Day 13

Jitman wasn’t married. He also never had a girlfriend. He hadn’t had any sex in his life either.

Jitman was 53 years old. He had no family. His parents had passed away when he was 47. They’d died in a bus accident while on a pilgrimage to Baraha Chetra.

Jitman was educated till class 9. Not that he wasn’t a smart kid or anything. It’s just that books never appealed to him as much as shops did.

So Jitman helped his father in the shop. His father sold fish. The fish came from Malekhu. This was the late 70s Kathmandu. During those times, fish still came to Kathmandu from Malekhu.

All days Jitman would sit on his shop selling fish; he’d inherited the shop after his parents had passed away in 1973. The delivery arrived at around 3:30 pm every day and a bucket full of fish was dropped on his bucket. They mostly were rahu and helsa. The smell overpowered the one emanating from nearby Ganesh Mandir in Naagpokhari sometimes.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew Jitman. His family had lived there for centuries. Word had it his grandfather had married an American princess. That’s right. Everyone at the time — during those decades after the war — thought America had everything, including princesses; which perhaps metaphorically, it may very well have had.

His father or his aunts though didn’t have much of American features as one would expect. But he thought it was alright. What did it matter anyway? He would still be selling fish; American features, or not. And he liked doing it. He enjoyed the smell. The clashing of the fish when they were tossed onto the bucket. They looked so clean. So fresh. And they had these eyes.

(To be contd.)