Land Where I Flee Read online

  LAND WHERE I FLEE

  Also by Prajwal Parajuly

  The Gurkha’s Daughter: Stories

  New York • London

  © 2014 by Prajwal Parajuly

  Map © 2013 by Raymond Turvey

  First published in the United States by Quercus in 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.

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  eISBN: 978-1-62365-458-0

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercus.com

  For Gangtok and Kalimpong

  and

  for Advik Vyas Sharma, who, at 1.5 years, laughs when I read out the most serious parts of this book to him.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  One

  The Problem with Reunions

  Dirty Sheet and Burberry Coat

  Questions and Answers

  Two

  Three

  Prasanti Paradise

  Four

  Five

  Fireworks

  Six

  Nicky

  Seven

  Eight

  Life

  Glossary of Foreign Words

  Author’s Note

  The Chaurasi is a curious event—not many Nepali-speaking Hindus in India, especially people of my generation, know much about it. This could be partly because few people live to see their 84th birthday. When I referred to texts, priests, and people in the know about why the 84th birthday was a landmark event—and not, say, the 83rd or the 85th one—I was frequently given answers in the form of one or some combination of the following: there being 8,400,000 species on Earth, the soul having 8,400,000 births, and the 8,400,000th birth taking the human form. Besides the numerical connection brought about by 84, these responses weren’t entirely convincing. Also, some sources dismissed the 8,400,000 link as hogwash. A somewhat satisfactory, if rarely cited, explanation lay in the significance of the lunar calendar and the numbers 108 and 1,008—especially auspicious in Hinduism. With 12 full moons a year, it takes 84 years for one to witness 1,008 full moons. The 84th birthday is, thus, celebrated as a day of gratitude to the moon. All four of my grandparents lived past 84. The grandfathers spent their Chaurasi their own ways—the one in Nepal participated in three-day-long celebrations, and the one in India had a simple puja for a few hours—while the grandmothers forewent theirs on account of sicknesses.

  For some insight into the Nepalese words and phrases used in the book, please consult the glossary.

  The factory looks like a heritage hotel.

  As though it houses not drudgeries and machinery and yards of uninteresting linen but priceless artifacts.

  Its exterior yellow, light and cheerful, with bay windows gleaming and inviting; the main door, intricately embellished with carvings of lords Ganesha, Shiva, and Hanuman in terra-cotta; two trees—guava and orange, one on either side of the building—standing guard.

  Ropes of Buddhist prayer flags strung high up between the two trees—blue, white, red, green, yellow—flapping, fluttering, almost flying. The inscriptions on them—symbols, sutras, mantras—sending out positive energy. Keeping evil forces at bay.

  The cutouts of the couple advertising the factory’s products on the garage door: once clad in Western clothes, now wearing Nepali outfits.

  The male is in cream daura-suruwal. His top, the daura, button-, collar-, and cuff-less, the flaps in its front held in place by the only visible pair of strings across the chest. The pants, the suruwal, snug-cuffed, tapered, their excess length gathering at the ankles. The woman, formerly depicted in a black dress, is now wearing gunyu-cholo, her green gunyu a sari with its loose end tucked into the front. The blouse, her red-and-white rhombus-patterned cholo, bulging at the chest but otherwise similar to the daura.

  The topiary on the marigold-covered lawn spells out: NEUPANEY TEXTILES. The squash climbers on the trellis conceal stenciled inscriptions that reveal: NEUPANEY GARMENTS EST. 1984. A polished copper plaque by the entrance of the building announces: NEUPANEY APPAREL, INC., KALIMPONG, GORKHALAND.

  ONE

  The Problem with Reunions

  Blowing thick, circular smoke that mirrored the slowly accumulating cirrus clouds in the sky, Chitralekha surveyed the scene unfolding before her from the balcony. Her choice of cigarette—the kind that found favor among the servants, coolies, and construction workers of Gangtok—confounded her doctor as much as the way she smoked it: she puffed on the tobacco wrapping held in an O of her forefinger and thumb. Her technique may have been considered uncouth, and the tobacco flakes in the beedi might pose more harm than those inside an ordinary cigarette, but Chitralekha preferred relishing her poison the way she did. Like the ring that for more than seventy years had swung between her nostrils, stretching the septum, the beedi represented the familiar. With so much change imminent, she found comfort in the familiar.

  Her grandchildren, who lived in various countries whose names she could barely pronounce and whose shores she had no intention of visiting, would be here soon for the Chaurasi, her eighty-fourth birthday, the preparations for which were in full swing. The garden around her cottage was abuzz with activity. The priest was not satisfied with the length of bamboos that would be used for the sacred kiln and expressed his discontent in a nasal voice together with a perpetual thudding of his walking stick. The eunuch servant, who swept the driveway more for Chitralekha’s comic relief than to actually contribute to the bustle around her, wasn’t happy with the priest and made her disdain known with loud, off-pitch singing that drowned out the old man’s drone. A few painters, mostly oblivious to the disagreements surrounding them, lazily splashed the walls with vertical patterns that often became zigzags. Chitralekha did not like the look of the walls now. The chipping layer of red the workers were trying to paint over was too strong for a coat of white to dilute it; they’d have to paint twice, maybe three times. A jeep tottered a few days prematurely into the driveway with a thousand marigolds that the eunuch would soon have to sew into garlands to be festooned from the roof and to deck the windows.

