Where to Begin?

Where to begin? I stepped out to go home.

The usual walk took me across a large gallery, polished marble floor, steps to the left. One of those stairs that you imagine would form the centerpiece of an English ballroom, coming down two sides of a wall, meeting about halfway and then turning to face you, doubling in width and then coming down to the ground level. Looking at the size of the gallery and the height of the ceiling- three storeys-you could picture a lady and gentleman coming down the stairs, starting at opposite sides, meeting where the stairs met, and coming down hand in hand. Clapping, rapture.

Except, the walls here were adorned with three large portraits of Rana Prime Ministers. Then at ground level, on the walls, you would find framed, black and white photos of Rhino Hunts, and in a corner somewhere, even a picture of a scrawny young to-be King Tribhuvan. These fading pictures, framed in black, separated from the frame with a wide strip of thick white paper on all sides greet you as soon as you enter the building. They guide you around the large gallery, which now serves as the lobby. I looked at each one the day before yesterday when I was waiting for the office to open, noting how similar the poses were, and the action shots. It reminded me of a book I once saw somewhere by a British historian named David Cannadine. It was called Ornamentalism. Maybe one of these pictures had even been in that book- especially the one of the senior queen of Chandra Sumsher. It looked familiar.

One youngish man was standing in hunting regalia over the corpses of five dead tigers, his world war one rifle in his right hand, his right leg bent and mounted on the pile of corpses. In another, a majestic rhino, laying down as if asleep and an adult man, one tenth the size, shorter, even than the shortest elephant grass- about the size of the rhino's front leg- trying to lean on the dead animal. Pictures of everyone from Chandra Sumsher to Janga Bahadur and the Lord and Lady Mountbatton (surrounded by what looked like several mini kings of various heights, all wearing the flowing crowns that I grew up associating with only The King himself.)

In the corner, just as you step up into the building, and behind you just as you step out, is a remarkable picture. It has a Tibetan looking delegation, standing around a chair. In the chair is seated a young, bearded and moustached, bald teenager. The caption reads, "His Holiness The Thirteenth Dalai Lama"

So leaving the Dalai Lama with his Rana contemporaries, I stepped halfway out the door. There were some police officers there. One of them had those red and yellow checkered linings on his hat. There was a police pickup, a few guards, and a black car in the middle with a government license plate. I guessed that was not for me, so instead of stepping out, I walked to another exit.

As I walked perpendicular to the police column, I could see from this perspective that it was a modern day version of a "Sawari". The person who got out looked old, and tried his best to assume the role of an important person. This meant keeping grim and overcast, and nodding passively only once when a high ranking police officer energetically saluted him. His wife was behind him too. She didn't get a salute.

As I walked on, I saw a large gathering of people- playing the role of modern day peasants perhaps- in a parking lot that is filled with cars usually. There were cars too, but they seemed to be embedded in a sea of people. Actually, a small puddle of people. Perhaps they were here to see The Important Person.

The day had become overcast and grim. It had been sunny in the afternoon, but perhaps the sky wanted to be important too. I walked on. Turning the corner, where some workers were either taking something out or putting something into a long hole by the side of the road, I looked for cabs. None to be found today.

I walked on, turning the next corner where a security guard was posted to challenge the challengeable. No taxis. The next corner, still nothing. And I saw why there was such a dearth of cabs. A young traffic police officer was standing by the road, trying to decipher what an armed police officer was saying. He seemed to be asking, with sign language, "Should I let the cars go? Are there more cars?" The armed police officer carried his arms (a stick) in one hand and decided that the best thing to do was to stop this nonsense and run towards the traffic police officer to figure out what he was saying. They must have met by the time I reached the main road. There were no cabs.

Again, a police officer was whistling at any cars that tried to stop. So, I walked on.

Eventually, there was a cab parked and waiting. He asked for 200 Rupees. I got in without a word, and we moved on. I asked him where he got his fuel.
"I've put in Chinese fuel, what to do?"

...pause...

"I put in five liters. They say you shouldn't use this stuff, but I did. The car is running still, but there is a little change in its feel."

"Where did you get the fuel? Black?" (on the black market?)

"Yes. They asked for Rs. 150 per liter. They brought it down from Khasa. They say you shouldn't use it straight up. But I had five liters of fuel left in the tank and so maybe because it is mixed with that, the car is still running."

The driver was young, relatively. Maybe a little older than me. He had a night's stubble on his face, and only the part around the lower right jaw was white. I wondered whether that patch was the oldest. Imagine, perhaps, that was the set of stem cells to differentiate into cheek cells, then hair follicles in adolescence, and the first to grow hair. It was the old patch, and so it had grown white. The rest was black. He was probably in his cab all night waiting for fuel, only to not get it in the morning. His Sahu required Rs. 700 a day, and the fuel had to be purchased by the driver. Our young man had his "Driver Identification Card" mounted below his meter- one of those black ones with the grey lcd screen and black digital characters, the light pink, light green and transparent yellow buttons, the aluminum seal sticking out of the left side, the rectangular ridges decorating the casing on either side, and in the lower right hand corner of the screen the familiar circle divided into many slightly separated slices, which would look like it was spinning when the car moved. The meter was mounted with the help of a tightly folded piece of newspaper behind it, separating the back of the meter from the dashboard by maybe half a centimeter. I wonder when the paper was from, and what was happening in the country when this car officially became fit for cruising passengers about the streets of KTM.

In his photo, in the official identification document, below the meter, he was wearing a tie. It looked like a brown and white tie with thick stripes of alternating colors, the stripes leaning down on the left. His shirt was light green. His eyes looked shocked. And the blood red background stood out most. As always, the writing on the "card" - actually about twice the size of a spread out wallet of the sort that men like to carry in their back pockets-was in red marker, handwritten. His name, etc. by some bureaucrat, or more likely a police officer.

It was about 5:15pm, when the roads around Ratna Park are full of cars. But there were very few cars. The sidewalk leading up to the old bus park was packed with people, five rows thick, waiting for the micros that would stop there in usual times.

We moved on.