Manaslu, Early Morning
Hello readers,
It has been a year since the preceding post. Happy new year.
Changes have brought strong currents- strong enough to make writing very difficult.
It will take voices to bring out more writing. Do say something.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Onwards
Devghat, Afternoon
We met A. Maharaj at the G. Ashram, where I was kindly given a room, where I sit now. I have been thinking about why I am here. The swami talked mostly of politics, travels and also said that one who is dissatisfied always develops a negative viewpoint. Bu ton asking P. Ji later, I was told that A. Swami never backs a political party. Perhaps he is dissatisfied with all of them. Right now, I am not sure why I should give him elevated respect. The only noticeable characteristics that I have seen are a heavy cough/laugh, calmness in speech, ability to make or remember stories, and the ability to get people's respect. I will have to wait until my mind is able to see more.
We met A. Maharaj at the G. Ashram, where I was kindly given a room, where I sit now. I have been thinking about why I am here. The swami talked mostly of politics, travels and also said that one who is dissatisfied always develops a negative viewpoint. Bu ton asking P. Ji later, I was told that A. Swami never backs a political party. Perhaps he is dissatisfied with all of them. Right now, I am not sure why I should give him elevated respect. The only noticeable characteristics that I have seen are a heavy cough/laugh, calmness in speech, ability to make or remember stories, and the ability to get people's respect. I will have to wait until my mind is able to see more.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Devghat...
Devghat, Late Afternoon
At 5 this morning, my eyes opened to KB's question: Bihanai niskane ho? (Are we going to leave early in the morning?)
Of course. I jumped out of bed and headed for the bathroom and did everything but shower. The food last night was so good that I was afraid it would mess up my stomach. But it didn't. No tea either, and we headed straight for the main road in front of the house.
Our first stop was Gaidakot, where we took a dip in a very swollen Narayani river, and cleaned that water off with a couple of buckets of water from a nearby well. After a change of clothing, after our'bath', we walked to the Ram Temple, walked about and back to the Narayanghat Chowk. From the bridge we saw a boy on a tube floating after a big piece of log go under us (we reached the other side before he emerged), a 10 Rupee rickshaw, 15 Rupee bowl of Tarkari (Vegetables) and a cup of tea, and a 30 minute bus ride later we reached Devghat.
KB introduced me to a man, a former big person, businessman, politician, who renounced the world and just finished repeating the Gayatri Mantra of the order of a million times in 23 months. We had lunch/breakfast on the upper wooden floor of his half wooden, half cement house (because the lower portion was Dhalan'd- that is, cemented). I packed the smaller sling bag while our host talked, and was ready to leave on my journey, just as he suggested that he show us around. So, I left everything there and went on a tour of Devghat.
At 5 this morning, my eyes opened to KB's question: Bihanai niskane ho? (Are we going to leave early in the morning?)
Of course. I jumped out of bed and headed for the bathroom and did everything but shower. The food last night was so good that I was afraid it would mess up my stomach. But it didn't. No tea either, and we headed straight for the main road in front of the house.
Our first stop was Gaidakot, where we took a dip in a very swollen Narayani river, and cleaned that water off with a couple of buckets of water from a nearby well. After a change of clothing, after our'bath', we walked to the Ram Temple, walked about and back to the Narayanghat Chowk. From the bridge we saw a boy on a tube floating after a big piece of log go under us (we reached the other side before he emerged), a 10 Rupee rickshaw, 15 Rupee bowl of Tarkari (Vegetables) and a cup of tea, and a 30 minute bus ride later we reached Devghat.
