Waiting

The lights have gone out. The birds chirp outside, there is a light blanket of clouds, and the sun tries to come through in parts. A gate screeches open, and a voice yells- it is a child ad then another. I cannot make out what is said. Perhaps, they are on their way to school. The sun has just gained a little intensity and it brightens up my keyboard. It is a shy intensity, and makes me think that it is going to be covered up soon.

"Chhuti ko din ma ali kati aaraam gara ke," my grandmother says.

Rest a little on a day off. The "ke" is her slight insistence, a strong but loving suggestion.

The lights have gone out. Thirty minutes to go.
The sun is being covered again, its light becoming diffused.

The sound of a wooden plank being hit with a hammer gives some rhythm to the morning. To my right, there is a double window, those small ones found in the old Kathmandu houses made of cement, brick and mud walls. Not very pretty from the outside if it were not for the cement frame around it, taller than it is wide, and with the thick cement arch on top. The glass only covers the top half of the window, and it is split in the middle so that it can be swung open, inside. Covering the bottom half, which is not glass anyway, there is a cabinet. The top of the cabinet has a piece of one of those plastic floor covers that are used instead of carpeting, that are gray on the underside, lined with some sort of rubber, and shiny on the top with an attractive pattern. This one is mostly light red- surely because it was washed out by the sunlight- with red octagons spaced regularly, four opposite sides touching four other octagons and with squares connecting each octagon to four new octagons. The borders of all these shapes are thick white. The squares are purple and have a greenish white flower in the center. The flower has two layers of petals, eight each. The bottom layer of eight protrudes one by one from the spaces between the upper layer of eight, like a two layered sunflower. Except this flower's petals have green marks on a white background. In the center of the circularly arranged petals, there are eight white dots, irregularly spaced and mixed with many more smaller purple dots. The flower hovers in the square, separated from each side by about twice the thickness of the square's white border.

Well, the octagons are also of two types. One has a flower and the other has concentric stars spreading outwards in two layers- dotted purple, then dotted red. And the flower octagon has a thicker border with purple dots- 16 a side, and two end dots shared with the connected two sides.

There is a box resting sideways on the tarp, partially covered by a cloth and partially covering what looks like a plastic card in a plastic case. The box must be empty. It says from top to bottom, "Asthalin" and on the outside of the top flap- now on the side- it has a hand holding a cylindrical object, the long way, between the fingers and thumb. This image, a white hand with a white object, is surrounded by a solid blue circle. Around the top, arching, there are some green letters that are not legible. Maybe the white object in the white hand in the blue circle on the white box that happens to be lying sideways is an inhaler. But I doubt the box contains anything- it has already collected dust waiting to be thrown out.

The lights are back. Perhaps I will go to Patan today as was suggested to me some time back.