| Username |
Post |
| Deep |
Posted
on 21-Dec-01 02:28 PM
Sri ganesaya nama
Vituli Mandal
-Deep
“How much you got?”
“Ten.”
“Ten paisa?”
Anil looked at me with disgust and spat on the ground and said, “Mu* lai aile… ten rupees ni Machis ka dam thirty five paisa”. He used to say this “machis ka dam thirty five paisa every time he had to satisfy the urge to say some nasty (manpari) words when he couldn’t pronounce them because of certain reasons.
Anil asked me, “so, dhanadye how much do you have?”
“Tis rupya”, I lied. I actually had forty rupees but I didn’t want him to know that.
“Then, let’s go to the Ramailo mela”, he proposed.
It was around 2 PM and we already had our khaja ko chia and some slices of krishna pauroti . So, we headed towards Vituli Mandal (this is what a friend of ours used to call Bhrikuti Mandap). On our way whenever and wherever possible we used to put shrines/temples to our right and if that was not possible then we made sure to touch our heart and forehead looking at the shrine/temple. What for? We both were not quite sure but we probably were asking for the blessings from gods and goddesses. We just used to do that.
After wasting approximately 40 minutes of our precious life on the dusty streets of Kathmandu we entered inside the Vituli Mandal. The ramailo mela was not that ramailo then. It was still early for the activities. So, we just strolled around for an hour looking around the stalls to make up our mind. We, certainly, couldn’t enjoy all the stalls (money and time constraints) so we had to make up our mind on which stalls are we going to be engaged with. We decided to start with hath khali nahune chittha. We had our eyes on the bicycle and other expensive prizes. “There is no need to hang around here after winning that bicycle (saikal)”, Anil declared.
“What do I get if you win that saikal?”
“You will get to ride on my saikal, what else do you want?”, he said without even looking at me. I thought, what he said was not that bad because there will be no question what he gets if I win the bicycle.
To win that bicycle one had to get five as the total. This is how it worked. Right in front of you in that stall there was this slanted wood board full of half cut holes. You were to pay for five ping pong balls and release them on that wood board. Each half cut hole had a number. If all -five- of your balls rested on number one marked hole then you have won the bicycle. Let’s say you released your first ball and it rests on hole numbered 5 and the second one rested on 2, the third one on 9, the fourth one on 1, and the last one rested on 8 then your sum would be 25 (5+2+9+1+8=25). There were prizes associated with every possible sum (that’s why it got it’s name haath khali nahune chitta!). So, you would get the prize associated with the sum 25. I bought my five ping pong balls and decided to go first. I gave a good look at the bicycle and started to release the balls. The first one landed on number one. All right! The next one landed on goddamn three and other balls also rested on other goddamned numbers and the combination got me a pair of earrings. Tato na chharo! So much for my dream of winning that goddamn saikal.
Hey, Deep, save those for your darling, Anil said. Deep was not my real name. It was a fashion then among our friends to change our name to match our sweethearts’. My one way love’s name was Deepa, so I was Deep. A friend of ours had changed his name to “Anjan” to enjoy the closeness with his “girlfriend” Anjana(that “girlfriend” of his never ever spoke to him and the poor girl didn’t even know she was his girlfriend). Anil was after too many girls. He liked just about any female so he decided to stay away from that complicated renaming business and stuck with his real name, Anil. Now, it was his turn. He rolled his first ball. Right on number one. Second ball, also on number one. When the third ball also landed on number one, I got alarmed. This guy is going to win “my” saikal or what? People around us were also watching him play. He was getting pretty close in winning that bicycle. He released his fourth ball. My heart started to beat like crazy when I saw that fourth ball resting on number one again. He was only a ball shy from winning my saikal. Anil was looking around and his eyes were saying, you pathetic losers, take a good look at the winner, me. He looked at me and said, so what did you win again? Oh! Yes, I remember, earrings, huh? I wanted him to win anything but that saikal. He lifted that last ping pong ball closed his eyes for a moment, I knew he was remembering that Ganeshthan by his house in our tole, and let the ball rolling. My God! he couldn’t believe what he saw. I didn’t either. His ball quietly rested on number six and he won a beautiful tongue scrapper. Thukka….Machis ka dam thiry five paisa…he walked out with his tongue scrapper. I followed him with an inner smile. He blamed couple of people including myself for his failure to win that cycle. He said someone slightly pushed him when he was releasing the ball and he looked at me and said “Taile dher aas garera pani ho saikal najitya”. He was way wrong. I was not hoping for his win, NO! not at all. There was this guy used to come to our chowk to play guchcha (angle or tappu or even hwakrayang) with his younger brother and if he missed hitting his target guchcha after a long stare then he would either deliver a khotta after briefly letting his tongue touch slightly raised bent middle finger or would deliver a slap to his innocent brother if he decided to keep khotta for some other time and would say “yo mu** le dher aas garera at ho ni.
.....
continue on the next thread....
|
| Deep |
Posted
on 21-Dec-01 02:29 PM
....from Vituli mandal 1...cont'd...
