The storm raged all night long

Original title Ratbhari Huri Chalyo. From Rai's first collection, Bipana Katipaya, 1960.

Again the wind began rattling the tin roof remorselessly. 'Clang, clang, clang,' it went. They feared the whole roof was going to blow away. Inside, in the dim light of a lamp flame, wavering in the draught, Kaley's mother and father looked up at the ceiling. The tin was blackened by wood smoke and in many places they could see some drips like perspiration. Some boughs, as black as the ceiling, prevented those eighty or ninety sheets of tin from blowing off in the wind.

"How strong the wind is up on this hill! How hard it blows!" said Kaley's mother, during a lull when the banging of the roof paused briefly, then she set about lighting a fire in the hearth.

"It's never going to stop!" said Kaley's father, "It's been a whole week now!" He had barely finished speaking when the rain began to hammer down again.

"When it rains like this I'm afraid of landslides. We were fools to come and live here!" The rain grew heavier, its noise on the tin roof became deafening as a flame began to dance in the fireplace. They could no longer hear the sound of single drops: a continuous roar filled the room. Now it would wash everything away, they would be pulled down by a landslide, sweeping down from above to bury them

It seemed as if the house was. sliding away and pulling them down with it.

"Lord Mahakal! You are our Saviour and Protector!"

The wind was making the flat wooden shelves bang against the wall. All the cupboards were saturated, inside and out. The bed which always stood against the wall had been moved away to a spot where no rain leaked down onto it. Kaley was asleep, holding onto his little sister.

"It was you who insisted that I should build the house here!" The husband was suddenly angry. "Otherwise, we were enjoying living in a proper building in the middle of town, working for the police. We didn't have to worry about storms or landslides there."

The wife said nothing.

He snapped, "A big landowner you've become! You'll pay for it, you know!"

"Go away, sleep secure," said Kaley's mother, "The rains are always like this in July, what can we do? It's been like this for years. If we're killed by a landslide, we're killed by a landslide. What can you do if your time has come?"

"You were asking for death when you came here, and now you're going to get it." The rain eased a little. The wife made some tea in a mug. As the deluge lessened, they could hear rainwater pouring down from the eaves. As he drank his tea, he asked, "What time do you think it is now?"

"Oh, who knows? Eleven or twelve o' clock, perhaps." Kaley's mother sighed.

"Will it be alright now, do you think?"

"It'll have to be."

He finished his tea and stood up. On his way to the door, he kicked against a pot which was catching the drips from the roof, and water splashed out everywhere.

"Why don't you watch where you're going?" said his wife, and spread out a sack. Saying nothing, he opened the door and listened out into the darkness. The Rungdung river was thundering fearsomely, making the hillsides tremble. From time to time, he thought he heard another kind of noise, and he imagined the river washing up whole trees, and the river waters becoming yellow with mud from the landslides.

It was so dark, he could not see his own hand. He turned and called to his wife from outside in the dark. "A torch, bring a torch!" Kaley's mother pulled an old black torchlight out from under a pillow and brought it to him.

"It's blown all the sheeting off the cowshed." Kaley's father switched on the torch and went down below the house. The eye-shaped light of the torch appeared on the soaked ground and the grass.

Kaley's father collected the pieces of sheeting that had blown off, and climbed up onto the roof. He straightened the tin sheets and weighed them down with rocks. It was drizzling now.

Kaley's mother dug a sharp mossy rock out of the ground and passed it to her husband on the roof. He set it down on the roof and told her, "You go now, it's coming on heavy again. I'll just feed the cow before I come in."

"Let's both go now," said his wife and waited for him.

"You feed it some grass, then, I'll just finish off here… Oh — who'll hold the torch for me if you do — wait, wait, I've nearly finished now."

Kaley's mother's face was streaming with water, and her headscarf was drenched as she waited. Kaley's father finished and came down from the roof at last. They hurriedly fed the cow and went back into the house. The rain grew louder again.

After they had changed their clothes, they looked ready to act as beggars in a play. They blew up the fire and dried themselves by it.

"Any tea?" he asked.

"Aren't you going to sleep now?" she asked in reply.

"You go and sleep. Just make some tea for me first." Kaley's mother got out the black kettle and scooped a mugfull of water into it.

"Fill it right up," he told her, and she did.

Kaley's father was looking up at the roof. He got up, got out a rope that had been bought to make a tether, and tied it to a rafter. Then he looked around on the floor for somewhere to fasten the other end, and saw the millstone.

"Bring me that."

"Why?"

"The wind is so strong!"

Kaley's mother could say nothing. She staggered across with the millstone until it was by his

feet. Once he had tightened the rope around the millstone, Kaley's father was rather more at ease. Kaley's mother sprinkled some tea dust into the kettle, then climbed into the loft to sleep.