KB introduced me to a man, a former big person, businessman, politician, who renounced the world and just finished repeating the Gayatri Mantra of the order of a million times in 23 months. We had lunch/breakfast on the upper wooden floor of his half wooden, half cement house (because the lower portion was Dhalan'd- that is, cemented). I packed the smaller sling bag while our host talked, and was ready to leave on my journey, just as he suggested that he show us around. So, I left everything there and went on a tour of Devghat.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Journey Begins
Bharatpur, 8pm
I am hot, but the wind feels cool even when it touches the dry parts of my body. Trucks whir by on the street facing my window, temporarily drowning out the sound of crickets, and many other insects, when their brakes squeal. The room that I am in is light blue, like the sky on a sunny Spring day, and equally splattered with splotches of white. Square, a fan on the ceiling, which is completely white, and with a storage ledge also painted blue because it happened to sit just below the white band running below the ceiling, all around the room. It reminds me of RD's room in P. But there are no mosquitoes here. Yet.
My journey to study began today with my walking away from the house, anxious to be out of sight of Baba and Ama, waving in their nightgowns on the front steps, so that I could start making use of the Mala that HB gave me yesterday. The bus left Kalanki at 6am, but we arrived here only two hours ago. Krishna Bhir, and the ignorance of drivers, struck again, painfully stretching a three hour trip to a 12 hour one and forcing me to get a good nights rest here before heading to Devghat tomorrow morning.
I am hot, but the wind feels cool even when it touches the dry parts of my body. Trucks whir by on the street facing my window, temporarily drowning out the sound of crickets, and many other insects, when their brakes squeal. The room that I am in is light blue, like the sky on a sunny Spring day, and equally splattered with splotches of white. Square, a fan on the ceiling, which is completely white, and with a storage ledge also painted blue because it happened to sit just below the white band running below the ceiling, all around the room. It reminds me of RD's room in P. But there are no mosquitoes here. Yet.
My journey to study began today with my walking away from the house, anxious to be out of sight of Baba and Ama, waving in their nightgowns on the front steps, so that I could start making use of the Mala that HB gave me yesterday. The bus left Kalanki at 6am, but we arrived here only two hours ago. Krishna Bhir, and the ignorance of drivers, struck again, painfully stretching a three hour trip to a 12 hour one and forcing me to get a good nights rest here before heading to Devghat tomorrow morning.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Green
The lady sat across from me, reddish highlights along the front bangs of brownish black hair, she stared out of the window. Studying for her USMLE exams, like many of her colleagues, she had taken a break for a meal with me. She began to speak, and mentioned in her conversation that one of her friends was a Gynecologist. In relating her story, she mentioned that after this friend had performed an operation, a "Gyne" operation, something happened. But I didn't follow. This mind had already been sent to another time and place.
An arching right turn, as sharp as it can be on the highway, led further along a raging milk-chocolate flow of the river twenty five meters below. Grey. Green. Brown. Grey cliff draped with greenery above a brown river. The black pitch road, no longer its usual dry dusty grey, having regained its color after a frequent short shower just minutes before. The left apron of the highway was about ten feet wide. In places, the clumps of grass obscured the real edge, in other places, minor landslides bit into the smooth grassy boundary of the skirting.
As though racing with the river, our white mini van, with twenty people inside, sped along the road, along the river, along the cliff, towards a large metallic bridge made of strong looking iron, through which the road passed. Speed bumps marked both ends of the bridge, which rose up high above the road that passed through it.
It was a larger version of the bridge that we had walked across the day before on the way back home. One of the two companions had remarked that there was a third friend of theirs who climbed up to the top of the bridge and ran across the wide top beam. The bridge was two trapezoids, top shorter than the base, positioned like handles that were pulled up by invisible hands in the sky. In each of the trapezoids, slanted beams of the same thickness and material as the top and bottom beams, formed triangles. And on top of these side beams were plastered posters proclaiming a Maoist victory in the elections. The posters were torn. The riveting on the iron bars, I-bars, lined each bar at equal distances from each other and each edge. The steel dimpled border of the bars looked like a decorative touch to an otherwise ominously dark and unadorned metal structure.
