Close Shave
@NKS
It was first
week of September. The farmers of Gaudi stopped removing weeds from their paddy
fields temporarily for Teez. Teez, a women’s festival in Nepal , would be
celebrated for a week. All married women would be invited to their parental homes
where they would eat best of the food available, meet their old friends, wear
their best cloths and jewelries and gather at a central place of the village
for singing and dancing. Their fathers, their elderly mothers -who would stay
at home for their daughters, and brothers, would try their best to look after
them during the entire period. Daughters had nothing to do except enjoying
food, song and dance. They sang about their painful or happy married life. They
sang the song praising their parents and brothers. Some songs would be
traditional and some were composed spontaneously. It was the most important
occasion for every woman who struggled most of the times at their married
houses through out the year for their two ends meet.
Shanti’s father
had come two days ago to invite her for Teez. But her husband, Prem, declined
to send, ‘Who do you think would take care of the house and buffalo? There is
not a single stick of firewood. I want to collect it now. Moreover, Teez is
four days away. You can go after two days.’
Shanti stared at
him angrily and muttered a curse which could not be heard. Prem was surprised
to see his shrewish wife not breaking the quarrel on such event.
‘Okay, today I
will take children. Send her early morning day after!’ said Sherman and left with the three children.
Several village women left for their maternal
homes that day. Many more went next day. Married daughters of the village
started coming in. There was festive mood all around the village excepting
Prem’s house where Shanti kept herself bored and frequently nagged Prem using
all tactics. A one year old son, youngest of the four, cried most of the time
to add unpleasantness in the house.
Next morning
Prem got up with severe backache. He had to postpone his plan of firewood
collection that day. He lied down whole day and the night. He felt better next
morning. He picked up his khukuri,
ropes and namlo and left for jungle.
While exiting
from the house, he looked towards his wife and said, ‘I have told Badal for a
share of meat. Bring and cook for lunch. You can go when I come back.’
‘Go to hell!’ said Shanti.
Prem was not
surprised. Such remarks had become very common for him.
He walked a
mile, crossed the spring and climbed uphill towards the jungle. Though the
jungle area started right from the spring, there were only small plants and
shrubs in that area. He had to walk another half an hour to reach that part of
the jungle where trees were tall, thick and dense. He started cutting dry
branches and twigs, collected them at one place and bound the load using his
ropes. He encircled his namlo around
the load, set strap on his forehead and bore it on the back. The load was a bit
too heavy for him.
He started
climbing down slowly and carefully. He was hungry, thirsty and weak. He was
sweating profusely which he wiped using shirt sleeves repeatedly. At noon, he
arrived at the spring. He rested his load against a boulder and ran towards the
water. He knelt down on all fours, dipped his mouth in the water and drank like
a cow. When the thirst was quenched, he said to himself, ‘now I can reach
home’.
He lifted the
load and moved ahead. He thought about mutton curry and rice that was supposed
to be waiting for him at home. Thought alone produced water in the mouth and he
swallowed. The load became heavier and the distance appeared very long. But
there was no firewood at home and he had to carry the load by any means. After
that, he could relax for remaining time of the day, he thought. When he reached
on the outskirt of the village, he heard and recognized the loud harsh cry of
his buffalo. ‘What is wrong?’ he thought and paced faster. The sound of the
buffalo became louder and louder and he arrived home totally out of breath and
energy. He threw his load outside the barn. The buffalo howled more loudly and
moved rapidly as a football player on the field pulling its neck-cord very
tense. It was jumping on the mire made of its own urine and dung and tears
rolled down its eyes. He did not see his wife but the door was open. He forgot
his own fatigue, sweat and hunger and pitied for the suffering of the animal.
‘The bitch is
dead or what? How can she become so careless? How can she ignore such pathetic
cry of the buffalo?’ He muttered similar other questions to himself and ran
towards the haystack.
He pulled down
some hay and threw it before the buffalo. The buffalo stopped howling instantly
and began eating the hay. He arrived at the yard and saw a small cloth bundle
lying on a corner of verandah. His son was sleeping naked beside the bundle.
Houseflies covered his mouth, body and limbs as bees on a hive. Prem ignored it
-there were too many flies and they were everywhere in the house. Then he saw
his wife entering the yard with a sullen, indifferent face. She did not speak a
word and went towards the son. Prem entered the house to eat his lunch.
