Transport is Arranged

"Jaawalaakheljaawalaakhellagankheljaawalaakhelsaatdobaato! O jaawalaakhellagankheljaawalaakhel!"

It was an early milestone of my stay here, the day I found myself able to decipher these strings of syllables. They unreel like gritty, oily ribbons from the mouths of the (pre)adolescent boys who hang out the doors of every microbus in greater Kathmandu. The system is simple enough: it's basically an audible sign conveying the vehicle's route. This one's headed to Patan, the former city-state that lies south of Kathmandu proper and that is now well swallowed-up by the ever growing metropolis. Everywhere are reminders that within living memory of most of the city's inhabitants Kathmandu was more like a modest town, one that gave way abruptly to a sleepy agricultural hinterland. Patan, only a few kilometers away, was enough of an entity in itself that its dialect of Newari is distinct, and Bhaktapur's (at less than 15 km from KTM) is only marginally comprehensible to a Kathmandu Newar. Place names around the Valley are reminders, in their simplicity, of simpler times: new road, Pipal tree, work-place, seven-way-crossroads (saat dobaato, "seven two-road"). Now Haadigaon, whose name imlies village, is in the middle of the city, a short and trafficky walk from Nepal's first and largest supermarket (which in turn is named after the local tantric Hindu temple, Bhatbhateni).

But I digress. I was talking about getting around: it's a trip. I mentioned systems, but when it comes driving they are nonexistent. The only rule is to drive on the left-hand side. Even that's more of a suggestion, for cutting across the road (there are no actually lanes) to pass is fair game. No, wrong word: that implies rules again. Driving is a free-for-all of three and four-wheeled vehicles, hordes of motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, a few rickshaws and the occasional wayward sacred cow. Horns are used not so much as instruments of expression, as in "Screw you bub, try and cut me off!!", as announcements of one's presence on the road. "Here I am coming up on your right." And the bigger buses are equipped with incredible horns that emit a staccato burst of deafening noise like a child hitting a huge organ's keyboard rapidly with a mallet. Do-mi-re-mi-do-mi-re. Intersections . . . work somehow, sort of, despite rather than because of the occasional traffic-light or uniformed mannikin unwilling or unable to direct anyone. But jams (as in "kasto jam bhayo!") are an everyday reality and are caused as often as not by road closures due to strike/protest (the infamous "banda"). Mind-numbing, chest-choking, soul-sucking jams. The motorcycles take their chance to squeeze between the immobilized four-wheelers but in the old city's narrow alley's they too clot up so that sometimes even pedestrians are stuck in the midst of the pack. It just came to me: the city is having a coronary. Anyway. There's talk of a Japanese initiative to expand the arterial "Arniko highway" (spectacular euphemism) into a 6-lane affair, but, as they say elsewhere than here, 'nothing good will come of this.' I take comfort in the near certainty that nothing at all will come of it.

If driving demands a different kind of canniness than we rule-bound Americans are used to, so does being a passenger. The first challenge is re-assuring oneself that there is indeed room in that sardine-can microbus: just find a foothold and someone to grab onto and duck your head inside the door, or hang off the side until the micro nears any sort of police presence (then it's all limbs inside). When two inches of seat open up, claim it like your birthright with one blade of your butt and be content. Make sure to shout out when your stop comes, and be up on the latest fare (11 rupees as of today) so you don't get shortchanged. It can be stressful, what with the discomfort of half-crouching in Twister-worthy contortions, gripping onto a seat with an old woman's head in your armpit. But more and more I find the closeness of the crowding comforting. No one will think twice about leaning on you or sitting closer than any New York subway-rider would find appropriate, and you can lean back on the supporting mass of humanity without reservation.

A peculiar jewel of the bus system lies in the interchange between the driver and the other character I mentioned, usually a twelve-to-fifteen year old boy, whom I'll call the conductor. His job is not only to spew those gorgeously melded syllables with as much brusque adolescent disdain as possible. He also collects fares and makes change, arranges passengers with impunity. You, brother, over here, you come sit, you up front. let's go, let's go! anyone for Tangal? No? Speak up! Guess not, go, go. He's constantly in and out of the vehicle, or standing in the open doorway, hanging on by the tips of his rubber sandal-clad toes. It's his exclusive right (though much abused by disgruntled passengers) to bang on side of the bus, signifying by the rhythm of taps to stop or go. On the bigger buses on precipitous roads throughout the hill region, this simple means of communication has evolved into a complex set of whistles and taps. En route from Syabrubesi in November, Wave was convinced she had decoded the conductor's bird-like calls: he was directing the vehicle as if by remote, with a call for L (away from the craggy blasted rock face) or R (away from the abyss). When we met another vehicle, both would shriek to a stop and the lowlier of the two would reverse around the switchbacks and minor rockslides to a place wide enough for the other to pass with a few inches to spare. It fell to the conductor to relay the signal that this operation could proceed: ta-tap ta-tap, ta-tap ta-tap . . . and the bus inched back, axles moaning, brakes crying for mercy. All this bussing is more fun, at least in nice weather, if you're one of the sardines stacked on top of the bus, sitting on the iron rack, your 50 kilo sack of rice or your trekker's pack. Avoid neighbor's vomit, get proper look at the screaming death down below.

