She lived there. I saw her flee from the 23rd floor, Golden Sands Club, Atlantic City. She let go of her arms and legs and made a gesture like her savior Jesus and let herself fall freely from the 23rd floor, hitting the ground with a loud ‘thud’, dampening it with redness. Cabs came and left, picked up, dropped off; like in a vicious circle, they kept rotating, back and forth, back and forth. Like her life, like those memories in her life. Bitter. Sweet. Tasteless.
She was beautiful. Prerana. And even for her daunting personality, had been gracious throughout her life. But sometimes her fingers froze as she kept tapping on the keyboard and words would refuse to show up on the screen. There was no expression in her sentences that sprouted like beans on the monitor; may be it was too much of an expression. Her face stood on her neck like a frozen carcass. Busses passed, cabs came again, this time with passengers, dropped them off, and left, like in a monotony. She raised her head and wondered; for once she let nothingness shape the holistics of her life. Everyone was running, running towards nothingness. Towards eternity they’d never reach; the thirst for something they’d never discover, the unleashing of desires that don’t have an end. Prerana was seeking a purpose meaningful, a craving to averse delusion, a desire that was in itself flawed but sought that vision which Buddha himself opined for...
‘Why am I doing this?’ Answers exploded yet this haunting was so staggering she lost sense almost, and so she would gather herself and jump into the water-- letting feelings dissolve in water molecules; or sometimes she’d just sit there shaking in horror, quiet, letting emotions rot within her. Think. Think! Her mind would say, again and again, and she’d dig her face into the pillow and try to forget how to think, for once. But then it wouldn’t stop, thoughts…whatever has happened to me, she’d start musing and then…Reality came limping like a looser, always unwelcome.
Munindra dai was her savior. “Haina Nepal bata thuprai koseli lyayeu jasto cha ni…” Munindra dai heaves a sigh of relief with the suitcase escorted to one of the rooms after an exhausting ride from the airport. The place she was being ensconced into looked like an underground compartment; damp, dark, baby cockroaches crawling the walls by the kitchen stove. He quickly brought out a room freshener and squeezed it in the air letting it roam freely, numbing their nostrils. The statue of liberty standing tall and proud watching their mundane efforts must have smiled, for once.
Kentucky Chicken was for dinner, and Jerry joined with a few cans of Budweiser spread around the table, not to mention the cockroaches. The three shared lives; with eyes stuck on the nearby T.V screening an African movie. The storyline was plain, without twists; like Prerana’s own life. Munindra dai apparently had bagged the reputation of a renowned Yogi in Nepal, where respect bestowed a fine livelihood and an easy comfort. But his decision to settle in this barren land without the notice to the concerned had brought out a dramatic twist in his coveted lifestyle. “Faith is also an amazing term”, he stared on the screen in search of words to show where faith had dislocated his reality. With a bitter gulp of beer, Prerana just listened. “Five years…you know, five years is a lot of time…” Munindra dai tweaked his lips and chose to let his eyes run randomly over her face. She quickly moved her eyes away from him and smiled at Jerry “Is the food good?” Jerry just shrugged. Prerana wanted to say sometimes time fails creation itself, let alone the sustainers of it. “I understand Munindra dai. Why don’t you want to go back to Nepal?” Prerana realized that was an offensive and a stupid question at the most, but there wasn’t a handy solution she could prescribe to her patients. His duly earned respect back home paid homage to the counters of McDonalds and Subways here. 18 hours a day, he worked; sometimes in a gas station, lifting ice, or in Subways rolling breads. His hands had hardened, looking rough with scratches and blotches of blood here and there. He would come back from work, open a can of beer and take out a burger from his bag, or sometimes rummage through the refrigerator to find a chunk of frozen meat passively sitting there unattended for days. Good food was occasional, like when Prerana and the likes would clear up the counter to cut vegetables once in a while.
“He needs a girl” Jerry said, his mouth tearing the skin off the Kentucky chicken. Prerana laughed “Hmmm…no 1 solution to everything! A girl”. At first Munindra dai, in his late thirties, just laughed, letting his thick, yellowish-white skin blush red, his neatly arranged teeth spread into a beautiful set of pearls. His black hair cropped up like cotton balls on top of his head, leaving the corners of his ears naked, giving him a young look. He was chubby, seemingly fat, with chunks of flesh looming heavy around his chest. After Jerry had insisted in his hallucination that it’s time Munindra dai got married, the latter nodded. Jerry’s whining opened secrets. “Yes, her family has helped me process a green card and all that, I’m very grateful, but how do I marry a ‘bhaisi’ like her? Timi nai bhana na” Munindra dai confessed in his drunkenness that the girl who liked him was white, bland, and fat.
