Destination Biratnagar

Waiting for the flight in the airport is one of the detestable things for me and this time the destination itself would bring my excitement down. Its not the destination but the climate that made my destination undesirable otherwise I am someone who love the expanse Terai, the paddy fields expanding beyond the limits of my sight, the whistling breeze that would spell life into the beautiful greenery, the cows returning home and the monotonous ringing of the bells tied around their neck. I love watching them walk, I watch with great amusement the size of their belly little protruded after grazing for the whole day and more content are the eyes of the shepherd expecting the amount of milk he can get. In the early mornings, inside the small tea-stalls the sight of people squatting holding small glass of tea gives an impression how one can find pleasure in smallest of the things. The tweeting birds in the early morning along the wires that follow the road may be to its dead-end, make the morning musical.
Thank god, the flight was in time almost exact except in the runway we had to wait for almost 15 minutes to wait for a VIP who would arrive late at the cost of our time. Time has no value in this part of the world, if you can’t make it today, make it tomorrow, we live by that principle and it is that simple. If we can’t do it next generation will do it, what a wonderful way to shirk our responsibilities. In order to avoid the curses of the waiting passengers we were not told why we were made to wait for no apparent reasons. The authorities knew the passengers were well-prepared for delays.
Anyways the plane took off and as it gained altitude the city looked smaller and smaller, the houses tiny and tiny. The roads looked like lines on the palm of a huge hand. I felt like shifting the crowdedly clustered houses to somewhere else in my palm like the mythical “Hanuman”. I wished I could rebuild the city. The plane penetrated the clouds and the hide and seek started. I could see white clouds like balls of cotton randomly dropped over the earth. Thicker the clouds more excited I was to jump down into them, lay on my back, legs bent one leg over another, my head pillowed on my hands, to look at these flying planes. In my thoughts I was no older than two twin sisters who sat in seats in front of me on the other side. Unlike them I just didn’t say “In aeroplane the conductors are ladies.” This innocent comment from these kids is still ringing in my ear and I cannot resist smiling. I wonder how the attendant would have reacted to this, how much of energy would it have taken for them to maintain their fake smiles. By, the way the attendants were more beautiful than the last time. However the fakeness in their smile grabbed my attention more than their beauty. Prabably that was the painful part of their job. In my last flight the hostess hadn’t said “Namaste” to every passenger, they only brought their palms closer and didn’t even smile. I wonder if we had paid more for the ticket this time.
The plane flew over the rivers and I would try to see their source but they would vanish inside the clouds. The terai was enveloped in clouds most of the time but as it became clearer, I was overjoyed to see the green paddy, no clusters of houses. The majority of the houses I could say almost made me forget we lived in concrete structures. The small huts looked like scarecrow in the huge fields. The bread-basket of the country was welcoming us with the open arms. The Koshi river looked ferocious and it had already engulfed a huge area leaving a large number of people homeless.
We were in the ground after rising to 13800 feet and the temperature of 30 degree Celsius at 5:00 PM made me worried about the day that was to follow. The drizzle that followed brought some solace and I was pleased to feel the terian water in my cheeks. Honking of rickshaws, streets dividing the houses into two sides, sights of women in their bicycle, speed of the vehicles, shapeless smoke rising from the huts, coconut trees, confirmed that I was in Biratnagar or in any other plain. It was hot but not as scary as I had anticipated. The shops opened till late in the night and late till morning took me by surprise. The country certainly has variation. At 7:00 I had to walk to quite a distance to find a shop open to get a tooth-brush which I had forgotten to bring. To my wonder the street looked lonely except for few bicycles carrying the school students. Like villages I had expected even the city to rise early but many chimneys were already belching smoke, the smell of the firewood made me want tea. Tea in small glasses, teas darker in color and teas rich in milk, alas not a single stall is open. Small biscuits dipped in the local tea tasted great. The stalls had this biscuits in thick bottles and they sold it in individual pieces.

Just another evening in office

My small room is sparsely lit. The bluish light has created a kind of cosmic ambience. I am in love with that small bulb at the upper corner on the left of the entrance that keeps trying to make my room look brighter. When the faint stream of light evades the bulb, I feel like the protestors slipping in through the barricade into the restricted area. I love this rebellious nature light. It has spread like the light that escapes from the corners of unrelenting clouds after a rain. May be it is not only the rebel, its mischief as well. When I was young, very young indeed not even ten, we used to tie handkerchief around our eyes and we had to catch our friends. In those games children life myself used to escape under the spread arms of the blinded person. He/she used to get hold of the preys but alas he would only embrace the air, the abundant air, air that could not be embraced. The lights are escaping from underneath the cover of that bulb, the cover that has given the light the bluishness. The wall clock arms are aligned against each other at 5 and I assume its 25 past 5. I could have doubted the clock but I don’t, I trust it. In these two years, I never had complaints with this clock. I never asked why had it been punctual, always active and running. In this loneliness, I am wondering for the first time if that’s the peon who regularly changes the battery. Probably it’s the same peon who brings me a cup of tea every morning at 11:00. Why is he so punctual? May be that is the reason he never wants the watch to sleep.

