TUESDAY
Tuesdays were the loneliest days of Roop Shova’s life. She stole peevish glances from the window every once in a while. She was well aware that her doing so would not change the fact that a Tuesday was a Tuesday, and yet she did it, more out of habit than logic.
The window sill was beginning to gather dust. She had no interest in cleaning it. The ledge boasted of thick grey accumulations. She sat at the base of the window seat sometimes, looking through the iron rods that stood between her and the world. The iron had rusted to black.
Across the street, shopkeeper Dabaldai, waited patiently for customers. He flapped the newspaper now and then, as though it had arrived at his shop to serve the purpose of a fan, rather than the news it carried. Huge glasses sitting atop an aquiline nose moved up and down as the newspaper jerked in air. She recognized the nose as that of the Prime Minister.
The house was quiet. Cousin Amrit had just got a visa to America and her mother had gone over to visit him with the sagaan and the good wishes of the family. Roop Shova had heard of so many people applying for something called DV lotteries to go to the US. They said Nepal was no more fit to live in. She wondered what it would be like if she had got the visa instead of her cousin Amrit. What would she do in the land of the hippies? Would she be able to speak English just as well as Amrit did? Amrit had gone to St.Xavier, the school run by Christians. Some of her cousins were even educated in India, in Darjeeling. But Roop Shova’s parents had not had so much money so she and her siblings had been educated at Raktakali High School, a government run school. The only English Roop Shova could remember was what she had read in the books. It had been a long time since she had spoken to anyone in English or written in the language.
College was a long time ago…almost a decade. They had been brief morning hours, running off to the huge building crammed with women in brown saris and then a sprint back home to avoid men who so readily made passes at anybody in that uniform. When college got over, the fear of men taunting her on the streets and the nervousness in answering the teacher’s questions in the classroom had also vanished. And so had marriage proposals. Life was simple at home; the window room and the baigaa, where she helped her mother cook during the monthly festivities, were her world now.
The day she noticed Ram Babu look up at her window, she had found herself a new occupation. She noticed he had sharp features and curly dark hair. She knew he came from the west- the districts she’d heard of and never been to. She had heard people from the districts were very smart and were not to be trusted. She had also heard they were the ones, who had brewed the rebellion against the King. Most of the men from the districts were Maoists or they were in some party. She knew things were changing fast in the country. The King was no more like a king. The ministers seemed richer than the King when they appeared on TV. They all came from the districts, the men who made loud speeches on TV. Ram Babu was one of them. But she was always eager to listen when she heard him chat in the streets- party leaders, government policies, the market price, his children. His voice was crisp like the morning air. Ram Babu was a clever man, different from the men she had seen around her a lifetime- men who were ever willing to organize feasts or drink themselves silly. She often thought life must have more to it.
Ram Babu would disappear on Tuesdays. Not that he was present in her world in any significant way on the other days of the week, but on Tuesdays, he would just disappear.
Roop Shova sighed. She picked the karuwa, lifted it so that its nozzle was right above her mouth and tilted it, drinking continuously with a chuckling sound. She got up to look at herself in the mirror. She looked like a child in her plaits, her complexion fair and frail. But there was something about her eyes that deepened like that of an old woman’s. She turned to look at the clock when the cuckoo bird came out to say another hour had gone by.
Roop Shova thought the day was taking too long to pass. Every day offered the same activities for her (unlike the things in the country that were ever changing). But Tuesdays were different. She felt less at ease on Tuesdays, as though someone was blowing and blowing a huge balloon inside her and she would burst choking. There was nothing she could do about it. So, Roop Shova just returned to her window seat and waited for it to be Wednesday.
Luncheon (TKP)
The very first meeting was somewhat comical. Annu was new to the neighbourhood. Her husband had a job with the disestablishmentarianism, which kept him on the move all the time. And which was no fault of his, really. So the wife and the daughter just moved along with him, wherever it was that the job placed him.Once, when Annu was hitchhiking, the woman behind the wheel had asked her how long she had been in the town.
“Two months. My husband’s just got a transfer.”
“So do you get to move around a lot then?” The woman puffed away at her cigarette, blowing little circles in the air.
“Six times now, in eight years. That’s how long we’ve been married, too.”
“Well… you should go right ahead and divorce your husband. I’d never stay with a man who makes me move places that often.”
