Two Women and the Girl

Two Women and the Girl

“They cannot expect me to carry them like toddlers now in their twenties!”

Prabha was walking beside the Ghantaghar, the Clock Tower, with her school-time friend and colleague Binita.  Binita couldn’t miss the sincere affectation in Prabha’s voice and did it justice with her seemingly assenting silence. The two women in their late thirties walked on the raised pavement instinctively skipping jagged pavestones and meager puddles, their polythene bags of vegetables dangling, hooked to their alert fingers.

Now as the rush-hour bulge in the day’s lower end was petering out, the sun sailing away unseen dimmed the not-so-far-off hills. Now that they had bought for their dining table whatever groceries they felt desirable at reasonable bargain. Now that they could let their slouching minds perching on their relaxed motions to be unhinged from the puncutalizing pull of the office. Now that it was easy to extrapolate to oneself on uneasiness. Now that they could really talk of caring with care.

“When will his final term be over, Alok’s?” Binita tried to engage herself seriously. She felt, it was required to be an active listener; she morphed forthwith and effectually into one.

Prabha brushed it aside. "Oh! It'll be over this Dashain early"—meaning Alok, her only child, 21, would take his exams before the month-long Dashain vacation and, possibly, get his results after the festival was over. "It’s the attitude . . . it's his demeaning disdainfulness . . . he's like it is all stand and take-off for him in the world. And I'm all idiocy and wimping with off-color obsolescence. He doesn't hate my . . . astuteness, he disdains it. And his father looks at him with silent towering admiration, towering continually, against his shortishness. In all our youth I never felt he'd be so fickle in his judgments. I wonder if a man can melt all his solidity and vitality and let it flower in his seed! It is all so stupid, always being old and not getting anything done right, and losing interest in how to."

Binita knew what this it's all so stupid meant. It was one of the codes the strict survival of which made their friendship subsist for nearly three decades. It meant not to intercept. It meant you had to believe that the spell of sentiment was not going to last for long. Wait and listen, it meant, for a while.

"Just yesterday, he said he'd have to travel. He had to take up on experiencing. Only then could he know what his real calling was. Then his choice would be a free and life-fulfilling one. Can you believe it? Life-fulfilling. Where from does he get so much confidence to churn out such phrases? 

"First he left engineering and joined journalism. Now he is almost a Master of English Literature. He has almost turned my and his father's collection of novels and poetry upside down. He won't take up reporting just yet. He'll travel in our expenses. And his father isn't fumed at all. Now it gets me to think I should have had more children. That could have made him think about forcing his prodigal alter-ego out, don't you think?"

Binita was amused and surprised. "By god", she said, "You say it so surely. I married almost five years after you. That was normal, I waited for my parents to strike a fair deal and you brokered your own and that too early. Anyway, your husband and you stuck at it well. Now I have three children. And you're already making me nervy to think about what I'm to look forward to now that Anita is almost out of school."

Prabha became really animated. "How I forget, have you decided to have Anita transferred to another school? I think you said Baghmati Academy, didn't you?"

Anita, Binita's eldest child, who was at the last year of school had been badgering her parents to transfer to the posh Baghmati Academy because her three best friends were to go there apparently. But Binita suspected it wasn't enough of her reasons to want that.

"Her father made a good use of his professional acumen. He did one of his real talks with his offspring. That conference insistently excluded me but once it was over and the two came out of her room, she was no more obstreperous and grumbling. When at mealtime the father said," Friends come and go but not family", Anita shook her head like a disciple in awe. They can be such actors in the house sometimes, you see. But may be for my readiness to receive their every frivolity with a serious face that allows them that. Even in school I would let you talkative guys to tower over me and most often it would be about whether or not it was stupid of a certain girl to have salad for Tiffin for a whole week." Binita's vexation was surprisingly clear. This made Prabha guffaw. Binita joined in too.

"You remind me of the little us. But you're not telling me something, isn't it?" Prabha now turned Probing.

"Look Prabha, you were a smart girl and now you are smart too. You charted a course of life which is exemplary of a woman who has self-respect; you defied your oppressive family and justified your freedom by marrying out on your own. It looked scary and shocking but it turned out it wasn't. Given the times, it might have been the only thing one could do for oneself. But I remained sweet even when what I felt was very less so. I grinned and smiled and thought I gave the family a reason for grinning and smiling and that there was a final justification of it all. But marriage changed the norms and the game. My husband was in all respects a person one could boast of, he still is. And I had children. Not just one like you and others, but three. Three in a row. It was like I was born thrice over in those five or six years. 

