THE DEATH OF RAMMOHAN ADHIKARI

Nepalese Clay, 21st Issue (2013)

SUSHMA JOSHI

On the morning his son was to return from Doha, Rammohan said to his

wife: “Lets go to Shivapuri forest, you and I. We can both take some

rope and hang ourselves together tonight.”

Rammohan Adhikari knew with absolute certainty, at five in the morning

on that warm July day, that he was going to die that night. The air

felt muggy—rainwater from a sudden downpour collected in slippery

puddles on the road, the looming new construction of his neighbour’s

rising building seemed to close in, heavy and oppressive, cutting off

the flow of air, and a low bank of dark rainclouds had hovered over

the Kathmandu Valley.

His wife, who was wondering what to feed her eldest son, who was to

fly in from Doha that afternoon, scolded him. “What kind of talk is

this? You must stop thinking these dark thoughts, and welcome your son

back home.”

                                                ***

Rammohan, peering from the grimy glass windows separating the waiting

crowd from those returning from abroad, saw a faded, balding man walk

out of Tribhuwan airport-this was his eldest son Prem, who he had seen

walk off to the United Arab Emirates fourteen years ago, and who he’d

seen three times since. Rammohan watched this tired man walk towards

him and had a tiny moment of déjà vu—only last Saturday, he’d stood

there watching from the same glass wall, looking at the long line of

men dragging suitcases. Except on that day, his youngest son was

leaving to go to Kuwait, instead of returning to Nepal. His broad back

exuded energy as the young man dragged his suitcase up the sloping

concrete and into the line of people waiting to leave. Wearing red

tika and a marigold garland, he had eagerly gotten their blessings,

then hastened off without a backward glance at his tearful mother.

This was Prem’s third return home since he’d gone to the Gulf. Their

daughter-in-law, who lived in the apartment above the old couple,

welcomed him with wavering uncertainty, as if she didn’t recognize the

man who she had married, and who had left for a foreign country,

fourteen years ago. Their three year old daughter, on the other hand,

gave him a raucous welcome, as if she knew the father who she was

meeting for the first time.

Prem worked for a company that helped disabled people, he told the

group of assembled people from his tole who’d come to meet him upon

his return. “You know those chairs that move. I help push the people

in it.” He gave them a tired smile. Rammohan could see his neighbours

turning away, uncomfortable, when his son shared this news. His son

worked with apanga people, pushing their wheelchairs? What kind of

profession was that? A sense of shame overwhelmed him—he thought about

all the other people who’d told him their sons worked in hotels, or

with big clothing companies.

Rammohan didn’t say a word, but his son caught his eye and gave him a

smile. “In Western countries, they respect people who work with the

disabled,” he said. “It is also one of the highest paid work.”

Catching the flash of disdainful anger in his father’s eyes, he added:

“And they also don’t believe disability is caused by past life sins

and karma. They think disability is caused by genes.”

“Jeans?” one of his nieces questioned her newly returned uncle.

“Genes. A code inside our body that defines who we are. It lies like

two intertwined snakes, so they say.”

“Eyyy, geeenes!” said his niece, nodding wisely. “We just learnt about

genes in science class.”

That’s all Prem said. Rammohan felt a tiny weakening of his resentment

and anger—perhaps, he thought, his son was doing something important,

after all. And then a wave of anger overcame him again. He has left

his parents in their old age to go push chairs for apanga people?

An old woman exclaimed that Prem had always been a kind and

compassionate little boy, and she always knew he would grow up to

serve those in need. Prem smiled then, a quick smile. That smile

seared through Rammohan. “How can he sit there, lapping up this

adulation?” Rammohan thought. “He has abandoned his parents in their

old age, to serve disabled strangers in a foreign country. Then he

boasts it is highly paid. How can he justify this?”

The flight had been long. People left, allowing Prem to take a nap and

shake off his tiredness. As the last woman walked out, Rammohan said

to his wife, again: “The Shivapuriforest. We can go together to the

Shivapuriforest.”

