\*
Sorry I could not meet my own deadline. In my defense, I was helping a recently baptized DV-Lotterian buy a Corolla. Little did I know, it would end up becoming a 7-hour-long escapade. Why is this that I lose a little faith in humanity every time I visit a car dealership?
Ok, I chose to create a new thread because some of my friends asked me to do so. If you were in Mustang and missed the first part, here it is:
http://sajha.com/sajha/html/index.cfm?threadid=45319
*/
FROM KAAVRE TO THIMI (FINAL PART)
“It’s amazing he passed the fifth grade without any prior schooling. You must feel good, you helped him a lot.” Meera said flipping the egg over by shuffling the pan.
“You have to hand it to him. He worked his butt off.”
“He is very smart; I always knew it.”
“He’s quite mature for a 17-year-old. When our Ashok was 17, I remember how immature he was. Dhaney is quite the opposite … Sometimes he tells me stories of his childhood in Kaavre. He makes a lot of implicit sense out of his memories. He draws Aesop like morals from his anecdotes. I’m not bad with words myself, but every so often, he puts me in awe.” Sameer bragged of his pupil.
“I feel the same way. Look what kind of relationship he has with Jhukkyai. Those two are like best friends. Ria is more reserved, but he is as close with her. He treats those two girls completely differently. With so little exposure, it’s incredible that he matured so early in his life.”
“That’s where we are wrong I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exposure is not just about seeing the world and being able to afford what it sells. It is also about realizing what you can’t have. Here’s a kid who begins his life without his mother. Here’s a boy who watches his father work like a dog to make ends meet. Here’s an adolescent who witnesses his brother vanish. These are exposures.”
“I think he felt the biggest sense of loss when his brother disappeared. By then he was old enough to realize that loss. Ria tells me he says they were very close.”
“I bet they were … His maturity has a lot to do with how his father took it after his brother disappeared. His father gave up and Dhaney had to pick up life in bits and pieces … When there was not much to appreciate about his father, he must have realized, how much he should have appreciated him when he was there for him.” Sameer said gazing at Kamal Nath’s old helmet that sat on top of the wall cabinet.
“You switch between subjects so swiftly; it is hard to keep up with you.” Meera praised her younger brother, adding, “You were not old enough to appreciate that. I was. But I’m sure I took it for granted then.”
“I know the new head doesn’t fit in that old helmet, but I wish it did.”
“Who else is eating Wai Wai and the egg?” Mangala Devi interrupted the conversation as soon as she entered the kitchen.
“Sameer and me.”
“Two of you will eat all those noodles and three eggs?”
“And Dhaney.”
“Naani, you have already spoiled that girl, Sadhana. She sits on your living room chair when you have guests around. She watches TV with you guys all the time. I noticed she wears jeans pants now. So do me a favor; don’t spoil Dhaney with Wai Wai and the egg. I’ll give him some ‘Bhuteko Chiuraa’ and ‘Kaankraa ko achaar’.”
“I told you so. Wai Wai is a luxury for Dhaney. Egg’s a rarity. I don’t think I have seen him eat egg in this house.” Sameer shook his head in repulsion.
“Chhoraa, I know you’re better than me. When you start making money, you make the rules about who gets to eat eggs.”
“No mami I’m not better than you, we’re just deeply different,” Sameer reflected, “You live to appreciate what has not changed; I live to regret that I can’t bring that change.”
The noodles episode had the ingredients of many of the wars Mangala Devi had waged on her two children in the past. However, Chaitanya walked into the house before their differences turned into a full-scale battle of rights versus righteousness.
“Namaskaar,” Chaitnaya said peeking through the kitchen door, “Oh Meera’s here too. Khai ta chhori haru?”
“Namaste kaka … they’re with their father.”
“Darn you kaka, you have become half the man you used to be. You’ve lost a lot of weight.” Sameer, who was more casual and chummier with the relatives, added.
