Arresting God in Kathmandu Read Free

he had fallen.
    “He’s back in the village, near Pokhara. He’s a carpenter, building this and that. But the money is never enough. That’s why I had to come here.”
    “You don’t have any children?”
    She shook her head and blushed.
    They sat in silence for a moment. She said, “You know, my husband says one shouldn’t think too much.” There was a note of pity in her voice.
    “Why does he say that? Does he say it to you?”
    “Not me. I don’t think all that much. What’s there to think about? Life is what God gives us. My husband says it to any of our relatives who is unhappy and comes to him for advice. In this city I see so many worried people. They walk around not looking at anyone, always thinking, always fretting. This problem, that problem. Sometimes I think if I stay here too long, I’ll become like them.”
    Pramod sighed at her simple ways.
    By now the streets were crowded; people were on their way to work. The park, in the center of the city, provided a good view of the surrounding buildings, many of them filled with major offices.
    The woman stood, stretched, and said, “Well, I should be going home. Make tea and then cook some rice for myself.” She looked at him sweetly. “I can make tea for you in my room.”
    Pramod was startled.
    “It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. Here you are, sitting and worrying about what, I don’t know. So I thought you might want some tea. My house isn’t far. It’s right here in Asan.” She pointed in the direction of the large marketplace.
    “All right,” Pramod said. He got up and followed her out of the park, embarrassed to be walking beside this servant girl, afraid that someone he knew might see him. But he could feel a slow excitement rising in his body. He walked a few steps behind her, and she, seeming to sense his discomfort, didn’t turn around and talk to him.
    When they entered Asan, they were swept into the crowd, but he maintained his distance behind her, keeping her red dhoti in sight. There was a pleasant buzz in his ears, as if whatever was happening to him was unreal, as if the events of the last two months were also not true. His worrying was replaced by a lightness. He floated behind her, and the crowd in the marketplace moved forward. He didn’t feel constricted, as he usually did in such places. In fact, his heart seemed to have expanded.
    When they reached an old house in a narrow alley, she turned around at the doorway and said, “I have a room on the third floor, the other side.” She led him through a dirty courtyard, where children were playing marbles, and beckoned to him to follow her through another door. Pramod found himself in the dark. He could hear the swish of her dhoti. “The stairs are here,” she said. “Be careful; they’re narrow. Watch your head.” He reached for her hand, and she held his as she led him up the wooden stairs. Now Pramod could see the faint outline of a door. “One more floor.” He thought she looked pretty in that semidarkness. On the next landing she unlocked a door and they entered a small room.
    In one corner were a stove and some pots and pans; in another, a cot. A poster of Lord Krishna, his blue chubby face smiling at no one in particular, hung above the bed. The gray light filtering through the small window illuminated the woman’s face and objects in the room. She was smiling.
    He was drawn to the window, where he was surprised to find a view of the center of the marketplace. He had never before been inside a house in this congested quarter. In the distance, vegetable sellers squatted next to their baskets, smoking and laughing. A faint noise from the market drifted into the room, like the hum of a bee, and he stood at the window and gazed over the rooftops and windows of other houses crammed into this section of the city.
    “You can sit on the bed,” she said.
    He promptly obliged, and she proceeded to boil water for tea. He