This is a dry monsoon. Menopausal women can't walk too far before they consider returning homeward, but abandon that thought too, as their grandchildren race ahead to meet their friends. It is a small patch of grass where someone should have built a house long ago: the plot is divided, marked, mapped into rooms and passages. But this is a big city, and no doubt the wheel of fortune became for some an oil-press and chewed them up. Their detritus is perhaps this square of open space in our concrete jungle. I am dragging a pair of chappals around its perimeter. Grandmothers wiggle their fingers out from damp fists of toddlers and kids and sigh.
On the eastern front sit a row of young men, reeking perpetually of marijuana, staring at the children and women with thick red veins in their eyes, talking too loudly, shouting obscenities at each other. Nobody knows these men by their names here. Soon, one of these days, neighbors will descend upon them with rods and bricks and chase them away, but in a week or two, another crop of young men will take over the patch of green. They trickle away after dark, ambush people near Ranibari for mobile phones and cash, sometimes climb over the walls to steal a water pump or bathroom fixtures and door handles. But, for now, they josh, they kick each other around in the dirt, smoke.
Further ahead along the perimeter, young mothers walk with infants and toddlers. One pregnant woman walks with her friend who smokes a cigarette. The friend drags along a three year old who wants a lollipop in another kid's hand. The kid's mother pulls, rudely lifts the kid by one arm and swings him three paces forward, sets him down on his knees. “Walk,” she says, “Walk of I'll drown you in the paddy field.” The pregnant woman pauses to look at the said paddy, just off the edge of the neighborhood. Fruits hang from lime and persimmon and grapefruit trees, and another tree that is more laden than others, so full are its fruits along the length of its slender branches that it recalls all seasons past and future: the riotous sight it must be while in full bloom, and the satiation it must bring with its ripe colors and smell, sweet taste.
“Do you know what fruit these are?” An old man asks me because, of all the people passing him, I look him in the eyes and smile. I am seeing blossom and fruit on the wonderment on his face. “This is not persimmon, not pear, nor peach or plum,” he says. “Do you think this is apple?” he asks. “No, I don't think so.” I remember green apple growing wild around a small town in Washington, so many different varieties planted just for a few weeks of blossoms every year. “Not apple, I don't think.”
“So you don't know?” he asks, although he doesn't seem very disappointed by my ignorance. No, I don't know. “It is not apple?” he asks himself. “But look how rich it is, how much of it! How green and healthy it looks!” A young girl comes out of a lavatory hidden by the fruit tree. When I turn back from the edge of another grid of roads ready to be boxed in by houses, the old man is still looking at the tree full of fruits. It seems strange to me that he and I are the only two people seemingly touched by the fruits and their potency as promises.
A boy runs into me, slamming his face into my sternum: he has eyes only for his purple kite. I grab and lift him off the ground, make sure he isn't in pain. He is embarrassed: he must be ten years old, just of age that he feels indestructible, capable of flight of every sort. “This kite never flies where I want it to,” he says. “What bullshit you talk, boy,” I say, “Why don't you just admit you don't know how to fly kites?” He grins. Behind him, sitting outside the gate of their single-storey house, a lady who looks like his grandmother bounces a toddler on her knees. The toddler has a lollypop, which it sucks, spits on, holds out to the kite-running brother. The kite-runner leaps and leans forward, offering a tongue on which the toddler swipes the lollypop. Although the kite-runner returns to his kite, he races back to the lollypop and offers his tongue again, and when the toddler swipes the lollypop on it, cunningly bites down on the stem, snatches the lollypop away.
For a second or two, the toddler giggles and claps at the brother's cleverness, but the ruse becomes transparent to the infant mind and the waterworks and wails start in full force. “Bring it back,” says Grandmother, “Give it back!” The kite runner returns to the crying toddler, but instead of handing back the lollypop, starts wailing at the baby, feigning great pain, crying right back, confusing all greed right out of the toddler. It is a trick I have never witnessed before. It is almost political in its genius, praiseworthy. The toddler stops crying, starts slapping the brother's face with small hands, almost in affection. The brother has changed into the court jester, and he can no longer be blamed. The jester leaps in the air, lollypop still in mouth, and tries to flick the purple kite back into the tepid sky.
Back at the perimeter of the patch of green, a boy dribbles a football behind his elder sister. He talks in hushed tones. “Those boys are the Taichin gang,” he says. “They have killed seven people. I heard. They are drug-addicts, tyabeys.” I am tempted to ask the boy if he isn't confusing something he watched on the television with the reality of street gangs around him. Seven murders by a gang of boys slapping on marijuana buds in the evening to get a cheap high? But I don't know enough about street gangs around my neighborhood, with their cryptic, slyly obscene graffiti like “The beauty of Originality is in the O” sprayed on walls. The boy keeps turning towards a the gate of a house we have just passed, so I turn to look.
Landlord watches intently as Painter works on the wrought iron design on the gate painted black: he is applying gold to the relief. Not gold paint, but gold leaf. Real gold, actual gold, the kind for which mines and dug and wars are fought, on the gates of an ugly house. I sit down by the street, not because it is something I routinely do, but because it is something I don't routinely see: gold leaf being applied to the gates of a house in Gongabu. I want this gate to be tagged next, I think, preferably with an obscenity easily translated into Nepali. This gold is astonishing to me, after seeing in the mind of an aged man the promised gold of a tree bowing with an unknown fruit, after witnessing the gold of the political skill of a boy with a purple kite. Landlord watches me suspiciously, but he has to pay attention to the leaf of gold in Painter's hand, lest he sneak the evening's raksi's worth under the nails on his toiling hands. Gold, actual gold, on the outer gates of an ugly building in Gongabu! The wonders we get to witness daily!
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Gurkha Riot Police in Singapore
The "Singapore Lahure" isn't your typical Lahure: if in the Queen's employ, he isn't a Singapore Lahure at all, and if in the employ of the Government of Singapore, he is in the police, not in the army.
How much does the impressions of one person affect the fate of thousands? A lot, needless to say. But, rarely do we get to point to specific moments in history when an incident indelibly impressed a person, who went on to institute something that created a new identity for a whole group of people. Case in point: the Singapore Lahure.
My nephew, in his quotidian quest for scrap paper, managed to dig out a copy of TIME magazine, [September 21, 1998], titled "Starr Report," all about Clinton's sexcapade.
In it is an excerpt from "The Singapore Story," memoir by Lee Kuan Yew, in which a young Lee, watching defeated Allied soldiers being marched back into Singapore by their Japanese victors, writes:
"While this platoon was camping in [our] house, British, Indian and Australian forces were marched to captivity... Many looked dejected and despondent, perplexed that they had been beaten so decisively and so easily. The surrendered army was a mournful sight.
"There were some who won my respect and admiration. Among them were the Highlanders whom I recognized by their Scottish caps. Even in defeat they held themselves erect and marched in time--"Left Right, Left Right, Left, Left!" shouted the sergeant major. And the Gurkhas were like the Highlanders. They too marched erect, unbroken and doughty in defeat. I secretly cheered them on. They left a life-long impression on me. As a result, the Singapore government has employed a Gurkha company for its anti-riot police squad from the 1960s to this day."
How much does the impressions of one person affect the fate of thousands? A lot, needless to say. But, rarely do we get to point to specific moments in history when an incident indelibly impressed a person, who went on to institute something that created a new identity for a whole group of people. Case in point: the Singapore Lahure.
My nephew, in his quotidian quest for scrap paper, managed to dig out a copy of TIME magazine, [September 21, 1998], titled "Starr Report," all about Clinton's sexcapade.
In it is an excerpt from "The Singapore Story," memoir by Lee Kuan Yew, in which a young Lee, watching defeated Allied soldiers being marched back into Singapore by their Japanese victors, writes:
"While this platoon was camping in [our] house, British, Indian and Australian forces were marched to captivity... Many looked dejected and despondent, perplexed that they had been beaten so decisively and so easily. The surrendered army was a mournful sight.
"There were some who won my respect and admiration. Among them were the Highlanders whom I recognized by their Scottish caps. Even in defeat they held themselves erect and marched in time--"Left Right, Left Right, Left, Left!" shouted the sergeant major. And the Gurkhas were like the Highlanders. They too marched erect, unbroken and doughty in defeat. I secretly cheered them on. They left a life-long impression on me. As a result, the Singapore government has employed a Gurkha company for its anti-riot police squad from the 1960s to this day."
Friday, July 17, 2009
Chepangni
so, here's the weekly essay.
i am getting tardy as a writer. i have assignments, i have deadlines, i am pretty much empty inside. it feels like i have lost sight of why i should write, even to earn that small wage.
in any case, here's another terribly written piece:
-----
Chepangni
“Does she look like a Chepangni? Does she?” Her husband asks. Chepangni leans against the still damp mud plaster, bright from the morning's wash of red clay. No, she doesn't look like a Chepangni. “She doesn't look like a Chepangni. What does she look like?”
Theuwataar is at the other side of a trail-bridge across the Trishuli river. At the very mouth of the bridge is a small tea and raksi shop with a bench on the Trishuli side. But, because I threw my chappals against the wall and sat, everybody is sitting on the floor: Chepangni, her husband the Chepang, Grandma, Lahure. Timo hovers around the edges, teasing a child, making her repeat her name. The two girls are in kindergarten and know how to say 'Morning!
“She doesn't look like a Chepangni,” I say, and mumble to my drink, “You are right. She doesn't look like a Chepangni.” Lahure begins to laugh, an interminable series of hiccups paced to allow a sip here, a smoke there. Chepang picks up a slimy, tart piece of gava and drops it into his mouth. Chepangni takes a cigarette and asks her husband for a light. Lahure is amused by the mild embarrassment that is spreading over my face. “She looks like a Bahuni, doesn't she?” Chepang slaps his thigh, shuffles on the balls of his feet to add emphasis. “Sir is probably thinking how did this ugly Chepang get such a pretty Bahuni wife,” he looks at his wife, who giggles back, haloes him with her flavored breath, mingling this and the other. Lahure continues his choked giggle.
“Does she look like a woman who has given birth to twelve children?” Chepang is very proud of his wife. His smile widens to reveal two more upper-molars. He swings his head back and finishes the raksi in his glass and instinctively reaches for the bottle that is empty by now, the second hour of our conversation. Chepangni smiles at her husband again, reaching her glass to the bottle in his hand. They discover together the small disappointment of a bottle without its gift of mild, sweet millet raksi. Lahure hands Chepangni the two bottles already empty. There is another round of disappointed laughter. Lahrue asks his daughter-in-law for another bottle.
“Twelve children?” It is hard to believe. There are a few lines around her eyes, but she couldn't be more than forty-five years old. “Four sons and four daughters,” Chepangni says. “Four died.” So easily said. Four died. Boys? Girls? No matter. Four. Dead. Eight survive; three work across the bridge, bring home eleven thousand rupees every month.
“So you are a Bahuni?” I ask Chepangni. “No,” she says, “What Chepangni, what Bahuni.”
“Ask her to speak the Chepang tongue,” Lahure says. “Such a pretty Bahuni she was when she was younger, but she knew only Chepang.”
