The Prediction

THE PREDICTION AND OTHER SHORT STORIES

SUSHMA JOSHI

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or if real, are used fictitiously.

First published in 2013 by Sansar Media and Publications Kathmandu, Nepal

Text © Sushma Joshi

The rights of Sushma Joshi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyrights Act.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the author.

Publisher: Published at Smashwords by Sansar Books, August 2014

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CONTENTS

1. The Discovery of the High Lama

2. A Boleria for Love

3. The Promise

4. Hunger

5. The Prediction

6. Shelling Peas and History Lessons

7. The Best Sand Painting of the Century

AFTERWORD

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THE DISCOVERY OF THE HIGH LAMA

The older I get, the more I am astonished by this trickster hand of time.

Look at all the boys we thought would go on to become doctors and engineers. They became lafanka men playing guitar in Thamel. And the lafanka ones went on to become stars in unexpected places. One boy who came last in class throughout his school days won a scholarship to study fashion design in New York. Another boy, who was the top student of our batch, became so disheartened after Harvard rejected his application he spent the next decade drinking in the Bamboo café, talking sadly about his plans to be a chemical engineer.

But the most surprising story of all was Bigyan’s. Did you ever meet him? He was one of the boys who played in the Tigerbalm band at the Insight Bar. Yes, that’s right - the guitarist. He had that curly hair always slick with gel, and the dreadful pair of sunglasses. He wore that Pakistani imported leather jacket with a big white yin-yang patch on the back.

What’s up with the yin-yang, Bigyan? I said, slapping him on the back as he sat there on a high chair at the Maya Bar. He was drinking Mr. Everest whiskey. I had recently returned to Kathmandu for the winter vacations. A scholarship to study environmental science had taken me to Boston, where I had acquired a taste for pizza and a penchant for long-haired hippie girls with liberal tendencies. Now, sitting down in the chair next to Bigyan, I felt myself so much more hip, elevated and distant from this backwater than I could ever have imagined.

He grinned that lop-sided grin, strummed a few chords on the guitar, and then looked up. I thought it looked cool, he said, without apparent irony. I wanted to give him a lecture on the meaning of the two signs, their gendered implications, the way Eastern spirituality was being exoticized, appropriated and marketed by the West to advance its own values of profit-driven, globalized capitalism and destroying the world with its crass materialism. Then I restrained myself. He wouldn’t understand anyway, I thought as I pulled up a chair. Looks like you’re pretty deep into this spirituality game, Bigyan. Trying to find god with the rest of the world travelers, huh? Only a moron would have missed the note of sarcasm in my voice, but it flew over Bigyan.

He grinned and replied, Yin and yang is fashion, Prakash. Like headbanging. That, in short, summed up his understanding of spirituality.

After my school leaving exams, I applied to colleges in the States. I waited for almost a year to find out the admission decisions. That year was the most torturous one of my life. I spent those twelve months with Bigyan and four other boys who are now scattered in Europe and Australia. Every time I met Bigyan, he raved about some defunct heavy metal band from the eighties like Cinderella. Or some defunct rock band from the seventies like Uriah Heep. Their band did the cover of Santana’s Black Magic Woman each and every night, sometimes twice a night. If it wasn’t Santana, it was Bob Marley. No woman, no cry. I almost cried from the boredom of it all.

Bigyan, took pity on my miserable existence. I see potential in you, brother, he said. You’d make a great backup guitarist for our band. Come practice. Just in case this college thing doesn’t work out. He strummed a riff from the roadhouse blues. Hear this? Show me how you can do it. My stumbling version impressed him. That night, he took me to meet another band—the Dead Metal Rose—who met to practice in his living room. They had a jargon all their own. Hey bro, can I borrow your wah-wah? Your crybaby? a dashing musician with a ponytail and a t-shirt with the two embroidered eyes asked. The room smelled heavily of pot. The drummer handed over a foot-pedal, and I realized what they were talking about. The boys told me people who followed Nirvana were cool, Pearl Jam were cooler and Jim Morrison were coolest. When they ran out of covers, they sang awful Nepali pop songs in the same vocal style as Mariah Carey, a quiver at the end accentuating the agony of lost love. That was Kathmandu as I knew it.

