Between them, things had felt somewhat constrained and claustrophobic ever since Ramesh had returned from Saudi. It should not have been so strenuous, for Shanta  had been the one who had pestered Ramesh for the last two years to return to Nepal. Hadn’t he done enough already? Paid millions to purchase the Australian passage for both their sons while also building a three-story house on four aana of land in the capital. The house Ramesh built had circular stairs of the kind that he and Shanta  admired in the Indian soap operas they were both addicted to. It was the peculiar opulence of the stairs that compelled visitors to say, “Ramesh has made a leap in life,” and it was true. Everything a Nepali dares to dream of, Ramesh has managed to obtain, laboring abroad for fifteen years, first in Dubai, then in Saudi Arabia, working as a security guard for the Al Nakheel Mall.

Now, the rented floor of their house provided what amounted to a small pension, and what was more, he was only forty-two, with an entire life ahead of him. Ramesh could do as he pleased. His brother-in-law had encouraged him to get into real estate. The commissions would be as high as fifteen percent, and even if there was no sale, there would be several meetings with prospective buyers and sellers where they could easily squeeze out a few rounds of beer and sekuwa.

Yet, the excitement of homecoming had not matched the reality. That morning, as had been their ritual during the early years of their marriage, Ramesh rolled over, pulled up Shanta ’s oversized maxi, cupped her left breast with his palm, and began to suck on her dormant nipple. Shanta was sleepy and surprised, but she allowed it.

Moments later, their skin had enveloped each other., Ramesh made the first thrust and Shanta  returned his passion with a soft moan of the kind that encourages more thrusting. Oh yes, yes, but the first moan worked more as a relaxant than an inspiration. Ramesh felt his manhood leak. He attempted to regain the momentum, but he couldn’t.

“Did the desert also wrinkle your dick?” Shanta  asked playfully, to which Ramesh responded with his most natural instinct: his palm impacting her right cheek.

“Watch who you are talking to,” Ramesh said.

Shanta  got up, said nothing, though Ramesh wanted her to. An angry sneer, at least, if not an apology, but she remained quiet for the half hour while she got ready for office. Ramesh noticed that Shanta  applied heavy makeup to hide the impression of his slap. She left early without making him any breakfast.

Shanta  worked as a teller at the Sinamangal branch of the Sanima Bikash Bank. She often told Ramesh over their long-distance video calls how her job, despite the pressure, kept her sane all those years while she dealt with two hot-headed teenage boys at home. It was a steady job, which became stressful at the end of the day during bank closing, especially if the balance sheet did not add up. Ramesh encouraged Shanta  to quit. After all, he was making enough, wasn’t he? But over video, Shanta said that she enjoyed holding stacks of money.

“It makes me feel powerful,” she said. “One day, after our sons send us money, I will withdraw all the money just for a single day. I will stuff a shirak ko khol with the cash and sleep like a child again.”

“I have been offered a raise. I can gift you that cash blanket myself.”

“No,” Shanta  insisted, “I need somebody to hold me as well.”

Oh, how lovely and succulent she looked over video! They had a rhythm to their long-distance love. Over video call, each of them made their dinners and ate in front of their phone screens. Ramesh shared his room with another man, a Dalit from Sarlahi, and it was not guaranteed they would always have privacy. Shanta  had even learned to quickly close her video and be quiet whenever Shiva Kumar interrupted them.

Ramesh tossed and turned in his bed. He recalled how, during the first ten years he was in Dubai, his love had somewhat faded. It was a relationship forged by a sense of conjugal duty, but after he relocated to Saudi, he had begun craving Shanta ’s love and attention. The longing for his wife supplied him with the energy to work with a zealous spirit.

His work was simple: to stand at the mall door and open the door for visitors. Thankfully, he stood inside the building, but the constant opening and closing of the door meant that he was alternatively exposed to the full force of the desert sun and then assaulted by the icy blast of the central AC. It made him sick frequently, but this too his body had been accustomed to. His company had offered to renew his contract, along with a pay raise, but Shanta  had protested. They had the freedom to choose now. So Ramesh happily decided that it was time to reunite with his soulmate.

But soulmates forged over long-distance calls were as incongruous as two bodies inhabiting a single space. Ramesh returned home after five years and was appalled by Shanta ’s folds of belly fat. Her face retained a youthful vigor but her body had already contorted to the horrors of late middle age, and he found her ugly. Shanta also seemed to forget that Ramesh was even home. Three times, she made dinner just for herself.  And, what was worse? In the three weeks since his return, they had attempted sex three times and all three times Ramesh had been ashamed. Ramesh knew that there was no greater threat to manhood than leaving a woman unsatisfied. Had his experiences in Saudi altered his desire, he wondered?