“My father is a Bhatta Chhettri from Baglung. My mother was a Chepangni. He took her home. But these were the old days, you know how it was between castes. Somebody told my mother that Bahun-Chhetri let their Magar-Chepang wives sleep in the granary. But when they get sick or too old to work, they are put out in the jungle, in a cave hours away, to die on their own. She didn't believe that, of course, because her husband loved her. But when I was born, she waited for her mother-in-law to name me on the eleventh day. Nothing. Twelfth day, nothing, thirteenth day, nothing.
“There was another Chepang in that village. My mother and he were the only two Chepangs in the village of Bahun-Chhetri folks, and they were both orphans. So she went to him on the fourteenth day and said—Why aren't they naming my daughter? That's when the other Chepang asked her if she would leave the village and elope to a place where Chepangs lived. Can you imagine? From Baglung, they came here. My Chepang father died just a month ago.
“I hear my father has four sons, and is a rich man now. I heard he has a gairikhet that takes sixteen pairs of oxen. It may be that I have never seen his face, but he is still my father, and he is still alive. I want to go back and tell him I am his daughter. I don't believe he doesn't know I am here. Don't you think? These days even the law says I am entitled to his property.”
“You shouldn't be greedy,” Lahure says. Chepang adds without looking at his wife, “It is no good to live in hope. Expectations are no good, they only create trouble.”
“I didn't know that story!” Lahure exclaims suddenly agitated. “Nobody ever told me that story! I always wondered—the father is Chepang, the mother is Chepang. How did this bhauju have a Bahuni daughter? But I was always too polite to ask.” He starts laughing again. “But, now it doesn't seem at all strange. My father and mother were both Darai, but this Bhauju's mother was Chepang. Doesn't she look all Magar and none Chepang?” Grandma, our picture of silence, smiles just a little, looks at the finger of raksi remaining in her glass. She too was orphaned very young, without any memory of her father or mother.
“I was surprised,” I say. “I knew we were coming to a Chepang village. Had no idea there are Darais living here.” There were Bahuns, Chhetris, Gurungs, a Sarki family. Just no Rais and no Damais, they kept telling me. Over an afternoon of stories about migration and famine, fighting the Pakistanis and not getting to fight the Chinese, the most consistent color was that of mingling, mixing of bloods, each person sharply confused about their lineage, but muddled and assured about who they were. Chepangni, a Chhetri's daughter from a Chepang woman, had been called a Bahuni all her life in the Darai Magar-Chepang village. Now she smiled, accentuating her Bahuni features, smiling down her sharp nose and large eyes. Later in the day, some friends showed a photograph of an old Kandel Chhetri man, proudly flashing his strings of rudrakshya and tulsi rosaries and a vertical smear of sandalwood paste, who looked very much Chepang around the eyes and nose and the too, too bare strands of hair clinging to a round chin. I realized how vacuous and redundant my trained “sensitivity” became at the face of such a dynamic confusion of identities. These families had existed in harmony, nourishing and exploiting each other, looting and feeding each other, for centuries. Now we ask the Chepangni why she looks so much like a Bahuni, and that is alright.
“But, I am his daughter,” Chepangni is still speaking, her eyes searching the brown torrents of an over-brimming Trishuli. “He loved my mother. I was fourteen days old when my mother left the village. I don't believe he will be unhappy to see me. I am his firstborn. I must look like him, because I look nothing like my mother. I want to see his face once before he dies. He is my father, after all.”
i am getting tardy as a writer. i have assignments, i have deadlines, i am pretty much empty inside. it feels like i have lost sight of why i should write, even to earn that small wage.
in any case, here's another terribly written piece:
-----
Chepangni
“Does she look like a Chepangni? Does she?” Her husband asks. Chepangni leans against the still damp mud plaster, bright from the morning's wash of red clay. No, she doesn't look like a Chepangni. “She doesn't look like a Chepangni. What does she look like?”
Theuwataar is at the other side of a trail-bridge across the Trishuli river. At the very mouth of the bridge is a small tea and raksi shop with a bench on the Trishuli side. But, because I threw my chappals against the wall and sat, everybody is sitting on the floor: Chepangni, her husband the Chepang, Grandma, Lahure. Timo hovers around the edges, teasing a child, making her repeat her name. The two girls are in kindergarten and know how to say 'Morning!
“She doesn't look like a Chepangni,” I say, and mumble to my drink, “You are right. She doesn't look like a Chepangni.” Lahure begins to laugh, an interminable series of hiccups paced to allow a sip here, a smoke there. Chepang picks up a slimy, tart piece of gava and drops it into his mouth. Chepangni takes a cigarette and asks her husband for a light. Lahure is amused by the mild embarrassment that is spreading over my face. “She looks like a Bahuni, doesn't she?” Chepang slaps his thigh, shuffles on the balls of his feet to add emphasis. “Sir is probably thinking how did this ugly Chepang get such a pretty Bahuni wife,” he looks at his wife, who giggles back, haloes him with her flavored breath, mingling this and the other. Lahure continues his choked giggle.
“Does she look like a woman who has given birth to twelve children?” Chepang is very proud of his wife. His smile widens to reveal two more upper-molars. He swings his head back and finishes the raksi in his glass and instinctively reaches for the bottle that is empty by now, the second hour of our conversation. Chepangni smiles at her husband again, reaching her glass to the bottle in his hand. They discover together the small disappointment of a bottle without its gift of mild, sweet millet raksi. Lahure hands Chepangni the two bottles already empty. There is another round of disappointed laughter. Lahrue asks his daughter-in-law for another bottle.
“Twelve children?” It is hard to believe. There are a few lines around her eyes, but she couldn't be more than forty-five years old. “Four sons and four daughters,” Chepangni says. “Four died.” So easily said. Four died. Boys? Girls? No matter. Four. Dead. Eight survive; three work across the bridge, bring home eleven thousand rupees every month.
“So you are a Bahuni?” I ask Chepangni. “No,” she says, “What Chepangni, what Bahuni.”
“Ask her to speak the Chepang tongue,” Lahure says. “Such a pretty Bahuni she was when she was younger, but she knew only Chepang.”
“My father is a Bhatta Chhettri from Baglung. My mother was a Chepangni. He took her home. But these were the old days, you know how it was between castes. Somebody told my mother that Bahun-Chhetri let their Magar-Chepang wives sleep in the granary. But when they get sick or too old to work, they are put out in the jungle, in a cave hours away, to die on their own. She didn't believe that, of course, because her husband loved her. But when I was born, she waited for her mother-in-law to name me on the eleventh day. Nothing. Twelfth day, nothing, thirteenth day, nothing.
“There was another Chepang in that village. My mother and he were the only two Chepangs in the village of Bahun-Chhetri folks, and they were both orphans. So she went to him on the fourteenth day and said—Why aren't they naming my daughter? That's when the other Chepang asked her if she would leave the village and elope to a place where Chepangs lived. Can you imagine? From Baglung, they came here. My Chepang father died just a month ago.
“I hear my father has four sons, and is a rich man now. I heard he has a gairikhet that takes sixteen pairs of oxen. It may be that I have never seen his face, but he is still my father, and he is still alive. I want to go back and tell him I am his daughter. I don't believe he doesn't know I am here. Don't you think? These days even the law says I am entitled to his property.”
“You shouldn't be greedy,” Lahure says. Chepang adds without looking at his wife, “It is no good to live in hope. Expectations are no good, they only create trouble.”
“I didn't know that story!” Lahure exclaims suddenly agitated. “Nobody ever told me that story! I always wondered—the father is Chepang, the mother is Chepang. How did this bhauju have a Bahuni daughter? But I was always too polite to ask.” He starts laughing again. “But, now it doesn't seem at all strange. My father and mother were both Darai, but this Bhauju's mother was Chepang. Doesn't she look all Magar and none Chepang?” Grandma, our picture of silence, smiles just a little, looks at the finger of raksi remaining in her glass. She too was orphaned very young, without any memory of her father or mother.
“I was surprised,” I say. “I knew we were coming to a Chepang village. Had no idea there are Darais living here.” There were Bahuns, Chhetris, Gurungs, a Sarki family. Just no Rais and no Damais, they kept telling me. Over an afternoon of stories about migration and famine, fighting the Pakistanis and not getting to fight the Chinese, the most consistent color was that of mingling, mixing of bloods, each person sharply confused about their lineage, but muddled and assured about who they were. Chepangni, a Chhetri's daughter from a Chepang woman, had been called a Bahuni all her life in the Darai Magar-Chepang village. Now she smiled, accentuating her Bahuni features, smiling down her sharp nose and large eyes. Later in the day, some friends showed a photograph of an old Kandel Chhetri man, proudly flashing his strings of rudrakshya and tulsi rosaries and a vertical smear of sandalwood paste, who looked very much Chepang around the eyes and nose and the too, too bare strands of hair clinging to a round chin. I realized how vacuous and redundant my trained “sensitivity” became at the face of such a dynamic confusion of identities. These families had existed in harmony, nourishing and exploiting each other, looting and feeding each other, for centuries. Now we ask the Chepangni why she looks so much like a Bahuni, and that is alright.
“But, I am his daughter,” Chepangni is still speaking, her eyes searching the brown torrents of an over-brimming Trishuli. “He loved my mother. I was fourteen days old when my mother left the village. I don't believe he will be unhappy to see me. I am his firstborn. I must look like him, because I look nothing like my mother. I want to see his face once before he dies. He is my father, after all.”
Thursday, July 9, 2009
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:
-----
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.
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:
-----
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.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Accounts
--Prawin Adhikari
Elder and Younger are sisters, Gurungs from somewhere in the west. Elder has to sit down because of hot flashes. She pulls her lungi mid-shins, presses the soles of her feet against the already hot cement floor. Elder fans herself with a steel plate covering a bowl of potato and chickpeas curry on the show-case-counter. Younger still hasn't returned from her errand of buying a spoonful each of freshly ground cumin and coriander from the masala mill around the corner.
Samdhini is walking with a young girl. She pauses to smile at Elder. “Come, drink a cup of tea, Samdhini-O!” Elder says. “Just had tea two hours ago,” Samdhini says. But the day is cooling off just a little, and this window of restfulness needs friends. Samdhini sends the young girl ahead, tells her to be careful. “You look like you've been buried under embers,” she says to Elder. “Tell me about it!”
“Where is my other samdhini?” Samdhini asks. “Don't know where she crawled to die, that woman,” Elder loses her temper. “The tarkari is overcooked already. This bhai, bichara, he ate bhatmas without lime. And that woman is still talking to the shopkeeper.” Samdhini starts to laugh. “Where were you headed?” Elder asks.
“That way. Couldn't even give a little bit of dahi-chiura to the kids for fifteenth Ashar. She will bring some chicken. Cheaper by twenty rupees over there. This lahurey neighborhood has become too expensive.”
“They are lahureys, they can pay,” says Elder. “Look at that house! Isn't that like a mansion? He didn't waste money sticking stone to the outside walls. I have been inside. All the money is inside.” Both women fan themselves with whatever they find—a steel plate, the ends of a grimy curtain. Younger comes laughing, says her namaste to Samdhini.
