Arresting God in Kathmandu by Samrat Upadhyay

Author:Samrat Upadhyay [Upadhyay, Samrat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2014-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

Dust rose inside the bus, tiny particles glittering in the afternoon sun. The bus lurched toward its destination, the temple of the Goddess Durga on the outskirts of the city. His wife was asleep, her head resting against the window. In front of them sat a man with four hens, their feet tied together. With every jolt, the hens tried to rise in the air, cackling insanely, sending feathers floating up and down the length of the bus. The kohl on his wife’s eyelids trickled down her cheeks. Ganesh smiled and stretched his legs. He looked forward to the ceremony at the temple, where his relatives would ask him to kill goats because he was good at it. And Ganesh would hoist the khukri knife high in the air, its sharpened edge glinting in the dusk, amid the appreciative cries of the onlookers.

Another vision came to him. He was sitting in the middle of a field, his mother in her petticoat leaning over him, smiling and whispering. Blood was running down his nose, soaking the front of his shirt, trickling down his thighs and into the earth, where his friend was waiting with an open tongue. Then his wife leaped out of a photograph and shook her finger at him, and the dancing bald man had a face that looked much like his own. Everything grew silent, a bird cried—and he opened his eyes and looked around. The bus had stopped, caught in a traffic jam.

He was tired, as if he’d been walking for a long time. He woke up his wife.

“What?” she said, her eyes bleary, sweat like dew above her upper lip.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“About what?”

“Whether I can kill a goat today.”

She searched his face. “What’s the matter? You’ve never complained before.”

The hens once again rose in the air and sprayed them with feathers.

“Look,” he said. He lifted his hands. They were shaking.

She picked a feather from his head and ruffled his hair. Then she dabbed the sweat on his cheeks with the end of her sari. “You don’t have to kill a goat if you don’t want to.”

Her hand on his face felt good. “But what will everyone say? They will laugh at me.”

“Who cares?” she said. “What can it do to us?” His eyes dosed; he felt her lips brush against his cheek. “My mama’s boy,” she whispered. “My sweet, sweet mama’s boy.” Now her lips were nibbling at his ear, and he opened his eyes. The man with the hens was staring at them, and he felt embarrassed, but he didn’t stop her; her words were soothing.

The bus came to a stop. They got out, dutching the bundles of rice and fruit they had brought to offer the gods. In front of them was a large field filled with cars and trucks, and, in the distance, the temple’s pagoda.

As they joined the crowd moving toward the temple, some of Ganesh’s fatigue vanished. He stopped to take off his shoes; the grass felt good beneath his feet.

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