Arriving in Kathmandu, Nepal on September 15th, after my 11 days in Kalimpong, India, I took a taxi from the airport to the Fulbright office. On the way to the office we encountered an enormous traffic jam. The traffic is bad enough as it is in the city as a constant chaotic swarm of buses, vans, motorcycles, goats, pedestrians, bicycles, dogs, and cars, but this was different- we hadn’t gone anywhere in minutes and it was jammed up as far as I could see.
I asked the driver what the problem was and he said “baanda chha”- chha means ‘there is’ and baanda literally means ‘closed’. Baanda is one of the words used for one form of political strike / protest which is quite often now in the city. Over the past several years, and especially more recently, at any given time- from one day to the next without any notice at all- any part of the city or its entirety can be completely closed down to automobile traffic. By blocking specific and major intersections the city becomes closed. And many businesses will also close down in protest.
I asked the driver why there was a baanda today. He explained that recently the government had instated a curfew by which all shops, restaurants and bars had to be closed by 11pm. Tamel, considered the tourist district and party / club / bar / discotec center for Nepali Youth, is home to many businesses that would prefer to be open until the early morning hours. The workers of these businesses- waitresses, bar tenders, etc.- protested that day by closing down a few major intersections, what would happen to their jobs, their money, their livelihood with such a curfew which is to date heavily instated every night by a swarm of armed police who are not afraid to used their bats so I hear.
The taxicab driver explained that the government believes that a lot of crime emanates from these late-night alcohol serving establishments, and so the curfew. When I talked briefly with another Fulbrighter about the curfew, he also seemed to think it was a good idea. His notion came from the fact that he and his girlfriend didn’t like to see such westernization in Nepal- he still is searching for “the real Nepal” that he has not been able to find over the last two weeks in this bustling, rapidly modernizing yet simultaneously ancient city.
“The Real Nepal”- Buddhists and Everest and ancient ‘sustainable’ traditions. And where are the authentic Nepalis anyways? Why do they all watch TV and wear jeans and drive cars? “I came here to get away from all of that” I heard another westerner say. So what is “the real America”? Wallstreet and Hollywood, ritz and intellect, sex, power, whiteness and beauty? I don’t feel like a very ‘authentic’ American, although I fit the mold in many ways. Dreaming of authenticity is very dangerous and we must recognize our desires, try to trace their roots. Considering the circumstances, denying people ‘development’ can also be considered a form of oppression. To assume we should have access to observe or engage in an “authentic traditional” culture is another symptom of privilege with various roots and repercussions. But there is no denying the wisdom of ancient ways of life and the proliferation of western hegemony is definitely a source of their demise.
This issue of modernization is such a tricky one to be thinking about here in Nepal. After being here only 10 days I don’t feel especially educated about all of the recent history of the country, something I hope to change very quickly, but I can certainly say that right now I feel as though the situation is a tangled ball of yarn with dozens of different colored strings sprawling out from the congested center.
Kathmandu itself is the melting pot of Nepal. The Newari people are indigenous to the Kathmandu Valley and are the people who originally built the ancient cities and kingdoms of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur- now the major cities in the valley. In the late 1700s the Kathmandu Valley was conquered (or “unified” as the euphemism goes) by the Gorkha Army and from there a Hindu Kingdom prevailed with overlapping caste systems in place (Newari and Hindu/Gorkha). Slowly people from all over the area began to settle in the Valley and today you find people of many different ethnic backgrounds residing in the Valley- Tamang, Rai, Tapa, Gurung, Sherpa, just to name a few. The ways in which these people were integrated into the hierarchical social order is fascinating and complex. Because they were neither priests (Brahmins), warriors (Chetris), merchants (Vishia), untouchables, nor Newaris they were jammed into the lower rungs of complexities oversimplified by the classical Hindu caste system theory. Modern Nepal still struggles with issues inclusiveness concerning the caste system, and class of course is another whole issue. Someone can be rich, but because they are of a low caste, be looked down upon. My foreign eyes are not tuned to notice the subtleties of caste discrimination and oppression but I am sure with time and education I will start seeing things more clearly. Even in the US one needs a certain focus in their vision to see the multiple ways in which race, economics, culture, and law interact and weave together as our grandly unequal and unjust social fabric.