“What are you grinning about?” Elder shouts. “Why did you have to rub your snout with the shopkeeper's?” Samdhini starts off on a long-winded tale about Younger's legendary tardiness. Once, Younger was washing clothes in a bucket outside the house. A visitor—the kind that you take indoors—distracted her. The clothes lay in the bucket for another three days. Samdhini reminded Younger about the wet clothes, wallowing in water gone green with algae. Younger put the clothes to dry, but forgot them for a week on the clothesline. “They were like leaves in autumn. Her boy had to go around wearing shirts that fell apart if you pulled on them.”
Two bahun men sit down. One is Loud, the other Deferential. Loud asks Elder if there is something to drink. “Of course, there is something to drink. Why wouldn't there be something to drink?” Loud wants jaand, not beer. He is too poor today to drink beer. “Then drink raksi,” Younger suggests.
“Oh, ho!” Loud grins. “I haven't eaten anything since eight in the morning. If I drink raksi now, won't I fall off the chair?” Elder points at Deferential. “Who is this?” “From my village,” is the answer.
“You don't want me to draw up your accounts, do you? ” Elder says. Loud's face distorts. “You hag!” he says, only half in good-nature. “Why did you have to go telling everybody I had wasted twelve hundred rupees in one evening? Do you know what my thekedar did to me when he heard?”
“What was I to do? I had to close all accounts. I needed the money. And you did, didn't you? You drank away twelve hundred rupees that night.” Deferential looks at Loud's face.
“Say what you want. You lied! You said you were selling the shop. You insulted me before my friends just to get your money. Where did you think I was running away to?”
“I did sell the shop, to this one here,” Elder points to Younger. “I am helping her run it now, show her how to run the shop, make some money. You accuse me of lying? I swear by the gods, I have never lied to a bahun-chhetri.”
What does it mean to a menopausal Gurung woman trying to find her way around a small tea-shop business in Kathmandu to never lie to a Bahun or a Chhetri? Loud smacks his lips together after taking a big swig of the jaand Younger has just put before him. Deferential is going queasy, looking alternately at the buffalo meat on his chiura, and the milky cup of jaand. He is a Bahun freshly transplanted to the city.
“You were afraid I would run away without paying your money,” Loud says. “But I am a thekedar now.” Loud is incapable of stopping his face from distorting into a mask of haughtiness. Deferential worships him from across the small table.
“You are a thekedar?” Elder can't quite believe, but she smells blood. Younger perks up—this must be a special point of instruction in her ongoing education about the successful management of a four-top tea-shop. Loud taps the table with his empty cup. “Lalitpur side. Not a big house, but I am a thekedar now. Started on Saturday.”
“Saturday was a good saait,” Younger stands with a ladle dripping by her side, watching Loud eat his chiura and buff-curry. “Give him some gravy,” Elder says. “No, no,” Loud replies, “give me more.” He taps the table with his enamel cup.
Two Bhojpuri-speaking boys ask for “the usual.” Younger pours them two glasses of raksi. The boys pick out two doughnuts from the counter. They knock back the raksi, ask for water to chew the doughnuts with. “Put it in our account, okay?”
“How much was that? That was twenty five rupees,” Elder says, fumbles through a well-worn notebook. “Why do you pretend, Aama?” asks the doughnut-raksi boy. “Here, give me the book, I'll write it in.” Elder hands him the book. “See, here, twenty-five,” the boy writes into the notebook, shows it to me, to Loud. “You are not that old, Aama,” he says to Elder. “At least learn to write numbers.”
“Ah, you loud-mouth madhise! Go away now!” Elder shoos the boys away, not without affection. “Don't return the doughnuts tomorrow,” the boy says. Stale confectionery is half-price.
“So you don't even know how to write?” Loud Bahun asks Elder. Younger turns the pages on the notebook, standing by the door. “I know how to read and write,” Elder says. I pick through the bhatmas on my plate. “No, no. I don't. I don't know how to write or read,” Elder says. Loud instinctively puffs up a little, taps the table with his empty cup.
--Prawin Adhikari
Elder and Younger are sisters, Gurungs from somewhere in the west. Elder has to sit down because of hot flashes. She pulls her lungi mid-shins, presses the soles of her feet against the already hot cement floor. Elder fans herself with a steel plate covering a bowl of potato and chickpeas curry on the show-case-counter. Younger still hasn't returned from her errand of buying a spoonful each of freshly ground cumin and coriander from the masala mill around the corner.
Samdhini is walking with a young girl. She pauses to smile at Elder. “Come, drink a cup of tea, Samdhini-O!” Elder says. “Just had tea two hours ago,” Samdhini says. But the day is cooling off just a little, and this window of restfulness needs friends. Samdhini sends the young girl ahead, tells her to be careful. “You look like you've been buried under embers,” she says to Elder. “Tell me about it!”
“Where is my other samdhini?” Samdhini asks. “Don't know where she crawled to die, that woman,” Elder loses her temper. “The tarkari is overcooked already. This bhai, bichara, he ate bhatmas without lime. And that woman is still talking to the shopkeeper.” Samdhini starts to laugh. “Where were you headed?” Elder asks.
“That way. Couldn't even give a little bit of dahi-chiura to the kids for fifteenth Ashar. She will bring some chicken. Cheaper by twenty rupees over there. This lahurey neighborhood has become too expensive.”
“They are lahureys, they can pay,” says Elder. “Look at that house! Isn't that like a mansion? He didn't waste money sticking stone to the outside walls. I have been inside. All the money is inside.” Both women fan themselves with whatever they find—a steel plate, the ends of a grimy curtain. Younger comes laughing, says her namaste to Samdhini.
“What are you grinning about?” Elder shouts. “Why did you have to rub your snout with the shopkeeper's?” Samdhini starts off on a long-winded tale about Younger's legendary tardiness. Once, Younger was washing clothes in a bucket outside the house. A visitor—the kind that you take indoors—distracted her. The clothes lay in the bucket for another three days. Samdhini reminded Younger about the wet clothes, wallowing in water gone green with algae. Younger put the clothes to dry, but forgot them for a week on the clothesline. “They were like leaves in autumn. Her boy had to go around wearing shirts that fell apart if you pulled on them.”
Two bahun men sit down. One is Loud, the other Deferential. Loud asks Elder if there is something to drink. “Of course, there is something to drink. Why wouldn't there be something to drink?” Loud wants jaand, not beer. He is too poor today to drink beer. “Then drink raksi,” Younger suggests.
“Oh, ho!” Loud grins. “I haven't eaten anything since eight in the morning. If I drink raksi now, won't I fall off the chair?” Elder points at Deferential. “Who is this?” “From my village,” is the answer.
“You don't want me to draw up your accounts, do you? ” Elder says. Loud's face distorts. “You hag!” he says, only half in good-nature. “Why did you have to go telling everybody I had wasted twelve hundred rupees in one evening? Do you know what my thekedar did to me when he heard?”
“What was I to do? I had to close all accounts. I needed the money. And you did, didn't you? You drank away twelve hundred rupees that night.” Deferential looks at Loud's face.
“Say what you want. You lied! You said you were selling the shop. You insulted me before my friends just to get your money. Where did you think I was running away to?”
“I did sell the shop, to this one here,” Elder points to Younger. “I am helping her run it now, show her how to run the shop, make some money. You accuse me of lying? I swear by the gods, I have never lied to a bahun-chhetri.”
What does it mean to a menopausal Gurung woman trying to find her way around a small tea-shop business in Kathmandu to never lie to a Bahun or a Chhetri? Loud smacks his lips together after taking a big swig of the jaand Younger has just put before him. Deferential is going queasy, looking alternately at the buffalo meat on his chiura, and the milky cup of jaand. He is a Bahun freshly transplanted to the city.
“You were afraid I would run away without paying your money,” Loud says. “But I am a thekedar now.” Loud is incapable of stopping his face from distorting into a mask of haughtiness. Deferential worships him from across the small table.
“You are a thekedar?” Elder can't quite believe, but she smells blood. Younger perks up—this must be a special point of instruction in her ongoing education about the successful management of a four-top tea-shop. Loud taps the table with his empty cup. “Lalitpur side. Not a big house, but I am a thekedar now. Started on Saturday.”
“Saturday was a good saait,” Younger stands with a ladle dripping by her side, watching Loud eat his chiura and buff-curry. “Give him some gravy,” Elder says. “No, no,” Loud replies, “give me more.” He taps the table with his enamel cup.
Two Bhojpuri-speaking boys ask for “the usual.” Younger pours them two glasses of raksi. The boys pick out two doughnuts from the counter. They knock back the raksi, ask for water to chew the doughnuts with. “Put it in our account, okay?”
“How much was that? That was twenty five rupees,” Elder says, fumbles through a well-worn notebook. “Why do you pretend, Aama?” asks the doughnut-raksi boy. “Here, give me the book, I'll write it in.” Elder hands him the book. “See, here, twenty-five,” the boy writes into the notebook, shows it to me, to Loud. “You are not that old, Aama,” he says to Elder. “At least learn to write numbers.”
“Ah, you loud-mouth madhise! Go away now!” Elder shoos the boys away, not without affection. “Don't return the doughnuts tomorrow,” the boy says. Stale confectionery is half-price.
“So you don't even know how to write?” Loud Bahun asks Elder. Younger turns the pages on the notebook, standing by the door. “I know how to read and write,” Elder says. I pick through the bhatmas on my plate. “No, no. I don't. I don't know how to write or read,” Elder says. Loud instinctively puffs up a little, taps the table with his empty cup.
Friday, June 26, 2009
MJ Dead
Michael Jackson died. Heart attack.
there was a revolution about to start in Iran, and the only good thing they had going for themselves was the attention of the international [western] media.
What happens? MJ dies. All eyes turn to him.
there was a revolution about to start in Iran, and the only good thing they had going for themselves was the attention of the international [western] media.
What happens? MJ dies. All eyes turn to him.
Good Fences
I am getting worse with every post/essay.
This is so lackluster. I need to recharge in a big way.
----
Good Fences
There is no struggle more lonely than the fight for respite, the battle against a myriad forces for the opium of sleep, for a descent into quiet so smooth that nothing is remarkable the next morning, and for an awaking so complete and abrupt that an entire night passes in the blink of an eye. That is luxury, that is heaven. The body feels it in the reserves of energy bulging in the limbs and an uncanny acuity of the mind. Daylight makes everything brighter and more saturated in its color than ever before. The air tastes better; the mouth rids itself of its dirty sock of rotten breath and bitter plaque. There is no kink in the neck, no arm twisted into pinpricks, no sheet dislodged and wrung around the body laboring through a long night. A man in this manner renewed instinctively practices empathy, the golden rule, social graces: he smiles, he picks children to make them laugh, he feels noble and acts on that feeling. He becomes a good neighbor.