“Let’s go to the living room, I’ll bring ‘Khaajaa’.” When she saw the kitchen getting crowded, Mangala Devi shepherded everyone out of the kitchen.
Chaitanya declined the ‘Khaajaa’ offer, but insisted on a cup of sugar-free tea. When Meera brought the tea, he took three quick sips and said, “I’m here to take Dhana Bahadur with me.”
“I don’t get it.” Like everyone else in the room, Mangala Devi was surprised.
“I have news … You must have heard about the Maoist attack in Mangaltar, Kaavre.”
“How is Dhaney’s father?” Sameer took a wild guess.
“He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“How bad?”
“He’s gone.”
An uncomfortable stillness followed Chaitanya’s mournful exhale. Sameer rested his two elbows on his two thighs, clasped his hands tightly and parked his chin on his knuckles. That was his usual posture when he did not want to reason the ‘why’. Mangala Devi kept on staring at Chaitanya as if she wanted to hear more about the death.
“Now he’s practically an orphan. He has no one in the entire world. Imagine.” Her eyes saturated with tears, Meera anguished, trading a gaze with Sameer and Chaitanya alternately. She did not bother to look at her mother.
“Imagine.” Chaitanya chorused.
“We were just talking about his hard luck … Just a while ago, Sameer and I were talking about his father. And now this.”
“Are you taking him for the funeral?” Since she did not know how to be troubled by the death of a person she never knew, the god fearing Mangala Devi chose to remain topical.
“The funeral is done. The Armed Police took care of it. What is there to do anyway? They draped the body with the white cloth and burned it. He was a number for them and was treated like one … a casualty number.”
“If he’s already cremated, where is Dhaney going with you?”
“The inspector there called me. He wants to talk to Dhana Bahadur. I didn’t ask why.”
“We’re not in any danger, are we?” Mangala Devi sounded worried.
“Give it a rest mami, this is not the time. For five minutes, pretend as you care.” Meera chastised her mother.
“Meera it’s natural to be concerned,” Chaitanya did not believe a word he said. He too was annoyed by Mangala Devi’s needless inkling.
“I read the attack took place at the police post. What was he doing there?” Sameer finally broke his silence.
“Most probably he was heading home from a ‘bhatti’. The police post was on the way. Though the cops say that the Maoists killed him, we’ll never find out which side of the bullet got him.”
“Does it matter which side of the bullet got him?” Sameer subtly grilled him because he felt Chaitanya was trying to make a political point.
“It doesn’t,” Chaitanya settled it quickly when he realized where Sameer was coming from. “We have to tell Dhana Bahadur. You want to call him?”
“I’ll tell him, you guys stay here.” Sameer stood up and slowly walked out of the room.
“Who are these sofas mourning? Why are they shrouded in white?” When Sameer left the room, Meera suddenly barked at her mother. Neither Mangala Devi nor Chaitanya responded. They knew the sofa covers had nothing to do with Meera’s outburst. Mangala Devi had covered the sofas with white cloth to protect them from Kathmandu’s pollution. After buying the material in Indrachok, Meera herself had sown those covers.
“Meera, can I have a glass of water?” In the wait for Sameer and Dhaney, when the silence became unbearable, Chaitanya devised a scheme to break it.
Twenty minutes later, Sameer and Dhaney came to the room. Sameer walked back and sat down where he was sitting before. Dhaney stood next to the door. He did not have tears in his eyes, but his face played a documentary on how he felt. Meera looked at his face and tears rolled out of her eyes. She wiped her tears and quickly turned her face away.
When nobody said anything, Chaitanya eulogized, “Your father was a good man.”
“He used to be more than a good man before he started drinking.” Dhaney responded starring at the floor.
When the silence prevailed anew, Chaitanya told Dhaney, “We need to go.”
“Mami give him some money.” Sameer just about ordered his mother. When Mangala Devi left the room, Dhaney walked inside the room and sat on the floor.