So ethnicity, caste and class. There is one string of yarn.
The major issue in Nepal right now of course if development. Many people claim that people in the cities and in remote rural villages alike need more electricity, better education, better roads, better hospitals, better jobs, more economic power so that Nepal as a nation can prosper and become more powerful within the international community. For decades politicians have promised development programs, but nothing ever seems to happen with these policies. The people lost faith in their parliamentary / Monarchical bureaucracy which just seemed to gobble up money from home and abroad, keeping the rich and the poor poor but without the development and progress many people felt needed. For 15 some years a Maoist lead military force spread inspirational revolutionary rhetoric and anti Royal Army violence throughout the country. Thousands were killed, acres of land seized, hundreds of protests, strikes and other political maneuvers were taken, and eventually the King was ejected. Democratic elections took place about a year ago electing the Maoist to power. Today a constitution is being drafted and yet somehow the faith in government seems to be small. The recent national budget proposal calls for twice as much money as previous ones and includes monumentous goals like dam projects leading to electricity exports to India. Today the Nepal’s capital city loses power 36 hours per week. Many people don’t trust the Maoist either and expect more of the same from the new politicians, big ideas, little action.
So civil war, transition from monarchy to democracy, government, Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and development projects is another thread of yarn.
Education. In such a relatively economically poor, developing 3rd world country the education system is lacking. I have yet to see school in rural areas but I have heard they are usually little more than small shacks with small classrooms jamming in dozens of students for one teacher. In a town in the hills there is a 12 year old boy in the seventh grade who is at the top of his class. In the same grade are 15 and 16 year old kids. If this young boy was given a scholarship to study in a good school in Kathmandu he would be placed in the second grade. I recently met a women from Holland who is working with the Nepal Ministry of Education. Currently there is absolutely no teacher training necessary to become a government-school teacher. Graduating from high school is the only qualification. Of course there are certain text books and exams for certain grades. With this system people make up their own lessons and material that can be far from truth or actual reality; unified teacher training, pedagogy, and curriculum are far from sight. She said that they have created great models for putting such programs in place, but Brahmin men make all of the decisions at the end of the day she says. The bureaucracy seemed intolerable to her. From my experience the education system is also very traditional in the sense of not questioning the ‘guru’ who knows all, and memorization without true understanding is very common, especially for younger children. Another thing which shocked me is the Euro-American centrism that, from my limited experience talking with people here, seems to pervade the school system (not too surprising considering dominant forms of ‘development, progress and democracy- all hot topics in Nepal – arose from the West.
Education, another strand.
Media. Walking down the streets of Kathmandu today, media is everywhere. Advertisements mostly come from cosmetics (shampoo, etc) idolizing glowing fair skin as the symbol of beauty, alcohol companies boasting excitement, sex and prestige as the characteristics of these increasingly popular beverages considered entirely risqué to many less than a generation ago, motorcycles which “set millions of hearts aflame”, cell phones which seem to be just about everyone’s access to a personalized modern experience, and packaged food so that life can be fast.
Television of course is incredibly enchanting, addicting, and popular. Almost every Nepali family’s home I have been in boasts a TV on for several hours day and night. Here the glamour of the Western World is displayed in all of its undisputed fabulous glory and in comparison Nepal is oh so poor. Hindi and Nepali TV programs range from sitcoms, to music videos to the nightly news and often times have good local programming. I have spoke to many that say the aspirations and desires of the youth are planted by the media. A huge percentage of young Nepali men are abroad to make money.
Media, another pervasive strand.
Tradition. Hindu and Buddhist dharma are firmly rooted as the pillars of this society. The culture, the language, the daily practices, dress, religious ceremony and philosophies all interwoven as one. The balance that is kept by people entering the middle and upper classes between tradition and modernity is quite unique, many might consider themselves ‘suitably modern’.