"What I was or thought for myself to be before that became a distant memory. And when at some moments it was all clear, it seemed silly when mothering was so palpable. And then it would fell so terrible to think I was lapsing into the ancient mold of woman. Time to time when I saw you getting on with your university education, with a husband and a son, and even taking up a job, it was difficult to explain myself to me as simply as what life had meant at school — to study to be a success."

"But still you haven't told me where your anxiety lies. I think I can understand that. When you possibly saw my life as rosy as you just said, I was going through the hardest phase. But it will be unfair, though, to call it hardest. I owe much to that phase. Being a modern woman—if that makes you any better as a person— in Nepal was my explanation of myself to me as it were, so to speak." Prabha spoke with as much levity as she could lend to her voice.

"The thing is I had Anita first. A girl. Then boys, Prabal and Prakit. While I was still tendering over Prakit, Anita was already menstruating. She grew so much a Daddy's Girl while I've virtually never left the house. Now she worries me. She is constantly on the telephone. Her father shrugs it off with a laugh and an occasionally satirical jibe. And thinks he's done enough to notify her of his knowing. She might make friends with boys is nothing to worry about. But I couldn't let myself keep mum when something of a sort made her think of changing her school. Her self-assurance in realistically thinking it a possibility— it served as an eye-opener, I guess, that I've not known my daughter at all. But she has grown up so different, and so fast." Binita heaved a premature and so short a sigh that Prabha knew she wasn't over yet. "How can you talk so naïve ?"Prabha felt like saying but she knew better, knew that such an interposition could jeopardize the flow altogether and much that would better be said would be left unsaid. "People are always so unknowable, but you know that. Even you were deceptive towards your parents when you were young, you just said. Not a matter of conscious or unconscious effort. It is just that it has to be. That deception is no one's fault, if you ask me. The deceived are unable to get that you might be able to show or there will be so much to disapprove of. And what with the special situation of the Generation Gap. To talk of the ever lying rift between people, it is even stupid to mention. Who doesn't understand it? And still we live with self-deception. We try to believe we know, we understand and eventually, unconsciously keep a safety vaulve where we can feel wronged. Of course I'm not being very partivular about what you said you recently felt about Anita. She is good— nice girl! In many ways, I feel she doesn’t show a lumpy mind, amorphous, brooding, —and untamable, surely."

"She is polygonal. But her edges keep on sharpening and blunting with her moods. And the scale keeps on expanding. At least that much I find palpable presently." Both the women laughed now. They had come across the walk-over hub at Ratnapark. People walked loosely on the pavement but still jostling by them, for little clusters of them were sporadically let out by vehicles at the stop. Beside them the iron-bar fence that bordering the shabby and greenish public park ran along and soon curved in a rectangle with their motion. The tarmac and trees were now exuding coolness as the deepening evening accompanied them.

Occasionally they came across a pani-puri vendor surrounded by girls in very short shorts making much of the citric-infused crunch-balls. By the time they had walked over the length of Tundikhel and turned corner, it was dark. People were thinning down but the lights came out bulkily. Across, the New Road bazaar came glossily romping into their eyes that chose not to patronize it for all its glamour. They continued to walk on this side of the pavement where from one of the exits from the ground little boys were sauntering out with cricket bats and wickets, their play over with the sun. still it was time too early for the stars and the moon to be addressed their overdue. Vapor lights blazed too near and overhead. The road seemed to swoon with so much light.

"O your kurta looks absolutely dazzling!" Binita smiled at the compliment. She had had it tailored just the earlier weekend. The gold plated entwines and emerald tasseled neckline was complemented by road-marker light-gold stripes running down in broad parallels to the lower hemline; and little crystal starlets made it look like an Olympian marathon track littered after the ceremony. The pattern was distinctly beautiful in the brocade-like green cloth. "You'll notice its shine ever more as we step inside." She cheerily caught Prabha's bare hand and led her across the moving autorickshas, scuttling the momentum into the dazzling mall. It was a new one, for them, Kathmandu Mall. While everyone from teenager to menopausal women talked of whatever trifle they'd bought there, they had been waiting for an occasion to buy something themselves too. To have had bought something was necessary, if not the something was really needed. On this they concurred in thought but it took a whole year for them to concur in going there. And now it was they were plunging into the thick of the to-be-special evening.