“One time when I was nine, I fell down from a tree. My head split open. He had seen me fall. He came running to me with a bottle of Dettol and poured every single drop on my head. Then he carried me on his shoulder and ran for half an hour … His shirt was soaked with blood that dripped from my head. The more I bled, the faster he ran. The whole time he just kept on repeating one thing: ‘Taauko thichi rakh’ ‘Taauko thichi rakh’. When we reached the Health Post, two people grabbed him. They both thought he was the injured one. It’s not because there was so much blood in his shirt; because he was in such a panic he looked more injured …”
“You still remember that. That matters.” Meera tried facilitating when Dhaney choked.
“Dijju, it also matters I couldn’t light the fire on his dead body. When I ran away from him, I never saw it coming, that he too can run away from me …” When Mangala Devi entered the room, Dhaney stopped.
Mangala Devi gave Dhaney one 500-rupee and three 100-rupee bills. When Sameer did not like what he saw, he opened his wallet and upped the sum with a thousand-rupee bill. Nobody said a word except Dhaney: “Why do I need all this money?”
“Eat some noodles and eggs before you go,” Mangala Devi offered. Meera and Sameer looked at each other’s vacant face.
“Muwa I don’t feel like eating.”
********************************************************************
“Can I put the tea on top of this book?” Dhaney asked Sameer pointing to a Kaplan GRE book on Sameer’s side table.
“Go ahead. That book has already served its purpose.” Sameer replied zipping his passport bag.
After double-checking his I-20, the acceptance letter, another letter from International Students Office and his transkripts, Sameer carefully put them inside a leaf-embedded Nepali paper folder with string tie. He secured the papers by tying the folder string and walked across the room towards a Godrej double-door steel cabinet. After putting the passport bag and the paper folder inside, he aligned the cabinet doors, pushed them in, and closed the Godrej by pulling up the metal lever handle on the right door. When the doors closed, he scrutinized his own face on the vertical mirror that was attached to the left door of the Godrej. Sameer did not like the reflection he saw. He felt, his present looked too nostalgic to be lured by the expectation of his future.
Sameer sat down on the bed, looked at his watch and said, “This time tomorrow I’ll be somewhere above the ocean.”
“Are you excited?”
“I’m nervous … Three of my best friends left six years ago. They’re already settled there. I’ll have to start from scratch.”
“Do you regret not leaving six years ago?”
“Yes and no. When I read their emails, I feel like they have already become half ‘goraa’. They sound confused. I don’t blame them. They left when they were 20. I’m more mature now, I’ll not change the way they have. That’s the good thing. The bad thing is, the older you get it’s tougher to adjust to changes. I’ll miss it here. I’ll miss Jhukkyai. I’ll miss fighting with mami. I’ll miss missing baba in his own house. I’ll miss everything.”
“But you can watch live wrestling there.” Dhaney smiled. Wrestling was one of the very few things he knew about the place where Sameer was going.
“When have you seen me watch wrestling on TV?” Sameer knew Dhaney was deliberately lightening up the topic when he became emotional. “Close the door and sit down.”
When he obliged, Sameer asked, “After I leave, you think you can you survive this house?”
“You’re saying it like I have other choices. I’m stuck with muwa and Ashok dai.” Dhaney usually spoke his mind with Sameer.
“Don’t group them together like that. There’s a difference between mami and Ashok. Though she won’t change, mami lives with the guilt of being mami. You have to admit it that she is a devotee. She has devoted her life to god and her family. Beyond that, she is lost. She is unfair to you because it is a part of her tradition, not her personality. Ashok on the other hand is a foregone conclusion. He is a replica of our ‘hajurbaau’, mami’s father.”
“How about buwa? I just can’t figure him out.”
“Baba was a happy man who wanted to be rich. Now he is a rich man who does not know he is unhappy. He walks around with a body of dead spirits.”