Here in the city, it seems that a good proportion of people have their own gardens, they grow various vegetables seasonally to supplement having to buy. Just a couple blocks away from my apartment in the middle of the city is a rice patty in someone’s front yard. Squash vines are common ornaments to nearly every house, climbing on roofs, trees and power lines. The further one gets away the more agricultural land there is. In just a twenty minute bus ride I can be in the hills where the rice patties extend for acres and corn, potatoes, radish and mustard greens grow lusciously as a combination of food for the house and food to be sold for income. In this setting many families have their own cow or water buffalo to provide manure (fertilizer) and dairy for consumption or sale. It is not uncommon to see a 70 year old women or a 8 year old girl carrying a large bamboo basket overflowing with grass and shrubs- a portion of their cow’s daily feed- all of its weight strapped onto their head and draped on their back which leans forward up the steep hills and paved or dirt roads. Others carry loads of brick, dirt or absolutely anything you can imagine in these load carrying baskets.
Just an hour bus ride (10 miles) I can be in a completely rural setting. From the top of tall hills ones sees terraced hillsides interlaced with subtropical forest and green valleys as the foreground to the Himalayan mountains. These terraced hills have provided the sustenance of life to god-knows how many generations who lived in with these hills. Of course things have never been perfect, but the country-side can be very idyllic for someone passionate about healthy food, healthy environments and healthy people. The entire food chain is visible here as well as the incredible agro-ecosystem which people have induced for life. Eating a meals of rice, lentils, vegetables, fruits, wild plants, herbs and spices, fresh dairy and meat products- all from your direct vicinity is quite remarkable to me, not only to think about it, but to feel its pleasure and its nourishment.
But of course these traditions are suitably slipping away. In many villages young men are endangered- they have left to make money. Speaking to young men about these issues, it seems many would rather have money, ride a motorcycle and have the freedom to stay out at a bar past 11pm than to live in the footsteps of their forefathers. As my other Fulbright Fellow friend, studying democratization in Nepal, said yesterday “who wants to live in a mud shack after you have seen modernity?” In many cases, as a byproduct of overpopulation and socially unjust land distribution, the food that can be grown on a family’s land is not enough, as such they have to make money. So you can work for a dollar a day doing manual labor, or 4,000 rupees (65ruppees=$1, so about $60) a month in an office if you are lucky, or be 1 of 11 getting 3,000 rupees/month collecting eggs from a factory of 15,000 chicken (as I recently saw). But the young men will tell you that none of this is enough for the lives that they want.
Once, where rice could not be grown, millet, wheat, buckwheat and drought resistant rice where grown. Today corn, potatoes and other veggies fill the terraced fields that also now taste cheaply produced chemical fertilizers which give higher yield but devitalize and deplete the soil in the long term. A cash oriented system slowly replaces the old value system and as a result people no longer eat the old foods that used to fill their bellies in such good ways, one older Nepali man told me. The same old man, when I asked him why he thought so many young men leave their homes, families, and friends for work and money abroad, said that so many of them watch the television and it shows them the life of wealth- a fabricated illusion. But they think this illusion is a reality, he says, and so they leave to try to make it so. The grass is always greener on the other side.
Agriculture, development, desires, the changing food system, illusions and reality- another long, long yarn of thread.
Of course there are too many threads to be sorted but I am trying to get a holistic understanding of the situation before I choose one area to concentrate on. So far to me the notion of desire is very intriguing to me. It is tragic that so many young men leave the country now for work, and in my next entry, I will tell a story of a recent interaction I had with some young men not too much older than myself.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
20 Minutes Around the neighborhood
BLOG ENTRY 1 9/22/08 11am
There is nothing like a stream of cold water pouring down your back to bathe and wake yourself up in the beginning of the day. When I first got to my flat here in Bhat Bhateni, Kathmandu, Nepal one week ago the miniature hot-water-heater above the toilet was broken. Since then it has been fixed but I have yet to use it. I rather like the chilly water and the hot-water-heater takes twenty minutes to get ready anyways.
This morning I woke up and did some yoga and stretching in my bedroom, then I walked up stairs and greeted to sun on my flat’s rooftop. The view from the roof is not spectacular but one definitely gets the feeling that they are right in the middle of a big city, and that is where I am. Kathmandu with a quickly growing population of 1 million is one of three bigger cities in the Kathmandu Valley. A couple days ago I had hung up some laundry after washing it by hand under the same faucet that I bathe with (the showerhead is useless) and forget to bring it in before it rained last night- typical evening and nights showers for the end of the monsoon- but I was surprised that by 9am the powerful sun had already dried most everything.