“Buda,” the old woman said. “Please stop this talk. I need to go out

and buy vegetables. I will get pumpkin shoots. It is Prem’s favorite

food. I know they don’t have it in those Khadhi muluk.”

                                                *

A day before Prem’s flight from Doha, Rammohan had an urge to eat mangoes.

“Here you go, Muma,” the student who lived in the room pulled the

curtain to their room, and handed a roll of bills to his wife. “Here’s

my rent. Please forgive the lateness.”

His wife started to count the notes. They lived from the rent they got

from tenants who lived in their two houses. The young student with the

lively smile was the son of an old friend of hers from her maiti. She

let him stay in the house for reduced rent.

“I want to die when one of my sons are in town,” Rammohan said to his wife.

“What are you saying?” She said. “You are barely sixty. We have four

sons. One or other of them will be around when you die, surely. Its

not like they are going to be away from Kathmandu forever.”

“But I haven’t seen them in almost four years,” he said. “One is in

Doha. Another in Malaysia. The third is in Saudi. And the fourth has

just gone to join his uncle in Kuwait. I don’t know if they will

return.”

“Well, they keep coming and going. Now let me think about what to do

with the money. We need to replace the mustard oil, and the salt

too…and I would like some brown sesame seeds, and some fennel.”

“Can I ask you something, Budi? Can you give me the Rs.500?”

“What do you want that for?”

“I want to buy some mangoes.”

“Five hundred rupees worth of mangoes? We can’t buy five hundred

rupees of mangoes.”

“But I want to eat some mangoes.” The old man, when he wanted to,

could be stubborn.

The old woman sighed. “Here you go,” she said, peeling off a green

hundred rupee note. “This is enough.”

“But I can’t just eat by myself. The entire family must eat,” he insisted.

“This Rs.100 will buy half a kilo. Its enough for you.”

“Everyone--all four of our buharis, all our grandchildren. They should

sit in a big line and eat today. Even if it is only a small piece.”

“Mangoes for everyone,” said his wife, sighing. Her husband could be

impossible sometimes. “We shall do as you say.”

She took the note, and called out to one of her daughter-in-laws, who

was at this very moment walking down the stairs, if she could buy the

mangoes. “Sorry, Ama, I am about to go out to meet a friend,” the

youngest buhari said, hastily, before she could be roped into an

errand. “But why don’t you ask Sabita?”  Sabita was the eldest

granddaughter, and more affectionately disposed to the old couple than

the other children.

“Sabita! Saaaabita!” the old woman went out to the balcony and called.

Coming, Muma.” The old man could hear the girls giggling in the flat

above—they were watching a film on Star TV. His granddaughters seemed

to talk endlessly about the latest film stars and models, for hours

and hours. As for his eldest grandson, who had grown old enough to

have friends who owned motorcycles, he had taken to going out every

weekend to places he would never see. The older his grandchildren got,

the less they talked to him.

Even the young ones were difficult to talk with—they chattered about

their boarding schools and lessons, and the old man couldn’t

understand any of it. It wasn’t the same lessons he had learnt during

his school years--no Sanskrit mantras, no Nepali poems, no dantay

katha. “During our days, we used to recite Bhanubhakta’s Ramayana by

heart,” he said to Ramu, his youngest grandson, one day. Ramu, taking

this as an accusation from his grandfather of his ignorance, retorted:

“But Bajay, that was during your time, in the village. We live in the

city now. Uilay ko kura khuili sakyo! Today this is our Ramayana…” And

then Ramu opened his mouth and sang:

Radha likes to party

Radha likes the moonlight

 And then he and the other children burst out into giggles at his daring.

Once Rammohan had tried to teach his eldest grandson the hanuman

chalisa. The young man had continued to play his video-game machine

while repeating half heartedly after him, until the old man, irritated

by this inattention and the ping! ping! ping! noises, had given up his

lesson. He sometimes got the sense that they lived in worlds so

different it could never converge.