Ramesh got out of bed by consoling himself that later, after Shanta  returned from work, he would tease her for much longer, finger her and make her come before he entered her. He would put small balls of cotton in his ear so as not to be swayed by her sweet moans; that way he could maybe last for a respectable time. The frustration bubbling between them would find release, allowing a fresh start for his homecoming.

He went to the kitchen to make some tea for himself. There, he realized for the first time that he did not know where things were kept. He opened a cupboard looking for loose tea and suddenly had the urge to open every cupboard, examine every wall, every beam and frame of this palace of sweat and dreams.

In their bedroom cupboard, Ramesh found their wedding album. In the photos, Ramesh was wearing a loose suit while Shanta ’s hair was covered by a red veil. He looked at the photo and then at the cupboard mirror. Even he could not deny the transformation he had undergone. But, twenty years later, Shanta still looked youthful. He remembered how he had panicked when the janti was approaching the wedding grounds. What if she was ugly? His mother’s assurance that Shanta  was one of the most beautiful girls in her village had not kept his trepidation at bay. For the entire ceremony, Shanta ’s face hid behind her veil and it was only at the moment of the photograph in his hand that the veil was pulled back. Once assured of Shanta ’s famed beauty, he smiled generously for the photo.

“A lazy brute like you will at least work hard at night,” his friends had joked, and Ramesh had felt triumphant that such a beauty had become his possession.

After their marriage, it was Shanta  who had pushed him to leave Charali and go to Kathmandu in search of fortune. He had been happy with his carefree life, but Shanta  had, as his parents remarked, made a man out of him. It was true,  to make that leap in life, Ramesh needed to be steered by Shanta .

In their bedroom closet, underneath the photo album, there was an old khukuri that his mother had given them when Ramesh and Shanta were venturing to the city for the first time.

“You will become so rich. You will eat goat every day. You will need this,” his mother had said.

He put the khukuri and the album back, and decided to get tea and breakfast at a nearby eatery. He got ready, locked the doors and as he was walking out, he met Sagar, their tenant, who was pulling out his Pulsar bike. Sagar was in his early thirties and offered to drop Ramesh at his destination. Ramesh declined, saying he needed the morning walk, but the offer lightened his mood. He was relieved to have had a reliable tenant like Sagar. That young man had been renting their flat since he was twenty. There were a cast of characters Sagar had found as sublets to occupy the second bedroom in his flat. For the tenants, his house was like a revolving door at the mall. People came and left constantly. But Sagar had been a steady face for the last ten years, and over time, Shanta  had come to rely on him on a number of things: turning on the motor for the well water, which was a painful chore if the tank completely emptied. It took a bucket of water to wet the pipes before the motor began pumping water out of the ground. Sagar also did not mind dropping their sons off at school, and even stayed behind as a lookout for their house when Shanta  and the boys went to Charali for Dashain.

At the eatery, Ramesh ordered a plate of chana and anda as well as chiya and churot. A silver sliver of smoke escaped his cigarette, and Ramesh began planning for the day. There were two properties to go inspect and persuade the owners, but that would not take much time.

When his breakfast arrived, two men walked into the eatery. They wore hand-me-down cotton shirts and navy blue pants, clearly school uniforms once upon a time. Each of them carried a see-through file carrier. Ramesh immediately recognized an earlier version of himself.

“Which manpower company?” Ramesh asked as they took their seats at the table adjacent to his.

They seemed both shocked and relieved to have been recognized.

“Anjali,” one of them responded.

“Which country—which company?” Ramesh asked again.

They answered. Ramesh warned them not to make cash payments to the manpower agent. Always a bank transaction with a clear line in the remarks stating the purpose, Ramesh said as the men grew more attentive. Ramesh knew these men wanted him to speak of his migrant experience. A veteran sharing his wisdom with the younglings. These men were not much older than his own sons and Ramesh could foresee their future. The hours would feel long, but the first year, they would be driven by their desire to prove their worth to their employer. Back home, their families would immediately benefit from their labor: the repayment of their family loans and a gas stove to replace the firewood chulo. The time spent fetching firewood would now be exchanged for sitting in front of the foreign television, which they would bring back on their first vacation to Nepal. Their photo—clean shaven, oiled hair, starched shirt—taken in a studio would hang above the television out of quiet obligation, the same way the president’s photo is hung in government offices.

If this migrant is lucky, Ramesh thought, he would successfully inseminate his wife on his first vacation. Then, the prospect of a son would encourage the migrant to work even harder, but as days became weeks and weeks became years, unfulfilled desires would occupy his mind. Masturbating in the shared bathroom would no longer satisfy his urges. To lay supine in one’s own bed and touch oneself would become a dream. The migrant would become increasingly frustrated, for his room would never be completely empty. Then, the bravest among the roommates would say, “we are all men here” and this would ease the men into watching porn and masturbating together.

