I found one story, but in english. Original is always better. So, please buy the book if you can.
Sveta Bhairavi
- B.P. Koirala
It's a tale of a time long ago, as old as 35 years. I was around 10 or 11 years old at the time.
Rains over, the autumn season was just around. The giant Koshi river, after having devoured many homes and hamlets, humans and animals in the course of its flooding fury, was alowly shrinking back to its normal bounds. But the signs of its earlier riverine devastaion were till around in the shape of ponds and poodles, of swamps and soft earth…as if the Taandava dance of destruction was over, but the air was still thick with its reverberations. The earth looked as if she had jusk shaken-off the pangs of her pregnancy…as cold and wet. Butterflies of various hues were lightly fluttering here and there like some painted boats. One could experience a certain nip entering into the atmospphere. The wind-speed was soft and slow, enthusing people with spontaneous sportiveness. The paddy field had startted yellowing at places. Life was more at ease.
At the south-east corner of our kitchen-garden was located Lehala's tiny house. It was more of a shack rather than a homesetead. Lehala, a petty-famrmer of the Kewat tribe, lived in it with his lone daughter, Faaguni.
Faaguni must have been 16 years old. But while I sit to record events o so long ago, I feel it is almost futile to discuss Faaguni's age. That she was 16 may be a fiction of my own imagination alone - 35 years later today. Only that she wasn't a little girl, nor was she a mature maiden. But even in the pristine rural atmosphere of what for me was a golden village of childhood memory, innocent girls did show signs of youthfulnes and Faaguni couldn't have been an exception. That's why I put her age as sixteen.
Faaguni had something special about her. Her features were extraordinarily fair. In a sea of black and swarthy faces, and of moderately light-complexioned people like us, her fairness stood out in stark contrast. Her eyes were grey and her tiny hair had taken a golden hue. Had she been in a position to give herself a beauty and cosmetic treatment, her skin colour, hair and eyes would have led one to mistake her for a south European. But where were these toiletries available to her?
Even her nature set her apart from the other village belles. She was sober in a peculiar way. While her contemporaries and peers were given to giggling on flimsy pretexts as they worked in the fields, or went to the forests for fodder, or to the village-well to fetch water, she would remain unmoved…More, she didn't even have friends. She grew up, a lonely bird, on the banks of the river and spent most of her time under a mango-tree next door. She would perhaps play with dust the whole day under that tree, keeping a lonely vigil over her house, as she waited for her gather to return from the fields, or she would perhaps proceed to the river for an occasional bath.
I am here to relate just one incident. It is not even a day-long incident, but an unexpected happening of an afternoon that resembled a crack of a thunder-bolt from a clear blue sky in a peaceful moment. The incident itself lasted a short while and I am aslo keen to narrate it in brief.
Faaguni used to work in our household. Since ours was a large family, even minor day-to-day chores used to consume a whole day at her age.
Howsoever large a household be, a time comes in its daily life - no, even in the daily life of an entire village - when a thick pall of silence descends upon it. Time stands still…and a strange quiet prevails. In the midst of such an all-pervading silence, even a minor sound resounds with an explosive report and makes an apprehensive heart start a-thumping with curiosity. What's up?
I was reclining on a small mat in a lonely room. All my friends and plymates had perhaps gone to the Koshi river either to play in its sandbanks or to swim in its waters - they ostensibly forgot to take me along. At least my chum, Litthu, ought to have called me!
Random thoughts kept contantly crossing my mind in the all-pervading silence, like paper-boats floating in the river, one after another. I was aware only of the acute soundlessness - a silence that was palpable enough for me to possibly touch even while lying down.It is in such moments of utter silence that incorporeal objects such as ghosts and goblins take shape in the mind's eye. The story of Boksi, a female gnome, narrated by Sannani, a female relative, also crossed my mind like a flash - so did thoughts of a black-mouthed dog of the Boksi, that is said to devour bones in the cremation ground. The reversed, back-to-front feet of the Kichkanni, also a female gnome, horns portruding out of her chest, also seemed to have materialised as vague shapes in the all-quiet surroundings. I wasn't terrified, however.
