The Flight of Crows:
When Tuan painted crows, hundreds of them hopped along the ground until they disappeared as speckles of black ink in the distant background, or tore out of the paper with eyes peering down hardy beaks, head atilt to examine the painter or the onlooker, each crow differently captured in the acuity of its rodent wile. They always watched you attentively, Tuan's crows, some mid-peck at a dry worm, some treading on the tips of their toes, legs flexed for the upward thrust to safety, but always aware of your gaze. Sometimes he painted them alongside eggplants and gourds and drunk monks acting like fools: the crude twist of a misshapen gourd looked like the fierce knotting on the face of a monk whose loincloth has come undone in his drunkenness and now looks like the crow that understands fiercely the secrets of the world and therefore resents it for being so quick to snatch from it anything beautiful.
I have just finished walking around the four tallest buildings in Kolkata, forty, fifty stories high apartment buildings that are rumored to be slowly sinking back into the pokkur ponds from where they soared aloft. I have followed the flitting and caws of crows to a heap of rubbish, just finished guzzling from a can hidden in a plastic bag, and settled on a worn bench outside a barbershop that is mostly bamboo and tarpaulin. A bald man is getting a shave. Another man is running a hand over his freshly shaved head. The barber sizes me up, sees: balding, greasy, unkempt hair, stubbly chin. I turn away from him and face the crows instead.
Hundreds of crows are speckled over orange and green rags from the recent nationalist celebrations. Because it is drizzling lightly, some crows look up to receive the spray on their faces, but some lift soda-bottle caps and sip in leisure. They have no fear of my stoic presence on the bench: for them I might as well be the crumbling, half-painted, unbaked clay figure grinning in a corner, a god that wasn't lucky enough to be bought for a puja, and now brandishes a sword of foil over a restless, rancid kingdom. I crush the can after lapping up the last few drops of malty wetness around the rim and throw it in a low arc into the midst of the black crowd. Not all heads turn. Most trace the arc with a patient study. A few shuffle an inch or two outwards in a ripple, and a few outright dart from the spot where the can flops to a rest. A novice saunters up to the can, bobbing to his sides like a young man in a spiffy new jacket and affecting a jaunty gait. Novice pinches the can and tilts it, immediately drops it. Another crow comes in for a closer inspection of the can and needlessly pecks Novice. Novice caws once, doesn't sound much of a protest, and bobs away, his gait now carrying the sting of admonition. The pecker knocks the can around a bit, pulls at the plastic bag, lifts one foot as if to crush the can, perhaps changes its mind, because it rushes off towards Novice to land another needless peck on its head.
So the horde pecks and picks apart the detritus of four tall buildings. I have counted seven servants by now who bring garbage tied in a Spencer's bag from the biggest mall in Kolkata that sits adjacent to the tallest buildings in Kolkata. The mall is in its turn built over an evacuated pond, after forcing the closure of a factory that existed there, and after expelling the shantytown around the pond. One bag, thrown from the edge of the pile, spills a riotous palate of orange and curry yellow and shellfish and sequins from the backs of rohu fish from a dinner party. Many crows hop to pick prawn shells, but what is the nutrition in that? A scuffle breaks out over another plastic bag that has remained closed until a Hulk of a crow ambles into the riot, raises its hard black beak to the sky and lets out just half of a caw. Order returns briefly as bobbing heads watch Hulk and me, Hulk and barber, Hulk and three other bags that come as missiles shot from another world. Hulk pecks once, lets others pull apart the plastic bag, rummages, picks a shiny bit of a disposable plate and flies to the top of the barbershop.
Hulk caws loudly and flies off to the branches of a gnarled tree across the bay of trash. A man somewhere between forty and sixty staggers towards us. He steps directly into the garbage and, with a violent jerk of his head, throws off a woven plastic sack twice the size of his body. Another ripple of dark wings ensues, another clamor of caw-caws, and everybody settles down, including the man, who chooses the roots of the gnarled tree for support. Man unravels the gomchha rag tied around his head to support the load, and in the folds finds a chewed-up datiwan twig with which he cleans his teeth. He looks across his kingdom, knows I am out of place there, spits out of the corner of his mouth, looks away dismissively, dozes off, wakes to wipe the beads of moisture that have settled on his hair.
