Memory Lane: Delicate Sound of Thunder!
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I closed my eyes at her request. She gently plucked one of the eye lashes from my cheek that had given away.
"Tero parela katro laamo, keti ko jasto!" She exclaimed as she turned around, fidgeted with her fingers until she was ready and turned around to face me. She pressed her hands together firmly and spread out her doublet of fingers and motioned with her head for me to start guessing.
"umm!" I thought of my possible future aims rubbing the sweat that oozed out my nose ." Engineer, Pilot, Teacher,
Peacemaker, Driver" I assigned her fingers from thumb to the little one.
"Doctor khai ta?" she seemed surprised. "Dr. Mama jasto chai banna man lagdaina?" She motioned her head to the adjoining neighbor's veranda who was a hot shot dentist.
"hyaa! Jo pani doctor~ chado khol na!" I pressed on impatiently. Reluctantly, her fingers gave away and I was thrilled to find the eye lash tucked neatly between her tiny ring fingers.
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Peacemaker bhanya chai k ho ni?" my sister wondered. Our eyes both followed the sound of the ruffling in the plum tree in our bari below that lay next to the wall of the gully. Few kids around our age were hurling stones with all their might. The plums were not ripe yet, but we cared less about the plums.
"Peacemaker bhaneko rocket banaune haroo!" I boasted after a while not confessing to the influence of the recent movie that was shown in hostel.
"Tihar ko jasto rocket banaune ?" She leaned on to the railing of our chaut next to me beholding the distant Dhobi khola and Kalo Pul.
"Hyaa hoina! sachikai rocket. prithvi bhanda baira jane rocket!" I reminded her the gravity of my lofty aim.
"ani kina naam peacemaker ta?" my sister sometimes had a question-pox.
".........Peacemaker bhanekai......" The percussion of the damaru cut our conversation short. We both sprang up in delight and headed downstairs in one breath. This was what we had been waiting for all afternoon.
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I watched him from our main gate make his way towards the end of the long gully and reach the dead end. He stopped his percussion, looked around, put down his sack, erased the sweat from his face stretching his rugged shirt, reloaded the sack in his shoulders and began to make his way back, playing his damaru on his right hand. "Makuri! farki sakyo, chado garr!" I shouted at the top of my lungs without taking my eyes off him.
She screamed back and within less than a minute, she was at the main door with some worn out slippers. "Yetti le pugcha hola?" She asked panting heavily. Seeing the commotion, Fupu, who was manuring her favorite flowers and babysitting us for the day made her way towards the gate as the vendor stopped before us. He put his sack and the basket full of toys down as our eyes grew bigger.
"K chaiyo sauji? " He began to untie his sack as I held my breath. My sister and I had both heard numerous urban legends of sack full of children's heads. I inched in closer under the vigilance of our beloved fupu and noticed all he had were more worn out slippers and plastic.
Relieved, we began to dig his basket of toys to which he protested vehemently.
"K chaiyoo bhannus na! di halchu ni sauji" Finally we saw what we had wanted for a long time. that one shiny irresistible "dur bin"
At first he said two pairs of slippers were not enough for the most expensive toy he had, but he couldn't withstand our pungent pleadings, and finally, he gave in. We were ecstatic. I quickly held it up towards the sun and peeked through it. There were two familiar actor and an actress: Kumar Gaurab and Tina Munim!
"Oys! ma ni herne ni" my sister began to grow impatient.
"Ek chin na" I maneuvered my favorite new toy away from her. Unfazed, I glared at that long flowing hair and the irresisitble face. She became my new best actress for a long time to come.
"Timi haroo ek chin eklai basdai garna sakchau? " Fupu gently nudged us inside the house "la tato tato dudh ra biskut khai hala ta" She took us to the kitchen and poured us two glasses of warm milk and opened the glucose biscuit packet. "ma tala Naran Than samma pugera auchu. La la! dhoka soka layera basa. Natra pheri Jogi le lai-jala hai!"
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No sooner had Fupu left, the torrential monsoon arrived at a frenetic pace. The skies began to turn gray, the winds howled, and the big drops of rain began to fall one after the other beating down hard on the newly sprouted corns and the flowers alike in the bari. We rushed from room to room closing all the the windows protecting the inside from potential wayward rainfall. We were the only school in the valley at the time that got nearly a week off during monsoon season each year. My sister had school that day but she had her usual headaches, the ones she usually got when I came back for the holidays, and for some reason, maami cut her some slack that day probably to keep me company.
There we were, sitting by the window pane watching the rain flood our little bari making myriad little streams. Within a few minutes, the downpour transformed to a drizzle and sun pierced through the darkest blanket of clouds.