“When my brother vanished, I too saw my father die, a long before the bullet killed him.”
“There’s a difference. Your father did not choose to be unhappy. My father did.”
After a moment of silence in honor of two prematurely dead spirits, Sameer gave him a piece of paper and said, “When I’m gone you don’t have to live here if you don’t want to live here. Call Mahesh in this number. I have talked to him about you. He can help. You know how to dial?”
“I have dialed before.” The 19-year-old boy, who had finished second in the seventh grade final, had dialed telephone only three times in his life.
Sameer opened up his wallet and gave Dhaney four thousand-rupee bills. When Dhaney hesitated, he said, “I have no use of these bills now. You need it, keep it. If anyone asks, tell them to ask Meera di. I’ll let her know.”
“Why you …?” Dhaney paused to wonder.
“Which why? Why am I different, or, why I gave you the money?”
“Aren’t those two the same question?” Dhaney had actually meant, why of all the people in the house, he chose to leave. However, when Sameer misinterpreted him, he played along.
Tickled by Dhaney’s response, Sameer said, “When you’re smart, sometimes you need to use that for your own advantage. No matter what, you have to finish SLC. That’s our deal.”
*****************************************************************
Dhaney picked a leaf at a time from a freshly bunched Mustard leaves and washed them under cold running tap water. When he finished draining the leaves and reached for a plastic strainer, he felt a rapid heartbeat followed by a shortness of breath. He immediately sat down on the floor and rested his back on a big tin box of sesame oil. When that posture did not ease his discomfort, he lay down on the kitchen floor, rested his head on the ‘Pirkaa’ and murmured, “How long can the engine run? It has to stop one day.”
Dhaney had routinely felt fatigued for six weeks. He had lost both his appetite and weight. However, fearing reactions of apathy and suspicion, he had not mentioned his condition to anyone in ‘Mangala Niwas’. That evening his body could not tally his spirit. Though he was able to stand up and walk to his room downstairs, once he lay down on his bed, he was bedridden for days.
“Paracetamol is not working on him. His fever has not gone down in four days. Take him to Dr. Karki’s clinic in the evening.” Mangala Devi told Ashok.
“You find something for me every time ‘Indian Idol’ is on.”
“You’ll be back by then.”
“Ask vinaju. I’m not going. I don’t even believe he is that sick.”
“Ask vinaju? Are you out of your mind? In a week, they’re all leaving the country for two years. You don’t think he’s got other things to do?”
“They’re leaving in eight days. You’re telling me they are busy packing now?”
When her pampered son went to the other room and started playing guitar loudly, Mangala Devi dialed her daughter’s number. She looked at the family picture on the wall right above the telephone and briefly yielded to the whims and spells of emotions. She missed her other son who was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Though Mangala Devi had pampered Ashok beyond mend, neither she trusted him, nor was she proud of him. There were three reasons behind that. First, Ashok was somewhat like her. Second, he was exactly like her father. Third, Ashok was nothing like her other son.
When Meera’s husband, Sagar, returned from the clinic with Dhaney, Mangala Devi offered him a glass of Orange Tang and asked, “What did the doctor say ‘Jwai Saaheb’?”
“He recommended couple of tests and a chest X-ray. That’s why it took a little longer.”
“Oh you didn’t need to, Ashok would have taken him for the tests … How much do I owe you?”
“That’s fine. It’s on me.”
“No no no. You’re too much. I can’t accept jwai’s money. Laaj mardo kuro. How much was it?”
“That’s ok mami, let it go. Dhana has done enough for Ria and Jhukkyai. I owe him too. Jhukkyai keeps on telling me when we leave she will miss Dhana the most.”
“I’ll deal with Meera then.” Though she knew her hardnosed daughter was not going to take the money from her, Mangala Devi conceded. Amidst the debate on transactional mores, she forgot to ask why the doctor prescribed those tests.