About an hour later, Sabita did come down, and the old woman asked her

to go out and buy some mangoes, because Grandfather said so. The old

man, who was sitting there by her side, told his granddaughter this:

The mangoes should be true maldau, with thin, taut skin, and when the

top was cut off, they should be able to smell its fragrant origins.

The insides should be yellow, not orange, and they should be able to

bite into it and taste its firm flesh, without it falling into their

hands in a slippery mess. There should be enough for all four

daughter-in-laws and the seven grandchildren, even if they were very

small pieces.

                                                *

A few months ago, their well, which had served them well since his

earliest days in Kathmandu, had run dry. One day, his wife came to him

and said: “Buda, there’s no water.”

A new apartment building of thirty stories had risen up like a monster

in front of their house. The man who drilled for water said that he

used to get water at sixty feet--now there was none at two hundred

feet. The new construction had sucked the neighbourhood dry. They now

paid three thousand rupees for water, which arrived in a tanker two

times a month, and filled black plastic tanks that sat on top of their

roof. His whole life seemed to be turning into a desert, just like

those of his sons, who toiled in the hottest deserts in the world.

Turning on the TV terrified him—each day there was a news item of

someone who had committed suicide, or died in an accident, in the

Gulf. One day I am going to turn on the TV and see one of my sons

return as a corpse, he feared. Is this what he’d toiled in his youth

for—to sit in great fear in front of the television each day, fearing

death?

Their eldest son sent back money, his buhari had told his old wife.

But all that money went to pay for school fees, for books and for

clothes. Then there was the hair saloon his buhari went to each month,

and from which she emerged transformed, her hair looking strangely

yellow. She needed money for frivolous expenses, grumbled the old

woman--hair saloon, going to the cinema to watch the latest movie,

buying expensive shoes and hair dye. He and his wife had never seen a

rupee of the money his sons sent back home. His sons’ families lived

on different floors of their big house, and each dealt with their

finances themselves.

The old couple had enough—they had a number of small rooms they rented

in their two concrete buildings. The rent was enough for food and

other expenses. To supplement this, his wife went out every afternoon

to wash dishes at a house down near the square-this extra income

helped to buy his medicine. She didn’t say anything, but he felt her

reproach at having to demean herself to this level. She was, however,

determined to do her duty.

What he didn’t have was the sense of being surrounded by a family who

he had raised and loved. That appeared elusive. His sons, when they

called, never asked them if they needed any help with the household

expenses--they took it for granted the old couple could manage. The

people who surrounded him—four buhari, seven grandchildren—all

appeared so independent, so uncaring. Nobody asked him how he felt

that day. Nobody asked him or his wife what they were going to eat

that evening. Everyone was rushing in their own world, busy with their

lives. It felt at times as if he lived in an arid desert, just as his

sons were living in theirs, sweating in the Gulf.

Each dusk, the old man looked out over his balcony, and at the lights

twinkling at the giant city around him. Where had these buildings

sprung from? When he had looked out before from his balcony ten years

before, all he had seen were rice fields. How lovely it had been then!

They had been the only people with tall buildings in that

neighbourhood then. And now there were even taller buildings all

around him, cutting off sight of the mountains.

The air seemed to be getting tighter around his neck—he had asthma,

the doctors had told him. It was not curable, but they gave him

multiple inhalers and other medications. Those cost a fortune. His

wife put aside the money for them in an uncomplaining manner, but he

was aware, all too keenly, that the money could be used on other more

essential items.

Each morning, he looked out over the balcony and saw a giant city

sprawling at his feet—bigger and taller, denser. The trees had

vanished around him as he watched. And the older he got, the greyer it

got—buildings with blue glass fronts springing up all around, and the

streets thronging with new people, none of who he recognized.

