The only motorable road in Mukteshwar enters from east of the
town, where the market is, shops line the left side of the road, as it goes up
meandering like a river, as is the case with most motorable roads in the mountainous
regions. It leaves the market behind with the last shop of Shahji, combination
of a general store and stationary besides being a medical store and functioning
as a phone booth too. Between Shahji`s shop and the butcher, which stands apart
from the rest of the market, is the only blind curve the road takes in
Mukteshwar, a bend, as called in the local language. Left to the road at this
point is a vertical dip, going down hundreds of feet and on the other side is
the slope of the mountain, leading to the verandah of the Bist family`s home,
whose kids were very unhappy about, among other things, the position of their
house as every unstopped straight drive during a verandah cricket match was
likely to send the ball flying, hundreds of feet down the hill. They had lost a
lot of balls.
After taking some
meaningless turns, going up, crossing the pale yellow building of the church,
the road forms a circle around a little park, at the center of which stands the
forever standing flagstaff, on which the national flag is waved during a
national day, if its not precipitating. The circle also acts as the only U-turn
for the two government buses and other heavy vehicles that enter Mukteshwar.
From there, crossing the State Bank, it goes straight up for sometime before it
passes the surf-blue and white single story building of the government
hospital, next to which lies the trail uphill to the temple, situated at around
7,000 feet above the sea level. The road ends leading to The Red Roofs, a small
guest house owned by Shahji, which includes a big dining hall and four separate
guest rooms. From its flowery garden, one can see the snow covered peaks of the
Himalayas. There isnt any proper road after this, which frays into big and
small trails going deeper into the mountains.
To Hament Bist, the
cook at The Red Roofs, this motorable road was utterly meaningless, for nothing
motorable ever came that far, usually taking a U-turn from the circle, leaving
him with the only option of walking it back home, apart from taking the milk
van, which left a little early and thus could not be taken when Shahji was
around. He usually left around half past nine, after dinner was over. But as
the rest house rarely received any guests after summer, making it irrelevant
for Hemant Bist to stay that late, he offed around half past seven, throughout
the year till the next year`s summer brought some (mostly misguided) tourists
back to the guest house.
During
this period, every evening, around seven, Bist would start cooking a meal for
Dinesh, who did various odd jobs and was the only other employee at The Red
Roofs, a little less than half an hour later he would be hurriedly walking up
the road, roughly some four major turns away on it, till the hospital, where he
would stop shortly facing the upward trail to the temple, hands folded, head
bent impatiently mumbling an inaudible prayer.
He would hurry on after
this, not paying any attention to the hospital or anything at all, till he
reached the government liquor shop, which stood between the hospital and the
bank near the circle, from where an
upward trail took him to his house above the bend. He would be drunk by the
time he reached home, to his wife and three kids; two boys and a girl, ranging
between eight to thirteen, the girl being the second born.
Mrs. Bist, a
homily woman, who spent most of her time in kitchen, cooking or in the
bathroom, washing, with majority of the
time left to her from that being spent in taking care of her younger son, less
than half his actual age, mentally, due to an accident during pregnancy,
dreaded the arrival of her husband, during this period, stinking of a whole
bottle, but this dread turned to horror whenever she saw him carrying another.
On these days, Hemant Bist would become insidiously aggressive and vicious with
each gulp off of the second bottle and any mistake or mishap by the family
members could cost them dearly, though they were rarely sure if anything they
did, anything at all, wouldn't be seen as a mistake by Hemant. The kids would
even stop breathing in his presence, least it turned out to be a mistake in
their father`s eyes. Mostly, if he didn't see the kids, who tried to remain
inconspicuous, though not successfully every time, the wrath of Bist`s
intoxicated rage fell on his wife and the night ended with loud snores and
subdued sobs, the former outlasting the later on fortunate nights.
The two
elder kids went to a local government school where they, their minds filled
with the horror and pain inflicted by their father, tried to hide any sign of
it from their faces. But, usually as the bluish-purple bruises were difficult
to hide and it was hard to make others believe that she was predisposed to
getting knocked over or he somehow always got into the way of a hard hit
straight drive, the siblings kept to themselves as much as possible.