“Dhana needs to rest,” Sagar reminded Mangala Devi, and voluntarily explained to her why the doctor recommended the tests.
*************************************************************
When they came out of Dr. Karki’s clinic, Ashok gave Daheny a 20-rupee bill and said, “I’m going to my friend’s place, take a microbus home.”
Ashok arrived at ‘Mangala Niwas’ within minutes. Mangala Devi and Kamal Nath were in the living room discussing one of the lands they owned in Jorpati. The landowner’s certified paper, ‘Laal Poorja’, was spread unfolded in front of them. Ashok was surprised to see Kamal Nath at home.
“Where is Dhaney?” Mangala Devi asked.
“He’s coming. I have given him money for the ride.”
“Why didn’t you bring him with you? What did the doctor say?” Since she was doing most of Dhaney’s work, Mangala Devi was getting impatient with the helper’s illness.
“His test results came positive.” Ashok replied without any emotion.
Kamal Nath quickly folded the ‘Laal Poorja’ and sat down on sofa. He looked confused. He knew Dhaney was sick, but he did not know the details. “Which test came positive?”
While his parents listened to him somberly, Ashok explained Dr. Karki’s tests interpretations in detail.
“That’s why you didn’t bring him with you. You were scared to put him behind you in the motorbike.” After all Kamal Nath was Sameer’s father, his genes provider.
“So? The disease is contagious; I didn’t want to take any chances.” Ashok confessed no guilt.
“It’s not that easily transferred from one person to another, idiot … What did the doctor recommend?”
“When I mentioned Arbindra uncle, he advised Thimi hospital. Here’s his diagnosis.” Ashok gave Kamal Nath a piece of paper in which Dr. Karki had scribbled Dhaney’s prognosis.
“Poor boy. What do we do when he is cured?”
“Even after he’s cured, he’ll be too weak for months to come. Bringing him back here will be like feeding a horse with a broken leg.” Ashok calmly tackled the forged morality in Mangala Devi’s cryptic indifference.
“Call Arbindra tomorrow and let Chaitanya know.”
The man who had built the 4,350 square feet ‘Mangala Niwas’ adjourned the session.
He had come home early for a reason that evening. Ishwor Raj’s daughter at Minnesota State University in Mankato, was in urgent need of three thousand dollars. Despite government restrictions on dollars, Kamal Nath had promised his partner that he would find a way to send money to his daughter. He had that critical matter to resolve.
*****************************************************************
Six inches inside the outer edge of Arbindra Sapkota’s office desk, a wooden nameplate that had ‘Director’ printed below his name welcomed his guests. A computer on the desk that was five feet away from his chair looked like it was there for a decorative purpose only. Next to a call bell on the middle of the desk, a colorful penholder held a black pen, a red pen, two blue pens, a highlighter, a tiny bottle of liquid paper, and a stapler. On the left, a glass cup with a quarter inch of residual tea at the bottom waited a peon.
‘WHO Communicable Diseases Seminar, 2002, Jakarta’ was engraved on a beautiful ivory paperweight that sat on top of a letter from a SAARC official. Two words in the letter, ‘debilitating’ and ‘fortnightly’, were circled in red. Right above those words, their respective meanings, ‘kamjor paarnu’ and ‘2 haptaa maa ekchoti’, were written in Nepali.
Arbindra rang the call bell on his desk. Within a minute, an energetic young man appeared in his room.
“Hajur?” The young man respectfully begged why he was summoned.
“Take this file to Dr. Pradhan. Take this glass too.”
When the peon took Dr. Pradhan’s file, Arbindra Sapkota realized he had no other work left for the remainder of the afternoon. Bored by the anticipation of more boredom, the 5 feet 4 inches tall ‘Thimi Hospital’ Director rested his short legs on the bases of his Swivel Armchair and leaned back. He folded his hands behind his head and started to swing his chair around.
