Accounts

--Prawin Adhikari

Elder and Younger are sisters, Gurungs from somewhere in the west. Elder has to sit down because of hot flashes. She pulls her lungi mid-shins, presses the soles of her feet against the already hot cement floor. Elder fans herself with a steel plate covering a bowl of potato and chickpeas curry on the show-case-counter. Younger still hasn't returned from her errand of buying a spoonful each of freshly ground cumin and coriander from the masala mill around the corner.
Samdhini is walking with a young girl. She pauses to smile at Elder. “Come, drink a cup of tea, Samdhini-O!” Elder says. “Just had tea two hours ago,” Samdhini says. But the day is cooling off just a little, and this window of restfulness needs friends. Samdhini sends the young girl ahead, tells her to be careful. “You look like you've been buried under embers,” she says to Elder. “Tell me about it!”

“Where is my other samdhini?” Samdhini asks. “Don't know where she crawled to die, that woman,” Elder loses her temper. “The tarkari is overcooked already. This bhai, bichara, he ate bhatmas without lime. And that woman is still talking to the shopkeeper.” Samdhini starts to laugh. “Where were you headed?” Elder asks.

“That way. Couldn't even give a little bit of dahi-chiura to the kids for fifteenth Ashar. She will bring some chicken. Cheaper by twenty rupees over there. This lahurey neighborhood has become too expensive.”

“They are lahureys, they can pay,” says Elder. “Look at that house! Isn't that like a mansion? He didn't waste money sticking stone to the outside walls. I have been inside. All the money is inside.” Both women fan themselves with whatever they find—a steel plate, the ends of a grimy curtain. Younger comes laughing, says her namaste to Samdhini.

“What are you grinning about?” Elder shouts. “Why did you have to rub your snout with the shopkeeper's?” Samdhini starts off on a long-winded tale about Younger's legendary tardiness. Once, Younger was washing clothes in a bucket outside the house. A visitor—the kind that you take indoors—distracted her. The clothes lay in the bucket for another three days. Samdhini reminded Younger about the wet clothes, wallowing in water gone green with algae. Younger put the clothes to dry, but forgot them for a week on the clothesline. “They were like leaves in autumn. Her boy had to go around wearing shirts that fell apart if you pulled on them.”

Two bahun men sit down. One is Loud, the other Deferential. Loud asks Elder if there is something to drink. “Of course, there is something to drink. Why wouldn't there be something to drink?” Loud wants jaand, not beer. He is too poor today to drink beer. “Then drink raksi,” Younger suggests.

“Oh, ho!” Loud grins. “I haven't eaten anything since eight in the morning. If I drink raksi now, won't I fall off the chair?” Elder points at Deferential. “Who is this?” “From my village,” is the answer.

“You don't want me to draw up your accounts, do you? ” Elder says. Loud's face distorts. “You hag!” he says, only half in good-nature. “Why did you have to go telling everybody I had wasted twelve hundred rupees in one evening? Do you know what my thekedar did to me when he heard?”

“What was I to do? I had to close all accounts. I needed the money. And you did, didn't you? You drank away twelve hundred rupees that night.” Deferential looks at Loud's face.

“Say what you want. You lied! You said you were selling the shop. You insulted me before my friends just to get your money. Where did you think I was running away to?”

“I did sell the shop, to this one here,” Elder points to Younger. “I am helping her run it now, show her how to run the shop, make some money. You accuse me of lying? I swear by the gods, I have never lied to a bahun-chhetri.”

What does it mean to a menopausal Gurung woman trying to find her way around a small tea-shop business in Kathmandu to never lie to a Bahun or a Chhetri? Loud smacks his lips together after taking a big swig of the jaand Younger has just put before him. Deferential is going queasy, looking alternately at the buffalo meat on his chiura, and the milky cup of jaand. He is a Bahun freshly transplanted to the city.

“You were afraid I would run away without paying your money,” Loud says. “But I am a thekedar now.” Loud is incapable of stopping his face from distorting into a mask of haughtiness. Deferential worships him from across the small table.

“You are a thekedar?” Elder can't quite believe, but she smells blood. Younger perks up—this must be a special point of instruction in her ongoing education about the successful management of a four-top tea-shop. Loud taps the table with his empty cup. “Lalitpur side. Not a big house, but I am a thekedar now. Started on Saturday.”

“Saturday was a good saait,” Younger stands with a ladle dripping by her side, watching Loud eat his chiura and buff-curry. “Give him some gravy,” Elder says. “No, no,” Loud replies, “give me more.” He taps the table with his enamel cup.
Two Bhojpuri-speaking boys ask for “the usual.” Younger pours them two glasses of raksi. The boys pick out two doughnuts from the counter. They knock back the raksi, ask for water to chew the doughnuts with. “Put it in our account, okay?”

“How much was that? That was twenty five rupees,” Elder says, fumbles through a well-worn notebook. “Why do you pretend, Aama?” asks the doughnut-raksi boy. “Here, give me the book, I'll write it in.” Elder hands him the book. “See, here, twenty-five,” the boy writes into the notebook, shows it to me, to Loud. “You are not that old, Aama,” he says to Elder. “At least learn to write numbers.”

“Ah, you loud-mouth madhise! Go away now!” Elder shoos the boys away, not without affection. “Don't return the doughnuts tomorrow,” the boy says. Stale confectionery is half-price.

“So you don't even know how to write?” Loud Bahun asks Elder. Younger turns the pages on the notebook, standing by the door. “I know how to read and write,” Elder says. I pick through the bhatmas on my plate. “No, no. I don't. I don't know how to write or read,” Elder says. Loud instinctively puffs up a little, taps the table with his empty cup.