The first time Ramesh masturbated communally was out of forced circumstance, not due to some sick fantasy. His roommate had joked that this was an upgraded version of their teenage years, when boys banded together and leered at girls bathing in the river.

Touching oneself in ‘public view’ was like forming a small hole in a dam. Once the water started to leak, the dam was bound to burst.

“We are all men here, only desperate. There is no harm in helping a brother out,” Ramesh’s roommate had said as a way of proposing an occasional blowjob to the other. Going home to their wives meant waiting for a year or more, and this was the khadi, the vast desert, there were no whorehouses to venture out to satisfy their urges, Ramesh’s roommate said.

“Ma chhakka hoina,” Ramesh roared back. I am not a homo.

“Daju, I will go first and if you don’t like, you don’t have to do the same for me.”

But Ramesh went down willingly when his turn came. He still remembered the taste of the dick in his mouth. It tasted like soil from the fields, and the drop of precum in his mouth like raw, uncooked string beans, a vegetable he despised.

A routine had been established. Roommates took turns going down on each other. This routine was only halted when someone went back home for vacation, got transferred or left their jobs.

The arrival of a new roommate meant new dynamics and provided enough intermission for Ramesh to suppress his fear that he was slowly turning into a homo.

At the eatery, shoveling spoonfuls of chana into his mouth, Ramesh decided against sharing his most intimate and terrifying experience of working abroad. If he had even mentioned it, the respect these young men showed him would vanish. Plus, these men, yet to know of such desperation, would double down on their commitments to their newly wedded wives.

For a year or two, Ramesh had lived with a terrifying thought: What if he actually was a chhakka?

He had been relieved only after he learned that this was the way of the world: in army camps, in the desert, on ships in the high seas, and in prisons, men substituted for the absence of women. Ramesh would have liked to discuss this with someone, anyone, but he was afraid of being judged. So, at the eatery, Ramesh shared only the basic experience of working as a migrant laborer, which, these days, anyone can learn through newspapers and Facebook reels.

After paying, Ramesh walked to the houses he needed to inspect. The owners were relocating to London to be with their children. These were the best kinds of clients, for they were always in a hurry to sell off their property so the prospective buyers could be assured of a hefty discount. There remained a possibility of a double commission, and excited at the prospect of a sudden income, he treated himself to beer and sekuwa.

At around 3, after three or five—who cares how many— beers, he stumbled back home. He was ready yet nervous. He intended to fuck Shanta  for a minute or two, just long enough to feel dignified about his performance.

As he walked inside the gate of his house, he saw Sagar’s Pulsar. And to keep himself from overthinking while he waited for Shanta to get home, Ramesh decided to chat with Sagar.

Ramesh climbed up the circular stairs, brimming with pride. No house he had inspected or visited had his kind of stairs.

The front door of Sagar’s flat was carelessly left open. Ramesh walked in quietly to make sure that there was no break-in. As he approached the bedroom door, Ramesh knew what was happening and that he should retreat. But the soft moans escaping the bedroom excited him and he crept closer, tiptoeing not to be heard. He peeped through a crack in the door and had a sliver of a view of the bed. Even if Ramesh could not see the whole thing, he could make out what was happening, just as it is possible to imagine what a thing must be like by observing the shadow it casts.

Sagar sucked on black, erect nipples, and slowly moved down to the woman’s fat belly. He kissed the stomach belly as if it were the flat expanse of a model.

“Didi, you are so beautiful,” Sagar said, and slid further down so his face was between her naked thighs.

That boy Sagar must have been so good with his tongue that the woman released a long moan.

“Bhai, chika malai. Pleeaaz,” the woman let out. Brother, fuck me, please.

Ramesh recognized the voice immediately. He stood there frozen in rage, but something else as well, something he had never felt before. He knew what he had to do. He knew where the khukuri was. Actually, he did not even have to get the khukuri. He just had to walk in as calm as a Buddhist monk and it would end. He would confront Shanta . If she had been so busy whoring herself, why had she insisted on Ramesh’s return? Ramesh was ashamed, but he could not stop looking.

Sagar grabbed Shanta  by her hair and thrust his cock into her mouth. She sucked on it eagerly, like a young child having a go at a popsicle. In between her hurried sucking of Sagar’s dick, Shanta  pleaded to him again.

“Bhai, chika malai.”

And then, as Sagar obliged, Ramesh felt his underwear and pants strain against the slow bulging of his sex.