The girl, usually
second in line to her mother, in incurring her father`s wrath, as the eldest
son was growing in size and the younger one tended to howl like a street dog
after a few tight ones, was a timid and frail creature of around ten, malnourished
with prominent dark half moons under her eyes. The insides of her tiny bony
hands were pink and cracked from constant contact with dishwashing soap and
detergent powder, which she used at various houses before going home after
school. Although she didn't like the work and was constantly worried about her
mother, she tried to delay going back as much as possible and usually met her
elder brother at the little park, around which the road circled, their meeting
point after he had delivered milk which the milk van brought in the evening and
had to be manually supplied around, up and down the hilly tracks. Whenever she
reached late, she found her brother flinging stones into the infinite of the
valley next to the park. Clutching a dirty stone, glaring at it inimically,
he`d fling the stone with all his might and then try to hear it land.
"
You never hear the bastard hit the bottom." he`d say, his face so red with
hostility that she was reminded of their father, in fact, to her he looked
exactly like Hament, but it never stayed, the hostility and redness left his
face like an uninvited guest, and he`d say, managing a forced, hollow
chuckle," Maybe the sonofabitch got stuck in the trees."
By the time they reached, their father would
be home, a sign of it was that the light in front of the house would be off,
something which their father was very particular about, but it remained on if
he wasn`t back, because in an unfortunate but not unprecedented case of his tripping and falling in the dark,
things become ugly for the family as it either enraged him making him ever more
dangerous or injured him, which lead to additional expenses. It
was true that although Hemant Bist managed without much hard work at The Red
Roofs as the guest house remained largely unoccupied throughout the year, apart
from the five odd months of warm and constant sunshine during summers, when he
stayed there, Hemant could hardly make ends meet, especially when the most
important end for him to meet was his unquenchable and irrepressible thirst.
Every
morning when he was staying home, he`d wake up with a splitting headache which
drove him to work early, as Dinesh was bound to have something to drink.
Usually he did and was ready to share it for a price, but there were days when
he was dry, leaving Hemant to rid the hangover with strong chai, which he
mostly did sitting in the garden gazing at the mighty Himalayan Peaks.
Sometimes Dinesh joined him.
" You look like a
dead fish, old man, I am sure it wasn`t less than a bottle last night."
" Last night is over lad, and will never come back, the
only thing that comes back is the thirst, goddamn this thirst! god damn this
need that never gets satisfied. I say, why the fuck couldn`t you save me a drop
or two?" "I don`t stock especially for you Bistji and I don`t own
a liquor shop... guess we`ll have to
wait around for food till the liquor shop opens up then? huh?"
"You are no less ungrateful than those sonsofbitches at
that place. Goddamn you people.. Goddamn
this all... Goddamn this and you people, all forever." he`d mumble
bitterly, staring into the white mountains.
The five summer months always passed
away like a warm musky waft. The family, safely away from Hemant, who`d be staying
at the guest house, would go about their work as usual though feeling slightly uplifted.
And though money was always short during this time, as Bist`s absence was physical as well as
financial, the family didn`t mind it much, plus the meager earnings of the kids
could very well satisfy their humble needs. But somehow, the dread remained,
for they knew well that the summer wouldn't last forever, and Hemant would come
back, back with his alcohol breadth and senseless violence and although the
thought sent a chill through their spines, the family tried to enjoy whatever
little time they had before the summer ended.
The younger son, too weak minded to have any notion of time
apart from recognizing day in and day out, would also sense the ending of
summers. The family became glum and pensive. Whatever little conversations
tried to lift the heaviness, would keep getting abruptly hushed as the speaker
would blank out staring into a particular corner of the room. But what made it
clear to him that the big man with the stinging brown belt was not far away,
was that the other two kids would come back home completely silent one day and
lock themselves in their room, then his mother came into theirs to give him a
kiss, which happened to be a little more moist than usual. Before long, as
abruptly as he had left, Hemant Bist would be back at the door swaggering,
swearing, seething.