Until reality knocks his teeth out, that is. Monsoon, so blithely disrespectful of women pulling ploughs and villagers marrying toads, skirts the rims of the valley on its way elsewhere, always vagrantly elsewhere. Concrete roofs heat up, wait silently for the thick of night to radiate. A friend needs attention thousands of kilometers away. The head rings from the frantic back-and-forth of emotions. Ugly mullet is already sticking to neck-sweat. The air is still, without any sign of mercy. A white owl flies to perch on the the window, shrieking, being answered from four houses down. From the sewers somewhere come the terrified squeals of a rat. Mosquitoes put up a concerted raid, swarming along the net, circling endlessly at an uncomfortable near-distance, like fate coiling in to claim the last russet glow of life.
Across the street, the neighbors are evicting their tenants, a bunch of boys who have everyday of the past six months grumbled about the lack of water. It is just past midnight, but they have managed to procure a small truck, which comes barrelling down the narrow street, loudly honking at the too-frequent intersections. An argument breaks out about what the last month's rent ought to amount to: the boys say they need a thousand for the truck, and therefore five is all they have. But the rent is six, and there is no way in hell they can just pick up their beds and toss them into a truck, the neighbor shouts. The boys try to hoist a second bed over the corrugated-iron gate, kicking the gate open, kicking it shut, banging into it, banging out of its prison. Long after the argument about money has been forgotten, one of the boys starts about the water, the lack of it, the expenses that caused, how the new house has water three hours everyday instead of never. The neighbor needs to answer, but she has nothing to
say, because this truth hurts her more than anything else the boys said all evening long, because there are three other families living in that house, surviving on no water whatsoever. She tries to say something, but something catches in her voice. She starts and stalls, caught in an odd recital where emotion rushes before reason, where reality oppresses with its full weight to clamp her voice to kill it before it can register a protest.
Barely a minute passes between the truck's disappearance and the arrival of a rival nuisance: idiots in the neighborhood have takes a motorbike and modified its muffler on the exhaust. It screeches into the neighborhood, comes to a halt, revs its engine. There has never been a louder noise in the neighborhood, not even during a wedding around the corner, from where a brass band played terrible rendition of tasteless Bollywood songs all night long. The blacktop in the neighborhood is unspoiled, without surprises, and for most part, straight. It is an exciting course with gentle curves, wide, stable surface, well lit enough that there is no danger of being surprised by a stray dog or a drunk on his way home on a motorbike. The idiots run their motorbike all night long, attracting unfortunate admirers, other young men, mindless idiots who are satisfied even just to twist the accelerator while the bike stands stationary.
It is impossible to sleep. Fantasies begin to rise: what if a bottle of flaming kerosene Molotoved their shining youth as they raced past the window? What about a line, tied to gates, blackened with grease, set at the level of their necks? Let them roar then, let then yell with excitement. What about a long pole that suddenly shoots from the dark to lance through the spokes of the motorbike and sends the delinquents in flight, brief, coarse, not quite murderous, so that the job can be finished with bricks, sacks of gravel? A noose that catches the one in the back, the one with the loud mouth, yanks him right out, and by the time his friend turns around, dangles him from a pole? A kitchen knife could then cut out the rider's liver, even as he tries to make more noise, rev the engine one last time in an act of punk, rebellion.
Sleep, with its dark trickle of villains, spills from hair-roots and the involuntary shuddering of the eyelids and sits on the chest. Knowing that this is sleeping and this isn't makes it harder still. There is light outside, the darkness becomes an unsightly gray before turning a luminous, crisp blue. But bad sleep sits on the chest, reaching into the brain, clawing through the mind for the small and beautiful moments of rest and illumination, and slobbers as it feasts, shifting on its heels occasionally to remind that this is no nightmare, neither a reverie, not a wisp, not abstract, not ether. This is real, this beast of discomfort, slowly eating all goodness away, pushing its own kernels of the abominable and vile into the roughed-up bed of the conscious.
Morning means more neighbors awoken to a new day with the imprints of thousands of old ones: the rattle of a bicycle returning from Ranibari with drinking water; middle-aged men grunting after the shuttle-cock at the community badminton net; Amala on her roof, complaining about water, a hand-pump getting scratchier and angrier as nothing comes, nothing but stale air poisoned with the stench of watery rust. Suddenly, the hated motorbike starts again. A boy with a broken arm is revving the engine while his friend holds the bike. I scream from the roof, but they don't hear me. Another neighbor marches down the street swinging a large iron rod. “All night long,” he says, and twenty heads come out of their windows: “all night long! Not a minute of sleep!” The boys who thought the loudness of their motorbike gave them immunity from community policing, seem taken aback. The big iron rod rests lightly atop the motorbike headlight as the boys are advised against repeating last night's racket.
Twenty windows close. So it is morning. So what? Must sleep. Now.
This is so lackluster. I need to recharge in a big way.
----
Good Fences
There is no struggle more lonely than the fight for respite, the battle against a myriad forces for the opium of sleep, for a descent into quiet so smooth that nothing is remarkable the next morning, and for an awaking so complete and abrupt that an entire night passes in the blink of an eye. That is luxury, that is heaven. The body feels it in the reserves of energy bulging in the limbs and an uncanny acuity of the mind. Daylight makes everything brighter and more saturated in its color than ever before. The air tastes better; the mouth rids itself of its dirty sock of rotten breath and bitter plaque. There is no kink in the neck, no arm twisted into pinpricks, no sheet dislodged and wrung around the body laboring through a long night. A man in this manner renewed instinctively practices empathy, the golden rule, social graces: he smiles, he picks children to make them laugh, he feels noble and acts on that feeling. He becomes a good neighbor.
Until reality knocks his teeth out, that is. Monsoon, so blithely disrespectful of women pulling ploughs and villagers marrying toads, skirts the rims of the valley on its way elsewhere, always vagrantly elsewhere. Concrete roofs heat up, wait silently for the thick of night to radiate. A friend needs attention thousands of kilometers away. The head rings from the frantic back-and-forth of emotions. Ugly mullet is already sticking to neck-sweat. The air is still, without any sign of mercy. A white owl flies to perch on the the window, shrieking, being answered from four houses down. From the sewers somewhere come the terrified squeals of a rat. Mosquitoes put up a concerted raid, swarming along the net, circling endlessly at an uncomfortable near-distance, like fate coiling in to claim the last russet glow of life.
Across the street, the neighbors are evicting their tenants, a bunch of boys who have everyday of the past six months grumbled about the lack of water. It is just past midnight, but they have managed to procure a small truck, which comes barrelling down the narrow street, loudly honking at the too-frequent intersections. An argument breaks out about what the last month's rent ought to amount to: the boys say they need a thousand for the truck, and therefore five is all they have. But the rent is six, and there is no way in hell they can just pick up their beds and toss them into a truck, the neighbor shouts. The boys try to hoist a second bed over the corrugated-iron gate, kicking the gate open, kicking it shut, banging into it, banging out of its prison. Long after the argument about money has been forgotten, one of the boys starts about the water, the lack of it, the expenses that caused, how the new house has water three hours everyday instead of never. The neighbor needs to answer, but she has nothing to
say, because this truth hurts her more than anything else the boys said all evening long, because there are three other families living in that house, surviving on no water whatsoever. She tries to say something, but something catches in her voice. She starts and stalls, caught in an odd recital where emotion rushes before reason, where reality oppresses with its full weight to clamp her voice to kill it before it can register a protest.
Barely a minute passes between the truck's disappearance and the arrival of a rival nuisance: idiots in the neighborhood have takes a motorbike and modified its muffler on the exhaust. It screeches into the neighborhood, comes to a halt, revs its engine. There has never been a louder noise in the neighborhood, not even during a wedding around the corner, from where a brass band played terrible rendition of tasteless Bollywood songs all night long. The blacktop in the neighborhood is unspoiled, without surprises, and for most part, straight. It is an exciting course with gentle curves, wide, stable surface, well lit enough that there is no danger of being surprised by a stray dog or a drunk on his way home on a motorbike. The idiots run their motorbike all night long, attracting unfortunate admirers, other young men, mindless idiots who are satisfied even just to twist the accelerator while the bike stands stationary.
It is impossible to sleep. Fantasies begin to rise: what if a bottle of flaming kerosene Molotoved their shining youth as they raced past the window? What about a line, tied to gates, blackened with grease, set at the level of their necks? Let them roar then, let then yell with excitement. What about a long pole that suddenly shoots from the dark to lance through the spokes of the motorbike and sends the delinquents in flight, brief, coarse, not quite murderous, so that the job can be finished with bricks, sacks of gravel? A noose that catches the one in the back, the one with the loud mouth, yanks him right out, and by the time his friend turns around, dangles him from a pole? A kitchen knife could then cut out the rider's liver, even as he tries to make more noise, rev the engine one last time in an act of punk, rebellion.
Sleep, with its dark trickle of villains, spills from hair-roots and the involuntary shuddering of the eyelids and sits on the chest. Knowing that this is sleeping and this isn't makes it harder still. There is light outside, the darkness becomes an unsightly gray before turning a luminous, crisp blue. But bad sleep sits on the chest, reaching into the brain, clawing through the mind for the small and beautiful moments of rest and illumination, and slobbers as it feasts, shifting on its heels occasionally to remind that this is no nightmare, neither a reverie, not a wisp, not abstract, not ether. This is real, this beast of discomfort, slowly eating all goodness away, pushing its own kernels of the abominable and vile into the roughed-up bed of the conscious.
Morning means more neighbors awoken to a new day with the imprints of thousands of old ones: the rattle of a bicycle returning from Ranibari with drinking water; middle-aged men grunting after the shuttle-cock at the community badminton net; Amala on her roof, complaining about water, a hand-pump getting scratchier and angrier as nothing comes, nothing but stale air poisoned with the stench of watery rust. Suddenly, the hated motorbike starts again. A boy with a broken arm is revving the engine while his friend holds the bike. I scream from the roof, but they don't hear me. Another neighbor marches down the street swinging a large iron rod. “All night long,” he says, and twenty heads come out of their windows: “all night long! Not a minute of sleep!” The boys who thought the loudness of their motorbike gave them immunity from community policing, seem taken aback. The big iron rod rests lightly atop the motorbike headlight as the boys are advised against repeating last night's racket.
Twenty windows close. So it is morning. So what? Must sleep. Now.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Then they woke me...
Load-shedding in the middle of the day, a tardy monsoon, and riots in the streets outside: perfect ingredients for a mid-day nap. And the heat and lethargy makes for the perfect day-time lucid dreaming.
I was having an excellent dream this afternoon. It was something I would call awesome-o or super-bueno. Because it lead up to a pay-off of the kind I prefer: I was going to write a story at the end of it, to be read before an audience. What's more, I was being paid to write the story!
It was a fantasy more than a dream, but it came with the sensory reinforcement of a dream, you know, where the colors are extra saturated, where immediacy feels more immediate, where the surprises are bigger and where the satisfaction of being creative within the boundaries of the dream-world is greater.
I was in a truck, somewhere in the US, with a bunch of people who brought out their crack pipes. I am not kidding. I resisted: I don't do crystal Meth, I said. Who was selling the drugs? Mithun. Kinda funny, but Mithun had the rocks in a small brown-paper bag, and was selling them for twenty dollars each. I realized I needed to get off the truck, so I faked injury, said my leg was hurting a lot.