He thought back to all the hard work he’d done in his youth. “Mari

mari kaam garyou buda, abha hera ta, saas pherna pani garo cha

ahilay!” You killed yourself in your youth, old man. Now look, you

can’t even breathe, the old woman often reminded him. Breathing had

become difficult these days. Maybe there was less air in the Valley to

breathe.

At forty-two, he’d saved enough to build buy an anna of land. A small

house was still on it, and a peepul tree shaded the roof from the rain

and wind. Then fortune had intervened. A businessman had offered him a

generous sum for it, since it was in a good neighbourhood. He’d cut

the peepul tree that fell in-between his wall’s periphery and the

temple next door. The temple priest had said he shouldn’t cut the

tree, but he had ignored the old man’s protests and done it anyway.

With the giant tree out of the way, the one anna had given him enough

profit to buy four anna outside the Ring Road. And this was too good

too give up.

This buying and selling had continued. Rammohan had bought a lot of

cheap land, felled a lot of trees, and sold it to people who wanted

big houses. And from that, he’d amassed enough for two big concrete

buildings inside the Ring Road. Two tall concrete buildings which had

been the dream of his lifetime. These buildings, he had always

imagined, would save him from a life of poverty and hardship. The

buildings would bring him happiness.

He’d thought one day he would leave them to his four sons. How was he

to know they would all leave one day, to pursue their own dreams? How

was he to know he would one day he’d be trapped in these buildings,

unable even to walk up and down the stairs, unable to breathe in a

city that seemed to be closing in on him with the concrete heaviness

of his own dreams?

                                                *

Sabita came back, carrying a bag of fragrant maldau mangoes. That

evening, when everyone was home, the old woman called them over.

Everyone sat in the old couple’s room, in a long line, as he wanted.

They were all laughing and talking, and he felt glad as he saw the

smiling faces of the young children arrayed in front of him. These

were his progeny—the children who would continue his long, proud

lineage.

His wife sliced the mangoes into small pieces, cutting them into five

pieces—two big slices on each side, then two small wedges from the

sides. The khoya, or seed, was saved for the smaller children, who

liked to suck upon them. There was a big buzz in the room as the

children licked up the drops of mango juice from their palms and arms.

“Are you happy?” the old man asked Nirmala, his youngest grandchild.

“Happy!” Nirmala announced, trying to lick her elbow. “Mango! More!”

“Your Baba will buy you more mango. He’s coming tomorrow.”

The little girl hadn’t seen her father, but she had talked to him on

the phone, and seen his face in the computer. She knew Baba was a

special man. And for the first time, he would bring her gifts, just as

the fathers of other little girls brought for them in the

neighbourhood.

“Baba!” The little one’s eyes brightened. “Baba make me housing,” she

said, using the English word. “Big housing. Blue glass windows!” Her

mother smiled and said to the old man: “Prem promised her that when

he’s made enough money, he’ll make her a tall building with blue glass

windows.”

A blue glass building! The old man felt a lump in his throat, as if

the waste and the loss of youth and time was too much for him to bear.

He thought about himself at his son’s age, driving like a maniac at

night to pick up customers. How reckless he had been! How he’d worked

months with so little sleep! He’s waited outside bars in Thamel,

waited for johns who’d stumble out drunk with young dancers on their

arms, all so he could have enough money for his buildings. He closed

his eyes, and for the first time in his life, he felt his life flash

before his eyes, and he felt its piercing emptiness.

                                                *

        Then his son Prem arrived in the afternoon flight. He was tired, his

father could tell. He smiled his old mischievous smile. His hair had

gone white, and he looked old. “Baba,” he said, and he bowed in that

old way, reaching all the way down to touch the old man’s feet, which

made the old man feel happy and humble inside.

Later, sitting on his father’s bed, chattering and laughing, Prem had

asked his father: “How are you?”

