'Chow mein': a translated Nepali short-story

Note from the translator: .Chow mein is a short story from Durga Karki’s first book Kumari Prashnaharu, a collection of short stories, published by Nepalaya in 2020. Set on a small hilly hamlet, near the ferocious Marsyangdi river, Chow mein is a story of a teenage girl who discovers the absence of her father, and projects her desire for a father on all the male figures in her life. The story culminates in an encounter with her father, but Kamala does not recognize her father until after he has already left the village. Chowmein was shortlisted in the Bharakahari short story competition in 2019..Translator:.Sandesh Ghimire is a writer and translator based in Kathmandu. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. He is currently at work on his book and he teaches creative writing at Institute of Advanced Communication, Education and Research in Kathmandu..Support Southasian literature, become a patron of Himal today!.EXACTLY AT EIGHT THIRTY on an evening in June, when I unbolted the latch to my room and walked out, I saw that the rain that had stopped several hours ago had begun to drizzle again. In the goat pen adjoining the room, a kid snapped its long ears. “Myakkku…” another bleated softly. After that, hooves sounded against the bamboo slats of the floor. Some goats moved away, others stood up. They knew I had got out..The rain beating against the tin roof and the maize leaves became louder. It was as if the monotonous trill of the frogs from the edges of the vegetable garden was teasing me. I slipped on the red clay, slick from the rainwater spilling down from the eaves. I held on to a wooden post to save myself. I pressed the buttons on my phone to light its torch. The thong of my chappal had slipped out of its hole again. Without fixing it, I held the chappal in my hand and walked towards the backyard. I happened to step into a puddle by the cobblestones; the murky water splashed all over my face..Of course, a deer being chased downhill is harried even by the weakest calf. Even the mud cursed me..“I love you, Kamala,” he had said before I left home. My lips had trembled and my chin quivered when he said that. Water seeped through the tin roof to soak the side of the rafters, a bead of water hung there, ready to fall. A forty-watt bulb hanging from the rafters to watch me had become grimy. As I watched, the drop of water shivered and fell to the ground. I had no response for him other than to sniffle and sob. My voice was caught in my throat..Yet, he understood what I had been trying to tell him. “Must be, there is love somewhere. Don’t cry, sleep now.”.His words, steeped in love, made me sob even harder. How could he possibly have known that I was in no place to fall asleep? I leaned against my neighbour’s house to force the thong of my broken chappal into its hole..A mild breeze stirred the leaves of the maize in the terraces above the house, coursing through the fields with a strange music. But it couldn’t awaken any excitement in my heart. .Does the dark night know that these maize leaves were battered by hail just a few days ago? The leaves try to regather their broken selves – does the wind understand that it shakes them even farther apart?.A dim light flickered behind Thapini Bajai’s home. The old lady must have come outside to pee. No matter how urgent the need, she never relieved herself in the front yard – the holy tulasi plant is there. In April, her son, Ramji, had performed the Dasdaan and Vaitarani rituals near the same tulasi, the old lady laying by its side. Within a month, she had resurrected. By May, she was able to walk around the house. In June, she brought back her goat kids from Ramji’s house. .“Thapini has defeated death,” people said. But for what, I wondered..Thapini Bajai shook her dhoti to get rid of drops of pee clinging to her petticoat. She would now sweep the beam of her torchlight from the path up to the water tap. The beam of light would stop at the tap’s head, where she would check if the pipe dangling from it was moving. If she saw the pipe move, she would rush out, snatch it off and hurl it away. This habit had not abandoned her even after her return from the gates of the underworld. .But for what, Bajai? I would ask myself. After all, her neighbours never denied her a few leaves of spinach or a luffa gourd or two, even without her asking. I never understood what compelled her, in such rain, to clamber up slippery terraces to snatch away her neighbour’s water pipe. .“You are too naive, Kamala.” He had said this under the shade of an alder on the banks of the Marshyangdi river. Further away, children who had bunked school were jumping into the river from the tallest rock to escape the summer heat. Not long ago, a fourteen-year-old had jumped from one of these rocks and never returned home. His mother had run barefoot over the hot sandy riverbank, dragging the ends of her dhoti, screaming, “My boy! My son!” .Her wail had risen halfway up the hill and shook the blades of the young siru grass I was cutting for fodder. It bent the thin trickle of water falling through the hollow of a banana-tree stem. A blade of grass, the trickle of water – they had understood this mother’s grief. But did her screams fail even to prick the conscience of the mighty Marshyangdi? Is the Marshyangdi just a cascade of changing waters? To flow may be its dharma, but is it also in its dharma to sweep away anything, everything that falls into its path? .