Man startles a crow eying his ankle and lobs a phlegm missile at another. His leathery hands grip the equally leathery trunk of the tree that gives him ribbed shade, and pushes himself up, propelling the body forward. He kicks plastics apart, stoops to pick up metal: a handful of paper-clips, greasy foil, a length of concertina razor wire, a set of TV antenna constructed with aluminum pipes, one whole copper kalash in a sack of empty bottles of foreign liquor. Man stuffs his already bulging sacks with the new finds. He pauses, suddenly aware of the crushed aluminum can under his foot. He picks it, smells it, shakes any remaining liquid out, looks at me as he drops the can to stamp on it with vigor. He presses the can into a small ball and stuffs it into the sack.
Man rolls the gomchha around his head, creating a hollow in the top to cushion the load. Then he pinches the sides of the sack: there is no hold because the plastic sack is bloated, so Man must pinch small folds with his fingertips. He presses upon the load with his head, pushing his buttocks into the sky, grunting. He squats, starts, falters, sighs, takes a pouch of khaini from a fold in his lungi and quickly gets patting and spitting and repeating the squat and start. Man succeeds in throwing the load into the air and receiving it on his head. He is Atlas and he is Shiva. Then Man splays his bony frame like Christ on the cross and staggers over the effulgence of rich homes, every separated muscle on his arms and shoulder registering the squelch and filth underfoot. Man wears his neighbors' sins like a crown on his head and leaves the crows behind after spitting in their direction a mouthful of dark, rejuvenating juice. He staggers, stands still, stretches his arms more to balance the burden, stumbles forward. Man repeats the struggle until he disappears from view.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Crows and a flower
More photos... I should be working. Instead, I am drinking jaljeera, eating two-week stale cucumber, and stalking crows.
more photos
I have prepared some photos today. Early in the morning, I spent some time on photoshop making posters of myself. Which I plan to put on a couple of t-shirts. Fuck Che. Wear Prawin. I'll put up the posters later.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Photos
Since my computer is broken, I have inherited Elena's computer for the meanwhile. I have been fooling around with Photoshop to distract myself and made a few posters, etc, mostly of Elena. But, here are a few photographs that haven't been manipulated with much, although they aren't exactly as in camera. Also, obviously, one is a posterized picture. I wish I had more graphic skills.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Tumi amako bhalobasho? Ekhono?”
“Lau, lau, lau!” He is a bit distracted, the script AD, but he tries his best. Although the lights have been set up for a while now, the artist for this scene can’t speak Bangla very well, and the AD’s job is to prep her within the hour. He did not write the dialogues. He will not call the shots. They have given him a somewhat impressive title: Monitor! The manager of Cocoon, an upscale boutique from where Aparna Sen will pick up an artifact sometime in the afternoon of the following day, a Wednesday, mistakes the novice artist for a well known face. She elbows Monitor for space across the table and volunteers to make the Bangla into Roman for the foreign artist, her eager face lapping up the shine of Elena’s radiant makeup that borders on the garish. Men in the unit surreptitiously leave their posts to check if the artist procured by the producer really stands up to the mark, the production value of the movie.
They seem to approve, because some of them suddenly grin like idiots, rapidly flick their tongues over dry lips and search the room for other pairs of eyes that might be labouring under the burden of similar thought. I am standing in a corner, waving my arms to check where I cast a shadow, checking if I can see the camera in any of the many mirrors artfully arranged around the boutique. It is an upscale sort of a place where cleverly disguised crap sells for artwork just inexpensive enough for those devoid of actual interest in art to hang and stuff and strew their living quarters with a semblance of culture. Driftwood dragged out of the sea is painted to look old, carved to look weathered; terracotta and gilt sculptures are pressed with grime and pasted into the crannies of the wood to make the whole structure organic. Lamps have been built into the sculptures, so that a seated Buddha smiles to one half of the room while casting his unkind gloom in another direction. Two men from the unit stoop to examine tin boxes for breath-mint, printed with pinup posters from the fifties in America and arranged over a faux-antique table. The manager raises an eyebrow. Her assistant, who has by now twice sprayed a jasmine scented room-freshener into my eye, transports his Babu potbelly to the table and unceremoniously removes the entire tray of glorious, nubile, buxom, sylphine ghosts from a distant land.
