Ramchandra is a math teacher earning a low wage and living in a small apartment with his wife and two children. Moonlighting as a tutor, he engages in an illicit affair with one of his tutees, Malati, a beautiful, impoverished young woman who is also a new mother. She provides for him what his wife, who comes from a privileged background, does not: desire, mystery, and a simpler life. Complicating matters are various political concerns and a small city bursting with the conflicts of modernization, a static government, and a changing population. Just as the city must contain its growing needs, so must Ramchandra learn to accommodate both tradition and his very modern desires.
Absolutely absorbing yet deceptively simple, this novel cements Upadhyay’s emerging status as one of our most exciting writers.
Ramchandra is a math teacher earning a low wage and living in a small apartment with his wife and two children. Moonlighting as a tutor, he engages in an illicit affair with one of his tutees, Malati, a beautiful, impoverished young woman who is also a new mother. She provides for him what his wife, who comes from a privileged background, does not: desire, mystery, and a simpler life. Complicating matters are various political concerns and a small city bursting with the conflicts of modernization, a static government, and a changing population. Just as the city must contain its growing needs, so must Ramchandra learn to accommodate both tradition and his very modern desires.
Absolutely absorbing yet deceptively simple, this novel cements Upadhyay’s emerging status as one of our most exciting writers.
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Overview
Ramchandra is a math teacher earning a low wage and living in a small apartment with his wife and two children. Moonlighting as a tutor, he engages in an illicit affair with one of his tutees, Malati, a beautiful, impoverished young woman who is also a new mother. She provides for him what his wife, who comes from a privileged background, does not: desire, mystery, and a simpler life. Complicating matters are various political concerns and a small city bursting with the conflicts of modernization, a static government, and a changing population. Just as the city must contain its growing needs, so must Ramchandra learn to accommodate both tradition and his very modern desires.
Absolutely absorbing yet deceptively simple, this novel cements Upadhyay’s emerging status as one of our most exciting writers.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780618382682 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins |
Publication date: | 02/05/2004 |
Edition description: | Reprint |
Pages: | 304 |
Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
1 Thin as a waif , she wore a faded kurta suruwal. She stood in the doorway of Ramchandra’s bedroom, where he tutored his students. “I am very weak in math, sir,” she said as he gestured for her to sit next to him on a cushion on the floor.
To ward off the chill, unusual for late September, she also wore the traditional khasto shawl. She had long eyelashes and a slim nose; fine fur dotted her upper lip. Her hair, glistening with oil, was pulled back in a prim style. Malati, she said, was her name, and she appeared slightly older, past her teens, than the students he normally tutored.
“I charge five hundred rupees a month,” he said. “Three sessions a week, one hour each.” A shadow came over her face.
“Can’t you afford that?” Ramchandra drew the electric heater close to him, even though he had a blanket wrapped around him and was wearing the thick socks that Goma had sewed for him. The walls of this old house, where Ramchandra rented his flat, were thin, and on a chilly day like this, harbinger of the cold that would soon envelop the city, the entire house became almost unbearable. One of the coils of the heater had come loose, and it protruded dangerously, still glowing red. He’d have to fix it soon, before the children burned themselves on it, before the coming months of winter, when “even the fish feel cold,” as Ramchandra’s mother used to say.
“I come from a poor family,” she said.
Ramchandra glanced out the small window. From his seated position, he could see the electric and telephone wires zigzagging outside his window. A kiteswooped in the tiny blue patch of sky. Dashain festival was here, which meant more expenses.
His tutees had often cited their poverty, even those who came from well-to-do families, as their reason for defaulting on their payments. Well, he wasn’t rolling in money either.
He and Goma and the children were living on the top floor of this old house, with its rickety stairs and cracked ceilings, its cramped, dank rooms that never got enough sunlight, this house controlled by a landlord who came rapping on the door if the rent wasn’t paid on time, where deafening traffic from the street penetrated the thin walls, shook the rooms, and made reasonable thinking impossible. For years he’d been harboring the dream of buying some land and building a house in the city, if only to silence his in-laws.