  “We need competence around here,” the Brahmin priest whined. “We all talk too much.”

  “Aye, the Brahmin thinks we all talk too much,” the eunuch retorted. “A Brahmin thinks we talk too much. Soon he will tell us we eat too much sugar.”

  “It’s useless talking to your kind of people, Prasanti,” said the priest while squinting at the terrace to lock his eyes with Chitralekha’s. He failed because she looked away. “All you do is talk, talk, and talk.”

  “Oh, and I sing and dance, too!” Prasanti shouted. “Sing, dance, and clean while you stand there and order everyone around. Don’t forget I am of the Brahmin ca
ste, too, Pundit-jee.”

  “You should be out on the streets singing and dancing with your kind. Were it not for the generosity of Aamaa here, you’d not have a home.”

  “And were it not for the kindness of Aamaa here, you wouldn’t have a rupiya to feed that bulging stomach of yours, Pundit-jee. We’re both the same.”

  The priest looked up at Chitralekha again. She knew he expected her to intervene, but she was enjoying the exchange too much to put a stop to it. She had taught Prasanti a lot of things, but the eunuch had taken it upon herself to puncture the Brahmin’s ego on a regular basis, and to mediate just when a performance this flawless had been delivered would be a shame. It was important that the priest be put in his place because every festival brought about a resurgence in his belief that he was irreplaceable. This translated into a general disregard for the opinion of everyone around him—he found fault with matters as trivial as the height of the pedestal on which he was to be seated during ceremonies and made purchases Chitralekha seldom authorized.

  “What has the world come to?” The Brahmin shook his head. “A half-sex thinks she and a priest are one and the same.”

  “Yes, this half-sex has to prepare for the arrival of Kamal Moktan now,” Prasanti said. “I am a hijra who knows important people—unlike you, Pundit-jee.”

  “Yes, to be sure, he must be coming all the way from Darjeeling to see you.”

  “To see Aamaa, but at least I get to greet him.”

  “He must be looking forward to that.”

  “As much as I am to seeing you leave.”

  It was time for Chitralekha to make her presence felt.

  “Prasanti, show some respect to Pundit-jee,” she said. “He will leave only after you’ve served him tea.”

  This would do it. The hijra had done well. The priest’s self-importance was sufficiently deflated. He would not insist on seven-hour-long ceremonies and outrageous donations. With this minor issue taken care of, Chitralekha could now prepare for her meeting with Kamal Moktan, who headed the new political party that promised the residents of the neighboring Darjeeling district their beloved Gorkhaland, a separate state from West Bengal, of which they were now an ill-treated part. Moktan had infused the Gorkhaland movement, largely stagnant since it hit its crescendo in the eighties, with new hope. He probably needed to talk to Chitralekha about making the movement bigger and better.

  Chitralekha would have preferred to meet with Moktan up on the terrace, but it would be too noisy. Prasanti had already laid claim to a makeshift storeroom in the west corner of the rooftop that now housed a huge cauldron of rice-flour batter prepared by her voluble recruits—two miserable, pitch-dark girls from the neighborhood—that they would soon fry into sel-rotis, those crispy doughnuts that Chitralekha had no great fondness for and from which she could seldom escape during festivals and celebrations. It’d be interesting to see how the politician would react to his earnest solicitation for donation being punctuated with guffaws from the trio inside the storeroom, but the rare October drizzle that looked as if it would arrive in a few minutes was as much a deterrent to a meeting on the terrace as the clanging of utensils and the giggling fits that had already begun.

  Her office was a mess. Prasanti had wiped clean all the pictures on the walls but had conveniently ignored the hillock of paperwork that had built up on the desk. The ashtray was overflowing with beedi butts. The cleanliness of the office didn’t matter much to Chitralekha as long as the photos on the walls—two of her with the governor of Sikkim, one with the chief minister and a few with various important people—were spotless. She noticed with consternation that a picture she had long before relegated to the cupboard, the one with the ex-chief minister whose chances of coming back to power were as high as those of Prasanti’s giving birth, was enjoying pride of place between the photo in which she was shown receiving an award from the governor and another in which she and the tourism minister smiled gaily into the camera. Prasanti could be so useless.

  “Prasanti!” Chitralekha called out, her voice echoing through the house. She repeated the servant’s name a few times, aware that the eunuch feigned deafness when she felt like it.

  “These sel-rotis are so round.” Prasanti walked in, coughing, a few minutes later. “Even rounder than my head. But the smoke is killing us.”