We went to hunting stall and targeted the animals way in the back because they had the expensive prizes but the bullets(corks) were not hitting where we wanted. After losing few more rupees, I gave up and Anil looked up at the stall keeper. When he saw the keeper was a Madhesi, he said,”marya madisele jiundo nepali lai thagchha bhanya yahi ho”. Chor marsya. I am not sure if the stall keeper heard that. I guess, he didn’t because he neither chased us nor said anything.
“I want to eat something, let’s go to a stall where we can win something we can eat”, he said. We headed towards a stall where we were to pay for some rings and throw those rings at the things on a low table from a certain distance, anything those rings circled (completely) was ours. We both targeted Gorkha biscuit but those goddamn rings were jumping here and there and were only partially covering the biscuit and other stuff on that table. We didn’t win anything. He had his tongue scrapper in a back pocket of his pants and I had my earrings in a front pocket of my shirt. We moved on.
Deep, lets go ride a horse, Anil said looking at an army stall. I was not really sure but thought that would be fun. At least, there was nothing to win or lose. You pay for the ticket and make a round on one of those army horses. We approached the ticket booth and he said, kin m*** tickets, afu ta tat bhaiyo, yar. Futya kaudi chhaina. (This is why I didn’t tell him I had 40 rupees). I went to the ticket counter and asked for two tickets for the horses. The man from the other side of the counter, asked “two tickets for what?” I repeated “horse”. He gave me a look and with a faint smile asked have you kids ever ridden on a horse before? Anil kept quiet and I said, “yes”. He handed me over two tickets with instructions and we proceeded towards the riding ground. A light fence was fixed around that riding ground and many tall, shiny, and sharply active horses of different shades were there.
When I got to that riding ground, I remembered an Indian proverb “Aab aya hei uunth pahad ke niche”. Until a camel came at a foot of a mountain he thought that he is the largest thing around (I was not sure if that was the correct meaning of that proverb but that’s how I interpreted). When he saw a huge mountain then he realized he is nothing. When I got the close look of those monstrous horses, I panicked. I thought, there is no way I can ride on these giants. They were huge, seemed at least two times taller than me and some of them were so wild that even those army guys who were there to hold those horses for ticket holders were having rough time containing them. “I can’t wait to ride on one of these Arabian horses” spoke Anil. Ani, taile kina latte dya ni tyo ticket bechne lai, ghoda chadya chha bhanera?. He laughed and added, “what he meant was a real horse like these not those wooden ones that you may have ridden”. I didn’t even look at him and just looked around. I made up my mind, I am not gonna ride on one of these monsters. To my delight I spotted another booth where there were ponies or mules or donkeys or asses, whatever. I said, thank god! I can ride on those.
.....cont'd on Vituli mandal 3...
|
| Deep |
Posted
on 21-Dec-01 02:30 PM
....cont'd...from Vituli mandal 2....cont'd
Ok, Anil, I am gonna….when I turned around to deliver my decision to Anil he was gone from there to the place where you were to give your ticket to an army man and he would give you a horse to ride. I saw Anil stretching his tiny hands with a ticket towards that army guy but the army guy took someone else’s ticket and I saw Anil’s hand lowering. I approached him to tell him that I am exchanging my ticket for those ponies, I am scared to ride on these horses. As I was trying to say this, another horse came to that spot and people stretched their hands with tickets. Anil ignored what I was saying and stretched his tiny hand again and was repeatedly saying “dai, ma chadchhu, yo ghoda, ye dai..”. I was amazed to see how fearless Anil was. He was slightly senior than me in age and was also slightly taller than me but he also was looking a tiny creature in front of that huge horse he was pleading to take. This time too he did not get the horse. He looked back to me and asked, “what were you saying?” I gathered some courage and in a low keyed voice delivered my decision. So, you wanna ride on those machis ka dam 35 paisa khachhar? He roared in the loudest possible voice from him. Everybody looked at us. You darpok, let me check your pants. Did you already wet your pants just by seeing these horses? He circled me watching my pants. He made me a tamasha there and then. People laughed at me and I wish I were a little tiny bug crawling underneath that ground so no one could see me. “Go ride on those worthless asses….shame on you….”. He left no avenues unexplored to humiliate me and present himself as a proud and fierce kid. Still, I was not ready to ride on those monsters. So, I slowly dragged myself out of that horse riding crowed followed by the humiliating smiles and looks of the crowd. When I turned back to see what he was doing? “Thukka, mu**” he actually spat and said. Sure enough, he was looking at me. Without looking back after that “Thukka mu**”, I headed towards the ticket counter to exchange my tickets for pony ride. One more time, I could hear Anil’s scream, make sure you ride on a baby donkey. I was mad at him, real mad. But I couldn’t fight with him because I knew who would beat me. He was a well-known (in our “bhura” group) street fighter. Many of us tried to snatch his reputation but he prevailed.