Waking up at 8:30am like I did this morning is rather late for these parts and by the time I was done with some exercises on the roof John, another Fulbright Fellow who is my roommate for the time being while he finds a flat to make his own, was already cooking some breakfast. Ducking under a grapefruit tree hanging low with heavy green fruit I walked out of my typical little gated complex of five or so apartment buildings to my small neighborhood street. Directly across the way are two small shops that seem to do the same thing- sell kaajaa (food that does not include rice) and chia (chai / tea). They are tiny little shacks with a cozy atmosphere. Walking another 45 seconds down the street I pass two tailors working with old fashioned sewing machines with foot power capability (the city looses power about 36 hours/week) and a little general store selling packaged candies, drinks, soaps and other small goodies. The little corner store had people crowded around a small table drinking tea and chatting. I took a short cut down a small alley way hardly wide enough for a bicycle passing another tailor, a little western style bakery (muffins and shitty white bread) on the left and a small Indian restaurant on the left.
This alley takes me to the main street of Bhat Bhateni where I took a left next to a huge tree on a rock stoop, the base of the tree stained red from people doing puja (Hindu / Bhuddist religious worhip ceremony). Past the tree on the right hand side of the road is one of the most expensive restaurants in Kathmandu. The Roadside Cafe sells wood-fired pizza, hummus, and some Nepali snacks (I had the pasta pesto there which really wasn’t any good, but the pizza I tasted was excellent). Just across the street from The Roadside Café is a daadaa, a public water tap. Any time of the morning, day or evening you walk by there will be men, women and children bathing, washing there clothes, and filling up water jugs in stone open room fixed below the road where sometimes creepy men stand above and overlook the women bathing with a towel around them.
This busy street is loaded with traffic and movement. At any given time on any street there can be any or all of the following: pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, huge buses, small minivans, cars, took-tooks (small three wheeled automobile used for public trans), dogs, goats, cows, chickens, and of course trash. Its hectic, loud and scary at times with large plumes of black diesel fumes clouding the streets from the old vehicles in a country with next to no emission standards. There is no real order to the madness. For the most part people drive on the left side of the road but there is a constant battle for position on the streets and it is a constant colorful swirl of all forms of human transportation. It is incredible how many people fit into the public transportation vehicles. A small mini-van I road in the other day somehow crammed in over 30 people packed like sardines standing and leaning over each other, even hanging outside the side door. 12 rupees to go just about anywhere (70 some Nepali rupees to the dollar).
I walked past the couch mender, more tailors, an internet café, small shops a couple schools and many piles of trash to get to a small shop that I knew had the veggies I wanted to buy just a minute or two down the road. This shop like most others are small and open air with an array of goods sprawled out on the ground or behind the counter. I picked up two bitter gourds (I doubt you have ever seen this really bitter squash in the US unless you go to a south-asian market), two large cucumbers and a few tomatoes for 30 rupees (about 40 cents) and walked the other way back home.
I walked by another Fulbright friend named Eli who was on his way to the office, he gave me a fresh muffin from that bakery and said we might see each other tonight. Eli is studying the transition from Monarchy to Democracy currently taking place now in Nepal and thinks that drafting a constitution here will be no easy or small task, but more on that later. Again I walked past the water tap, but passed the alley this time to stay on the main road. Less that a minute walk from small alley a more major intersection. Standing at this intersection, before you is a large mall where things have fixed prices (so there is no bartering and haggling which is otherwise the sometimes fun and entertaining norm) and you can find just about anything under one roof. Its not a mall or even a huge department store by western standards but it is a very new and big shopping experience for Nepalis and the whole complex was started by one Gurung (ethnic group) woman as a small shop like any other but developing over the last 25 years to now have escalators and four stories of clothes, household goods, electronics and foods.
There are a few billboards at the intersections advertising antidandruff shampoo and White Mischief Vodka- “A little mischief, a lot of fun!”. Across from the mall and the billboards is the main mandir (Hindu temple) of the Bhat Bhateni neighborhood. There are a few ornate buildings and intricately carved and colored statues of gods with people handing out, doing puja, praying or just walking by. This is a medium-small mandir, but walking along the street, one frequently encounters mandirs stained red and other colors with people maybe doing puja, they range from a small statue the size of your hand built into the side of a wall or building, to a small brick room with a ganesh statue in it built under a gnarled pipal tree which looks hundreds of years old (like a mandir just down another street), to a huge temples considered word heritage sites.
