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.

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.

A song and a friend

When I gained my consciousness she was smiling at me through the mirror. I could only guess I must have been watching at the mirror for a length of time and she was standing by the mirror. Though my eyes were directed in the mirror, I was not grasping the view my eyes had covered for me. We do not see anything even if we are looking at it unless our brain chooses to perceive what our eyes saw. The mortar and crushers were running in the building site while my executives were busy reading the newspaper. Why did she smile I don’t know and from when was she smiling I don’t know either. Was she thinking I was hitting on her, why would I? I had no interest in her, many times when we are deep in our thoughts our eyes are stuck somewhere without blinking. I was thinking about a friend who stayed in the next room when I was at Trishuli.
After returning home from morning walk, as always I sat before the TV and as always I began with entertainment news. I seek more entertainment than I did earlier possibly it’s the symptom of my life getting boring. Then I switched to the news channel. While two were showing Indian Prime Minister’s meeting with George Bush, the other was reporting from a crime scene where a gang war had taken place in Delhi. People buy negative news easily. They look for sensation and scoops. I switched to Nepali channel with few minutes remaining for news. A revolutionary song was playing. I like that song, I have always liked it from the time I first heard it. I didn’t hear it from its singer but from another revolutionary of his time. The song asks the women, mothers, sisters etc. to rise against oppression and speak for their rights.
In Trishuli my sleep always broke up with the songs of Mr. Abhi. He also used to write revolutionary poems. Poems of days for the poor, oppressed and outcasted, poems of days when equality will prevail and the tears will irrigate the expanse fields. So I used to call him ‘Kabi jyu’ i.e. Mr. Poet which became his nickname among many of his colleagues. His songs were too always described the sunny day when the poor and oppressed will get their right, when the laborers will get the cost of their sweat, when the oppressor will fall to their knees and the dawn that will herald new age of destitute who in spite of hard labor succumbed to poverty, hunger and oppression. His songs were roars of youth who had come out of their hide to fight for their country. It was a voice that seemed like assertions in unison of rebels who had broken the shackles of discrimination and denials. Not only the songs it was his powerful voice. His voice trembled in between the song but the trembling were the toppings on the ice. His was a powerful voice that seemed to fight the roars of the mighty Trishuli River few hundred meters away. My brain, my thoughts used to get arrested in his word and his voice.

His struggle with life always began early in the dawn. He had a fixed routine and there was never a change. he had his small kitchen in the verandah. There were a kerosene stove, few utensils, two plates, two-three spoons, a bamboo rack for holding bottles of spices and a table to host the stove and to be used as a dining table. He has been the simplest man I have every seen till date. For more than a month I didn’t speak to him because we two had one common nature, we never talked with anyone unless we need to do so. His roommate never had smallest hint of hesitation when it came to talking. He would talk with any stranger as if he were his soul mate. Kabi Jyu on the other hand was an introvert but I loved to listen him from the time I had no exchanges of word with him. When I didn’t talk to him, I didn’t know anything about him except that he liked to sing. He sang as if he were in a recording studio and no mistakes were allowed. He sang the whole song.
When I began talking to him the very first evening we had a soulful talk. I think that was on the education related thing. I always thought he must have been a rebel at some point of time but he never told anything. We really grew close and we proved that friendship has no age restriction. Its just a bond, a selfless bond. He told me about his family, his struggles during his days in Kathmandu. But he never talked about his youth even upon inquiry. He never talked about his parents, brothers or any other relatives which made me certain that he’s hurt.
The other people knew few things about his youthful days. I had thought right, he was a political activist in his student life. He fought for democracy and probably it was when he learnt those songs. He sang songs I had never heard. I wondered how TV and radios missed those beautiful songs.
Today I was thrilled to hear that song. The song had already reached its end but it had brought the dyed but finely combed hair, brush like moustache of a large man with the nature of a child, someone still a rebel rebelling against life. I thought I would give him a call today. I love his accent, I love his zeal, I love the way he calls me Sandip Ji. Salute to you.

