The Chills Of Magh: A Short Story
The Chills of Magh
Creaks. The silence of midnight has loudened her steps down the wooden stairs.
Her mornings are chaotic. She wakes up early to prepare breakfast for a family of nine.
“Rani, I’m leaving. It’ll be late when I get back!” screams Kumar, her husband, who leaves early in the morning in a white land cruiser to pick up his boss and then head towards the office.
She must prepare breakfast for her daughters who must head to school or college. Her eldest daughter has just given birth after getting married to a construction worker living in Kathmandu. The youngest is her son, he was born about a decade ago to end the long chain of seven daughters. She pours kerosene onto the firewood arranged well in the chulo out of a blue canister.
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When her mother used to tell stories about how wives had to burn themselves along with their dead husbands, she used to be terrified. After she was married to an elder man than herself, even after the abolishment of Sati-pratha, she had that fear. But after more than two decades of being married to Kumar, she had lost the will to live. Sometimes she pictured killing Kumar, but her children needed a provider. Her halted education was her handcuff and divorce was a concept she’d never heard of.
Naked, she comes out of the covers, tired of lying beside her booze-guzzling husband. The cold night has been forgotten in the intense fire burning inside her. The agony of hell she has gone through made the chills of winter look pleasant.
The creaks cannot be heard as she walks barefoot down the stairs. She has now locked the doors of every room as her daughters sleep peacefully with their bhatija, a visitor during his vacations. The floors are getting wetter with every step she takes holding the blue canister.
She stands naked on the porch. Her goosebumps clearly visible under the glowing rays of the moon, but she can barely feel the cold. Whip marks on her thighs, bruises on her back. A blue canister, leaking, on one hand and a half-lit cigarette on the other. She has
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