I fish through the drawer to find a remittance voucher and fill in the details as she informs me in a slow, reluctant voice. Her voice has a fragile undertone that reverberates long after her spoken words disintegrate into the air.[break]
Her eyes are languid from a long walk in the sun, and the freckles are embossed deeper by the heat. I verify the remittance code and ask for the identification reference. She produces a laminated copy of her citizenship. I look at her photo – one of those vintage black & white photos – with large, luminous eyes.
It’s sad what time has done to her face, to her vintage black & white face with large, luminous eyes. Her hands are calloused and coarse, like the skin of the brown tote with the fake Louis Vuitton monogram she’s carrying.
As she writes her name, I watch her thick eyebrows twitch in irritation. She isn’t particularly appreciative of filling in all the petty details as required by the remittance document.
“You mean I also need to fill in my house number?”
I nod in affirmation.
“But we live in a rented house.” Her response is quick, her eyes wobblier. The sudden excitement in her voice punctures the otherwise slow rhythm of time.
“You can possibly write down the number of your rented house, then,” I offer her.
“Just because we don’t have a house of our own.”
Illustration: Sworup Nhasiju
Her sense of loss stays with me like the thick, viscous sap of fern that gradually ferments in my brain until my whole body is covered with invisible, greenish tendrils. It’s as though I’m impregnated with some green-colored ache – soft, fleshy, pungent. The pain is latent, yet excruciatingly familiar.
Long after the bank day is over, I carry her famished face with me. The sense of void she has imbibed in me is unmistakable. No matter whatever I distract myself with, she remains as the context for it all.
On my way back to the Osho commune in Pokhara, where I stay, I pass by a large grassy meadow. The ground is full of spear-like grass blades, ripened potently by mid-monsoon showers that weave themselves secretly into the clothes of little kids who have gathered there for an afternoon play.
The kids run with brazen energy, their limbs tanned rich chocolate, twitching and flexing in raw vigor. I slow down my scooter, and smile at them. Frenzy runs through the group and the kids jump and yell in delight.
Most of the kids are from the adjoining sukumbasi tole, a scrawny ghetto by the side of the International Mountaineering Museum, with big round puddles for road, where, on clearer days, the kids sail their paper boats.
Their houses are rudimentary, held together by bricks and galvanized steel plates. In the evening, while returning from work, I often spot thin streams of smoke that disperse from the pores of bricks and envelope the houses in an illusory mist. Women hang their petticoats on the edge of the steel roofs. Lined in unison, the colorful petticoats bear a rather curious resemblance to the Buddhist prayer flags.
The makeshift blocks don’t probably qualify for proper houses, yet those kids in the fields don’t seem to grieve for the lack of one. On the contrary, their suntanned bodies radiate certain warmth of belongingness that embraces everybody around.
Their embraces feel warm. If I were a grass blade, I wouldn’t probably mind weaving myself into their clothes and go to their brick apartments, either.
The rest of the ride is rather listless, interrupted occasionally by the sudden surge of breezes sweetened by the ripening paddy fronds.
The sky has cleared after a heavy downpour in the afternoon. A few redundant trickles, however, continue soaking my shoes. My toes feel soggier. Strangely, I can’t just let go of the woman with the famished face, who once had large, luminous eyes.
Just because we don’t have a house of our own.
It is only when I’m on the threshold of the commune that it strikes me why I empathize with her loss – I don’t have a house of my own, either. In fact, the concept of owning a place wearied me constantly. Even as a kid.
When my mother had refused to buy me a bicycle because she was saving money to construct a house, I had written a poem in protest, which said, how it surprised me to see all the efforts people put into encaging themselves. I had come to a conclusion that even though we love to make much fuss about being free, deep down, all that we ever want is a comfortable cage.
It was my by brother who often punctuated my idealistic flights with pragmatic questions which challenged the possibility of surviving without a house.
True, a place to take shelter in is indispensable. But what kept me wondering was why put so much value into owning it, or feel distress for not having a personal greenhouse to ferment one’s freedom?
It takes me a few days, in fact two days, to come to the realization that the quest for owning a house is only metaphorical. What we are all looking for is a place to take refuge in.
I was watching a documentary on the South Indian ascetic, Shree Ramana Maharshi, who had fled his house at the age of 14, only to find refuge in himself. At some point, his grieving mother sends a message to her baby boy to return home, to which he replies, “I’ve found mine.”
Watching Ramana Maharshi, who renounced his house and took shelter at a termite-infested cave in a quieter corner of Thiruvanamalaya in South India, I come to an understanding that the real shelter doesn’t come through a mere assemblage of bricks or concrete, or galvanized steel plates, for that matter.
The grace of Shree Ramana Maharshi is reminiscent of those carefree kids in the fields, whose majestic spirit is no lesser than that of Digambar, a Hindu deity, who claimed the whole space under the ether his own. I feel, unless one retreats into one’s own refuge, one remains a refugee, no matter how tall or wide our greenhouses may stand.
It’s then it dawns on me that the quest isn’t really as materialistic as it appears. At some layer, the sense of loss the woman had cast on me is my own. What a house personifies is a place to rest, to relax, to be oneself. Since the refugee inside us is so subdued by infinite desire and ambitions, we seek a shortcut – a house of our own.
Everyday at the bank, I deal with clients who come to pay their home loan interests. Their houses, the houses of their own, haven’t done much to ease their fears. I watch a pool of anxiety well up in their eyes when the bank revises its interest rates, or the municipality decides to dismantle houses to expand roads. To be honest, save Ramana Maharshi and his like, I haven’t really come across anyone who reflects that sense of being home, of owning a house.
The truth is that most of us seem to be simply owned by houses.
The writer lives on an isolated plateau in Pokhara with rabbits and fireflies.
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