I turn right at this intersection and stop briefly at a shop that sells fruits and vegetables. I have become friends with the family that owns the place. Every time I walk by they have a friend or customer sitting down and chatting. Whenever I walk by they invite me to sit down. Usually they will feed me fresh papaya, bananas of various assortments, pomegranates, carrots, and apples at the shop while we chat (they even had me over for dinner the other night- but that is a whole other story), but this time I just sat down a minute or two and then left telling them that I was cooking breakfast. I walked away with some cilantro they gave me for free- they have given me so much, they are so friendly, its incredible!
Walking away from their produce shop I am soothed by smell of incense burning at the mandir across the street. Within seconds the calming cent of incense is replaced by a thick, pungent aromas and a noisy machine rattling as it grinds spices of turmeric, coriander and cumin in a tiny shop with three women dressed in red saaris, squatting as they wait to by their share. My apartment is just a minute or two walk from the produce shop and along the way I poked my head through a open air curtain into a small restaurant I have been going to for khaanaa (food that includes rice) to say hello to the super friendly short and stout didi with a traditional nose ring (didi meaning older sister- everyone is either your younger or older brother or sister). Here they serve dal baat, the traditional Nepali meal of rice, lentil soup and vegetables eaten with the hands, of course food is not really considered food culturally and linguistically unless there is a mountain of rice on your plate. It’s a great place to eat as much as you want (they serve you as many times as you please) for 50 rupees (65 cents), and meet local people. The didi gave me a huge smile and asked when I was coming next as she washed saag (vegetable greens) under a faded poster of Avril Lavigne on the wall behind her and a funky feathered chicken scurrying at her feet.
Just around the corner some people said hello to me as I walked by. The two guys were standing in front of the neighborhood barbershop, one of them had shaved my beard the other day and they recognized me and asked how I was, have you had tea this morning, have you eaten yet? No I said, I was about to cook. I asked if they had, no they had had tea and kaajaa, but no food; they would soon go to the room they share nearby and cook and eat dal bhaat. At their barber shop a beard save is available for 30 rupees I got this combined a good face wash /message and mediocre back, head, arm massage- 45 minutes 100 rupees. Around the next corner I turned left into my gate shuffling by the white dog that is always hanging around at the foot of our gate. There are stray dogs everywhere sticking to their own territory and they are most active at night.
By the time I got back to the flat not more than 20 or so minutes had passed since I left to buy the vegetables, and I could have made it back in less. But what is the hurry? its nice having things close and friendly people all around. No one ever seems to be in a rush here and I am trying to get on that wave length- so different from the busy nature of American life.
John was adding beans, peas, tomatoes, and potatoes to the pressure cooker, later adding freshly stoned ground garlic-ginger-hot pepper paste and turmeric fried in pungent mustard oil. The 25lbs stone I bought for $3.50 is a great thing to have to grind spices and fist size rocks of pink Himalayan crystal salt sold in the bazaar. I cooked the bitter gourd with fenugreek, onion, and turmeric, cut up the cucumber and we made an acchar- a freshly made condiment also called chutney; although we think of chutney as a pickle here the two words are synonymous and can mean either. The acchar was of freshly ground coconut (I drank its water yesterday), lime juice, cilantro and salt. We ate the delicious meal with churri, a crunchy pre-cooked, flattened and dried rice popular for kaaja. I don’t know if I will ever be able to make food taste like the Nepalis do. I know how they cook, but there is just something they have, the right touch, the experience of cooking dal bhat their entire lives, that makes there food such as incredible experience to eat.
There is nothing like a stream of cold water pouring down your back to bathe and wake yourself up in the beginning of the day. When I first got to my flat here in Bhat Bhateni, Kathmandu, Nepal one week ago the miniature hot-water-heater above the toilet was broken. Since then it has been fixed but I have yet to use it. I rather like the chilly water and the hot-water-heater takes twenty minutes to get ready anyways.