For the past three years, he and Goma had been putting away five hundred rupees a month. Or at least trying to; some months, especially during the festivals, not only could they not save, but they had to dip into their savings, which troubled Ramchandra constantly. “This way we’ll never build a house,” he’d said to Goma dejectedly the other day after he’d checked his bankbook and discovered that the balance was not even a lakh rupee. A few months ago, he’d even looked at some plots of land, but most of them had been exorbitantly priced. There was one plot, near Dillibazaar, that was nice — close to the vegetable market and to the bus station — but the seller wanted five lakh rupees. Ramchandra had told him that no reasonable fool would buy the plot at that price, but as he walked away, he knew that the land would be sold within a few months. Many people were getting rich in Kathmandu. The country was poor, but in the capital, wealth was multiplying in the hands of those who’d opened new businesses or those with government jobs who didn’t turn away from hefty bribes.
With her worn-out clothes, Malati indeed looked poor, unlike his only other tutee, Ashok, a merchant’s son who arrived every morning in a shiny black car, with loud music thumping from the speakers.
“I don’t have a father,” Malati told him. “And my mother raises chickens to support the family.” “Then perhaps you should be working,” Ramchandra said. “Help your family.” “Right now I am not in a position to work, sir,” she said solemnly. “Besides, I want to go to college.” And for that, she needed to pass the School Leaving Certificate exam. She admitted that she’d barely passed the preliminary Sent-Up exams, administered by her school, and was worried about the actual exams.
“What’s the point of going to college when you need some income right now?” She pursed her lips and glanced out the window.
She is pretty, he thought. But it was her determination that moved him. If he could help her, then it was his duty as a teacher to take her on. In the afternoons he taught at the rundown Kantipur School, with its crumbling walls and dark, crowded classrooms. It was a government school, whichh meant that it had a meager budget and disgruntled teachers. Most of them, like Ramchandra, tutored students on the side for extra income. These days, he was tutoring only Ashok, and he could have Malati join their sessions. “Okay, how much can you afffffford?” “Two hundred rupees, sir.” “That’s too little,” he said, thinking of his bank account. “I can tutor you for only two sessions a week for that.” “That’s fine, sir,” she said. “I can do the rest on my own.” “I’ll need the money first.” “I’ll bring it tomorrow morning.” There was an awkward silence. He expected her to leave, and when she didn’t, he was about to say, “Okay, then.” But she asked, “Sir, are you from Kathmandu itself ?” He studied her a bit more closely.
People from Kathmandu rarely asked each other that question. Only outsiders probed one another, searching for something that bonded them in the city.
“Originally from Lamjung,” he said.
After his father died, he and his mother had sold their land and house in Lamjung to pay off creditors and had come to Kathmandu, with his mother’s jewelry in a plastic bag and with the address of a distant relative. Mother, God bless her. He hoped her soul was at peace in heaven.
“I knew,” Malati said. “I knew you were not from here. Your face tells it.” “Is it really that obvious?” “Well, couldn’t you say the same about me? Where do you think I’m from, sir?” He had no idea, but he was amused by her excitement. “Jumla?” His mention of this remote, barren area in the northwest part of the country made her laugh. “You like to joke, don’t you, sir. No, I’m from Dharan.” “When did you move here?” “A few years ago. But I still miss it.
People in this city are so . . .”— she seemed to be searching for the appropriate word —“unfeeling.” Ramchandra’s own memories of Lamjung remained clear: the general store in a mud house perched dangerously on top of a hill; the biting cold in the morning; the haze that hung over the hills, and the clouds that rolled in and made the house in front of you disappear; the smell of sweet rice cooked in the mud oven, the smoke stinging his mother’s eyes and making water run down her nose. But it was the memories of his early years in Kathmandu, the hardships he and his mother had endured, that were imprinted on his mind like a religious text. For a long time he had been angry at the city for making their lives difficult. But he’d grown to love the city, and although he understood what Malati was saying, he didn’t want to identify with her sense of helplessness. “It’s been so many years,” he told her, “that I consider myself a local of Kathmandu.” “Of course, sir. Still, this city can really make you suffer.” Tears started to well up in her eyes and, strangely, he was moved. He asked, “Do you want to sit down? Have some tea?” She composed herself. “No, sir, I have something to attend to.” As she was leaving, she smiled at him, revealing small white teeth. “I’ve heard you’re very good, sir.” Ramchandra waved his hand in the air.