Bigyan was a friend of mine from Class Four. We were in Budanilkantha Boys’ Boarding School together. His parents named him Bigyan - not after bigyan, the science of the West, but the bigyan or inner knowledge of the East. Bigyan, unfortunately, was not endowed with the intellect that his name hinted at. He had a comfortable reputation in school as the stupidest boy from our batch. It took him three days to learn the same poem from Mahendra Mala that the rest of us learnt in an hour. He lived in the room next door to me, with his sweaty vests and underwear piled high on the bed.

Prakash, I think I am going to fail again, he would say, in despair.

Don’t despair, Lwangay, I would console him. At least you’re not retarded like the Ganesh Sir’s son. We had given Bigyan this nickname. Bigyan would read the same poem over and over, and still wouldn’t be able to memorize it. He would get down from his bed and do some quick push-ups to stimulate his blood circulation, but the poor boy’s brain was so bodho it took him hours to memorize a line.

Mero pyaro Okhaldhunga

Mero pyaro Okhaldhunga

He repeated over and over, and then beat his head with his fists in sheer frustration. Prakash, help me, he begged. I can’t remember a thing.

Try repeating it a hundred times, I said. My tone was causal, with that pitiless humor that boys use with each other.

I do. It doesn’t work.

What are you going to give me in return?

A plate of alu-dum, he replied.

Your brain is stuffed with potatoes, all you have to do is to scoop some out. He would always flash a meek grin at these potato jokes made at his expense. He needed to finish his homework and avoid reprimands from teachers. The best way was to suck up to us. I took the book from him, and read the lines out, slowly, very slowly - my tone hinting at his retarded mental progress. Repeat after me, I would say. Repeat after me. I wanted to hypnotize him. It would take us a while, but he would, after enough time, remember a line. That’s how he passed his SLC exams - along with a few cryptic notes he had scribbled in his pencil box, and that folded piece of paper with all of the algebra formulas and geometrical theorems he had tucked inside his socks.

Bigyan was not good at math or science, everybody agreed. But he had a hidden card up his sleeve. When he was five, his father, who was in the Sports Council and had been a well-known athlete in his days, insisted he learn kyo-kushin karate. Why he chose karate as the sport of choice was unknown. What was exceedingly clear was Bigyan, from day one, excelled at it. Chopping boards to bits with the palms of his hands was easy as peeling an orange. This skill won unadulterated admiration from his teenaged classmates.

By the time he was sixteen, Bigyan had a black belt. That was his saving grace. That’s what allowed him a chance to travel. At a time when most of his friends were getting scholarships and flying off to study in the US or Europe, he was invited to take part in a tournament in Mongolia.

That’s when this crazy story starts. Bigyan got a phone-call one morning from the National Sports Council. His old coach Jagat Lama sounded stern as he asked the question over the phone: Can you come with us? Can I?, thought Bigyan, looking at of his window at the tree heavy with crinkled pink asaray flowers. His band was slated to play for the bar that Sunday. His boys would be disappointed if their guitarist failed to show up. But then he thought about Mongolia - a word rife with unknown vistas, kilometers of red sand and stone, men and women with ruddy cheeks and good health. I’ve never traveled outside Kathmandu, he reminded himself. Mingma was a good guitarist – he had jammed with the band so often he could take over if there was an emergency. And this, thought Bigyan, is an emergency. I need to go to Mongolia. Mingma could have his big break with music while Bigyan traveled.

I can come, he said. Good, said Jagat, clearing his throat. Bigyan was his best student. Jagat knew that the team would have no chance of winning without him. The click of the phone at the other end signaled the end of the conversation, and Bigyan was left staring at the receiver. Then he did a little dance around his room. Mongolia! Wait till he told the other boys about it!

