The night Asman dai saved my life. And his own.

 I've been thinking about this incident a lot recently. I don't quite know why.

It is from those early years at KTV, when I was in my 20s. I used to do quite a bit of night shifts because they had divided the English news team into morning and evening shift. Evening shift meant that you got done with your newscast at 11pm and then you had to wait for the Nepali bulletin and engineers friends at the MCR who had to wrap up duty and switch shifts with the night team to go home. Most nights, you left the office close to midnight. 

Apparently, I lived farthest from the office among the lot who had to be dropped off after the shift. It was always the case. And being the last person to be on the dropped off list, the night rides homes were never quite free of adventures. One time, Hira Dai and I helped a man driving a big jeep and his two year old child out of a ditch. A ditch about four feet deep. I'll leave that story for some other time.

But today...

The incident that has been on my mind a lot: Asman Dai and me. He had dropped everyone else off. The last colleague we had to drop off home was someone who lived in those plains near Gujeshwari, down Gaurighat. One had to take the road down towards Gujeshwari, just across the river and keep driving into the fields. This was in the early 2000s and that area was isolated, with just a few houses scattered across the fields. This was during the civil war.

That night after dropping off this colleague, we were going back and towards the road to Mitrapark. He would go up the main road and then take me to Ganeshbasti. It was a bit past midnight. As we moved, we saw five men walking slowly or standing in the middle of the road. I can't tell which, but they were there suddenly. They stopped the van. Asman dai stopped to ask what happened. And hose men didn't say much but tried to yank him out the car and one man opened the door in the back, the kind of door that slides, you know? And he tried to grab me. 

"Baini, dhoka banda garnu," Asman dai shouted. And I acted quickly, I suppose out of fear. I held on to the door, didn't quite manage to shut it. His door was still open, too. But what he did was, he pressed the gas and the van sped up, hit one of the men and went forward. The men shouted, swore at us. I'm not sure if the one who got hit was badly injured. I imagine they were only minor injuries. Asaman dai didn't look back. He kept driving. We shut the doors at some point. I was shaking with fear. He look frightened, too.

Who are those men, I asked later. He didn't know either. But he dropped me home safely and then went back to the office to do the rest of his night duty. 

That night, Asman Dai saved my life. And his own. We were asked the next day by colleagues about what had happened, but no one inquired or tried to take measures or introduce policies to protect the workers on night shifts. Things went on as they normally did. Or so we imagined.

Next time we were on the same route, Asman dai made sure to drive down Gaurighat with more people in the van. 

I don't know where Asman dai is now. His full name is As Man Tamang and we used to call him Asman dai. I remember his face and wonder about him sometimes. I don't even have a phone number for him. There were dozens of night shift drivers at KTV who took care of us through the civil war, the peace process, the emergencies, street protests and what not! But we barely remember their names. 

 

 

Gathering

I stole this image from NYT because I coveted that moment (I forget the name of the photographer, so in that sense, this makes it theft )--I wanted to be a woman standing in a random street, just after a storm, gathering fallen leaves. I found enormous comfort in that thought.

Lately, I've been unsure about everything. Everything. And yet so comfortable in becoming this woman who's a hermit, living everyday inside my parents' home, cooking, cleaning, eating, sleeping, reading, writing nothing worth reading. That's me. It's like all the awful things that happened to me in life were leading me to this moment of quietness. Maybe death is like that, too?

I often think about the horrible things that happened to me. I am probably not past the abuse in my marriage, the gaslighting in certain relationships, the sexual exploitation by men who claimed it was stemming from love. I haven't gotten over those things and I think sometimes that writing about them might help. Perhaps if I write about how frightened I was that afternoon when he parked his scooter outside Gyanedra's residence and called me a bahunphile and how I was coerced into going to his friend's house to have sex. It was the beginning of something horrible. How is it that even for women who are educated and wise and who know good from bad, it often ends up becoming just the physical fear of a man. How come?

 

Vacancy announcements: Husband

2018

2023

2024

2026

Mid-day blues

 I live in a battered body--battered by time, by illnesses, by accidents, by men I loved in the past. My body is mine, but sometimes, feels like a stranger, sometimes an enemy. Still, my best friend. I was thinking about how the closest someone else comes to knowing or cherishing your body are the following people (and in pecking order):

1. Your mother

2. Your lovers

3. Masseuse at different times

Children probably appear at the end of this pecking order. They depend on your body while young, but never really grow to know it, cherish it. As you age, they might even think of your body as something they owe filial piety to and not more. 

Not sure why I was thinking about all this, but this morning, I felt like I was brimming with sadness and so decided to have some fun writing a vacancy announcement. It's the latest one on the next post. But here's a stray thought:

Today, I feel like I'm a line

broad, uneven 

drifting through the noise

the chatter at teatime

the need to say, to say

I'm a line, that lands nowhere.

wastefulness

How does one expect to get any work done with a cat sitting on your chair, occupying over half the space and a dog sitting at your feet, tearing a random something to tatters? Yes, my space is heavily compromised as of now. 

I thought the perks (if any) not having children was that one would get to work in peace. But I must have been quite mistaken. Having pets is no different. My clock revolves around these two-- BabuBagh and LunaMoon--pet, feed, check on them between work and repeat every hour. 

Heigh ho!

I have been able to get very little done recently. I feel like my head is pooled in stories but none have been written. And in that sense, I wonder if I'm starting to become like my mother. Am I? 

Trapped somewhere far

Meera, like her name, belonged in only one place--to herself in a far flung idea of herself trapped somewhere.

When periods came, she would bundle up her mother's old sari and clutch it between her legs. For underwear, she had learned to cut her father's or brother's old trousers and alter it into something that fit her. No one offered to buy her any knickers. She was the invisible one in the family. After polio stuck her when she was four, she could no longer participate in the games her siblings played. And her parents didn't think it was necessary to send her to school.

And no one spoke to her about what she should be doing during periods or what they were about. Her elder sister, Laxmi showed her how to bundle up cloth, then tie a string around her waist and knot the ends of the cloth on to it so it stayed in place. But cloth was always scarce. If her mother discarded an old sari, she and her sisters had to compete for their share. And sometimes, when children in the extended family out grew their iicha cloth diapers, a tatter of pretty print from a frayed cotton sari would land in her hands. That served as period cloth.  

Meera liked to fold the period cloth neatly after they dried in the sun. They went into a corner of her trunk to wait until another month. And until then, she forgot about them, ran household chores, cooked for her family, fetched water in the ghaa, but before that she would polish it with ash until it shone like a gold pitcher. That was her job. To fix everything in the house, to take care of everything, to look out for the others. It sometimes included picking up her siblings' books and piling them neatly on the table. 

Meera, for everyone but not herself. Trapped. Far away.

 

No longer unmoored

The day was warm and blue, like the sky above us. Warmed by the sunshine and blue like calmness, trust and serenity Google talks about and not the kind that makes you sad. My heart felt so full of gratitude for the day and for you.  

I watched you walk into dappled light and look some pictures of you on my phone. It's how I want to think of us for the rest of my life. Walking with me towards open spaces, your big, soft hand holding mine in it. You cribbing about how I have no peripheral vision and how inattentive I am when walking on the road. And yet, and yet, smiling, holding my hand.

People often tell me I've been so unlucky in life. Then I think of the clarity you have brought me and I know they can't be correct. With you, I sit moored.