“Okay, okay,” says the artist, playing with her hair, eager to show how quickly she can learn the lines. “So, I say ‘love, love, love’ and run towards him?” She asks questions in Hindi and English, but the mustachioed AD answers only in Bangla. Cocoon’s manager bristles in her chair, eager to partake and please, but in her turn snubbed by those in the film fraternity. I can’t suppress a grin that flashes all too conspicuously across the room. Love, love, love! And hug the hero, a fat Bengali with too much cigarette in his breath, and be too eager to marry him. Of course, he is going to be distracted by the fleeting shape of his true love passing outside the shop window. One scene, with some six lines, to be shot from three different angles, and we are done in two hours. “You will manage,” says Devroop, first-time producer with a brown briefcase never an inch away from his body. “She will manage,” he comes over to mention to me. Perhaps he senses my skepticism. Love, love, love! Tumi amako bhalobasho? Ekhono? Do you love me, still?
The short reading progresses to a shorter rehearsal. The artist can’t remember all the nuanced consonants. The manager of the store tails her for a minute, reminding, mouthing, illustrating: “Like in rat!” Monitor stands behind the director, another potbellied man in plastic sandals, wearing the universal Kolkata scowl of someone with a digestive disorder, forever on guard against being found out at fraud as sincere artistic intellectual. Everything functions smoothly without his involvement, anyway. Two rehearsals reveal the need for prompts, cues, spoon-feeding by Monitor. The fans are shooed away from light sources and reflective surfaces, and other fans are switched off to create silence on the set. The manager quietly protests against switching off the air-conditioners, although the erratic hum of the machine is a cause for concern for the sound engineer. “Sound? Camera? ” “Rolling!”
Before the director says action, Elena runs on her toes towards Rahul, a swanlike imitation of what she must think of as cinematic elegance. She wants to be in a Bollywood movie eventually, one scene or two sufficing to round off her dream, perhaps a dance, but nothing item-like. Something with mehendi and flowers and running around trees, not a bit in a bar. “No, no,” says the director patiently before turning to the Monitor to ask what the artist’s name might be. “Action is meaning dialogue. Love, love love!” “Okay, okay, okay,” says Elena. After he nods at the cameraman, the sound-engineer, and the hero, the director barks: “Action!”
It is a Tuesday afternoon, and surely it is a Tuesday afternoon in Kathmandu, too, where, at one or two temples, Alok Nembang must have just finished bowing his head in a silent prayer. He is starting his second movie after Sano Sansar. Some people in the industry claim Sano Sansar did very well, and some people claim Sano Sansar didn’t do quite as well as it was expected to do. None of that matters now, I am sure, as Alok prepares to make similar adjustments in Kathmandu as I am watching in a boutique in Kolkata. Although, I doubt if any of his artists will have to be coached in the dialect being used, or reminded that “Action!” comes before action. I find myself wondering about where the pujas are being held for Alok’s movie. Perhaps one is at the temple of Karyabinayak, after which deity Alok has named his company. Perhaps another is a choice of the producers at Music Dot Com. I don’t know.
But the magic of cinema is the same here or there. A Bihari man wearing a bright blue shirt has found his way into the boutique. People in the unit mistake him for one of their own. He sidles over to my side. “That lady is the heroine of the film?” he asks. He drips with lust and leer. “No,” I tell him, “She is doing just one scene.” “She is not Indian,” he declares. “I don’t think so,” I say. “So she is not the heroine?” he asks. “I don’t think so.” But he clearly doesn’t believe me. He edges closer and closer towards Elena, until his toe softly knocks against a light-stand. He smiles at everyone who notices his intrusion and retreats to my side. “She will be a hit heroine,” he says. Elena looks at me across the room and smiles again. This makes the Bihari bristle. He shrinks. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile again. Monitor starts prompting Elena: “Love, love, love!”
“Lau, lau, lau!” He is a bit distracted, the script AD, but he tries his best. Although the lights have been set up for a while now, the artist for this scene can’t speak Bangla very well, and the AD’s job is to prep her within the hour. He did not write the dialogues. He will not call the shots. They have given him a somewhat impressive title: Monitor! The manager of Cocoon, an upscale boutique from where Aparna Sen will pick up an artifact sometime in the afternoon of the following day, a Wednesday, mistakes the novice artist for a well known face. She elbows Monitor for space across the table and volunteers to make the Bangla into Roman for the foreign artist, her eager face lapping up the shine of Elena’s radiant makeup that borders on the garish. Men in the unit surreptitiously leave their posts to check if the artist procured by the producer really stands up to the mark, the production value of the movie.
