For what its worth

Gopal was looking at his grandmother’s face as she pulled him out of her daughter’s womb. A second later, he was looking at his wife‘s lips on their wedding night. Yet in the next moment, he was sipping whiskey on a beach in South Korea, watching the tides roll off in the ocean. It must be South Korea, he thought, for he’d never seen a beach. Like a misfiring tape machine, these scenes were coming into and going out of focus on his mind’s projector screen.

The sky appeared a blue gaseous haze through teary eyes. He could hear a river flowing nearby, and people screaming, and sirens going off, but all enveloped in a fuzz of ambiance; like a piano with its damping pedal pressed. He might as well have been laying down underwater.

Water! He snuffled, and swallowed some mucus. It lacked moisture, and really irritated his sinus. He twitched and contorted his face muscles, and it eased the itch in his nose a little, but his eyes slowly shut themselves; the dehydration made it hard to keep them open for a whole minute. 

He pushed his eyelids up, and blinked a few times to bring the image into focus. He was in the middle of a bush, it seemed, laying on a somewhat bouncy bed of shrubs. Above and around, he could see the leaves and stems of sishnu¹, and another plant he could not recognize. Adding two and two, he figured he’d crushed the plants upon landing.

Yes. The landing, he wondered. To his great irritation though, however hard he tried, he could not remember a penny’s worth of it. He remembered jumping off the bridge, of course. He’d been airborne, and while he was at it, he’d even let the cool breeze comb his hair for a second, before realizing that he’d been too far away from the center of the bridge. Solid ground, thirty feet below, waited to crush his bones.

Even then, as he cursed himself, something had pinched his back.

His body was weightless, yet immobile. Somehow, it was flattened, back against the ground, and an invisible anaconda had wrapped the pair in a rigid coil. Must… fight.. He tried to raise his tree trunk of an arm, and the serpent tightened its grip. Sting! A sting so powerful, it shot out of his stomach, and, in a moment, had snaked its way through his nerves to the tip of every fingernail. It rode his esophagus back up, and rushed out through his mouth in the form of a scream: a sad, cacophonic bugle call that consumed the very last bit of his energy.

Taking a few deep breaths, he felt around his stomach for the point of agitation. He found it: a chunk of flesh missing from under his right rib section. The touch was salt and pepper on the wound, so he pulled his hand away. Tears rolled off as he looked at bloody fingers. He closed his eyes.

He recalled how this day had started; how he’d woken up in his old bedroom, to the sound of the same alarm he’d heard for almost 20 years prior. His wife had then brought him tea, which he had drunk, watching the 6 am news on N-TV. Same thing he’d been doing for what seemed like forever.

Even then, sitting on the edge of his bed, clutching the warm china cup in his hands, Gopal had known that it was no ordinary morning. A historic day was to succeed it; the day of a nation’s reckoning. He knew that people, all around him, were waking up with their eyes wide open. All of their patience and perseverance was going to pay off today.

The 19^th, and, supposedly, the last day, of the ongoing people’s revolution. Finally, after years of being improvised and dominated by the aristocratic royal family, the people of this great nation were to expect bright days. The King was going to transfer the control of power to the leaders of political parties: true representatives of the people.

“Within ten years, we will make this country look like Switzerland”, Gopal had heard Mr. Bhattarai, a leader of one of the communist parties, talking on News FM 74.7 the other day. Yet another leader, Mr. Koirala, of the Democratic Party NC, had stated that the literacy rate would increase by 10% annually, and the GDP would see a rise of 2%. The seven main parties had created an alliance to overthrow the King, and they needed public support like never before. They were not holding back on making big promises.

For Gopal, however, these promises held very less importance compared to one made to him by Mr. Rai, the leader of CPN-UML, another communist party in the Seven Party Alliance (SPA). For helping the party through the revolution, Gopal was to receive a sum of 7 million rupees, which was just about what he had been looking for.

Gopal was a shopkeeper, and co-founder of a gym, in a little village in the suburbs of the capital city. Business had always been slow, mostly owing to villagers migrating to the city at an ever-accelerating rate. So the shop was merely a way to keep himself occupied. Gopal relied on political parties for some extra income. Having a lot of influence on the boys of his village, and the neighboring ones, he would gather them up when parties needed manpower for staging protests, rallies, and other such events.