As the boredom worsened, Arbindra intensified the chair spin with a 15-degree auto increment every 30 seconds—periodically slowing for a yawn. When the chair swiveled at 105 degree, from the corner of his eye, through the window to his left, Arbindra Sapkota saw two of his subordinates smoking and talking. The way their hands swung in emotions, Arbindra knew they were talking politics. To confirm what his peripheral vision saw, he stopped his chair to read their lips. Sure enough, he distinctly read the taller of the two subordinates say ‘Girija babu’. Arbindra Sapkota could not wait to join the conversation. But as he stood up from the chair to walk out of the room, the phone rang.
After Mangala Devi finished explaining Dhaney’s diagnosis and Dr. Karki’s recommendation, Arbindra Sapkota asked her, “How old is he?”
“He is 20.”
“It’s not a problem. I’ll take care of it. Bring him in. If you have his citizenship card or any identification; that will help. If you don’t have any, that’s fine too.”
“How long do you keep a patient there?”
“Depends … we keep them for months at a time. I have the authority.”
“After that?”
“Is he returning back to you?”
“Well …”
When Mangala Devi hesitated, Arbindra stressed, “This disease has a stigma attached to it. I don’t blame you. You can be honest with me.”
“We’re not sure we want him back.”
“Don’t worry then. I’ll take care of it. He will have a way to survive once he is out of here. We have means. Just bring him to my office tomorrow.”
“So how is Bimala Ji doing?” The answerer knew that the questioner did not care for the answer. Yet, he chose to address a labeling glitch in the question.
“You mean Urmila.”
**********************************************************************
“Ashok!” Mangala Devi knocked on her son’s door. It was quite unusual for her to walk to his room. Usually, whenever she needed him, she either sent Dhaney to get him or yelled his name from the balcony.
“Wait, I’m changing.” Ashok quickly got out of his bed, quietly opened all the curtains and the windows and sprayed his cologne all around the room. Then he poured some ‘Pan Parag’ from an already opened zipper pack into his mouth and smelled his own breath. Though he had shaved three hours earlier, he put some aftershave on his face. Before opening the door for his mother, he made a fake sound of closet closing.
“You know it causes cancer,” Mangala Devi said when she saw Ashok chew ‘Pan Parag’.
“You came to give me that health bulletin?”
“Take Dhaney to the hospital. He is set to go.”
“Mami what’s wrong with you? You want me to sit next to him for an hour? The last time I checked, Thimi is like an hour from here.”
“It’s not contagious like that. You know it. If that were the case, every doctor who treated every patient would get this disease … This will be the last thing you’ll ever have to do for him.”
“Whatever mami … you can’t make me go.”
“When you broke your leg, he carried you around for how many days?” Mangala Devi applied a different tactic.
“He serves us. It was a part of his job. For me it’s a question of choice.”
“Go get a taxi then.” Mangala Devi was convinced there was no point reasoning with her son.
When the taxi arrived, before heading to his room, Ashok said, “I have not bargained the fare yet.”
“Bhai, how much will you charge to drop him to Thimi hospital? Mangala Devi asked the taxi driver pointing at Dhaney who looked sealed and ready to be dispatched.
The driver stepped out of the taxi to bargain. “Give me 400.”
Mangala Devi was a seasoned bargainer, but she did not have the will that morning. Besides, she thought the driver’s demand was quite reasonable. While the driver waited for her response, Mangala Devi pulled out her saree’s ‘palloo’ that was bundled and tucked inside the petticoat in her waist. She untied the knot on the bundle and cautiously took out four 100-rupee bills from the tightly rolled lump of crumbled bills. She counted the money twice before handing it to the taxi driver.
As he headed towards the taxi, Dhaney chose to deal with the farewell silence in his own way. He said, “Don’t forget to replace the fuse on the water pump. I have reminded Ashok dai also.” Though nobody told Dhaney anything specifically, he had figured out that he was not coming back to that house.