Kaley's father was alone, and deep in his own thoughts. Only when the tea boiled out of the spout to fall frothily into the fire was he startled out of his meditations. He was making his tea when the wind came howling and something fell onto the roof with a clang. Was it merely the top of the alder tree, or was it something else? He was filled with alarm.

When it seemed more peaceful, and as if the storm was abating, he too went to his bed, without even blowing out the lamp. The radish seeds he had sown will all have washed away, he thought— the banks of the terraces will have collapsed, a lot of sayapatri trees would have fallen down. His first job in the morning would be to dig a drainage channel down from the bhimsenpati grove above the house…

Had he been asleep for a while? He woke up: the wind and the rain continued. It seemed as if the house was going to blow away, so hard was it shuddering. The storm roared in the nearby trees.

He woke his wife. "It's a real storm now. What shall we do?"

Before she had had time to answer, there was a terrible noise, and the ground shook.

'What's happened? Get up, get up!"

He took the torch and went to open the door. Kaley's mother came too, and stood behind him. When they looked properly with the aid of the torch, they saw that the whole slope had slid away like water. Just then, a mulberry tree slowly toppled over and fell down into the landslip.

"Now what will you do?" she cried in terror.

"Go and get the children up," he replied, raising his voice above the noise of the storm. When she had gone, he switched off the torch, stood in the doorway, and looked…

Then it seemed to him that he could see a dim light of hope. Dawn was beginning to break somewhere amid the mists and the storm. Safe from fear under a basket inside the house, the big rooster flapped its wings and crowed,"Kukhuri—ka! !"

"Kukhuri-i-i-i ka-a-a-a-a-a-a!!!

In the morning, Kaley's father was draining the flood from the yard with his hoe, his head sheltered by a piece of sack cloth. He shouted to Kaley's mother as she set off to town with a churn of milk on her shoulder, "Some nails, some long nails. Don't forget to buy some, will you! I'll have to spend the whole day hammering."

"If it rains a lot, let Kaley stay home from school today," she called back as she went up the hill. In one place, a bank of earth had collapsed and blocked the path. Today she met none of the people she would normally meet on that path at this time in the morning.

After about an hour and a half, she arrived at Moktan Babu's door near the courthouse. Here they took half a seer. As she poured out the milk, the pretty girl who was the mistress of the house showed her some kindness.

"Come in and sit down for a minute. Have a cup of hot tea before you go." She shut her umbrella, stood it in the doorway, and went inside.

"What a storm that was," said Kaley's mother, "We didn't sleep a wink all night!" "Us too!" said the mistress, "The wind was rattling the windows all night. I didn't sleep at all. What a wind that was!"

"Oh, was that all?" joked Kaley's mother. Her face was dark, her body was strong, she was nearly forty. "It nearly blew our house away! You're alright here, there's no fear of landslides. It took our whole yard away, and now the house is going too! , I don't even have time to say 'it's raining' – the cow can't be left to go hungry, I have to run out and cut grass for it. If I don't sleep at night, I don't get a chance to sleep in the day.

"Yes, it's true, we have it easy here," said the mistress, with genuine sympathy, "Our roof did leak, though, and it ruined our clothes, books and everything. Now the power's shut off."

"But when you look at our situation, you'll see that that's no calamity. While I'm here, I get really distracted as soon as it starts raining again, worrying about what's happening at home. Yesterday that wind broke all my maize plants, nothing was spared…. "

Kaley's mother went off to deliver milk elsewhere.

Now that they had suffered this disaster, she felt they had gained nothing from working the land. They had been comfortable in the town. At the end of each month they received a salary and wanted for little. The children didn't have to go far to their school, she didn't have to get soaked when she went to draw water, the streets were easy to walk on, and there was no fear of storms and landslides. Her head had never ached before – since they took up farming, it ached all the time.

She had had no spare time at all since they took on that land. She was ashamed of her hands, cracked by dust and cowdung, and of her fingers, scarred from working with the scythe. Her whole body was ragged. They couldn't go away from the house even for a day: to travel anywhere far away was an impossible dream. She'd just have to go on working hard like this until the day she died…

Was she killing herself with all this work just so that she could eat and clothe herself? And what did they eat, after all? What kind of clothes did they wear? She had to conceal her food in case someone saw what mad e u p their meals. Dressed like this, she felt ashamed of herself in front of other people.

A storm of angry thoughts raged through her mind.

She arrived at the house of the half-caste man who worked at the police station. She knocked on the window of the locked door and called, "Milk!" A girl wearing grubby pyjamas came out to collect it. As she poured out a bucketful, the woman shouted to her from inside.

"Bring an extra three seers tomorrow, sister, to make creamed rice. Bring good milk, won't you!"

"Tell her I can't. It's hard to deliver right now. After that storm… I might not come tomorrow. Tell her to try somewhere else."

The woman had overheard: she came out of the door and looked at Kaley's mother.

