"Renegade'96"

There were three people in the southeast corner. Two men not yet middle-aged and a woman, younger still. As soon as I passed through the door my eye fixed first of all on the woman among the three. She was toying with mounds of soft chowmein. When my attention turned to the men, I saw that they were blissful with vodka’s intoxicating heat.

I saw down on a chair near the door. The rest of the restaurant was entirely empty- like a despondent person’s mind. At the counter the proprietress was nodding off. That motion of hers looked a bit uncomfortable. Anyway, she had no interest in her duty toward the three in the corner. Business activity had not made any impact on the two waiters standing by the opening to the kitchen either. In other words, the situation created a heavy burden in my mind alone. I was stopping under its weight.

My mind was despondent. Since morning my heart had been thudding. Why? Even I didn’t know. It’s like this with me sometimes. I‘ll be that despondent – just like s sentimental poet.

The hot weather was just over in the city. And about a month had passed now since the monsoon had ended. Already, after four in the morning, fog had begun to waft in the alleys. There was a feeling of sharply increased cold in the interior of the restaurant.

In comparison with other places in the city, though, this alley remains somewhat cool even in times of unbeatable heat. A cold damp and a special kind of smell always envelop it. I’ve known its atmosphere for many years; I have a deep friendship with it. Whenever I have to go out of the city intense recollection of this smell comes to me and seriously affects my nervous system. Like a character bereft of lover or wife, I become restless. Thus I can never sleep here in the afternoon.

But why is the proprietress nodding and waking, nodding and waking so uncomfortably? For a long moment I was bothered by this useless question.

“Is there milk brother?”, I asked the waiter who stood mechanically before me.

“Milk?”

“Yes, milk”, I said firmly.

“This is bar, sir. There’s no milk in a bar.”

“No milk? Then what is there? Is there tea then?”

“There’s vodka, Khukuri rum, Challenger, Bagpiper.”

“And what else?”

“There is also Tongba.”

“No dairy milk?”

“That there is not.”

The other waiter, who stood near the hole in the wall that opened to the kitchen, heard this dialogue and was smiling. He’d been around here for awhile, and so he knew me. But this boy was new.

“Are you new here?”

“Yes sir”

“When did you come?”

“Just a month ago sir.”

“Ah ….in that case, just bring a glass of water.”

“Sir, won’t you drink Tongba?”, said the waiter again, after putting the water on the table.

“I can’t drink it, this city Tongba” I answered in the tones of the grousing old woman in the spice company ad. But the waiter near the kitchen began to grin.

“Hey, cut the laugh ….shameless ass” I threatened him- in joking language but as if serious. After that he sealed his lips over the rest of his laughter.

The new waiter got out of there and, showing his discomfort, stood close to the old waiter. He did not understand the city. The city is not easily understood. It takes a long time. Moreover, for the poor this understanding amounts to a Mahabharata.

The three people in the corner were really getting into drunken displays of emotion now. Vodka intoxication was steadily awakening sharp awareness of their manhood within the male pair and its refraction could clearly be seen reflected in that woman. In this restaurant such happenings are considered commonplace. The regulars here are mostly lovers who can mortgage their own honor, or urban prostitutes who defy honour. Yet the restaurant owner is not as ill-reputed as the restaurant. In sherpa society to set up a hotel s no sort of immoral occupation. Furthermore, the owner is a person who, after working for sometime in a social-democratic party, has just joined a communist party.

When the telephone’s shrill bell suddenly sounded at the counter the proprietress, who had long been nodding and waking, was scared out of her wits. She rose in a panic from the chair and rushed toward the telephone. “Hallo!” No sound came from the other end. Irritated, she slammed the phone down.

“Why are you dozing off, huh? Did the old man keep you up all night or what?” I said to the proprietress in a teasing way. But she just smiled and rushed off toward the bathroom.

Amid all this a middle-aged hill-style man carrying a cloth bag passed through the doorway. His attire of Kamij-suruwal and the salt- and –pepper beard growing in anarchic fashion on his face directly gave away his identity-he was a resident of some eastern hill village. His age might even be much less than I thought it. The dreadful poverty of the village and murderous privation that the body cannot endure make anyone old before their time. So then, how could he be the one expectation to this?

He stood a moment near the counter, confused. The proprietress had still not returned from the bathroom. After glancing around for a moment he began to look toward rear of the restaurant. It was a very spacious place, this restaurant. It’s possible that there’s not even a library in the city that could hold so many people.

He first looked toward the corner. Then, acting a little ill at ease, he came and stood near me.

“Have a seat, why stand?”

“Where might Comrade Lakpa be?”