They seem to approve, because some of them suddenly grin like idiots, rapidly flick their tongues over dry lips and search the room for other pairs of eyes that might be labouring under the burden of similar thought. I am standing in a corner, waving my arms to check where I cast a shadow, checking if I can see the camera in any of the many mirrors artfully arranged around the boutique. It is an upscale sort of a place where cleverly disguised crap sells for artwork just inexpensive enough for those devoid of actual interest in art to hang and stuff and strew their living quarters with a semblance of culture. Driftwood dragged out of the sea is painted to look old, carved to look weathered; terracotta and gilt sculptures are pressed with grime and pasted into the crannies of the wood to make the whole structure organic. Lamps have been built into the sculptures, so that a seated Buddha smiles to one half of the room while casting his unkind gloom in another direction. Two men from the unit stoop to examine tin boxes for breath-mint, printed with pinup posters from the fifties in America and arranged over a faux-antique table. The manager raises an eyebrow. Her assistant, who has by now twice sprayed a jasmine scented room-freshener into my eye, transports his Babu potbelly to the table and unceremoniously removes the entire tray of glorious, nubile, buxom, sylphine ghosts from a distant land.
“Okay, okay,” says the artist, playing with her hair, eager to show how quickly she can learn the lines. “So, I say ‘love, love, love’ and run towards him?” She asks questions in Hindi and English, but the mustachioed AD answers only in Bangla. Cocoon’s manager bristles in her chair, eager to partake and please, but in her turn snubbed by those in the film fraternity. I can’t suppress a grin that flashes all too conspicuously across the room. Love, love, love! And hug the hero, a fat Bengali with too much cigarette in his breath, and be too eager to marry him. Of course, he is going to be distracted by the fleeting shape of his true love passing outside the shop window. One scene, with some six lines, to be shot from three different angles, and we are done in two hours. “You will manage,” says Devroop, first-time producer with a brown briefcase never an inch away from his body. “She will manage,” he comes over to mention to me. Perhaps he senses my skepticism. Love, love, love! Tumi amako bhalobasho? Ekhono? Do you love me, still?
The short reading progresses to a shorter rehearsal. The artist can’t remember all the nuanced consonants. The manager of the store tails her for a minute, reminding, mouthing, illustrating: “Like in rat!” Monitor stands behind the director, another potbellied man in plastic sandals, wearing the universal Kolkata scowl of someone with a digestive disorder, forever on guard against being found out at fraud as sincere artistic intellectual. Everything functions smoothly without his involvement, anyway. Two rehearsals reveal the need for prompts, cues, spoon-feeding by Monitor. The fans are shooed away from light sources and reflective surfaces, and other fans are switched off to create silence on the set. The manager quietly protests against switching off the air-conditioners, although the erratic hum of the machine is a cause for concern for the sound engineer. “Sound? Camera? ” “Rolling!”
Before the director says action, Elena runs on her toes towards Rahul, a swanlike imitation of what she must think of as cinematic elegance. She wants to be in a Bollywood movie eventually, one scene or two sufficing to round off her dream, perhaps a dance, but nothing item-like. Something with mehendi and flowers and running around trees, not a bit in a bar. “No, no,” says the director patiently before turning to the Monitor to ask what the artist’s name might be. “Action is meaning dialogue. Love, love love!” “Okay, okay, okay,” says Elena. After he nods at the cameraman, the sound-engineer, and the hero, the director barks: “Action!”
It is a Tuesday afternoon, and surely it is a Tuesday afternoon in Kathmandu, too, where, at one or two temples, Alok Nembang must have just finished bowing his head in a silent prayer. He is starting his second movie after Sano Sansar. Some people in the industry claim Sano Sansar did very well, and some people claim Sano Sansar didn’t do quite as well as it was expected to do. None of that matters now, I am sure, as Alok prepares to make similar adjustments in Kathmandu as I am watching in a boutique in Kolkata. Although, I doubt if any of his artists will have to be coached in the dialect being used, or reminded that “Action!” comes before action. I find myself wondering about where the pujas are being held for Alok’s movie. Perhaps one is at the temple of Karyabinayak, after which deity Alok has named his company. Perhaps another is a choice of the producers at Music Dot Com. I don’t know.
