Arresting God in Kathmandu (8 page)

When it became clear that Moti would not stop drinking, Rammaya again became depressed. Hiralal did not understand why Moti drank, and asked himself whether Moti felt something absent from his life. Both Hiralal and Rammaya had doted on their son. It occurred to Hiralal that perhaps that was the problem: perhaps they had pampered him. They were never able to say no to him, even when he demanded things they could barely afford: a large toy ship when he was seven, a brand-new Chinese bicycle when he was twelve, a trip to the Indian border to watch movies with his friends when he was fifteen. If Moti didn’t get what he wanted, he threw a fit, and Hiralal and Rammaya would succumb. Their giving in to their son’s every demand, Hiralal now thought, had turned Moti into a needy teenager, someone who felt insecure when faced with the rejections and disappointments of the larger world. Even as a teenager Moti had clung to Rammaya and sought her protection when he couldn’t deal with his father’s anger.

“It’s not our fault,” Hiralal told Rammaya. “People do what’s etched on their foreheads at birth.” He enumerated for her the children from good families who’d gone astray: his cousin Bhola’s young daughter, who had eloped with a truck driver; their neighbor Horn’s son, who languished in jail for the murder of a police inspector; Rammaya’s own niece, who was rumored to be working as a prostitute in the city’s luxury hotels.

But Rammaya could not be consoled. She moved around the house slowly and took longer to do her household duties. In bed, she hardly spoke to Hiralal, and sometimes when he woke in the middle of the night, he found her sitting, staring up at the ceiling.

One morning she complained of a headache, and within a week she was gone. “Meningitis,” the doctors said. It was as if someone had sucked the breath right out of Hiralal’s body. And no tears came. He tried to cry, but his eyes only burned.

After Rammaya’s ashes floated away on the Bagmati River, Moti’s drinking became worse. He went to the bhatti in the morning and stayed until it closed. Sometimes Hiralal heard him crying in his room. One morning Hiralal went to him and asked, “You miss your mother?”

Moti looked at his father with cloudy eyes and said, “Ma comes to me in my dreams.”

Hiralal smiled. “She never comes to me. She must love you more than she loves me.” All day long it bothered him that he hadn’t dreamed of Rammaya since she died.

A week later, Rudra’s wife offered a proposal. A beautiful girl’s parents were looking for a groom for their daughter. Hiralal waited for the bad news. “She has a slight limp in her left leg,” Rudra’s wife said. Hiralal sighed. This was not what he had imagined for his son. “But she’s very beautiful,” Rudra’s wife added. “And a very good girl. She’ll take care of Moti. Bring him around.”

Hiralal looked at the framed picture of Rammaya by his bedside. Would she have even considered this? “Moti has to agree,” he said to Rudra’s wife. “Do the girls’ parents—?”

“They know,” she said. “But they’re anxious to find someone for their daughter.” Before leaving, she told Hiralal, “I’ll bring a photograph tomorrow. The parents were unwilling to give me a picture unless you were interested.”

Hiralal was grateful to her for acting as a lami—the middle woman—for Moti, but he felt bad for the girl’s parents, having to settle for their daughter’s marrying a drunkard. But what else could they do? Let their daughter be mocked by neighbors and relatives all through her life? Hiralal knew how his society viewed such matters: better to have an alcoholic son-in-law than no son-in-law.

The next morning, after getting dressed for work, Hiralal went to Moti’s room and had to shake his son a few times before he opened his eyes.

“There’s a proposal for you,” Hiralal said.

Moti sunk his face in the pillow. “Ba, I’m sleeping.”

“A beautiful girl. From a very good family.”

Moti turned his head. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying that you should get married. And we’ve found the right girl for you.”

Moti laughed. “Where’s this talk coming from?”

Hiralal didn’t know how to answer. “Is this how you’re going to spend your life? Getting drunk, no job, no school?”

“Please, Ba, I have a headache.”

“Oh, really? I wonder why.”

Moti again buried his face in the pillow.

“I’ll arrange for a viewing.”

“Do what you want,” Moti said in a muffled voice. “I’m not getting married.”

“We’ll see about that.”

