| Biswo Nath Poudel |
Posted
on 03-Oct-00 11:32 PM
White,semi-unraveled and placid cumuluses
were streaking eastwards while the migratory
birds from south were crossing the KangaliKot
hills, speaking with and beckoning in their
own language the innumerable flocks that
were travelling along.I grew up so inured
to those birds that it was always a hard task
for me to figure out whether they were
singing or just quarelling, whether they were
animatedly frolicking or just becoming
enraged. The weather was agreeable, and
people could be spotted flying the kites from
the top of the houses.
Did I say people? Such an epicene attribute!
From the angle that I saw them, they
consituted a bevy of pulchritudinous belle,
delight of every aesthetician, because I have
been a proud boy ever since I have realized
that the world comprises of only two genders.
There was always an uncanny attraction in me
for the girls in the red shirt,with fair
complexion and immaculate face.Plumps were
preferred, probably because we lived up in
the land profused with privation and scant
with cornucopea.I had no fondness for boys,
they looked ugly, pugnacious, and loud, while
girls were amicable and innocuous in their
demeanor.Probably it was the easiest choice
I had ever had to make.
She was such a great kite afficionado, and I saw her
right below the purring group of avian flock
trying to fly the lightweight paper-and- bamboo-stick-hodgepodge.
She was trying to extend the reach of the red
dragon shaped kite, and such was her face,
petrified with fear but amused to the extent,
such were her unmanageable ringlets coming
right in front of her beautiful eyes,that it
looked more than oxymoron that she was trying
to bridle the speed and direction of the kite
while letting her lineament loosely unleashed
to the scrutiny of every strangers.
It was Badadashain and that was her beauty.
Clearly Unparallelled.She drove us scatty,
and we roamed around her house.That was a
perfect Dashain. Usually she was not such a
common presence in her house , she had
attended St Mary's in Kathmandu, and her
presence in house had always sparked unabated
interest in all the young people of the town.
In Dashain, we all knew she would be there.I
still can't understand why boys like the
girls to that extent even when they are so small.
Panchami went, Shashthi went, then Saptami
came. People sat in the mat of the rundown
houses in the vantage point of the market,
and started playing callbreak and poplu. The
demand for the attendance would outrun the
existing capacity of those punters of the
town, jury mats would be arranged and
makeshift rooms were made.People would run to
grab the chance to sit down and play with
dignity, smelling the meat cooking in the next
door and sneering the poor children clamoring
for new dress with their helpless parents in
the market.Kibitzers will occupy the
remaining parts of the mat, exerting all the
way to the fringes of the mat, frazzling it
even more, and offerring advices to the
player about how the game should be played,
and the first card in the talon could be.
No player would ever be amused to get lecture
from those kibitzers, but they knew that the
position they were occupying were not
permanent and once they left the mat, they had to be reprising role of kibitzer at least for some hours
before reverting back to the player's
position. He would, as a kibitzer, be
vulnerable to the urge of game equally,anyway.
The girls had ,but , another story.Stripped
of free roaming capability, they would immure
themselves inside their houses. They had to
find themselves in a menual drudgery of
washing clothes and cleaning dishes. The
luckier one from the households who were
able to afford the retainers and helpers
would sit down in the mild sun and play card
with their mom and sisters.
The epidectic traits were commonplace with
her.I had seen her sitting right there in the
courtyard of her house and playing with her
sisters sporting ,whatelse, just imported Gucci and smearing her lips with striking hue of Ninaricci .I tried to talk to her, because after all she was my classmate in primary
school but unavailingly.Either I lacked the
gumption, or the chutzpah.Either I was a
coward, or proud, I never went to talk to
her whether her Dashain was as good as that
of mine.
Swings were swung more intensely, Malshree
were played more vigorously, and cards were
played more interestingly.Several squabbles
took place because someone was employing suberfuges in the game.We played
everything.We saw her playing.We saw her
flying the kites.We saw her showing us her
several faces:the ultimate dream of several
of us.
Every Dashain would come and go like that. We
all started thinking her as a Dashain gift.
We all started thinking her as one of us.She
grew up.She had her chests grown, and her
hips inflated. She had her smiles affected,
and her eyes condescending.Still, we knew,
with somewhat conviction, that she was our
villager, she was our property.The product
of our own mud, the upbringing of our water,
the making of our crops.Her body gained
height,her stature dwarved us, her beauty
humbled us,and we became more and more
infatuated.Because,perhaps,we also knew with
better conviction that we were boys, we
needed girls to prove that we wer grown up
boys.
Just when I left my village,she decided to
take part in Miss Nepal contest.We said she
was no longer our exclusively.She had gone
public.And by then our stock option was not
so attractive.I was happy that rest of my
Dashain,which I was not going to celebrate
in my village,won't be as illusionary.
But the imagery from the past Dashain still
invades me, and pokes me to write the memory.
[Just a fiction.]
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 04-Oct-00 09:57 AM
Ashu:
Thanks for the suggestion.Vocabulary has been
great nuisance to me,because I still can't
tell exactly which is simple word and which
is difficult word, perhaps because I learned
all those in the same time.
I write fiction rarely these days,though this
was written yesterday.WML, Wearable computing
High Level Synthesis, Java Application
manager designing etc has been my buzzword
these days.Quite frankly,this is when I wrong
my program that I write down something to
divert myself.
I shall look for the books that you
recommended, once the jhanjhat of midterm is
over.
By the way, our new defense minister is
charming,we all know that.But when I looked
at his picture, he looked so gangling in front
of our army chief and defense secretary that
I am damn sure had he applied to the army
private, he could have been outrightly rejected.
Good luck to him.But I have another grumbling:
Why the hell this Girija is keeping all the
portfolio within his family? He inherits
(and displays) all the traits of Jange.
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