The Story Never Told

Yam Kharel
USA

An unusual number vibrated my cell phone. I pressed the answer key. “Is this Yam?” interrogated a female voice. “Yes, I am. Who am I speaking to?” I inquired. She attempted to dominate my question with a laughter intending to conceal her identity.

“Did you finally get to publish your story?” she asked. “Which story?” I questioned her. “I mean the story you wrote about me”, she rectified. This clue sufficiently helped me disclose the biography of this anonymous caller.

“Namaste Sita Didi (sister), how are you?” I offered her this Nepali greeting with a sheer enthusiasm. And then we went on and on with our conversation scratching out almost every thing worth to talk about. Beginning from the day she turned in her application of interest for resettlement, she narrated me all her experiences as of today. The way she explained me her reason to opt resettlement, the first experience of the long sky journey, arrival to the destination, the challenges she faced during the initial days of her adjustment in the new environment, the eventual acclimatization, the gradual progress she earned and so on was interesting indeed. I let her tell me everything about herself in the best possible way I could because there was a purpose. Infact her descriptive conversation especially about the land she inhabited, made me feel to have mastered in the Norwegian Geography.

I discovered drastic changes in Sita Didi. She sounded to have been strengthened with new hopes and aspirations. Her heart seemed to have been filled with charm, joy and happiness of the new land. She seemed to have all freedom in the way she longed to. I thought, she must thank Jefferson for crafting ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ in such an accurate way to directly influence her life at this point. I could not stop commenting, “You sound a way freer, energetic and open than you ever used to be”. “You are absolutely right” she said with an extreme seriousness in her voice. “I am a free bird now. I have flown this far breaking the cage of those social misconceptions and superstitions.”
“So, do you still define yourself in the same arrogant way?” I threw this satirical question at her.

“You should know that in whatever way you define life, it is yet paradoxical. So the definition of my life changed with the situation. Well, at that particular point I regarded my life as a living corpse because that was what I felt. But that expired. Now I have started feeling the delights of life. Now I am feeling that I am a human again, after the death of the living corpse.” She clearly justified. I totally complied with this because it is true that life is always a paradox!
“By the way, how is Bikash doing?” I switched into a new topic.

“He is a man now. He goes to school and also is doing great with his soccer. He has gained some flesh. His squeezed lemon-like cheeks have turned red like apples.” She pictured me the boy almost without a gasp.

“Is he as naughty as he used to be?” I asked.

“Certainly not” she said. “He is changed.”

Before wrapping up the conversation I asked again for her consensus to authorize me publish the story. “You can now publish the story in the way you want. Just be careful with the confidentiality. Make sure you use the fake names.” She cautioned me.

I strongly assured her that all the characters and the plots in the story would be fictitious.

Sita Didi does have a story indeed. Her life in fact is a story of challenges. It’s the story of her transition through those pain and anguish, torture and harassment and tears and lamentations.

Had she been interviewed by a professional author, I would now be reading her biography flipping the pages in a bulky book. I had made at least a couple of attempts to publish her life story, but failed each time. My first attempt was to write a feature story for the newspaper I worked for. But ongoing conservative social issues of discrimination and distinction struck me to be alert against the probable controversies. I made a second attempt to modify the story in a fictitious form and send it to an annual Nepali literary magazine. This time I was not confident enough about how comfortable she would feel to be storied, she had signaled me a green light though. And honestly, perhaps my insufficient writing skills and the then security situations of the journalists could be some other reasons to disable my germinating literary interests.

To make a bag of money out of Sita Didi’s story was not my intention, nor was to win a big fame. To truly visualize the foul play from behind the black curtain of tyranny where human rights and democracy are far-cry was all my mission for.

I was a volunteer teacher for an adult English literacy class in the Bhutanese Community Development center when I first met Sita Didi. She was one of my students.

With the lapse of time, I started noticing some strange feelings in Sita Didi, especially of isolation. She did not seem to be participating in the assigned group works and did not seem to have friends as others did have. Her non reacting nature and the gloom that masked the charm of her real appearance could easily help one to doubt on the mystery that enveloped her real being.

