Hidden Women: The Ruling Women of the Rana Dynasty

By Greta Rana

Greta Rana MBE (awarded Order of the British Empire in 2005) is an author and poet born in Yorkshire, UK. She has been living in Nepal for over forty years. She first ventured into literary fiction in the 1970s after two short genre novels, ‘Nothing Greener’ and ‘Distant hills’ and a popular cliff-hanger written for a weekly newspaper titled ‘Against the Winds of Tomorrow.’ Her work in mountain areas was to provide the themes for her novels as she observed a country left behind and finding transition difficult against the ethnic and cultural divides and the suffering caused by the desperation of poverty in one of the harshest terrains on earth: her insights have also been sharpened by periods living in Laos and Afghanistan and work in and visits to Pakistan’s Northern Areas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Oct 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9789351940463

Book preview

1

Pattharghatta

Kadam Magar shivered feebly but perceptibly.

    Age had deprived her of warmth. She should have felt warm enough here in the jungle, but somehow, the grief of losing even the one whom she feared as much as loved made her body cold: her mind was cold too. Her grandson coughed, ‘Grandmother, would you go to the river?’

‘The last one I went to the river for was your father, nearly twenty years ago. He was killed by that one, through his greed – wanted to show he was up to it. Now it’s his turn. Now that should convince them he’s not up to everything.’

‘Grandmother, shush.’ Kadam’s grandson Dev appealed to her, looking around and peering into the trees as if the shadows of the jungle camp hid ghouls that were about to accost them.

‘You want me to be quiet? What do you think they can do to me? But they will do their worst yet, believe me.’

‘Do what grandmother?’

‘Stupid oaf, you’re just like your father. Don’t you understand? It’s not he, the one you all adore so blindly, who can do anything to you now. It’s them, the others. We’ll not be safe afterwards.’

‘We can go back to the village.’

‘What, to your uncle? He’ll like that, having all your brats landing on him. He hates us because he believes he was the one who lost out – no benefit he said, no benefit to me that my mother was Jung Bahadur’s wet nurse. Well, what did he know about his father and that bitch, my mother-in-law? Spoiled he was by all your grandfather’s wives – the barren ones with the one daughter between ’em.’

She fell silent. Her grandson waited. He didn’t know how old she was. Older than anyone he’d ever met. She had been thirteen or fourteen when she came to be the maharajah’s wet nurse, carrying his father, her second born, all the way from Dhulikhel. There was no choice. She had to keep feeding him so that she could feed Jung.

Dev knew her distaste for his father’s elder brother, the one she’d left behind in Dhulikhel. He begrudged them the glamour of Kathmandu, but truly he’d profited – the whole family had profited from his grandmother’s enslavement as a wet nurse. Jung, the corpse that lay by the river now, waiting for cremation, would go nowhere without her as a child – and as a man he needed her attention frequently.

Strange when you considered all the women he’d had. His numerous wives and that strange enigmatic woman, the wife (or widow?) of the Nana sahib: the man who had hidden in Nepal for many years as a saddhu. Perhaps even now the Nana sahib hid in Jung’s mountain estates? Who was to know? They said Jung had wooed the Begum of Oudh – but who knew? Hadn’t he given shelter to Ranjit Singh’s widow when she escaped from a British prison? Jung had braved the displeasure of the British and welcomed her. He’d refused to give her up until she wanted to go, until it was safe for her to go.

‘It’s against our Hindu custom,’ he’d said.

But had she been more than a religious duty for him? Who knew? Perhaps his grandmother knew and wouldn’t say?

The old lady looked as if she was sleeping, but the grandson knew better. The closed, rheumy eyes were thinking. She was a tough old bird and had lived through all the poison and intrigue of the royal Nepali court. She rambled on a bit – said daft things – but when it came to a crisis, she knew best what to do.