At the airport, the coach’s wife, along with the secretaries at the Sports Council, showed up with a basket full of marigold garlands.

I’ve never had this much flowers put on my neck before, Bigyan whispered to Motu as he felt the heavy flowers descend on his neck. A subtle floral scent overpowered his nostrils. Motu was the nickname of Rajesh, a lean karate black-belt who Bigyan had known since childhood. Rajesh was named Fattie because he used to be obese, due to all the ice-cream that his parents, who owned an ice-cream outlet, fed him as a child. Fourteen years of karate had reduced his body to a plank-hard thickness, but the name had never left him.

I’m leaving the country for the first time, said Motu, his eyes gleaming. It looked as if Motu had tears of excitement in his eyes.

So am I, said Bigyan.

Sometimes sportsmen leave the country for a tournament, and they never return, said Motu, digging his elbow into Bigyan and raising his voice to a meaningful whisper.

Well, we’ll be back, Bigyan said in a voice loud enough to be overheard. He had just glimpsed his coach turn with a raised eyebrow as he overheard the last part of their conversation. He didn’t want to leave a trail of intention behind, just in case he – like all the sportsmen before him who had gone before him to foreign countries and then disappeared – decided not to return.

After an hour of waiting, they walked up the shaky steps of a metal ladder into the cabin of the airplane. What a gigantic airplane! marveled Motu.

Yes, but there is barely room to stretch our legs, Bigyan said, as he tried to squeeze his lanky frame into the seat. A pretty stewardess came around with a plate full of sweets in shiny, colorful wrappers. Amongst the sweets were balls of cotton-wool. Bigyan grabbed a fistful of sweets in his hands. The ball of cotton-wool baffled him. He took a wad anyway, and surreptiously put it inside his pocket.

When they got to Ulan Batar, Bigyan and his teammates were herded into a big car, and driven straight to a hotel. The hotel had a twin beds with clean white sheets. Two clean towels hung in the bathroom. On top of the commode was a bamboo basket with a miniature bar of soap, and a tiny bottle of shampoo. After marveling at these innovations, Bigyan and Motu, who were sharing the room, fell asleep.

The next morning, they were driven to the building where the tournament was being held. The hall was big, with polished wooden floors.

I feel so nervous, Bigyan, whispered Motu. I feel like I am going to vomit. Don’t you?

No, said Bigyan. The hall, with its stack of boards and blue foam mattresses, felt familiar to him. In fact, he saw no difference between this hall, and the one he used to practice in Kathmandu.

You are so bodo, yaar, said Motu with a flash of irritation. Here we are, in the middle of Mongolia, surrounded by teams from all over the world, about to compete in a world tournament. And you act like you’re still turning cartwheels in Dashrat Rangashala.

Bigyan let the voice of his friend fade out from his consciousness. Motu is nervous, he thought, he’s going to make me lose my concentration. Breaking a board in Ulan Batar was not that different from breaking a board in Kathmandu, after all. When his name was called, Bigyan didn’t understand the shaky, jarred syllables. The Coach gestured to him. Your turn!, he said, giving him a big thumbs-up. He walked ahead, his entire thought concentrated on the task ahead. I am going to win a medal for Nepal, he thought, and as this thought crossed his mind, he had a clear image of himself flying through the air doing back flips like he had never done before. He noticed the faces of his teammates in the crowd. He saw himself moving forward without effort, and then realized midway that he was in full flight. His body flew through the routine with an ease that surprised him.

He’s too stupid to be nervous, Motu whispered with a flash of jealousy to the coach.

Shh!, the coach said, his hands clutching the bar in front of him with an iron-hard grip.

Bigyan’s palm did a vertical chop on a stack of wooden boards. His hands cut through them and they disintegrated like soft cardboard. At