These were boys used to working in the fields, hanging out in the woods all day, and drinking local ale at night. The alpha males also spent some time in the gym, but none of them had a regular routine. It wasn’t a tough choice for them when Gopal offered a 100 rupees a day for shouting slogans on the streets. Recently, however, it had been hard. There was more political awareness among the youth. Emergence of a lot of new parties willing to pay more for manpower had been further corroding business.

The other day, Gopal was shocked when Ram Mahat from the south village had denied participating because of disagreement with party policies. “You people are communists! You’d suck the blood out of rats, and store them in your office if you could! How’ll the people prosper by shouting your slogans?!” Gopal had kicked the boy out of his sight, but in his mind, he’d made a decision that day. He was going to quit.

He had grown tired of his poverty-ridden lifestyle. He was tired of worrying about not being able to provide a bright future for his son. He was tired of worrying his wife would go to her grave without ever being able to wear proper jewelry. He was tired of worrying his parents might not get a proper funeral because of lack of funds on his part. He’d heard there were opportunities in South Korea to work hard labor jobs and make at least 2 million rupees a month, which would be enough for his family to live like royals at home.

The thought of his wife’s happiness seemed to have given him a jolt of energy. He shook his head and opened his eyes. He listened hard for any movement around, but there was nothing friendly. He tried to think how long it had been since the incident on the bridge. An hour? Two? A day? No, it can’t be a whole day; the sirens are still going off somewhere. Still, the thought sent chills down his spine. What if everybody had left, and missed him?

Don’t panic! Wiping tears off, and smearing his face with blood while doing so, he took a few deep breaths. He stretched his neck around to find out that he’d have to lift himself up in order to take a look at the wound. Pressing his palms against the floor of flattened shrubs, he felt about a million tiny sishnu-needles press back, but that irritation was not noteworthy. He lifted up his head and upper torso through gritted teeth. Then he had to give up.

His insides had bonded with the shrubs by means of coagulating blood. Lifting his stomach felt like pulling two Velcro surfaces apart, and made him scream again. Only this time, no sound escaped his parched mouth. His throat burned from the attempt. Exhaustion.

As his eyes shut themselves up, an unknown warmth suddenly blanketed his body, and everything was a shade of sepia. He was in his bed, and his wife was sitting on its edge. Even though she still had her face covered with the red bridal-veil, he could tell her face was red.

Parbati? He called her name. No answer, but he felt her face grow redder in the moments of silence. Don’t be shy, he comforted her. You must be feeling overwhelmed, but really, there’s no need. Still, there was no answer. She sat like a wax statue, transfixed on the spot, unable to heed a single one of Gopal’s calls.

He knew it was up him to break the ice, and ease the tension in the room. You’re the man, he told himself. He straightened himself up against the headboard of the bed, and cleared his throat. Listen, um, we don’t..umm.. you know, we don’t have to do it tonight.

He did his best to sound convincing. He was equally as nervous as her, but being the man, he knew he had to take control of the situation. Heart pumping furiously, he slowly slid his palm underneath her sweaty ones, took hold, and held them out in the light. The hands that would caress him and raise his children. The hands he was destined to hold, forever.

They were tattooed with elaborate paintings of henna. Like creepers, they grew, out of her wrists, matured on her palms, and branched out into her slender fingers. Red fingernails bloomed like cherries at their tips. He kissed her knuckles softly.

Under her veil, Parbati’s lips curled into a smile.

He squeezed her hand, but grabbed only a fistful of shrubs. His eyes filled up as he thought of her. He felt very weak, and every breath seemed shorter than its predecessor. He could still hear people screaming, gunshots, and sirens going off, but nothing in his immediate proximity. He tried to shout “Help”, but a barely audible “-elp” was all he could manage through his throat, which by now, he was sure, was on fire.