The Maharajah hadn’t been well for days, but had insisted on coming here to this swampy spot in the Terai to hunt. He’d not been himself through most of the month: dysentery, fever, sweat – so many demons attacked him at once. His wives had wanted to send for a witch-doctor when the vaidya’s medicine hadn’t worked. It had enraged him. One of those great rages that everyone dreaded- the rage that turned him into a manic devil, although for many years he’d killed only game – not people. In the night his body writhed like that of a madman until he eventually lost consciousness. Dev had been with him – he was his body man – a privilege he enjoyed because he was the wet nurse’s grandson.

Dev was one of the inner circle – hamro manche – our person, as Jung referred to his trusted few.

Dev had anxiously asked him time and again, ‘Shall I ask grandma to make you some medicine?’

‘No, I forbade her to practice when I outlawed witchcraft. I’ll not use her now,’ Jung said.

Jung had died in the chill of a February night. Dev had prepared the corpse and handed everything over to the Brahmins. There was little he could do now. He’d been occupied with the living being, not the lifeless shell. After what seemed like many hours Jung’s youngest brother, Dhir Shumshere, had arrived and taken control – bringing with him the older few of his many sons.

Dev feared the feisty Shumsheres – they had the look of wolves, predators. Once they had put in an appearance, he had sought his grandmother’s counsel.

The old lady stirred now.

‘We’ll wait awhile,’ she droned, ‘but meanwhile have your wife pack what we need and get the kids ready. Tell her we must move in the night when they’re all asleep after the cremation – and quietly. She must impress that on the kids. We may or may not need to go. I’ll be able to tell you that shortly.’

‘We’ll go to Dhulikhel?’

‘So you think Dhulikhel’s far enough away from Kathmandu, do you, you great lummox? No, we’ll go south.’

‘South? But what do we have in India?’

‘Just do as you’re told,’ the grandmother snapped, ‘and do it quietly. Get me something to ride. If that one’s old enough to die, why should I be young enough to walk?’

Dev knew better than to argue. He had no idea where the old lady meant them to go, but he never doubted her wisdom. He wondered what the old lady was waiting to see. An omen, like the white tiger Jung claimed he had seen just before his body had been racked and contorted by the fever? It had been a never-ending night since then; an ominous haze had settled on the camp. People spoke in hushed tones like conspirators; except for Jung’s youngest brother, Dhir Shumshere. He bulldozed his way through the heavy court protocol that always accompanied Jung’s hunting expeditions.

Dev glanced towards the royal tent. He knew Crown Prince Trailokya and his brother Narendra were in there, feeling perhaps as bewildered as he. He was freer to tell the truth. What were they but birds in a very fancy cage? Dhir would keep them confined, until he had Ranodip, the next eldest of Jung’s brothers, declared Maharajah. Still, any other man with Dhir’s strength and army backing would have had himself declared Maharajah. But Dhir had been devoted to Jung. He would carry out his wishes to the letter; and what would his wolf-like sons think of that?

Dev knew them, had observed them pay court on their uncle, the Maharajah – not the kids, the younger ones from God only knew what wives – for Dhir had an eye for attractive women, they said. Not for noble women who would just lie waiting for you to poke them; but women who could draw the semen out of a man. They said it was because he had a weak sex drive and needed women who would do all kinds of lewd things. Well, Dev didn’t think it meant that at all; it just meant he had different ways of taking his pleasure. People gossiped because, of course, sex was for having kids.

‘I suppose Dhir runs after servants and outcastes because they’ll fiddle around with you in all kinds of ways a high-class woman won’t,’ the gossips would say. ‘Jung likes foreigners, Moslems and Christians, for that very reason. Dhir is not the only one who likes to try out a lot of women, we all know that!’

But then Jung had been different hadn’t he? The women didn’t need to do too much to get him aroused. And he did things for them, they said; things other men didn’t know to do. Dev had often wondered what those ‘things’ Jung did were. It was odd how death made you think about sex.

But now he had work to do. While the camp was all confusion, preparing for the cremation, he had better carry out his grandmother’s instructions. He’d never hear the end of it if she decided to leave and found him unprepared. Dev didn’t feel happy about her idea that they might have to leave Nepal. It was his home and he loved it. But, if Kadam Magar said they had to leave, he wouldn’t hesitate.