That year, during which the usually refreshing winter of Mukteshwar,
proved quiet troublesome for its inhabitants, for it not only killed the
postman stone dead under a huge Deodar branch, fallen from the weight of gathered
snow, but also destroyed Shahji`s PCO booth, more or less completely, as an adjacent
fifteen feet tall old Pine tree crashed into it one stormy night near mid
January, the girl found her brother staring into the valley, the muddy golden
light of the setting summer sun making the outline of his body shine. He was
clutching a boulder considerably big for his small rough hands and his eyes
were tracing the top of the hills on the other side of the valley. She felt the
agitation building up in him as he told her that their father would be coming
home, tomorrow morning,
" The couple from dilli leave in the morning, I asked
Dinesh bhai. They are the last one." She did not wait for him to do his
ritual stone throw, and started clambering the trail up their house, with heavy
steps. He followed her and they dragged
themselves home, sullen and quiet.
The
summers in Mukteshwar end when the dark grey clouds swell up from the foot of Himalayas, rising slowly for some days, spreading
towards the small hill town, and within weeks of getting visible, they`d be
pelting cats and dogs over Mukteshwar. The heavy rain would continue for days
without respite, and it could sometimes take more than a week before the people
could dry their laundry on the line in the sun. The old stone walls of the
three room Bist house would become so damp that the children got their backs
moist as they tried to hurdle against it, usually trying to avoid a dashing
object hurled in their direction by their raving father. As the rain didn`t
stop for days and the little one tended to wet his bed regularly, Mrs. Bist
left the laundry to dry under the shade in the back verandah, but as there were
never enough laundry clips, the wind kept blowing the clothes down into the
valley. Mostly the kid remained bottomless. Such days could bring disaster to
the family, as everyone was forced to
remain under the confines of the house, making it impossible to avoid
confrontation with Hemant Bist. Usually on these days their father woke up late
and the elder son was sent to the liquor shop, with an umbrella sometime after
that, and then the apprehensive family would insidiously wait for their inevitable
mistake and its unavoidable punishment.
A winter that comes soon, goes late. Everyone in Mukteshwar
knows that, and they knew it that year too, as the autumn quickly started
turning from pale to grey, like a child maturing before its time. One night as
her elder brother was sleeping under the barely warm covers, the sister woke
him up. He woke up to see a slight smile on her face, broken near a corner of
her joint lips, and suddenly he felt winter breathing in the room. He knew it was snowing. They got up and tiptoed
out of the verandah door. The night was shining bluish white with the iridescent
feather like snowflakes leisurely floating down from the bright black starry
night sky.
" See it is here." said the girl stretching her
tiny palm below a falling flake of snow, " Now it is not long before the
wet and the cold will go and people will come back to the hotel." The boy
who was already busy catching snowflakes and putting them in his mouth, said,
while looking for a big one, "That man from Dilli, one with a new wife, he
said he`d bring his wife to the hotel again." Winter was the final and
harshest season of hardship, but it was also the last and the snow was always
good.
Within the next
week, the only motorable road in Mukteshwar was rendered useless for the people
from excessive snow fall. Newspaper supply stopped. One of the two government
buses which brought them in stood stone cold near the market, only the top of
its big black wheels visible. Milk was brought in on a mule, every second day. And
then one morning when the postman was found buried under a Deodar branch, his
body too, along with his khaki bag, was taken to the hospital on a mule.
Sometimes the snow stopped bringing a bright sun out making the snow covering
everything, smoke, but it wouldn`t be long before the army of clouds would again
receive its troops from the Himalayan base and shower its snowy ammo into a
melting, water-bleeding earth. The constant snow storms disoriented most of the
TV antennas which survived their vulgar display of power and if one forgot to
keep a track of the calendar or wind his watch, total oblivion of time
surrounded him, unless he got some brave visitors or himself dared to go to a neighbor,
defying the storm. The time from the first snow fall to the last was, more or
less a frozen time capsule in Mukteshwar, when everything, inanimate or animate,
retired from life. Days went by, white and meaningless, the church remained largely
empty even on Sundays, the market saw not one customer strolling along engaged
in leisurely shopping, people usually came hurrying, clutching at their coats
or caps, and left quickly after buying important supplies. Christmas warmed
few, New year`s went unnoticed, the newspaper showing pictures of incredulous
fireworks from Beijing, Sydney and New York on the front page arrived four days
late and the telephone echoed an electric storm somewhere.
