A red pulsar bike stopped in front of the restaurant where I was waiting for my order of snacks one evening. The pillion-rider, a teenager, got off it with full energy and gushed in. The motorcycle driver, a middle-aged man of about fifty or fifty-five, followed him. Both looked well-off.

Mailee Sahuni, the middle-aged restaurant owner, welcomed them with a broad smile in her face. She served me a plate of pickled soybeans and beaten rice for which I had been waiting for more than twenty minutes. Her daughter, Shanti, also a teenager, appeared with a coke bottle which she put on my table, and ran inside. The teenager followed her.

I had a very tight schedule that evening as I was the only one at the newspaper desk because the Executive Editor was resting at his home after his appendicitis operation. It was already 6, and the district reporters had started faxing that day’s news. So, I was in a bit of hurry.

Mailee Sahuni served the man a plate of chicken from the woke that she had put on the stove. The man held it in his right hand, pulled a bamboo stool near to her with his left hand, and sat on it. He took his cap off his half-bald head, and started conversation with her. “What a hot day!” he said.

Parshu Shrestha

“Yes, it is very hot.” She said, “Won’t you beat it with the bottle of chilled beer in front of your eyes?”

“How could I,” he replied in a romantic tone, “if you don’t sit beside me?”

They did not mind my prying at them. I thought they were well habituated to it.

Sahuni opened the lids of two chilled beer bottles, gave one to the man, and held another herself. Both started gulping the beer. She glanced at me once, with a gulp of beer, and put her head on his chest before she said, “This is in your name, ok?”

“No problem!” the man said, “Take as many as you want.”

After a while, the man started feeding Sahuni with meat by his own hand and licking the bones of the chicken in his plate. They did not care about my presence there. The woman looked like a little pampered girl on the man’s lap. However, I could not hear clearly what they were saying to each other in their stupor because of the purring of the engines of the vehicles and their ear-piercing blowing of horn.

I wanted my pickled beaten rice of my plate last longer, but it was soon finished though I was munching it little by little.

The young boy who had disappeared into a room a while ago came out with blushing red and sweaty face. He approached the man and the woman, and smiled. The woman’s daughter followed him quietly. She was wiping her sweat with a towel.

“Are you done?” the man asked the boy.

“Yes, I’m.” The boy answered, “Let’s go now.”

The man got up from his stool, and took out five one-thousand-rupee notes. He put them in the woman’s hands and kissed her on her right cheek. Then, both of them, the man and the boy, disappeared on their bike.

The four people danced in front of my eyes the whole evening. I could not focus on my work. It was a painful evening for me.

In one mid-Baisakh afternoon, I was going to somewhere for a field reporting when I had another sudden and unexpected meeting with the same middle-aged man. At Chhhata Chowk, a lean and thin half-drunk woman was hanging under his shirt collar, frequently trying to slap on his face. He was avoiding being slapped. People were watching them with fun.

“You pig!” the woman was gasping in anger. “You got all pleasure, and ran out without paying for it.” The woman was in a black blouse and red petticoat. She was bare feet, and she had a mass of disheveled hair covering her face.

The man, who had pricked that restaurant woman’s thighs that evening ignoring my presence nearby, was looking pitiful this time. He did not look as happy and romantic as he did that evening. Perhaps he was ashamed of himself. He was telling the half-naked woman in his faint voice not to drag him in that manner, but she would be more encouraged to do so. He looked like a goat being dragged by a butcher.

I remembered my camera in bag. Should I take their photo? No, no. Why should I take their photo and give it a place in my newspaper? Many people might have got a lot of fun by their performance in the public square, but I was in dismay. I was not happy at this situation of the people of my town.

The woman pulled the man into a restaurant nearby, and they disappeared from the crowd’s eyes.