Today's bridge bars forming the trapezoids and triangles were painted blue. The blue looked milky- no doubt from repeated sun and rain over the years. Turning left now, after the bridge, we passed a police station. They used to check vehicles here some years ago- every single vehicle they thought looked suspicious. Today, the armed police officers, still clad in blue and purple fatigues, were unarmed. Only one was visible as he ran outside of his room towards the road with his uniform rolled up to his knees, purple and blue camouflage patterned t-shirt, hatti-chhap sandals instead of boots, and the look of a man in desperate need of something. It was morning, and he rushed quickly out of view and down to the river.
That was the only policeman we saw before we reached a busy intersection. The road merged with another road which came from the Terai. Ours came from Pokhara. On both sides, colorful signs. Restaurants. Marwadi Vegetarian, some said. Tandoori, screamed others. The vehicle moved us forward at a constant, slow, pace before stopping next to a police checkpost. The conductor jumped out with a fistful of pink paper. By the time the car moved again, there was an extra passenger which the conductor noticed, but didn't take notice of.
A young boy, grey tattered pants, green shirt with a faded yellow circle on the chest, dusty hair, sun crusted cheeks, and a string strap over his shoulders- perhaps to replace the broken sling of a bag.
The door slid closed with a finality that cued the engine to gradually rev up and send us coasting along the road. A folk tune started playing, beginning with a Sarangi. The driver seemed to have turned on the radio to keep him awake through the "monotonous turns" , as we were told in our English Reader in school, that awaited us on the rest of the journey towards Naubise and Kathmandu.
As the song progressed, never moving beyond a Sarangi, a boy's voice started singing about pains and pleasures, the things he had seen, the difficulties of life, his confidence in himself, the uncertain political climate, doubts about the future, hope that the listeners could sympathize. Each line was punctuated with a loud sipping for air, as though the singer savored the words, like a tart suruwa of clear and mixed emotions. The instrument, the Sarangi, seemed to cry along the tune.
He repeated the refrains until we reached the large, majestic gate to the Manakamana cable cars. Then the music stopped, and the boy who had slipped in at Mugling asked each of the passengers to be kind and give him a contribution. With his proceeds, he hopped off the white micro bus, ready once again to hop on another one back the way he came.
No doubt, someone else would mistake him for a radio, and then smile when she realized that the lyrics rang too true. Perhaps she would even shed a tear or two upon hearing the unbroken spirit of the young voice rise up in a single verse of confidence in fate after a flood of pain, suffering and hardship that even a young boy of ten had experienced. And perhaps she would feel a sense of pride when she failed to think of any other place in the world where she could intimately share in the life of someone else, so unexpectedly, briefly and movingly.
An arching right turn, as sharp as it can be on the highway, led further along a raging milk-chocolate flow of the river twenty five meters below. Grey. Green. Brown. Grey cliff draped with greenery above a brown river. The black pitch road, no longer its usual dry dusty grey, having regained its color after a frequent short shower just minutes before. The left apron of the highway was about ten feet wide. In places, the clumps of grass obscured the real edge, in other places, minor landslides bit into the smooth grassy boundary of the skirting.
As though racing with the river, our white mini van, with twenty people inside, sped along the road, along the river, along the cliff, towards a large metallic bridge made of strong looking iron, through which the road passed. Speed bumps marked both ends of the bridge, which rose up high above the road that passed through it.
It was a larger version of the bridge that we had walked across the day before on the way back home. One of the two companions had remarked that there was a third friend of theirs who climbed up to the top of the bridge and ran across the wide top beam. The bridge was two trapezoids, top shorter than the base, positioned like handles that were pulled up by invisible hands in the sky. In each of the trapezoids, slanted beams of the same thickness and material as the top and bottom beams, formed triangles. And on top of these side beams were plastered posters proclaiming a Maoist victory in the elections. The posters were torn. The riveting on the iron bars, I-bars, lined each bar at equal distances from each other and each edge. The steel dimpled border of the bars looked like a decorative touch to an otherwise ominously dark and unadorned metal structure.
