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.

Expression

The black clouds didn’t let the earth see its beloved Sun specially after it rained all the night. The city is littered and muddy, there are puddles everywhere thanks to the worn out roads where stones and the tars have come out of their places and the roads look like a toothless old man. It feels pity to walk on these road but businesses cannot be stopped for roads. In the evening the beam of light that entered into the go-down like passage of our department, I felt really nice. The roads must have felt better as well as with the Sun peeping through the curtains of heavy clouds it must have given the roads a hope to get dried. But then its nature, why would nature listen to the woes of dirty roads and miseries of people who forgot umbrellas at home, the black clouds were back again. Today we witnessed Sun for not more than fifteen minutes. When it rains occasionally and when it’s the first rain of the season, it’s a different feeling, the smell of the soil, the leaves that dance taking a shower everything part of the rapturous nature. When it rains longer, when the mood is already somber and one has to walk in the littered city now clad in mud the chances of feeling happy is very little specially when one is not pleased with the day, with oneself. The drizzle had already started and drops of water on my glasses made things look blur. In the road everyone hurried to home, few with umbrellas and few without umbrella. In the sleek cars the richs and the important watched we poor souls as we jumped and tip-toed avoiding the puddle which were bigger pools at places.

I was already missing a warm cup of tea as I hurried home under an umbrella whose wires have come out and desperately looking for some repair. I remember their poor condition only when I have to use them and I am using the same umbrella broken at places, may be I won’t replace it until it sags. Either the whole lot of workers had returned home lot earlier than me or I was late I had no problem finding the public tempo. Two elderly people sat facing each other and were talking their things which didn’t interest me. May be after being in a safer place I was busy observing the people trapped in rain, the walking umbrellas as the carriers were hidden under these umbrellas, kids clad in their rain coat. I saw one of the old men laughing. He had lost his front teeth, the gap made him look pretty specially in the grey hair which remained only in their sides. My thoughts were caught in ‘will I live till my teeth fall’. I got interested in their activities, they were talking about a book whose name I don’t remember. They talked how they pass time, about their children, none of them talked about their wives may be they were widower. It must be very difficult to live lonely at that age. As I was pondering about these things, the old man who sat by my side told the other that one of their friends died a month ago. The expression on the face of another old man changed without transition. It was filled more with fear and hopelessness rather than with pity. He must have thought they are all standing in the same queue just waiting to be picked up by death. I wonder if they still had dreams or if dreams had become meaningless at their age. I wondered I would they look back into their lives, what would they think seeing the babies they had carried on their arms now carrying their own babies. Once we know the end there is just meaninglessness around. I don’t know if the old man was thinking people will talking about his death just as similar as they were talking about the death of their friend. Their generation was just dying out, to let others to fill their place. In the long run no one means anything to the world. How do they think when they see young people living the days they once lived. Their frail heart must have been the graveyard of so many wishes, so many ambitions. What would they plan for the next day? In my childhood specially when I was bed-ridden after I broke my leg and when nobody used to be around, I used to think what if I lost my parents and the thoughts would be just expanded and I would cry. How would they feel when they know now the countdown has begun. One often ask a retiring employee how was his/her experience in the job, I wonder what would they reply if one asked them about the experience of their life. What would they think when they hold their grandchildren in their arms? What would they think when they see an old lady in the woman they married, the woman they lived with. Would it trouble them that they might see their beloved partner bading them goodbye for ever. I had become serious, the old men must have talked about so many things when I come out with my questions. The aura of the old man had changed and it had clear tints of indifference when I departed. I am walking the same road, somebody might undergo through similar thoughts when they will see me then.

 

Haphazard

The morning is torrid and I am already feeling lazy thinking how hot and scorching the day is going to be. The color coat in a newly painted house that I can see from my verandah is irritatingly shiny. The sky is clear but not soothing. Interestingly I am excited about going to office today which is a very rare case. I took a day off yesterday as I had an exam, I took it without any need just to help my classmates. After so many mornings of a queue of bikes before my house, the passage to my home looks rather lonely today. My mother told the other day I have been inducted into the hall of fame of VIPs, her tone sarcastic and her aura mocking me. I must say I have been busy lately. I have always been busy when I have had exams. The other day I was helping a classmate solve a problem in my room and lecturing another on the cell and there was a call waiting in the landline. Sarita found this rather funny and incomprehensible. Mummy is used to it and she thinks it is futile on my part, but may be I feel good. I feel good when I look important, feel important but I hate this feeling. Everyone likes praises but I think my likings are little too much and that’s why I hate it.