“Is it the same to flow and to sweep away, sir?” I had asked my school’s headmaster the next afternoon. .“You are so full of questions, Kamala?” He smiled more and answered little. .Perhaps I had learnt to question while still in my mother’s womb. “Mother, why are you always in a rush?” .“Mother, why do you always cry?” .“Mother, why do you smoke so many beedis?” .My questions did not cease after I was born. “Mother, where are these ants’ home?” .“Mother, why doesn’t the nanny goat give her kids her milk?” .“Mother, why don’t I have a pee-pee like Subash’s?” .“Mother, did the rats steal Grandma’s teeth?” .“Mother, if I swallow orange seeds, will they grow in my stomach? If I eat chewing gum, won’t it twist my intestines?” .“Mother, how can such small lice drag me away to the chautari and hang me there?” .Sometimes my questions made my mother laugh hysterically, at other times she became angry, and sometimes she would give an answer just for the sake of it. And so I asked her one day, “Mother, where is my father?”.That is the first time I remember my question silencing her. When I kept bringing up the subject, she finally broke down and said with teary eyes, “Over there!” Mother was pointing at the door. Above it was a black and white photo obscured by soot. Father had a thick moustache. A round hat perched atop his head. A hat-strap ran under his chin, joining one temple to the other. As if too scared to touch him, Mother sat with raised shoulders, thick kohl underlining her eyes. Even the kohl could not hide the shyness in her face. .Standing at the threshold, I craned my neck to see my father’s face and asked, “Where is he now?” How brightly my eyes must have sparkled at the time! Mother, who had put aside the rope she had been braiding to light a new beedi, looked toward the Marshyangdi, blew out a thick billow of smoke and said, “Far away… in Delhi.” .Her answer in that moment had perhaps been directionless, like the smoke she had just now exhaled..“Where Subash’s father is?”, I asked, squatting by her side. .Mother did not respond. She just shook her head with watery eyes. Then she stubbed the beedi out on the floor, hugged me awkwardly, as if I were a newborn goat kid whose mother had died without giving it the first suckle. .Subhash’s father came home for Dashain. I also waited with Subhash at the chautari on the hike up from the river to receive my father. Subhash’s father arrived with a porter carrying his humongous bag. My father did not come. .“And where is my father, Bada-ba?”, I stopped him by the roadside and asked. .He glanced at my face. Then he looked at the porter who had just put his load aside and was wiping the sweat from his face. Bada-ba looked at me again and opened a small bag in his hand. He took out a whole packet of sweets saying, “Here, all of this yours, okay, child?” .Although the whole bag of sweets lifted me to heights of elation, I immediately returned to the ground and asked, “But where is my father, Bada-ba?” .“Your father? He did not get leave this year. But he sent those toffees, to give them to his daughter.” .Swifter than the wind, I went in, hollering for my mother. I found her mopping the stairs to the pantry. “Mother, look! Father sent candies. Said he will come next Dashain.” .Just for a moment, Mother’s eyes shone with joy. Grandma, who had been making wicks in the pantry, craned her neck to watch me and Mother. Mother’s eyes lost their light and were drenched again. She soaked up her pain with the rag in her hand and rubbed it into the floor. .The next few Dashains, I went with Subhash to the chautara on the hill above the river to wait for my father. Packets of chocolates arrived as his gifts, and later even pairs of new clothes, but he never came. .When it became intolerable one year, I sent a message with Subhash’s father. “Please come home for Dashain next year, no matter what! Otherwise, Bada-ba, tell him that Kamala will never speak to him.” .Father did not come. Perhaps it did not matter to him whether I spoke to him or not. .Subhash stopped going to wait for his father, because he knew his father would come home even if he didn’t wait by the river. And I stopped going near the river because I knew that my father would not come even if I waited for him. And, gradually, I stopped going to Subhash’s home for Dashain. One day, Bada-Ba came over, sat on the straw mat on our porch and asked my mother about me. .Crestfallen, I stood on the threshold, one foot out and the other in. .“Beta, you stopped coming to meet your Bada-ba?” .I did not respond. .