"Oys! Indreni Indreni!" my sister exclaimed pointing to one in the sky and we both began to sing in chorus. "gham pani gham pani syal ko bihe, kukur janti biralo baun!"
"Jai Sambho!Baba ko kuch dedo!!" A rugged voice at the main door startled us. With ashen face, dreadlock hairstyle, orange clothing with a trident in one and a conch in the other hand, the monk looked horrifying to us.
"Aghori baba raicha!" my sister exclaimed and pulled me down the window before he could locate us .We crouched down to the floor as we heard him blow the conch. Fupu used to tell us that these babas blew human bones of dead people. We remembred Maami's advice of not to let any Jogis into the house for they could hypnotize and take us to India and sell our kidneys and so forth. Our hearts pounded harder as we killed time under the window pane. After a while, convinced he had moved to the next house, I mustered enough courage to slowly move up and peek from the window. Horror set in when I realized, he was looking straight at me. He made a futile attempt to fend the metal "chukkul" from outside. I got down in a second, signaled my sister to follow me and we tiptoed on four limbs to the next room and shut the door, and drew the curtains. He was still mumbling something, but it got lost in the wind and our fright.
We waited on the floor of the dark room with our bodies shaking in fear. To add to our misery, we heard the wooden main door of the house creak open. Oh darn! we had only closed "jaali ko dhoka" and completely forgotten about the main door. I held my sister's hand who was cringing in fright as we were sure the aghori baba had made it inside the house. In my last minute ditch, I, with all my might found the nearest chair pushed it against the door, climbed up on it, and locked the hinge shut.
"Oys! kehi garr na" my sister squealed softly. The
Peacemaker began to scrutinize the room in desperation, and desperate times call for desperate measures. To our luck, my eyes struck on a rusty iron that was laying under the table. I quickly grabbed it, pulled its cord and asked my sister to plug it in. We had found a weapon to defend ourselves for the worst case scenario. However, when I felt the iron, it was cold. Time ticked by, the creaking of the wooden door outside was teasing us going back and forth, but the iron remained cold. In the rage of panic, I pulled the plug out of the three hole pin, checked it, and plugged it back in. The nightmare of titanic proportion was setting in our lives, as the rustic iron that our family had trusted for years malfunctioned in the most inopportune time.
"Oys!Makuri" Dhoka khola ta! Kaha chau timi haroo?" Our maami's anxious voice relieved us from the core as she pushed on the metal door outside. We got up, climbed up the chair, unlocked the room door, ran outside and noticed the wooden black door was still creaking back and forth in the wind. We unlocked the jaali ko dhoka, ran to the main metal door outside, pulled the "Chukkul" open and greeted maami at the door. Seeing our fright, she wondered if something had gone wrong. We relayed our story in one breath.
"Tyo Iron kina nikaleko huh?" my mom gave us a quizzical look once we were inside the house. When we relayed her the truth, her face began to frown in displeasure at first and an ample relief.
"Malai thaha thiyo!!" We followed her as she went into the corridor and turned the meter handle to "ON" position. "Timi haroo le yestai garlau bhanera, power off garera gayeko thiyen"
She reached her bag, pulled out the newspaper and gave it me to read the front page "tyo padd ta oys! euta kasko ghar ma ho, aroo le angoor chorla bhanera current rakheko, afnai choro marecha" I began to read the newspaper article . Maami always had incredible instincts.
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The rain had left two big irregular puddles in the chaut. I began to poke the water with a stick seeing our own reflections ripple in the light wind and the evening sun. The events of the day had left me, the peacemaker innovator, scared and embarrassed. My sister got attached with the durbin. Kumar gaurab became her favorite actor without actually seeing him act in a movie.
"Oyss!" She motioned towards the dhobi khola still looking through the dur bin, "Tero Rocket, tyaha bata udaye hudaina?" she pointed to the barren land next to the dhobi khola where in a few years' time the biggest cinema hall of KTM was to be built. "Aan" i held my composure "Rocket pani kai cheu ma udauna parcha, ani aago kaum huncha" i tried to recall the events of the fading movie.
"tara Dhobi khola jado ma ta sukcha ni? ani kata bata pani lyauchas?" my sister's questions began to annoy me however, the ruffling of the plum tree distracted us once more. The same kids, our age, were still hurling stones at the immature plums with all their might. Few hit their target, and a handful of unripe plums fell in the gully. The children scurried after them, picked them up and gleefully dispersed towards the dead end of the gully. Thankfully, there were no wires in our trees in the bari. We hated plums anyways. From afar, we could make out our fupu coming back from Naran Than, with prasad in her hands. That seto guliyo prasad. As soon as our eyes caught that, we ran down instantly erasing the delicate sound of thunder we had narrowly escaped that afternoon.
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