“What Lakpa?”

“Isn’t this his hotel?”

“Ah…Lakpa Sherpa. Is your home around Taplejung too or what?”

“Yes. It won’t do for me not to find him.”

Exhibiting great innocence, he began to look into my face.

“I haven’t seen Lakpa today either. Ask the proprietress when she comes. Sit down a moment though. Rest yourself.”

After my urging he was compelled to sit.

“So then, what business have you come to Katmandu on?”, I opened up the bundle of questions.

“I came to meet Comrade Navin.”

“Who’s comrade Navin?”

“Now, what to say! That’s the name I know. During the panchayat regime he worked secretly in our district. He stayed many times in my house too. A very good person he was. I too did much service. The police were searching for him. I heard there was an order to shoot on sight. How many times he had to shit and piss inside the room. Without any disgust I would empty his chamber pot. But now, where is he….?”

“That’s many years ago though. It’s already nearly a decade since the panchyat fell. Now who can arrange for you to meet the one you call ‘Comrade Navin’? Who might remember now, this name given in the underground days?”

He was very encouraged by what answer I’d given after hearing his words. Rushing in his happiness he said, “What, do you work in the communist Party too?”

Seeing him preparing to rise from the chair, I said: “Don’t rush, don’t rush.”

“What level of the party do you work in?”

“I’m not a party worker. Until some days ago I was a correspondent for a private sector daily newspaper. Now, having been tossed out, I’m unemployed.”

After that he looked depressed.

“But still, I’m very interested in politics. Because of my profession too, I was compelled to know about it.” Intending to intervene in his depression, I kept on talking.

“Then you don’t know Comrade Navin, isn’t it so?”

“Why are you searching for Comrade Navin? Is it to get jobs for your children or what?” I asked this question thinking that he’d already passed the age for holding a position.

“They’re not children callable of holding a position, mine aren’t sir.”

After answering he looked extremely sentimental. In a moment, like a saturated clay water pot, his eyes wettened. Why was he sentimental? My heart refused to enter compassionately into the tangled events. I was in no way ready to make him suffer more by picking at his wounds. And then too, why carry another’s pain at a time when my own heart was as irregular as the pendulum of an old clock?

“If you want to meet comrade Navin go to the Balkhu office. In the party’s old records may be – who this Comrade Navin is, I mean”, I politely advised him.

“I went there. Yesterday morning before it had struck seven I arrived. The office wasn’t open. After waiting around for three hours the office finally opened. But the soldiers and office workers sitting there said there’s no one called Comrade Navin here, and not in our old records either. Saying ‘maybe in some other party’, they sent me away. I only knew him.”

“So, haven’t you asked the comrades of your district, ‘who is he, Comrade Navin?’?”

“No one gave a good answer. Now, Comrade Lakpa may know about this matter; otherwise- it can’t be discovered from others. Only here there’s one last hope.”

“Isn’t Lakpa a newcomer though? What might a new member, of all people, know about old matters? Who might that old history remain with now?” I expressed my doubt again.

Finally after such a long time, the proprietress returned to the counter. That middle-aged villager rose and mobbed toward the counter.

“Where’s Comrade Lakpa, sister?”

“He left for da district, first t’ing in da mornin”, she answered in sherpa style of speaking Nepali.

“Yesterday was da Contact Front ‘Lekshun, he sed. He won in da presdent , I hear. Feasted all night. Sang songs. And t’en, firs’ting in da mornin’, off to da hills.”

The villager again became baffled and began distractedly to look outside. After puzzling for a moment over the dilemma of whether or not to go outside he come over to me once again and sitting down, he said: “Why does Mahakali Treaty Have to be done, who knows? I wanted to hear it once from the mouth of Comrade Navin. But now, who can say where he is?”

I couldn’t understand at all whether this villager was wounded by or gloried in the Mahakali Treaty. I even asked a couple of questions to figure that out. But he just kept on constantly reciting “Comrade Navin, Comrade Navin…..”

“So long as I don’t hear Comrade Navin’s reasoning, how can I set out my own opinion?” Suddenly riled, he hurled this answer at me like a projectile.

You just carry on and on, saying “Comrade Navin, Comrade Navin….” At some point that secret name of an underground party leader will not have been saved amid the ruins of the underground times. Where within that party are you going to come across it now? And how long are you going to race around like this, as if insane, to get certificate saying whether the Mahakali Treaty was right or not?”

“Forgive me. I’m not in agreement with your views. Comrade Navin is the name of a god who resides in my soul. We were together during much hardship, many crises and many great difficulties. He is witness of my poverty and terrible hunger. How could Comrade Navin, strong advocate of democracy, nationalism and the people’s livelihood so easily forget Taplejung’s poor peasant Haribhakata karki in that way? If you’d been in that situation you’d think this way too. Understand?”

