The Fiction of truth, the truth of fiction

FIRST DIVISION SUSHMA JOSHI The small servant quarters behind the Colonel’s house where Mahesh spent his first night in Kathmandu would be his home for the next nine years. Life took on a well-known routine from his first morning. From six am to ten am, Mahesh attended the Nandi Ratri School. In the afternoons and evenings, he  shopped for food, gardened, and ran errands. He planted a vegetable garden. He repaired the water pipes when they broke. He took clothes to the drycleaners. He knocked on the doors of the Colonel’s relatives to deliver red and gold invitation cards to marriage and rice-eating ceremonies. A few months later, he learnt to drive the car, and could then he seen around town, driving the red Toyota. He had no time to complain about the hard work he had to do—each morning at dawn, he sat down and forced himself to practice mathematics. Before long, Mahesh’s humor endeared him to the household. The Colonel’s two daughters demanded he accompany them on ev...

Read my story "The Prediction," about an astrologer's prediction about the last days of the Rana regime of Nepal.This story is to be published in the journal Himalaya in November 2013, published out of Yale University. This story is based on a small snippet of an anecdote told to me by my father--who does not believe in astrology, but was goaded into sharing this historical story with me after I pestered him with miraculous stories of astrological predictions which had come true, in my own experience. Our family of Joshis ("Jyotish" means astrologer) were astrologers in the Royal Court of Nepal. This tradition was discontinued in my grandfather's generation. The young astrologer in this story, however, is not from our family. He is thought to have come from outside Kathmandu. The astrologer was a pleasant young man, with worn down cloth shoes and a dust-coloured set of clothes. Mohan Shamsher was surprised. He had expected someone older, someone mor...