The truck stopped where a crowd was waiting for me. They put me in a wheelchair. These were Nepali people in the US, and I had been invited to read at one of their celebrations. They were going to put me up for two days, in a room where I had a writing desk. This room faced north, had white walls, a small bed with soft, white sheets. A window that looked out on a flat roof with rails, and a gray, broad river flowing from east to west. I remember thinking: not bad, not a bad room to write in.
One of the organizers gave me a contract, written in blue ball-point pen in a uniform, precise, small Devnagari. The text in Nepali listed questions about myself, instructions on how I was to write the story, the details they [the community that had invited me] wanted to see. I had two days to write. I was being paid 250 bucks, which I thought wasn't very much at all.
Because I would need to write some 12 pages for it to be a decent length reading, and it would take me about three hours to write one decent page, to edit it, etc. But I was going to do it for the 250 they were offering, because, after all, I was a writer. No matter how much a writer says he is not being paid enough to write [editing is a different matter], it is always more than he ever thought he would get paid, to do the work he desperately wants to keep doing forever, and the value of which is really nothing at all.
I was reading the details, surrounded by the people that were hosting me, when I was woken up, to go fetch Abhi from his school.
I just wish I had been able to dream just a minute more, perhaps five minutes more, get something on paper, a phrase, an idea. I have often felt that reality is the shadow of dreams, and not the other way around, and that is exists only for us to have to regret it, endlessly, for the things that we could have had and done and seen in our dreams... I would have written the story out, if only I could have put something on paper... a sound, a face, a fear...
Bonus: while I stood by the school gate waiting for Abhi, Hanshu, my niece, sneaked up on me. She is in grade 1. She offered me water from the tank the school has installed by the gate. I love her. She brings a smile to my face every time I think of her. Because she loves me, too.
I was having an excellent dream this afternoon. It was something I would call awesome-o or super-bueno. Because it lead up to a pay-off of the kind I prefer: I was going to write a story at the end of it, to be read before an audience. What's more, I was being paid to write the story!
It was a fantasy more than a dream, but it came with the sensory reinforcement of a dream, you know, where the colors are extra saturated, where immediacy feels more immediate, where the surprises are bigger and where the satisfaction of being creative within the boundaries of the dream-world is greater.
I was in a truck, somewhere in the US, with a bunch of people who brought out their crack pipes. I am not kidding. I resisted: I don't do crystal Meth, I said. Who was selling the drugs? Mithun. Kinda funny, but Mithun had the rocks in a small brown-paper bag, and was selling them for twenty dollars each. I realized I needed to get off the truck, so I faked injury, said my leg was hurting a lot.
The truck stopped where a crowd was waiting for me. They put me in a wheelchair. These were Nepali people in the US, and I had been invited to read at one of their celebrations. They were going to put me up for two days, in a room where I had a writing desk. This room faced north, had white walls, a small bed with soft, white sheets. A window that looked out on a flat roof with rails, and a gray, broad river flowing from east to west. I remember thinking: not bad, not a bad room to write in.
One of the organizers gave me a contract, written in blue ball-point pen in a uniform, precise, small Devnagari. The text in Nepali listed questions about myself, instructions on how I was to write the story, the details they [the community that had invited me] wanted to see. I had two days to write. I was being paid 250 bucks, which I thought wasn't very much at all.
Because I would need to write some 12 pages for it to be a decent length reading, and it would take me about three hours to write one decent page, to edit it, etc. But I was going to do it for the 250 they were offering, because, after all, I was a writer. No matter how much a writer says he is not being paid enough to write [editing is a different matter], it is always more than he ever thought he would get paid, to do the work he desperately wants to keep doing forever, and the value of which is really nothing at all.
I was reading the details, surrounded by the people that were hosting me, when I was woken up, to go fetch Abhi from his school.
I just wish I had been able to dream just a minute more, perhaps five minutes more, get something on paper, a phrase, an idea. I have often felt that reality is the shadow of dreams, and not the other way around, and that is exists only for us to have to regret it, endlessly, for the things that we could have had and done and seen in our dreams... I would have written the story out, if only I could have put something on paper... a sound, a face, a fear...
Bonus: while I stood by the school gate waiting for Abhi, Hanshu, my niece, sneaked up on me. She is in grade 1. She offered me water from the tank the school has installed by the gate. I love her. She brings a smile to my face every time I think of her. Because she loves me, too.
Monday, June 22, 2009
smooth and tender and sway
I am struggling with love stories. Not that I have never written one: Face of Carolyn Flint is one, I think. There were a few more that I wrote for Suskera.com But I have never been satisfied with my products.
Here, in The New Yorker, is a beautiful, unexpected love story by a certain Stephen O'Connor: Ziggurat
It is beautiful. Here's a favorite moment:
"The Minotaur was a novice of arc and swell and dip, a new-minted connoisseur of smooth and tender and sway. That little snippet of bird-peep that entered the new girl’s voice whenever she got excited, or when she thought something she had done was stupid—he wanted to put that in a box, tie it up with a leather thong, and keep it around his neck."
This is the kind of stuff that makes me wish it had come out of my writing...
Here, in The New Yorker, is a beautiful, unexpected love story by a certain Stephen O'Connor: Ziggurat
It is beautiful. Here's a favorite moment:
"The Minotaur was a novice of arc and swell and dip, a new-minted connoisseur of smooth and tender and sway. That little snippet of bird-peep that entered the new girl’s voice whenever she got excited, or when she thought something she had done was stupid—he wanted to put that in a box, tie it up with a leather thong, and keep it around his neck."
This is the kind of stuff that makes me wish it had come out of my writing...
Name?
I heard from Rakesh and Yagya that Alok Nembang's next movie has a name. In today's Saptahik or something?
Anyone has a copy of it? Could you just tell me the name?
Anyone has a copy of it? Could you just tell me the name?
MC talk today
I didn't want to be there, and it was apparent. I had no clue what to talk about, and that was apparent. I talked, like a madman chained to a fantasy. I am inarticulate, I become angry and defensive really quickly, and I was in a difficult position: I had to blame Ajit and Sushma for the flaws in the book, which there are aplenty.
But-- Myblogride, thanks for being there.
Tehmporary Chitrakar, dude, it was fun, I hope you seriously pursue your dreams [make them into your vocations, if not your professions], and here's what:
simplyscripts.com
johnaugust.com
celtx.com
pretty much self-explanatory once you go to the URLs.
I think a certain person named Anu was there too. I wasn't wearing my glasses [broken; owner broke], or I would have roped you into a conversation.
But, it is over now, the obligation. Good, good.
and really really fuck pretentious semantics about how a kuire cat meows or myaauuu's.
But-- Myblogride, thanks for being there.
Tehmporary Chitrakar, dude, it was fun, I hope you seriously pursue your dreams [make them into your vocations, if not your professions], and here's what:
simplyscripts.com
johnaugust.com
celtx.com
pretty much self-explanatory once you go to the URLs.
I think a certain person named Anu was there too. I wasn't wearing my glasses [broken; owner broke], or I would have roped you into a conversation.
But, it is over now, the obligation. Good, good.
and really really fuck pretentious semantics about how a kuire cat meows or myaauuu's.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Correct Info About Martin Chautari Event
It seems I have been giving false info so far, saying the event is scheduled for 1 PM.
It is scheduled for 3 PM, June 21, 2009 [Sunday].
See you there perhaps?
It is scheduled for 3 PM, June 21, 2009 [Sunday].
See you there perhaps?
Friday, June 19, 2009
To a flake of your life
The OCP movie work is getting interesting, finally, now that it is time to fit the puzzle together. I have lost interest by now, but two more creative minds are working on it. I have become more the spec-writer, producing pages and necessary screen-play patches, rather than commanding an over-all view of the script.
The brilliant engineers at NTC un-fixed the entire neighborhood's telephone connections three days ago. They assigned wrong phone numbers to our landline, so that the ADSL service no longer worked. But, it is alright now. I am on the internet from my computer, which feels much better than trying to write emails from the nearest cyber, where the kid has figured out that I might want to rent his DVDs.
Here's what might appear in the paper on Sunday:
---
Besieged is the word for how it felt. Trapped. Weighted. Buried, mauled, left to rot. Change was desperately the new sauce for vitality. Let it tang on the tip of the tongue, let a new tinkle be ear's new laugh, let it come, what may come, and let it bring what dares come. Such was the flare of a need for friction, a need for flight. But, there was little distance to be covered on a fire built of no fuel. The leash of professional slavishness was short. How far can a man run to escape work and detail, dialogue and scene, reversal and climax, sustained illusions of stillness that look into the soul?
Monsoon hasn't come yet; the heat is unbearable. There is not enough haze in the air to cut out the sun. Roof and walls thicken during the day, fatten with the poison of afternoon heat, make the nights infernal. Sleep becomes thin, unravels every minutes, leaves holes in its shimmering shroud through which come real and imagined worries. The threat of a night before a chemistry exam almost ten years before erases the trunk of experiences since then. Gone, the many years spent happy since, the few years of work and romance, of reading poems under a tree and writing poems on roofs, cliff-tops, peeking at a bird's nest after friends and merlot. Gone the welcome memories and maps of faces and bodies that otherwise spiced sleep. Panic sets in. Sweat becomes the cold prison from which the mind looks outward, at the already too-bright sky, the loud remonstrations of neighbors laboring at hand-pumps, and the knowledge that once more the reprieve has passed, once more, the cool black of night that should have been wrapped over eyelids has evaporated.
Desperate for something to hold, slapping the sweat that has matted his thin rat-tail hair, a man gazes west and sees what? A road to nowhere. Mhepi, its pine-forested pubic mound, and arranged in a ring below it a skirt of heat darting up from blacktop roads. Microbus drivers thrown just slightly off their already mad axis; their erratic swerving and cornering over long stretches of an empty road. Immobile like swatted flies, shopkeepers paste their cheekbones to small squares of concrete on their floors, shifting every few minutes on their straw mats to cover another inch of untouched coolness. In a tea-shop that doesn't sell tea, there is a girl, who can't be more than twelve years old, who has been wilted by heat and wrinkled and pruned by sweat into an unhappy hag. From the coldest part of the house, where she washes dirty dishes, an swarm of flies rises on cue, to hover inches away from new skin, testing the alien for signs of life, salt, nutrition dripping from nose-tip.
Thirty minutes pass. No fridge. No eatable that hasn't been left out in the heat. One half of the shop is dark, the shutters pulled down, a fan roaring from a corner. A phone rings and a body stirs awakes from one corner, crawls on all fours. It is a bitter, bitter man calling, angry at being duped: he paid good money to go somewhere. His money has disappeared, but the visa hasn't arrived. He trusted her, a sister from his village, he trusted her to take care of him, and now he is a destitute, without enough money to pay the lodge for the night, and there is the bill at the bar to worry about. She calms him. She calms me, her voice beseeching, scolding with mild seduction. She leads him through an interrogation with yes-no questions only. She strokes her hair as she forces him to agree. There is a bold stripe of blonde highlight in her hair.