Loneliness

I never learnt to accept departures as a light regularity in life. They have always left me wonder and feel lonely. Though I was at the peak of my naughtiness last Saturday with my friends but when we were reminded that this might be the last meeting of few of us, I was thrown back to the empty and sullen loneliness. There was probably no one who I might miss, except remember sometime even then to find somebody who you have seen regularly disappear is a weird thought, not very funny. A little later I was waiting Subash sir at Kalimati in one of the busiest area in the city. Strangely the place was suspiciously quiet. I knew there were strikes going on but even then to find that place with no sounds and no hustle and bustle is something that cannot be grasped easily. Probably the quietness inside me was stronger than the quietness in that place. My emptiness was sucking in every sound and I stood alone in that place and the world moved around me in circle, just the way they show in movies. The sun was however in its fullest glare yet I had no thirst. I felt a stream of sweat run down my spine which forced me to consciousness. A fistful of young students had gathered for some kind of protests. I would have damned them otherwise but just spared them. A small kid scornfully looked at me, I don’t know what made him scorn me, may be that was his regular way of seeing people. I don’t remember if he continued looking at me with squinted eyes and his head making an angle with his shoulder. A lady was bargaining the price of mango with its seller and a stray dog looked at me as if a climber was looking at the peak of the mountain he had to climb. I returned him a look of helplessness, I had nothing for him. As if he had understood me, he walked past me and a young boy kicked him. I wanted to kick the boy as well, I feel no one is allowed to assault another being just because he is superior or he thinks he is superior. He told his friends he cannot see dogs. I wanted to tell him, I can’t see you but what would that mean to him. What do I mean to him? Possibly he will laugh at me but his attire suggested he would rather knock me off. I might not be wise but I am not that stupid that I would go to the butcher and ask him not to slay the goat. The dog had run away, moaning in pain but I know he will return because he has to feed himself, he has to seek mercy of his assaulters. I don’t think all of us are alive because we want to live but just because we don’t know what to do.
After a long time I was feeling lonely and this loneliness was not attributed to anyone’s absence in that place. It was a peculiar loneliness; I was overwhelmed with so many thoughts. Out of no where I remembered a couple who I had seen from bus at Gaushala, probably they were bidding each other bye for the day promising to meet again tomorrow. The boy kissed the girl on lip and she blushed. Kissing in public is a taboo. I saw the girl, she was not beautiful not ugly either but I would not have kissed her but I also didn’t love her for that matter. Once it was already late and I couldn’t get any bus. After a long wait a bus came. There were few passengers and most of the seats were vacant. In these cases I prefer backseats watching the night progress with the whiffs of air making me aware that I was alive. I feel a kind of comfort to pass leaving the light poll behind. I like watching people hurrying in shops but calm at restaurants. There was a girl already seated next to window so I took a seat next to her. The breeze was blowing her hair that came to my face and stuck to it. Slowly the numbers of passengers dropped and dropped. I hadn’t seen her face but her cheeks were bright. I don’t know what made her look at me, we were very close. This type of closeness is welcome most of the time but not at those where I want to be with myself. The girl was just an OK, I thought had we been in love would I kiss her. I was thrilled, I was amused. Her hair kept flying to my face and once or twice she will pull them without even turning her face toward me. I wished I could kiss her not for anything else but just for kissing.
Without my knowledge the students had disappeared, I didn’t even notice their slogans. That dog had also vanished from my thoughts. A bike passed in front of me, it left a cloud of smoke which would soon disappear and no one knows if anyone had passed there in a bike. Those smoke were like moments in life, they are ephemeral. They cannot be seen or smelled but they will be there in the environment, in the atmosphere except that they will never be needed. My thoughts had no images of the friends with whom I was laughing just some minutes back. Subash sir came and after wasting sometime at his home we set out for a dinner arranged by my brother. While I wasted time, I tried to lay the burden of emptiness, discussed office and works. Though I was different now, their shadows were still there. For the first time I took wine and unlike they said I was tripped. All of a sudden my never stopping mouth, I lay on the chair my hands crossed behind my head watching the light I truly bid bye to many thoughts for the time being. I was back to my glare again, don’t want to have wine again but I was more peaceful. I couldn’t sleep properly that night, the same faces I had confronted in my day came laughing and giggling in front of me.