It was at this moment of eerie quietness that the door creaked sligthly ajar. It had obviously been pulled open, but even that minor sound hit my ears as if by an explosion, given the mystery-bound silence infested with imaginary wordless - and bodiless - beings. I was alarmed and my heart-beats mounted. 'What's up?'
But my appprehensions were set at rest as I saw none other but Faaguni, equipped with a small bucket containing a cowdung-and-mud mix soaked in water, as also a Lundo floor-scrubbing rag. On entering, she said, "Get up Saanu Baabu, I am here to give the room a wash-up."
I kept on string at Faaguni, unmoved.
"Why do you stare at me so?"
"You're wearing a new Dhoti today, that's why."
"I felt like putting on a new Dhoti today. Isn't it nice?"
"Yes, it is."
Her grey eyes twinkled. Grey-eyes do not seem to possess the stability that is characteristic of blue eyes or black - the glimmer of pleasure shows faster in grey eyes. I witnessed the same glimmer in her eyes.
Faaguni's playfulness was also peculiar today. To see such a sudden sea-change in a person not normally used to fun and frolic makes one wonder awhile at the mysteries of human nature. What has overtaken Faaguni today, that she has suddenly turned so unusually vocal? Asked she, "Why are you staying here all alone, when you should have been out, playing with friends?" And, again, adding in a peculiar vein, "Do you feel like staying alone, without a wife?"
Marriage, wife and love - these were topics that made me bashful those days without a reason. I must have reddened in the ears as I protested, "Nonsense…!"
Faaguni must have fathomed my agitated, non-plussed state. She let out a guffaw and went on laughing. The more my cheeks reddened, the more they fuelled her laughter. But my male ego erupted at a point as I said, "How about your husband? Where's he?"
That put an end to her mirth, but her features asumed a peculiar tenor as she smiled and said, "You are (my husband)!"
"Nonsense!..." I repeated.
It appeared that her eyes changed their hue in no time. They grew visibly darker. A shade of dull, as it were, that overcomes a tree-groove, ashen during the Fall and prior to sprouting afresh, when shaded by the cloud.There wasn't only a change in her eyes, but I felt her bodily frame was also in the grip of a major upheaval which she was trying to withstand or resist. She was apparently tremulous, shaking.
I said,"I know you have a husband. By the way, why don't you go and live your husband, eh, Faaguni?"
"We have merely exchanged Chuman; the gaunaa, wedding ritual, is yet to take place" - she trembled again.
"What's a Chuman?"
"A kiss. A holy confluence of two pairs of lips." But how could I, a kid of 9/10 years at the time, be expected to appreciate the significance of a kiss? I could only vaguely feel that a kiss was somehow connected with marriage, spouse, and love; but all these were alike in being secret and full of shame.
"Chuman is a childhood ritual with us," she added, "one that calls for mixing the blood of a would-be bride with that of a groom; each of their small fingers is pinpricked in order to draw blood and the girl's bleeding fingers are rubbed against those of the boy. Gaunaa ritual follows when they are grown-up, and the groom takes his bride home after that."
I asked her while still lying aslant, "Your hubby hasn't come to take you home, why?"
She visibly shook all over once again and said with some excitement, "Come on, come on your foot, quick - I have to give the floor a wash-up." And then, with a giggle, 'Didn't I tell you, you're my hubby?"
She suddenly stiffened further, and her eyes darkened all the more. A hoarseness came over her voice as she asked, "Isn't there anyone around? And below?" She abruptly stood up and inspected the adjoiing rooms. Then returned. But, by then, the fairness of her face appeared to have been left behind - it had simply vanished. A bluish hue had overtaken it, and her eyes appeared further sunk into their sockets, like two deep and dried-up water-holes. Her breath came heavy - and fast. The twin signs of her youth protruded from her dark blouse like two sharp and stiff horns jutting out of a doe's head. Like an abrupt and sudden sandstorm that rushes amongst the sands of the Koshi, she rushed and stumbled towards me, almost gasping, "You are my husband!"
