Up and over a suspension bridge, past a tarp slipping off a bamboo frame littered with the aftermath of a bāluwā-gitti party – Himalayan Dragon Beer empties, half-devoured meals, a sodden fire, bike helmet, damp blankets.

Of a sudden I find myself transported to a cottage of my own, an hour from Pokhara, a dusty, longish bus from Kathmandu.

John was drunk the first time I met him – 68 years old, thin but tough, short but imposing.

It would begin as an emptiness that churned and expanded in Hajurama’s stomach, gutting her, carving her from within.

She was Noor Jahan, she was Lakshmi Bai, she was Cleopatra, she was a Queen, a Warrior, a God.

She had never really loved her husband. What she had felt for him was a kind of respectful devotion, the kind her mother had held for her father.

Me, too, has a strong-armed will,

a mean swing

for bats and balls, a

wild, mean, streak for elbowing.

Prince Trailokya stopped at a bend halfway up Shivapuri, exhausted. He’d left his horse outside Budhanilkantha temple almost two ghadis ago and had climbed continuously, determined to make it to the top.

The third edition of La.Lit’s Writing Nepal short story contest, judged by US-based Nepali writer Samrat Upadhyay, has been won by Dipesh Risal with his short story ‘The Almost Enlightenment of Prince Trailokya’.