TUESDAY

Tuesdays were the loneliest days of Roop Shova’s life. She stole peevish glances from the window every once in a while. She was aware that her doing so would not change the fact that a Tuesday was a Tuesday, and yet she did it, more out of habit than logic.

The window sill was beginning to gather dust. She had no interest in cleaning it. The ledge boasted of thick grey accumulations. She sat at the base of the window seat sometimes, looking through the iron rods that stood between her and the world. The iron had rusted to black.

Across the street, shopkeeper Dabaldai, waited patiently for customers. He flapped the newspaper now and then, as though it had arrived at his shop to serve the purpose of a fan, rather than the news it carried. Huge glasses sitting atop an aquiline nose moved up and down as the newspaper jerked in air. She recognized the nose as that of the Prime Minister.

The house was quiet. Cousin Amrit had just got a visa to America and her mother had gone over to visit him with the sagaan and the good wishes of the family. Roop Shova had heard of so many people applying for something called DV lotteries to go to the US. They said Nepal was no more fit to live in. She wondered what it would be like if she had got the visa instead of her cousin Amrit. What would she do in the land of the hippies? Would she be able to speak English just as well as Amrit did? Amrit had gone to St.Xavier, the school run by Christians. Some of her cousins were even educated in India, in Darjeeling. But Roop Shova’s parents had not had so much money, so she and her siblings had been educated at Raktakali High School, a government-run school. The only English Roop Shova could remember was what she had read in the books. It had been a long time since she had spoken to anyone in English or written in the language.

College was a long time ago…almost a decade. They had been brief morning hours, running off to the huge building crammed with women in brown saris and then a sprint back home to avoid men who so readily made passes at anybody in that uniform. When college got over, the fear of men taunting her on the streets and the nervousness in answering the teacher’s questions in the classroom had disappeared. And so had marriage proposals. Life was simple at home; the window room and the baigaa, where she helped her mother cook during the monthly festivities, were her world now.

The day she noticed Ram Babu look up at her window, she had found herself a new occupation. She noticed he had sharp features and curly dark hair. She knew he came from the west- the districts she’d heard of and never been to. She had heard people from the districts were very smart and were not to be trusted. She had also heard they were the ones, who had brewed the rebellion against the King. Most of the men from the districts were Maoists or they were in some party. She knew things were changing fast in the country. The King was no more like a king. The ministers seemed richer than the King when they appeared on TV. They all came from the districts, the men who made loud speeches on TV. Ram Babu was one of them. But she was always eager to listen when she heard him chat in the streets- party leaders, government policies, the market price, his children. His voice was crisp…like the morning air around Basantapur just before Dashain. Ram Babu was different from the men she had seen around her a lifetime- men who were ever willing to organize feasts or drink themselves silly. She was sure life must have more to it.

Ram Babu would disappear on Tuesdays. Not that he was present in her world in any significant way on the other days of the week, but on Tuesdays, he would just disappear.

Roop Shova sighed. She picked the karuwa, lifted it so that its nozzle was right above her mouth and tilted it, drinking continuously with a chuckling sound. She got up to look at herself in the mirror. She looked like a child in her plaits, her complexion fair and frail. But there was something about her eyes that deepened like that of an old woman’s. She turned to look at the clock when the cuckoo bird came out to say another hour had gone by.

Roop Shova thought the day was taking too long to pass. Every day offered the same activities for her (unlike the things in the country that were ever changing). But Tuesdays were different. She felt less at ease on Tuesdays, as though someone was blowing and blowing a huge balloon inside her and she would burst choking. There was nothing she could do about it. So, Roop Shova just returned to her window seat and waited for it to be Wednesday.