For more than sixty years his grandmother had lived with Jung and his family. She had been witness to his tantrums and tribulations – from the time he urinated in his pants, to the time when he could pass water no longer. She had seen his greatness and generosity and his rages and murderous actions. He had been a man who loved greatly and gave generously but who also killed without regret his kith and kin. Now that Jung was dead, Dev knew that his grandmother was looking, not into the past as most old women do, but into the future. He wondered what retribution she saw there through her rheumy eyes which seemed not to see this world, but a time beyond the present, revealing and unravelling. Kadam used to be visited by visions as a young woman: strange visions that could tell her what would happen in the future.

Dev reached the tent he shared with his wife Mina and their kids. He didn’t want her to panic. She was stupid enough while at peace; panicked, she’d endanger the whole lot of them. He’d have to threaten her; it was the only way with women like Mina.

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The sun was almost setting. Jung’s sons, Jagat and Padma, were to lead the ceremonies. They would place the wick at their father’s head and send the spirit of Jung on its journey into the afterlife – and who could tell, perhaps to be born a noble amongst the Englishmen he had so admired in his life? Jung’s sons remained stoic, unresisting and expressionless as three of their mothers arranged themselves on the funeral pyre by their father. One of them cradled his head on her lap.

From a distance, Kadam wondered if they’d taken opium. She was filled with disgust and loathing for Jung’s brothers! Her little one, Jung, would have never wanted this. He never wanted his women to commit sati. He believed it was a cruel practice and a waste of a woman’s life. Jung had had little mercy for men – when he had to dispatch them he did so ruthlessly and without remorse. But women: he could have forgiven them anything, and he did.

Cradling Jung’s head on her lap was Maiya, his ‘beloved’. She was Hiranya Garbha, the sister of Fateh Jung Chautaria who was slaughtered by Jung at the infamous massacre in the Kot. She had come to her husband’s bed with poison and a dagger hidden in her night robes, intending to kill Jung that night with a poisoned dagger! But after a taste of his sweetness she had confessed all, and hadn’t asked for mercy. He’d loved her for it. He’d loved her intensely and admired her for wishing to avenge her brother.

‘Will you so avenge me, my love?’ he had asked her, not once but a hundred times. He would never have wished her to go with him to the fire!

The most beautiful of the women on the pyre, although aged, was Putali – Jung’s ‘doll’. Putali, as his lover, had kept him unscathed from the vengeance of her mistress, the Queen Lakshmi Devi. ‘What must she be feeling?’ Kadam thought. That she couldn’t keep him from death this one time? How anguished she must feel! It was less than three months since Putali had lost her son Babar, the Maharajah’s favourite. Was it grief that led her to the pyre?

The third one was Mishri. All the three wives were firm friends. Yes, the three had loved him intensely – all the more reason for them to carry out his wishes even after death. But hadn’t Jung been explicit in his wishes that none of his wives should commit sati? Jung’s brothers must be forcing this. Certainly it couldn’t be his sons. The brothers wanted clear control by eliminating three of the most powerful of the Maharajah’s wives. What better way to do it than in the time-honoured manner of sati? A little opium and by the time the women really felt the flames, it would be too late. The indolence of the opium-eater makes it easy to overcome one – the smoke would choke the women to death before their flesh burned.

Kadam burned with anger. What an indignity Jung’s brothers had heaped on her little one! She knew his soul would be enraged at this. He would haunt them and their progeny. A curse on them for this foulness, a curse! She clenched her hot fist, pulling the flesh on her breast. Her little one, her milk son, was dishonoured by this. She felt it, his soul must feel it. It did not look well for the Rana dynasty he had founded. Those swines! She, Kadam – the old witch, the wet nurse – would curse them if Jung’s spirit didn’t. Despite what she had witnessed and feared in him, she would curse those who disobeyed his wishes.