Two laborers are working in our small garden, they are digging a tunnel for passage of water. After watching them work and the work they did, I was thinking I could have done that so that was waste of money. I felt nice to have this feeling though I know it only looks easy but is a tough task in reality. There are books and papers spread in my room, so many papers of assignments and projects belong to those who had been here for study yesterday and days before. Many books are waiting to be read in my shelves and I don’t think I will consider their plea very soon. I will however finish books that I have borrowed from others. That is a promise to those books!!!!!

I am feeling bored as I am writing this, may be it is because I am writing after such a long time. I was busy helping Sarita do her assignments and she always has so many stories of her friends and schools to tell me. The reserves of her stories never empties. Today she was telling me about one of her classmates whose parents had a tough time making the two ends meet. She said, they were made to evacuate their rented rooms after being able to pay rents for months. The teachers have asked the other students to help them with things they have in extra like books and copies. I appreciated the teacher. Sarita would have had same fate were she left at her home in Dhading. She would not have made it to school as her parents are poor and she would have to take care of her younger siblings. It makes me feel a little better because I feel guilty for having a child work as maid. She goes to school and she is happy most of the time, that should console me, I suppose.

The other story she told me was of another of her friends who found a pouch of ribbons red and blue on the road which he showed to the teacher. The teacher jokingly told her since he has so many ribbons he should tie them in his hair as well, the other day the boy came to school with ribbon tied in his hair. Sarita says he is so dumb and passive that he actually thought the teacher really wanted him to see in ribbon. 

Though there are books and papers around me I am least interested in them. May be it’s the dazzling heat, I should start studying.