Tell me your story. She stares back, stroking her hair, tapping the table with a thin, chipped nail. I write stories, but today I couldn't think of anything to write, so I have come hunting for stories. Tell me your story, and I will write it exactly as you want me to. She taps the table, asks me if I want anything else to drink. Where did that man want to go? You know, some Arabian fantasy, sun and sand and towers eclipsing man's ability to see clearly. What happened to his money? Why didn't his visa arrive? She stops tapping the table. What sort of stories would we tell? Interesting ones. Don't hesitate. Tell me, anything, about you, about the business, about the neighborhood. She gets up, clears the table of egg-shells and empty glasses.
So much for something to hold. So much for tell me your story. A stray dog corners itself into a tight box of shadows between house and wall and utility pole. Back off, mongrel, it says with its panting and squirting over the new kingdom. After almost a minute of staring back and forth, the dog no longer feels threatened, it lowers its hindquarters with princely leisure, lets its testicles hover over the ground, seeking the coolest spot. The spectacle is concluded. Although it is later in the afternoon, the heat is just as unrelenting. Instead of the scorching sun overhead, it is the waft from the ground that stifles. A thirsty tongue can't decide upon its essence: it switches between a coarse-barked log and a brittle wafer.
A boy brings a bicycle out-matched to him to the bridge over the Samakhusi sludge-run. There are three men sitting on the bridge, having surrendered in the fight against pre-monsoon heat. There is a stack of plastic envelopes, baggies, of all sizes, on the bike's carrier. But the boy isn't authorized to sell them: he stands guard by the bicycle and waits. Tell me your story, kid. I write stories, but I have nothing to write about today. He stares back, grabs the rails on the twelve-foot concrete bridge over Samakhusi and leans over. It is a ridiculous gesture. The water is barely four feet below, black and curdled, bubbling instead of foaming, moving only imperceptibly under the crust. Tell me your story, kid. Treat me to a flake of your life. He looks to the other men sitting on the bridge. He can't trust a man who sits on a bridge over Samakhusi, under Mhepi, asking for stories. He spits over the rails and watches the white blob float down, over an endless chasm, to echo and splash on the torrent a mile below.
The brilliant engineers at NTC un-fixed the entire neighborhood's telephone connections three days ago. They assigned wrong phone numbers to our landline, so that the ADSL service no longer worked. But, it is alright now. I am on the internet from my computer, which feels much better than trying to write emails from the nearest cyber, where the kid has figured out that I might want to rent his DVDs.
Here's what might appear in the paper on Sunday:
---
To a flake of your life
Besieged is the word for how it felt. Trapped. Weighted. Buried, mauled, left to rot. Change was desperately the new sauce for vitality. Let it tang on the tip of the tongue, let a new tinkle be ear's new laugh, let it come, what may come, and let it bring what dares come. Such was the flare of a need for friction, a need for flight. But, there was little distance to be covered on a fire built of no fuel. The leash of professional slavishness was short. How far can a man run to escape work and detail, dialogue and scene, reversal and climax, sustained illusions of stillness that look into the soul?
Monsoon hasn't come yet; the heat is unbearable. There is not enough haze in the air to cut out the sun. Roof and walls thicken during the day, fatten with the poison of afternoon heat, make the nights infernal. Sleep becomes thin, unravels every minutes, leaves holes in its shimmering shroud through which come real and imagined worries. The threat of a night before a chemistry exam almost ten years before erases the trunk of experiences since then. Gone, the many years spent happy since, the few years of work and romance, of reading poems under a tree and writing poems on roofs, cliff-tops, peeking at a bird's nest after friends and merlot. Gone the welcome memories and maps of faces and bodies that otherwise spiced sleep. Panic sets in. Sweat becomes the cold prison from which the mind looks outward, at the already too-bright sky, the loud remonstrations of neighbors laboring at hand-pumps, and the knowledge that once more the reprieve has passed, once more, the cool black of night that should have been wrapped over eyelids has evaporated.
Desperate for something to hold, slapping the sweat that has matted his thin rat-tail hair, a man gazes west and sees what? A road to nowhere. Mhepi, its pine-forested pubic mound, and arranged in a ring below it a skirt of heat darting up from blacktop roads. Microbus drivers thrown just slightly off their already mad axis; their erratic swerving and cornering over long stretches of an empty road. Immobile like swatted flies, shopkeepers paste their cheekbones to small squares of concrete on their floors, shifting every few minutes on their straw mats to cover another inch of untouched coolness. In a tea-shop that doesn't sell tea, there is a girl, who can't be more than twelve years old, who has been wilted by heat and wrinkled and pruned by sweat into an unhappy hag. From the coldest part of the house, where she washes dirty dishes, an swarm of flies rises on cue, to hover inches away from new skin, testing the alien for signs of life, salt, nutrition dripping from nose-tip.
Thirty minutes pass. No fridge. No eatable that hasn't been left out in the heat. One half of the shop is dark, the shutters pulled down, a fan roaring from a corner. A phone rings and a body stirs awakes from one corner, crawls on all fours. It is a bitter, bitter man calling, angry at being duped: he paid good money to go somewhere. His money has disappeared, but the visa hasn't arrived. He trusted her, a sister from his village, he trusted her to take care of him, and now he is a destitute, without enough money to pay the lodge for the night, and there is the bill at the bar to worry about. She calms him. She calms me, her voice beseeching, scolding with mild seduction. She leads him through an interrogation with yes-no questions only. She strokes her hair as she forces him to agree. There is a bold stripe of blonde highlight in her hair.
Tell me your story. She stares back, stroking her hair, tapping the table with a thin, chipped nail. I write stories, but today I couldn't think of anything to write, so I have come hunting for stories. Tell me your story, and I will write it exactly as you want me to. She taps the table, asks me if I want anything else to drink. Where did that man want to go? You know, some Arabian fantasy, sun and sand and towers eclipsing man's ability to see clearly. What happened to his money? Why didn't his visa arrive? She stops tapping the table. What sort of stories would we tell? Interesting ones. Don't hesitate. Tell me, anything, about you, about the business, about the neighborhood. She gets up, clears the table of egg-shells and empty glasses.
So much for something to hold. So much for tell me your story. A stray dog corners itself into a tight box of shadows between house and wall and utility pole. Back off, mongrel, it says with its panting and squirting over the new kingdom. After almost a minute of staring back and forth, the dog no longer feels threatened, it lowers its hindquarters with princely leisure, lets its testicles hover over the ground, seeking the coolest spot. The spectacle is concluded. Although it is later in the afternoon, the heat is just as unrelenting. Instead of the scorching sun overhead, it is the waft from the ground that stifles. A thirsty tongue can't decide upon its essence: it switches between a coarse-barked log and a brittle wafer.
A boy brings a bicycle out-matched to him to the bridge over the Samakhusi sludge-run. There are three men sitting on the bridge, having surrendered in the fight against pre-monsoon heat. There is a stack of plastic envelopes, baggies, of all sizes, on the bike's carrier. But the boy isn't authorized to sell them: he stands guard by the bicycle and waits. Tell me your story, kid. I write stories, but I have nothing to write about today. He stares back, grabs the rails on the twelve-foot concrete bridge over Samakhusi and leans over. It is a ridiculous gesture. The water is barely four feet below, black and curdled, bubbling instead of foaming, moving only imperceptibly under the crust. Tell me your story, kid. Treat me to a flake of your life. He looks to the other men sitting on the bridge. He can't trust a man who sits on a bridge over Samakhusi, under Mhepi, asking for stories. He spits over the rails and watches the white blob float down, over an endless chasm, to echo and splash on the torrent a mile below.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
What do you get as a writer?
Nothing.
If it is not from my readers or people in a team employing me to write their movie script, I don't have to take shit from anyone regarding the choices--vocational and artistic--that I have made, to stick with for a lifetime.
If it is not from my readers or people in a team employing me to write their movie script, I don't have to take shit from anyone regarding the choices--vocational and artistic--that I have made, to stick with for a lifetime.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Back?
I feel like a bone bleached to the point of brittleness. But I need to bounce back, with vigor, with creativity.
That which is the source of our greatest joys is often also the source of our biggest frustrations. Be it the rewards at a job that requires creativity, or be it life generally. I suppose it is the default mode of your existence to take the better things for granted.
But it hurts, like eagles picking at one's liver, when our sources of happiness and affirmation turn upon us, make us doubt, make us want to die.
Man, I can be dramatic.
I owe somebody half-dozen monologues. Today better be the day.
Bandh in Kathmandu, by the way. I have no clue why. What Kathmandu needs now is a death-squad of non-aligned mercenaries that will arrive at a chowk where political activists are trying to enforce a bandh, shoot a few heads open to suggest alternatives, collect money from the tol-basi, move on to the next chowk. Or, down to the Terai to open the highway.
That which is the source of our greatest joys is often also the source of our biggest frustrations. Be it the rewards at a job that requires creativity, or be it life generally. I suppose it is the default mode of your existence to take the better things for granted.
But it hurts, like eagles picking at one's liver, when our sources of happiness and affirmation turn upon us, make us doubt, make us want to die.
Man, I can be dramatic.
I owe somebody half-dozen monologues. Today better be the day.
Bandh in Kathmandu, by the way. I have no clue why. What Kathmandu needs now is a death-squad of non-aligned mercenaries that will arrive at a chowk where political activists are trying to enforce a bandh, shoot a few heads open to suggest alternatives, collect money from the tol-basi, move on to the next chowk. Or, down to the Terai to open the highway.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Nothing for Sunday
My mind is blank. I did not sleep well a few days back, for a few nights in a row. Which mostly means I did not have the time to have lucid dreams. Because of that, my mind went to sleep. I kept the brain running with Red Bull, but the mind is a bitch of another creed.
So, nothing for Sunday's Kathmandu Post. Which is sad, because I really thought I was at a point where I had to write better than my usual: last Sunday's essay was by far the most moronic in thought, most juvenile in attitude. I thought I'd hit the bottom, and wanted to bounce back with something good--not necessarily easy to read or interesting for the readers, because, fuck the reader, but something rewarding to myself. That did not happen. I prepared, I really did, but when time came to write, other matters occupied the mind. I have three writing projects going simultaneously, but am preoccupied by something beyond my control to *effect.*
What this Sunday's essay would have been about:
--the bearded old man who usually stands around PN Shah's statue at Singha Durbar, with a feather duster in his hand, wearing white daura with slogans on it;
--the sparrow of a lady who volunteers to control traffic between Lainchaur and Kapurdhara;
--the fact that the rest of us, citizens of Kathmandu, can go eat shit before the dedication these two show towards lost causes; and,
--an Edward Lear limerick, which goes:
"There was an Old Man of Nepaul,
From his horse did have a terrible fall;
But, though split quite in two, with some very strong glue
They mended that man of Nepaul."