Malati turned out to be very poor in math. She’d mull over a problem for a long time, often missing the most obvious connections. When he’d explain a problem and hint at a possible solution, she’d nod slowly and chew her lower lip, as if everything were sinking in, but when it was time to solve the problem, she’d scratch her head and tighten her eyebrows, unable to move beyond the most rudimentary step. In contrast, Ashok, whose math skills Ramchandra had previously considered weak, now appeared bright. “Addition,” Ramchandra would gently say to Malati. “You need to add the interest to the principal, not subtract it. Don’t you see?” And slowly recognition appeared on her face, as if to say, “Why didn’t I see that before?” Then she would nod, her head bobbing up and down. But that understanding soon proved false, and the next moment she would frown and chew her pencil’s eraser.
One morning, two weeks after she’d started, Malati was stumped on a particular problem that they’d gone over repeatedly. Ramchandra slammed down his pencil on her notebook with the neatly written numbers. “Even a monkey from the Pashupatinath Temple would be able to solve such a simple problem.” He jabbed a finger at the air in front of her. “You’re not a monkey, are you?” Malati looked down at her toes, her face red. Ashok smiled at him in disbelief, and Ramchandra’s wife, Goma, who had come in to collect empty tea glasses, shot him a glance.
He was about to say something conciliatory to Malati when she, still looking down, said in a strong voice, “I told you my math is poor. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I need help.” “Okay,” he said slowly. “Let’s look at this from another angle.” Ashok was still smiling, watching Ramchandra closely.
“Is my face going to get you a pass in the S.L.C.?” Ramchandra asked him.
For the rest of the session, Malati remained quiet. Mechanically, she did what Ramchandra asked her to do, her lips pursed, and when it came time for her to solve a compound interest problem on her own, she said, “I have a headache. I’ll go home now.” “Still fifteen minutes left, Malati.” “Didn’t I just tell you I have a headache?” she said, and quickly got up and went down the stairs.
A sense of remorse plagued Ramchandra throughout the afternoon, when he was teaching at school; throughout the evening, when he came home, tired, and tutored a student and, later, played snakes and ladders with his son; and into the night, when he tried to sleep.
This lingering guilt surprised him. Ramchandra rarely scolded his students, and he never hit them, as many of his colleagues did. But he also knew that it was necessary to protect his dignity as a teacher, so at times he would verbally discipline students for being unruly, as the older ones were likely to be. The issue of discipline had never arisen with those he tutored at home; this was the first time he’d scolded anyone. But Malati’s reaction to his disparaging her went beyond the shame a student might feel at being scolded. Somehow he’d wounded her deeply.
Ramchandra also regretted that he’d wasted the rest of her session, during which more could have been accomplished. He prided himself on the number of his tutees who went on to pass the S.L.C. exam. Sometimes it took only minutes for a student to move from one level to another. That’s why Ramchandra, no matter how tired he was, insisted that his students stay the full time they were scheduled for. This was especially important in the case of Ashok, who often came up with all kinds of excuses to leave early. With Malati, it was even more crucial, because it was difficult for her to pay her fee.
In the dark of night, Ramchandra pulled his sirak closer around himself and stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Lately, he’d been having a repeated nightmare, in which he couldn’t solve a simple algebra equation in front of his students. He attributed the dream to his heavy load of tutoring and teaching.
Ramchandra had discovered his skills in math early. When he was in the dangerously situated general store in Lamjung with his mother, he’d quickly deduct the cost of the kilo of lentils from the five- or ten-rupee note that she’d just handed to the vendor, and announce, loudly, “Need to return two rupees and twenty paisa.” He’d solve math problems so fast on the small slate his father had given him that his father would say, “Wait, wait, before you erase it; let me see if you did that correctly.” And Ramchandra would hand over the slate and grab a pencil and a notebook to scribble something else.
Later, after he and his mother had moved to Kathmandu, he would see a storekeeper in a spice shop laboriously scrawl the items and the prices. But the numbers would zoom inside Ramchandra’s head, and he’d announce, in his sullen voice, “Total, seven rupees and fifty paisa.” Often the shopkeeper would squint at him and, in jest, offer him a job as his assistant. He’d want to take the offer, but his mother would always say no, that she wouldn’t dream of putting her son to work until he’d finished school. “I want you to be an engineer,” she said. She seemed particularly bent on engineering, either because she liked the foreign-sounding word or she associated it with mathematics.
