Bullets

It was morning time. My grandparents and I like to sit on the roof of our house. Sometimes, my mother is also there. But not too early in the morning: the sun has to be out and strong so that you don't feel cold. It is not spring yet, and the days are warm but the mornings misty. Even at 10am, the time that we go sit on the roof, being in the shade is noticeably colder- not cooler- than being in the sun. We sat there today for thirty minutes before heading in. In the meantime, we had about five mandarin oranges. Their skins were already mostly detached from the part that we eat, and from the outside, instead of looking perfectly round, they looked like partially deflated plastic balls. Stick your thumb in next to the bump sticking up from the top- the part where it hung to its branch- dig your finger in, and pull apart. It's a common ritual which yields sweet and sour rewards. Today's oranges were mostly sweet. My thumb passed close to my nose as I took a deep breath. I can still smell the faint after-odor of orange peel on my fingers. Maybe some of the peel and juices got stuck beneath my nail. That happens a lot.

It happens a lot especially when there are a lot of oranges to peel, and lots of grapefruits to peel like when we make "Sandheko Bhogotey". Imagine a medium sized steel tub, full of peeled and separated grapefruit. Actually, you have to peel the grapefruit first, and about half the volume disappears. Then you take the naked fruit and peel it again, carefully, to remove the fibers- they look like veins. And then you split each little piece of the double naked fruit and pull off the outside skin again. So you are left with just the juicy morsels closest to the seeds. Ultimately, you are left with triple naked grapefruit, de-seeded. It is the same story for the oranges, and would be the same for the lemons too except the lemons don't separate so easily. So we just end up squeezing the juice out. And by the way, the grapefruit has to be prepared in the shade. It gets bitter apparently if you put it in the sun too long. Anyway, then comes the salt, the sugar then come the spices- tumeric, cumin, something we call "Jimbu"- I have no idea what this is in English.. The last two are fried deeply in hot oil, and the pan with oil is dumped, along with the burnt spices into this tub of citrus. A brave soul then decides it is safe enough to stick her hand into the preparation- that the hot oil has cooled enough- and then mixes and mixes. In the end, each spectator- and probably fruit peeler too because there are so many to peel- is rewarded with a small steel bowl full of the very tart, sour, salty, and very very good stuff.

The thing to do is eat a whole lot of that stuff, and then drink a couple glasses of water- because, as they say, the concoction helps to "increase the blood in the body"- and then move away from the crowd, find a warm sunny spot on the roof which promises to stay sunny for the next few hours, and take a nap. It is the most restful sleep imaginable in Kathmandu. Especially if it is the months of Poush and Magh.

The radio, which always seems to be playing in my house, just interrupted the news flash for a more important news flash. "This just received from the metropolitan police: Bullets were moved in the New Baneshwor area. We are informed that police are now on the scene."

Actually, "bullets were moved" is a literal translation. They meant to say that bullets were fired there, perhaps by someone other than the police. Bullets could have moved without being fired of course, and probably do move a lot without it being reported as a super news flash on the radio. For example, bullets move when armed robbers approach to their target near Vishal Bazaar but decide not to rob; or when the army man standing in front of the palace shifts his weight and his gun tilts; or when an armed police officer walks along the streets wondering whether he is really of any use in a city where other groups have become the law givers; bullets move when the container that they are being shipped in is transported; bullets also move when the UNMIN workers accept ammunition handed over by Maoist rebels; or when the real Maoist soldiers hide their guns under their pillows instead of turning them over. So much for bullets moving. It's a good thing they meant "bullets were fired." Otherwise, it would have caused a lot of confusion because bullets move all the time.

Confusion not unlike the confusion caused when I can't publish a post right after it is written, but have to wait until the double coincidence required for internet access happens- first me and the ISP have electricity, and second this period of overlap happens to be when my internet service works- and then give the post a date in the past so that those who had checked for the new post at the date that the post says it was actually posted would not have found it then, but would find it now. That's confusing. I mean that you probably get confused when a post was not there at the date and time that it says it was posted...

You are not going crazy: It's the load-shedding.