Parshu Shrestha

Saainla Baaje looked a fat bull when he wore the crown of the kush herb, a sacred herb in Hindu culture with the scientific name ‘eragrotis cynosuroidsʼ,which was knitted in the shape of the horns of an ox, over his shaved head. He had no cloth except a janai, a sacred thread worn by the Brahmin and the Chhetri men, across the upper half of their body. He had worn a white dhoti, loincloth. He had tucked the front part of the dhoti into his back taking it underneath his loin.

Saainlaa Baaje had just come out of his bathroom. He put the pirka, a low wooden stand made for sitting, on the floor, and sat on it. He also put on a kush ring on the fourth finger of his right hand, and dragged a small bowl, full of reddish-black solution, from a corner to his front. It was the solution of cloves, swollen and diffused in water in the bowl.

Mumbling some Sanskrit mantras with his eyes closed, Saainlaa Baaje soaked his right hand’s fingers in the solution for a while and took some of it in his palm. He kept chanting mantras for a long time, perhaps for more than half-an-hour, before he opened his eyes.

He took a chammar (the bushy tail of a Himalayan cow) in his left hand and started ringing a bell with his right hand. Moving his right hand clockwise, he kept ringing the bell past the idols of various Gods and Goddesses in the temple he had created in a corner of that semi-dark room. His left hand was, meanwhile, busy touching Sagar’s head and body occasionally with the chammar and hitting the ground. He repeated this action several times for almost half-an-hour. He shook his whole body occasionally. Sometimes, he opened his eyes wide to observe around the idols and closed them sometimes just to mumble words clandestinely.

Sagar had been sitting with his legs folded on a mat with his father nearby. They were facing the temple and the idols of Gods and Goddesses with a flower in their hands in ‘Namaste’ position by the order of Saainla Baaje.

Sagar was both doubtful and terrified. What if Saainla Baaje heated the trident that was standing in his temple in fire, and embossed its red-hot shape on his soft cheeks and stomach? He had heard the news occasionally of so called ‘matas’ (literally meaning ‘mothers’, the self-proclaimed Goddesses) and shamans doing the same to mentally sick women with red-hot punyu, a traditional Nepali kitchen instrument made up of bronze or aluminum for serving rice on plates. Therefore, it was natural for him to be afraid.

Saainlaa Baaje had ordered Sagar’s father to bring him in the first hour of the Tuesday morning to his house with materials for worshipping the deities before Sagar would speak with anybody else. He was a renowned priest cum shaman in the village. He was believed to have the capacity to cure any disease with the rice he would give after chanting mantras. It was why his father had taken him to Saainla Baaje.

Sagar had caught jaundice more than a month before. His both eyes, and other body parts had been completely yellow. An Assistant Health Worker, who was the best available medical professional in the village, had said that his liver had swollen by almost two inches; therefore, he had pain in his right stomach and had almost no appetite. He kept sleeping for whole days due to extreme debility.

Sagar’s mom had prepared necessary items to take to Saainlaa Baje’s when she knew he was going to be taken to him. She had put some freshly picked flowers, a packet of incense sticks, vermillion, and one hundred and fifty rupees in a fiber bag and given him. She told him to give the bag to Saainlaa Baaje before he would start his worship and chanting of the mantras.

Saainlaa Baaje completed his chanting and worship in almost forty-five minutes. Then, he turned his face towards Sagar, and commanded, “Spread your palm, boy.”

Sagar hurriedly protruded his right palm to Saainlaa Baaje. In the depth of his somehow cupped right palm, Saainlaa Baaje poured a teaspoonful of the reddish black liquid in which he had been dipping his right hand with the kush-ring for more than half-an-hour. He then said, “Take this in your mouth, and gulp it down. You’ll get well instantly. Om Namo Shivaya!”

Sagar followed Saainlaa Baaje’s order, and put the liquid into his mouth. The hot taste of the clove solution gave a burning sensation to the inner layer of his mouth. He felt as if his tongue had been swollen and his mouth had been fully occupied by it. He felt that the peppering solution would certainly do irreparable damage in his internal body organs like liver that had already been weak due to chronic jaundice. Therefore, he decided not to swallow or gulp the solution but to keep holding it in his mouth as long as he would stay there.

However, it was not easy. Sagar found himself in a situation of great urgency because with each moment passing, he started feeling more and more restless; on the other hand, his father had no haste for walking away, and kept chatting with Saainlaa Baaje even after the completion of the worship. Sagar just kept praying and hoping for his father to remember to return home.

Sagar started feeling greater urgency to either spit or swallow the clove solution he was holding in his mouth. He had no other way, outright, because the sensation of pungent taste was ever increasing every moment. Finally, he was relieved when his father bade farewell to Saainlaa Baaje and was ready to return home.

He spat it out as soon as they had been a little away from Saainlaa Baaje’s house. His father didn’t know it.

“Thank God,” he thought, “I am saved at last.”

He wondered how many people might Saainlaa Baaje have killed unknowingly in this way.

(Parshu Shrestha (1981) lives in Itahari, teaches English, and writes stories.)