  “Don’t talk too much, Prasanti. Why have you hung this picture up?” Chitralekha rapped at the offending frame, almost knocking it down and wishing it would fall when the picture managed to stay put.

  “Was it not to come out?” Prasanti innocently asked.

  “Why would it, fool? Why would you find a picture from the cupboard and hang it up?”

  “All these photos you’ve taken are with ugly men. I wanted a picture of you with a good-looking man. He is the only handsome man with whom you’ve been shot.”

  “And why would I, an eighty-three-year-old widow, want a picture with a handsome man, Prasanti?” Chitralekha could feel her fury abate.

  “They are better than these ugly men. Some have no hair, and this one has more hair sprouting from his ears than he does on his head. This one could braid his nose hair with a rubber band.”

  “So, you hung the other picture up?”

  “Yes,” Prasanti answered impudently. “I want pictures with handsome men, so must you.”

  “But Basnett will never come to power. How would a picture with a loser like him make me look good?”

  “Good for you, then—at least other women won’t take pictures with him.”

  Chitralekha stifled a smile, ordered Prasanti to consign the picture to where it belonged, had her abort the task midway, and asked for the photo to be propped back up in its new home.

  “See? You like his handsome face, too, don’t you?” Prasanti giggled.

  “No, I don’t. Go make sel-roti. You’ll waste a few hours putting that silly picture back in the cupboard.”

  Moktan was late. The meeting was scheduled for three, and Chitralekha had specifically told the politician’s jabbering assistant that she didn’t like to be kept waiting. It would be another fifteen minutes before a fleet of cars slithered into the driveway carrying Moktan and his entourage, their black Nepali hats perched pharisaically on their heads.

  The bell chimed. Prasanti had been instructed not to open the door until she counted to sixty twice. Chitralekha walked to the foyer so she could hear better.

  “Is Chitralekha Aamaa there?” one of the men asked.

  “She’s in a meeting,” Prasanti answered.

  “I am Kamal Moktan,” Moktan said.

  “I am Prasanti.”

  She had been trained well. The men laughed. Prasanti giggled with them.

  “I have a meeting with Aamaa.”

  “She had a meeting with you at three. She waited until 3:05, but when you didn’t come, she took another meeting. She’s busy. Why don’t you wait in the garden?”

  One of the men was quick to quip, “The rain has stopped, sir. The sun might be out at any moment. It’s better to wait out in the warm than inside.”

  Five minutes lapsed, then ten. Prasanti brought the men tea and Good-Day biscuits. “She will be out in another five minutes. She told me she was meeting with only you,” she told Moktan. “The others will have to wait here.”

  Prasanti had done her job, once again redeeming herself in her mistress’s eyes. Kamal Moktan would be malleable now.

  “Namaste, Aamaa,” Moktan said sincerely, straightening his jacket at the entrance of Chitralekha’s office. “Sorry I was late. The roads are bad because of the landslides in Rangpo, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. The last time our chief minister was here, he told me he always started an hour early to see me because he didn’t want to keep me waiting. Starting an hour early even when he lives in Gangtok is practical.”

  “I’ll take note of that,” Moktan said, taking a seat. “I am sorry if I was late, but we enjoyed the tea and biscuits outside.”

  “So, why did yo
u want to meet me?”

  Moktan rubbed his hands together as though warming them. The action bored Chitralekha even before all the verbosity tumbled out. She had had enough experience with politicians to know that this one had a long speech planned, and she’d have to find her way out of it. The Nepali-speaking people of Darjeeling were stupid to rest their hopes on this man to get them a separate state.

  “You know the Gorkhaland movement sometimes needs elderly people to encourage the youngsters, especially an elderly person as respected as you in society.” There’d be a lot of repetition, a little flattery, allusions to her old age and the wisdom that came with it, her generosity, and how important she was. “You haven’t given us your full endorsement since we started. I understand that you are from Sikkim now, but we all know your roots are in Kalimpong, and that’s where you own your first and most symbolic factory. Unlike most people in Sikkim, you haven’t chosen to distance yourself from the great cause of Gorkhaland. We would be highly obliged if you’d give a speech about the importance of Gorkhaland and how I’d help achieve it because of my devotion to its people.”

  “Why me?” she asked. “It’s interesting that you should ask me.”

  “I have a cousin’s cousin called Rajeev.”

  “I am glad I know his name.”

  “He completed his engineering degree from Manipal in Rangpo. All his friends from Sikkim already have government jobs. He was among the top students in his class—got better scores than even the Bengalis. He’s yet to find anything. We just have no jobs in Darjeeling—no prospects, nothing.”

  “I can’t find him a job in Sikkim if he’s not from Sikkim.”

  “No, no, that wasn’t what I was going for. If in this speech you could ask people like him—educated and unemployed—to support the movement and tell them that they will find jobs when Gorkhaland happens, which we can attain only if we receive their full support, I’d be really grateful. There is too much cynicism among the educated.”