On the bus to Jawalakhel, Hiralal puzzled over how to persuade Moti to come to the viewing. Over the past months, Hiralal had been remembering how, as a child, Moti liked to tour the city with him on Saturdays. They’d go to Patan, stroll in the square, with its intricately carved temples and the curio shops where foreigners bought small replicas of city monuments. They’d go to the Balaju Garden, with its twenty-two stone spouts gushing water, watch men bathe in their white underwear, women wash gigantic mounds of clothes. In Budhanilkantha, at the northern edge of the valley, they’d circle the huge statue of Vishnu reclining on a bed of snakes. Moti’s favorite place was the Swayambhunath Temple, perched on a hillock to the west. They would climb a steep staircase to the top, and Hiralal would have trouble catching up to Moti, who’d bound up the stairs like one of the hundreds of monkeys that roamed the temple complex. When they reached the top, Moti’s face would be flushed, and he’d rush to the lookout that opened on a breathtaking view of the valley. Moti loved to identify the city landmarks: the royal palace, with its strange curves; the large Tundikhel field, which now looked like a small green patch between the buildings; the Dharahara tower, standing like a white pencil. “Our house is there,” Moti would say, his finger struggling to pinpoint the exact location of Jaisideval in the cluster of houses far away.

Hiralal worked as a driver for a rich Marwari businessman, Chaudhari saheb, who owned shops and restaurants in the city and two distilleries in the outskirts of the valley. Hiralal had been working for him for nearly twenty-five years, shuttling Chaudhari saheb in a Toyota Corolla between his shops and factories. Chaudhari saheb had treated Hiralal well, giving him bonuses during the Dashain Festival and the New Year, but he had one habit that annoyed Hiralal: he was a back-seat driver. When Hiralal became really annoyed, he would say, “I’ve been driving for years, hujoor.” Chaudhari saheb would grimace and say, “That doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful.”

This evening Hiralal was tired. In Thapathali, Chaudhari saheb had shouted, “A bus to your right,” directly into Hiralal’s ear, making his head ring. Later, when Hiralal swerved too close to another car, Chaudhari saheb let out a series of grunts, like an animal. Hiralal had half a mind to stop the car and ask Chaudhari saheb to drive while he sat back and offered advice. As it was, driving in Kathmandu had become increasingly nerve-wracking. Hiralal was always having to avoid ricksaw-pullers, pedestrians who crossed the street with abandon, reckless taxis, bus drivers who smirked as they tried to run him off the road, government cars that cruised as if they owned the road, and village idiots who waited until the last possible minute to jump in front of him.

But Hiralal’s exhaustion vanished when Rudra’s wife came to his house to show him the picture of the girl. She was indeed beautiful, with large, kind eyes and a slim nose. “She looks like a good girl,” he said to Rudra’s wife, who responded, “She’s a very good girl.” She was a year younger than Moti, she added, and a perfect match. “Of course, you’ll have to drive it into his head that his old ways cannot continue, or the girl’s life will be destroyed.”

Hiralal debated whether to tell Rudra’s wife that Moti still needed to be convinced. But she might take that for a no and stop the negotiations. After all, her reputation as the middle woman was at stake. “He’ll come around,” Hiralal said, and kept the photograph to show to Moti.

Late that night when Moti came home, Hiralal took a plate of dal-bhat to his room.

“I’m not hungry,” Moti said. He was struggling to get into his pajamas. The room reeked of cheap liquor.

“You have to eat something. With all that drinking—”

“Ba, I already ate.” He sat on the bed.

Hiralal sat beside him and held up the picture. “Here, take a look”

Moti gave his father a quizzical glance and then laughed. “You don’t give up, do you? I told you.”

“Just take a look.”

Moti nodded at the picture and said, “No.”

“Look closely. See how beautiful she is.”

“Ba . . .” Moti started to say something, then took the picture and peered at it. Hiralal, watching his face closely, thought Moti’s drunken eyes lit up. “She’s okay,” Moti said after a moment.

“So, I’ll arrange for a viewing?”

“As I said before, I’m not getting married. I’ll go for your sake, but I won’t marry her.”

Hiralal put his arm around Moti. “Son, she’s a good girl. You’ll get married, get a job, I’ll have grandchildren.”

Moti chuckled. “I’m just nineteen, Ba. What will I do with a wife? Just produce grandchildren for you?”

“What’s the harm in looking? If you don’t like her, you’ll say no.”

Moti leaned back on his elbows.

“Think of your mother,” Hiralal said. “This is what she’d have wanted.”

After a moment, Moti said, “All right, I’ll look. But I’m warning you, be prepared for a no.”

Hiralal left the picture by the bedside.