Friends,farewell and memories

Yesterday’s Saturday was quite an event. In spite of the mist of uncertainty we had a small get together of few friends. After getting out of the college two years back, there was no formal event when we had gathered to sit to bring the old days back to life. Bringing back the college days back to life does not mean we should sit and remember what we had done, how were those days. This is however a way in itself, but just a small gathering of faces that have been lost in the hastiness of life and in the struggle to seek an identity that is different from that of a student, can itself bring those old days to life. We did not sit to look back those events bringing the moments that from the mysterious dark into the flashes of today; neither did we try to formally miss the friends that couldn’t make it there due to several reasons. Even then the gathering itself was capable of simmering nostalgia. The other reason being to bid bye to three friends who will move on in their life to seek a destination of their own. We again did not make it a farewell gathering that will remind us of the crunching number of friends in the city. When we started our undergraduate degree we were almost thirty in numbers. When we were in the last semester there were around twenty seven and when we had gathered there we were less than fifteen presently in the country while only seven of us could make it to the gathering. Pushing the responsibilities, work and the chaos behind we were just jubilant students there with no care to the world yet with the desire to conquer it. In spite of a different truth we were exuberant about life. If next time we plan to sit we will have three people less, yes our presence is reducing. While two among us will fly abroad to pursue higher studies one will be married to India. Though we will have constant touch with the former two, yesterdays’ meeting with the latter could be the last one and we will miss her, miss her mischief, miss her accent, miss her contagious laughter when we will drown in the nostalgia of our college days. Those flying abroad will come back may be just only on vacation but we will be able to meet them and someday a similar day as yesterday could be arranged but I doubt if the three girls will be able to make it. We tend to expect what we think is most likely to happen; probably this was too early to sit back and remember the moments that escaped into the womb of unforgiving time, indifferent time. The fact is still there in the quest for survival, in the shackles of our own responsibilities we might not get bountiful of time to look back into the memories, but even if we managed to remember them once we will miss those faces, would loose ourselves in assumption how would they be doing, where would they be and how would they look. If we are old enough we might drop tears out of compassion even if not a bleak smile will compliment our aura. In my college years I never got close to any girls, this was not a conscious act, it just happened. With boys my relation was same to all and I never belonged to any group which we had in our class. Not belonging to a group can sometime be painful specially when there are events, in the break, in any other programs while most of the batch-mates will be busy with their own group, I had to behave as if I were an outcast. I would never fit in to any groups, especially in the earlier days when I was a recluse. Though I could mix up well with few class mates very well, I never thought I will ever miss the college days. I had my own reservations against coming closer to any class mates. I must have been happy with few friends I had. In fact I had only two friends, apart from them I was alien to most of others. I was tagged arrogant, aloof and an introvert; I never tried to break this image, I never cared to. Even when I was all of sudden a funny creature it was never a conscious decision.
Seriously, I never thought I would miss faces from my class. I never in my dreams imagined that I would like to be in touch with many of them even after the college. I never doubted I will ever write something like this in my entire life. Today as I write this, just the feeling of the fact that I will probably never see few faces my entire life is making my heart feel cold.
Actually I have always been very sensitive to departure and once I told a friend that I must have lost someone in my previous life (I don’t think I believe in previous life) who I loved the most and my life must have gone out of track because of that, so even in this life departures chills me to bone. They actually do. I have always treasured memories and whenever someone passes into memories they become special in their own way. Either you love them too much or you hate them to extreme. I might take days to find a one particular person who I hate but there are innumerous names and faces I love. I have always had friends who were very close and very special but they have come and they have left with no thinnest string of connection between us. In my higher secondary I regarded few friends as friends for life but they slipped away just like dry sand slips away from fist. Time acted like a whiff that blew away that sand, they blew them far away to their deserts I might never navigate, even if I do they will be different altogether. The number of friends has grown from two to higher and I know most of them are friends for life now. Even then I will miss those who had gathered yesterday. One day or other there will be only memories left, communication will reduce and eventually it will lose with most of them though not will all of them. If anything will be there then it will be memories, sweet memories.

