Surviving

Tomorrow, I head to Kurintar as a part of a group of writers and photographers collaborating on a wonderful little project. It should be exciting, going into the villages to talk to old women and recording their life experiences, internalizing what we hear, and writing in different forms to capture the essence of the grannies.

Here's for next Sunday: the title is ominous. I have strong opinions on the recent spate of violent mob activity around the country, especially the leit-motif: manipulation by a few people to get the mob to execute/persecute others on their behalf. But, for now, just this watered down essay:

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Surviving



Even at eight in the morning, we are weary enough to laugh about the possibility of being beaten up by villagers. An unlikely bunch of trekkers we make: three men, slight of beards, sharp of features and easy of gaits, walking in the incessant drizzle that is Shivapuri's rain. We are walking from Tokha to Muhanpokhari, from where Yagya and Dhiraj will continue to Sundarijal. We pose before the statue of Chandeshwori, murderous, divine, too-many limbed. I wonder aloud if it is not the creation of a grammatical error rather than a scriptural-sculptural mandate. “Dus haat-khutta bhayeki,” might have, instead of becoming the graceful ten-armed, two-legged goddess, end up a form of terror: ferociously waving ten different weapons, thundering down a celestial battleground on all of her ten feet powered by glistening, taut, muscular thighs, aiming for the neck to behead and drink the bright sap.

Yagya confers with two teenagers washing their hair under Chandeshwori's feet, their own well-shod feet splayed and managed as far away as possible from the grime running down their necks. It is possible to take the road that curves out of sight—but that is an inferior choice, because it is a road crudely drawn on the crumbling sand-face of Shivapuri. A child can piss on the road and cut a channel through it, and Monsoon is freshly upon us, eager to puddle and run. It will be unpleasant walking. Dhiraj thinks it more prudent to ask somebody that is not a teenager.

It's alright. We climb until we meet a trail, likely used by army personnel during their patrols. It can't be a trail used by villagers to collect firewood or fodder. Under a canopy of pine, there is no firewood or fodder. Our calculations about where we ought to be by what time races far ahead of us. As we argue about where we will cross Bishnumati and if it will be possible to do so on the mountain, without climbing down to the bridge by the ISKCON temple, we realize there is no more of the trail that is supposed to reach the road. We are in somebody's field of lima beans.

I am scared. Used to be that the thing I feared most at times like this was the farmer's dog, or the dog that survived on the farmer's scrapes. After that, it was the fear of accidentally happening upon a farmer's cucumber vines. But, standing at the rain-picked edge of a patch of lima bean plants, I worry that the three of us will be taken for something actually menacing enough to elicit mob-action: Kidnappers! What if there are children in those houses? I have always made faces at kids, even in a crowded street, to get them to smile, laugh, slyly hide their faces to start a game. There were some Indian tourists who tried that universal communion with children a few kilometers from where I was born, and they were soundly beaten by the villagers. Why should I expect a different fate?

Nothing happens. Nobody shouts at us, even for spoiling the edges of their carefully cut terraces, or for the genial crime of annoying the peace of a Saturday morning. We jump down a terrace and reach the road. A pile of uttis leaves is decomposing, liberating the smell of our shared life in the boarding school where that was the smell of the rainy months. We pause to discuss what houses and colonies existed ten years ago and what didn't. Some things look exactly as they were. But there is a jumble of the newly-minted. House, neighborhoods, shapes in the mountains. Some places and people have survived—the old couple on the hill, RK with his momo shop, the holes on the campus walls from where escape was made. The catalogue of what is new is immense. Most of it is in the form of new houses built into the mountainside, with ridiculous roofs and sentry-posts above the gates which, to me, seem sufficient for a writing life. At least the guards have a view, flower-vines outside their windows, terraces of rice fooling them each morning into believing in a verdant, stable, sun-kissed world.

I am tired; my body acts much older than its age. The microbus driver starts talking at Muhan Pokhari and doesn't stop until Bansbari. His khalasi is just as lively. They phrase everything to get me to agree with them: the other drivers are drunk and mad, the way they drive. The locals are drunk and mad, the way they descend upon anyone at the slightest chance. The police are sober and keen, the way they squeeze money out of you. Politicians are the only ones sleeping well: their bonuses are fattest, their work hours most leisurely, their job least punishing. Students are mad, it is hard to tell why: why do they so easily take a naked sword into their classrooms if promised meat and raksi in the evening? Who has brains? The man who sends money through the post office to his parents in the village, that's who. Because then everybody in the village knows that their son is in the city, earns money, sends it to the post office. Because then they can always borrow for salt-oil-soap.

Well, that's good. Makes old parents proud and rich. What else is good about surviving these days? Khalasi and driver shake their heads. “Kathmandu is a big city,” the driver says, “but the biggest crime these days is the crime of being a stranger. Being unfamiliar.” There is no guarantee when the students will turn on you, with their bricks and their iron rods. There is no guarantee when the people of a neighborhood will turn on you, take you out of your microbus, beat you to a pulp. There used to be a knowledge of security. It was alright to be a stranger arrived at a new village or neighborhood. It was possible to be a guest, to show up and ask for a drink of water. Today, that knowledge is gone. In its place is another knowledge: there is no guarantee of any kind. Being unfamiliar is enough reason to be violently forced out of a peaceful routine, to be beaten to an inch near death. We are at Bansbari. The khalasi starts collecting fares. The driver drives, still shaking his head periodically, perhaps disagreeing with violent new surprises flaring in his mind.