“I am good,” the old man said, his face taking on a closed look. “As

good as can be.” The fact that Prem spent his time working for apanga

people still rankled with Rammohan, but he knew raising it would be

useless. Rammohan couldn’t imagine why his son wouldn’t stay home and

take care of his aging parents, instead of taking care of disabled

strangers in a foreign country. But money was obviously paramount in

this day and age, and who was Rammohan to voice any dissent about his

son’s choice of a profession? I have no say in this, he thought, and

didn’t bring it up again.

“His asthma is worse,” his wife interjected. She was sitting below the

bed on a little chakati, and making some wicks out of cotton for her

evening pooja. “And the doctor has told him he needs to have…” here

she lowered her voice: “An operation.”

“An operation? For what?”

“He needs to have his water removed.”

“What water?” asked Prem, puzzled.

“You know, from over there.”

“Oh, you mean…?”

“From his private parts,” the old woman whispered in a penetrating

whisper, as if she would hide the news from her grandchildren,

scattered around and laughing from their own conversations. “From his

private parts.”

“Its going to cost Rs.60,000!” The old man spat. “That’s enough for my

kriya expenses. I’d rather spend that money on my funeral than on

removing my balls.”

“They won’t remove your…” The old woman looked at him reproachfully.

“Just the water. It will make you feel better.”

Prem did not know what to say. He agreed with his father, in

part—sixty thousand rupees did appear a large sum of money from an

operation which, it was clear, hit at his father’s sense of manhood.

On the other hand, the way his old mother looked at him, with those

mournful eyes, it was almost as if there was no other recourse. The

operation had to be done, and done in full, if his father was to be

taken care of properly in his old age. Mentally, he calculated where

the Rs.60,000 would come from—he couldn’t contribute any income to the

operation, and he doubted his brothers could either.

“Rs. 60,000 is enough for my funeral,” the old man repeated. “I’ll use

the money to pay for my kriya, not for this operation.” What, wondered

the old man, was the use of having your most essential part removed,

and for what? To enrich those nursing homes and doctors who kept

snipping off parts of you, one after the other? To add to the mountain

of medical bills people like his sons had to pay? They slaved in the

deserts of the Gulf, only to have their hard-earned money go towards

removing body parts from their family members. The whole world, the

old man decided, had gone crazy. People no longer followed natural

laws anymore. It was better to die, then to continue living, in this

world anymore.

                                                *

The old couple’s room was once again full of people. All four

daughter-in-laws, who quarreled about petty matters on other days,

joined together to welcome their eldest brother-in-law. The

grandchildren ran afoot in an excited buzz. For one small hour or so,

Rammohan felt as he had imagined his life would be, when he was

working all those long, hard nights of taxi-driving of his youth. He’d

be surrounded by happy grandchildren and loving children, he’d dreamt.

And here, with the old familiar smile of his son by his side, the

dream appeared real.

For a brief moment, as he felt his son’s hand rest on his shoulder,

Rammohan felt his life was complete.

At five pm, when all the house was quiet with people resting in their

own rooms, the old man walked into the puja room where his wife was

putting together the dhoop and batti for the night’s pooja. “Budi, can

you give me twenty rupees?” he asked.

The old man hadn’t worked in over a decade. He didn’t have money in

his hands since he stopped driving. The tenants gave the rent to the

old woman, who handled all the financial affairs of the household.

“Why do you want twenty rupees?” Then she opened her purse, and gave

him a fifty rupee note. “Here you go.” Twenty appeared so little.

Whatever he needed it for, a fifty was more in line with the times.

*

        Later, they learnt that the old man had gone to the small shop where

they sold the plastic mugs and buckets, and the feet of nylon and jute

rope. He had asked for four hands of rope.

        “Char haat dori?” the shopkeeper asked. “What are you going to do with it?”

        “I planted a guava tree in a flowerpot,” the old man answered. “The

tree got too big, and it broke out of the pot. I need the rope to tie

the pot back together again.”

        “Here you go,” the shopkeeper, a pleasant young man, said, handing

him the rope.

        Later, neighbours would report spotting the old man as he walked by,

carrying a coil of rope behind his back, peering at the trees. “What

are you looking at the trees for?” they inquired.

