A newly-translated Nepali novel set in 1980s’ Darjeeling is a cautionary tale of a failed movement

Basnetni-aamai, sitting on the edge of the bed, caressed her husband’s cheek. He had been lying insensate for three days. She took the cap off his bald pate, chapped and dry like a desert. Wiping the droplets of sweat on his brow with a corner of the majetro on her head, she glanced at his eyes, tightly shut, and said in a soft voice, “Ai Bau, say something.” The old man opened his mouth and took a deep breath. As he exhaled, he began to cough. He coughed so hard it was as if a rock being hammered into shape to be fit into a wall had splintered and lodged inside his lung and he wanted to hack it out.

After the bout subsided, Aamai put her ear near his lips. Only the final rattles remained. A sharp smell, like that of ammonia, was emanating from his mouth. “This is the stench of death,” Aamai guessed.

Tears fell from the old man’s eyes as they slowly shut and opened like a dying candle. They fell once and then they dried up. No speech remained. Whatever the old man said, he said it with his tears. Perhaps Basnetni-aamai understood what those tears wanted to say. Once she understood, she wailed. And by crying, she made many others sitting beside her weep. Basnetni-aamai did not live long after Old Man Basnet died.

Only nine months. But in that short duration, she lived an astonishing life. Less than a month after her husband’s death, she struck up an enmity with Shikari-baje. On the road, near her house, in the fields – wherever she would see Shikari-baje, her eyes would redden with rage. As if he was a villain who always kept a catapult ready to kill that which she loved most – birds.

His catapult became an enduring symbol of terror for Basnetni. It was a weapon which would sever her heart. A weapon with which he had set out to hunt that beating organ of hers. A limitless hatred for Shikari-baje sprung up inside her. The sole purpose of that hatred was to keep herself and the birds from harm. And from that hatred, one could conclude that the battle of her remaining days would be waged with none other than Shikari-baje, that hunter of birds.

Shikari-baje, too, was incorrigible. He would always keep a catapult slung around his neck. Why was he so relentless in his pursuit of birds? No one could unravel this secret while his life still remained. If a bird perched on the fig tree near his house, he would chase it down to the Rangeet river and even across it. He was a crack shot, and he wouldn’t rest until he had run down his quarry.

It didn’t matter if he was part of a wedding party or a funeral procession, the catapult always stayed in its place. One day, he had gone to a bank to set up a new account. The guard had shooed him outside. He was ready to forego a bank account but wouldn’t take the catapult off his neck.

One got the impression that without his catapult, he couldn’t draw breath. But without his weapon, Shikari-baje couldn’t die easily either. For three days, he lay on his deathbed in a fever. He had lost his senses. There was no hope of recovery. Friends and relatives kept watch day and night at his bedside, anticipating the moment when his breath would leave his body. But it just wouldn’t. When there was nothing else to be done, the priest from the temple came home and recited verses from the Gita. Did Shikari-baje hear him? No one knew. The verses did not cease the old man’s rattling breaths.

A Baitarani ceremony was conducted. The old man was made to touch a heifer’s tail so that she could pull him across the celestial river into the afterlife, but he stayed back in this world.

A priest recited a few chapters from the Bible but soon left, disappointed.

A bijuwa shaman chanted all the spells he knew. The old man didn’t die.

Near and dear ones who visited asked the old man’s family if he had any unfulfilled desires. But what desire could this man, who had spent his dotage chasing birds, have?

On the third day, his grandson had an idea. He went into the kitchen. His grandfather had hung the catapult behind the door. The boy returned and, lifting the old man’s head, slipped the catapult around his neck. An astonishing thing happened. His life-breath left within 15 minutes.

Basnetni-aamai’s face brightened upon hearing of Shikari-baje’s death and the villagers surmised that she was now touched in the head. Some gossiped: “The old man must have cast a love-spell on his wife. He died before he had a chance to break the spell, which is why Aamai has been reduced to this state.”

Ten days after Old Man Basnet died, tracks of birds appeared where his son had shattered the mound of earth which represents the corpse in the death rites. Then, one day, Basnetni-aamai dreamed that her husband had become a bird and was flying high in the blue yonder. The old woman was convinced: “My husband has reincarnated as a bird.”

Thus, her connection with birds was forged. They became her friends, and those who persecuted birds became her enemies.

Excerpted with permission from Fruits Of the Barren Tree, Lekhnath Chhetri, translated from the Nepali by Anurag Basnet, Penguin.