Old Demons, New Deities by Tenzin Dickie

Author:Tenzin Dickie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: OR Books
Published: 2017-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Light

Tsering Lama

We live in an old city with almost no electricity—but every so often a charge comes, and we hear the hum.

It was winter, the dry season, and load-shedding meant only three hours of power each day after lunch. As Mother reminded us endlessly, this was just enough to store the charge for the electric lamp, run the water pump, and put on a pot of rice in the cooker for dinner. As a consequence, we watched TV the way we used our taps, turning it on only at the right moments. This was, I know, as difficult for my mother as it was for my cousin and me. Most evenings, with hours to go before we could fall asleep, Cousin Norzy and I would lie around in the TV room, draped over the sofa’s armrests, a candle stuck on an empty jam jar between us, while Mother prayed in the kitchen. Of course, even as paperless refugees, we weren’t strangers to this country. We were born in this brick and dust valley and were used to waking up to find uncharged cell-phones and light switches that were indifferent to our repeated pokes. And like the neighbors, we too spoke longingly of the 1990s when the power only went out every other day—or so we recalled.

But it was boredom, not the darkness, that eventually got to us.

That night, I remember making a few predictable, lazy suggestions: we could henna our hair, or read Norzy’s ex-boyfriend’s letters again. But my cousin only made a few low grunts barely audible over the crickets, stray dogs, and Popo’s prayers.

Popo, my father’s father, was visiting at the time. Though my father passed away many years ago, Popo was as strong (and short on words) as ever. He still lived in the Tibetan settlement a five-hour bus ride away in Pokhara where my parents met as children, fell in love, and built their first home together with stones and a bamboo roof.

My mother tried for many years to convince Popo to come live with us in the capital, saying that it wouldn’t be a financial burden, but he refused. Instead, every year around this time, he came to the capital to renew his Residency Card (something they stopped giving out before my cousin and I were born) and stayed with us as he made many trips around the city to get the right stamps and signatures. The rules changed often and I always sensed in Popo the fear that he wouldn’t get the paperwork done that year, that he might somehow lose his place in the country.

Over the hum of Popo’s prayers, we could hear the neighbors cooking and fighting about their landlord’s wife. Norzy and I tried to make out the details but the pressure cooker always hissed at the worst times. This was its way. A few cars and motorbikes honked at each other in a small traffic jam nearby, crunching the gravel as they wedged themselves out of the narrow roads in our neighborhood.

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