I exchanged my ticket for pony and got to the pony riding side of the ground. I guess Anil was right. I was even scared to ride on those ponies. But there was no way I could tell Anil that I couldn’t even ride a pony. Everyone in our tole will know and I will be so embarrassed. I was thinking Anil will certainly inflate this scenario (how fearless he was and how machis ka dam 35 paisa coward I was) and will turn me into a joke. I got sad. Anyway, I collected all my strength and handed over my ticket to a guy there and he put me on a pony and gave the rein. That pony knew what to do and where to go and from where to return so I just sat on him and actually enjoyed the ride and thought I could have easily managed those monsters as well. In a few minutes the pony came back to the starting point and I got off. Evening was fast approaching and I had to be at home before night progressed. I rushed to the horse riding zone and found Anil still holding that horse ticket. Poor guy hadn’t had the chance to ride on. I called him and said I am done. I also reminded him that it’s getting late. He looked at me and before he could open his mouth a horse came there (on the other side of the fence) just a couple of feet away from him. That horse seemed really wild but that did not matter to my friend “the one and only fierce Anil”. Realizing it’s getting late and that army guy is not giving a damn about his plead and ticket he pushed himself inside the fence from a little opening between fence polls and caught the rein of that horse and pleaded with stretched hand with ticket one more time, dai, rat parna laisakyo…aba yo ghoda ma chadchhu, ye dai. Anil was trying hard to hold onto the rein but that monster, perhaps, didn’t like a tiny kid holding or hanging on him or whatever moved around and before anyone could realize kicked Anil on his waist. Horse jumped and ran to the other side of the ground and dear Anil was briefly airborne and landed on the ground rather roughly.
I rushed to the spot. It took me a while to get to the front of the crowd and when I got there he was nowhere to be seen. Only people were laughing so hard as if a hit joke was told to them. I asked them where did my friend go, no one knew for sure. I looked around but didn’t see him. I didn’t know what to do. I kept looking for him for few more minutes but couldn’t find him. I just didn’t feel like going home without him. I kept searching for him. Then just about I was ready to give up and head home with a heavy heart, I saw him walking towards me like Bassa (there was this guy “Bassa” in our tole who used walk swinging, and limping heavily). Immediately a wave of smile invaded my face. I was glad to see him alive, I guess. I ran towards him and asked, “where were you?” He didn’t answer me. He said, tyo randi ko bahn ghodale le kya sanga hanyo yar..I again asked him, “but where did you go from there? I was looking for you all over the place…”He still didn’t say anything but just looked at me. I pushed one more time, “Anile, ka ga this bhanya . He spat on the ground, looked at the faded vermilion shade of the western sky and said, “ka janu ni! Machis ka dam 35 paisa …tyahi mu** khachhar ko ticket satna ga ni.
----------------------------------------------
Purano ghatana yaad ayera….dhun dhan bho…anta…..je parla parla bhanera lekhde…palish garne kam garina…………atit ka kuraharu…grammar srammar...angreji sangreji ta bharmar vadragol bhako hola upuryukta lekh ma tara pani adhi jati matrai pani padhne le bujhe bhane lekhya sar hunthiyo…..kasto lagyo lekh pathak lai…? Bhandine kripa gare jaya hunthiyo. Lau ta siv om..siv om.
|
| nabin |
Posted
on 21-Dec-01 07:11 PM
Vituli mandal ?
tsch! tsch!! tsch!!!
|
| - B |
Posted
on 22-Dec-01 08:30 AM
Deep,
It was fascinating. Your reminiscences - Deep/Deepa, angle/tappu guccha, machis ka dam, etc - were very cleverly weaved in and made me remember my own teenagehood. Keep up the good work and I hope to read more of your writings in future.
- B
|
| Biswo |
Posted
on 31-Dec-01 09:23 PM
Deepji:
It is wonderful. I liked it very much.
I also had a friend like Anil who used to force me to foot his bills, who was as
audacious as Anil, and who was also as unrestrained as Anil regarding his words,
that your story transported me to my childhood also.
My words of appreciation.
|
| Deep |
Posted
on 02-Jan-02 12:28 PM
Thank you -B ji, and Biswo ji for encouraging comments. Time permitting, I wish to write more from those "immortal" days that have "died" .
|
| NK |
Posted
on 02-Jan-02 12:42 PM
Deep, i have all the time in the world today. So I read your piece. Liked it very much. A glimpse into your, shall i say, coming of age piece. what happened to Anil? Is he still a swaggering cool dude? or life just hapened to him?
|
| Deep |
Posted
on 02-Jan-02 01:36 PM
NK ji, (closing your eyes, please kick this *ji* away with all your strength if you don't like it after your name.)
As I wrote in my thank you note to -B ji and Biswo ji, those were the immortal days but have died now. As Lord A. Tennyson wrote in "Tears, Idle Tears" *the days that are no more*. Vituli Mandal is sure a glimpse of the days that are no more. I wish I could backspace all these days...but....
Anil (his real name) is doing fine in Ktm. with his family. Last time when I was in ktm. I tried to bring back some of those dead days to life (without the help of Satya Sai Baba) but he said, "...hey M***, ooilya kura khuile...aba ta budho bhai sakiyo yaar..jahan pariwar wala manchhe po ta ma aba ta...ta M*** jasto naga hora..."
Deep
|