“Engineer, yes,” she would say. “You’ll build things.” Once he started attending school, in a crowded little classroom in Kathmandu, not too far from where he was now teaching, his hand would shoot up every time a math problem was put on the board. Eventually, the teacher started eyeing him with resentment. His friends gave him the nickname Hisabey Hanuman, because his prowess in math equaled the strength of the monkey god Hanuman, who uprooted an entire mountain, held it up on his palm, and flew.
How odd, thought Ramchandra, that he’d called Malati a monkey when he himself had been called a monkey in his youth. In college, when Ramchandra was called to the board to solve a calculus problem that gave the professor a headache, he knew that teaching would be the natural profession for him. And it was, for the most part, but the tutoring sessions wore him out. These days before falling asleep, he’d try to ward off nightmares by visualizing pleasant scenes, like a walk by a blue pond, a bountiful garden, cool mountain air. But Malati’s voice, saying, “That’s why I’m here. That’s why I need help,” kept ringing in his ears.
Tonight, his tossing and turning awoke Goma, who asked, “What’s the matter?” He said maybe he’d had too much tea that day.
She turned on the light. “That girl is bothering you. You should think before you speak. Serves you right.” “I’m tired,” he said. “It’s hard enough, teaching full time at that hellhole, and then tutoring these students day and night.” “Still,” Goma said, “she’s a young girl, and very sensitive. Treat her gently. Think of her as your own daughter.” “And who’ll treat me gently?” he asked.
“Who can I turn to for comfort?” He took her hand.
She placed her other palm on his forehead and said, “Why don’t I rub your head for a while? You’ll feel better.” He put his head in her lap, and she massaged his face, her smooth fingers gliding across his temples lulling him into a drowsy state. Through half-open eyes he looked at her face. Goma was a small, chubby woman, only a few months younger than he, and he was reaching forty-two. On her forehead was the small red tika she got every morning at the Ganeshthan Temple in the neighborhood.
Before the sun’s rays fell upon the streets, she would go to the temple with a plate of rice and with flowers she’d picked in the courtyard garden. She’d return home just as the sun’s rays lit the window of the house on the opposite side of the courtyard. A large mole sat right below the bridge of her nose, her “beauty spot,” Ramchandra called it.
“You don’t need to keep taking on tutees, you know,” Goma said.
“If I don’t, how will we pay for the expenses of Dashain and Tihar?” Dashain was only a week away, with Tihar chasing at its heels. It meant that Ramchandra had to dip into his savings to get new clothes for the family, plus at least a hen, if not a goat, for sacrifice to the goddess. In fact, this year he was going to argue against buying a goat, which would cost several hundred rupees. He’d thought of suggesting to Goma and Rakesh and Sanu that they satisfy themselves with a hen, but of course everyone would be disappointed, and neighbors and relatives would talk, especially his in-laws. What else could he do, though? Right now he had only Goma to convince. The children tended to absorb Goma’s feelings and mirror them, so if she felt the family couldn’t afford more than a hen, they’d reconcile themselves.
“Without the tutees, how will we get out of this hellhole?” Ramchandra asked. “How will we ever build a house of our own?” Goma put her index finger to her lips.
Sanu, thirteen, and her brother, Rakesh, nine, were sleeping in the next room. But as if to support his argument, a horn blared outside, tires screeched, followed by a bang and the revving of an engine. Both Goma and Ramchandra instinctively closed their eyes.
“You can’t seem to utter a sentence without using the word hellhole these days,” Goma said.
“Well, what do you call this?” He waved a hand.
“I’m not unhappy here,” she said.
“Your parents are unhappy that you’re here.” Over the years, he’d become more bold when speaking of her parents, even though he knew that his complaints made Goma uncomfortable. They had never taken a liking to Ramchandra, even though they had chosen him as their son-in-law.
When Ramchandra and Goma got married, he was still living with his mother, in an even smaller flat in Thamel. At that time he was attending Tri Chandra College and, on the side, tutoring students, one of whom was Goma’s sister, Nalini.