As Jagat was about to set flame to the pyre, Maiya held up her hand, indicating that she wished to speak. A hush fell on the onlookers. Most of them must have believed that Dhir had given the three of them opium, so that the cremation would not be a debacle. True, high-class women were obliged to commit sati if their husbands died before them, but while some did so passively, others writhed and even screamed hysterically when the flames burned their flesh. There was no experience in life, not even childbirth, which could prepare them for such a death.

Dhir wouldn’t want a ‘show’ of that kind, so everyone knew he’d drug them. But Maiya wished to speak. It might be embarrassing for him: a drugged woman has no control of her tongue. In that honeyed voice of hers, every inch a patrician lady, Maiya said: ‘Gentlemen, you all know the love the Maharajah had for you, and the zeal with which he devoted his life to the welfare of your country. If, in the discharge of his duty he has ever, by word, look, or deed, wronged any of you, I, on his behalf, ask you to forgive him and to join me in praying for the everlasting peace of his soul.’

And Kadam knew then! She knew that Maiya had refused to be drugged. She would die as she had lived: brave and unbroken. Kadam also knew that there would be bad blood in the Rana clan and the devil to pay for this and several other nights’ deeds. She wouldn’t send her grand-daughter-in-law to attend to the rest of the ladies. When the ashes of her little one were searched for by his sons, so that one remaining bone could be embedded in the holy river, and the Ranas occupied themselves with death pollution rituals, she and her small family would be on their way south, across the border to India. She would seek refuge for herself and her family with Jung’s illegitimate son, Ran Jung, in Calcutta – the one married to the memsahib. A fine woman she was, the memsahib. At least she would understand the ignominy of this dreadful night at Pattarghatta. It was a night that couldn’t be undone, but its curse would destroy the dynasty in the end.

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2

The Wet Nurse

Kadam Magar had dreaded the thought of another ordeal in the cattle shed, but her menses had stopped for the second time. This time it was more than bewilderment about what was happening to her body that tortured her. Now she knew what it meant when her monthly cycle stopped. It meant that her husband’s ‘thing’ had pushed back all the blood into her stomach – to the place where babies were made. He’d done that with his nightly jabbing and heaving. She didn’t know why he had to do it every night!

Kadam knew ‘it’ made babies. She was after all a farmer’s daughter and had seen animals do ‘it’. She also knew that animals didn’t do it all the time; only when it was time to make babies. Perhaps her husband knew when it was time and she didn’t. Ye gods, he’d been at her almost as soon as they’d brought her from Gorkha to Dhulikhel. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other wives. He was quite an old man, about thirty, and had three other wives and a daughter.

The daughter was almost of marriageable age and the wives had no other children. Kadam’s mother-in-law, the youngest and only surviving wife of five, had suggested bringing a bride from Gorkha. ‘Then we’ll have a grandson, once we have a daughter-in-law from Gorkha,’ she said.

She thought like that because that’s exactly what had happened in her case. She herself had been brought from Gorkha after her co-wives had produced daughter after daughter; and then seemed to dry up and wither.

Women dry up early in the Himalayas, men are evergreen. Women dry up because if they’re not bearing children, they’re suckling them or burying them. At the same time they’re planting radishes and grain, grinding it, pickling vegetable leaves and roots, milking the animals, feeding them, fetching water and wood. Women shrink into the scenery, are sucked into the whiteness of the peaks, hover over the furrows ploughed by their husbands: men’s solitary contribution to agriculture: fertility. Ploughing of course was the only thing men knew how to do – bold women drew inferences from it.

‘That’s all they do, plough,’ said Kadam’s mother-in-law. ‘They plough the land and they plough us and we have to look after everything that grows and make sure it keeps on growing.’

They would never dare say it too loud, and never to their mothers-in-law or sisters-in-law, only to their friends, women they trusted. For men were gods, particularly husbands: gods who had to be worshipped morning and evening by washing their feet with water, catching it in a small dish and drinking it. That’s how a devoted wife worshipped her god of a husband.