“Do you not like your clothes, beta?” .I quietly scratched the ground with my toe. .“I hear you came first in school this year. Your father has sent an entire box of pencils,” he said, pushing a packet of candy, a kurta-salwar set and a box of Nataraj pencils toward me..“I don’t need anybody’s pencils, take them back to him!” .I slammed the door to my room. I could not hear Bada-ba, or Mother, or Grandma. After a while, Grandma cried, “This rotten fate…” .“Accha, let’s say I’ve brought you these things. Can’t I bring you anything? Am I not like a father to you?” .Bada-ba raised his voice a little. In a teary voice, Mother said, “Let it go, brother. She is still a child.” .But I was not a child anymore like Mother thought. .“Bada-ba?” I ran to the backyard to follow Bada-Ba, who was on his way home after Mother and Grandma had dispersed for work, and asked, “You do meet my father, don’t you?” .Bada-ba froze. For a long while, he did not lift his gaze from the ground. He turned around as if to say something, but he didn’t find his voice. .“Bada-ba, I am already fifteen,” I said without crying. .He wet his lips with his tongue, glanced towards Thapini Bajai’s home, and swallowed his spit. Then he said, “Beta, I have not met your father for exactly fourteen years.” .My eyes welled up with tears suddenly; all that remained was for them to stream down my face. Through the beads of my tears I saw an image of Bada-ba, greatly bloated in the middle, tremulous. He trembled for a few moments, fell to the ground, disappeared instantly into the parched soil of the backyard..“He is alive, isn’t he?” The fear lodged in my innermost heart escaped with a quivering voice, in anticipation of a terrible answer. .“He has another family, I hear, over there.”Bada-ba blurted this out, without much thought. Then, without turning to look at me, he went away. Perhaps he lacked the courage to look at me..TWO YEARS AFTER Mother called me a child, I wrote a poem addressing my father. My poem won second prize at the competition organised for the school’s golden jubilee celebration . The next day, the headmaster called me to his office and waved a piece of paper at me. “Who taught you to write such mature poems?” .I cried in response. If I could have spoken, I would have said, “Circumstances, sir.” .“Why do you cry, you silly girl! Hardships make a person stronger.” .He patted my shoulder, pushed down my hands stationed below my nose to hide the sniffling and sobbing, and said, “If there is any problem, talk to me directly.” .I wanted to ask, “What does love make of a person, sir?” .“WHY WERE YOU upset in class today?” .“Why didn’t you come to school yesterday?” .“Why did you do so terribly in the exams?” .I was being called to the headmaster’s office quite regularly. At first he would ask these questions in a raised voice, but after I would repeat the same old answers he would say softly, “Is there any difficulty?” I would shake my head. Then he would extend his hand to give me either an orange from his desk or a candy from his pocket. I would take it quietly and leave. .When I walked out of his office, I would be teary with happiness. .During the winter of my tenth-grade year, the school decided to take us on an educational tour. It was not easy for mother to put together five thousand rupees at a moment’s notice. I did not have winter clothes to wear on the tour. I didn’t raise my hand to be counted among those going on the trip without asking mother first. .“Why aren’t you going on the trip?”, the headmaster called me to his office to inquire. “I have lots to do at home, sir!” I tried hard not to cry. “I have put your name up for the trip. Come on time, on the day after. Wear warm clothes.” The cries that I had suppressed burst out. I tried to cover my mouth to stop them, but I failed. He got up from his seat, held my cold hand and said, “Such a cry-baby! Go!”“When will I pay…” I could not complete the sentence. “Get a job, earn a lot, pay me back. Double. Can’t you?” I always dreamt of working a job, for my mother’s sake. On that day, one more person was added to that dream. .AT THE MAYADEVI temple in Lumbini, I pushed through the crowd to ask for a photo with him on a friend’s phone. He shaded his eyes with a hand over his brows, and, like always, rested his other hand on my right shoulder. I saved enough of the money my mother had given me for the trip to print two large photographs. I kept one above the door, next to my father’s photo. .I wrapped another photograph in a newspaper and gave it to him. He smiled and said, “Wasn’t there any in which I hadn’t covered my face?” .