‘Probably she
ate the food,’ he thought. But he found no food, no meat. Pots and pans were
empty. He found no sign of cooking any food in the house at all.
Horrified he
rushed out and yelled, ‘what about the food? I find nothing there.’
The wife stared
at him angrily and shot back, ‘No food has been cooked today’.
‘But I am
hungry, you know that. And I had told you to bring meat and cook for lunch.
Where is meat? Where is food?’ he lamented.
‘Go to hell and
eat the dung! you coward’, she shouted.
Prem did not
know how, but a in a split of a second, he reached to knock his wife and
slapped on the cheek with full force. The wife fell down on the yard, but stood
up instantly with a jerk.
The words flew
from her mouth automatically, ‘you, son of a bitch, you bastard, you
mother-fucker, how dare you? Why don’t you hang yourself and die? I would be
the happiest widow in the whole world! I will not return to your bloody hovel
until you dog are dead’.
She was shouting
abuses rapidly and at the same time dragging the child violently. She lifted
the bundle on her head, and ran dragging the boy, constantly cursing the
husband.
Prem had never
manhandled his wife in the past despite many such occasions when she roused his
anger. For him, she was a shrew of the highest order and he kept himself always
cool and silent whenever she started cursing him. That day also he wanted to
keep calm despite her verbal attack. It had happened automatically without his
intention.
‘It was long
time overdue’, he thought.
He was in a
rundown condition –tired, weak and above all hungry. He thought that he had to
eat something to stay alive. He went inside the house, which was, as Shanti had
rightly called, a hovel. It was an eight feet by twelve feet makeshift hut
erected using rough wooden pillars on the sides and rough, ugly planks erected
vertically to form the wall. Between the planks were uneven gaps enough to see
everything in the house from outside. Above, there was a thatch roof. And there
was a lowly wooden door for entry in the house. There was no any partition inside.
Everything including linen, kitchen, pots, pans and ration items scattered here
and there. It was a dirty little house, and Prem was the poorest of the poor in
the village. He went to the oven to see if there was fire in it. Using a stick,
he stirred the ash. A few tiny embers flickered inside.
‘That means the
bitch cooked and ate alone’, he thought.
He pulled a bit
of dry grass from the outside roof and put it above the flickering embers, and
puffed air on it repeatedly ‘foo…foo…foo…’
through his mouth bowing his head closely on the oven. First there appeared
small, bluish smoke then kindled the fire. He added few more sticks on it and
the fire was on. He pulled an iron cooking pot from the side, poured some rice
in it, drew water from a dark iron bucket from other side and put it inside the
pot. Then he laid the pot over the oven. He poked the fire and added few more sticks
on it. There were four or five potatoes lying in a corner. He pulled two of
them and started peeling. When he remembered his hoped mutton curry and rice,
he felt sad.
Prem was in a
state of melancholy. He started thinking about what had gone wrong in his life.
His childhood was happy. Though his father had died when he was only four, his
mother Seti had looked after him well. They lived in a village in the hill and
had adequate land for their food. Seti was an active farmer working through out
the day. She always kept one or two buffaloes at home so that there would be
milk available to her son. She produced more rice, maize and other stuff than
they needed and sold the surplus to meet other expenses. Both of them lived
happily. As there was no school in the village those days, Prem could play or
help his mother at home. When he was eighteen, the mother started searching for
a suitable wife for him. There was no shortage of girls for a boy like him. He
was healthy, smart and active. Mother selected a girl from another village and
marriage took place soon.
Rita was fairly
good looking, obedient and active like her mother-in-law. Seti felt happy on
her selection. Prem and Rita started working together. They moved their bed on
the upper floor of the house. All three were happy and contented.
One day, about
six months later, Rita and other women of the village had gone to the forest
for grass. While cutting the grass, something entered Rita’s left eye. She felt
acute burning sensation and irritation. She could not open the eye and tears
came out like stream. She cried for help and a woman, who was cutting grass
nearby, came to her. But both of them had no idea of doing anything about it.
Rita arrived home with burning eye in the evening. It was not considered serious.