Finally I found out his name-Haribhakata Karki. He was very agitated. His eyes, which had been brimming awhile ago, were glistening again. Then he became very silent and, resting his elbows on the restaurant table, bowing his head, he began to ponder.

“Does Comrade Navin have no existence at all then, in this country?”

The noise from the southeast corner began to increase a bit again. Of the two, the short fat man looked very agitated. He was performing various shenanigans to show off that ‘I’m a big-time businessman of the city’. But from his planned exhibition you could tell-he’s a land-agent earning money handover fist like he’s just won the lottery. The main activities that he had just embarked on were to jump up, get over to the counter, make a phone call and then, returning to his place, to carry out a concerted campaign to win over the woman who was there.

This time too he rose and made it to the counter. And just like before he started to punch the English numbers stuck to the telephone.

“Hello!”

“…..”. What the answer was, I didn’t know.

“Listen up. Put a lock on those three phones. Don’t let anyone make call. All kinds of useless sons of bitches come to make calls. Unemployed idlers make me furious. Son of a bitch penny pinchers…. Understood? Today I may not make it there. The program is to go to Dhulikhel or Nagarkot around evening. If yesterdays client comes tell him to come at 10 o’clock tomorrow. Oh-and those phones-don’t let anyone touch them.”

After saying that much he returned to his own place.

“Sons of bitches can’t make two cents of profit.”

“Instead, coming around to make phone calls they just make a nuisance of themselves, see how it is, love?”, he added after sitting down cross legged and massaging the woman’s shoulder’s.

The other man who was there looked a little polite than the short fat one. His entire activity consisted in nodding his head. As I watched they finished off a half of vodka and moved on to another quarter.

“Sons of bitches carry on like it was their own father’s wealth. In the final analysis, I’m not their father though, am I now. Or how is it?”

The other man and the woman didn’t express any agreement to this outburst of this. Perhaps that burned him up-at that moment he shouted:

“What, you don’t believe it either? Eh Gope, you don’t believe it either or what? You ass, you’ve been to my office a thousand times.”

The woman definitely didn’t like this vulgar manner of Short-and-Fat’s. She signaled with her eyes to the one called ‘Gope’ to get up from there. In the same way he signaled to the waiter to bring the bill.

There was about a peg left in each of the two men’s glasses. Short-and-Fat was in favour of sitting for a long time yet, so he said: “What’s the rush all of a sudden, our car won’t come before five o’clock, isn’t that right? Why sit around making unnecessary small talk? Meantime come over to my office one time. Going here and there, doing this and that, it’ll be five before we know it.”

“What’s that I hear- I made unnecessary small talk? You son of a bitch Gope, what unnecessary small talk have I made? Did I talk about the Mahakali Treaty?”

“Who said you talked about the Mahakali Treaty? said the polite man with the idea of smoothing out the situation. But short-and-Fat paid no attention to this effort of his. Playing the classic drunkard he said-“Let it be dammed-Mahakali, Sahakali.”

Haribhakata, who had been sent into depression by the previous conversation, and had been sitting with his face down on the table, started up. He began peering toward the corner. Meantime, after dropping money on top of the bill the waiter had presented on a plate, those three walked out of there.

“Anyone at all will be like that after drinking”, Haribhakata politely commented.

“It’s not everyone who’s like that after drinking, its renegades who’ll be like that, understand?” A bit agitated, I expressed my own reaction.

“Renegades? Who is u calling a renegade? What – were those renegades?” ”Yes, among the crowd of renegades, those too were one kind of renegade. Renegades of ’96.”

I didn’t know if Haribhakata understood this talk or not. He was stymied by his own inner turmoil.

“Well then, I’ll be going too. If we meet again one day…..” Waving his hand, he went toward the counter and, taking leave of the proprietress, he excited.

After that I was alone in the restaurant. My solitude made the environment all the more uncomfortable. It seems the waiter who had just arrived fro the hills was made uncomfortable by me not eating anything too. He came over to me again and started to whine:

“Won’t you drink Tongba sir?”

“No Tongba. If you can bring it from outside, I’ll have a glass of milk.” Just as before I gave a withering reply and, taking a stale newspaper from my bag, I began to read.

Now the waiter was really confused. With a befuddled expression on his face he headed for the counter where the proprietress sat. But just like before, the proprietress was once again participating in the national program of nodding off.


(Translated by Mary Des Chene and Khagendra Sangraula)