But the magic of cinema is the same here or there. A Bihari man wearing a bright blue shirt has found his way into the boutique. People in the unit mistake him for one of their own. He sidles over to my side. “That lady is the heroine of the film?” he asks. He drips with lust and leer. “No,” I tell him, “She is doing just one scene.” “She is not Indian,” he declares. “I don’t think so,” I say. “So she is not the heroine?” he asks. “I don’t think so.” But he clearly doesn’t believe me. He edges closer and closer towards Elena, until his toe softly knocks against a light-stand. He smiles at everyone who notices his intrusion and retreats to my side. “She will be a hit heroine,” he says. Elena looks at me across the room and smiles again. This makes the Bihari bristle. He shrinks. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile again. Monitor starts prompting Elena: “Love, love, love!”
Monday, August 17, 2009
Trouble in Kolkata!
I was trying to check out the subtitles in Sano Sansar [there are a few typos...] when my computer froze. I tried to re-start it, and it just died!
I hadn't backed up two days' worth of translations that I had completed. I am a day behind schedule now, and I an already on a very tight schedule. I am panicking now, because it seems like there is a hardware malfunction. Or a virus might have got to it, although that is very unlikely, since I haven't been online since leaving Kathmandu, and have shared a USB with another computer that has a pretty good Norton AVP.
I have already wasted a day, and I can't aford to waste another day, but the technician is not here yet. I don't know when he will get here. I don't even have a phone to coordinate with him. Kinda tragic it is.
On the other hand, Alok Nembang's movie starts shooting tomorrow.
I hadn't backed up two days' worth of translations that I had completed. I am a day behind schedule now, and I an already on a very tight schedule. I am panicking now, because it seems like there is a hardware malfunction. Or a virus might have got to it, although that is very unlikely, since I haven't been online since leaving Kathmandu, and have shared a USB with another computer that has a pretty good Norton AVP.
I have already wasted a day, and I can't aford to waste another day, but the technician is not here yet. I don't know when he will get here. I don't even have a phone to coordinate with him. Kinda tragic it is.
On the other hand, Alok Nembang's movie starts shooting tomorrow.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Point, no point, and Kolkata
I was listening to my father talk to a group of journalists at a function organized by "Paila," an NGO interested in diverse activities, where he told the journalists that they ought to write clearly enough that the first sentence in their articles should contain their thesis or argument.
I disagree, but from a privileged position: I have a column where I specifically refrain from doing that. I attempt to write lyrically. There can't be a flow to the sentences unless the images in consecutive sentences are in harmony. If that harmony is sustained/ruptured through a design, the images form a specific argument of their own.
For this reason, I consider long descriptions as what one might call "thesis." The choices that go in constructing a description aren't without calculation, and therefore they present a specif stance on a problem: sociological, aesthetic, rhetorical. I don't want to put the thesis in the first sentence because I am not writing a college paper or a report for an NGO. I don't want to explain anything to the people in specific words, because guiding the thoughts of a reader is more satisfying.
On a separate note: As soon as I get done with my obligations for QC, I am going to leave for Kolkata. I will translate "Sanbidhan ma Dalit" by Subhash Darnal, try to write some movie scenes, and keep writing for the Kathmandu Post column.
I disagree, but from a privileged position: I have a column where I specifically refrain from doing that. I attempt to write lyrically. There can't be a flow to the sentences unless the images in consecutive sentences are in harmony. If that harmony is sustained/ruptured through a design, the images form a specific argument of their own.
For this reason, I consider long descriptions as what one might call "thesis." The choices that go in constructing a description aren't without calculation, and therefore they present a specif stance on a problem: sociological, aesthetic, rhetorical. I don't want to put the thesis in the first sentence because I am not writing a college paper or a report for an NGO. I don't want to explain anything to the people in specific words, because guiding the thoughts of a reader is more satisfying.
On a separate note: As soon as I get done with my obligations for QC, I am going to leave for Kolkata. I will translate "Sanbidhan ma Dalit" by Subhash Darnal, try to write some movie scenes, and keep writing for the Kathmandu Post column.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Signatures
Here are a few signatures. Enjoy!
Jhalanath Khanal -- UML
Girija Prasad Koirala -- Nepali Congress
Prachanda -- NCP Maoist
The one word answer
As a response to a comment about "Need to Talk," I wrote: No. It meant: no, it isn't about the special need of Nepali people to talk a lot, and no, I don't believe all writing needs a thesis. If I were trying to prove a particular point, I would need a point. But I am not trying to prove a particular point. I am trying to write very generally about the things I see and experience. Sometimes I write about the thoughts that come into my head, unceremonious, uninvited.
Often, the posts I write for the paper are pointless, *and* badly written. Rarely, they are pointless and well written. A couple of them are perhaps well-written, and with an overarching point.