Seti took it as an ordinary case. But Rita could not sleep whole night. Next
morning, a medicine man was called from the neighbourhood -the village had many
of them. He felt her pulse and claimed that an evil spirit of the woods had
cast eyes on her. Then he started chanting incantations in a muffled voice to
drive away the affects of the evil spirit. He took ash, pressed between big and
middle fingertips and blew it out on her face after every incantation. He did
it for about five minutes and left declaring that the eye would be perfect
after three such rituals to be conducted every morning. The medicine man or the
quack doctor continued his rituals and on the fourth day she felt some relief. But
there appeared a flowery patch on her cornea adjoining the pupil. It was
whitish brown and round. When a person saw her face, the first thing to appear
was that patch. The patch brought misery in her life.
Women in the
village talked about Rita’s flowery eye. Seti disliked Rita for the patch at
first then started hating her. Prem could do nothing for it. Those days,
villagers had no access to modern medical facilities. It took two days
foot-walk to the nearest town where such facilities could be available, and it
was not affordable for them. Rita silently cried and Prem sympathized silently.
Seti’s hatred towards her daughter-in-law increased rapidly. She renamed her as
Phoole (the one with a flowery patch
in the eye).
She would say, ‘Phoole did this, Phoole did that’ and everything Rita did appeared wrong to her.
She started
abusing her without any rhyme or reason. She spoke ill about her in front of
other neighbours. She abused her son for not hating her. Prem did not hate her
but at the same time; he could not utter a single word to correct his mother.
When the
neighbours tried to speak for Rita, Seti would shout, ‘Take her and make
daughter-in-law in your house’.
Rita’s parents
knew all about it, but they kept mum hoping that everything would be all right
after sometimes. However, for Rita, life turned from bad to worse. One day her
father came.
‘Your daughter Phoole has spoiled our happiness.’ Seti
said. ‘Why don’t you take her with you?’
The father
looked towards his son-in-law. But Prem was not looking at him. Rita’s father
sat silent for some time painfully bowing his head.
‘My daughter,
let’s go! I cannot leave you at such place’ the father declared in a decisive,
sad voice. ‘Forget that you were ever married’.
‘Go, go! Take,
take!’ retorted Seti.
Rita was hearing
the conversation standing on the door-side. She came out with a cloth bundle on
her side very soon. While leaving, she threw her eyes on Prem. Prem also looked
at her helplessly, and she left. Thereafter he had never seen her. He had heard
while in the hill that she was living with her parents peacefully.
Seti became
happy for this. She immediately started searching for another bride for her
son. A man from the village had gone to terai
-the plain area of Nepal .
When he came back and heard about Seti’s plan, he met her and said that one of
his relative’s daughters in the plain could be a suitable wife for her son.
‘I am going back
after three days. Why don’t you send your son with me? If he likes he will
marry her, if not he will come back!’ he said.
Seti asked
several questions concerning the girl and her family and the man replied.
Everything seemed perfect to her.
She called her
son and said, ‘you go to plain with this uncle! Marry and bring the girl if she
is beautiful as uncle has said! If not, you come back alone!’
Prem said nothing.
Prem went with
the man after three days. Within a week he was shown the girl. Sherman ’s daughter Shanti was fair, tall and
good looking for Prem. Though nobody had proposed her until then at twenty-five
because of her querulous nature, Prem did not know all about it and liked her. Sherman heard about the
boy’s financial condition and agreed to give his daughter. He knew the drudgery
of the hill but he was not sure about someone else demanding his bad mannered
daughter. So he preferred not to miss the opportunity. The very next day, a
simple marriage was conducted at Sherman ’s
own expenses and Prem returned home with his new wife.
Shanti found her
new house very uncomfortable. She had different expectations. Though the boy
was not bad, the household seemed undesirable for her. Brought up in the plain,
she could not walk properly on the hill-tracks. Food habit was different and
people were awkward. For water, she had to walk a mile carrying a copper jar on
the back. In the hill, everything appeared up-down, zigzag to her. Beside all,
her mother-in-law was a hag with no manner of speech and conduct. She began to
dislike her on the very first day of her arrival. Initially, Seti tried her
best to peacefully accommodate the new daughter-in-law in the house, but within
few days, she realized that the new woman was much worse than the previous one.
