Clouds

"Ghar Hamro Ramechhap/
Dolalghat ma aaaunu hai/
jaamla ekai saath"

The flute leads the tune of the female chorus into a steady stream of alternating madal beats.

The radio has changed now to some other program- I took a break from writing to have Aloo Chiura. It was cooked with some some jira of course, and it was yellow because of the oil, and i guess some besar- tumeric- and cooked and cooked. It can be hard or soft depending on how much water you decide to leave in it before serving. This one was fairly soft. We had it with what we call "Poushe Achaar", the very sour pickle made in water from the month of Poush, instead of oil, but with plenty of spices, and left out in those plastic containers with colorful lids, and perhaps a bit of paper, a strip, stuck hard to where the adhesive- now visible and perhaps with some dirt or other particles stuck to it- was applied to the label. Usually these are Horlicks jars (blue lids), or perhaps Viva (red lids), and Glucose-D jars (usually plastic, with green lids). So in this array of multi colored lids capping jars- plastic for water achaars, and glass for oil ones- the tone of the color comes to indicate how long it has been in the sun. The lids fade. Amongst the jars of lids and sour deliciousness inside, there is always one or the other which is extremely old compared to the rest- it seems to be tightly packed, and sometimes partially full but always made of glass. The other jars would have dark colored liquid with yellow specks floating around- mustard seeds. You can barely see the liquid in the strange one. The odd one is the Tama jar.

I wonder if Pandas would like Tama- they are young bamboo shoots after all- or whether they would reject it as rancid.

Oh, I forgot to mention the best part of the Aloo Chiura: to the hot oil, before you put in anything else, you add some chili pepper, and heat it just enough that you don't get the noxious vapour that is very irritating to the eyes. Then add some chopped onions. These onions, lightly, and sometimes heavily fried are buried under the potato and covered with chiura as the cooking progresses, but they resurface later to add their flavor to the mouth. And of course, if the khursani should resurface, it also adds a smoky, spicy flavor- the spicy often more memorable than the smoky.

The clouds are coming now. Gradually darker and closer, like a soft gray ceiling that sets everything into sharp relief- buildings, leaves, trees, flags, even the occasional pigeon sitting on a decommissioned high tension wire. The pigeon sits, tail feathers down below its red-pink claws- as they gripped the wire. Its neck glistening greenish and purple, and the white separating the gray of the beak from the rest of the head. From this distance, I cannot see the eyes clearly but I can imagine the orange iris enclosing a black pupil. It was alone, no friends in sight, lit from the south by the sun which shines fully from the side of the sky not yet conquered by the clouds. I wonder if it is raining there where the clouds are. If I look south, the sun is bright and I fancy that the sun will stay, but when I look to the other side, north, the clouds seem very determined- determined to rain. Perhaps the pigeon will fly away long before then.

If it does rain, it will be the first of the season. Perhaps, then, as they say, it will get hot.

If it gets hot and rains, it will be easier to fill this

which stands above me and behind, as I write this.