If I wanted to make a point, I would write reviews or commentary. My column in Kathmandu Post doesn't even have a name, because it would be dishonest to give it a semblance of organization. Yet, I talk about the commonplace, the ordinary. I must be doing something right, giving the commonplace and the ordinary a divergent persona, a separate voice, that people read it, and dare I say, enjoy it.
Here are few posts that have no point to them, but are not without meaning:
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/04/moonrise-and-eunuch-song.html
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/01/kolkata.html
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/04/bihari-nightmare.html
And here are some that perhaps articulate the points they try to make:
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/03/weak-finish.html
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/05/waiting-for-tarkari.html
I take pleasure in sentences, phrases that are potent or lyrical or simply limp with pointless whimsy. I do sincerely believe that the essays I write have a meaning to them, if not a point or a thesis that can be stated in a few sentences or less. I like to think of my essays as a bouquet of impressions and expressions, part of which wilt and disappear, part of which will come back to the reader at a later time.
The mangoes growing in the rubbish heaps around Kathmandu--apparently it made a lot of people here happy to read about it. Somebody else said--write more about mad men nodding yes, yes, yes. What was the point to their fascination with that?
Often, the posts I write for the paper are pointless, *and* badly written. Rarely, they are pointless and well written. A couple of them are perhaps well-written, and with an overarching point.
If I wanted to make a point, I would write reviews or commentary. My column in Kathmandu Post doesn't even have a name, because it would be dishonest to give it a semblance of organization. Yet, I talk about the commonplace, the ordinary. I must be doing something right, giving the commonplace and the ordinary a divergent persona, a separate voice, that people read it, and dare I say, enjoy it.
Here are few posts that have no point to them, but are not without meaning:
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/04/moonrise-and-eunuch-song.html
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/01/kolkata.html
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/04/bihari-nightmare.html
And here are some that perhaps articulate the points they try to make:
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/03/weak-finish.html
http://prawinreviews.blogspot.com/2009/05/waiting-for-tarkari.html
I take pleasure in sentences, phrases that are potent or lyrical or simply limp with pointless whimsy. I do sincerely believe that the essays I write have a meaning to them, if not a point or a thesis that can be stated in a few sentences or less. I like to think of my essays as a bouquet of impressions and expressions, part of which wilt and disappear, part of which will come back to the reader at a later time.
The mangoes growing in the rubbish heaps around Kathmandu--apparently it made a lot of people here happy to read about it. Somebody else said--write more about mad men nodding yes, yes, yes. What was the point to their fascination with that?
Friday, August 7, 2009
Need to Talk
"Of course, everything is expensive now. But that is because I am poor. Much poorer than I used to be." He lies. He accents his lie with a crisp hundred rupees note folded like a tent. Under it is a still-smoldering stub of Shikhar. Whenever he has to project disinterested authority he bunches his moustache up to the nostrils, perhaps to smell in it the smoke and spice of an afternoon break from slapping dry cement to sewer-joints of damp bricks. A gold ring looks back at him, a blind Cyclops, its heart of stone lost long ago, the stem bent out of shape to cling to a finger thickened with labor. He sips his raksi through the mustache, wipes the dampness to the tips of his mustache, smacks his mouth and pushes the lips in a porcine pucker to smell the mustache. He must sense that my attention is wavering, because he starts again.
"The flood of 2050 ruined me. I was a good shopkeeper. Good merchant. Sahus in Bhairahawa gave me three lakhs, four lakhs in credit. But the flood came, and that was the end of my prosperity. Lakshmi swam away in that flood–that is what I tell people. The flood got everybody, but the poor remained poor, the farmers lost one crop. I had three truck loads of merchandise in a go-down. Water reached the light bulbs, that is how high it came. Three days earlier I had received a shipment of sugar. Sugar! In a flood! Like that!" A clap of hands: palms sliding over each other. Gone!
"I used to do one lakh thirty thousand rupees is sales daily. Can you imagine that much money? I guess you could. Now everybody has one lakh rupees. Even this shop cost one lakh rupees, Rabi says. Didn't you say, Rabi? Fridge, gas, liquor, table, chairs, everything. But the flood took everything from me, everything. I became one like a mad man, left home, left my family. I haven't been back ever since. Even now, sahus from Narayanghat, Birgunj, they say–if you settle down, if you do your work, we'll give two lakh, three lakh in credit. They still come to my family because I still owe money. Thirteen bigha land, a go-down full of soap, rice, dal, sugar: flood took everything."