So, her dislike towards her daughter-in-law grew each day. Then she began
hating her. Daughter-in-law had a bit too much of pride for her parents and
herself. She openly grieved for her misfortune. She rose very late in the
morning. She was lazy and irritating. She lacked respect towards the elders of
the house and village.
At first Seti
hoped that Shanti will tune up in the hill after sometimes. But nothing improved.
Instead she became worse. She declined to obey her, complained to her husband
about his mother’s wrong behaviour, roused quarrel in the house without any
reason and cursed her husband for everything including making her his wife.
Neighbours watched her activities and felt happy remembering what Seti had done
to Rita.
‘She rightly
deserves what she is getting now’, they would remark.
Shanti was a
great conceiver. She delivered three children, two sons and a daughter within
four years. She was either pregnant thus weak, or weak after delivery all the
time. Seti could not match her in the quarrel so she stopped telling her
anything. Prem was always meek before her. The house which sold surplus grain
in the past was buying foodstuff now. Prem had borrowed money from all the
available sources to fund the growing household expenditure. Shanti cursed the
house, the village and the hill for her poverty and poor health. She sternly
told her husband to immediately sell the land and move to the plain before it
was too late.
Seti was hardly
fifty years old and in perfect health until the new daughter-in-law entered the
house. Since then several maladies had attacked her including headache, body
ache, indigestion, joint-pain among others. Her health had severely damaged
during those four years. Quack doctors failed to cure her illness. She had
become very thin and fragile. Then she had fever for a week.
She said to her
son one evening. ‘My son, I may not overcome this fever. I do not want to
continue this type of life either. I may die soon. I want to tell you that you
should sell this land here and go to the plain as your wife wants. May be, she
will find happiness there. O, how sad and thin have you become!’ she held his
hand and sobbed.
Prem also sobbed
with her.
‘Mother don’t
say this, you will be all right in few days. We will stay here. Let the bitch
curse herself whole life’, he said.
In that very
night, he heard groaning sound of his mother from the ground floor. He rose and
rushed down to mother’s bedside.
He held her hand
and cried, ‘Mother, mother, mother’.
There was no
response Seti stopped groaning. She had died.
Within two
months Prem disposed off his property. He returned money owed to village people
and moved to his father-in-law’s place with whatever money was left with him along
with his wife and children. Sherman
helped him to procure that dwelling and a few acres of land at the adjoining
village, where he was living now. Three years had passed and he had four
children including the one year old son born after his migration to the new
place.
Prem saw the
pot. The rice-water was simmering. He heard fast foot-steps approaching his
house. Soon, someone stood on the door blocking the light from outside.
‘You dung-eating bastard, did I give you my daughter
for your thrashing?’ Sherman
growled.
Out of a sudden,
he jumped over him like a tiger on its prey. Prem had no time to reply or
react. Sherman
boxed, slapped & hit on whatever body parts he found. An eighty kilo man
engulfed a fifty kilo prey using all his weight and might, and the victim
received the attacker helplessly. He felt himself pressed under a heavy
boulder. His hands, legs and body were pressed under the giant. The rice-pot
had turned up-side down and the simmering rice-water spread all over the mud-floor
forming mire at the place of struggle. Prem felt hot and slippery. He thought
that Sherman
was going to kill him. It was then when his right hand became free during the
tussle. On moving it up and down with an effort to release his body, he happened
to get hold of the upper edge of the rolling iron pot. He held it tightly and
lifted it as high as he could and then rammed on the back of his attacker
repeatedly. On first stroke, the man cried ‘ah!’ thereafter he became loose and
stopped hitting and cursing. The pot also slipped and rolled away from Prem’s
grip. Now he was simply buried under an inactive heavy burden. He upturned the
body using whatever strength was remaining with him and got released himself with
difficulty from the clutch. Sherman
lied motionless and quiet. Prem placed his palm near Sherman ’s nose to feel the breath. He was
under the impression that Sherman
was not breathing. Intense fear engulfed him. He wanted to run away to avoid
his arrest and life imprisonment. His nose was bleeding. He pulled a rag
hanging on the pillar outside, wiped the blood and ran with the rag in his hand.
