Lil Bahadur Chettri is a Nepali writer from Assam, India. He is a recipient of the Sahitya Academy Award for his book Brahmaputrako Chheu Chhau. He is one of the most successful novelists in Nepali language.
1
This night was not as cold as it usually is in the high hills during the month of Phagun.1 The sky was overcast, and the cold breeze did not blow from the peaks, so the night was still. Although it was the bright half of the month, all the moon’s light could not reach the earth, and there was only just enough light to see by.
From a distance, Dhané Basnet looked as if he were asleep, bundled up from his feet to his head in a dirty quilt that was torn in places. But he was not sleeping. He was trying to set aside the flood of emotion that was tumbling down on him, so that he could welcome the goddess of sleep. But his efforts were all to no avail. One moment he would shut off the flow of thoughts and try to sleep, but the next second those feelings would revive and come back to surround his brain. So Dhané got up, went to the fireplace, plucked out a glowing ember from the ashes, and lit a stub of tobacco wrapped in an angeri leaf. As he blew the tobacco smoke out into the room, he sank back into his thoughts. Questions, objections, answers; and then more questions arose one after the other in each corner of his heart.
“The old baidar2 is prepared to give me a buffalo, but he’s asking a terribly sharp price – and then of course I have to pledge my plowing oxen as security. If I don’t pay off the interest each and every month I’ll get no peace at all. ‘Four-legged is my wealth; do not ever count it,’ they say.3 If anything goes wrong I’ll lose the oxen and everything else as well. But what could go wrong? The buffalo’s pregnant, and she’s already got a sturdy calf. And she gives plenty of milk, too. In a year or two the calf will grow up. And if we get another female calf the next time she gives birth, that will be better still. My little boy will get some milk to wet his throat as well. If we put a little aside for a few days we’ll have ghee, and we’ll surely make a few annas.4 That would be enough to pay the interest, and we’ll keep the buttermilk. If the maize is good this year I’ll use it to pay off half the debt, and we’ll just live on millet.” His thoughts raced by like a powerful torrent. When the tobacco was all gone, Dhané, “the wealthy one,”5 wrapped himself in his quilt again. Half the night had passed already, and he yawned.
2
Dhan Bahadur Basnet is a young man: he has just turned twenty-five. His frame attests to the mountain air and the nutritious food of his homeland, but his handsome face is always darkened by clouds of worry, like black clouds sullying a clear night. He has just one life companion: his wife, Maina, who supports him through his times of sorrow and rejoices when he is happy. In Maina’s lap there plays the star of Dhané’s future, a three-year-old boy. The family also includes a girl of fourteen or fifteen, Dhané’s youngest sister, Jhumavati, whose marriage Dhané has not yet arranged because of his financial difficulties. The boat of Dhané’s household bobs along bearing its little family of four, facing many storms on the unfathomed seas of the world.
Dhané’s crisis may be likened to the black clouds and moon of this night. The moon wants to cut through the net of clouds and spread light throughout the world, making it blissful in the cool soft joy it provides. But it is unable to do so: the clouds have reduced its light to nothing. Dhané wants to burst through the net of his money problems and bring his little family happiness and the cool shade of peace. He longs to restore the foundations of the roofpoles and posts that the termites of his debts to the moneylenders have made rickety. For that he has relied on his industry and labor. He works hard, he is industrious. For every four cowries6 he is willing to lay down a bet on the last breath of his life. But his hardships do not change.
The rotting posts of his house just go on rotting. Like mist rising up to join the clouds, the land owners and moneylenders of the village add to his problems. The sharp interest rates they charge, the way they snatch the security pledged if a promise is broken: in Dhané’s life these are like the blows of staves on a man who is already unconscious. But despite all this he has not admitted defeat. He hides his sorrows and goes on treading the path of labor.7
3
“Hariram! The price of the buffalo is 120 rupees, the interest must be delivered to Hariram’s house at the end of every month. And listen! If you are late by even a day during the months that you owe money to Hariram, I tell you I’ll remove the oxen and the buffalo from your shed! There, what do you say? Make a mark with your thumb on the agreement.” So said the baidar, who wore a fresh mark of white sandalwood paste on his brow.