Somebody will surely find me. He tried to be positive. So many others had jumped off the bridge. At least one other person must have landed in this area. But where were these people? Could they all be trapped in their own little bush, holding on desperately to their lives? What if nobody were to find them? Or what if somebody finds them, but it’s too late. He saw Parbati’s face filled with tears at the news of his death. He had to live!

She must be on the roof, he thought. After the King had imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the streets, people had taken the protests to their rooftops. Utensils, tools, tubes, sticks, anything, and everything that could make a sound were being banged against each other to produce noise. 10 year olds banged on aluminum lids with steel ladles, and shouted “Down with aristocracy-- Long live democracy!”

What do these kids know about politics and democracy? Gopal had thought, but at the same time, he’d realized that he himself couldn’t tell the difference. After all, he’d never had any knowledge of his party’s political agendas, or any other party’s for that matter. I do it for the food that fills my table, he’d always told himself.

When a TV reporter had asked him similar questions a few years ago, he’d grabbed the man’s camera, smashed it to the ground and chased him away; Gopal was always known for using his fists whenever words failed him. But it was different this time; he himself was asking the questions: What am I doing? Whose side am I on? Am I doing wrong to my own people? I might get killed on the street tomorrow, what is it worth? No answers. Also, there were no cameras to smash, nobody to point fingers at, nothing. There was only judgment- cold and hard.

Any doubts he had about quitting this lifestyle had been cleared on that day. He wanted to take off as soon as the revolution was over. His travel-agency had already established contacts for him in South Korea, so he could start working as soon as he got there.

It’ll be in a factory manufacturing mobile phones and tablets, his agent had said to him. Gopal had imagined himself in a factory worker’s uniform and laughed. But a slight issue had gone unnoticed until that time: he had to first learn to read and write Korean. So it was decided that there was to be a 3-months period after the revolution where Gopal would study the Korean language and pass a standardized test.

Once the revolution began, it was quite hectic for Gopal. He had to push away all thoughts of Korea out of mind and focus on the work that needed to be done at base. For the first week, he’d been out on the streets, leading a troop of village boys, shouting anti-aristocratic slogans. Of course, that was before the curfews were imposed and the security forces were still hesitant to use their batons.

With the curfews however, things heated up rather quickly; they brought out tear-gas guns and other guns that would shoot rubber bullets. Staring at the blue sky, he thought of the day when one of his boys were shot. They were both rushed to the hospital where only one got the medical attention he needed. The other had sustained serious head injuries, and couldn’t be saved. Was it the 13^th day? Or the 14^th? It all seemed like events from so many ages ago.

Of course, the events from the present day were solid images in his mind. He remembered leading his troop of men to the local school playground where they merged with troops from other villages. From there they’d marched on towards the heart of the city where the royal palace sat in its glory. What he hadn’t yet realized was that similar troops had emerged out of every little village in the suburbs, and every other barrio in the city; it seemed as if every person in the country was there.

They had to halt upon encountering a blockade in the Memorial Bridge just a few blocks from the palace. On the northern side, on the way ahead, troops of armed security forces had sealed the road. They were equipped with tear gas bombs and bullets. Behind him was a mass of people, still trying to push forward. Gopal was doing the same too, shouting slogans the whole time.

Then, out of nowhere, the chopper had appeared: a dark green terror machine, bearing the emblems of the royal army. Without warning, it opened fire, and the troops on ground followed suite with tear gas bombs. The people replied with terrified screams. All hell broke loose.

Suddenly Gopal was in the middle of a stampede. He was being pushed and shoved from all directions, while he himself tried to stay on his feet. A woman ahead of him spit out blood and hit the ground. The stampede continued over her, smothering her wriggling body into the asphalt. This is not how I die, he thought, and right then, as if god was showing him a way out, he saw a man jump into the river.

Without thinking for a second, Gopal pushed his way to the edge of the bridge, climbed the bar, and leaped. 

A soldier on the northern end of the bridge had seen the perfect opportunity to put his target-practice skills to test, and fired a shot. The airborne body had twitched mid-air, and continued its journey down into the bushes. The soldier had howled, and lit a cigarette.

^{1- (Nepalese) a kind of shrub that has needles all over its leaves and stems. Very irritating to human skin}