That morning, Hemant Bist woke up late, irritable and with a
headache. He had finished his and the liquor shop`s last remaining bottle the
previous day and Mrs. Bist was getting worried. Her husband was still in the bathroom,
when there was a knock at the door. As the Bist family rarely received any
guests, apart from Shahji`s servants sent to fetch Hemant for some errand, Mrs
Bist opened the door feeling a little hopeful. The servant boy told her that a
tree had fallen on the phone booth of Shaji`s shop, who required Hemant Bist to
come immediately. Her husband went out grumbling and mumbling curses under his
breath and she closed the door to stop the chill from entering the already cold
room, and went about doing her work with a little relief. The two elder
children came out of their room to help their mother and the youngest one gave
out a low moan, making a sound, first time in days, to indicate that he was
hungry.
The afternoon
slowly rolled into evening and the evening turned to night, which finally brought
Hemant home, exhausted and cranky. He did not waste time in making his family
aware of his bad mood and the preceding bad day. He went into the room of the
younger son, who upon hearing his heavy footsteps, turned blue in the wet cold
covers, as he tried to hold his breath. He saw his father`s face, twisted from
disgust and contempt.
"Look
at this disgusting pig." he fumed, " I froze my joints, trying to
chop that goddamn tree in this cold and this
swine lies here, happily shitting the bed." Mrs Bist, who was in the
kitchen making tea, realizing that her husband was in the child`s room, started becoming restless
and agitated, she concentrated all her effort on hearing what was happening in the room.
"I slog
from morning to night, trying hard to provide for all of you, and I can`t even
expect a clean bed to rest my bones when I am back." Suddenly hollering
like a loudspeaker, he bawled, " Woman! Do I have to sleep in the shit of this
filthy excuse of a child you`ve made!"
Shivering violently with fear, her mind focused on the boy, Mrs. Bist
reached towards the shelf above the gas stove for a cup, the tea suddenly rose
up boiling in the pot, the cup slipped from her hand, she quickly tried to take
the pot off the stove, but before she could reach it, the cup crashed on the
floor, multiplying into a million pieces, the noise stunned her and she dropped
the pot filled with hot boiling tea.
The commotion made Bist
lose it, he went thumping into the kitchen, roaring like a thunderstorm,
"You crazy ungrateful whore!" and grabbing her hair pulled her out.
"Is it not enough for you to burden me with these worthless bastards that
now you go around throwing and breaking stuff I bought with my hard earned
money!" As his hands proved unsatisfactory to him in bringing his wife to
justice, who was successfully avoiding any substantial hit by curling up like a
centipede, Hemant drew his belt out and began unmercifully lashing his wife.
The pathetic yelps that the belt inevitably elicited from her upon contact,
made the two elder kids helplessly stare out through the crack of the door in
horror at her, while their father continued his verbal and physical violence,
blaming their mother for his miserable life, the cold, the snow blocking everything, the absence of alcohol,
the falling of trees and the death of men.
But as Hemant could not quench his appetite for punishment, he intensified
his lashing making the iron studded end of the belt puncture her skin, making
the reddish black blood flow effusively through the holes.
Standing behind her brother, sobbing noiselessly, the younger sister,
feeling scared and unsafe, took hold of her brother`s arm and realized that it
was strained, she looked down at his hand and was shocked to see him clutching
a big boulder in it. She looked up at his face and gave a shriek of terror. It
was burning red with hostility, just like Hemant Bist, in fact, he was Hemant,
and this Hemant behind the door was glaring bitterly at the Hemant outside the
door.
The
shriek diverted their father`s attention to them and leaving his wife in
tatters, he went towards the door with heavy steps, cursing, "You require
a taste of this belt too, I feel. You scoundrels! All of you! Scoundrels!"
The
door opened with a jolt from the father`s forceful push making the son stagger
back, holding the boulder, while the father staggered in clutching the belt. As
the man`s eyes focused in the darkness on the boy holding the rock, the girl
ran out to her mother, who was lying half dead in front of the kitchen. She did
not hear the thud as the boulder landed on the floor or the vehement cursing by
her father, or the minute long dull and continuous thumping sound that was
followed by an eerie stillness .