Kadam had already fulfilled her mother-in-law’s expectations by having one son: a son who had suckled poorly and who had been taken over completely by the old lady. He wasn’t yet a year old and Kadam’s breasts burgeoned with the milk she squeezed out so that her mother-in-law could feed her darling grandson through a reed: the way they did with animals that couldn’t suckle property. It was uncomfortable for Kadam, but her mother-in-law didn’t mind. She had got herself a grandson. He was hers. Sometimes, to comfort him when he cried out but not from hunger, the old lady let him gnaw on her tits. After all, he couldn’t suckle well so it didn’t hurt. He was what you might call a lazy baby. He fed well when milk was poured into his mouth, but he didn’t like to work at it himself.

Kadam would never have dared object. One didn’t object to anything one’s mother-in-law did. Yet, the old lady probably thought Kadam minded because slyly, when no one seemed to be listening, she hinted to her son that Kadam might be missing not having to care for his son. Kadam wasn’t – she just didn’t enjoy squeezing away at her breasts to get all the milk out – and what a great milk machine she had become! It would flow down her blouse and on to the fields if she were only a little late getting back up the hill and into the house.

‘She must be a buffalo,’ her co-wives sniggered. They already hated her because she’d had a son and they hadn’t. They’d failed after all those years of marriage, and everyone knew it was the woman’s fault if a man had no sons. A woman who couldn’t bear sons was bad news. Not that they begrudged Kadam their husband’s poking in and out of her with his stiff prick.

At first Kadam had thought he dreaded it as much as she did. His face would be expressionless as he loomed over her. Wordless he’d fumble through her clothes until he found the place and then, with stiff jerky movements, he’d thrust up and inside her. He’d thrust in and out like a mad thing, panting and shrieking like a wounded Billy goat – as if he were in pain, as if she had teeth there, inside, biting him. And he did it every night even when her menses stopped. Of course, that would be to make sure the baby was still being made.

Kadam never looked at his ‘thing’. It scared her. She imagined it quite black and like a big banana, like the ones that grew on the lower slopes of the hills. But a stiff unripe one, not at all like the sweet little thing her son had, which looked just like a fat worm when he pissed.

Kadam was tortured by the thought of another session in the cattle shed with only the brusque manners and care of the local midwife to keep her company. She also worried about the milk, would it be just as much? Would this child suckle or would the old lady snatch this one away as well? Yet there was nothing she could do, she was trapped. Given away by her family, who were so far away in Gorkha, she had no option but to do what she’d been sent to do – worship her husband like a god, obey him and give him sons. And obey his mother more than you would your own. Well, she was doing that, wasn’t she? They hadn’t been married two years and there was already another pregnancy.

Kadam was twelve – two years older than her stepdaughter who would be married as soon as a groom could be found. Her mother had told her that to comfort her as she’d been wrenched weeping from her arms. ‘Once the daughter is married, none of your co-wives will have any influence and if you have a son …’

Kadam’s mother never finished the sentence, but Kadam knew what it implied.

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Kadam’s husband’s family was one of the Hinduised Magars who had left Gorkha for the Kathmandu valley in the wake of Prithivi Narayan Shah. Kadam’s antecedents had not been among those fortunate enough to follow Prithivi Narayan Shah, King of Gorkha, on his incursions into the Kathmandu valley. No doubt, the men of Kadam’s family hadn’t thought it worthy of the almost thirty years of effort – no matter how rich the ultimate pickings.

Prithivi Narayan Shah had made himself a legend among the Gorkhalis. Kadam’s father-in-law, garrulous after liquor, would recount events before his time as if he’d been there. Already people believed that Prithivi Narayan had conquered the many principalities of the country, unifying them into a nation state. Kadam’s father-in-law swore by this. How he could have known it was a mystery. Prithivi Narayan Shah had died when Kadam’s father-in-law was a boy. Had he a more honest memory, he would admit that Bahadur Shah, Prithivi’s second son, had unified the country. Bahadur Shah had been Regent to his nephew Rana Bahadur, Prithivi Narayan’s grandson from the eldest son, King Singha Pratap, at the time. The Newars remembered the ‘true’ facts. They had long memories. Bahadur Shah had expanded the territory, taking Kumaon and Garwhal in 1794. There was no telling what he would not have achieved if Rana Bahadur had not had him murdered a year later. The Gorkha rulers were swift to murder, you see.