I am powerful

“But you had said you loved me”, it was a desperate plea. I guffawed. “When did I say that to you?” my reply was sharp and cruel. “Not everything needs to be told”, her eyes were confused, her face had become red, this red was redder than the red when she used to blush, her eyes narrowed and her nose looked more pointed. Her hair were still unmanaged and a lock of it tried to hid her breasts. But there was nothing she had which I hadn’t seen if she wanted to hide her body, she was still naked and so I was but I was pulling my trousers up. Her lips looked like the petals of a rose in a young spring, I wanted to taste them again as by that time I had already forgotten the taste of her lips. She was looking strange, in her anger she looked more matured. Her eyes were still confused. She said which was however a question, “you never loved me”. I have always been truthful, I nodded my head. Its not that she never asked me if I loved her, she used to ask me that question in most of our meetings which she called ‘date’ just to make it sound more fancy. To me those were just meetings and she was just another girl. Every time my reply was ‘no’ and she always smiled, the smile mocked my truth. She used to ask me if I had someone else in my life, I never have had anyone who I regarded my and I will never have one. My reply used to be simple and true, ‘No’. Her reaction suggested security, she seemed to take a deep breath and she used to pull her body so that her neck looked shorter and her shoulders used to get closer to her ear.  Now she is accusing me but I had never lied. I never have two plays at the same time. I love playing with weak and helpless because that is what I am. I won’t tell you lie, my relation with women is my attempt to prove I am not weak, I am not helpless. When they beg before me, I feel satisfied. I feel so powerful to be in a position to make or ruin somebody’s life, but I have never put a trap, I have never lied. I have never told a woman I loved her. “Not everything needs to be told”, she repeated. Was that another of the universal truth that I missed in my primary school? “But I always told you I didn’t love you”. She stared at me undoubtedly she was more confused now, her remark was an incomplete “But..”. “So is this the only thing you had wanted from me”. Even after knowing my inclination toward truth and even after knowing the answer and the truth itself, every woman asks me the same thing. “Yes” was my reply, I repented for nothing. I had not forced her to sleep with me, I had not forced her to meet me. Many times the meetings have been her arrangements. Today’s meeting was one of her arrangements in her favorite restaurant. She was happy, she wanted me to ask the reason. I asked her but I don’t remember her reply, I was just looking at her, she looked beautiful, I was looking at her from the eye of an artist. After so many failed attempts to own her body, today’s evening I didn’t even think about sleeping with her. She hardly allowed me to kiss and that had made my challenge difficult and that is what made me adamant to sleep her, to see her naked, to play with her bare body. Today she looked preetier than ever, when I drove her back, she asked me to come in. I still have no hint that today was going to be my day. She had lost her so called “morality” to her happiness, the reason of which I hadn’t listened. We watched TV and whatever happened next was just unplanned. I enjoyed, I know how she looks like naked. I know her now inside out. When everything happened and when she had lost all her physical privacy to me, when she had chosen to be my slave, she seemed to have woken up. Out of nowhere she asked me when were we supposed to marry. My reaction was innocent, “Marry? Why should I marry you”  And then was that question “But you said you loved me” She was looking so pretty that I would have made love to her once again, again and again but she spoilt everything. Her red lips disturbed me but I knew she won’t let me get closer. Deceived by my own nature I won’t lie to re-possess her body, play with it. With other women I have slept more than once but with this one, this is the first and this is the last. Oh God why can’t I lie. What would have happened had I said we will marry , next year, next month or may be tomorrow. I would have avoided finding another woman. I cursed myself. Tears rolled in her eyes, they made me more content. I wanted to yell from the terrace into the city that had already fallen asleep that I had made somebody cry, I control somebody. She said, “I have no point to live.” That won’t bother me. I was going to be same, had she wanted me to continue meeting her, I would have done that because believe me my hunger for her body had not satiated. You would say I disrespected women, I considered them as a toy to play with. Sorry, you have got me wrong. In my entire writing do you see I have created a trap, they have just fallen to me. I have never raped a woman, I have never used a woman who has been let down by the world, I have never forced anyone to sleep with me. I respect women more than those who shout for woman rights. I just seek the ultimate pleasure in the universe, just for that one moment I love women. I do not want them cry, I like smiling faces of women.

She lifted her face, the tears had dried but they had left their track through her cheeks. Her anger was still worse, “So, you considered me just a whore, you picked from a market, slept with and dumped.” “No” my plea was desperate. I have never picked a whore to sleep with and I will never do that. As I said earlier, to get what is easier to get is not my business. I do not want to buy a body with money, its passion that I love to possess not just a body of a woman. “I have not changed”, I said. You are no different to me than you were yesterday and few hours before when we were having lunch. I had no intentions to hurt you.

She spit in my face, that raised my temper but it dropped down. I wiped my face and I left the room, she had covered her face with her arms as she sat with bent knees. She looked like a model posing for a nude picture. The door slammed behind me. After walking for 10 minutes I looked back, the lights of her room was still on. 

Strokes of thoughts

 More than half of last one hour I wasted in vain looking for my specs and now as I write this I still do not have specs. Without specs I am not feeling myself as if I have borrowed eyes from somebody else, donated by somebody already dead. The vision is blur and strained. From last one hour I had been wanting to write something strokes of words, words if woven become poem, become sentence, become quote, become inspiration, become vision and if spread apart just meaningless. By the way in the last sentence I remembered I had a nap earlier and that reminded me where I could have left my specs. Now the specs stand on my nose. I feel better though in the last half an hour I have spilled so many thoughts that have dried. I carried it more than I could hold, like a kid holding so many things in his arm, walks with care but still unknowingly leaves behind fallen things, clothes, books, beads and so on. Possibly somebody will collect his things but who will collect my spilled thoughts, who will see it, who will fill it when me where they originated have failed to hold them. Why are they so volatile? What is the meaning of their existence? I write while I keep forgetting, I forget still I keep writing. Crazy words!!! I think to write one thing and when they are written they are something else. My thoughts are so restless, so disconnected. Since no chain exists between one wave of thought to another they just vanish similar to the items that vanishes in the hand of the magician. We tighten our fist so that we can hold things, so that it does not go away and we control it. When we tighten fist we are assured that we have strong hold of our possession but in magic they vanish when they are strongly held. In real life it’s the case with relationship I believe, stronger we hold someone away we get from him/her, by the time we open the fist alas!!! There is none left. Drink your tear then, drown in sorrow. Lost can be looked for but those who leave are gone, gone for ever. More we look for them farther they go. I again wrote things I didn’t have in my thoughts when I was looking for specs. The earlier thoughts lived their life and gone they are. I tried to tighten my fist and faster they vanished.