The daughter stared in utter horror as her father emerged from the room with
someone on his shoulder, who could have been her brother, but was bloody and badly bashed out of recognition. She followed him with her eyes, as he went out
the verandah door and although, the terror she felt was too overwhelming to
make her move, a strange morbid curiosity made her follow him. The partially
headed body was perfectly motionless, on Hemant Bist`s shoulder, the hands and
legs hanging down loose, waving gently with the strong wind, as he crossed the Verandah
and went down the slope. She followed, the morbid curiosity giving way to a
strange morbid certainty. Her father had reached the end of the slope, and was standing above the bend, only the lamppost and
a small portion of the road visible below, dividing him from the valley. He paused there
a while, looked left, then right and then below, all was inked in black, the
sky, the snow, the bend. Suddenly a wave of panic crossed her, cutting through
her curiosity and certainty, and she started moving faster, breathing heavily.
She was some ten steps away from her father as he hurled the body of his son
down hundreds of feet, into the bosom of the valley.
She froze to the ground, the step she had taken seemed not
just some inches in the show, but buried miles into it and her heart suddenly
paused after a giving a loud thud, as if it had free fallen all the way down
from its position, inside her chest next to her foot, miles down, deep in the
snow. She did not realize when her father returned or how long she stayed
peeping over the edge into the ocean like blackness of the valley, but as she
tore through the stormy wind, towards
the house, she suddenly couldn't rid herself of a particularly nagging thought which
had taken hold of her completely and by the time she reached her unconscious
mother, she was so worked up about it that her breath was fast and heart was
pounding rapidly. The mother came to, as her daughter gently tucking at her
sleeve, choking with sobs. She couldn`t understand for a few moments what her daughter was rambling through her
sobs, as her whole body was throbbing, hot and stinging, with pain, but she
forgot all about the torment when she finally understood her. I think he is
stuck in the trees because I didn't hear him hit the ground, was what she had
been trying to tell her mother.
Only a few remember that winter from anything more than the
loss of their postman and a hazy recollection of a fallen Pine tree on the
phone booth of Shahiji`s shop. But, as seasons come and go and times past
always remain minuscule in the memory as compared to times present, even the
harshest of winters, barely survived, remind
people of nothing more than a pale feeble feeling of gratitude at having
withstood it.
It was a week or two into the delightful and warm spring
following that winter as the snow started disappearing, exposing things it had
been hiding underneath her, when the local inspector at the police station in
Mukteshwar received the news of a child`s body being found, hanging dead in the
trees, of valley by the bend and soon he realized that he would have to inform
the cook from up at the guest house of Shahji about the discovery of his
missing son, which had been reported by him sometime during the winter.
The inspector couldn't help but notice the marks on the face
of the cook`s wife, as she opened the door to him, neither did his trained eyes
miss the disquiet in her eyes. As Hemant Bist was at the guest house, he had to
give the unfortunate news to her, but he could not understand why he saw
more distress than heartache in her
response to the news.
"Mrs. Bist, I know it`s a very unfortunate thing and you must be
going through a lot" he said in a low voice, carefully observing her
responses," But if you could think of someone who might have done this,
you know based on suspicion, it`d become easier for me to catch the offender,
and bring justice to your child." He could clearly see her hands fidgeting
in her lap, her head sunk low, going up
and down with her breathing, which was slowly speeding up. Her husband`s
formidable face, as he undid his belt, kept dancing in front of her eyes. She
hadn`t witnessed the incident herself or knew how it was done, but she hadn`t a
trace of doubt in her mind as to who had murdered her son. She was going
through a commotion within her, as she tried to hold something which was trying
to break loose. The inspector glanced around the room, and noticed the head of
a sickly little girl looking at him timidly, with big sad eyes, before it
disappeared quickly behind the door again. Mrs. Bist began heaving, highly
agitated by her effort to control herself, her struggle was palpable in her
gestures. And then, finally, as if the matter within her had ultimately been resolved,
tears flowed down her cheeks, falling into her lap. She gave a sigh and looking
at the inspector denied knowing anyone who could have killed her son.
"He was so young, so innocent, just a little child, who
could`ve harmed him?" she said remorsefully , forcing out every word which
seemed to resist leaving her mouth, as if it was aware of being a lie, being an
insult to the memory of the dead child. After the somewhat puzzled inspector
left, the mother went into her room, and slumped down next to her sleeping son,
the daughter followed her in. Since that disastrous winter night, all that the
little girl could think of was her brother, stuck in the trees, under the snow.
As her mother wept, hugging her, she stared blankly at the wall behind her,
and she knew that her brother HAD spent the cold winter stuck in the trees, under
the freezing snow.