        He’d replied: “I’m looking for a tree in which I can hang myself.”

        “Hanging is such a difficult way to die,” one of the young men had

joked, thinking the old man was making fun of them. “Why don’t you try

some other method that is an easier way to go.” And then the young men

had laughed uproariously. Rammohan had smiled at them, as if he agreed

it was a good joke.

                                                *

        At around five thirty pm, Rammohan walked to the Kumari temple.

There, close to the temple, he saw a long column where a light was

affixed. The column was just the right height—it would make an

excellent place to die. Besides, he’d always wanted to die by the

Kumari temple, as he’d told his wife.

        That night, they all gathered in his room to watch the program on

Nepal Television—the funny program. The children laughed and laughed,

as if they couldn’t stop laughing. Prem teased his nieces and made

them laugh even more. The old man smiled along with them, happy at

last. He looked over at his son every once in a while, as if to make

sure he was still there.

        It had seemed so important, when they were trying to have children,

to have a son.

        “If you don’t have a son, who will give you the dag-batti?” his old

mother had admonished him. “When you die, you need a son to set the

funeral pyre alight.” How happy they had been, when the sons arrived,

one after the other. Four sons, all at once, like some boon from

heaven.

        “I had this son for a purpose,” he thought. “Now he is going to

fulfill his purpose.”

        Around ten pm, everyone retired to their rooms. The old woman fell

asleep on the sofa. For the past few nights, as if sensing his threats

about dying were real, she’d laid across her body across the door, on

the floor, as if she’d stop him from walking out at night when she was

asleep. But tonight, in happy exhaustion, she’d fallen asleep on the

sofa.

        The old man got up, and with great care, put on a clean and crisp

white shirt. He wanted to look good on his last day on earth. His

pants were black, and he took the time to iron them with care,

watching his sleeping wife through the half open door. Then he rifled

through his pile of Dhaka topi, till he found the one he was looking

for. The one with the tallest peak, which made him look elegant. He

looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like a bridegroom about to

go pick up his bride. He smiled. This was turning out to be a good

day.

                                                *

        At eleven at night, the old woman woke up, suddenly disoriented.

Where was everyone? She realized she’d fallen asleep on the sofa. Then

she looked around for her husband. He was gone. He wasn’t in his bed,

he wasn’t in the next room, he wasn’t watching TV. He was not in the

house.

        She called her son. There was no recourse—the sudden panic she felt

at her husband’s disappearance meant she had to wake someone, and her

son was the first one that came to mind. Prem, who was just falling

asleep, put on his shirt over his white vest, and quickly put on his

pants before taking a torch to go search for his father.

        “Where do you think he is?” he asked his mother.

        And for the first time, all those remarks that he had made came back

to her. “Lets go to Shivapuriforest, you and I,” he’d said to her,

only the afternoon before. “We can hang ourselves from ropes and die

together.”

        “I think he may be in the Kumari temple,” she said, as calmly as she

could manage. Because the second thought that came to her memory now,

with penetrating freshness, was this off-the-cuff remark: “When I die,

I’d like to do so in the Kumari Temple,” he’d told her one day, after

returning from the temple. Like all remarks of his, she had let it

pass without a second thought. Now it returned to her, like a

prophecy.

        And there he was, hanging, in his pressed pants and white shirt,

wearing his Dhaka topi like a bridegroom, on the pillar of the Kumari

Temple.

        At eleven thirty pm, even though they had not wanted to do it, all

the neighbours had awakened. At twelve, the police arrived. The police

had come from all from sides—east, west, north, south. They put their

arms around people’s necks and took them off to interrogate them about

what had happened.

        There was really nothing much to tell, except to say that the old man

appeared to have thought it out with care, down to the last detail. It

was clear he wanted to die while one of his sons were in town so he

could get the dag-batti from their hands. And, on that day, his eldest

son had just returned home from the United Arab Emirates.