This morning I woke up and did some yoga and stretching in my bedroom, then I walked up stairs and greeted to sun on my flat’s rooftop. The view from the roof is not spectacular but one definitely gets the feeling that they are right in the middle of a big city, and that is where I am. Kathmandu with a quickly growing population of 1 million is one of three bigger cities in the Kathmandu Valley. A couple days ago I had hung up some laundry after washing it by hand under the same faucet that I bathe with (the showerhead is useless) and forget to bring it in before it rained last night- typical evening and nights showers for the end of the monsoon- but I was surprised that by 9am the powerful sun had already dried most everything.
Waking up at 8:30am like I did this morning is rather late for these parts and by the time I was done with some exercises on the roof John, another Fulbright Fellow who is my roommate for the time being while he finds a flat to make his own, was already cooking some breakfast. Ducking under a grapefruit tree hanging low with heavy green fruit I walked out of my typical little gated complex of five or so apartment buildings to my small neighborhood street. Directly across the way are two small shops that seem to do the same thing- sell kaajaa (food that does not include rice) and chia (chai / tea). They are tiny little shacks with a cozy atmosphere. Walking another 45 seconds down the street I pass two tailors working with old fashioned sewing machines with foot power capability (the city looses power about 36 hours/week) and a little general store selling packaged candies, drinks, soaps and other small goodies. The little corner store had people crowded around a small table drinking tea and chatting. I took a short cut down a small alley way hardly wide enough for a bicycle passing another tailor, a little western style bakery (muffins and shitty white bread) on the left and a small Indian restaurant on the left.
This alley takes me to the main street of Bhat Bhateni where I took a left next to a huge tree on a rock stoop, the base of the tree stained red from people doing puja (Hindu / Bhuddist religious worhip ceremony). Past the tree on the right hand side of the road is one of the most expensive restaurants in Kathmandu. The Roadside Cafe sells wood-fired pizza, hummus, and some Nepali snacks (I had the pasta pesto there which really wasn’t any good, but the pizza I tasted was excellent). Just across the street from The Roadside Café is a daadaa, a public water tap. Any time of the morning, day or evening you walk by there will be men, women and children bathing, washing there clothes, and filling up water jugs in stone open room fixed below the road where sometimes creepy men stand above and overlook the women bathing with a towel around them.
This busy street is loaded with traffic and movement. At any given time on any street there can be any or all of the following: pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, huge buses, small minivans, cars, took-tooks (small three wheeled automobile used for public trans), dogs, goats, cows, chickens, and of course trash. Its hectic, loud and scary at times with large plumes of black diesel fumes clouding the streets from the old vehicles in a country with next to no emission standards. There is no real order to the madness. For the most part people drive on the left side of the road but there is a constant battle for position on the streets and it is a constant colorful swirl of all forms of human transportation. It is incredible how many people fit into the public transportation vehicles. A small mini-van I road in the other day somehow crammed in over 30 people packed like sardines standing and leaning over each other, even hanging outside the side door. 12 rupees to go just about anywhere (70 some Nepali rupees to the dollar).
I walked past the couch mender, more tailors, an internet café, small shops a couple schools and many piles of trash to get to a small shop that I knew had the veggies I wanted to buy just a minute or two down the road. This shop like most others are small and open air with an array of goods sprawled out on the ground or behind the counter. I picked up two bitter gourds (I doubt you have ever seen this really bitter squash in the US unless you go to a south-asian market), two large cucumbers and a few tomatoes for 30 rupees (about 40 cents) and walked the other way back home.
I walked by another Fulbright friend named Eli who was on his way to the office, he gave me a fresh muffin from that bakery and said we might see each other tonight. Eli is studying the transition from Monarchy to Democracy currently taking place now in Nepal and thinks that drafting a constitution here will be no easy or small task, but more on that later. Again I walked past the water tap, but passed the alley this time to stay on the main road. Less that a minute walk from small alley a more major intersection. Standing at this intersection, before you is a large mall where things have fixed prices (so there is no bartering and haggling which is otherwise the sometimes fun and entertaining norm) and you can find just about anything under one roof. Its not a mall or even a huge department store by western standards but it is a very new and big shopping experience for Nepalis and the whole complex was started by one Gurung (ethnic group) woman as a small shop like any other but developing over the last 25 years to now have escalators and four stories of clothes, household goods, electronics and foods.