I returned home irritated by the cacophony in a wedding. I had a nap because my irritation would not just go away. I woke up with listlessness which I still have and then I was invaded with thoughts, random ones, those that I never feel like writing, those that have never been beautiful, those that are sticky like gums that I want to get rid of. I went for a bath, while I bathed I bathed with thoughts more than I bathed with water. Water washes the dirt from ones outer body what washes the thoughts that is inside your head, your heart. I had skirmishes with thoughts and I feel ‘skirmishes’ are the appropriate words. I came out of the bathroom into the empty home the home that is just another house when its empty. My dog slept lazily in his couch and he didn’t feel necessary to check who opened the door. I like home when there are voices filled in its atmosphere. I was raised thus in a small world of my family apart from which nothing mattered. I sought happiness among my family and that made me rather insecure.

The climate that has abruptly become hotter is equally irritating, in the roads people prefer walking in the shades. Just few days back, basking in the sun was one thing people missed about holidays but now they just stay in. Roads will be emptier and laziness will take over probably the season favorable for thoughts is slipping away. Probably in the thoughts now will be heated, sweaty and contradictory. I know that won’t happen but who knows scientists in developed world are actually experimenting on it.

Scratches of thoughts when no mood for work

There is still time for the stars to appear in the sky, the twilight is usual. From somewhere I smell the froth of boiling tea. Ah!! there it is the push-cart, a hotel in a wheel. I have never had tea from these push-carts one I am not a great fan of tea and the other I am concerned about cleanliness and the jazz. It’s been a while that the cart has stood in front of me and as the naughty froth try to come out of the kettle the owner of the business lowers the flame of his stove. I must have been watching the over enthusiastic froth for almost ten minutes and in all these minutes not a single customer has come yet the owner seems to be in hurry. He opens one container after another. There is no reason behind my standing before the book shop watching the cart. Yes I had come to the book shop to check for a book unfortunately the book was not there. I had stopped to think what should I do next as like many times I had become thoughtless, had forgotten everything as if it were some amnesia. I could not make sense of the crowd, they make me feel dizzy, my existence become so minute and trivial, and everyone is in hurry. On the other side of the road a slogan is painted on the wall. It is an appeal I don’t understand, appeal to reconstruct the country. But that is none of my concern; I am irritated by the hubbub. All these people seem to me to have been directed to move, walk, trot in random and they are doing what they are told without knowing why they were told to do so. The book shop is crowded too and people are seeking books in all kind of subjects, subjects even my father wouldn’t have heard in his youth while he was student in a huge city of Calcutta. I believe they have renamed the city to Kolkata, may be they don’t like Shakespeare (“What’s in name that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”). Even many places in Kathmandu city have been renamed but that makes sense to me because that is what New Nepal is. I won’t be surprised if they changed the name of the country itself.
The twilight has come on a hold, it is not changing, the sky has stopped the roads are however busy, I feel the pace of people has widened. This seem to be a competition where every man on the road wants to overtake the other, as if they are running for a jewel and everyone fearing that the mine might be empty when they reach there. The steam from the kettle rises and vanishes. A gate opens and the students come out of the college chattering, playing, laughing just to lose their identity in the crowd, just to lose their voice in the noise. Small glasses are wiped and are arranged upside down in the cart, he picked a small dirty piece of cloth to lift the kettle from the stove and soon small glasses were filled as the student came directly to his stall.
Unfortunately I lost my confidence in academic degrees just after I joined the college and yet the fear of unemployment had me stuck in the college for four years. I won’t deny that I was different when I came out of the college but it has been a little help. Unwillingly I am back at the doors of college once again just to get a proof of knowing things. I try to seek if these students have different opinions. I seek it in their eyes, in their body language and in their expression. Whether it’s the light that has become scarce by this time or because of my own problems I fail to find anything. I see people more aware of political alignment and consciousness than consciousness for quality living. Soon the glasses of tea start emptying, a small boy probably the owner’s son is busy cleaning the glasses. I didn’t notice when he joined his father but I can see a man in the making I hope he grows up to become someone whose shop is bigger and more profitable than his father’s. He dips glasses into a tub of water whose color changes from colorless to light tea. He rinses them with clean water next and it becomes ready for another round.
The crowd fails to clear and I come out of my amnesia. I mix in the crowd and a bus sweeps me from one crowd to next. In my lonely room I feel significant, I feel sad to seek myself in the crowd.