The marriage proposal had come as a surprise, a few months after Nalini took the S.L.C. exam.
“The proposal is not for Nalini?” he’d asked his mother.
“No, it’s for her older sister.” He’d seen Goma at her parents’ house only a few times, when she passed by the room where he was tutoring Nalini, but now he couldn’t recall her face clearly. He did remember noting that she was prettier than Nalini, who had a sad, deprived look.
“Why would they want to give their daughter to someone like me?” he asked his mother. Usually, he tutored his students in his small apartment, but the Pandeys had asked him to come to their house, and since they offered him a hundred rupees more than he usually got, he’d gone. He’d been intimidated by the grandeur of the house, by the stern look on Mr. Pandey’s face. But he needed the money, and he found Nalini an easy student to tutor.
His mother suggested that maybe his reputation as a bright student had led Goma’s parents to give their daughter to him, knowing that he was poor. Perhaps they believed that, with his intelligence, he’d soon occupy a position that was lucrative and that their daughter would live in luxury. Perhaps they were impressed by his behavior when he tutored their younger daughter. “This is a great honor for our family,” his mother had said. “Perhaps our hard days are over.” At the time he married her, Ramchandra didn’t even know that Goma was his age. When his mother showed him her picture, he recalled her face more clearly, and a sweetness entered his heart, and he said yes. The age factor had never bothered him, and it didn’t bother him now, although he was annoyed whenever relatives referred to it, as if it were fundamentally wrong for the wife to be the same age as the husband. One relative had said, “Seven years’ difference; that’s the best. Our ancient texts say that a difference of seven years helps the harmony between the husband and wife.” The man had looked affectionately at his wife, who, exactly seven years younger, was chewing pan, which made the inside of her mouth bright red. She had established herself as a petty gossipmonger, belittling those who had less than she did. Ramchandra didn’t know which ancient texts the relative was referring to, but Hindu texts were often sprinkled with such petty advice. “I don’t believe in those rules and myths,” Ramchandra had replied, and the relative, still smiling at his wife, had said, “This is our culture.” In moments of quiet Ramchandra did wonder why Goma hadn’t married earlier, when she was in her early twenties, when she could have been easily negotiated into a well-to-do family. Had she done something scandalous when she was young? he wondered. Although when he looked at his wife — the devotional tika on her forehead, her straightforward, sweet manner with him and their children — he knew that he was sinful in even thinking such things about her.
Ramchandra was in a classroom in the basement of a dark building, wearing his dirty dark-blue shorts and stained sky-blue shirt. Suddenly the teacher’s whip came slashing through the air and struck him across the face, where it became numbers, problems, and he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried, solve them. The other students, in their recently laundered uniforms and ties, mocked him, and Ramchandra called for his mother, “Ama, ama,” and woke to discover that Rakesh was crying out for his mother from the next room. Goma, who usually awoke at the slightest noise, was fast asleep. Ramchandra hurried to the children’s room, but he didn’t turn on the light lest it disturb Sanu. She was awake, though, and said, “Ba, I think he had a nightmare.” Ramchandra sat beside Rakesh, who was whimpering, and stroked his hair, trying to calm him.
Gradually, the boy became quiet and then asked, “Ba, what am I going to get for Dashain?” “What do you want, my son?” “A bicycle.” “Bicycle is too expensive. How about a toy bicycle?” Rakesh made a face. “All of my friends have bicycles.” Ramchandra turned to Sanu. “And what do you want?” “Nothing,” she said. Every day Sanu seemed to be growing more aware of the financial restrictions of her family. “And he doesn’t need a bicycle either.” Rakesh started arguing with her, and, fearing that they’d wake Goma, Ramchandra raised his hand and said, “I can give you a nice story right now. Free of cost.” “If he gets a bicycle, then I too need something big,” Sanu said.
“We’ll deal with that later,” Ramchandra said. “Now the story. In a distant land a long time ago there was a poor girl,” Ramchandra began. He spoke softly so that Goma wouldn’t wake up. The naked bulb hanging from the ceiling in the corridor revealed the outlines of his children.