Today's bridge bars forming the trapezoids and triangles were painted blue. The blue looked milky- no doubt from repeated sun and rain over the years. Turning left now, after the bridge, we passed a police station. They used to check vehicles here some years ago- every single vehicle they thought looked suspicious. Today, the armed police officers, still clad in blue and purple fatigues, were unarmed. Only one was visible as he ran outside of his room towards the road with his uniform rolled up to his knees, purple and blue camouflage patterned t-shirt, hatti-chhap sandals instead of boots, and the look of a man in desperate need of something. It was morning, and he rushed quickly out of view and down to the river.
That was the only policeman we saw before we reached a busy intersection. The road merged with another road which came from the Terai. Ours came from Pokhara. On both sides, colorful signs. Restaurants. Marwadi Vegetarian, some said. Tandoori, screamed others. The vehicle moved us forward at a constant, slow, pace before stopping next to a police checkpost. The conductor jumped out with a fistful of pink paper. By the time the car moved again, there was an extra passenger which the conductor noticed, but didn't take notice of.
A young boy, grey tattered pants, green shirt with a faded yellow circle on the chest, dusty hair, sun crusted cheeks, and a string strap over his shoulders- perhaps to replace the broken sling of a bag.
The door slid closed with a finality that cued the engine to gradually rev up and send us coasting along the road. A folk tune started playing, beginning with a Sarangi. The driver seemed to have turned on the radio to keep him awake through the "monotonous turns" , as we were told in our English Reader in school, that awaited us on the rest of the journey towards Naubise and Kathmandu.
As the song progressed, never moving beyond a Sarangi, a boy's voice started singing about pains and pleasures, the things he had seen, the difficulties of life, his confidence in himself, the uncertain political climate, doubts about the future, hope that the listeners could sympathize. Each line was punctuated with a loud sipping for air, as though the singer savored the words, like a tart suruwa of clear and mixed emotions. The instrument, the Sarangi, seemed to cry along the tune.
He repeated the refrains until we reached the large, majestic gate to the Manakamana cable cars. Then the music stopped, and the boy who had slipped in at Mugling asked each of the passengers to be kind and give him a contribution. With his proceeds, he hopped off the white micro bus, ready once again to hop on another one back the way he came.
No doubt, someone else would mistake him for a radio, and then smile when she realized that the lyrics rang too true. Perhaps she would even shed a tear or two upon hearing the unbroken spirit of the young voice rise up in a single verse of confidence in fate after a flood of pain, suffering and hardship that even a young boy of ten had experienced. And perhaps she would feel a sense of pride when she failed to think of any other place in the world where she could intimately share in the life of someone else, so unexpectedly, briefly and movingly.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Rain
It is a constant shhhhh. If you listen carefully, there are many many sh sh sh sounds, individual ones. They come from all distances, as far and as near as you can hear. There is a heavier, flow like constant dripping where the drain drops water down. There is the muffled bhhhhhh where it hits the cement roof above. The metallic clanging tang tang where it hits the corrugated iron. Now, it is softer, like it is only hitting the leaves of plants. Just by listening to the different noises the droplets make. An aural image when the eyes are closed.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Yellow
Its dark blue up there. More dark with a tinge of blue. There are greyish splotches, irregular, patchy, which have also taken on the bluish tinge of the backdrop. In some directions, it looks mostly bluish, and in other places mostly greyish-blue. There were small white shiny specks last night. Today, none are visible. A starless night. A set of lights is moving away from the horizon, perhaps at 30 degrees, yellow in front, yellow in back, three other lights visible- one flashing white under the yellow one in the back, one flashing red, above both and between the two yellow ones. There is a third one which is visible only when the white one in the back turns off and disappears when it turns on. It is followed by a sound, a roar that fluctuates in volume, but is consistently loud. It trails the lights at some distance. Now the blue light has separated from the other two, and moved to the left at some distance, the red is not visible. The plane has turned in this direction and is flying off to the right. Suddenly, like a flashlight beam, a long stretch in front of it, almost as long as the plane itself, is illuminated in a murky yellow light. It is flying through a cloud. Now it is gone. Sounds and lights.