He sees nobody is listening anymore. In the reprieve he grants, a Sherpa woman starts talking in her sing-song, impenetrable accent. "Sherpa people can't make food taste very good, but they are very clean, very clean," she says. The shop used to belong to her sister in law, who got her papers to go to "Fuddans," so Rabi, a Rai, owns it now. The Sherpa woman doesn't seem to approve. "It tastes alright, tastes of kodo, so it is alright. But what kind of a Sherpa restaurant doesn't have tongba?"
"You knew the people who owned this restaurant?" Niru Pokharel, whose cousin has an examination in a few days and who is quite lost in the big city where she has been for just a week now, smiles at the Sherpa woman, who gives Niru a brief history of the establishment: her sister in law bought it from another Sherpa family from Solu, their neighbor, and before that it was owned by the Gurung family that lives above the shop. There is never enough water here, and it is too far from Samakhusi Chowk for it to be profitable. It should have been closer to the chowk."
"With this style, style of management, this standard and service, it should have been outside the hospital, and then," says the businessman from his corner, finishing his sentence with a quick jerk of his neck to draw an exclamation with his chin. "It is alright," says Niru, who grew up with Rabi in Morang, "Babu is a hard working boy. He will make the place work." Rabi is indeed personable, recognizes faces, has a very polite, very friendly approach. When he learns that the one-armed man is also a Rai from around his area, he doesn't hesitate to call the customer into the kitchen, pull up a stool for the man, and start chatting about the Eastern Hills. The one-armed man pulls his sleeve over the missing appendage and shoves the sleeve under his backpack. They talk, calling each other Sainla dai, their Nepali a mellifluous contrast to the rough, confrontational cadence of Nepali spoken around Tanhun.
"So you are really a writer?" Niru sits at the table, not bothering to clear the next table where a teenager girl is whispering into the ears of a seven year old boy, both of them talking rapidly in English, conspiring about their next culinary folly: sukuti? Sekuwa? Buff Chowmin? The dark corners of the cheap bhatti around the corner seem to these children an escape rarely permitted by the family: the half-plate of momo shared between aunt and nephew a tastier treat than the canned/foiled sweetmeats their relatives in America can send. "So you are really a writer?" Niru asks. Nobody believes me when I say I am a writer. So I don't tell her I am also writing movies, because she wouldn't believe that.
"Not that I know much, but you know how it is, I have tried, not stories, I don't think I could do stories, but poems. No, not poems, exactly, because I think it is hard to write poems, but ghazals, yes, ghazals. I dabble in ghazals." She beams. Waits for me to say something, but I nod instead. What does one say to a nineteen year old woman who dabbles in ghazals? "So, you are still a student?" I ask.
"Of life," she beams again. This is precious. She is a student of life. I feel she is accusing me of hypocrisy, of fronting. I am a student of life. How tedious that is as an idea. "Back home, in Morang, there is an FM station where I have two hours every week and people tell me I have a very good voice. So I thought I would try here, in Kathmandu, but without contacts and relatives, it is impossible," she says. "It is just, just too big, too many people, too big a city." She is not exasperated. "But, I like reading more than I like reading, even though I do dabble in ghazals."
"You will return, won't you?" she stands by the door, holding her phone. I nod. "Maybe I will read your name in the papers some day," she says. I shrug. "It made me happy to talk to an actual writer," she says, but I don't wait to indulge such bullshit. It is cold outside, the rain having poured furiously first, and then steadily chilled the air with a persistent, pleasant drizzle. Now the air is damp, but not particularly wet. Businessman is furiously sucking on another Shikhar, hunched up by the newly laid sewer walls, slapping cement dust onto the wet walls to seal it. He looks up at me, but I don't think he recognizes me anymore. He sniffs at his mustache once more.
"The flood of 2050 ruined me. I was a good shopkeeper. Good merchant. Sahus in Bhairahawa gave me three lakhs, four lakhs in credit. But the flood came, and that was the end of my prosperity. Lakshmi swam away in that flood–that is what I tell people. The flood got everybody, but the poor remained poor, the farmers lost one crop. I had three truck loads of merchandise in a go-down. Water reached the light bulbs, that is how high it came. Three days earlier I had received a shipment of sugar. Sugar! In a flood! Like that!" A clap of hands: palms sliding over each other. Gone!