Search for a book

They say you can find even god if you seek him properly but today after wandering all around Bhotahity and Ratnapark I could not find a good book of Quantitative Techniques. This is not a book I am searching with a choice but rather with an obligation of a course I am pursuing. They also say to seek god one does not need to wander from one place to another, from one temple to another, god is inside oneself, one just need to concentrate and find that god. My concentration has never been so focused and selfless as I have never found the god inside me. I race between one thing to other when I try to unlayer myself, turn the leaves after leaves inside me. There hasn’t been a long time since I have started believing in god and even that was for selfish reasons yet I believe there he is or may be she is. What’s in gender? God is god after all.

Today was probably just another bad day for me. After visiting one book shop to another I still had found nothing but coincidentally I found so many people I hadn’t seen for years, some people whose images had been wiped up from my faintest of memories. I met my primary school teacher that’s more than eighteen years back at time I hadn’t even hit the double figure of my age. Then I almost collided with one of my father’s friend who I hadn’t seen for almost twenty years. Now one will wonder do I really mean I recognized them and I should say yes I did. At the time when those images where carved into my memories I used to be sharp today I am only outwardly witty nothing close to sharp. In the crowded lanes of Bhotahity the whole city seemed to have come, is Kathmandu really so small was a question I was asking myself in my soliloquies. By the way if I close my eyes something else opens its eyes inside me, it is just another me, who keep whispering into my brain one thing after another. These soliloquies are the reasons why I have not been able to find a god inside me.

I really struggled to come out of my burial. I was buried in works and before I could complete one another work will arrive. If one had to breathe voluntarily I would have died finding no time to breathe. I was thirsty as I walked the littered roads, my mouth parched. There was no water in office today because both the peons were absent. I measured the roads between Thamel to Shahid-Gate in vain. Many book sellers didn’t know what Quantitative Techniques really was. To be true even I didn’t know till few days back, I didn’t know statistics was called Quantitative techniques. When the teacher brought the subject before class, and discussed its role in decision making I was puzzled how could decision be quantified? And now I know it. It is not actually quantifying decision but aiding the making of proper and effective decision. Luckily I am not ashamed of my ignorance and that is why I enjoy the Eureka moments. The transition between complex problems to easy solutions is such a wonderful experience. Problems are problems until we find a solution, (what a silly statement it seems to be but that’s it). Complexity are properties of things, events etc. until a way-out has been found. Possibly simplicity is the fundamental property of every thing, may be we just need to discover it. The ‘Eureka’ moments cherishes us.

I almost ran out of the break time as I wasted all the time running helplessly from one book store to next. I cannot afford staying hungry, my hunger for knowledge would never be satiated with a burger but without a burger I will not be able to stay alive to enjoy the hunger for knowledge. Unfortunately this hunger for Quantitative Analysis is an induced one not a genuine one. Hopefully I will find it somewhere else.