At least, that’s what the Newar women whispered. But Kadam heard them chatting in Newari as they worked in neighbouring plots on their crops. She heard them because she was young and her ears were alert. She didn’t speak Newari, but she got the gist of the gossip. Because she was young and not from a family who had usurped that land, she made friends among them. Sometimes she wished she’d been born a Newar. Their girls were married to Vishnu when they were infants. ‘Ihi’ was the name of the ceremony in their language. They were freer. They could leave their men if they really couldn’t get on with them, and they weren’t locked up as much as the Gorkhali women.

Kadam’s husband’s family was so intent on proving they were good Hindus, much like their benefactor’s family, that they forgot many of their Magar traditions: they were intent upon becoming as much like Kshetris as possible. Kadam’s own family was not quite that Hinduised. Her father and grandfather had discussed it all when her husband’s family had come looking for a wife for him – a fourth wife of good Gorkhali stock, because the family had no grandsons.

‘Shall we give her, this one?’ her grandfather had said.

‘Well, I wonder if it’ll work out? This lot puzzles me,’ her father had replied.

‘Puzzles you?’ had been her grandfather’s response; not asking why, but asking all the same.

‘Well, they’re obviously Magars like us, but even though we’re Hindus we haven’t left our old ways, old rituals, gods. These people don’t even call themselves Magar anymore. They keep only their clan name and leave Magar out.’

‘What’s so puzzling?’ the old man had said. ‘Their family had land over near Kunwar khola. The lands were settled by old Ahiram Kunwar, the fellow who left Dhungresanghu in Kaski lock, stock, and barrel when the Kaski rajah’s son tried to capture Ahiram’s daughter and keep her as a concubine. The Kunwars weren’t having that. They’re descended from a very religious clan, that’s where Kunwar comes from – ‘prince’ they say. Like these mad old saddhus call each other maharaj. Well, Ram Krishna – Ahiram’s eldest son – took off with Prithivi Narayan Shah and the men and women of this family were his servants, tilling his land, so the men left with him. They came back for their women much later. Ram Krishna Kunwar had done well for himself they say – and received a lot of land from the King. Some of it he leased to Kadam’s in-laws: it’s much better land than what they owned in Kunwar khola by all accounts.’

Kadam had heard different versions of this story from her in-laws. They were so proud of their affiliation to the Kunwars – such brave soldiers, the Kunwars. Ram Krishna had distinguished himself at Kirtipur, when Prithivi Narayan’s great general, Kalu Pande, had been struck down. This part would always be told with great relish because Ram Krishna’s heroic role at Kirtipur had been responsible for the Dhulikhel land lease.

‘Huh, your father-in-law talks as if the Gorkhalis rescued the Newars from a fate worse than death. The way he goes on about Kirtipur, I bet he doesn’t mention the butchery that went on,’ Kadam’s Newar friends would tell her.

‘Don’t we have a right and duty to defend our homes and families against invaders? Your Gorkhali rajah had the noses and lips of every man cut off, apart from those of the flautists and suckling babes.’

Cutting off the nose was the Gorkhali punishment for an adulterous wife. King Prithivi Narayan had not only maimed the men of Kirtipur, he had insulted them, perhaps implying that they were no more than women.

‘How insane he must have been, your great King of Gorkha. Anyway, it is our people and our kings who made Kathmandu what it is today. Prithivi Narayan was dead within two years of his great conquest, so there you are. I bet that doesn’t fit your father-in-law’s stories.’

It was the exploits of Ranjit, the son of Ram Krishna, and his son, Bala Narsingh Kunwar, that Kadam’s father-in-law was most fond of recounting. After all, they were from his time.

‘I remember Ranjit,’ he said, ‘He lived in Dhulikhel and returned from time to time. He was liked by Prithivi Narayan’s descendants. After all, his father Ram Krishna had been governor of Chitwan in the south, and Ranjit had led troops in the invasions to Tibet when Rana Bahadur was King. Later he became governor of Jumla. His son Bala Narsingh got a post as bodyguard to King Rana Bahadur and even went to Benares with him when he abdicated in favour of Girvan Juddha.’

