One More Time Read Online Free Page B

such a trip to school, and wearing only a pair of flip-flops. There I stood in my heavy boots and all my hiking clothes, while they skipped by in school uniforms and next to nothing on their feet, calling ‘Namaste,’ their eyes glowing in their fresh handsome faces.
    Mam’s words resounded in my head. ‘Which shoes do you want?’ she had quizzed, as the shop assistant stood waiting.
    ‘I don’t like either pair. They both look so nerdy!’ I’d replied indignantly.
    ‘They’re just school shoes, it doesn’t matter what they look like!’
    Protesting with Mam was pointless. Once her mind was made up, there was no changing it.
    ‘And tomorrow you can walk to school. It’ll do you the world of good!’ she went on.
    ‘Ah, but, Mam, it’ll take me ages.’
    My primary school was probably less than five minutes from our house, but in the end I only ever walked the distance, at most, four or five times.
    Mani grabbed hold of my arm, startling me slightly.
    ‘Look!’ He stretched out an arm and pointed to the surrounding foliage. ‘Can you see?’
    I looked intently, trying hard to follow where he was pointing but saw nothing. ‘No. What is it?’
    ‘Look,’ he said again, this time pointing more definitely.
    I squinted my eyes but still saw nothing. ‘I still can’t see anything. What is it?’
    Mani bent down and picked up a stone. ‘Look now,’ he said as he threw it.
    The stone was a direct hit and a giant caterpillar tumbled from a leaf and fell out of view. Mani laughed again.
    ‘Ah, a caterpillar,’ I said, amused by Mani’s stoning of it. ‘A dead caterpillar,’ I laughed. ‘It was very big, maybe the size of my hand.’
    ‘Caterplow…’ Mani didn’t recognise the word.
    ‘No, caterpillar.’
    ‘Cater…caiterplo…Ah yes, butterfly!’
    Was he joking? ‘Yes, kind of!’ A moment of silence followed.
    ‘I become married next year, you know?’
    ‘You’re getting married?’ I looked at him. ‘Oh, nice one. What’s your girlfriend’s name?’
    ‘Ah, Mani have no girl but now I am thirty-eight which is very old for Nepali man. Next year I must marry or Mani have no chance!’ Mani’s face lit up as he spoke and it was clear that the prospect of marriage excited him greatly.
    ‘You have no girl but you are getting married? How?’
    Mani stared at me briefly then turned away and slyly laughed to himself. After a few moments he returned his gaze to me, this time with renewed seriousness.
    ‘Ah, right now I have plan! Before, I think maybe I was unlucky?’
    Mani let this last line hang and threw me aquestioning look, as though he wished me to confirm his bad luck. I couldn’t, so he continued.
    ‘Yes, maybe, I think, I have bad luck. Now Mani has plan though—no drinking, no ganja, only dal bhat. Only dal bhat for me and I am saving my money!’
    I began to understand the direction of the conversation.
    ‘You have arranged marriages in Nepal?’ I asked, but Mani looked at me blankly. ‘When you are getting married, do you know your wife for a long time before the wedding or do you meet for the first time on the wedding day?’
    ‘Ah marriage, I understand,’ he replied with excitement. ‘If I work hard, the mothers they see. They see if I am good man, if I work hard, if I drink not so much and no ganja. Now I eat only dal bhat. The mothers they see that I am saving and that I am good, but still I need build house and then mothers give me daughter.’
    ‘So have you picked a daughter that you like?’
    Mani’s eyes opened wide with delight and an embarrassed kind of happiness.
    ‘I see one girl—’ he broke off into bashful laughter.
    ‘Is she the same age as you?’ But I knew she wouldn’t be. Almost every married Nepalese man I’dseen seemed to have a wife almost half his age by his side.
    ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I am old, thirty-eight, I tell you very old for Nepali man. She is younger, maybe twenty-two!’ Again his face lit up with a smile. ‘Maybe