It being a
festival time, farmers did not go out for work. All were inside their houses
listening about their married daughters’ life stories. Moreover, Prem’s house
was in a corner of the village. The nearest house was about a hundred yards
away. He saw no one in the vicinity. At first, he walked in a normal speed with
a view to make others feel that he was not in an emergency if he happened to
encounter anyone on the way. Once he came out of the village, he ran in the
direction of the spring where he had drunk water while returning from the
jungle. He reached to the spring within a short time and moved downward alongside
it. The sun was setting and he had to cover a long distance before night.
On the way, he
found a guava tree laden with fruits and picked about a dozen of them, wrapped
in the rag which he was using to wipe his nose and moved down eating one after
another. He felt better and walked faster. When it became dark, he turned to
the road that led to his aunt’s village. It took him about three hours to reach
there at around ten in the night. The old woman lived alone in the house as her
only daughter was away in the town with her husband. He knocked the door twice
and heard creaking of the cot inside.
The woman came
near the door and asked sharply, ‘Who wants to come in at this hour?’
She had not
expected a guest. She thought that a thief or burglar could be waiting outside.
She began trembling due to fear.
‘I am your son
Prem, aunty. Please open the door’, Prem replied.
‘Who is Prem? I don’t
believe you’, she said.
‘Aunty, I have
come from Gaudi and this is an emergency. Please let me come in’, he said.
‘Oh, poor child,
come in! Come in!’ she opened the door and Prem entered.
The woman wanted
to know everything at once and Prem briefly narrated the incident. By midnight,
he had eaten the food for the first time in the last thirty hours. He told his aunt
not to speak anything with other people about him. He went to upper floor and
lied down there on a cot.
For three days
and three nights he trapped himself there moving out only in the darkness of
the night to attend the natural calls. The aunt gave him food there and prayed
for Sherman ’s
life. She would visit neighbouring places during day time keeping her ears open
for information from Gaudi. On the fourth day afternoon, a woman said that a
son-in-law of Gaudi had severely beaten his father-in-law.
‘What happened
after that?’, the aunt asked inquisitively.
‘Nothing in
particular’, said the neighbour and added, ‘in fact the son-in-law gave a good
thrashing and the old man became unconscious. The man thought him dead and ran
away. He has not yet come back’.
‘What a pity!’
exclaimed the aunt, ‘A young man beating his own father-in-law mercilessly,
probably to kill?’
‘No, no, that
was not exactly so.’ said the neighbour ‘in fact the father-in-law appears to
have decided to kill the man. The man was not exactly old, he was around fifty
or so. But he is very fat and strong, I know him. His name… Hitman or Sherman.
He has thrashed many young men in the past. He has a very bad reputation of
initiating quarrel.’
‘What happened
when the son-in-law presumed him to have died and left? Was he caught by the
police?’ asked the aunt pretending as if she was hearing the news for the first
time.
‘They say, he
was found unconscious in his son-in-law’s house. And that is what I am told’
she concluded.
What had
happened was when no one turned up for taking the share of meat from Prem’s
house, Badal decided to deliver it himself. It was around five in the evening
when he entered Prem’s house with the meat. The door was wide open but he saw
no movement there. He thought that Prem might be taking rest after he came
tired from the jungle and his wife might have gone to her maternal home. So he
entered the house. The moment he crossed the door, he found Sherman flat on the floor. The scattered
things hinted that there was a fight.
He called,
‘uncle, uncle!’ but there was no response.
He could see the
up and down movements of Sherman ’s
abdomen which suggested that he was alive, but unconscious. He promptly went
out and called the neighbours loudly from the yard. Other people joined him
soon. They sprinkled water on his face and forehead. Sherman resumed consciousness after some time.
They escorted him to his house. He complained pain on the back and appeared to
be shocked. Otherwise, he pretended to be physically all right. He did not want
to report the matter to the village authority because he knew that the
authority would consider it a case of burglary. Prem could always claim that it
was only a consequence of self-defense, and his damaged physical condition
would approve it. He decided to settle the score himself. So the situation at
Gaudi was quite normal.
The aunt came
home in the evening congratulating Prem. She narrated everything she had heard
from the neighbour. Prem felt a sense of joy. Now he had not to worry about
police and the jail. He thanked his aunt for her support and declared that he
would be going back to Gaudi the next morning.
