The Ladder

'Milan, go down and open the door. Baa has returned.'
'Milan!'
A hundred things wander in my mind. I will not go, it takes an effort. No, I will not go because I cannot.
I have to, though. I'll get a scold serving otherwise.
But I simply cannot. How can I? I have to get downstairs first...
(the ladder)
...I do not want to go downstairs. I hate it. I hate the ladder. Let mother think I did not hear her.
I scratch the wooden railing on my window aimlessly.
But mother knows I heard her. She's just in the other room. How can I not hear her?
I will make some noise. That way, she might think she was not heard. I will scratch this railing harder. No, I'll open this steel cupboard, its doors yawn loudly everytime I try to open it. Ok. Mom, I hope you're listening to this. You see, this noise is too loud, you might have been saying something, but it easily would have been drowned by this groaning door.
'Milan....E-Milannn!'
No, this is a stupid idea. What is there that can be done? Baa is outside, yes. He has to come in, and he does not want to be left there for a long time. But no, the ladder. The ladder, I can't. I simply can't. But Mom. She wants me to. And she knows. I am obligated now.
It's so complicated. Why don't they understand? It's because of the ladder. I can't go downstairs. But Baa will wring my ears later. There will always be later. It's inevitable. I have to go.
It's always like this. There are so many things I have to consider while doing anything. My face is getting hot and sweaty. I simply cannot tell anybody, because I will not be able to explain.
I'll just simply not go. I'll deal with the consequences later. Now is the problem, I wish I was in the past, or that this present has already happened.
Why can't she go herself? Why do I have to go every time? Why don't they realize my problem in going downstairs. Opening the door is not a problem. Getting downstairs is...
Footsteps approaching the room. The sound of the hasp being turned and squeaked. The crack as the doorflaps are unlocked. The creak of the opening flaps and an angry foot stepping across the threshold.
Ok, panic now. Panic Now! Run.
I shelf all my problems and leap through the narrow space between my mom and the right side of the doorway...
(a whiff of coriander. Tomato chutney for dinner)
Mumbling 'I am going, I am going ni...'
I bound down the narrow ladder to the groundfloor below, three rungs at a time. Rushing mind. The thing. The thing under the darkness of the ladder. I can nearly feel its cold grasp through the gaps between the rungs where the wooden boardings have come apart. Yes, it has been busy prying and tearing the boardings open. On my next step, it'll grab my left ankle. I don't know, it'll probably pull my whole body into its dark realm, and that is simply terrorizing. It does not make any sound- after all, it's just a shadow. I hate it, I hate it from my core. Why doesn't Mua realize this? Why can't she tend to a matter as simple as this?
My left ankle nearly missing the last rung and the leg bowing violently. The knee buckling crazily, but somewhat holding me in place, my left turning out like a bent ruler.
I then jump on my right foot onto the ground so fast my body didnt get a chance to put all its weight on my left leg.
(weepy relief)
(thundering heart)
Control slowly coming back to my mind, I reach the door handle...Baa. He's been there all the time, what will he think? Why I took so long a time to reach here, he won't understand...
I hurriedly open the door, straining my eyes beyond the towering figure of Baa towards the sunny sky and welcoming its rays to come inside and devour the thing under the ladder. I hardly register Baa ruffling my hair (his clothes as old as him and belonging to him like a second skin, and his unrelenting love showing through his creased face). My mind is soaked with the problem lurking in the depths of the dark. I hate uncle. I hate him for not listening to my plaintive cries for fixing the boardings, because it's getting stronger everyday and is feeding on my fear because why else do I feel its presence grow exponentially when I am uncertain and fearing, like a dog growling deeper once it senses the other entity beginning to cringe in fear and cower. Why won't uncle fix it, when it is eating on my heart. Pretty soon it'll be fearful enough to take his notice and then it might be too late and it might start to feed on his fear too who will save us then?
(alone)
I whirl around, and just in time see the last leg of Baa vanish into the first floor's landing...
Alone again, and now even worse- the thing is now awake and alert and it waits for me.
'Baaaa!!!'
Heart quailing and turning into butter, I cry and run up the rungs again, tears flying from my face like drops out of a squeezed lemon, my face and legs numb and heavy with fear. My little nape hairs rising and the skin on my arms and back crawling...
No. No. Gasp, no... the thing... the ladder thing...

A Slice of Memory

TYO HUV MYTA HUWOX OXTVUY...

It is funny how we prioritize memory. We sift through logically important pictures and retain apparently random ones. We are librarians of odd collections. Unalphabetized, unordered. Asynchronous, non-chronological.

I cannot forget these letters. A list of black letters on a white board in our school clinic. A simple eye test. For me it is much more- the image pressbuttons me through a flipbook of school memories.

The first thing I gather during my memory retrodrive is that I was about twelve when I first came across that board. And the second thing is the doctor.

The doctor. We believed that he shared his face with the English teacher and a contract worker at our school. He visited our school every month for mass checkups. During such events, among regular doctoric antics ('show your tonsils', 'breathe this way and that', 'let me tickle your chest'), he would choose his subject with indifferent randomness and deftly hook his forefinger onto the waistband of our P.E. Shorts. To our consternation, he would pull it to glance inside, and before the elastic snapped back to the waistskin, his hand would already be busy on a health report. Fury! He just peeked at our crotch and our vocabulary did not contain an appropriate opinion. What would we have said? “Doctor! But why the watchy-watchy below the tomachi?”

