The pandit hurried with the arrangement for the last rites. They were preparing to lay ajee on the funeral pyre.
"What's her name?" he yelled.
"Ratna Kumari Shakya," the brother-in-law said.
I looked up that instant. I listened. Tears choked my voice. I wanted to say, no it isn't. Her name is Madhu. Madhu, a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. But I had no voice. I only had images of how the beautiful Madhu had been transformed into Ratna Kumari, the docile housewife, who didn't dance anymore, but cracked jokes with her grandchildren in a tongue that hardly sounded correctly Newari. Where had she picked such an accent from?
Was it from those years when she couldn't sleep and didn't know how to deal with toil, babies and the bhutu, at the same time and still keep smiling? I wonder where she picked her accent that made her a Newar who had borrowed her Newariness and had to be awkward about it.
When you're deprived of what belongs to you, and you have to stretch your hands before you asking to be lent those things back, it's awkward. That awkwardness never abandoned her. Just like people never let her forget Nepal was hers but no more hers because her patents conceived her in the hills of Darjeeling. Migrants are never welcome home. They may only visit.
Till her dying day, they didn't let her forget that. She couldn't belong here. Maybe she remembered Teesta and Reli khola that morning, when she walked down the stairs to go to hospital. I wonder what she thought about when she was telling her children she didn't want to leave home that moment.
"What's her name?" he yelled.
"Ratna Kumari Shakya," the brother-in-law said.
I looked up that instant. I listened. Tears choked my voice. I wanted to say, no it isn't. Her name is Madhu. Madhu, a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. But I had no voice. I only had images of how the beautiful Madhu had been transformed into Ratna Kumari, the docile housewife, who didn't dance anymore, but cracked jokes with her grandchildren in a tongue that hardly sounded correctly Newari. Where had she picked such an accent from?
Was it from those years when she couldn't sleep and didn't know how to deal with toil, babies and the bhutu, at the same time and still keep smiling? I wonder where she picked her accent that made her a Newar who had borrowed her Newariness and had to be awkward about it.
When you're deprived of what belongs to you, and you have to stretch your hands before you asking to be lent those things back, it's awkward. That awkwardness never abandoned her. Just like people never let her forget Nepal was hers but no more hers because her patents conceived her in the hills of Darjeeling. Migrants are never welcome home. They may only visit.
Till her dying day, they didn't let her forget that. She couldn't belong here. Maybe she remembered Teesta and Reli khola that morning, when she walked down the stairs to go to hospital. I wonder what she thought about when she was telling her children she didn't want to leave home that moment.
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