“There were, but none of just the two of us,” I said to myself. .Although I usually ranked third or fourth in class, I came first in the mock board exams. A rumour spread the day after the results, “The headmaster shows Kamala the question paper. There is something not quite right between them.” .I felt a sharp barb stab through my heart. I ran to the toilet in search of a place to cry. Graffiti on the toilet wall proclaimed, “Headmaster + Kamala”. .An emergency meeting was held at school immediately. The headmaster and other teachers entered our classroom. All of us stood up, but the headmaster didn’t tell anyone to sit down. I continued to sob with my eyes lowered to the floor. .Suddenly the headmaster said sternly, “Kamala! Step forward.” .I came out from behind my desk and stood crestfallen in front of everyone. “Did you cheat to come first?”, he screamed at me. I shook my head, drew my snot in. “Why are you so downcast then? Stand tall!” That day, I became truly scared of the headmaster for the first time..“Those of you who spread this rumour – should I read your names from the list in my pocket or will you come forward on your own and apologise to Kamala? Who wants to be rusticated a month before the SLC exams?” .The entire class fell into pin-drop silence. All the other students hung their heads. I alone held my head high. .“Must I call you by your names?”, the headmaster thundered at the girl standing at the corner of the first bench. She had already started to cry. As soon as the headmaster spoke, she cried and said to me, “Forgive me, Kamala. I will never repeat that again. Please don’t expel me, sir! Forgive me!”.One or two other girls apologised. As he was leaving, he turned around to say, “Kamala is my daughter. Believe me – you all are too. There is no one here who does not know about her. Aren’t you ashamed to say such things? Rascals! If that nonsense isn’t erased within the next half hour, I’ll be your worst nightmare!”.I shed a last pair of tears for the day and listened to his heavy footfalls recede. I wanted to run to him, hug him and shout, “Father!” .“THERE IS SATYANARAYAN PUJA at my home the day after tomorrow. Come, bring your mother,” he said on a Friday in March as the school was being dismissed. .Mother found it awkward to go. Instead, she cut four stalks of good black sugarcane from our kitchen garden. She spared only two ladles of the day’s milk for Grandma and poured the rest into a tumbler. I set the tumbler on the stone wall by Thapini Bajai’s house to pluck a plastic bag full of bael leaves. .I offered the bael leaves at the puja to thank the gods for the headmaster’s presence in my life. I had wanted to go home after the puja ended, but it became late while I waited to receive the prasad. The headmaster refused to let me leave without eating the prasad. .After some of the guests left, the headmaster’s eldest son tried to take a family portrait. I was sitting in a corner with a sectioned plate full of kheer, curried vegetables and achar. Some relatives poked fun at the middle son and said he was ruining the photo because he was not yet married. Guests in the courtyard laughed. Their aunt then joined the photo. The middle son went inside to fetch his grandmother. The headmaster, who had only a few days ago declared before fifty-five students that Kamala was his daughter, was not searching for me in the crowd. .My eyes, which yearned to see the headmaster shade his eyes with his hand and searchingly ask, “Where’s Kamala?”, fell instead, as tears dropped onto the spoonful of kheer that I was preparing to eat. I did not have the courage to lift the spoon to my mouth. A second surge of tears filled my eyes. Nearby, a street dog looked at me and then at the spoonful of kheer in my hand. It seemed to me he was telling me to not cry. I poured all the kheer out in front of him. I went to the backyard and cried until someone came to pee. .In the evening, after the meal, the headmaster called me near him and introduced me to his old friend who had come from Kathmandu. “This is my youngest daughter, Kamala. She writes really beautiful poems,” he said. .“I thought your youngest was called Puja?” his friend said. “Puja’s mother is your sister-in-law. But Kamala’s mother didn’t come today. Isn’t that so, Kamala?” I nodded..“He must have a dozen youngest daughters by now, don’t you think?”, his wife joked as she portioned out sel rotis on leaf plates. Another barb had struck my heart; I spent the night wide awake, trying to stem the bleeding. All night long, I craved my mother’s warm bed and the smell of beedis on her breath. .Perhaps that was enough to shatter my heart, and so I never returned to the headmaster’s home. He brought the tumbler in which I had taken the milk to the school sometime later. After my SLC exams, we rarely met. I would call him occasionally, to keep up pretences. He never cared to call me unprompted. And whenever I called, all he would do was to tell me that I didn’t visit him anymore. .During the Chaitey Dashain festival in April, Mother sold a goat that she had reared in my name for twelve thousand rupees. She wanted to loan out the money to earn interest on it, but I took five thousand and sent it to the headmaster along with a short letter. .He called me in the evening. I wanted to be scolded for my childish behaviour and wanted to cry. .But the headmaster did not admonish me. “Did you get a job so soon? Why did you have to send it?”, is all he said. For the first time, I cried because I hadn’t been scolded. .