give us food to eat, Gore’s Ba?’ She heaves a deep sigh. Maane says, ‘Your dry breasts are like a plot of barren land. How could the baby get milk, Gore’s Amma? How could there be milk?’

 Translated by Mukul Dahal

1.      chhindi-A room in the part of the house not worth living usually used to     store things.
2.      raksi-locally made raksi
3.      Amma-mother
4.      maanaa-quantity that weighs about a half kg.
5.      Ba-father
6.      bhaat-cooked rice
7.      chirpat-chopped wood
8.      sukaa-a twenty-five-paisa coin
9.      madhes- the plains