The woman combed out short strands of her blonde hair with fingers that still held the cigarette. She did it with great deftness. Annu looked at her in fascination and smiled. When she got off, she thanked her for the lift and the piece of unsolicited advice, which she knew she would never act upon at any rate. She had met all kinds of interesting characters during her stay in foreign lands.
But her meeting with Ling Ling was by far the most interesting.
Annu’s daughter Aashtha was five. And after a harrowing time that always comes tagged with moving, she had finally managed to enrol Aastha in a decent school, in the correct grade. But the environment to Aastha was new and therefore strange. So every morning, when Annu walked Aastha to school, her tears would begin to flow like they were rain in monsoon and would expand by leaps and bounds to seas by the time they arrived at the school.
That morning, Aastha had devised colic pain, desperately hoping a day away from school would be the treatment to her ailment. But her adamant mother, who knew all the tricks for an Icchya Diwas, just dragged the little hypochondriac to school. When Aastha started wailing, the class teacher advised that Annu leave. As she was walking out of the school, a woman, Asian in appearance, caught up with her.
“That crying girl,” she pointed toward Aastha’s class, “your daughter?”
“Yes,” Annu sounded embarrassed.
“Then why you leave her crying like that? You’re no good a mother!”
“The teacher told me to leave.” Annu felt the need to explain herself.
“You can’t say you want to stay? Why not you stay?” She sounded annoyed, almost as if she was reprimanding a child. The woman just walked away in a hurry, having made a disapproving face at Annu.
Following that day, Annu noticed the woman at school more often. But they never even exchanged hellos. Then one morning, as Annu was walking out of the school, the woman caught up with her again.
“Are you free in the evening?” She questioned in a tone that said she wanted to hear ‘yes’ for an answer. And she did.
“I don’t go to work today, so you’ll come to my house for lunch.” Evening? Lunch? “The teacher said to mix the children. I’ll take you with me from school. You’ll meet me here,” she commanded.
“I will.” Annu said at her usual polite self.
So in the afternoon, when she collected Aastha from school, she found the woman waiting for her. Aastha followed her mother quietly, who was in turn following a stranger. She drove them in an ocean blue Mazda to a huge house. As the main entrance was being unlocked, the lady of the house finally introduced herself.
“Oh!” she tapped her chin with the index finger. “I forget to tell you. My name is Ling Ling. From China.” Annu entered the house with some apprehension. She removed her frost bitten boots and slipped her feet into the first cosy slippers her feet found in the hall.
“No! No!” Ling Ling shouted, “My husband’s shoes! He’s French. He no likes to share his shoes.”
And Annu was rendered barefoot on a cold winter noon.
The luncheon was well set. Annu forgot all about the Tuesday bartas she observed as she sat on the settee, half watching “Neighbours” and half talking to her new acquaintance while the whole of her relished the thickness of the sausage piled on thick strands of cheese-dripping noodles. Forgive me Lord, she said inwardly when she remembered it was her Tuesday fast she was violating.
Ling Ling was talkative. She told Annu all kinds of things about the Chinese people that she has never been asked, meanwhile managing to pile on Annu questions after questions about Nepal that she didn’t want to answer. Why were the people so poor? Why was the monarch treated like God? How often did he appear in public? Do you think he’s a nice man?
The conversation gradually shifted to their daughters and their school. And then,
“Oh, I forget to ask your name”
“Annu.”
“Oh, and your daughter’s name – very, very difficult. I have problem to remember. Is it Abbie-gale?”
“No, no. Her name is Aastha.”
“Oh!” Her index finger raced up to her chin where it lingered, tapping. “She’s not Abbie-gale?” she pointed at Aastha in horror.
“No. Abigail is the English girl. You mean Abigail Jones from their class, don’t you?” Annu said, somewhat bewildered.
“Oh! The teacher says to me to bring Abbie-gale home for lunch.” She threw her hands in the air in a slight indication that looked like despair. Annu was so taken aback she couldn’t speak a word.
“Ohhho! Never mind.” Ling Ling laughed as she walked the mother and daughter out of the bungalow.
Annu walked home, feeling nauseated for eating all kinds of things on a sacred day and for having a lunch that had been cooked with someone else in mind.
Ling Ling, she thought. What an apt name for a strange woman. What she didn’t know at that moment was that the strange name was going to be her best friend in the years to come.
Posted on: 2005-07-09 18:51:40 (Server Time)
For, I ran into some of my neighbours, whom I hadn’t seen for years (who says you have to be in America to be busy 
?!!). It was fun!