‘You see,’ the old man said, almost in a whisper, ‘Girvan Juddha was from Rana Bahadur’s Brahmin mistress. People objected to him being given the throne. Poor Girvan Juddha. He died only recently, you know. But I’m getting away from the story. Six years after abdication Rana Bahadur returned. His half brother Sher Bahadur killed him, right there in the Hanuman Dhoka palace in Kathmandu. And Bala Narsingh killed Sher Bahadur on the spot. That’s what a good bodyguard does. If you can’t stop ’em, kill ’em.’ This latter would be said with much relish as if Kadam’s father-in-law himself had struck down Sher Bahadur.

‘And you see,’ Kadam’s father-in-law concluded, ‘how brave these Kunwars are. That’s why Prime Minister Bhimsen Thapa arranged for his brother Nain Singh’s daughter to marry Bala Narsingh. He knew he was from good stock.’

Kadam’s mother-in-law, the old man’s youngest wife, would scorn him behind his back.

‘Good stock indeed. They’re no better than us – same stock as we are. Always putting on airs and graces – all these Gorkhalis who came to Kathmandu. The old folks back in Gorkha know where we all come from – they don’t forget their ancestors. Good strong stock, Gorkhali stock – but as for who’s high and mighty now we’re in Kathmandu, give me a good Gorkhali family any day – but I’ve no time for all these windbags who harp on the past and miss out important pieces.’

Not even she, the only one of five wives to bear a son, would have dared challenge the old man’s versions of the past directly. Their origins, which became less and less Magar and more and more akin to those of his benefactors with each story he told, had become his favourite topic.

Kadam was confused. Her life had changed so abruptly when she became a wife. She didn’t like her life at all, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She felt almost guilty about the way her husband’s family presumed themselves better than the Newar families in Dhulikhel, simply because of their affiliation with the big Kunwar house – empty apart from those who were left behind to look after it and who hired people to work the land.

Her in-laws worked that Kunwar land too. They were obliged to, otherwise who knew what would have happened? Perhaps the plump parcels of land so generously distributed by Ram Krishna would be taken back. So, they worked the Kunwar lands and sent some of their crops in dues to Kathmandu. But it was good land, good soil – better than the land they’d had in Gorkha – that’s what Kadam’s grandfather had said. Kadam had also been warned to act at all times as if her in-laws were far superior to her own family: ‘Because they’re affiliated to a big family in Kathmandu and, besides, we’ve given a daughter so we have to respect them as our superiors.’

Yet in all their conduct, bragging and posturing, Kadam saw nothing superior at all. Often she was depressed. In her mother-in-law she found no qualities to encourage her to fulfil a daughter-in-law’s obligation to love her husband’s mother more than her own. She also found that, despite her mother-in-law praising the straightforwardness of the people of Gorkha, she was very eager to maintain strict caste rules when it came to her daughter-in-law. She might not adhere to them so strictly herself, but let them so much as cast their shadow near the kitchen or their husband when they menstruated and the old lady would slap them so hard as soon as their menstrual periods were over that it would bring tears to their eyes. Not that Kadam would know too much about that, or about the hut they slept in for the four nights of their menses, for she’d hardly menstruated since the day she left Gorkha!

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Kadam’s delivery time drew near. She brooded and became fretful. She still worked in the fields, but only at the lighter tasks. She was heavy and slow and, above all, she dreaded the time in the cattle shed with the midwife: she who was so sure of the absolute rightness of everything she did.

The first time, after her son was born, the remainder of her blood didn’t come out – she’d seen that happen with the goats at home sometimes; for some it would be difficult and they had to be helped. Sometimes the farmers would reach inside and help it out: the animal wouldn’t lie still. It could get messy. In Kadam’s case the midwife had tied her up to the crossbeam of the cattle shed by her wrists and insisted she bear down. She almost cried with relief when it came out finally, followed by gushes of her blood. She could taste fear in