So you think things are bad, huh?
Things that didn't happen to me: abusive family or friends or boyfriend girlfriend, being bullied at school, having an adopted brother who was adopted after he was released from prison for mudering is adopting parents, who was super-nice actually, much better than the abusive insolence of your father, and then breaking ties with the family.
Because these things happen only in America? Broken, dysfunctional familes are an American phonomena, aren't they, and by extension, something that happens to only white people who don't believe in the family anymore? Children who send their parents to old-people's homes, and children who throw their parents out of their homes, and parents who let their kids on their own after they are 16 (or is it eighteen?), and siblings who rarely talk to each other, and parents who love their pets more than they love their kids, and children who are more broken by their pet's death than their parents' death, and cheating husbands and cheating wives, and incestous siblings, and families that hardly meet once a year. What is that?
Zo has been trying to help/console her friend whose son was raped by a neighbourhood man over the summer. How old was he: 5, 6,7? She asks me, hopefully, to confirm, "Nepal doesn't have those people right? Those things don't happen there." Yeah. We don't hear, so they don't happen. Right. I'm broken.
Which makes me wonder, is the construct of the unbreakable family unit-- unbreakable no matter how high the costs to the individuals, a victorian construct, or did we always have that? It seems Nepali families before the British influence would often expand to newer places, so there was little convenience of the American transport. Would things have been different if parents had been able to pop over every other week, every other month?
Our morality is the victorian morality, forced upon us by the British, even though we pride on never having been colonised, that's for certain. The actual victorians shed their morality a long time ago, and here we are, stuck with two rigid hierarchies that your facebooks and twitters and the internet will not remove anytime soon-- the caste, and the class divide.
As Prof. Jalal says, the Victorian morality was/has come to be seen as the morality of the better-off. When you are farming, you may have personal freedom, the rules that apply to the bahuns of the cities don't apply to you. And when you get to the city, your daughter may not see the guy she used to as often anymore, she may not act the same way anymore, because you are now city-people, you're the middle class, and now you have new values. Victorian values.
Girls' hostels in Kathmandu are a ridiculous sight-- protected by 10 foot walls with glass shards on them, and a nighttime curfew that begins early and end lates. Because the women should not be running around in the night, fucking whoever the fuck they fucking want to, because that's not right, that's not how a proper prim lady acts. And the parents, yeah.
Funfact: If you are caught in the bed with a woman not related to you, the police will charge you for prostitution. Even though they would never actually raid the places where women are actually forced into it, you know. Because women should be prim and proper, and not be fucking around. Unless they are being forced to do it, and are making lots of money for the sahujis and the inspector saabs. Then it's alright. They may do whatever they please.
There's this vine of the nice-girl-whores of Kathmandu. They're young, 16, 17, 18, 19, and they're pretty, and they're great to talk to. They go to good private schools, and are driven to the school. And when they are free, you know, will have sex with you if you give them enough money. That comes after the homework though-- they have their SLC coming, and SLC is more important than sex or money. Da has funny stories about how he's been with all the nice-pretty-dont-take-such-a-fucking-long-time-dai-please-I-have-to-study-for-send-up-when-I-get-home in Kathmandu. He reports they are really good, and know what they're doing and life's good. I've not talked to him for a long time, I should get the details from him rather than get it secondhand.
B tells me I wouldn't believe if she told me how many of her 15-16-17 year old friends who went to the l33tSchool with her had had been with married men, some with kids. To which, all I could stammer: Where do they find married men? There seems to be a significant demographic of married men in Kathmandu in their twenties and thirties who, being the modern men they are and not the wifebeating assholes their dads were, love their wives, and have a great family life with kids and all. And when they get some free time, they find B's friends. Seriously though, what place do married men go to find girls in their midteens in Kathmandu?
Kathmandu is a cesspool. It doesn't flow. It may grow, it may get richer, it may dress more glitzier, but it will always remain. It won't change. The facade will change, and the malls will pop up everywhere, and the coffee cafes will take over the chiya pasals, but the untouchables will always remain the untouchables. In the last 40 years, the only thing that's changed in Kathmandu is that the ranajis have gotten a lot more people to pal around with, and possibly marry. You either marry into wealth, or into caste. The untouchables run away from Kathmandu -- anywhere they can go, UK, Australia, the Middle East, the Far East, United States.
And then the stories repeat, but with a more...American(shall we say) twist. I'm told of a DV family who lives in Texas that sold every last anna-paisa of land and Nepali currency for dollars and moved here. The son, in his mid-twenties has gotten into more grand theft autos than he can remember, he has broken his parole every time, and he now spends between different courts and prisons and visits his home in between. The 'patron' of the house, in late forties/early fifties, is forever inebriated, sleeping on the sidewalks, on the benches, in the parks, and when he does go home, he's not in the right frame of mind. His wife is in severe state of depression, she looks forever dazed and confused, and she can't figure out what she can do. She can't go back, because there's nothing there anymore. Their stories are our stories.
But is it their American-ness that screwed them over, or is it their Nepali-ness-- they have not been in the United States for very long? Or is it their lack of sophistication-- their pakheness, that causes them to have such a sadlife. Did they have the same life in Nepal? Would they have a similar life in Nepal? I know I'm contradicting myself here-- maybe they wouldn't because of the social security, but that's a different issue entirely which I will write on later someday maybe.
Rinse and repeat.
Now that they got rid of the DV, there should be some interesting dynamics. If the ethnicity issue does not take a major spin, all the asylum seekers are being asked to return back. Which is hil-arious (to me, probably not to them) because I'm told a significant proportion had seen it as a sure-fire way of getting a Visa.
I'm jumping back to the houses in Kathmandu. Real estate is going to take a major hit, it seems-- someone is defaulting on a Rs. 5bn project, and the future of the project is very shaky. What happens to the investment of all the institutions that have invested in it, remains to be seen. Nothing good can come from it though.
I want to bring this up again-- I've written it in some other post too-- when I was about to leave, Pr di joked that she was saddned that all the good men in Kathmandu were leaving or had left. That's not true at all, and may have been influenced strongly by the fact that her boyfriend was abroad too, but the fact remains-- are all the interesting men and women in Kathmandu going to be there anymore? The I/NGO people don't count. Are they? Will they?
Is Nepali a nationality anymore, or a state identity with multiple identities? If Nepal is not an exclusively Nepali nation anymore (I'm not defining the concept of Nepalis as a nation), (which I think is what's happening, and should happen), then does one necessarily need to maintaini physical contact with the motherland to remain a Nepali? If we define ourself by our nationality and not our political boundaries, then we are finally free to be practicing Nepalis, frolicking around. Kathmandu doesn't even have have to be relevant anymore.
The society is breaking apart not because of Westernization, but the sharp contradictions between the hypocrisy of our values and ground reality. A society cannot lie to itself forever and ever and ever.
I thought what would be termed as rape or sexual harrassment would be less common here, between the Nepali students. I've been told a few tales of particular character yes, but it seems his stories got around becase his issue became a public issue because law enforcement had to be avoided. I'm told consent of the woman is still not one of priorities of a lot of majority of Nepali men studying in the United States. Sure, they may not go to your top liberal arts college or your fancy university, they may not be privy to the tens of thousands of dollars of scholarship monies, but they are just as much under the laws as anyone else is. And yet, it goes.
Inspired by this amazing article. Very readable legth too. Read the comments also.
[Also, if I am bored enough, I might turn this piece into multiple more coherent pieces.]