Friends

While returning from airport after seeing off a friend, I realized that now there is one person less who I will call when feeling bored at office, when thinking about talking to someone. I knew I will miss those long chats without head and tail, laughing without reason and seeking naughty meanings in every sentence. Another thing was just denying leaving my thoughts, while getting in my friend had tried to seek something in the eyes of his father. The look was serious as if they were drenched in pain to leave the beloved home. Possibly seeking advices from someone who has always been there to advise on what to do and what not to do. I watched the eyes of his father which took an excuse to look into the eyes of his son. He pretended to have missed the look of his son’s eyes but I can tell for sure he had seen those eyes. Though with best wishes for his son, there must have been pain to see the departing son. The fact that he will return does alleviate the pain but still parents are parents. When one needs eyes to speak, then there is always something that human vocabulary fails to cover.
Just a moment later the friend who was at the distance of a phone call was to land into the unseen world, to seek glory for his career. Of course he can still be reached with phone call but emotions fall victim before the prowess of economy. We console ourselves with remembrances and memories. When I was strolling back to office, his face and his smile refused to exit from memories. A whiff of his gestures, appearance, words, wit and wisdom took my mind to an entirely different state. I have always been sensitive to departures and more than that he had been a very good friend, a caring one and also the one who had advices when I needed it the most. Even today I tend to dial his number forgetting he cannot be accessed thus. Then I think he should have got to his place by now and he could send mail anytime. But yes as stated earlier, I have bid bye to someone who I regularly called and talked. Best of luck to my friend!!!
From his very early history men have loved to be with creatures like himself i.e. with other men. It must have provided them security and help. When they invented agriculture they needed help as farming individually was not possible. Man has always been emotional; he has always needed love and support. From very early age children prefer to be with someone like themselves. Yes, man is social by instinct.
I have had good friends from early years of my life. As I gaze the 26 years I have left behind, I remember many faces that I liked. In spite of this I have never been someone with large number of friends. I can call it a complexity in my behavior or personality though having good terms with every class mate or colleague and with amicable mannerisms I felt free with very few of them. No-one chooses friends with care or with plan, friendship just happens. When few of my friends get numerous calls everyday and have loads of people around them; by calling people not greater than 5 I finish my list of friends who I have to wish a happy new year.
I am basically a loner, someone who enjoys talking to oneself more and pushing ones thoughts to limits than chatting with others. Few days back I was contemplating on few wish lists as the curtain of rain veiled the horizon from my sight, in most of them I didn’t want to be with anyone but just with myself. Maybe I am a sadist.
I have had best of friends and we being utilitarian just lost the hold once we parted ways in life neither swearing to forget nor promising to be in touch. Had there been promises and if breaking promises are sin, we would have been the greatest sinners. Friends at schools, at colleges etc. have come to life and have gone and countable few are in touch. With few the strings of connection so gaunt that they are in the verge of breaking and with least it is as strong as it had been.
Though the need for friend is independent of age, I believe teen age is the time of life when the most important people in life are friends. The world is so beautiful in their presence; everything is so helpful and easy when they are around. They know the girl you like, they know the song you sing, and they know everything about you as if they live your life more than you live it yourself. I have been to that phase. I had just one friend who I cared like I cared no one in the whole world. I still remember the evening gloomed in tears when I bid him farewell at a local bus station. Waiting for his letters was so much a pain and I expected every day this is the day when I will have his letter which never came. I had become more of a recluse while my friend was struggling with his own problems. Memories of those lonely days still torment me. The only thing that I know now is that when he was in the country last time I couldn’t even manage to meet him, he was no important any more. We learn to live life as it comes because deep inside us we know there is not much we can do.
When college grew familiar I thought I had friends with whom I will never part ways. Time proved it is mightier than anyone and today I don’t even know where they are. But there are people from your schools and colleges you are always in contact not because they are special but because you keep meeting them. There are few friends from school and colleges I have been with me though not by choice. Yet my best of friends are from my school and college who I am proud to have.