 White mercury lights glinted off the hard and slippery floor and the clacking of steps was muffled by a conundrum of feet, each pair producing its own voice. They moved from one store to the next not knowing what to do. Suddenly they found themselves making efforts at being ahold of their previous frame of mind. Prabha stepped into a shoes store where the price tags on the walled-over shelves made them cringe. Chic and untouchable. They felt their bags, now bulging with the vegetables they'd stuffed pell-mell into before entering the mall, deficient. Prabha remembered watching a news report, in CNN or BBC she couldn't be sure, showing severely malnourished children, their eyes sunken deep in their cranial sockets, their bellies bulging out like that of a distended belly of a woman well-matured in her pregnancy, looking at their white-skinned saviors with unfathomable countenances. Just as they were stepping out into the passage, she noticed a young girl in a sleek and tight-fitting top, which was yellow, assessing the kinds of goods the sight of which made her flush all over. Binita, unaware of her friend's stupefaction by her side, softly remarked," O there lies the sex-shop." The girl came over to the counter, paid the bill, clutched the plastic bag that seemed to contain something light and walked out into the passage. As she saw Prabha standing before her, she looked amazed, and said cheerily," Hi auntie! So nice to see you! How is Alok?" Binita couldn't help noticing the length of her shorts that barely came over her hips and were tantalizing exposed to intrigue a well-seated mind.

Prabha was at pains to match the girl's brisk felicity. "O he is fine. He is going to the north-western regions in Karnali this weekend. I think he'll work as community-based social worker for six months before the NGO assigns him with other responsibilities . . . here, of course." She was surprised at the quantity of information she gushed out. Was she nervous? A mere youngster, her son's age, was making her so? It was so disquieting and she tried to make it up as a normal conversation and giggled (it was her girlish one, that she always brought up whenever she had to handle an awkward conversation with a you-know-I'm-not-so-naïve-ish touch) and said with apparent self-reprobation," O I feel so guilty to feel sad for him. You know city-bred and insulated so much from country hardships! But all the year round I've nagging to myself and no less to him that he must get out. Er . . . what are you shopping then?" she wished she had not inquired thus. Unnecessarily, she realized later, she felt the need to emasculate it. "I mean you must be looking out for bags, or things you know, girls look for." The girl could have been surprised by her hitherto unseen articulateness but she remained leveled in her initial disposition.  "O yes, I was buying some toys and things, auntiee. Alok can alwayzz  do well anywhere. Just as I've always said." Prabha remembered distinctly when Alok had brought her home one day and in the kitchen where Ankita had rushed behind her to be of help she had said of him quite matter-of-factly to Prabha's wonder, "I'm confident Alok will be a high-achieving man." She had had to accede with a humble nod and try to inquire more about her. How she wondered at her frankness, how times were changed, how Alok could gush about his girlfriend so incessantly and how all of a sudden he'd declared it like declaring the onset of power outage that it was all over.

"Make sure to drop in sometimes." She erred again. She blushed, it seemed to her, for her son.

Ankita, privileged to be tactful, said," Erm . . . why not?" rapidly and smiled a perfect TV smile with her pinkish lips. As soon as she parted with the duo, Prabha hurried out of the corridor and to Binita's wonder looked intent to rush back home. When Binita was just about to reproach her friend, now at the bottom steps of the outer stoop, she saw an even perplexing Relief painted over her face that she held herself back. She didn't inquire and Prabha rightly understood it was waiting. Waiting to let her tranquilize and explain.

They hailed a taxi, hopped in and cozied themselves in the double seats. "I forgot to ask what happened of her going-abroad plans. She said she wished to study something like Commercial Psychology. . ." Binita tried to sound confused," What are you talking about?" This was an invitation to commence or to let go, either way.

Prabha began to recount the delicate progression of her son's love affair in all the you-knows and such zig-zags and now dated mortification, as people at such times are wont to use, as the cab speeded away in the pot-holed street like a careful ant locomoting through the grassy trails in its routine searching and rapid-sailing manner.