"You bring the milk. How can I go out looking for milk in this weather? You bring it. It's little Dipak's birthday."

"I can't." Her voice was weary. She looked at the half-caste woman: her clothes were so clean, her face so fair; how fine her hands were! Her husbands's alright, thought Kaley's mother; the house is full of sofas and beds, her cupboards are full of saris. She doesn't have to touch mud and soil or sweep up cowdung; she doesn't have to be afraid of the weather.

"There's not enough milk. And if the weather's like this tomorrow I won't be coming."

"And you expect us to drink our tea without milk all day? What are you talking about? Bring us the milk, whatever the weather!"

Kaley's mother went down the steps and out towards the bazaar without saying another word. As she walked along the road she muttered to herself,

"Oh it's killing my family, living like this. Frightened of storms and landslides day and night, making our living by turning over the soil twice a year on two acres of land. I'm going to sell both the cows, and the heifers, I'll sell the whole lot once I've got a good price. I'm going to sell the land too. And the tin and wood from the house and the cowshed. I'm going to take a little room in the town, for five or six rupees. I'll sell greens in the market, like Thuley's mother does. He knows masonry and carpentry, or else he could easily get work as watchman. I'll be able to bring up those two children far more easily. I'm not going to live in that desolate place any more…"

She felt much better once she had decided this. The ache in her legs disappeared, she no longer cared about getting soaked in the rain. In this cheerful mood, she approached the foodstore in the middle alleyway. There she bought two annas of peas and chickpeas, and put them in her bag. The tailor's wife was shopping there too, so Kaley's mother asked her, "Are there any rooms available near you, sister?"

"No, there aren't. Why, sister, have you had a landslide?"

"No, I'm just looking for somewhere to live nearer the bazaar. For 10 or 15 rupees, not too far from a water supply and a lavatory."

"There is one room," said the tailor's wife, a thin woman, "With two rupees for power, it's twelve rupees in all. There was a plainsman renting it, but he's left. I'll let you know tomorrow, sister."

"I'll come and see you myself. Tomorrow, at about this time." She opened her umbrella and headed for Malgodam. She had two more deliveries to make before she went home. She arrived on B.B. Gurung's verandah. The house had been full of people since nearly morning. A few stood outside, talking under umbrellas. Kaley's mother went around to the back to deliver the milk. She could not discover what was going on. Something must have happened – either to the husband or to the wife; there were no children. The fat wife used to come and go all day, her wooden sandals clacking. She went all over town carrying her white cat, Nini. The husband owned a dry-cleaning shop up on Laden-la Road.

"What's happened? Why are all these people here?" she asked the woman who came from next door to collect the milk. "Nini's mother had a fall last night. She's unconscious." "Where did she fall?"

She heard that the cat had been outside in the rain when the door was locked in the night. It must have mewed and mewed, but nobody heard it above the din of the storm. When the rain eased a little, there had been a search for the cat. They had looked outside, and called and called, but the cat had not come. Nini's mother's sandal had slipped as she was going down the hill to look for the cat, and she had fallen down on the road. A doctor had been called urgently, but he hadn't come at once. The woman was still unconscious.

"It's all the result of that stupid cat!" said Kaley's mother quietly. "That's it there, isn't it?"

A white cat sat warming itself and licking its fur by the fireplace. Kaley's mother couldn't just walk away. She sat down on the doorstep, and soon the husband came out in tears. The woman had died.

"How astonishing! What a shame!" Kaley's mother picked up her bag and the churn.

When she had delivered to the watchman's wife, and poured some out for the littlest daughter who brought out a small bowl, Kaley's mother sat down on a sack on the ground.

The watchman's wife poured her a cup of tea with milk, then he asked, "How are things out your way? The storm must have caused lots of damage. It must have wrecked everything."

Kaley's mother did not speak her thoughts, and the watchman's wife went on, "There's nothing for us to be afraid of here in the town, but I know how hard it is out in the villages and tea gardens. That's what made my father move to the town…"

Kaley's mother replied rather forcefully, "Oh, disasters happen everywhere. It's true, the storm did do some damage. But we'll put it right now. It's not an impossible task. I have my house, my cowshed, my cows in the shed. And there's the land, with thirty or forty bamboo trees, and fig trees and fruit trees too. The rows of cucumbers stretch up to the sky… How much damage can a storm really do, after all? I must go now and get started.

She gulped down the tongue-scalding tea and hurried off to the bazaar to buy the nails.

"It's getting very late," she said to herself, "Kaley's father will be furious!"

Translated by Michael Hutt

Indra Bahadur Rai is the renowned literateur of Darjeeling, who in the 1960s initiated the Tesro Aayam (Third Dimension) movement of Nepali literature, together with Iswor Ballav and Bairagi Kainla. Michael Hutt teaches Nepali at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.