Arresting God in Kathmandu (2 page)

When two months had passed with no job offer, Pramod’s stomach churned. He and Radhika managed to pay both months’ rent from their savings, but they had none for the coming month. Although Radhika borrowed some money from her parents, Pramod did not like that at all; it made him appear small. “Don’t worry,” Radhika said, “we’ll pay them back as soon as you get your first salary.” She was still trying to be optimistic, he knew, but he no longer shared that attitude.

A few nights later, she brought up the idea of selling their land in the south to finance a shop of their own, perhaps a general store or a stationery outlet. Pramod disliked the idea. “I’m not going to become a shopkeeper at this stage in my life,” he said. “I am an accountant, do you understand? I have worked for many big people.” Later, while she slept, he regretted having snapped at her. For one thing, he doubted whether the land would fetch much money, because it was getting swampier every year and was far from the major roads. More important, he could never imagine himself as a shopkeeper. How humiliated he would feel if he opened a shop and someone like Homraj came in to buy something. What would he say? Or would he be able to say anything? What if someone like Kamalkanth came in? Could Pramod refuse to sell him goods and tell him never to enter the shop again? If he did, what would happen to the reputation of his shop?

Each night, these thoughts kept Pramod awake for hours. He slunk into bed, faced the wall, and let his imagination run wild. Radhika put the baby to sleep, got into bed beside him, and rested her hand on his back, but he did not turn. Soon she would mutter something, turn off the light, and go to sleep.

Often Pramod imagined himself as a feudal landlord, like one of the men who used to run the farmlands of the country only twenty years earlier. He would have a large royal mustache that curled up at the ends and pointed toward the sky, the kind he could oil and stroke as a sign of power. He saw himself walking through a small village, a servant shielding him from the southern sun with a big black umbrella, while all the villagers greeted him deferentially. He saw himself plump and well cared for. Then he saw himself as an executive officer in a multinational company where Shambhu-da worked as an office boy. Shambhu-da was knocking on the door of Pramod’s spacious, air-conditioned office, where he sat behind a large desk in a clean white shirt and tie, his glasses hanging from his neck, a cigarette smoldering on the ashtray. Shambhu-da would walk in, his cheeks hollow, wearing clothes that were clearly secondhand, and plead for an advance on his wages, which Pramod would refuse. Shambhu-da would weep, and Pramod, irritated, would tell him the company had no place for a whiner.

Pramod giggled at this little scene. Then when he realized what he was doing, a moan escaped his lips. Radhika sat up, turned on the light, and asked, “What’s the matter? Having a bad dream?”

One morning Pramod was sitting on a bench in the city park, smoking a cigarette, after having made his humiliating morning round, when a small, plump young woman sat next to him and started shelling peanuts that were bundled at the end of her dhoti. The cracking of the shells was getting on his nerves, and he was just about to leave when the woman said, “Do you want some peanuts?”

Pramod shook his head.

“They’re very good,” she said. “Nicely roasted and salty.” She looked like a laborer, or perhaps a village woman working in the city as a servant.

“I don’t eat peanuts in the morning,” said Pramod.

“Oh, really? I can eat them all day long. Morning, noon, night.”

Pramod watched a couple of men in suits and ties, carrying briefcases, enter an office building across the street.

“The mornings here are so beautiful, no?” he heard the woman say. “I come here every day.” She popped more peanuts into her mouth. “Where do you work?”

The gall of this woman, clearly of a class much below his. “In an office,” he replied.

“It’s nearly ten o’clock. Don’t you have to go to your office? It’s not a holiday today, is it?”

“No, it’s not a holiday.”

“I just finished my work. Holiday or no holiday, I have to work.”

“Where?” asked Pramod.

“In Putalisadak,” she said. “I wash clothes, clean the house. But only in the mornings. They have another servant, but she goes to school in the morning. My mistress is very generous.”

“Where’s your husband?” asked Pramod. He felt himself smile; talking to a servant girl in the park was an indication, he thought, of just how low he had fallen.

“He’s back in the village, near Pokhara. He’s a carpenter, building this and that. But the money is never enough. That’s why I had to come here.”