This girl, Ramchandra continued, was seventeen years old and lived with her mother in a hut. The roof of the hut leaked in the monsoon rains, and the entire mud floor became flooded. They were so poor that they ate only one meal each day, usually in the evening by the fire, and the girl’s stomach rumbled during the night.
“Will this be a sad story?” Sanu asked.
“Maybe. Just listen.” “What was her name? The girl?” Ramchandra was stumped. Then he said, “Malati.” “But Malati is your student,” Rakesh said.
“Do you want to hear the story or not?” Rakesh became quiet, and Ramchandra continued. The girl always thought about her father, who had left the village a few years ago in search of a job in the city and had never returned. When she went to cut grass for their cow, whose milk they sold for money to get by, she stared out at the horizon, hoping to see her father return, his pockets filled with money and gifts of jewelry for her and her mother. Each night, as she lay on the mat on the floor where they slept, she listened for the knock on the door that would signal his arrival. In her dreams he would appear, well-fed and prosperous, in the city, missing his daughter.
One day, the richest merchant in the village came to their hut and asked the mother for her daughter’s hand in marriage. “Your daughter is very beautiful,” said the merchant, who had a long mustache, which trickled down his chin. “She is also a hard worker, so she will make a good wife.” The mother was delighted. In her mind she saw herself in a bright, gold-studded sari, wearing a diamond necklace, with five servants ready at her command. The girl was not happy. The merchant was her father’s age, and she didn’t like the way his eyes glinted when he looked at her.
Ramchandra didn’t know where to go from here, so he stopped, but the children pestered him to continue. “And they lived happily ever after,” he said.
“Who lived happily ever after?” Sanu asked. “The merchant and the girl? But she doesn’t like him!
That’s no story.” “Shhh, you’ll wake up Mother,” Ramchandra said. “We’ll continue tomorrow.” And despite their protests, he tucked them under the blanket and left.
In the next room, Goma was awake and bleary-eyed. “I was so tired I didn’t even hear. Did Rakesh have a nightmare?” “Yes, and I told him a story.” “Which one?” “I made one up.” “About what?” “Nothing.” He snuggled close to her.
“It was a nonsense children’s story.”
Copyright © 2003 by Samrat Upadhyay.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
Reading Group Guide
1. Ramchandra has many opportunities to avoid a relationship with Malati. Why do you think he chooses to begin, and continue, their involvement?
2. Why do you think Goma reacts to Ramchandra's affair the way she does? Goma tells him that she will not return to him unless Malati moves in as well. Why do you think Goma makes this a requirement? What will this accomplish? What does it say about the relationships between the three characters?
3. Ramchandra is asked to speak to a teacher at his school who is suspected of having a relationship with a student. Why can't Ramchandra see the connection between his actions and the actions of the other teacher?
4. What are the various ways Upadhyay portrays the characters' inner states?
5. Each character in the novel has a different reaction to Ramchandra's relationship with Malati. Why does each one react the way he or she does? What do their reactions say about their places in society, or about the society itself?
6. Many things are changing in Ramchandra's family. What other changes are taking place in their city or culture? How does the upheaval in the Ramchandra household reflect the social unrest in the city?
7. Is the definition of "family" challenged in the novel? If so, in what way?
8. There are two portrayals of America in the novel: that of the idealized nation where anything is possible, and that of a disappointing nation that doesn't live up to the expectations of those who are looking for a better life. How is this theme reflected in the events of the story?
9. Ramchandra and his in-laws argue repeatedly over what is best for his family. Why do you think he will not accept money from them to build a house for his family?
10. How does the author present the realities of life in Kathmandu?
11. In the beginning of the novel Ramchandra has a very close relationship with his children, but by the end of the story he has grown distant from them. Is this a result of his affair with Malati? How did the events in the story affect his children?
12. Apart from physical location, what are the differences between where Ramchandra's family lives and where Goma's parents live? Or between Ramchandra's background and Malati's? How do these differences affect how the characters relate to each other?
13. A death in the family always causes significant upheaval in the lives of those left behind. How do you think events would have turned out if Goma's father had not died?
14. Were you surprised at the fates of the characters eleven years later? To what extent do you think Ramchandra's relationship with Malati affected where each ended up? (Houghton Mifflin)