The taxi driver curiously looked at Dhaney and asked, “How long did you serve here?”
“Four and a half years.” Dhaney replied without stopping.
When Dhaney sat in the taxi, the driver walked to Mangala Devi and asked, “He served here for four and a half years, and there is not one person in this house who is willing to take this sick boy to the hospital? No one wants to give him three hours back for his four and a half years?”
“What makes you think he is sick?”
“Didi, I’ve been driving taxi for 19 years. I live and breathe amongst strangers. Believe me I can tell. Sometimes, I wish I couldn’t.”
“There’s nobody here right now to go with him. My son, who brought you here, is preparing for a test.”
“I can’t think of a bigger test than this.”
When Mangala Devi did not respond, the taxi driver concluded, “Four and a half years is an awfully long time not to be attached to a human.”
While the taxi was backing to leave, Ashok came running down and stopped the taxi. “You forgot this.”
“That’s for you,” Dhaney insisted.
“It’s yours.” Ashok threw the binoculars through the taxi window into Dhaney’s lap.
When the taxi took off, he told his mother, “I was just making sure he won’t use his binoculars as an excuse to come back here.”
Even Mangala Devi melted. While her right eye kept its composure, exactly one drop of tear rolled down from her left eye. When she walked back to her room upstairs, she debated with herself, whether her guilt was severe enough to mandate an extra day of fasting.
After four years, four months, and 17 days, carrying the same ‘Namaste’ bag, Dhaney left ‘Mangala Niwas’ three inches taller, two kilos lighter, and a thousand times wiser.
“Let it go. Nobody is running for you.” From the rearview mirror, when he saw Dhaney looking back at ‘Mangala Niwas’, the driver made his point.
“Dai, there is more to it than what you saw. I am leaving behind some good memories in that house. I met some decent people there.”
When the glib-talking driver asked him to elaborate, Dhaney shared with him his memories of Sameer. He told him about the first time Sameer had taken him out to a restaurant to eat momo. “I was so confused,” Dhaney giggled, “When the waiter brought the food, I stood up, grabbed the plate from his hand and started to serve Sameer dai.”
Dhaney shared his memories of Jhukkyai, the only person in the world who addressed him ‘dai’ and ‘hajur’. He fought his tears when he bragged: “That little girl has the purest heart in the world.” Dhaney talked about Meera, who occasionally cooked Momo just for Dhaney. “She is the only person I know who shed tears for my father. Even I didn’t cry.” He said proudly of Meera. Then in a low, rapturous voice, he bashfully shared how he felt every time he saw Sadhana.
It was a short ride to Thimi because Dhaney’s flashbacks were longer. And he exactly knew what to remember.
After parking the taxi outside the hospital, the driver turned back and said, “You walked out of that house with the filtered memories of what you wanted to remember. You fight your disease the same way. There will be bad days and there will be worse days. Treat them like good days and bad days. You’ll beat your disease in no time.”
“Then what? Who do I share with when I’m cured?” Dhaney asked staring at a poor middle-aged man outside the hospital’s main entrance who was carrying a very sickly boy on his shoulder. Though there was no Dettol bottle in the man’s hand, Dhaney felt his burden. Suddenly, tears rolled down from Dhaney’s eyes. He did not want to cry for himself, but there was nobody left to cry for.
**********************************************************************
“Thulo mami … Thulo mami.” Three weeks after Dhaney had left, a handsome looking man in his late 20s screamed outside the main entrance of ‘Mangala Niwas’.
“It’s Bhusan. Tell him to open the gate from outside.” Mangala Devi told Ashok.
Ashok walked to the window and screamed, “Bhusan dai, the gate is not locked. You can open it from outside. Gaai paschha vanera chukkul adkaako maatra chha.”
“He has brought a boy with him, right?” Mangala Devi sounded eager.
“Yes. Who is he?”
“That’s the boy from Gulmi that Saabitri was talking about. How is he built?”
