Shailendra Sakar

SHAILENDRA SAKAR

Boomerang

translated from Nepali by Mohammed Harun Ansari

'Keep quiet, blow the lamp out and sleep.' 'Unha, there is no sleep in the eyes at all.' 'Don't talk, lie down and remain silent even if there is no sleep in the eyes. It is just three o'clock at night. Is it time to rise? Children will wake up'.

'No, they won't until five in the morning'. 'Still what do you murmur at this odd hour? Other may be disturbed. This is not our house, you see. We are tenants and should live very carefully. There are other inmates living in the adjoining rooms.'

'When to go to buy vegetables in the morning? Can we get cauliflowers?'

Thus this talk continues for two hours unsystematically-- ranging between romance and disgust.

It is begun either by me or my wife. But in fact it doesn't matter who initiates it. Sometimes it turns into heated exchanges and sometimes into a delightful sexual act. The kids rise up and in order to feed them milk and biscuits she is compelled to get up willy-nilly. She rises in irritation mumbling away to herself and discharges urine noisily in an empty Ankoria milk-can to avoid taking the kids out to urinate. It fills me with nausea. The earlier romantic exchanges and pleasant kisses appear to be boring and disgustful.

I say,' Have you urinated in the milk-can?' The son has already woken up. He will see all this. Have a sense of shame at least. She retorts in a bit loud voice,' Who goes outside in such a cold? You never buy a bed-pot...' She continues uttering to me. Her reference to buying a pot at this point is yet more abhorrent. I speak out,' After having a bed-pot do you intend to urinate more noisily so that it is audible to the inmates of the neighboring rooms, don't you?' Without uttering a word she mixes Ankoria milk into the hot thermos-water and begins to pour it down into papsi.

I contemplate how unpractical and humorless we are! I continue brooding: the elder son should be taken to the vessel to urinate. A sudden sense of fatherly duty makes me rise. If I don't take him myself, he will piss in the bed and wife will shake with anger because of added load of work to put the bed in sun. I then, will have to tell her that she does not need to be worried. Why to give her trouble? I myself put it in the sun at the time to my going to the office. She complains that my too much fondling and love showered on the son, has spoiled him. I don't see any such thing. As a father I must feel my duty towards him. How can this much lead to his going astray? But it is true that he is a mischievous sort. If I am there be becomes a bit recalcitrant but in my absence he obeys every body else.

This sort of nuisance around three or even earlier at night I never like because it makes me more conscious of the approaching morning with a message of the daily-routine work which is full o boredom and irritation. The emerging bright day appears yet to be ugly and detestable through extremely trivial domestic problems.
'Can we get kerosene today?' 'I can't say for certain. Any way I have asked the sahu. He has promised to supply it. Go and fetch it soon. There isn't a drop of it.'
'Did you meet Ram Bahadur?'
'Yes, I did but I clean forgot to talk about that.'
'Why has he kept the receipt of the land with him?'
'O.K. I will go and bring it today.'
'Will he give the money?'
'Well, it is difficult to get back the money lent.'
'That is why I asked you not to lend but you are the sort who doesn't pay any heed.' When to bring back the ring pawned?' 'Where is money?' It is here....look'.

She forms a provocative sexual shape in her hand by joining two fingers together. I put my middle finger through. In this way our bitter talk suddenly becomes sexually surcharged. Sometimes it has sexual beginning but ends in pulling at each other's hair in sheer bad taste and disgust. There are many contacts which have not be which have no beginnings and ends. I never have any pre-hand knowledge as to what turn a particular talk is going to take. I recall, perhaps, my father too wouldn't have any beforehand inkling of the impact of such gossips with my mother. I also recollect the pleasant and bitter day of my childhood. There were hardly two or three rooms in that grand hilly house. There wouldn't be any problem for any body to sleep. I would sleep in a corner by the side of my parents and would awake at night hearing similar gossips by them. I remember how I would get myself wrapped in a quilt but still make a hole through it to watch the outside activities. I would wonder what these grand men and woman did by rising in the middle of the night. Talks and mumblings would begin as they now do between me and my wife. Time and space has changed but the subject is the same-- the domestic affairs. My father had to listen to the irritating utterances and similarly become sexually excited willingly or unwillingly.

'Keep quiet, blow the lamp out and sleep.'

'Unha, there is no sleep in the eyes at all.'

'Do not talk, lie down and remain silent even if there is no sleep in the eyes. It is just three o'clock at night. Is it time to rise? Children will wake up...'

'No, they won't until five in the morning'. 'Still what do you murmur at this odd hour?' The talk would further continue,' Today one will slaughter a goat.' 'A kilo or so must have to be bought.' 'Where is money?' 'It is here--look.' And perhaps father would perform sexual activities, and similarly their days would begin with words uttered in contextually mingled with realities and monotonies, and also mother would discharge urine in an empty pot noisily.

I find sheer coincidences-- they occur automatically. I resolve I won't take interest in such activities in life. But they occur beyond my control. I am returning to where I had set out from the abrupt beginning of talks at three o'clock at night, trivial domestic issues and our preoccupations with petty things and plans appear before me in flashbacks. I feel living in them. Rising suddenly at night and spreading her 'Sari' and petticoat, my wife is absorbed in doing away with lice and looking for fleas, in the same way as my mother used to d. And I, like my father get up and light a Bidi or cigarette. My father never liked going to office and very often he would escape from there in the middle of the day on one pretext or the other. It had become almost a part of his daily routine. Today I too don't like to go to the office and prefer to roam about along the roads. And in the time of being drunk, like my father, I too enjoy singing cheap songs at any time of the night.

I find it hard to distinguish whether he is being repeated in me or myself in him. I feel we are afflicted with the same curse, to get rid of which, it may take the sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of years.

Shailendra Sakar, Nepal's prominent poet and short story writer, has been awarded Yugkabi Siddicharan Shrestha Puruskar. He participated in several literary movements like Boot Polish, Movement for the Upliftment of Discarded Communities and Poetry of the Road. He has authored half a dozen of books of poetry and short stories.