My favourite physics teacher's sister lived in Taplejung, her husband had an aunt whose son did something in the shipbuilding industry in Vishakhapatnam, and the brother of his wife's maternal uncle's son-in-law was a husband of my third girlfriend's mother -- she had married someone else before him but he was a drunk good-for-nothing; thankfully his daughter, my then-girlfriend, was not.
School sakye dekhi chyang khaana gaa thiyena. Ekloi jaanu man thiyena, ra sangai janey manche sab jana dherai tadhaa gaisakeko thiyo. I never liked chyang so it was not that I wanted it... I wanted to drink some for old time's sake-- like an old friend.
Patan ma Mangalbazar ma Honacha cha, right next to the Durbar Square. Everyone goes there-- it's like a five-star as far as chyang khaane bhattis go. Not the place you would go alone-- you would be the lone weirdo while everyone else is in their groups of fours and fives and tens. There's this tiny bhatti in Mangalbazar, take the road right across the main road from Mangalbazar, and keep going; turn right when you see a tiny door. Stoop in and get in there-- that's the place you would have found me the day I met the Dhankute keti.
Dui jana gori, gaala bhukka pareko, i-phone ma geet sunne keti haru tyaha k gardai thye, I don't know. They had chhoyela-chiura in front of them, and two bronze glasses. The moti sahuni and her lean daughter of not more than 14 were working on the gas, so presumably the place was female-friendly. Besides, even jadyahaasi have better things to do than go to bhatti at three in the afternoon on a wednesday.
Both were rested against the grimy wall with legs on the bench, and had shut their eyes to the music before I got in. I noticed, because once I went in, they shuffled around-- the shirts were pulled up and hairs touched.
I asked for bhatmas-chiura and two glasses of chhyang.
Outside I can hear the usual mangalbazar cacophony of tempos and taxis and rickshaws and hagglers and peddlers and the garrulous mics all competing with one another to form this quiltwork of saandeko sound, if i may. It's not entirely pleasant, but you don't feel at home when it's not around. On the wall next to the gas are the posters of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya (amusing, I tell myself, royalists midst the original ethnic communists and maoists), now faded and dirty with decades of grime, and beneath them some 'Vaani' by Birendra about education. Girl education probably.
The walls must have been blue when they were painted, but they were now black-brown above the dirty-hand-line and yellow-orange-red, from all the paan and oil and whatnot, beneath it. A little white dog lay cuddled below one of the wooden tables.
The radio is playing a song-request program. The host asks the caller what Imraan Khan's first movie was. He's from Naya Baneshwar, and he gets it right-- his reward is a gift hamper from a recording studio which is trying to unload old CD's and cassettes from its inventory. He will receive 40 cassettes and 4 CD's of unsold Nepali songs. That's his punishment for having the knowledge of such stupid trivia. The radio is now playing some bhojpuri song.
Outside I can hear the usual mangalbazar cacophony of tempos and taxis and rickshaws and hagglers and peddlers and the garrulous mics all competing with one another to form this quiltwork of saandeko sound, if i may. It's not entirely pleasant, but you don't feel at home when it's not around. On the wall next to the gas are the posters of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya (amusing, I tell myself, royalists midst the original ethnic communists and maoists), now faded and dirty with decades of grime, and beneath them some 'Vaani' by Birendra about education. Girl education probably.
The walls must have been blue when they were painted, but they were now black-brown above the dirty-hand-line and yellow-orange-red, from all the paan and oil and whatnot, beneath it. A little white dog lay cuddled below one of the wooden tables.
The radio is playing a song-request program. The host asks the caller what Imraan Khan's first movie was. He's from Naya Baneshwar, and he gets it right-- his reward is a gift hamper from a recording studio which is trying to unload old CD's and cassettes from its inventory. He will receive 40 cassettes and 4 CD's of unsold Nepali songs. That's his punishment for having the knowledge of such stupid trivia. The radio is now playing some bhojpuri song.
The little girl brings the bhatmas-chiura. There are three unsqueezed hemispheres of lemons there-- the sahuni didn't want to take a chance with my toleration of sour.
fiction, fyi.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think. I'll read, promise.