“You don’t have any children?”

She shook her head and blushed.

They sat in silence for a moment. She said, “You know, my husband says one shouldn’t think too much.” There was a note of pity in her voice.

“Why does he say that? Does he say it to you?”

“Not me. I don’t think all that much. What’s there to think about? Life is what God gives us. My husband says it to any of our relatives who is unhappy and comes to him for advice. In this city I see so many worried people. They walk around not looking at anyone, always thinking, always fretting. This problem, that problem. Sometimes I think if I stay here too long, I’ll become like them.”

Pramod sighed at her simple ways.

By now the streets were crowded; people were on their way to work. The park, in the center of the city, provided a good view of the surrounding buildings, many of them filled with major offices.

The woman stood, stretched, and said, “Well, I should be going home. Make tea and then cook some rice for myself.” She looked at him sweetly. “I can make tea for you in my room.”

Pramod was startled.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. Here you are, sitting and worrying about what, I don’t know. So I thought you might want some tea. My house isn’t far. It’s right here in Asan.” She pointed in the direction of the large marketplace.

“All right,” Pramod said. He got up and followed her out of the park, embarrassed to be walking beside this servant girl, afraid that someone he knew might see him. But he could feel a slow excitement rising in his body. He walked a few steps behind her, and she, seeming to sense his discomfort, didn’t turn around and talk to him.

When they entered Asan, they were swept into the crowd, but he maintained his distance behind her, keeping her red dhoti in sight. There was a pleasant buzz in his ears, as if whatever was happening to him was unreal, as if the events of the last two months were also not true. His worrying was replaced by a lightness. He floated behind her, and the crowd in the marketplace moved forward. He didn’t feel constricted, as he usually did in such places. In fact, his heart seemed to have expanded.

When they reached an old house in a narrow alley, she turned around at the doorway and said, “I have a room on the third floor, the other side.” She led him through a dirty courtyard, where children were playing marbles, and beckoned to him to follow her through another door. Pramod found himself in the dark. He could hear the swish of her dhoti. “The stairs are here,” she said. “Be careful; they’re narrow. Watch your head.” He reached for her hand, and she held his as she led him up the wooden stairs. Now Pramod could see the faint outline of a door. “One more floor.” He thought she looked pretty in that semidarkness. On the next landing she unlocked a door and they entered a small room.

In one corner were a stove and some pots and pans; in another, a cot. A poster of Lord Krishna, his blue chubby face smiling at no one in particular, hung above the bed. The gray light filtering through the small window illuminated the woman’s face and objects in the room. She was smiling.

He was drawn to the window, where he was surprised to find a view of the center of the marketplace. He had never before been inside a house in this congested quarter. In the distance, vegetable sellers squatted next to their baskets, smoking and laughing. A faint noise from the market drifted into the room, like the hum of a bee, and he stood at the window and gazed over the rooftops and windows of other houses crammed into this section of the city.

“You can sit on the bed,” she said.

He promptly obliged, and she proceeded to boil water for tea. He wondered how she, with her meager income as a housemaid, could afford an apartment in the city’s center. Then a curious thought entered his head: could she be a prostitute? Yet he knew she wasn’t. As if divining his thought, she said, “The owner of this house is from our village. He knew my father, and he treats me like a daughter. Very kind man. Not many like him these days, you know.”

He smiled to himself. Yes, he knew. He said nothing.

When she brought the tea, she sat next to him, and they sipped in silence. Soon he felt drowsy and lay down on the bed. She moved beside him, took his hand, and placed it on her breast. He ran his finger across her plump face. Her eyes were closed. He had no reaction except that there was an inevitability to this, something he’d sensed the moment she began to talk to him in the park.

When he made love to her, it was not with hunger or passion; the act had its own momentum. He was not the one lifting her sari, fumbling with her petticoat, he was not the one doing the penetrating. She required nothing. She just lay beneath him, matching his moves only as the act demanded.

He stayed with her until dusk. They ate, slept, and then he got up to survey the marketplace again. The crowd had swelled; strident voices of women haggling with vendors rose to the window. He felt removed from all of it, a distant observer who had to fulfill no obligations, meet no responsibilities, perform no tasks.

