The house that haunted

We had rented a single room in a five storied building in a poor neighborhood of Kathmandu which reminded me of a prison cell cramped with 6 prisoners. Sunlight could barely penetrate through the only window as another tall house outside blocked the view. So we basically lived in the dark. The building was ancient and the paint on the walls had faded which left patchy taint on them. The plaster had peeled off on most places. The lowest floor of the house was the darkest and the light bulb hanging on the ceiling didn't work. There were only two rooms. A long passage connected it to the street outside. Right beside the entrance, a tap gave us drinking water once a week. There was a small toilet on the right hand side of the staircase. It was so small that an adult could barely stand up straight in that stink hole though once three full grown adults had managed to get in and lock themselves inside.

A middle aged aunty who lived in one of the rooms on the same floor, had caught them 'red handed'. This woman, whose face I fail to recall was plump and quite loudmouth and used to spend most of her hours gossiping about falana and dhiskana. When the incident happened, the whole neighborhood had gathered outside the restroom while she pounded on the door from outside, screaming at the top of her lungs. "Come out this moment or I swear I will call the police," she was shouting. The people inside didn't move or make a sound. "You scoundrels, you filth. If you do not come out this instant, I will break the door," she was flying with rage. I watched her from the far corner of the corridor, she was wearing a gunyu cholo and an old cotton sari which was as red as her face at the moment. She was tall and thick and her immense belly could barely hide under her clothes. It took a couple of minutes for them to give in. The door was unlocked and out came a man and two young girls whose faces hung low. I only have a memory of one of the girls. She was quite young, fair skinned and short and skinny with a shoulder length dark hair. She was wearing a white t-shirt which was pretty loose on her body and a pair of tight white pants.

No sooner had they stepped on the scene, the aunty literally jumped at the man and began strangling him. She kicked and tugged off his hair as if plucking feathers off of a dead chicken. The man didn't defend himself. His eyes were on the floor as she kept throwing slaps and punches at him, enduring all the physical abuses and not lifting his finger to defend himself. We stood there watching the scene unfolding in front of our eyes, bearing the witness of the live telecast of this scandalous affair. I heard someone say, "This pervert deserves to be hanged." Then another piped in, this time a female voice, "all three of them should be hanged. Where are those bitches? Where did they go?" Heads turned right and left but those girls were nowhere to be seen. They must have escaped when the aunty had gotten hold of the man. "They must have escaped," somebody declared. But the aunty was not listening. She kept hitting him until she was out of breathe. That fat body was not much help as she let go of the man to catch a stitch in her chest. The seducer saw his chance and pushed through the crowd and ran off leaving the woman cursing and swearing loudly. She jumped and shouted after him, "if you ever cross the threshold of this house, I shall teach you where to stick your d***". She raised the middle finger of her right hand and pointed it towards her groin area, she screamed even louder, "next time you can put it in here you @#$&" and God knows what else. Everybody laughed. Though I was too young to understand what was happening, I knew rest of the spectators were enjoying the free dose of entertainment. It had at least added some flavor to their boring and monotonous lives and provided them something to gossip about for a next couple of weeks. Adultery and Toilet…

Toilets on the floor where we lived was yet another story. Though there were taps and pipes in the bathroom, they were just for a show and without running water. A blub was placed above the yellowish toilet pan which thankfully worked. It cast dim yellow light over the withered tiles on the floor. At least they had tiles, something only rich people could afford, I always thought though they were slippery and thick with black and green mold. The working class families who lived there could not or would not afford a toilet cleaner and a brush. No one even bothered. My parents often said, "Why can't Fuche's father buy one Harpic? We are not the only one using it." I knew, Fuche's dad would be saying something similar, "Kanchi's father acts as if he poops on the street. He can buy a toilet cleaner this time." So everybody in the house somehow outgrew the idea of cleaning the bathroom and they had gotten used to the filth and the smell and of course the cockroaches.

The toilets were filled with those sneaky things and I remember one instance when I accidently crushed one. I was just about to climb in the toilet when I heard a loud popping sound like a balloon bursting, from underneath my slippers. As I lifted my feet, I saw a large cockroach lying immobile on the floor, right where I had been standing. It gave me chills, disgusting kind of chills to be precise. Bile rose in my throat as I imagined guts of the insect sticking on the soles of my slippers. The corridor was too dark to see the poor insect clearly and I was thankful for the lack of sunlight for the very first time. Dark places, smelly toilets and cockroaches were quite common for us. They didn't bother us so much and it was a normal way of life. We had more pressing matters in our lives that needed our immediate attentions; bathroom cleaner and Baygon were not one of them.

We spent 4 years in the house but I must admit I was never fond of it. My father had sent me and my siblings to nearby private school, so most of my classmates belonged to families that were financially sound. I had been to some of their houses and I envied their lives. For this reason, I had decided against bringing them to mine. I was ashamed of taking them to my house with the fear of being judged. What if they saw the naked windows, the unilluminated staircases? How would they comment when they saw the uncarpeted floor and lines of empty water buckets on the doorstep? Would they even stay longer enough to get used to the stench of urine that lingered in the air? When I thought about it, my heart would beat in my throat and I would say to myself, "I don't want to be laughed at."

I also wished we had our own house with sleek furniture, gas stoves like everyone else and a television. Our neighbors next door had TV and cable line as well. I and my younger brother used to sneak to their room to watch in spite of our father's restriction. I couldn't care less when Sanju conjured stuff with his magic pencil and Frooti took me on a journey to the fairy land. But those blissful evenings always came with a price as we had to endure our parents' beatings and lectures. Sometimes a young nephew of the TV owner didn't let us in or would taunt us until we were forced to leave the room. I never spoke of such humiliating experiences because I foresighted the consequences.

Looking back at my past through the eyes of an adult, I see a 6 year old despising every moment in the house and the bleak atmosphere that filled her tender heart with melancholy. There were times when she felt she would never smile again. It was as if all the happiness in the world had gone, like her soul was being sucked by Dementors. The house has taken four years of her life still it has given her strength to crawl back to the root whenever arrogance and pride overpower her. Yet, scarcity didn't choke us, life continued, indifferent to the cracks and holes on the walls that reeked of dead memories and demented dreams yet nobody bothered to clean them. It stayed that way. It was better that way.