Waiting for Tarkari

Here's the next Sunday's:

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Waiting for Tarkari

Politics has gone the kimchi way, which is to say, everyday it rots a little, excites a little. The paralysis born of small insights is diluted by another insight into the vast comedy of terrors that fills each blighted hour of news. Each ballooned politician inspires more envy for his skills as a theatrical actor than for his achievement in the political arena. Eventually, the political imperative becomes less embodied than a forgettable itch: Diwas tells me we disagree on everything, and that becomes the farthest reach of my political work. Naturally, the mind turns to far more important events: waiting for something to happen; waiting for the humid mulch of May to lift; waiting for a beauty-queen to pause mid-sentence and giggle; sucking on the teats of trite wit and anticipating the satisfaction that comes from ending a sentence.

When Diwas says we should go crowd hunting, it feels decadent and rich, nourishing with the froth of all excitement strictly revolutionary. But, when Alston and Diwas meet me by the post office in Sundhara on Monday afternoon, we find nothing of the throbbing masses, no reverberations in the air of red salutes and red fists. Instead, it is one-size-fits-all rayon socks by the dozen, a dump of cheap pumps in gold pleather, and comic books of Bollywood movies from the late eighties waiting for praise in the shadows of malls and library. They walked all the way from Sanepa, and I took a microbus to Sahid Gate, but there is no political disturbance, no action to be had. The most surprising aspect of the new development is the extraordinary restraint shown by fellow citizens. It makes me feel cheap, almost idiotic, for wanting to witness something to the contrary: something less surprising and more violent, much less mindful and far more bloodthirsty.

It is Tuesday. Thamel is so quiet that we have to wake up the napping employee at a popular hangout. Yagya and Rahul are meeting after seven, eight years, but soon their conversation runs dry, because, in the age of facebook and twitter, there is no private thought, even if private life is protected. There is talk about women and marriage, nothing that leads anywhere. There is a bigger concern, a bigger circus that commands attention: cricket! The film of sweat that separates the body from the seat becomes stickier, saltier; the world shrinks to the swing of a bat of the leather of a white ball describing an arc with its lazy spin. Activity reduces to speculation about scores and the finger raised to get the bar's attention. Nothing happens: it is a fast-scoring game, but it happens inside a glass-faced box, with screaming legions of fans and cheerleaders who flash their smiles and red silk underwear, but still inside the protected box.

A murmur rises, beating a rhythm with slogans, approaching from an indeterminable direction. At first, it mingles naturally with the noise in the cricket stadium, but soon it filters in through the windows, around the door, riding the excitement on the faces of the restaurant staff. The murmur becomes an indistinct, overpowering roar. But, as it gets closer, it become chopped into smaller choruses, each led by a voice inching towards a torn, hoarse whisper. It is a sea of red, hammer and sickle, and endlessly marching past. Restaurant employees run to bolt the street entrance from the inside, idle by the walls, fingers laced into the meshed wire fence, watching passively, bickering actively about the number of people, the direction in which Prachanda's resignation will take the country. The procession seems too precise to have been driven or derailed by passion: they don't exhort to the pedestrian, they don't try to engage the spectator. There is no thrill of terror. It is decidedly not paisa-vasool.

On Wednesday morning there is a fresh perspective on the new political scenario: since the Maoists are no longer in the government, this year's Miss Nepal competition can be organized without the usual fear. Of course, the beauty queen making this observation doesn't foresee Prachanda's press conference, through which he makes it clear that this resignation is a mere change of diet until he heads the next government. What is both exciting and disappointing about the farce is the realization that the bite has been taken out of the political barking. There aren't enough drumbeats of doom.

Thus the day coils into itself, begets a fresh habit for unattached details, looks for minutiae while postponing acknowledgment of the political reality. What sound like lonely dogs barking across the neighbourhood loom and compound into a swollen caterpillar of a julus writhing its way through a silenced neighbourhood. And what sound like anger and self-righteousness bounding down an alley become nothing more than neighbourhood dogs, each barking to defend its piss-lined shrine to itself. By the time another large julus passes outside a sekuwa joint in Nayabazaar, ears perk but the conversation doesn't pause. The julus plays itself to the mind: a throng driven by no particular crisis, and much too studied in the art of the julus, following not an all-consuming passion, but by a party directive.

But all of this seems distant, like a circus on another planet. What used to seem hallowed--the business of creating new political realities--now appears as it really is: ridden with lies, no matter who is the party lied to. The parties seem to be filled with silver-tongued dimwits, or others that are brilliantly inarticulate, with a tail of unquestioning fellowship. In the everyday, however, small changes happen without shouting for attention: the streets are easier to navigate; there are fresh vegetables in the market; newlywed friends finally arrive in Kathmandu from Dang because the roads are open. Sacks of parwar inspire a prayer of thanks and women leafing through fresh saag smile at each other, secure in the knowledge that there is plenty to go around. And that says a lot about the simple prioroties of the simple people. Let the naked ambitions of the political parties continue to make a fool of each unworthy one of them. Today there will be fresh, inexpensive tarkari to look forward to, and that is enough. That is more thrilling than the next video-tape, next unconstitutional shenanigan, or the next, inevitable act of terror.