Ganesh sat down and started to cut the bowl of potatoes. His right thumb flicked a paring knife over the wrinkled brown skin of a potato, knicking it in places. Ganesh gouged out a particularly nasty looking potato eye that had a stubble of green sprout growing out of it. He glanced up when the television started to splurt out that there had been an earthquake in Karnali zone. Ganesh’s village was in Karnali zone.
The camera swept over the shops in the middle of the market place of his village square. Ganesh’s eye brows arched. There were people milling about trying to look into the camera, and behind them, the sturdy vegetable and carpentry shop that had stood had crumbled. The doorway to the panchayat building had dirt flowing out of it. The roofs had collapsed in many of the places that most of the villagers depended on.
Ganesh’s hands slowed down on the potatoes as he focused on the scene unfolding on the television. If that was what the stores in the middle of town looked, he couldn’t even imagine what some of the village huts must have been reduced to.
A throat cleared in the room. Ganesh knew that he was already late to make dinner. From a chair opposite from him, the mistress of the house was gazing steadily at him. She sat in a bamboo rocking chair with a Femina magazine in the lap of her turquoise kurta-suruwal. Ganesh’s hand quickened over the potato that he was almost done with. He dropped it into a steel bowl with water in it.  The potato made a ‘bloop’ sound as it hit the water and made a ‘ding’ sound as it hit the shiny bottom. The reflection of the fluorescent tubelight in the water shattered into a million stars.

Ganesh quickly grabbed another potato and his hand worked furiously over it. Feeling sure that he had satisfied the mistress that he wasn’t goofing off, Ganesh returned his eyes back on the television screen. Cleaning potatoes while being able to watch TV was a privilege that Ganesh did not want to abuse.
The newscaster on Nepal News informed that the earthquake had devastating effects on the villages and towns around where his parents and siblings lived. Due to logistical problems there would be a delay in getting resources to them by helicopter.
So what could he do? As much as he yearned to know, Ganesh couldn’t just leave the house where he worked as a servant and go to his family.
Yes he knew that his father had just managed to take a loan and build the house. Ganesh had received a letter saying that they had put in the rafters to build the kitchen. Ganesh’s father seemed proud to be able to provide this. He knew that his mother had wanted a decent kitchen instead of doing most of the cooking in the red-mud mopped floor on the front porch. It had taken his folks sometime to gather the money to be able to put this addition together. Ganesh’s mother had started to spin yarn to supplement the families income.
And now, this had happened. If, as the newscaster said, 80 percent of the houses in his town had crumbled, things didn’t look good. The salary that he earned working for this house in Kathmandu barely paid for his schooling at a local night school. That had been the deal that one of the guys from his village had made with the mistress of the house. He had dropped Ganesh with an army sack half-filled with clothes. Ganesh was to do the cooking and cleaning and all the chores that needed to be done during the day. In exchange the mistress paid for his night schooling and gave him some spending money. He daren’t ask the mistress for money to help his parents out without being tossed out of this job too.
Ganesh dug his top teeth on his bottom lips trying not to let the angst show on his face. He had, before this moment, put that idea out of his mind as complete nonsense. But this earthquake changed everything. He decided to reconsider the burglary idea that a couple of boys had suggested to him after night school last month. He had dismissed them. He wasn’t that kind of guy, he had told them. He never wanted to be that kind of a guy.
Ganesh looked at the television set. This time he didn’t see the newscaster. He saw the television set in a gray metal case with a key hanging out of the glass door that slid up. Between glancing at the last potato getting scalped in his hands, he let his eyes wander around the room. Ganesh realized that he felt strangely at home with the things in the room in a way that he had never before. And that scared him. Ganesh dragged his eyes back to the potato that he was strangling in his whitened palms.

Awesome Read. Keep 'em coming!

The last paragraph made me think about something in the past. My friend called himself a Misanthropist. I feared when he looked at people around. Thankfully, he didn't have a gun.

That is pretty funny, sleepless. Appreciate the encouragement.

Nice flow. Is there more?

Khataraaaa raichha ni story ta. Stories of the househelps looting their own homeowners in Kathmandu is rampant. While this act cannot be commended, part of it is due to the huge gap in wealth and minimum pay of the help.
Well narrated story without giving up too much hints.

स्वर्गीय होमे ज्यु , कथा मिठो लेख्नु हुन्थ्यो ... जहाँ हुनुहुन्छ यो कथाको लागि धन्यवाद है ...