Days passed. Prerana had been around the US for quite a while but New York was truly New for her. Work was hectic and commuting between Manhattan and Queens only made her the more lonelier. “Hello! Oh hi! Yes! It was me who called…do you still have that apartment available for rent?” It wasn’t the inadequacies in the building or the cockroaches drooling around the cooking utensils, that created an urgency to evacuate the place, but a weird feeling, a form of suffocation of going back there and sitting and watching an African movie with Jerry and Munindra dai with Budweiser cans spread all over, was more pressing.
“I think he should get married, right Jerry?” Prerana announced while at dinner one night. “Here, drink some of this, its good stuff” Munindra dai brought out some bottles of Corona and spread them on the table. “I don’t feel like drinking” Prerana’s humbleness was rebuked with insistence. But then she changed the topic again. “I will find someone for Munindra dai” said she with confidence.
“You know what? I think you should go out with him. Why...He’s a nice man…” said Jerry shifting coriander out of the chicken curry and rice he was eating. “Jerry! He’s like my brother…” Prerana threw back a defenseless statement on air to be evaluated.
All the way to work and back Prerana kept ransacking through the newspaper advertisements for roommates wanted and thinking about Sishir from Boston who she’d talk for hours; Vikram from India now living in Kansas, who had told her that the stone Shiva lingam stands on is the symbol of vagina; Amrit from California who had sweared to god that he liked her and had stopped calling after they had finally met; Nick who just knocked on the door unannounced and insisted they go to bar sometime, or hang out with him on weekends, usually every other Friday when he would’ve nothing to do. Life was normal, and busy. Sometimes too busy to speculate what it was leading her into.
“Yes aama, I’ll take care of her. She’s like my sister, don’t worry”, Munindra dai had assured her mother. Prerana was grateful to Munindra dai. She had almost swallowed a ball of saliva stuck in her throat that slowly moved down with an ache in her heart. Trying to hide her watering eyes, she smiled; she had never felt so stranded and alone.
New York was in fact beautiful. She was fascinated by the colors of beauty the Statue of Liberty radiated around it. Standing atop, alone and serene, it instilled new desires of freedom that worked like an elixir for her life.
“Yeah I’ll be there in five minutes” The China Town in New York, walking shoulder to shoulder with Srijana reminded her of home. Or inviting a few non-Nepalese co-workers for dinner in a Nepali restaurant never seized to amuse her. The idea of moving out from Munindra dai’s place started to fade away, leaving dampening shades of worries that triggered back with some instances. Like for example one night she came home to find Munindra dai completely drunk, staring at the T.V screen and weeping. In absence of Jerry, Prerana was perplexed for a while on what to say. Things happened, and sometimes reality came limping like a looser, unwelcome…
“Hmm…I need a lot of love” Past midnight, Prerana murmured onto the phone. On the other end, Sishir was teasing the way she said the word ‘stewpid’ and how she sometimes eats chicken nuggets for lunch.
A couple of mornings later while walking back from work she was relaying bits and pieces of what had happened last night at Munindra dai’s place. “It wasn’t pleasant to hear that. I don’t love him Vikram, but he…he sometimes behaves weird. I want to get out of there!” Prerana gasps for fresh air. “Yes! I’m listening”.
“You need to get laid” Vikram says it out with authority.
“What?”
“Yes. You need to get laid”.
While Prerana crosses the road a car screeches right in front of her with a slam in the brake. She waives her hand in an apologetic gesture, and rushes forward.
“Yes, I think so too” she just keeps walking looking back and trying to comprehend what just happened.
“So when do I come there?”
“What?”
“So when do I come there to get laid?”
Prerana slams the phone. Asshole.
The cellular suddenly starts beeping. Ignorance is the best refuge sometimes; Prerana comes clean out of the hustle bustle of downtown Manhattan while the phone indicates a new voicemail. “Prerana baini, khoi tapai lai din bhari phone gareko, yaha nurse haru kuri rachan…” Dewang dai’s voice echoes in urgency.
“Shit!” Prerana nervously flips open the phone. She was supposed to be in the hospital to help translate Dewang dai’s questions into English and help him sign the papers, before the nurses could do anything to cure the newborn baby’s asthma symptoms. She had missed all calls when he had strenuously tried to reach her.
“Dai! Ma aai haale…” Faster, bigger steps, she keeps walking…
A few days later, some people who knew Prerana ‘closely’ knew she had started disliking Munindra dai for some reason and had moved out. But life was busy. Work, friends, acquaintances, Munindra dai…something within her was wanting to break free. Sometimes she wouldn’t speak much; she’d just sit there quiet and smile at people. At other times she’d come back from work to her apartment and sit on a dark corner and stare at something, for hours. Sushil never called her anymore. Yet life moved on.
A month later Munindra dai gets the news that Prerana jumped off a building in Atlantic City; he is relieved.