There are a few billboards at the intersections advertising antidandruff shampoo and White Mischief Vodka- “A little mischief, a lot of fun!”. Across from the mall and the billboards is the main mandir (Hindu temple) of the Bhat Bhateni neighborhood. There are a few ornate buildings and intricately carved and colored statues of gods with people handing out, doing puja, praying or just walking by. This is a medium-small mandir, but walking along the street, one frequently encounters mandirs stained red and other colors with people maybe doing puja, they range from a small statue the size of your hand built into the side of a wall or building, to a small brick room with a ganesh statue in it built under a gnarled pipal tree which looks hundreds of years old (like a mandir just down another street), to a huge temples considered word heritage sites.
I turn right at this intersection and stop briefly at a shop that sells fruits and vegetables. I have become friends with the family that owns the place. Every time I walk by they have a friend or customer sitting down and chatting. Whenever I walk by they invite me to sit down. Usually they will feed me fresh papaya, bananas of various assortments, pomegranates, carrots, and apples at the shop while we chat (they even had me over for dinner the other night- but that is a whole other story), but this time I just sat down a minute or two and then left telling them that I was cooking breakfast. I walked away with some cilantro they gave me for free- they have given me so much, they are so friendly, its incredible!
Walking away from their produce shop I am soothed by smell of incense burning at the mandir across the street. Within seconds the calming cent of incense is replaced by a thick, pungent aromas and a noisy machine rattling as it grinds spices of turmeric, coriander and cumin in a tiny shop with three women dressed in red saaris, squatting as they wait to by their share. My apartment is just a minute or two walk from the produce shop and along the way I poked my head through a open air curtain into a small restaurant I have been going to for khaanaa (food that includes rice) to say hello to the super friendly short and stout didi with a traditional nose ring (didi meaning older sister- everyone is either your younger or older brother or sister). Here they serve dal baat, the traditional Nepali meal of rice, lentil soup and vegetables eaten with the hands, of course food is not really considered food culturally and linguistically unless there is a mountain of rice on your plate. It’s a great place to eat as much as you want (they serve you as many times as you please) for 50 rupees (65 cents), and meet local people. The didi gave me a huge smile and asked when I was coming next as she washed saag (vegetable greens) under a faded poster of Avril Lavigne on the wall behind her and a funky feathered chicken scurrying at her feet.
Just around the corner some people said hello to me as I walked by. The two guys were standing in front of the neighborhood barbershop, one of them had shaved my beard the other day and they recognized me and asked how I was, have you had tea this morning, have you eaten yet? No I said, I was about to cook. I asked if they had, no they had had tea and kaajaa, but no food; they would soon go to the room they share nearby and cook and eat dal bhaat. At their barber shop a beard save is available for 30 rupees I got this combined a good face wash /message and mediocre back, head, arm massage- 45 minutes 100 rupees. Around the next corner I turned left into my gate shuffling by the white dog that is always hanging around at the foot of our gate. There are stray dogs everywhere sticking to their own territory and they are most active at night.
By the time I got back to the flat not more than 20 or so minutes had passed since I left to buy the vegetables, and I could have made it back in less. But what is the hurry? its nice having things close and friendly people all around. No one ever seems to be in a rush here and I am trying to get on that wave length- so different from the busy nature of American life.
John was adding beans, peas, tomatoes, and potatoes to the pressure cooker, later adding freshly stoned ground garlic-ginger-hot pepper paste and turmeric fried in pungent mustard oil. The 25lbs stone I bought for $3.50 is a great thing to have to grind spices and fist size rocks of pink Himalayan crystal salt sold in the bazaar. I cooked the bitter gourd with fenugreek, onion, and turmeric, cut up the cucumber and we made an acchar- a freshly made condiment also called chutney; although we think of chutney as a pickle here the two words are synonymous and can mean either. The acchar was of freshly ground coconut (I drank its water yesterday), lime juice, cilantro and salt. We ate the delicious meal with churri, a crunchy pre-cooked, flattened and dried rice popular for kaaja. I don’t know if I will ever be able to make food taste like the Nepalis do. I know how they cook, but there is just something they have, the right touch, the experience of cooking dal bhat their entire lives, that makes there food such as incredible experience to eat.
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