The Lama Who Never Was

By Parshu Dahal

The Lama Who Never Was features Parshu Dahals debut collection of eight short stories. His stories share one striking similarityAn unpredictable twist. Spinning twists are not only his forte. His inimitable knack for juxtaposing many social practices with oft-overlooked societal prejudices even against animals is very striking . In The River , The Narsingha Player, The Lama and the Sikkimese villager of yore, he explores deep relations humans develop with everything they come into contact withmusical instrument, animals, riverseverything. The Priesthood and The Niece are woven around two aspects of human emotionsbetrayal and remorse. The Lama who never was touches upon bed-wetting, a fairly common ailment amongst children that has a stigma attached to it. Raise your Standards is themed on the unbridled infidelity. Parshu Dahal weaves his stories around issues which could appear trivial and insignificant, hence often overlooked.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Aug 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543700831

Parshu Dahal

Parshu Dahal was born in Gelling, a sleepy, but beautiful hamlet in West Sikkim. The Lama Who Never Was is his debut collection of short stories. His stories are interspersed with deep human emotion and masterly crafted twists that make them compelling. He is a police officer by profession and loves music. He lives in Gangtok with his wife Sitalika, daughters Raj and Dibya. A canine companion Mimi completes their family.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Parshu Dahal.

ISBN:                Hardcover                     978-1-5437-0082-4

                           Softcover                       978-1-5437-0081-7

                           eBook                            978-1-5437-0083-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

CONTENTS

The Lame Squirrel

The Narsingha Player

Raise Your Standards

The Lama Who Never Was

The River

The Niece

The Priesthood

The Sikkimese Villager of Yore

The Lame Squirrel

Pushing off with both hands the shoulder-high blades of grass that encroached upon the narrow track that threatened to obstruct his way, the old farmer Jetha Khaling gingerly walked the way up his house, tailed by his four-year-old grandson. Halting beside a rock, the octogenarian could not help but disbelieve what stood before him. He touched, retouched, and caressed the rock with his feeble hands and circled around it. Then he looked around him and across the ridge, to the other side of the Rothak River, the blue Mangalbaray hills, a shallow plate-shaped hillock on the horizon overlooking the beautiful Rinchenbong village. He then turned his head towards the east, across the Ramabam River, to the distant city of Darjeeling, glittering under the autumn sun. They had not changed, and neither had his vision. To that end, he was convinced. Then he studied the Chuchay Dhoonga, the rock, again—the rock that had been a part of the village history, like the farmer himself. The majestic rock had been cruelly mutilated and pruned beyond recognition—not even a pale shadow of its former grandeur. A heap of freshly broken pieces of the rock lay stacked on the side of the under-construction road, where a woman sat battering them into still smaller pieces, unbothered. His grandson on his lap, the old man squatted on a piece of log, angry and confused. ‘A literal battering down of history, and all cunningly carried out in my absence… a well-planned sacrilege,’ he muttered.

He had just come back home from hospital the night before. Never had he been away from home for so long, and never in the last eighty years of his existence had there ever occurred a situation so compelling as to require him to ever breach the safe confines of his tiny country and venture out to the relative chaos of the plains. However, much to his consternation and annoyance, he had to be unwillingly escorted to an alien land somewhere in Bengal, to a large hospital to treat a condition that his doctors in Gangtok felt required expert management. Having embraced addiction to the bidi, the native tobacco roll, for a close to six decades, the inevitable had finally caught up with him. The robust, unyielding farmer had finally fallen to lungs rendered irreparably diseased by years of abuse. The farmer’s son had felt it wise to keep the diagnosis of ‘advanced stage of cancer of lungs’ from his illiterate father. Still proud and obstinate and oblivious to the lethality of the ailment that plagued him, he pestered his son to bring him back to Sikkim.

‘You tell me there’s nothing serious, and so do these doctors. Yet, for a reason best known to yourselves, you detain me in this alien land where you are fed food you can’t eat and spoken to with words you can’t understand. Aren’t those big doctors in Gangtok competent enough to treat me…this elementary, old-age problem that I am afflicted with? A little cough and breathlessness—that’s all I suffer from,’Jetha Khaling lamented.

Ignorance was indeed bliss sometimes, his son felt. Had his father not been illiterate, how long could he have succeeded in concealing from the old man the truth about the lethal ailment he carried, considering that signboards and posters on walls, or every article in the hospital, including the spoon he ate with, bore the name Hasan Cancer Institute?

Jetha Khaling was left staring at the rock aimlessly, moaning the loss of history and the nostalgia it evoked. Comparing the self with this mute, defenceless object, he began to pity the self. He too had become insignificant now. His opinion no more mattered to the village folks, for none came to him now for advice. Who could have authorized the destruction of this village landmark? ‘Whose audacity?’ he wondered, as he left the rock alone and walked towards a pair of old bar-pipal trees, planted by his forefathers as a sacred obligation more than two centuries ago. It was another element of the village history, and the picturesque canopy it created formed a part of the local folklore. Jetha Khaling ran his eyes along the gigantic trunks till they rested on the wide, unbroken roof that the far stretching branches formed atop. As he turned his head, savouring the magnificence of the canopy, he was suddenly blinded by a ray of the bright autumn sun that penetrated the foliage which had begun falling to demonstrate their deciduousness, heralding the cruel winter’s approach.

Gathering a few bar leaves that had fallen, he sat on them under the shade. Mimicking his kopa, the grandfather, the child too gathered a few leaves and sat next to him. Lighting a bidi, Jetha Khaling began to ponder about the fate of trees now. ‘Will it be their turn next?’ he wondered.

Gloom writ large on his face, he picked up a conversation with the child to get over the anguish.

‘Whom do you love more, your ama or Papa?’

‘My grandpa,’ came an unexpected reply from the grandson. Jetha Khaling smiled, evidently amused with the innocent flattery. The pervading gloom that loomed large over him suddenly seemed to have vanished. He was happy once again. As he struggled to frame a questionnaire list to elicit adorable replies from the infant, his attention was drawn towards a squirrel that crawled down the trunk of the pipal tree under which he sat. The animal gingerly advanced towards them, halting about a few paces away. It looked around, without moving an inch, nervous and indecisive. Then it took a few uncertain steps towards them and stopped again. There was something about this animal that surprised the old man. He knew that the shy hill squirrel would never come so close to humans; at least he had never seen that happen. Then he studied the animal closely. It was indeed different. It was lame. Its left hind leg was missing, possibly amputated in an accident or a predator attack. The farmer felt in his coat pockets for eatables and finding a few pieces of dry coconut that he carried for his grandson, he handed one to the child and threw the other piece gently to the expectant visitor. The squirrel picked up the food and limped away.

Now, every day he would walk to the place and sit under the canopy alone as the infant went to school. The lame squirrel would make