Load

The darkness of early morning has given way to the bright sunlight and chirping birds of morning.

My uncle is sitting in front of me, wrapped in a blanket, just his head sticking out from the top. My mother is reading out a list of candidates for constituent assembly elections as printed in the Kathmandu Post. I am not sure which party this is, maybe the Nepali Congress which submitted this list yesterday. And he is either repeating the names or saying "Ani," or just nodding his head and saying "aaa."

It is unlikely though that elections will happen. That is what I hear.

So much for that.

Now there is the sound of drums, clarinets and horns. Someone is getting married. The chaotic sound, you can imagine, people with red coats beating the drums the "Janti" moving forward, eventually dragging the girl back with them after a prolonged ceremony which is different for each household. Technically, it should be the same, but the priests have great leeway. The rest of the crowd does not know really what the details of the ceremony are, and so he can tailor the bulk of it to his own will.

Now the music has become faster paced. I don't recognize the tune.

Dogs barking now. Perhaps the band is walking by the house. No, the music is getting softer now.

There is a mist in Kathmandu, where we live. We've had load shedding for most of yesterday so I went to Thamel. There is a restaurant there which is tall, and from it you can see beauty. It was late afternoon, so the sun was already tilting west. The shadows, looking towards Swyambhu's silhouette, defined the hills. The different sides of the hills were different shades of blue and gray, you could even make out bumps, ridges, slopes of different angles that become visible only when the sun is just so. My eyes moved to Swyambhu, dark, perched on a hill- the only manmade feature visible at that height, looking out over the valley. You could just imagine the eyes, now hidden, staring into your soul. The monkeys, the stairs, the people. the music, the view looking down.

Panche Baja now. So the Janti must have arrived at the girl's place. No, it is actually Bagpipes. Perhaps this is the army band.

About load shedding- two places have to have electricity before I can write it turns out. Last night, I woke at 3 so that I could write. There was electricity, but it turns out there was no electricity at wlink, my ISP. And therefore, I could not type. I went to sleep instead.

Weekends are bad. There is barely any synchronization between the electricity schedule here and the schedule for wlink. Weekdays are better.

The music is quiet. So the girl must be sitting at the jagya now, with the guy, doing their stuff. I wonder if it is a Newari wedding or a Bahun wedding. Maybe it is a "mixed" marriage. This just means that the parents are mixed up about the fact that their racism is not really meaningful to their kids who have decided to get married.

I am waiting for the electricity now, eager to post this. The band is still playing, now mostly drums. The sun streams down, some warmth emerges.