I had a vague idea that most of Nepal's citizens seem to be divided between slaving for a psychic cause [Old Man, nationalism]; and a material cause [traffic-volunteer lady, controlling vehicles]. However, the psychic seems to dominate over the material in politics [Newa Rajya calling for chakka jam, making livelihood more expensive]. Although, ideally, the material should dominate over the psychic [good roads should lead to better expression of national cohesion; reduced load-shedding should positively affect civil discourse about constitution-writing]. And so on.
But, shit didn't get written, people.
In other news: I had sent an inquiry to Teri Choden about a month back, when Nayantara suggested I should contact her about writing for Y! Magazine. I didn't hear from her. But, apparently this month's Y! Magazine mentions this blog as a half-decent read in the Nepali blogosphere. So, instead of inviting me to write for the magazine, Y! referred readers here!
I thought I'd greet those readers, you know, the ones that are going to change the average daily visits to this site from 6 to maybe 9 for a few days to come. How is this for a bit of reflexive mindfuck?
So, nothing for Sunday's Kathmandu Post. Which is sad, because I really thought I was at a point where I had to write better than my usual: last Sunday's essay was by far the most moronic in thought, most juvenile in attitude. I thought I'd hit the bottom, and wanted to bounce back with something good--not necessarily easy to read or interesting for the readers, because, fuck the reader, but something rewarding to myself. That did not happen. I prepared, I really did, but when time came to write, other matters occupied the mind. I have three writing projects going simultaneously, but am preoccupied by something beyond my control to *effect.*
What this Sunday's essay would have been about:
--the bearded old man who usually stands around PN Shah's statue at Singha Durbar, with a feather duster in his hand, wearing white daura with slogans on it;
--the sparrow of a lady who volunteers to control traffic between Lainchaur and Kapurdhara;
--the fact that the rest of us, citizens of Kathmandu, can go eat shit before the dedication these two show towards lost causes; and,
--an Edward Lear limerick, which goes:
"There was an Old Man of Nepaul,
From his horse did have a terrible fall;
But, though split quite in two, with some very strong glue
They mended that man of Nepaul."
I had a vague idea that most of Nepal's citizens seem to be divided between slaving for a psychic cause [Old Man, nationalism]; and a material cause [traffic-volunteer lady, controlling vehicles]. However, the psychic seems to dominate over the material in politics [Newa Rajya calling for chakka jam, making livelihood more expensive]. Although, ideally, the material should dominate over the psychic [good roads should lead to better expression of national cohesion; reduced load-shedding should positively affect civil discourse about constitution-writing]. And so on.
But, shit didn't get written, people.
In other news: I had sent an inquiry to Teri Choden about a month back, when Nayantara suggested I should contact her about writing for Y! Magazine. I didn't hear from her. But, apparently this month's Y! Magazine mentions this blog as a half-decent read in the Nepali blogosphere. So, instead of inviting me to write for the magazine, Y! referred readers here!
I thought I'd greet those readers, you know, the ones that are going to change the average daily visits to this site from 6 to maybe 9 for a few days to come. How is this for a bit of reflexive mindfuck?
Saturday, June 6, 2009
I have a date!
Around 4th of August!
Finally, about 17 months from the date I started writing for the screen, a screenplay I wrote will start shooting. The actors have been signed, the camera has been hired. Once the music album--which is being written/composed--is finished, the project reaches the point of no-return. And, on or around August 4, with a small puja to bless the endeavor, shooting will commence.
Come December, it is quite likely that there will be two movies out with my name in the credits. If the OCP movie finishes by then, that will be three, although, in strict honesty, the writer for the OCP movie should be credited to Alan Smithee. Whatever. I am in it for the money. I am taking the path of least resistence through the project now.
For those of you in Kathmandu--I am supposed to speak on Sushma Joshi's "End of the World" at Martin Chautari on the 21st of June. So, come, with a few rotting vegetables in your sleeves. If I look really bored, or if it becomes really apparent that I no longer care, pelt me. You'll be doing me a favor.
Finally, about 17 months from the date I started writing for the screen, a screenplay I wrote will start shooting. The actors have been signed, the camera has been hired. Once the music album--which is being written/composed--is finished, the project reaches the point of no-return. And, on or around August 4, with a small puja to bless the endeavor, shooting will commence.
Come December, it is quite likely that there will be two movies out with my name in the credits. If the OCP movie finishes by then, that will be three, although, in strict honesty, the writer for the OCP movie should be credited to Alan Smithee. Whatever. I am in it for the money. I am taking the path of least resistence through the project now.
For those of you in Kathmandu--I am supposed to speak on Sushma Joshi's "End of the World" at Martin Chautari on the 21st of June. So, come, with a few rotting vegetables in your sleeves. If I look really bored, or if it becomes really apparent that I no longer care, pelt me. You'll be doing me a favor.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Screw New Nepal: Give Me Next Nepal!
This is by far the most angry, ego-maniac piece I have written for the paper. Hell, I even challenge Sujata Koirala to a duel.
It would be interesting if that woman chose to reply. I doubt it. She has no moral ground in this case, and virtually everybody else has the right to a superior moral stance.
--------
The word Mat, of Sanskrit origin, means a little more than an opinion, even if it be a studied, considered one. Matdan is therefore not a good word to use while asking this foundational question: what does it mean to vote? The word vote, of Latin origin, is no less a part of Nepali vocabulary than the words mat or matdan. The word vote originally meant to make a solemn vow towards effecting change. An opinion is hardly even an indication of the will to act; but to make a vow, especially by a people mindful to keep its word, is a meaningful act. It indicates the will to change the reality in which the population daily subsists, which is the only reason politics can, and should, exist.
Nepali politics in the past month has been dominated by three losers: Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, and in the past few days, Sujata Koirala. How is Pushpa Kapam Dahal a loser? He has often assumed a mantle not given to him by the vote of Nepali people. He first declared himself the “first-future-president” of our republic, so untenable and ridiculous even in its linguistic gaucherie. He then took a series of decisions for which he had no support among those who didn't vote for him: the most basic requirement while considering the daily functioning of a coalition government. This arrogance cost him his over-expensive bed at Baluwatar. For assuming to have the votes of people who didn't really vote for him, he is a loser.
Madhav Kumar Nepal and Sujata Koirala, on the other hand, are losers because they lost elections. Plain and simple. Only the politically minded, who have become so used to seeing wisdom in the intricacies of political designs that they no longer see what is plain and simple, can find complicated excuses for why Sujata Koirala can be a good force in politics. For some strange reason, especially among the educated and informed, the value of the simplest gestures has been lost. It has become buried under so much analysis and considerations and informed opinion that the basis, the foundations upon which they must strain to balance in order to make their convoluted arguments, seem alien and cumbersome to them. The idea that the citizen's right to a meaningful survival comes before legal hair-spitting about clauses in a holey constitution doesn't occur to people with the luxury to buy newspapers and subscribe to weeklies printed on glossy paper. The fact that when a village along the border gets displaced after repeated assault and rape—be it by the Seema Surakshya Bal or local dacoits—it is a bigger national tragedy than the need for “civilian supremacy” ad defined by a political party escapes all privileged minds. What civilian supremacy—on, in the contrary camp, the letters of the law—are you debating over when your civilians are being raped and forced to flee? The victims were mostly displaced because of the civil war. I bet you that the SSB is not being directed by politicians in Dehli, but by local politicians and landowners, likely on both sides of the border.
Madhav Kumar Nepal has weaseled his way to power. Good for him. He doesn't have my respect for the simple fact that he has become the head clown of the professional group that laughs at the face of the idea that the ordinary, average citizen's primary vote is of any significance. But, to the man's credit is a long life in the service of the nation, a career unsullied by allegations of corruption. At least he has the respect and support of politicians elected by the people. But Sujata Koirala? She, too, lost the elections, which to me, in no ambiguous terms, means that the people of a certain area, to whom she begged for their support, in order that she could be their servant, to hear and carry their voice to the CA, refused her that grace, that responsibility. There is opposition within her own party against her appointment as the Foreign Minister—my representative to the world! She doesn't have the support of people who did win in the elections, who do have the permission to represent a part of the population. Yet, she is the face representing me to other nations. For the record—Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, you don't have this citizen's permission to represent him, because you couldn't secure the permission of his fellow citizens to represent them when you did grovel before them. They rejected you as unworthy. Again—plain, and simple. Sujata Koirala, go ahead, laugh at me. If you have the guts, tell me on this page, in this paper, how I am wrong, and how you have the moral—not legal, but moral—right to represent me.
If to vote means to make a promise rather than express a simple opinion, this cabinet of ministers makes a mockery of the citizen's vow to change the physical world in which he lives. It doesn't matter to me that the person I voted for doesn't represent me in the CA. What matters is that I am represented by a person who has the mandate of the people from the constituency in which I live. As an individual who believes in the foundational tenets of democracy—that all are equal and are worth one vote each upon reaching a certain age; that the majority gets to do whatever the hell it wants, but the biggest moral responsibility of the majority is to offer up its life to defend all reasonable rights of the minority; and that it is the responsibility of each citizen in the nation to respect, protect and uphold the laws of the land as written by worthy individuals delegated to the task through a process whose bedrock is the secret ballot—I cannot tolerate the idea that individuals who failed the basic test of the secret ballot get to represent me above and beyond the man I didn't vote for but who still won the elections. If to vote is to promise to act towards a goal, I am angry that Madhav Kumar Nepal and Sujata Koirala make a mockery of my vote, my promise to act towards a different, better landscape—physical, moral, psychic: political.
Screw New Nepal if it is going to be a parade of power-hungry manipulators who insult my vote. I am for Next Nepal, whatever comes out of the ashes of this fiasco. People of Nepal—mourn, because Sujata Koirala just strangled your New Nepal. If the woman can so shamelessly use her father, an old man who has hovered so close to death for so long, and conspire to take away from him the legacy for which he has fought since his childhood, what pity do you think she has for you?
It would be interesting if that woman chose to reply. I doubt it. She has no moral ground in this case, and virtually everybody else has the right to a superior moral stance.
--------
To Vote
The word Mat, of Sanskrit origin, means a little more than an opinion, even if it be a studied, considered one. Matdan is therefore not a good word to use while asking this foundational question: what does it mean to vote? The word vote, of Latin origin, is no less a part of Nepali vocabulary than the words mat or matdan. The word vote originally meant to make a solemn vow towards effecting change. An opinion is hardly even an indication of the will to act; but to make a vow, especially by a people mindful to keep its word, is a meaningful act. It indicates the will to change the reality in which the population daily subsists, which is the only reason politics can, and should, exist.
Nepali politics in the past month has been dominated by three losers: Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, and in the past few days, Sujata Koirala. How is Pushpa Kapam Dahal a loser? He has often assumed a mantle not given to him by the vote of Nepali people. He first declared himself the “first-future-president” of our republic, so untenable and ridiculous even in its linguistic gaucherie. He then took a series of decisions for which he had no support among those who didn't vote for him: the most basic requirement while considering the daily functioning of a coalition government. This arrogance cost him his over-expensive bed at Baluwatar. For assuming to have the votes of people who didn't really vote for him, he is a loser.