Unaccountable coins

It felt good when the conductor handed me three coins one rupee each when I told him I had a student card while handling him a note of ten rupee. If day before yesterday I had handed him the same amount he would have gruffly asked for three rupees more. I had got a new student identity card from my new college yesterday. Why it felt good, though three rupees does not make me richer neither does it buy anything that I would love to have and unfortunately there are nothing these days I would love to have except when the chill air try to pierce my body when I return from college in my friend’s bike and I wish I wish I had a car. Other days it would have been nothing but books unfortunately not even books appeal me these days. May be its work that is taking its toll; with six projects whose deadlines are already approaching, 24 hours seem insufficient. To add to that next month there will be visits to branches something worse than a pain in the butt.
Ok, now with the three rupees I have saved six rupees in fact. How come? Had I not have the card I would have paid thirteen rupees but with card I only paid seven so thirteen minus seven is six. Unfortunately even six rupee does not make me richer so that I can quit the job tomorrow and lay in my bed my legs crossed with a good book in hand or may be a soothing music in the background. Even all the six rupees I will save these two years I won’t have anything worthy. So, where will that three rupee coin go? Most probably tomorrow when I will be leaving for office, Sarita will ask for one rupee and I will hand her two because I love to see the sparkle in her eyes when she gets more than what she wants. The other one rupee will again go to her or go missing unaccountable. The ‘materialistic concept’ of accounting which I am studying in college these days also holds for me. Why would I bother about one rupee coin? If I keep getting this concession for being a student, coins will accumulate and where will they go? Nothing worth pondering though. Let’s forget Sarita because she does not get coins everyday. Now if I give ten rupees note to the conductor he will return me 3 rupees coin. Tomorrow I will hand the other conductor a note of Rupee five and two rupee coin. Now comes again the remaining one rupee coin and since my pockets have no hole, they will be spent. One of a similar day, an old man hardly able to keep his eyes open, his bony body standing on lanky legs with support of a stick, all my coins will be poured to him. But that does not make me a philanthropist not nearer to the greatest philanthropist in the history of mankind ‘Bill Gates’, the other side says no-one in the entire history of mankind has amassed as much wealth as him. I do not dismiss his being the greatest philanthropist because had I been him I would have never done that. Now that reminds me of another thing.
Only when a colleague asked if I was going home or not I realized it was already time to leave. At the station people waited desperately for a transport and none was to come, those which came didn’t stop as they were filled to limit. After 15 minutes a bus came and there was a kind of stampede to get to the bus. Few fell but I luckily was the third person to get into the bus and secured a seat by a window. While getting into the bus, running after it, a man so aggressively pulled me and threw his hand that my specs almost fell. That didn’t count as my specs were safe, my eyes safe and I was seated in a seat by window. Everyone got into it and the bus swelled. Then it changed its route. That made me indifferent as by either route I would have reached my destination. A man raised his voice, he was to get off at the same place where I was to get off even then he said its not if the bus takes him to his destination or not it should not leave those whose destination was in the other route hopeless. He was a sage who didn’t care if it comforted him or not but he felt others should not be left as such. I didn’t care after all it will reach my destination anyway. The man was seated in front of me, he turned toward me for reasons I don’t know may be to gather my support. He was the same man who had pulled me and almost broken my specs. ‘Double standards’ my boy I said to myself. I could have done surgery on his nature, what he did and what he said then it was time for me to get off then came my change the three rupees. Oops that was where I started. Leave it……..who cares for one rupee afterall.

Crap

The children are gathered in the open under the dim sky for their evening play. They are running and chasing, hugging and fighting, crying and making faces irrespective of the world, irrespective of a man who is watching them from the terrace of his home. In the background, the hill fades away but some portion of its surface that is not spilled with the shadow of its own enjoys the warm evening sun. In the courtyard Sarita is trying to show magic to the neighbors but every time she wants to vanish the coin away from her hand, she fails she stomps, folds the skin over her nose but keep trying it. Sane moves from one corner to other as the sun light no longer warms him. He looks at the place understands it isn’t warmer either and just slips inside the room, into the passage where his warm bed awaits him. Women in the neighborhood are picking their clothes from the clothesline, mums yell at their children for not wearing warming clothes while fathers are entering home. My elderly neighbors are talking with each other over a cup of tea, the old woman looks content as she laughs exposing the gap between her teeth. A row of birds are returning home after perching in the day. They maintain strange harmony as they make a perfect arc as they fly as if they were held in a string tied in their beaks. I am instinctively lazy and so I am feeling lazy. Laziness is more a desire not to do work rather than having no work. Work can be sought. My room needs dusting, there are wires snaking through my room, the books are in mess and there are spots in the mirror and the closet, the photos trapped inside the frame looks obscure as thick layer of dust has clung upon them. I have never done these things, I find my room cleaned, dusted, my clothes hung or kept on their places either by Mummy or by Sarita so I have taken these things for granted. Once a relative of mine after seeing the poster of Che Guevara tilted on the wall, said it suggested how careless I am when I should have been a perfectionist. Unfortunately I had hung the picture in such way intentionally I don’t know if the hidden intention was driven by my carelessness.