"I used to do one lakh thirty thousand rupees is sales daily. Can you imagine that much money? I guess you could. Now everybody has one lakh rupees. Even this shop cost one lakh rupees, Rabi says. Didn't you say, Rabi? Fridge, gas, liquor, table, chairs, everything. But the flood took everything from me, everything. I became one like a mad man, left home, left my family. I haven't been back ever since. Even now, sahus from Narayanghat, Birgunj, they say–if you settle down, if you do your work, we'll give two lakh, three lakh in credit. They still come to my family because I still owe money. Thirteen bigha land, a go-down full of soap, rice, dal, sugar: flood took everything."
He sees nobody is listening anymore. In the reprieve he grants, a Sherpa woman starts talking in her sing-song, impenetrable accent. "Sherpa people can't make food taste very good, but they are very clean, very clean," she says. The shop used to belong to her sister in law, who got her papers to go to "Fuddans," so Rabi, a Rai, owns it now. The Sherpa woman doesn't seem to approve. "It tastes alright, tastes of kodo, so it is alright. But what kind of a Sherpa restaurant doesn't have tongba?"
"You knew the people who owned this restaurant?" Niru Pokharel, whose cousin has an examination in a few days and who is quite lost in the big city where she has been for just a week now, smiles at the Sherpa woman, who gives Niru a brief history of the establishment: her sister in law bought it from another Sherpa family from Solu, their neighbor, and before that it was owned by the Gurung family that lives above the shop. There is never enough water here, and it is too far from Samakhusi Chowk for it to be profitable. It should have been closer to the chowk."
"With this style, style of management, this standard and service, it should have been outside the hospital, and then," says the businessman from his corner, finishing his sentence with a quick jerk of his neck to draw an exclamation with his chin. "It is alright," says Niru, who grew up with Rabi in Morang, "Babu is a hard working boy. He will make the place work." Rabi is indeed personable, recognizes faces, has a very polite, very friendly approach. When he learns that the one-armed man is also a Rai from around his area, he doesn't hesitate to call the customer into the kitchen, pull up a stool for the man, and start chatting about the Eastern Hills. The one-armed man pulls his sleeve over the missing appendage and shoves the sleeve under his backpack. They talk, calling each other Sainla dai, their Nepali a mellifluous contrast to the rough, confrontational cadence of Nepali spoken around Tanhun.
"So you are really a writer?" Niru sits at the table, not bothering to clear the next table where a teenager girl is whispering into the ears of a seven year old boy, both of them talking rapidly in English, conspiring about their next culinary folly: sukuti? Sekuwa? Buff Chowmin? The dark corners of the cheap bhatti around the corner seem to these children an escape rarely permitted by the family: the half-plate of momo shared between aunt and nephew a tastier treat than the canned/foiled sweetmeats their relatives in America can send. "So you are really a writer?" Niru asks. Nobody believes me when I say I am a writer. So I don't tell her I am also writing movies, because she wouldn't believe that.
"Not that I know much, but you know how it is, I have tried, not stories, I don't think I could do stories, but poems. No, not poems, exactly, because I think it is hard to write poems, but ghazals, yes, ghazals. I dabble in ghazals." She beams. Waits for me to say something, but I nod instead. What does one say to a nineteen year old woman who dabbles in ghazals? "So, you are still a student?" I ask.
"Of life," she beams again. This is precious. She is a student of life. I feel she is accusing me of hypocrisy, of fronting. I am a student of life. How tedious that is as an idea. "Back home, in Morang, there is an FM station where I have two hours every week and people tell me I have a very good voice. So I thought I would try here, in Kathmandu, but without contacts and relatives, it is impossible," she says. "It is just, just too big, too many people, too big a city." She is not exasperated. "But, I like reading more than I like reading, even though I do dabble in ghazals."
"You will return, won't you?" she stands by the door, holding her phone. I nod. "Maybe I will read your name in the papers some day," she says. I shrug. "It made me happy to talk to an actual writer," she says, but I don't wait to indulge such bullshit. It is cold outside, the rain having poured furiously first, and then steadily chilled the air with a persistent, pleasant drizzle. Now the air is damp, but not particularly wet. Businessman is furiously sucking on another Shikhar, hunched up by the newly laid sewer walls, slapping cement dust onto the wet walls to seal it. He looks up at me, but I don't think he recognizes me anymore. He sniffs at his mustache once more.
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