Madhav Kumar Nepal and Sujata Koirala, on the other hand, are losers because they lost elections. Plain and simple. Only the politically minded, who have become so used to seeing wisdom in the intricacies of political designs that they no longer see what is plain and simple, can find complicated excuses for why Sujata Koirala can be a good force in politics. For some strange reason, especially among the educated and informed, the value of the simplest gestures has been lost. It has become buried under so much analysis and considerations and informed opinion that the basis, the foundations upon which they must strain to balance in order to make their convoluted arguments, seem alien and cumbersome to them. The idea that the citizen's right to a meaningful survival comes before legal hair-spitting about clauses in a holey constitution doesn't occur to people with the luxury to buy newspapers and subscribe to weeklies printed on glossy paper. The fact that when a village along the border gets displaced after repeated assault and rape—be it by the Seema Surakshya Bal or local dacoits—it is a bigger national tragedy than the need for “civilian supremacy” ad defined by a political party escapes all privileged minds. What civilian supremacy—on, in the contrary camp, the letters of the law—are you debating over when your civilians are being raped and forced to flee? The victims were mostly displaced because of the civil war. I bet you that the SSB is not being directed by politicians in Dehli, but by local politicians and landowners, likely on both sides of the border.
Madhav Kumar Nepal has weaseled his way to power. Good for him. He doesn't have my respect for the simple fact that he has become the head clown of the professional group that laughs at the face of the idea that the ordinary, average citizen's primary vote is of any significance. But, to the man's credit is a long life in the service of the nation, a career unsullied by allegations of corruption. At least he has the respect and support of politicians elected by the people. But Sujata Koirala? She, too, lost the elections, which to me, in no ambiguous terms, means that the people of a certain area, to whom she begged for their support, in order that she could be their servant, to hear and carry their voice to the CA, refused her that grace, that responsibility. There is opposition within her own party against her appointment as the Foreign Minister—my representative to the world! She doesn't have the support of people who did win in the elections, who do have the permission to represent a part of the population. Yet, she is the face representing me to other nations. For the record—Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, you don't have this citizen's permission to represent him, because you couldn't secure the permission of his fellow citizens to represent them when you did grovel before them. They rejected you as unworthy. Again—plain, and simple. Sujata Koirala, go ahead, laugh at me. If you have the guts, tell me on this page, in this paper, how I am wrong, and how you have the moral—not legal, but moral—right to represent me.
If to vote means to make a promise rather than express a simple opinion, this cabinet of ministers makes a mockery of the citizen's vow to change the physical world in which he lives. It doesn't matter to me that the person I voted for doesn't represent me in the CA. What matters is that I am represented by a person who has the mandate of the people from the constituency in which I live. As an individual who believes in the foundational tenets of democracy—that all are equal and are worth one vote each upon reaching a certain age; that the majority gets to do whatever the hell it wants, but the biggest moral responsibility of the majority is to offer up its life to defend all reasonable rights of the minority; and that it is the responsibility of each citizen in the nation to respect, protect and uphold the laws of the land as written by worthy individuals delegated to the task through a process whose bedrock is the secret ballot—I cannot tolerate the idea that individuals who failed the basic test of the secret ballot get to represent me above and beyond the man I didn't vote for but who still won the elections. If to vote is to promise to act towards a goal, I am angry that Madhav Kumar Nepal and Sujata Koirala make a mockery of my vote, my promise to act towards a different, better landscape—physical, moral, psychic: political.
Screw New Nepal if it is going to be a parade of power-hungry manipulators who insult my vote. I am for Next Nepal, whatever comes out of the ashes of this fiasco. People of Nepal—mourn, because Sujata Koirala just strangled your New Nepal. If the woman can so shamelessly use her father, an old man who has hovered so close to death for so long, and conspire to take away from him the legacy for which he has fought since his childhood, what pity do you think she has for you?
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
What The Fuck, Indian Border Security?
Read this news:
It is a common occurrence, this encroachment of Nepali land by Seema Surakshya Bal, or SSB, India's border patrol. Most often, it is done on the behest of local politicians or land-owners on the Indian side: if you move the pillars by 35 meters for perhaps a kilometer, you suddenly open up so much farming land on the other side that it becomes worth the corruption, the coercion. I seriously doubt this is an effort directed by politicians at the center, or the Indian state apparatus: India has always, and very effectively, used closures of trading posts along the border to enforce political change inside Nepal. This grabbing of piecemeal parcels of land is too petty for it to be directed by the government of India.
I am not too naive to ignore the possibility of the involvement of politicians leading ethnic movements inside Nepal, either. Just read the last names of most of the victims.
But, when rape becomes a feature of it, there are serious problems that both governments should take seriously. It is bad enough that these acts deprive the poorest of the poor of their fundamental rights to property and the pursuit of a peaceful livelihood. But, to rape women and girls and disappear them? Murder is implied here, as I'm sure everybody realizes.
In this day and age, it is retarded, unacceptable even, that simply shifting the concrete pillars can be sufficient to change the international border between two countries. Fucking Retards in Nepali Government, just do this much:
--Call the Indian Ambassador, instruct him to supply a team from the Indian Ministry for External Affairs;
--Delegate a couple of officers from Foreign Ministry here;
--Suck some UN balls to acquire a GPS reader, you fuckfaces, you miserable maggots;
--Train the petty bureaucrats on how to place the GPS reader on the pillars, and how to to record it electronically;
--Make sure they have enough time to physically walk the border between the two countries. You might even want to have multiple teams working simultaneously.
This way, you see, you could have a record of the Nepali border that couldn't be altered by a barrack of gun-wielding men directed by a greedy goonda. Simple.
Well, Madhav Nepal and Bidhya Bhandari, if you can't do something about this, FUCK YOU! If you don't react strongly in print in tomorrow's paper, I am going to react strongly in Sunday's paper, calling you names you deserve.
It is a common occurrence, this encroachment of Nepali land by Seema Surakshya Bal, or SSB, India's border patrol. Most often, it is done on the behest of local politicians or land-owners on the Indian side: if you move the pillars by 35 meters for perhaps a kilometer, you suddenly open up so much farming land on the other side that it becomes worth the corruption, the coercion. I seriously doubt this is an effort directed by politicians at the center, or the Indian state apparatus: India has always, and very effectively, used closures of trading posts along the border to enforce political change inside Nepal. This grabbing of piecemeal parcels of land is too petty for it to be directed by the government of India.
I am not too naive to ignore the possibility of the involvement of politicians leading ethnic movements inside Nepal, either. Just read the last names of most of the victims.
But, when rape becomes a feature of it, there are serious problems that both governments should take seriously. It is bad enough that these acts deprive the poorest of the poor of their fundamental rights to property and the pursuit of a peaceful livelihood. But, to rape women and girls and disappear them? Murder is implied here, as I'm sure everybody realizes.
In this day and age, it is retarded, unacceptable even, that simply shifting the concrete pillars can be sufficient to change the international border between two countries. Fucking Retards in Nepali Government, just do this much:
--Call the Indian Ambassador, instruct him to supply a team from the Indian Ministry for External Affairs;
--Delegate a couple of officers from Foreign Ministry here;
--Suck some UN balls to acquire a GPS reader, you fuckfaces, you miserable maggots;
--Train the petty bureaucrats on how to place the GPS reader on the pillars, and how to to record it electronically;
--Make sure they have enough time to physically walk the border between the two countries. You might even want to have multiple teams working simultaneously.
This way, you see, you could have a record of the Nepali border that couldn't be altered by a barrack of gun-wielding men directed by a greedy goonda. Simple.
Well, Madhav Nepal and Bidhya Bhandari, if you can't do something about this, FUCK YOU! If you don't react strongly in print in tomorrow's paper, I am going to react strongly in Sunday's paper, calling you names you deserve.
Give Me Work!
Most of the heavy lifting for the screenplay I was writing has been done. I don't really know what is up with the other project on which I am supposed to be working.
Which means-- I am unemployed at present. Need screenwriting work.
The trouble with writing scripts is that you can't show completed assignments to prospective clients. You have to wait until the movie is out in the theaters before people can make the judgment whether to hire you for a project. But, movies always cost a lot of money, regardless of where they are made. In a small market like Nepal, a small budget is a bigger deal than a slightly larger one.
I have completed two commercial scripts--both romantic comedies. I want to write a full-out, unapologetic action movie, perhaps something that can set itself up for a sequel. But, even if everything goes as scheduled--there is no reason why it shouldn't, because the equipment has already been secured and failing to utilize it will result in a fine--my first screenwriting effort will be "published" in December.
I don't want to write for myself right now. That just seems too self-indulgent and dreamy, and I would likely take too long to complete a script if it is strictly for myself. But, that time has come. I should decide whether I want to write a piece aimed at pleasing the critics, at Nepali commentators who keep complaining about the lack of "story" in Nepali cinema. [This will be different when "Dasdhunga" comes out later this month]. Or, if I want to start with a couple more strictly commercial ventures. It makes a lot more sense to prove the worth of one's craft in the market, where the rewards are tied directly to the consumer's purse and thereby to the consumer's labor, before appealing to the consumer's aesthetics or artistic sensibilities with one's art.
So, off-chance, if you are in the market to produce a commercial Nepali movie, and want to put me to work over the next few months on a movie script, let me know. But, entertaining inquiries regarding commercial ventures only.
Or, think of it this way--you can commission something from me now, when my services come cheap, then keep the script in the vault for a year or two, wait for my profile in the commercial Nepali movie scene to rise, and then capitalize on the product. Yeah? Yeah? Come on! Any takers?
Which means-- I am unemployed at present. Need screenwriting work.
The trouble with writing scripts is that you can't show completed assignments to prospective clients. You have to wait until the movie is out in the theaters before people can make the judgment whether to hire you for a project. But, movies always cost a lot of money, regardless of where they are made. In a small market like Nepal, a small budget is a bigger deal than a slightly larger one.
I have completed two commercial scripts--both romantic comedies. I want to write a full-out, unapologetic action movie, perhaps something that can set itself up for a sequel. But, even if everything goes as scheduled--there is no reason why it shouldn't, because the equipment has already been secured and failing to utilize it will result in a fine--my first screenwriting effort will be "published" in December.
I don't want to write for myself right now. That just seems too self-indulgent and dreamy, and I would likely take too long to complete a script if it is strictly for myself. But, that time has come. I should decide whether I want to write a piece aimed at pleasing the critics, at Nepali commentators who keep complaining about the lack of "story" in Nepali cinema. [This will be different when "Dasdhunga" comes out later this month]. Or, if I want to start with a couple more strictly commercial ventures. It makes a lot more sense to prove the worth of one's craft in the market, where the rewards are tied directly to the consumer's purse and thereby to the consumer's labor, before appealing to the consumer's aesthetics or artistic sensibilities with one's art.
So, off-chance, if you are in the market to produce a commercial Nepali movie, and want to put me to work over the next few months on a movie script, let me know. But, entertaining inquiries regarding commercial ventures only.
Or, think of it this way--you can commission something from me now, when my services come cheap, then keep the script in the vault for a year or two, wait for my profile in the commercial Nepali movie scene to rise, and then capitalize on the product. Yeah? Yeah? Come on! Any takers?
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