The baidar was an old man, a firm traditionalist who paid great attention to matters of purity and touchability. He ate nothing that had not been prepared by his own Bahun cook. So that the name of Ram might always be on his lips, he sprinkled everything he said with his pet word, “Hariram.” His mornings passed in ritual and scripture, and he considered the giving of alms and feasts to Bahuns to be the highest duty. But he was always on his guard when the poor and suffering of the neighborhood came to borrow something petty. He did not forget to crank up the interest when someone borrowed a rupee or two, and the wages for all his hard work were earned by extracting high rates of interest from his creditors. Dhané knew the baidar well. Even though he knew that dealing with him was like setting his own house alight, he held his peace and made his mark on the paper.
It was time to let the livestock out to graze. The farm workers were making their way down to the fields, carrying baskets and ghums.8 Dhané came back to his yard, dragging the little calf behind him. The buffalo brought up the rear, bellowing as it came. Maina hurriedly scattered a handful of hay to one side of the yard, and the buffalo sampled it casually.
4
Dhané expected to profit from the buffalo in every way. “After a year or two my bad days will be over and my good days will begin,” he thought. But if things always worked out as they were envisaged, no one in the world would ever have blamed fate for anything. It was only about two weeks since Dhané had bought the buffalo. He came out that morning to milk it, carrying a milk pail with a little butter smeared on its rim. He went over to untie the calf, but then he saw that it was lying with its legs spread out and that one of its legs was quivering. He had tethered the calf in a hurry the previous evening, and when he saw it like this he nearly lost his senses. He told Maina and then went up the hill to call Kahila Dhami from the big house.9 The dhami came quickly, and when he had fingered the grains of rice in the tray for a long time he said, “It seems that Bankalé has got it.10 You just light incense for the deities of the house, and I’ll conduct an exorcism.”
It was just time to light the lamps in the village houses. The cowherds were busy laying out feed and spreading litter for their livestock. Over by the stream the crickets made the air resound with the music of their ensemble, as if some musicians from the city were playing their tanpuras. Down below, Telu Magar’s dog barked monotonously. Dhané was standing beside the calf, his eyes brimming with tears. The calf turned its eyes toward him and gave a cry of utter misery, as if it wanted to tell him in its mute infant’s language that this was the last hour of its life. Dhané wiped his tear-filled eyes with the hem of his shirt and sat down beside the calf. “Go now, mother, go happily. May your soul find joy in the other place.” The calf gave one strong kick and then gave up its breath, as if it were obeying his command. At milking time, the buffalo kicked out, brandished its horns, and jumped around, and Dhané was unable to touch it.
It was Phagun, and the fields were empty and bare. Several farmers had just begun their plowing. Dhané had let his buffalo out onto his dry field, and at midday he lay sunning himself on some straw on the open roof of his lean-to. Just then, Leuté Damai arrived in a foul temper.11 Leuté was very wealthy. He reaped a profit from sewing for the whole village, and he also had plenty of fields of his own, so he did not need to defer to anyone. Dhané climbed down from the roof, and Leuté saluted him, lifting one hand to his brow: “Jadau, Saheb,” he said12 “Have you let your buffalo loose? It’s been through my field, and it hasn’t left a single stem of my buckwheat standing. If my patrons let their stock wander out like this as if they were bulls,13 what will be left of me? Come with me and see the damage your buffalo has done!”
“It can’t have been in there for long; it was in my own field just now!” said Dhané.
“I don’t know anything more about it, but I’m going to get the mukhiya to fine you for this. You’ll have to pay whatever he decides.”
“All right, all right, there’s no need to get so excited, Damai! If it’s destroyed your crop I’ll repay you!”