When he got home that evening, he was uncharacteristically talkative. He even played with the baby, cooing to her and swinging her in his arms. Radhika’s face brightened, and she asked whether he had good news about a job. He said, “What job? There are no jobs,” and her face darkened again.

During the afternoons Pramod still pursued his contacts, hoping something would come along, but the late mornings he reserved for the housemaid. They often met in the park after she’d finished her work and walked to her room in Asan. On Saturdays and holidays he stayed home, sometimes playing with the baby, sometimes listening to the radio.

Once while he and Radhika were preparing for bed, she looked at the baby and said, “We have to think of her future.”

Pramod caressed his daughter’s face and replied, “I’m sure something will happen,” although he had no idea of any prospect.

Putting her hand on his, Radhika said, “I know you’re trying. But maybe you should see more people. I went to Shambhu-da yesterday, and he says he’ll find you something soon.”

“Shambhu-da.” Pramod suppressed a groan.

“He’s the only one who can help us.”

“I don’t need his help,” said Pramod.

“Don’t say that. If you say that, nothing will happen.” Pramod jumped from the bed and said, trembling, “What do you mean, nothing will happen? What’s happening now? Is anything happening now?”

One cloudy morning as Pramod and the housemaid left the park and entered the marketplace, he saw Homraj walking toward them, swinging his umbrella.

Before Pramod could hide, Homraj asked, “Oh, Pramod-ji, have you come here to buy vegetables?” He looked at the housemaid curiously. Pramod swallowed and nodded. “Nothing yet, huh?” Homraj asked. “My nephew can’t find a job either, but his situation is a little different.”

Pramod, conscious of the housemaid by his side, wished she would move on. He put his hands in his pockets and said, “Looks like rain, so I’ll have to go,” and he walked away, leaving her standing with Homraj.

Later, she caught up with him and asked, “Why were you afraid? What’s there to be afraid of?” Pramod, his face grim, kept walking, and when they reached her room, he threw himself on her cot and turned his face away. His chest was so tight that he had to concentrate on breathing. She said nothing more. After setting the water to boil, she came and sat beside him.

Pramod stopped his search for a job and was absent from his house most of the time. One night he even stayed in the housemaid’s room, and when he got home in the morning, Radhika was in tears. “Where were you?” She brought her nose close to his face to smell whether he’d been drinking. “What’s happened to you? Don’t you know that you are a father? A husband?” Now when he went to family gatherings, he wasn’t surprised that the relatives looked at him questioningly. The bold ones even mocked him. “Pramod-ji, a man should not give up so easily. Otherwise he is not a man.” Some sought to counsel him. “Radhika is worried about you. These things happen to everyone, but one shouldn’t let everything go just like that.” He didn’t feel he had to respond to them, so he sat in silence, nodding. His father-in-law stopped talking to him, and his mother-in-law’s face was strained whenever she had to speak to him.

At a relative’s feast one bright afternoon, Pramod watched a game of flush. The men, sitting on the floor in a circle, threw money into the center, and the women hovered around. Shambhu-da was immaculately dressed in a safari suit, and his ruddy face glowed with pleasure as he took carefully folded rupee notes from his pockets. Radhika sat beside Shambhu-da, peering over his cards and making faces.

“Pramod-ji, aren’t you going to play?” asked a relative.

Pramod shook his head and smiled.

“Why would Pramod-ji want to play?” said another relative, a bearded man who had been Pramod’s childhood friend. “He has better things to do in life.” This was followed by a loud guffaw from everyone. Radhika looked at Pramod.

“After all, we’re the ones who are fools. Working at a job and then, poof, everything gone in an afternoon of flush.” The bearded relative, with a dramatic gesture, tossed some money into the jackpot.

“No job, no worries. Every day is the same,” someone else said.

Radhika got up and left the room. Pramod sat with his chin resting on his palms.

Shambhu-da looked at the bearded relative with scorn and asked, “Who are you to talk, eh, Pitamber? A bull without horns can’t call himself sharp. What about you, then, who drives a car given to him by his in-laws, and walks around as if he’d earned it?”