‘Layers’

When I was young I had a coat of every colour, handmade by my mother, which changed in light of my mood and my surroundings. It was often wild as a peacock when I awoke in the morning, and sullen as a peahen when I had to go to bed in the evening. Sometimes it was translucent, blinding white – the same colour as my hand held in front of my nose on stormy nights, and bearing the faces of me and my brother and everybody we knew.

When I went to school I got a pukka coat, a coat in which to go out into the world, a coat in which to leave home, and I was very excited. Maroon! Out in the world I will be maroon, I thought, just like the fat man at the bank who smiles at my mother when we come to deposit my father's leatherworking earnings; just like the fat sun setting over the rustling corn of deep summer. Just like my feet, as it turned out, after running an hour to school with my shoes in my bag, so they wouldn't get scuffed.

It was without shoes one afternoon that I was in the forest, on the way home from school, marvelling over a tiny krait snake. It was so young that it still didn't have any teeth, and so I'd let it stretch its tiny mouth up and over the tip of my thumb, giggling from its ticklish tongue. I was so engrossed in its struggles that I didn't hear them come up, four boys from my class, full of hormones and accusations. I got big wet bruises on both sides of my head and all down my back; my jacket was ripped and stained with urine, its white piping yellow like pus.

I did what they said, and I never went back to that school again. I wasn't scared, but it was easier this way. My father was getting a lot of work anyway, and needed the help. My jacket? It's in the closet somewhere, black with the mould of a dozen monsoons.

This is part of a regular series of Himal's commentary on work by artists with the Kasthamandap Art Studio in Kathmandu. This painting is by Bhairaj Maharjan, acrylic on canvas, 81×100 cm.

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