“Do you think you can still talk down to me like that when your buffalo has ruined me? I’m going to the mukhiya right now!” Leuté strode off. Very soon he returned with the mukhiya and several other men, and they went over to Leuté’s buckwheat field, taking Dhané with them.
There was a ravine between Dhané’s and Leuté’s fields. The far wall of the ravine, on Leuté’s side, was very high, and cattle and buffaloes were unable to climb into Leuté’s field. But Dhané’s buffalo had followed the ravine right down to the main path and had then gone around to get into Leuté’s large terraced field, where it had destroyed roughly half the buckwheat. It was resolved that Dhané should pay a fine of three mohars.14 He was made to promise to pay within ten days, and a written record was made of this. When they had secured Dhané’s mark on the paper, the mukhiya and the other men returned to their homes.
Haay, the ways of fate are strange! One afternoon in the burning sun of Chait15 the buffalo came staggering into the cowshed. Dhané came down from the yard and was about to pat it when he noticed that it bore some bruises, which he guessed had been caused by some blows from a stick. He was speechless. But what could a poor man like Dhané do? Slowly he muttered, “Who hit you like this? You must have got into someone’s crops. That’s just how it is.” The buffalo’s womb had been injured, and four days later its calf was stillborn.
1 Phagun: mid-February to mid-March.
2 Baidar is probably a corruption of the word bahidar and is defined by Turner as “clerk, writer” (1930:459). The baidars fulfilled an important role in village communities in eastern Nepal, acting as advisers to village headmen on legal issues and drafting documents for them.
3 A proverb meaning that livestock can never be a sound or permanent investment because of its vulnerability to disease, old age, natural calamities, and so on.
4 In the old currency system, an anna was one-sixteenth of a rupee.
5 Dhané is the diminutive form of Dhan Bahadur’s name, and the name is chosen ironically: dhan means “wealth” and dhané means “wealthy one”.
6 Cowrie shells were a common form of currency in rural areas of Nepal before the economy became centralized and monetized.
7 Nepali prose narratives such as this switch between present and past tenses more frequently than an English translation can reflect. The present tense is often used to depict physical settings or to analyze psychologial or emotional conditions, producing a period of reflective stillness in the text, while the events of the story are usually recounted in the past tense. In this text, the present tense is also sometimes used to recount the unfolding of events, and this is reflected in the translation as far as possible. There are a few instances, however, where a paragraph begins to describe events in one tense and then switches to another for no apparent reason: the translation departs from the original in such instances so that this switching between tenses (which can be confusing in English prose) does not occur within the body of a single paragraph.
8 The baskets (doko) are carried on the back and shoulders and secured by a strap (namlo) around the forehead. The ghum is a boat-shaped covering made of interlaced bamboo strips that protect its carrier from the rain.
9 Kahila means “Fourth Eldest Son.” Very few characters in this novel are addressed by their given names, and this reflects colloquial speech, in which kinship terms and birth-order names are used much more commonly. The birth-order names that occur in this novel are Kancha (m), Kanchi (f): “Youngest”; Kahila (m): “Fourth Eldest”; Sahinla (m): “Third Eldest”; and Jetha (m), Jethi (f): “Eldest.” A dhami is a shaman or diviner.
10 Bankalé: a malevolent forest spirit.
11 The Damai are an artisanal case who traditionally work as tailors. They occupy a low position in the caste hierarchy.
12 “Jadau” is a deferential greeting used by lower castes when addressing a member of a higher caste (Turner 1930:207). Leute’s use of this form of greeting would appear to contradict the author’s claim that he “did not need to defer to anyone”: the inference is perhaps that the status acquired by birth remains a more powerful factor than any status acquired through wealth. Alternatively, in view of the ensuing tirade, it could also be construed as sarcasm.
13 Bulls are not generally confined but permitted to wander at will and are often held up as symbols of lustfulness and irresponsibility.
14 A mohar is half of one rupee.
15 Chait: mid-March to mid-April.