“Can I call you Baba?” It was the only question I asked Binay that evening. .After that evening, when I climbed down to the valley to cut grass or watch over our crops, he would come to the riverside with this or that snack. I would never tire of watching the Marshyangdi’s unceasing forward flow with my head on his shoulder. .“Why is the Marshyangdi always in a rush, Binay?” .I had begun to ask Binay what had once been my questions for the river. Perhaps in him I had begun to look for the care I had not found with my father or the headmaster. .IT WAS JUNE, there was a light drizzle. .Fields across the Marshyangdi had soaked up the monsoon and showed some green. Our side of the river was swarthy with field-hands working amid teams of oxen. Among them was the dark figure of my mother. She had gone to help transplant rice seedlings in Ramji’s fields. Two days later, Ramji would return the favour by shoring up the dykes along our paddy fields. .A black umbrella, bent to one side because of a pair of broken ribs, gaped open under the eaves. The monsoon rain had washed away the soil around the pebbles in the yard, and now their jagged and sharp edges poked at bare feet. I was in the kitchen garden, foraging for something to snack on because Grandma’s toothless gums had been itching since the morning to bite into young maize. .Since it was raining, I wanted to gather ears of maize from the terrace closest to the house, but Grandma shouted from her perch by the grain shed, “Bring it from the farthest end of the field. Don’t I have to feed the goats when you people aren’t around?”.I had just put my umbrella down to enter the maize field when I was startled by the sight of a man chewing on string beans under the banana tree. When he saw me, he also seemed to hesitate. Then, with a weak laugh, he said, “I was climbing uphill when it seemed like it would pour down, so I thought I’d shelter here. But I seem to have been snacking on your beans, kid.” .“Where were you climbing to?”, I asked, ripping open the husks to find tender cobs. “The Kunwar village” “Whose home are you going to?” “Lal Bahadur’s. Do you know him?” “Why wouldn’t I? He taught us maths in school.” “Right. Which grade are you in?” “Me? I just finished my SLC exams.” “Whose daughter are you?” “Basanti’s.” “Are you? How is Basanti?” “Do you know my mother?” I asked as I cut down the last stalk of maize with a sickle. “Yes… I know her.” “And where is your home?”He lost himself for a moment, picking out the beggar ticks stuck to his trouser legs, then said, “Mine is over there, across the river.” “Alainchey?”, I asked, gathering the stalks. “Yes, a little further up from there.” “Along the saddle or higher?”.After I inquired a bit too much, he said, “You wouldn’t know me. I am an old face.” I bundled up the stalks, saw that the rain was thickening, so I said to him, “Why would you get soaked out here? Come to our home, drink tea, leave when the rain stops.”.“Let it be, kid. I’ll keep climbing. I have to be back by the evening.” .He held onto the siru grass on the terraces and, with great difficulty, climbed down to the path. I felt a tenderness for the stranger who kept turning back to look at me, a banana leaf shielding his head from the rain. .I ran to the edge of the field to call after him. “Uncle, take this umbrella!” .He squinted at me. A trickle of rain had already begun to fall from his widow’s peak. .“I don’t know how late I will return.” “If the rain subsides, throw it onto the field, otherwise take it with you. After all, it isn’t even in good shape!” He covered himself with the umbrella, whose canopy had a fist-sized pool of water where the ribs had broken, and he walked away.I caught the same clump of siru grass that he had grabbed and climbed the steep slope towards home..Mother, who returned in the evening totally drenched, sat at the edge of the courtyard without changing out of her clothes and smoked two beedis, then went to the water-tap where we washed our utensils, put her hands on her hips and continued to soak. Only after a long time, once grandma yelled that she would catch a cold, did mother move under the eaves. .Her eyes were red like tomatoes. I remained standing at the door with a plate of corn and a head of garlic and some powdered mountain-pepper for her. .“What’s got you today?”, Grandma asked before I could. .“Your son had come through the village,” Mother said, biting her lip. .I sank to the floor, right there by the door, still carrying the plate. The water dripping from Mother’s dhoti reflected the fragile face of the man, with his widow’s peak and unkempt beard, as he sheltered under a banana leaf, munching on string beans. .That night, mother hiccupped as she ate her rice with a thin broth of steamed and smoked taro leaves. I told her I would wash the dishes, but she would not listen; she scoured and washed the dishes alone – took a long while, too. The new-born goat kid, brought inside the house for the night, bleated whenever someone walked in or out, but nobody spoke with one another that night. .The silence was so pervasive we could hear the spatter of the water buffalo peeing in its shed. “Sleep!”, Grandma said, cutting through the quiet. It must have been around eight at night. I had stepped outside with a torchlight in hand to pee. Somebody jumped from the dung-heap into the maize field and ran away with a rustle through the maize leaves. .