I don’t know when the sounds went to sleep, I remember something falling on the other end a while ago and after that somebody yelled. I don’t remember hearing anything after that. Silence looms in this part of my huge office soon after it strikes 5:00, sometime even earlier. I always hear the cheerful voices of people rushing home. They are always in hurry, like the tumultuous school students. I like those sounds, most of them meaningless. In my school a teacher used to say “When one speaks its an opinion, when many speak its noise”, it was more than 30 years back, I must have been 13-14 years then. Once I asked out of nowhere, unprepared “Why not ‘when one speaks its opinion, when many speak its rebellion’”? Back in those days, thrashing students was part of teacher’s duty, when I spoke that something reminded my teacher that duty of his which he had not obliged in last 45 minutes. I gave him chance to carry out his duty. I could not complete my math’s homework because of the welts, thanks to myself for reminding my teacher his duties. The other day, I was made to do 100 sit ups and my math teacher thought my ears were some ugly flowers which he wanted to pluck. Thanks to him my ears pained for almost a week. Somewhere at that point I lost my voice, never raised any questions, just listened to opinions, in spite of that I did get few more thrashings.

I think I can still feel the welts today, I became an introvert. Anyways, I find the light meets my personality. In these years I have not been to many rooms of my department, and I get confused in the names of my colleagues. That has also come with advantage though, my life has lesser interventions, I have to bring less fake smiles, I rather slay from front rather than backstab, I know my enemies better and I get my work done. The cigarette is getting smaller and smaller. The smoke rings twirl and vanish. I like the smoke rings struggling to exist, struggling to outlive their age. When I put the cigarette in my mouth to inhale the smoke, the edges of the cigarette go red. They burn and sulk, I feel like a master. I share the feel of Dagny Taggart (character from Ayn Rands ‘Atlas Shrugged’) proud at being able to tame the forceful flint of fire between my fingers. The papers under the paper-weight want to blow away with the air from the moving fan on the other side of me. The release of smoke has been strangely in sync with the fluttering of the paper as if the paper were excited to see the smoke rise higher and higher, as if it was cheering the paper. By the time the smoke vanishes, the fan would have faced the other side and the papers lie motionless on the table. My legs are on the table, one leg over another and the dark brown socks has given my feet strange look. I enjoy sitting this way specially when there is a cigarette in my hand. At this point of time, even ethics would have gone to take some rest. I have realized that for last few days I have regularly stayed in office after it sounds quiet, just to enjoy the puffs of smoke, to put my legs on the table one over another like a tyrant. My tyranny is against myself.

I was in my room when one of my bosses steno came to my room. Unlike many other stenos, she has this good habit of knocking at the door before scaring you off with unexpected presence. I had the same position as I have now except I didn’t have a cigarette. Had it been somebody else I would have dropped my legs but since it was her I didn’t. I feel she likes this care-free attitude, she leaves with a smile looking back, trying to appear seductive. That is when I want to have a heart full of laughter. She thinks I am hitting on her and possibly she enjoys this.

I can hear somebody’s footsteps, probably it’s the guards locking the rooms, my cigarette’s bud is on the ashtray. It’s time to go home.

Picking up a day from past

The temperature has only risen this week. Even falling asleep is difficult in the climate where the sky is breathing hot air. In the crowed concrete jungle of Kathmandu, cool breeze is a very rare commodity. That makes me sit under the clear sky in the night on the terrace of my house. Just a day before yesterday, I was relishing on the cool breeze in the night, the sky appealed me, it just lifted my chin to gaze it. Millions and millions of star hung in its expanse shawl. During my childhood, I used to read in science books and poems about the twinkling stars, I used to look at them but I never saw them twinkle because twinkling to me was going on and off the way the colorful lights do during Diwali. Till date I associate the term “twinkle” with lights going on and off. Sky specially the sky at Night has always mesmerized me; I get entangled in the fantasies, laden with so many questions. When loneliness and evening meet they make me nostalgic, so many men are reminded of pain and agony when they look into their past and luckily for me past has been wonderful, probably wonderful that present and they are wonderful because its past.

Anyways, that night under the elderly looking sky decorated with twinkling stars, I revisited my school life in my thoughts. The breeze became cooler as if it was blowing for those days. I remembered rising up early, finishing home assignments and rushing to school, to be part of a class where faces twinkled more than the stars. I cannot extract the meaning of the hubbub but I find music in it, music with no words but with soul. My friends are chatting, running, laughing and even crying. There are so many of those students who I still meet as job-holders, mothers, husband and wives, the impression of time is so clearly visible in them. Some of them are taller, some are chubbier, some have become serious, the faces have altered but the traits shaped by the childhood are somewhere there reminding we have known each other for a long time, very long time. Few have same cunning smile, some faces shine the same way when they laugh, some hands still move impatiently as they talk and some are still children though they have their own children. I sometime feel that childhood has not vanished, it hasn’t lost but its suppressed. When its friends we forget the age, when we meet after long time we remember good old days together reminding one another moments and events that have been rusted by the mighty time. Again matured people talk silly, laugh on silliest of comments, make fun of each other trying to make maximum out of it because when we disperse a different life awaits us. The shade of past vanishes in the dazzles of present. Back at home we have a different role to play because past is past, unrecoverable but sweet, distant yet very close, dream but that was a reality. It seems as if we are just the characters of a novel who sometime come out of the books, the books that only lie in the shelf. We come out, tug the layer of dust, hold each others hand, dance and sing, laugh and cry.

Change becomes something so visible and powerful. The laziest of us are now most active bankers, the flowing and dirty noses are dry and clean, the eyes have become frail and they need the support of glasses, beauties have turned into ugliness, ugliness are now beauties, bullies are empathetic, jokers are serious, mighty have become powerless, dummies have become scholar. Its not the change that is so significant it is what has changed that is so significant and loud.

I am so much captivated by past, by nostalgia because today few of us from our schools almost 10 years back are gathering an hour later. I am pleased, I am excited, I am so touched. I am excited to meet them, to seek my friends, classmates among the grown ups who I will be meeting a while later.