The more I studied her peculiar behavioral attitude, the more I felt like working on something to help her release from these emotional captivations. Since then I started focusing her in a special way. Each day I tried to invent a new way to get closer to her. Getting closer to her was not a deal but paving a way for her to walk closer to me was more important. She was shy, hesitant and uncomfortable at the beginning. But my special attentions on her were always associated with a good purpose. By and by we were able to minimize the distance between us.

A heavy rain was predictable that day. I decided to be smarter by getting to the class before the sky broke than losing another series of an umbrella. I, the rain and two other women from my class got there almost at the same time. It started raining heavily. Soon the hailstones started falling from the sky cumulatively as if the white bullets would pierce the earth’s chest. So we did not expect anybody to join us. I did not want to continue with the stipulated lesson when a bunch of adults were absent; and so did the duo. The class began with the subject unlimited. “Ramila is so cute.” “Gita’s husband makes a lot of money.” “Rohit and Leela are getting married”. Talking about the people is interesting!
“Poor Sita!, she does not know the father of her own son” said one of the women and the other affirmed. This gave an electric shock to my body. I jerked a little forth from the chair I was leaning my back against. “What?” I stimulated. “Didn’t you know that?” she said. “No. How did you know about it?” I asked incredibly. “I just heard about. Everybody says so.” She answered in an easy way. “Some people are good at exaggerating small things and they may always not be true.” I said. The other woman raised her head and spoke with a better confidence, “Sita and I lived in the same village in Bhutan. I know what happened to her. It’s true.”

“Do you think that is why she is so indifferent?” I asked.

“No doubt.” she replied. Now I was more deviated to this woman to scratch out the fact from behind Sita Didi’s mysterious life. I asked her almost everything that I thought would make me believe that her story was true. She explained me everything as if a spot scene eyewitness giving his statement before a judge. I gasped in astonishment. This made me hopeless. I thought, I just by myself would not be able to help scatter away the depressions that she was cloaked in.
My magnified sympathy toward Sita Didi facilitated in strengthening our relationship. Soon we developed our relation to be each other’s best friends. We addressed each other with our adopted sister-brother relation. She indeed cared me as a brother and I respected her as a sister. We were friends as well!

I had attempted to ironically ask her about the mystery of her life at every opportunity I had. She had known what and why I wanted to know. In most of her responses she had indirectly indicated with an “ok” that uprooted the doubt from my mind. I was just waiting for another opportunity to talk freely in a formal style.

One evening I was invited for a dinner at her hut. It was not my first visit but the first time I met her son. This time he was home perhaps because it was dinner time. Shower was the first thing he needed as he was stinking sweat after an all-day soccer. But he did not seem to be caring about it.

“What is your name?” I wanted to begin a conversation.

“What is yours?” he asked me in a sort of rude way, without answering my question.

“Yam.” I said.

“Yam?” mum talks about you. “Are you a teacher?” he asked.

“Well, not actually, but a volunteer teacher.” I replied.

“What does that mean?” he sounded inquisitive.

“One who helps some one to learn without getting paid.” I defined a volunteer teacher in my own way.
“I would not be so in future.” he said.

“Will you tell me your name now?” I requested.

“Bikash.” He answered. Soon there were some tender voices calling him from outside, “Bikash, let’s go to play soccer.” He jumped off the bed he was sitting on, ran out and disappeared among his peers.

While having the dinner I tried to persuade Sita Didi to let me write a story on her life. I honestly explained her the purpose of writing the story and the ethics of confidentiality.

Under certain confidentiality and security conditions she gave me her consensus. I felt like I have accomplished my mission.

I tried my best to jot down every single word as she narrated. She would experience some language use problems owing to our gender differences during the narration. I helped her simplify them. She would pause, go to the kitchen, and then come back and continue.

“……you know how brutally they assaulted us, the southern Bhutanese of Nepalese ethnicity. I don’t know, willingly or forcibly, my father and brother had joined others to raise the slogans of democracy and human rights from the street. The flame of agitation kindled. Armed forces were deployed to suppress the demonstrations and dominate those public voices.