“Mother! Thief!”, I shouted. .Mother and Grandma rushed to the water-tap. Mother snatched the torch from my hand and searched around the dung-heap. She scanned the maize field. The beam couldn’t penetrate any further..“That was your father. Must have come to laugh at my fate!” .I was dumbstruck by the confidence with which Mother spoke that sentence. Grandma was also speechless. Just then, mother cleared her throat, as if she needed somebody to hear her, and spit on the ground, “Thu…” .A pattering rain had begun a few moments after I entered my room. .The thought that the man whose face I had been desperate to see for the past sixteen years was right now scurrying downhill to the river did not let me fall asleep. I unlatched the door to my room and quietly walked out. .But perhaps fear stopped me. Uncertainty stopped me. Or, Thapini Bajai stopped me. “For what? After all, for what, Kamala?”, she seemed to ask, shaking her dhoti to remove the splattered pee. I didn’t have an answer, just like he hadn’t found an answer to my questions. .WHEN I WOKE UP the next morning, Mother was coughing in bed. After finishing the chores for the morning, I walked down to the valley to mill maize to feed the goats. .“Go to the fields to help with irrigation after you are done at the mill. I will climb down with food,” I heard Mother say as I walked towards the backyard.It was a new-moon day, when most people refrain from fieldwork. The fields were nearly deserted. I finished both chores, watched the Marshyangdi rush by for nearly an hour from the banks, and yet mother had not arrived. I had gone to bed after eating only two cobs of maize the previous night. Hunger made my stomach growl. I walked to the roadside. .Sangita Didi’s shop didn’t have any daal-bhat left. She gave me a plate of chow mein instead. I asked for a green chilli..“I’ll pay you tomorrow, Didi.” I worried the hem of my shawl as I told her about how mother hadn’t climbed down like she had promised. .“But no – your money’s already paid.” “Already paid? How?” “The man who was sitting inside said he would pay.” “Which man?” “How would I know? Said he’d borrowed an umbrella from you yesterday. He’s left it here, don’t forget to take it. It’s there, above the bed.” “Which way did he go?” My voice had already begun to quiver..“He just left; didn’t you see him?” She craned her neck to point outside. “He was waiting for the bus right there, don’t know if he found one yet.” .I ran out to the roadside. A man in a striped white shirt climbed aboard a bus, and immediately the bus conductor hit the side of the bus to signal for it to drive away. My teary eyes could not read the bus’s number plate beyond Ga.1.Ja. With a harsh blast of its horn, the Aadhikhola Yatayat bus swept away the father of my dreams. I stood frozen in the middle of the road, watching the bus speed away. .My heart teemed with questions. There was the disappointment lodged in my mind for so many years, there was the pain and the complaints from having been rejected. There was anger, but also hunger for my father’s face, for his affection, or, at the least, for the illusion that there had been some love, if nothing else. .I had promised myself so many times, sometimes as I dug into the sand on the riverbank with my sickle, sometimes as I scratched into my school desk with a pen, that if god ever brought me face-to-face with my father, I would shake him by his shirt-collar, wail loudly to ask – Where were you all these years? .Did you not miss us even for a moment? .Did you not ache to see how your daughter had turned out?.Did it not make you cry to wonder if she had eaten or if she was hungry? .Why did you come stalking through the maize field to see us? Why did you sneak away again? .What stone is your heart made of, Father? .But I had just now missed the opportunity to ask these questions. I could neither run to catch up to the bus, nor could I scream to ask it to stop. I was beginning to imagine that I had lost all control over my drenched eyes, my heart pounding against my chest, and my shivering legs, when I heard someone cough behind me. .When I turned around, my mother was standing there, carrying daal-bhat, bundled up in a discoloured shawl. Her sagging breasts, her ashen face, her shrunken stomach, cinched by the patuki cummerbund on her waist, filled me with an entirely different emotion. It felt like a plea for sympathy. .I hugged her tightly, and said, “Mother, Father fed me chow mein!” .Himal Fiction Fest 2024: Celebrating Southasian fiction in translation