There are many people strolling about. It’s 3 pm, and I am in Jhamsikhel. Everyone is going somewhere. Walking, walking, walking. Bikes zoom up and down on the road. Boys in their hippest outfits, trying to look cool, girls decked up as if they are going to a party. Couples walking arm in arm, in the sweet oblivion of love. Mothers with their children by their side— school’s over. In a way it’s beautiful. But then a bus screeches up, billowing mud and smoke. Reality smacks the dreamer into its arms. No dream lasts forever.

The pine trees that hang over Samiksha pre-school greet you. The smell of food from Tortillas tingles your taste buds. I am hungry, but not for food. I am hungry for sublimity.

There’s a bookshop there, full of marvelous wonders. I know this place like the back of my hand. Upon entering, I feel as if I am lost in the belly of the beast, yet soothed by the smell of paperbacks around me.

An angel appears. She opens her purse, slips out a cigarette, lights it. Breathes it in. You can’t smoke here someone says. She’s bummed out. She heads out. Guess she really needs a smoke. Sorry Dai, I have to go. Oh you have to leave?  I do now. I follow. Catavinas die on my lips.

Behold her, the blessed damsel of white. The entrance to Mara is surrounded by flowers, pretty ones. She’s there, just outside, breathing in smoke. I’m down here. What should I do? What can I say? Should I go? Follow? Try to talk to her? She looks older, world weary. American? Or French? Conversations I could have with her. Do you read books? You do! Who’s your favourite writer? This, this, this. Never heard of him. My favourite is Joyce. Have you heard of him? You haven’t? A shame. He’s magnificent.

Dream ends. She’s coming closer, closer. She’s passed you by. Probably returning to her party, her friends, boy friend? Maybe. What would she want with a Nepali boy like me? Nepali. A what? Nepali, from Nepal. Never heard of it.

nnn

So, what are you reading right now? D asks.

We’re in Mountainsnow cafe, Freak Street. The heavy cloud of cigarette smoke hangs overhead. The etchings on the wall—some snippets of lyrics, The Doors, Scorpions, obscene words, this loves that, etc.

Oh, Shirish Ko Phool, by Parijat, I say. It’s really, really great. Have you read it?

No, but I will now. She says, lighting a cigarette.

It’s a work of genius. By a Nepali nonetheless. It’s one of the few books that really impressed me. It’s really good.

Youngsters everywhere, like us. Some probably older. Hear what they talk—music, memories, lies. All of us, liars. All of us doomed to repeat the same travesties of our forefathers.

Let’s head out, I tell D. She stubs the death stick in the ashtray. An experiment in misery I say, today let’s perform. Us two, like gypsies, let’s roam through every crooked street, every nook and cranny of this here our Basantapur. Look at the beggars there with their laminated paper pages creased in the middle with which they ask tourists for cash. Some give, some don’t. And a policeman comes to scream at them whenever they pester a tourist for too long. Beggar children run around with no shoes or sandals. They’re laughing, smiling, fooling around. A future, what sort of future lies ahead for them? Will they end up as their parents? Or will they break free? In a way they’re just like you and me, D. In a way, we’re all connected, you see, yet so far apart. In this sea of faces all life mingles to one.

Quit being so melodramatic, she moans.

But that is my middle name!

We walk, past the temples and the red, red ground. The pigeons, the samosas, all the way to Thamel.

She has to leave.

Don’t go. I’m so alone.

She has to leave.

She goes.

I’m alone again.

That night I dreamed of the lady in white. The lady of the flowers. Cigarette in one hand, a lyre in the other. She offered it to me. Said, come with me. Leave this place. We can find eternity, together, away from this hole. Come, together we can be whole. But my feet are grounded. I sink. I sink like a piece of shit in the Bagmati. Try, try to sing in your chains like the sea. A poem comes to mind, and slips out my lips.

The world is bigger, grander they say.

But then again, who are they

To say? As if they know something,

Something at all about the despair

Of being tattooed a scoundrel, a nobody,

Just because you were born in a corner, or

Sandwiched between two majorities,

Sinking, squished in, unable to breathe—

A nothing, that’s all we’ll always be.

Unless,

And this word hangs in the air.

At times like these, in despair whenever I feel, the same image comes to mind. That of a beggar woman nursing her child in the open. While the women ignore her and the men try to look.