The authority was abused. Rape, abduction, torture and persecution toll started mounting every day. No matter it’s a day or a night, one would hardly dare to open the house door. People started feeling their lives incredibly volatile. Male adults of every household had the highest risk. Some had already started spending underground life, relying on forest shelter; otherwise in no way would their life be spared.

It would be midnight in an hour. The drizzle had not yet indicated to stop. Warmly wrapped up in a quilt though, I was awake in my bed. I believed so was everybody. My ears sensed a herd of iron-soles galloping in our courtyard. The sound approached the door. One from among the group knocked the door with a command to open. I ran toward parents’ room. My older brother joined us. Our fear seemed no bounds. My heart almost stopped beating. We held each other firmly. The knocks amplified into bangs associated with a series of threatening commands. My father went to open the door. He ran back to join us as fast as he could; letting them in. A queue of robust combatants followed him. One, supposed to be the chief of the group questioned my father beyond his answering capability as he had no idea of what the truth was. They accused him of plotting a conspiracy against the king. They alleged him with a tag of a terrorist. He repeatedly confessed his innocence. They started abusing him physically. One of them accosted and hit my father with his gun butt on his head. And then struck with the barrel. He fell onto the ground. They kicked and cudgeled him. Soon there was a pool of blood. My brother and mother jumped over his unconscious body to rescue him. We pleaded for his life, but all went in vain. They threw my mother to one corner and the brother too was a prey of their fatal torture. His head was bleeding badly. Both of them, in their half life state were dragged out and plunged into a van stopped ahead. I could hear my mother screaming and lamenting for help from the kitchen.

Those vampires were not quenched yet. Some of them dragged me to my bedroom. They threw themselves over me. I beseeched them to stop. I bellowed and screamed until I lost my voice. My clothes were torn apart and thrown away. They left no single piece of garment on my body. These fiends blatantly jumped over me, one after another until each one’s potency was over.”

At this moment Sita Didi was sobbing, tears drained through her cheeks and wetted her blouse. Her voice cracked as if her vocal cord was clogged. She again went to the kitchen. This time it took a while for her to get back to me. She had rinsed face, perhaps to wipe out the tear stains, but her eyes were still red.

“The news of this incident spread like a wild fire the following morning. I was helped to subside the pain by the villagers with domestic herbal therapy. I could feel the bruises all over my body. I could barely walk. It was engorged and swollen.

This is how I was killed alive many times. I am just a living corpse.”

“Please don’t say that”, I tried to save her from her self humiliation.

“No, that is the real definition of my life. And I have the right to define my life in the way I want to.” She sounded very rigid and a little furious. She paused and again brought herself under control to continue.

“Since then I lost the trust over human creature. I think it is the cruelest of all creatures. I lost all hopes of my life. I even attempted ending my life, but something stopped me, I don’t know what that was. I looked at my mother and thought of the uncertain whereabouts of my brother and father.

My brother was released in about a month and a half. He had lost most of his physical and mental abilities. The sever torture that he underwent in the prison reoccurred in his every nightmare. He even day dreamed the same. He insisted to quit as he was forced to sign to leave the country with in a month’s deadline. We anticipated for our father, but he never came back.

We left the country bidding a heartrending adieu to our sweet home, beautiful farm and lovely cattle.

There were few feebly built tilting tents on the bank of the Kankai river when we first arrived in Nepal. We installed one for us. It was in that tent I gave birth to Bikash right after nine months of that black night.

It’s true that Bikash is a posthumous and I myself don’t know who his father is. I just know that I am a mother, but never a wife I was.

Thus, youth, beauty and love bypassed my life. Life is long and painful. I think I am the only creature wandering in this desolate desert’s atmosphere with an uncertain destination”.

While I was working so hard on my vocabulary to sympathize her with the most inspiring words of literature, she spoke, “it is getting dark. You would better go, otherwise people will misinterpret your visit.”

By: Yam Kharel
USA

Tags: Bhutanese Literature Bhutani Katha The Story Never Told Yam Kharel