here is another story from my collection: Sanu's Pretty Doll Sanu lives with her sick mother. She's been diagnosed with lung cancer after working for seven years in a brick factory. Sanu's father is a guard at a cabin restaurant. This miserable family lives in a slum of Kathmandu. Life here is so cheap that one can buy it at the price of a needle. Life is so fragile that mean fleas and mosquitoes torture the dwellers. Brutal hunger hits their burning stomachs hard. Everyday life starts in a simple way. Deep inside, the struggle to survive digs and makes them toil to prove worthy to their tie-suit employers. To accomplish their daily missions, they wake up before the roosters and return home only after dusk darkens the sky. Even then, they don't earn even half of a middleclass teenager's monthly pocket allowance, and they spend their money thoughtfully. Dil, Sanu's father, looks at the sombre sky, climbs out of the bed quietly. He finds the gloomy lantern and lights it. Life has become like a robot. He soliloquies as he goes out of his haunted house. He stretches his strong scarred hands and prays to the Almighty and grumbles against the dreary state of his family and hums his self-made hymns. He believes in God but condemns all earthly religions. He lowers down his pleading hands and reaches for the bucket to wash. He dips his warm hands in the cold mucky water and splashes it on his face. For Dil, preserving his family is spirituality and takes himself as a divinity. He wipes his face on a torn vest, forgets he had spilled momo soup on it last night, and goes back to his one-room thatch. There is a black box and he takes out a dusty cotton pant and white plain shirt from it, sighs, recalls his eloped marriage at a deserted temple before closing the nostalgic box and shakes the clothes. He gives it a scornful glance, puts on his clothes with much anticipation. He checks his empty pockets, grins, and prepares to leave on empty stomach. But then, someone halts his journey. ?Bua, I want that pretty doll,? blubbers Sanu. The troubled father pinches her plump cheeks and assures her, ?I'll surely bring it today, okay? Now go to bed. Ama is sick.? Sanu hesitates and bursts out, ?You had said so yesterday and day before?? She is interrupted and consoled by Dil's voice, ?I promise I'll bring it today, alright? Give Bua a lovely kiss.? A small trembling sound is heard. The sun is already high up the hills. The sky is clear blue and cloudless. Like the Buddha, Dil sits under a pipal tree, contemplating on ways and means to get rich, and spews out his rage over the One living somewhere up there: Why are we made to suffer? What's your purpose in creating us? He receives no answers. Disappointed, he goes to work, lighting a bidi on the way. He rages as if in intoxication, driving him to curse the Pajero-driving Sahebs and makes his way to the sweaty place while weaving dreams of getting rich. The day is getting hotter. Back at home, Sanu's Ama is serving sisno and burnt chapatti on leaf plates. She's coughing. They start eating. Suddenly, Sanu bundles it and throws outside. ?I'm not hungry. I'm going to the riverside to play with friends,? she says and runs. Her disheartened mother wails and quickly muffles her cry with the border of her ragged kurta. She also stops eating and moves to her bed and lies down, thinking of her only child and her dark future. ?Dil Kami, here's your salary with bonus. Enjoy today,? says the cabin restaurant owner. ?Saab, we people aren't only cheated by poverty but also humiliated by our surname. It'd be better if you call me by my first name only. I'd be comfortable with that.? While saying, Dil the sentry bows and leaves with the thought of frugality in buying foods and obviously that pretty doll. He goes to the local market. Dil had hardly got bonus in his eight years of work at the restaurant. But fortune had smiled at him for standing up to the drunkards who had tried to assault Malati. He had saved her dignity. Malati is a waitress at the restaurant, and nothing more. The sun is up in the sky. The market is a thieving den. Everything is sold cheaply, casually and with cheating. Dil finds his friend's shop and buys the doll and some foods and moves on, thanking him. The sun is setting now. On his way home, he confronts the same assaulter, now roaring back at him. ?Aren't you the hero? We'll teach you what it means to be a villain.? He laughs. With a dragger, he and his gang charge him. Without his khukuri, Dil is helpless. Before he can run away, he's caught and is stabbed till he suffocates and falls down and dies a pitiful death. The killers get away howling and shouting. An hour later, policemen arrive and the bribed inspector orders that the body be taken to the ghat for cremation. The pretty doll remains wrapped in the bloodied ground. The pale sun is already meeting the darkening dusk. ?Don't go away,? says Sanu's sick mother. ?Don't worry. Bua is with you. He'll take good ca-r-re?? Her speech ends and her life too. Sanu pushes her mother but she doesn't reply. Sobbing, she calls for help. Neighbours show up and then carry the body to Pashupati and burn it. Sanu stays in a friend's home and can't understand what has happened. She only cries. The night is dark and deadly. Sanu is sleeping under the roof of a big building and she's dreaming about that pretty doll. But she doesn't know that soon her beautiful dream is about to shatter and she won't have the pretty doll.