Buddha's Orphans by Samrat Upadhyay

Author:Samrat Upadhyay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Part III

* * *

A Woman Grieving

FROM THE MOMENT she got up in the morning to when she went to bed, Nilu felt a weight clamped to her chest; sometimes it moved up and down or migrated to the top of her head, making her vision cloudy, and she felt disoriented. When she told Raja about these experiences, he waved his hand dismissively. “That’s all you talk about these days. Don’t you have anything else to say? I’m so sick and tired of hearing about how your world has gone dark. Fed up! I can’t listen to it anymore.”

That’s how he’d become over the past few weeks—quick to anger, callous about Nilu’s feelings one moment, then apologetic and weepy the next. In sharp contrast to their gloom, the newspapers were filled with celebratory headlines. No one had expected King B to cave in so readily. He’d retreated! He’d given up! Well, not exactly, some pointed out. He was still the king, although only ceremonially, like the British crown. Did you forget the sacrifice we had to go through? A few hundred killed in the process, gunned down by the police and the army. But the losses suffered by those who risked themselves as protesters were accompanied by several tragic accidental deaths: a boy in Biratnagar was trampled to death by a herd of cows barreling away from agitators who in turn were escaping the police; a diphtheria-stricken girl with a swollen neck had passed away in Bir Hospital when all the doctors left their posts to join a burgeoning rally.

Someone—Nilu didn’t remember who, because everything had turned blurry and weepy—suggested that Nilu and Raja petition the government to declare their son a martyr. This advice was given during the grieving period, well after Maitreya’s small bony body had turned to ash on the filthy banks of the Bagmati River. Martyr. “Had it not been for that julus, nothing would have happened to Maitreya,” the man who suggested it continued, softly, patiently, as one would talk to dumbfounded parents who were, understandably, incapable of clear thinking. “Maybe that’s what God had in mind, to sacrifice this poor boy for the good of us all.”

His words reminded Nilu of one of the Christian prophets—Abraham?—who had been willing to sacrifice his son like a lamb, to please his God.

“Every single person who died in the past few months is a martyr,” said one of Raja’s colleagues, emphatically, angrily.

Nilu nodded; Raja nodded. But what would the label martyr do? How would it change anything? But she was too weak to raise this question, didn’t want to ask it. She looked at Raja, who, head lowered, was staring at his lap.

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