As I type words making these lines, I have a feeling of mockery for myself. What I am writing? Just writing what it comes, no subject. Yesterday I wanted to write a letter to the finance minister on my way to office and was pretty confident till I came to my cubicle only to find there was no electricity. Tsunami swept away my zeal and no letter was written, my laziness hiding under the excuse ‘Why would a Finance Minister read a letter that come by thousands in his site?’. I recollected my spirit later in the day which was again let down by a call from a colleague who wanted my help. “Destiny“ didn’t want me to write a letter to the minister, spare him from reading a thought of one of his citizens. What would I have written? I would have suggested him to open up the economy don’t be another protectionist, embrace the globalization with proper precaution, identify the impact of ICT and use it to speed development and democracy, get rid of sycophants, get the YCL dissolved and if it cannot be done filter it and enforce strict discipline, remind him China got into the track of prosperity only after it adopted the open market policy and so on. Some day I may write it to him anyway but I am just in the right mood.

Its already dark now. I feel a block inside me and somewhere I acknowledge the current anxiety with this deadlock within myself, not being able to do what I wanted. 

It's a flat world

The world is indeed flat. Just two days after turning the first page of Friedman’s “The World is flat”, I sit in my chair mesmerized by the proof. Being an IT guy when I get to read how ICT has narrowed the world, how it has created opportunities and how it has played a pivotal role in pushing people dipped in the gulf of poverty into the brightness and prosperity I pat my own shoulders. But having done nothing to contribute to the above mentioned ICTs gifts I do feel low. More importantly being in a country with GDP hardly greater than 1100$ I do wonder if what the field they are talking about is the field where I have claimed my own space. Well, I do not however intend to discuss ICT, the wonderful gifts it has given to the world, I will talk a little about its impact in globalization and its contribution in shrinking the world.
Before I begin with my own experience, I want to remember an old lady with whom I shared the Micro-bus on my way back to home a week before. The old lady, her hair would have all been gray had she not colored them brown. Her skin thick and shiny and her eyes expressive and intelligent. She was telling to another lady how much she was worried when her husband had gone to India for about three months and how difficult it used to be those days to keep in touch with ones folks. Now she said her grandson went to “Amrika” a week before and she talks to him every day, she can even see him as he talks. “We seem to have lived in a different world back then”, she added. Distances are really being chopped off as the prices of PCs have gone down, the networks have embraced the world, fiber optics and wireless communications bringing miracle to world. We are friends with people who we have never really seen in real life, we talk with them watch them as we exchange greetings with them. How small the world has become? My friends live oceans apart but I know what did they have in dinner or breakfast. Stereotype mums today might say after chatting online with her son soon after he left home for abroad, I wouldn’t have cried so much had I known he had gone nowhere but just inside the computer.
Anyways time to begin my experience. People who say they have little work at Government Offices are sometime really right. When you have no work even surfing the Internet is really boring, you miss giggling with your friends, passing comments in their social networking sites only when you are engaged in other work. Even then just yesterday, I was very free and internet had nothing exciting to offer. My friend sent me a nudge over the msn messenger, I ignored like I was no time, even my status said I was busy!!! Of course I was busy wondering what to do. Thinking it had been some time wandering in facebook, I went there just to see what my friends and people were doing. Following the network of a friend I came across a familiar name though I wondered how that name sound familiar. But its face I cannot remember, I usually have no problem recognizing people and names. There she was a classmate from my primary school, grade four and five. Was it her? Fair, mischievous, short hair (we probably used to call that hair cut ‘thai hair cut’), prettiest in the class. The photo in her profile looked different, I did not have a clear image of her look but I knew how she looked. What wrong in sending her a message and there I was writing a short message asking if it was her. I wrote and forgot. The next morning (today) in half sleep I checked my mail and a mail said ‘hi I m from Kshitiz’. The book (Friedman’s “The World is Flat”) was lying flat on my flat table upside down so that I could begin from where I left it. I was in my flat floor scratching my head, I had learned the world is not round, its indeed flat. Someone who literally didn’t exist for me just pops up out of nowhere. Three hours later I am talking with her over the phone, just trying to fit faces we both knew, some we remembered many we missed. It’s a flat world.