But his face would remain motionless. A dead face. Formidable. Definitely not somebody who welcomed a humor pill. No sir. He’s in his suit and tie, ‘scope, briefcase, and a full-grown moustache. A person too important for a jokey poke.

How is that possible though? We were in our adolescent primes. We were a wealth of variation, ranging from huge to tiny, fat to skinny, and clean to odious and filthy. All hell were breaking loose in our body- hairy patches everywhere, intermittent squeaks in our speech. Didn't Deadface see anything there that did not fit the body’s rest of geography?

So I gave him a feared reverence.

TYO... HUV... MYTA... HUWOX… OXTVUY. It had not taken me long to realize that all the letters were laterally invertible. Hardly waiting for Deadface’s cue, I would scoot over to where I could see the letters on the mirror on the opposite wall. I would read it dutifully, once for each eye. It was of no use because I could say it all with my eyes closed. My smartass mind would be whispering the answers: TYO… HUV… MYTA… HUWOX…

If only I could somehow peer into his face closelyand start chanting "TYO... HUV... MYTA HUWOX... OXTVUY". A friendly invitation to laugh indulgently. He would probably slip into a smile and bellow from his tummy.No more deadface charade, you know?

Drunken Gazal

Listening drunkenly to the lazed gazal tune, he turns a blind eye to the direct sun in his eyes. Even the fly perched majestically on the silk of his nodding tie could not get on his nerves. Sighing contentedly, he feels vibrated at harmony with the hum of the sensual female voice, and lets his hands float on the wafting wind.

When I am like this, he exclaims to himself, I feel as impulsive as a dog.

As if to prove himself, he suddenly breaks his momentum and sits down cross-legged in the middle of the road, his earphone still filled with sultry croonings. Not even to the whooshing truckload of policemen (that leaves his shirt and tie flapping crazily) does he decide to bother.

Gently, he realizes that he does not feel any necessity to reach his office today.

My Neighborhood

I live in Kupondol, about 40 meters from the banks of Bagmati, and maybe about 200 meters east from the Kupondol-Thapathali bridge. We initially shared a dusty road that branched from the main road towards the 'holy' river. There was a major road-making project that left us with a bumpy dusty/muddy road all along the banks of the river. And since some influential person shares the road as well, the road was recently tar-topped.

Explosive Sneezer

Our neighborhood is quite an unhappening place. Our house faces a pink house. Nobody lives there except for a housekeeper. From what I hear from my room, he:

1) Sneezes violently, much like: hhHHhaintshyaa!

As if his oesophagus just exploded. Sometimes when it is very quiet in the evenings, the explosion can be quite startling.

2) Has a special liking for folk music. He uses a special device, which I imagine to be a folded piece of paper or leaf (through which he probably blows air to make that sound- I have yet to figure out how he alters the pitch).

The owner of the pink house stops by to check on things, annoyingly at 11 pm on his bike. He has a habit of revving up the engine, blowing his horn in a staccato and bumping the bike onto the clangy iron gate to hurry the keeper to let him in. After a minute or two, I hear the rumble of the opening gates, and the habitual exclaiming of the owner "Been sleeping, budho? Tyattika ber horn bajayeko sunena”. I at times feel tempted to remind him, maybe in a gentler tone, that I for one heard him right.

The owner runs the billboard/hoarding board business. You can make out some remnants on the lawn. We also hear the incessant sounds of drilling welding and hammering. And the workers either start work late in the afternoon or work till late- whichever of the two, they’re quite busy until it is too dark to work further.

The White House

The pink house faces a large white house. Ok- this owner of the house is quite a character. He used to host gambling activities, and engage in loud brawls, uttering foul words that were embarrassing to hear. Although, he has gotten quite tamer. However, he is still far from indiscreet. And he is obsessed with the timings of water supply. He is the first to know in the 'tole' when ‘water has come’, and reminds everyone by liberally hosing his terrace. And his current agenda is cultivation; he has cleared a portion of adjacent unused land which belongs to Prasuti Griha. The land is overgrown with inviting marijuana bushes. One thing about him that I abhor is his burning of his waste (including plastic) in his own compound. Arghh! It’s worse than being next to a smoker. I considered confronting him, but quickly thought against it. After all, he is one hell of a loudmouther. I hate being yelled at.

The Red House

The White house is abutted on the other side by a red-bricked house. This house clearly has more servant-girls (or as my Marketing instructor liked to euphemize it, “domestic helps”) than the members in the family. The owner owns a Proton and also likes to honk the horn until one of the girls rushes to open the gate.

Music

There is a bhajan mandali somewhere along the banks of the river, the exact location of which has still confounded me. If I do locate the place, I will most certainly wring the necks of at least one of those harmonically challengeds. Picture this scenario, every evening: a guy proceeds to send his eulogy to God through his harmonium, by playing the same tune over and over. To gather a wider audience, he employs a loudspeaker. I hear the voice loud and clear. Why couldn’t it be Ani Choying Dolma? And I end up tormenting myself by unconsciously playing the annoying tune in my head repeatedly.

The Smell

In winter, Bagmati slows down greatly until she's scarcely flowing at all. During that time, and when the wind flows in the right direction, we have quite an enriching olfactory experience. However, during monsoon, she menstruates and gets rid of all the foul substances deposited in her bed, and the smell disappears.

So this is the place in which I grew up- I have spent about 14 years here. You might now exclaim “Ah! So that’s how he got his oddity!”.

A view of one of the eastern hills from our terrace right after a downpour.