Manjushree Thapa
The Student in Love
Nirmal Bhattarai walked past the bridge, clambered over the fence and
skirted a heap of refuse at the crossroads into Kathmandu. In twenty
minutes he reached the campus road. There, he spotted his best friend
and ducked into an alley. He was in no mood. His neck was hot and his
mouth parched, so he stopped a while at the foot of a bottlebrush tree.
The morning was torrid, but the shade of the bottlebrush was touched by
winds that were almost cool.
Nirmal felt drained. He waited till he felt a new
stirring inside him, and he started to his feet, soon passing the taxi
stand and the fenced-off ping-pong club where boys were idling because
it was too hot to play. Then, on the next block, hordes of men were
streaming out of the movie hall, and Nirmal, shoving against them, felt
an urge to slide his lover's thighs against his own.
It was almost ten o'clock when he reached his
girlfriend's apartment building. He found her front door padlocked. He
faltered, suddenly confused. Eh. She had classes this morning. Now he
remembered.
There was a sound behind him and he turned to see
the children from next door tiptoeing into the yard to steal apricot
buds. One of them caught sight of him and froze. Then the other
children also saw him and stopped.
"Stealing flowers!" Nirmal shouted. "I'll call
the police on you!" He waved his arms in irritation, but felt too tired
to chase them away.
The children stood and stared at him, trying to
see if he meant it.
"I'll call the police, I said!"
After the children scampered off Nirmal went up
to the apricot tree, fingered one silken bud and ran his palm along its
brown trunk. It was a miracle that such trees thrived in this city of
asphalt and dust.
Nirmal knew it could be hours before his
girlfriend returned. There was no point waiting for her. But it was too
hot to walk back to his own apartment. He had no change for bus fare.
He didn't know what else to do, so he sat in the shade of the apricot
tree, and, lulled by heat, fell asleep.
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