From below the line of poverty

Even with a power cut of 16 hours a day, the city of Kathmandu looked still polluted and noisier. Not only the people who contributed to the hubbub it’s the new range of generator that not only polluted the air but also made irritating sound. My pocket was a little heavier than yesterday since my salary was deposited today. With installment of loans and few more deductions my payroll looked so helpless. I am planning to enroll to a graduate degree but even with all my salary I will fall short by Rs. 3000 (Roughly around USD 45) a month. I have to get a part-time job in the morning. I am enrolling myself to the degree for the sake of interest in spite of the fact that I could have enrolled to cheaper degrees but I didn’t. 

For the first time yesterday I remained almost hungry even after the lunch since my wallet was empty and still three days remained for the end of month in the Nepalese calendar. At home I was so frustrated since I had to compromise the very basic need of a human being, ‘food’.  For those who know me, know me as someone forgetful and rather unpredictable. I ruminated over the expenditures this month since this was the first time when I hadn’t been able to save money when a month ended. I pondered with closed eyes, still frustrated for the way life had turned out to be. Even stressing my head which was already aching for more than ten minutes, I couldn’t find where I had failed. Apart for my allocation for lunch and travel only books are the one where I deliberately spend relatively large sum. I usually allocate around Rs. 1000 (USD 15) for books. I had been to Pokhara where I had over spent but even that shouldn’t have made my situation miserable.  Just then I got an SMS from a friend which said “I won’t be able to return your book before the second week of next month”. OK, that is what I had forgotten, I had spent another Rs. 1000 (USD 15) on that book. I had bought four books this month which summed to Rs. 2500, Rs. 1500 more than regular. No electricity means no computers, no television which means the only time pass, enjoyment I can offer myself are books. I have finished seven books this month.

So, I started with the weight of my pocket. The city doomed in darkness was still displaying its glamour in the sun which will excuse itself for the day anytime from now. Just to avoid climbing the steps over the over-head bridge built by the KMC’s office (Kathmandu Metropolitan City), I cross the road at the zebra-crossing a little earlier but to my dismay the traffic police had blocked the zebra crossing. I looked at the detested over head bridge which seemed to make face to me. I pulled myself but just at the door of a book shop I just took a turn and I found myself asking ‘do you have Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers?’ the expected reply ‘No’. May be this is what they call the power of money. Yesterday I couldn’t feed myself fully and today I was giving me a different treat. I wanted to backtrack right away but the smell of fresh leaves of books was just too irresistible. I was looking at the shelves decorated with variety of books. There were Bestsellers which would have normally landed to my hand anyway and the pages would have been turned but no. All of a sudden it seemed my appetite for fiction seemed to be a passé. I spent a greater part in the management and economics section. I looked if there was any politics and development section but there wasn’t any. I returned empty handed. I cannot wait for the day when I will be enrolled in the college where a good library awaits me.

But then for those who know me also know my love for books may be just temporary. It may be replaced by new one very soon. Albeit, books and movies may decline in the list of my priorities, they will reclaim their position sooner or later. The recently read books has certainly changed and widened my view of this world. These days my subject of choice is economics and development. Luckily these books have made me realize we as a nation are not at any hopeless situation but the recent power crisis has terrified me that we are already in the path of sharp decline. Everyday more and more industries are closing, surplus labor with no jobs in hand is in rise. While I was pleased to know in spite of the civil war the living standard of people in average had risen I am so taken aback the restoration of peace hasn’t been able to do much.