A baby is crying somewhere in front. A metallic clank as some stainless steel dishes are set down to be washed somewhere in the distance. The prolonged hiss and abrupt stop as the pressure cooker weight abruptly falls and shuts off the escaping steam. Five seconds later, another hiss. Another abrupt stop. A shorter hiss this time. A car horn, more talk- some people chatting in a room somewhere off to the right. Dogs are barking at each other, a chorus is building. A motorcycle horn. A slamming door. This time it is one of those wooden framed doors with mosquito netting spread over a thin diamond shaped metal mesh, the frame of which which is held by a spring so that it slams shut when released.
Some silverware, sounds like a bunch of spoons and forks, being set down. The condensed series of clinks. A light has turned off. Some curtains are thin and shadows are visible in the rooms. A fluorescent light, a tube light, shines from behind a tree, patched shadows from the black leaves breaking up the white light. Someone laughs. There is the constant trrrrr of a night insect, the pulsating, higher pitched squeaking of crickets. Unbroken, and underlying everything. Almost ignored. A television throws out muffled sounds. A dog squeals painfully. The whirrrrrr of a motorcycle engine and the beep of a motorcycle horn, closer and to the right.
Another pressure cooker goes off far to the left. The dogs are barking aggressively now.
Looking up, a large patch of dark blue has opened up. Some specks have emerged. 11 dots of brightness. Stars, perhaps planets. Some twinkle. Stars. Some do not. Planets. That's what they taught in "Earth Science" in 10th grade.
The clouds looked immovable, but they are nearly all gone. Even in the night sky, clouds move.
A slight breeze now. Something is chirping. The insects sound louder now. The sound of an owl screeching as it flies by in a blur. It looked white. So perhaps something auspicious is to happen here.
About 30 stars now.
A baby is crying somewhere in front. A metallic clank as some stainless steel dishes are set down to be washed somewhere in the distance. The prolonged hiss and abrupt stop as the pressure cooker weight abruptly falls and shuts off the escaping steam. Five seconds later, another hiss. Another abrupt stop. A shorter hiss this time. A car horn, more talk- some people chatting in a room somewhere off to the right. Dogs are barking at each other, a chorus is building. A motorcycle horn. A slamming door. This time it is one of those wooden framed doors with mosquito netting spread over a thin diamond shaped metal mesh, the frame of which which is held by a spring so that it slams shut when released.
Some silverware, sounds like a bunch of spoons and forks, being set down. The condensed series of clinks. A light has turned off. Some curtains are thin and shadows are visible in the rooms. A fluorescent light, a tube light, shines from behind a tree, patched shadows from the black leaves breaking up the white light. Someone laughs. There is the constant trrrrr of a night insect, the pulsating, higher pitched squeaking of crickets. Unbroken, and underlying everything. Almost ignored. A television throws out muffled sounds. A dog squeals painfully. The whirrrrrr of a motorcycle engine and the beep of a motorcycle horn, closer and to the right.
Another pressure cooker goes off far to the left. The dogs are barking aggressively now.
Looking up, a large patch of dark blue has opened up. Some specks have emerged. 11 dots of brightness. Stars, perhaps planets. Some twinkle. Stars. Some do not. Planets. That's what they taught in "Earth Science" in 10th grade.
The clouds looked immovable, but they are nearly all gone. Even in the night sky, clouds move.
A slight breeze now. Something is chirping. The insects sound louder now. The sound of an owl screeching as it flies by in a blur. It looked white. So perhaps something auspicious is to happen here.
About 30 stars now.
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