Her breath was as warm as the whiff of the hotwind.
Like one frightened out of his wits, I started running around the room and away from her. And, as I ran, I felt Faaguni wasn't anymore her usual self - she resembled a breakaway stream of the Koshi that swirls in a flood-like fury during high tide. Sveta Bhairavi, the terrifying goddess, had been aroused, her locks flayling wild in the air, her eyes like burnt-out embers, the destructive power of the Taandava dance in her legs, horns jutting out of a blue-black bosom, and an open cavern of a mouth belching out a hot vapour-like breath! Sveta Bahairavi, Faaguni…
When and at what point of time in the course of that mad rush she tipped over the bucket, I do not know. A protruding nail seemed even to have dug into her feet and torn out her new Sari. The floor was a mess of multiple footprints bathed in blood and slush. But whe was unmoved and uncaring, while I was running breathless in order to escape falling into her mad clutches…
"Oh my god, save me, save me! The vast cavernous mouth of Shveta Bhairavi is out to devour me! Save me from her demon-like claws and nails, or else I will be burnt out in the furnace of her hot breath…I will be torn and pierced by her chest-horns…Save me, oh, save me!" My childhood mind, steeped in a world of fairy-tales seething with gnomes and goblins, with witch-like kichkinnis and other residents of the graveyard, envisioned them afresh and made me terror-stricken. I felt like fainting in a swoon. And, in a final bid to escape, I jumped out of the window, my eyes closed shut!
There was a heap of bamboo splinters below, meant for fencing the garden. I fell upon the stack, and a sharp nail jutting out of it pierced into my right leg just below the knee. Blood gushed out in a spout.
The storm subsided as suddenly as it had started. It was as if the Koshi river had returned, once again, to normalcy and was placid and calm, the erstwhile flood having subsided and forgotten. Faaguni came near me. A quitened Faaguni, unruffled and calm, a fair village damsel that she ever was, smiled soothingly and asked, "Were you badly hurt, Saanu Babu?"
Her grey eyes had by then assumed their normal shade, her bodily frame and fair face had regained their original composure. There was no trace of excitement anymore. The horns were now but elevations of an alluring youthfulness. That was Faaguni, Lelaha's daughter and our maid, who had had her chuman but was breathlessly awaiting the arrival of her betrothed boy for consummation.
Be that as it may, a storm had indeed brewed and broken a while earlier. Was that an incident to be forgotten? My childhood self was constantly at awe - what if the other people came to know of it? It would be a matter of degradation and shame. Why would it be a matter of shame or distress was beyond my childish comprehension. But then, that feeling remained and, in order that no one else knew what had transpired, I said, "I am okay, Faaguni; you can go."
One day I was crossing the small diversion of the Koshi river next to Lelaha's house. The water was just knee-deep. With the Dhoti wrap-round well above my knees, the reddish scar of my wound could be seen from a distance, shiny in the sun. Standing under the mango tree near her courtyard, Faaguni had been watching me come. As I approached her after crossing the river, she said, "Perhaps you have by now grasped the meaning of chuman well. A union between bloods. Your blood and mine got united that day over the bamboo heap."
"How long must one wait for the gaunaa?- I replied, laughing.
"Chuman is the important thing. But, at any rate, I have branded you so well as to leave its mark on you as long as you live. I also have, with me, an indelible stamp of that maddening moment, for keeps."
Even today, some three decades later, the scar on my knee reminds me of Faaguni. Where might she be? Would she be still alive? When must have her gaunaa taken place? Did or did not her husband get Sveta Bhairavi's darshan when he may have come to the village to fetch her?
The branch rivulet of the Koshi, the stunted mango tree, and Lelaha Kewat - how must they be faring now?
[Courtesy: Sheet of Snow, an anthology of sixteen Nepali short stories, translated into English by Nagendra Sharma and published by Nirala Publications, Jaipur and New Delhi,1997.]
http://nepalicreation.blogspot.com/2007/10/samples-of-trend-nepali-short-stories.html
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