He couldn’t sleep that night. This was the girl meant for Moti. After he saw her sweet face, Moti would change his ways. At two o’clock, Hiralal turned on the light and looked at the framed photograph of Rammaya hanging on the wall next to the bed. She was wearing a traditional Nepali shawl, the khasto, her broad face smiling at the camera, her hand holding the brass plate she used when she went to a temple, her forehead marked with vermilion paste. Hiralal remembered when the picture was taken. She had just come back from the Kathmandu Geneshthan, the temple of the elephant god, only a short distance from their house, and Moti, then sixteen, asked her to pose in front of the garden in the courtyard. A few weeks before, Moti had seen the camera in a shop and had relentlessly pestered Hiralal to buy it for him. When Hiralal pointed out that it cost three thousand rupees, an entire month’s salary, Moti went to his room and slammed the door. When he didn’t eat for two days, Rammaya sold her gold ring and handed the money to Hiralal. She refused to listen to his objection and said, “He’s our only son.”

Hiralal watched as Rammaya stood next to the white roses and complained as Moti asked her to move this way and that. Moti said, “Smile,” in English, as if he were one of the foreigners who clicked cameras in the nearby Durbar Square temples. When Rammaya smiled, Hiralal couldn’t help smiling himself.

Hiralal, Moti, and Rammaya’s uncle, an old man with a stoop, went to the girl’s house for the viewing. She was seated, Hiralal noted with relief when they entered the living room.

A servant brought tea and biscuits, and the girl’s father, a large man with a paunch, said, “Rukmini is our only child.” Hiralal nodded. “Moti is my only son. Our first child, a daughter, died when she was a child.”

They chatted for a while, and eventually Rukmini’s father said, “Well, I expect Moti babu will get a job once they’re married.”

“Of course, of course,” Hiralal said. Moti was wearing a suit and had combed his hair, and Hiralal thought he looked handsome except for his eyes, ravaged by all that drinking. Hiralal had pleaded with him not to drink on this important morning, and to his surprise Moti had complied.

Moti stole glances at Rukmini, who sat beside her mother on the sofa, her eyes focused on the floor. She was wearing a pink sari and matching pink lipstick. Once she briefly lifted her head to catch a glimpse of Moti, and then looked down again. Hiralal noticed that her legs were covered by her sari.

When they were about to leave, Moti abruptly said, as if to the air in front of him, “It would be good if she and I could talk. Alone.”

The room became silent.

“This is not normally done,” Rukmini’s father said.

Hiralal, though surprised by Moti’s request, said, “What harm will it do? Just for a short time.”

Rukmini’s father looked at his wife, who nodded. The parents went to the next room, where they waited impatiently, the girl’s father frequently glancing toward the door. After about ten minutes, Moti came out, his face slightly flushed. “Let’s go,” he said to Hiralal.

“So, what is the decision?” the girl’s father asked.

Hiralal was about to say that he’d get back to him tomorrow when Moti said, “Yes.”

All eyes were on him.

“Everything is all right, then?” Hiralal asked.

Moti nodded.

In the taxi, Hiralal said, “What did you talk about?”

“This and that.” Moti was still avoiding his father’s eyes, as if he were embarrassed.

“Did she get up to see you off at the door?”

“Why?”

“Just asking, wondering what happened.” Hiralal’s heart was beating rapidly. He didn’t want to push this, lest Moti change his mind.

“So what did you like about her, Moti?” Rammaya’s uncle said with a laugh. “I thought you were not going to marry.”

Moti smiled.

Hiralal nudged Rammaya’s uncle to query Moti further.

“So, what is it? What about her?”

“She reminds me of—” Moti turned red and shook his head.

“Who?” Hiralal asked.

But Moti, looking out the window, didn’t answer.

During the next few days, Hiralal was beset with anxiety. Every time Moti came home, Hiralal expected him to fly into a rage. To say he’d learned about her limp through someone—a friend, a relative, a stranger who’d whispered to him on the street, “The girl is a langadi.” But Moti apparently hadn’t heard.

As the day of the wedding approached, Hiralal couldn’t sleep. Once or twice he almost got up and went to tell Moti the truth. But the wedding was already set. Moti was sure to rebel, and the family’s name would be destroyed forever. Rukmini’s father would be humiliated among his relatives and neighbors, and the poor girl would have an even tougher time getting married. When Hiralal did manage to doze off, he woke instantly to his own voice. He suspected he was saying Rammaya’s name.