Beyond Serenity

Jamuna, it’s time to wake up. Can’t you get me some hot water?” I prodded Jamuna. She woke up at once while my four-year-old son, who was sleeping beside her, fidgeted, opened his eyes, and again slumbered back to that peaceful repose so typical of his age.

As I looked at my sleeping son, his clothes ragged and threadbare, his hair scraggly, untidy, my destitution became ever apparent to me. For a moment, this vivid consciousness goaded me. However, since I had no time to spare for

such meaningless thoughts, I picked up my namlo from a corner of the room, ready for my job, for the day.

“Your tato paani is almost done,” shouted Jamuna from behind me.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I will have tea at Sanumaya’s shop.”

It took almost ten minutes for me to reach Balaju bus park, my workplace, from my room. Anyone might find me strolling around Baalaju bridge, on any given day, looking for someone who might need me to carry a huge bundle of clothes, transport furniture, or anything else that can be loaded on my back for them.

Balaju should have caught up with its usual hustle by this time of day, but the whole Bus Park area looked relaxed and solitary. It was most unusual for this to be the case. Except for a few morning walkers and porters, all that typifies Balaju bus park—a dense presence of vehicles and their reckless honking, air contaminated with smoke and dust, people settling their stalls of Khasa items by the roadside, were nowhere to be seen.

I wondered if I had mistaken the time. It was unlikely. I have followed the same routine for four years, and except for a few of the early days, have never always estimated the time quite incorrectly.

I wanted to know what time it was and asked one of the morning walkers for it. He looked at me, rather agitated. It seemed as if I had trespassed into this life—fenced as it was with the vanity of wealth and luxury—by asking him for time. Curtly, he told me it was half past five. I had wished to ask him of the unusual silence of the place for that hour of day, but couldn’t muster the guts to question him any further.

Hoping for the crowd to grow, I waited, for almost half an hour. But the Ring Road remained deserted and I figured it must be another banda. The general strike meant another day of no wages, and I was nothing short of disgusted to realise this.

By this time, the sun had gloriously risen in the eastern horizon, at the prospect of a wonderful day ahead, it seemed. The unusual inactivity of the place lent it a fresh identity. This rare tranquil mood seemed to mock me, for this sort of serenity is not welcome to me. I saw a friend sipping tea over at Sanumaya’s tea stall, on the other side of the road and headed straight to where he was.

“So, it’s a banda again!” he said in frustration. “They seem bent on sucking the few drops of blood that sustain our frail lives. They won’t let go until they crush us to the ground.”

“Today is Rabin’s birthday, my son’s birthday,” I told him. “He got me to promise him a pair of new shoes for his birthday present. His old ones are torn at the front, and his toes stick out. He says his friends mock him.”

“Why did you promise?” he retorted. “You’re a fool! The poor don’t have the right to make promises to their children. If we make any, we’re bound to break them. Promises sound appropriate only in the mouths of those who’re we’ll off. They sound illicit when we make them,” he continued and then went on to curse the politicians who ‘lead’ this country. “Our leaders are only interested in serving their own interests, damned hypocrites. But it’s meaningless to even curse them. Wish we could all drop their petty politics, but it’s impossible to get rid of it. Politics follows you with the obstinacy of a shadow.”

“Will you have tea?” he asked after a pause, and I nodded in reply. A middle-aged woman was walking towards the tea shop were we were seated. I wished she would ask for my service. And indeed, she asked me if I would carry her luggage to the airport. I promptly stood up and replied, “I will madam.”

She pointed toward a huge, black luggage on the other side of the Ring Road and inquired how much I would demand for hauling it to the airport. “Why so anxious about the wage, madam,” I told her. “Give me as much as you see fit.”

As we made our way to the airport, there wasn’t a single trace of vehicles on the road. It was utterly deserted. Even bicycles were sparse as cadres recruited at every other road intersection were forcing cyclists to dismount and guide their bicycles forward on foot. Occasionally, we came across people with desperate, impatient expressions on their faces. They were obviously in a hurry to reach their respective destination.

It took us almost two hours to reach the airport, and the woman looked relieved when we did. She took a bulky purse out of her bag and then handed me a hundred-rupee-note.

“Madam, the amount is not proportionate to the labour I undertook for your sake. Even a normal-day taxi fare would have been more than what you’re offering to me,” I told her.

“You said you would accept whatever I offered to you,” she said to me. “And, now, you’re complaining?”

“Madam, I thought…………”

“Take this, and go away!”

Helpless as I was, I could do nothing against this. I took my feet back to Balaju, condemning my fate and cursing that pig of a woman. I still cast my vigilant eyes all around me though, expecting to see someone who would need my service. When I came across a group of people, I gestured towards my namlo as an indirect means of introducing myself as a porter. But no one needed my service. It seemed as if that miser or a woman has cast an ill omen upon my day.

It was almost noon when I got back. I stood on the Balaju Bridge for some time, smoking more cigarettes than I should have. That day, I did not go back to my room for lunch. Instead, as the sun began receding down the Nagarjun hill, I started thinking of my promise to my little son.

When you have time to spare, every passing minute coaxes you. And when you consider that each idle minute you while away will cost our family their food, you grow distinctly impatient.

My son must have been waiting for me, restless, persistent, in his anticipation of a pair of new shoes. He must have been musing on the prospect of going to school in a pair of shiny new shoes the next day. How was I to shatter that hope? How could I face him now, playing foul on a promise?

I could not conjure the strength to face him. I strolled aimlessly around the Bus Park for a long time until I became aware that my feet had begun dragging me toward a nearby bhatti. It sold local wine, and all the visitors there belonged to the same quarter of society as I.

I took a table in a dimly-lit corner of the public house, and ordered a bowl of chhyang.

I remember ordering four more bowls of the same, one after another.... Next day, in the morning, I was listening to my wife. “A drunken swine! How can someone drink so much!

Not concerned with his ijjat or his family...”

- Megh Raj Adhikari