Recently I've started riding on the back of Alden's bicycle, or what's known here as a "budho saikal" (old-man bike, in contrast to the ubiquitous motor scooters). The bike is, as he says, "very Southasian:" heavy as hell, comfortably upright in posture, no brakes to speak of. Nice loud bell. It must be made for the endless flat expanse of North India, which means it's not ideally adapted to Kathmandu's occasional hills: a slight incline and the brakes are apt to fail, as they did the other day when we took a nasty spill into a steaming pile of garbage (sweepers' strike?).
Biking around does give one a whole new perspective on KTM traffic, as well as a good lesson in faith. All I can see is Alden's back and the oncoming traffic to my right. I've trained him to shout 'bump' before a bump. I brace myself, thankful for the sweater wedged between me and the stiff frame. But mostly it's glorious, the smooth flow of the awkward machine in and out of traffic, the ding of the bell, the door-to-door service. Come bicycling with us!

shout out

above: the omnivorous Mr. Alden Towler

I thought I'd post this excerpt from my compatriot (and co ex-patriate) Alden Towler's blog, the matter-of-factly titled Alden in Nepal. Find it at http://aldeninnepal.blogspot.com We've shared much of our Nepali experience, so it seems fitting to invite my readers to check out his thoughtful and earnest perspective. The following bit dates back to the Dashain festival in October:

During festival time I had been noticing so much alcohol drinking and meat eating in the Buddhist community. Every house we went to they were offered. Even Maama [=maternal uncle -Jon] invited us to enjoy Jard and roksi (corn wine and distilled corn wine) as is the custom to please guests. I couldn’t help but ask the alcohol-avoiding, meat-eating, middle-aged married monk with a family a few questions.

“Can you tell me what you think about alcohol?” I asked.

“Its no good” Maama replied.

“But why? What does it do?” I said searching for a more full answer.

“Well” Maama began, “It ruins your heart, darkens your soul, spoils your mind, and destroys your relationship with god” he said in a very matter of fact yet heart felt way.

This definitely left me in a doubting and contemplative mindset. Nepalis are aimed at pleasing their guests, it is hard to refuse something without offending the host, finishing your mountain of rice is just about the only way to say thank you, not finishing it is a horrible insult to the woman’s cooking- ‘miTho bhayena?’ would be implied, ‘it wasn’t tasty?’

The conversation took another direction with Maama and it wasn’t long until he offered Jon and I some roksi. What! Jon and I looked at each other biting our lips to keep back the laughter, had this monk not just told us that alcohol is a horrible substance that ruins your heart, darkens your soul, spoils your mind, and destroys your relationship with god?!

“No, thanks” we said.

“Oh come on, just a little” he encouraged.

Saying no is just about the hardest thing to do in this culture. . .

"I am not time" / A riff and a rant on temporal dissonance

image: "straw festival" in Bhalwad, Kapilvastu. My host Pusparaj Paudel is in the head-scarf.

(1) polishing a stone

What is most unnerving to an outsider about rural Nepali life is the stasis of it. This finally hit me recently on the microbus from Kathmandu as I was listening to lok git, stylized folk music, on the radio: for all their melodic elaboration, the tunes never stray from the tonic. The underlying maadal drumbeat itself is tonal, but mono-tonal (which is not to say monotonous, necessarily: at their best these songs are hypnotic, almost narcotic). In the gaon, life has a similar steady, circular (because endlessly repeating) rhythm that can be incredibly unsettling to someone used to the perpetual drama of novelty. In the village people (well, women) are busy—washing clothes, cutting fodder for the livestock, cooking—but as an outsider there’s this hard-to-define sense of stillness. All the activity is intended to maintain domestic order, to keep the wheel turning; there is momentum, but it is angular, not linear. The modern, Western world is obsessed with change, our exalted “progress.” This forward momentum carries through to our daily and moment-to-moment lives, so that sitting and doing nothing for even five minutes is frowned upon: why is he just sitting there? Why doesn’t he get up and do something productive? (asking ‘why’ is another typically Western behavior.)

Visiting my friend Pusparaj in his village in the mid-Western Terai, before long I had to confront the question of ‘how to get into the rhythm here?’ It’s OK to sit and read when the life going on all around offers no easy way in, but in a way that misses the point. It's a kind of escape. Better to sit and sit. What’s needed is work of a mindless sort to yoke the striving mind to the day's minutes and hours: stripping kernels off of dried corn, maybe, or leading water-buffalo around in endless circles to coax the last rice grains to detach themselves from their straw. A piece of wood to carve. A stone to polish.

(2) on "Nepali time"

The thing that gets me about so-called "Nepali time" isn’t that any estimate of how long X is apt to have a margin of error twice as wide as itself, but that you can’t even count on the comforts of slowness that you’d expect to be a reliable result. Instead you’re likely to be rushed—chitto chi-chitto!—into doing something that will then fall victim to endless delays.
Today I set out on foot at 10 o’clock from the village of Bhalwad after a great many exhortations from my Pusparaj to get a move on. Obligingly I finished shoveling in the morning’s rice and we set off after relatively little ado. Our first destination was a town at the beginning of the hills where we were to meet a cow-urine-prescribing baba. How long the road, I ventured to ask? Two hours. Three and a half hours later we stumbled into the town parched—I hadn’t brought a waterbottle for the ‘two-hour’ walk--only to discover the Baba was nowhere to be found. We’d had an appointment (though perhaps that’s to strong a word) for 11:00 AM, so I would have thought we were right on time. No matter, we boarded a bus towards Sandhikharka, the district capital, where we’d spend the night at PR’s maternal uncle’s. The ride would take a full hour, my two companions agreed. I didn’t set my stopwatch. By the time we reached the town it was evening, the January sun ready to dip behind the hills. It must have been a three hour ride. All around me old women and small children were vomiting out of windows, into plastic bags, onto silent husband’s laps. But now we were almost there, to PR’s uncle’s place just a ‘little ways’ from the bazaar. By now I was agitated at our little group dawdling, visiting here and there with relatives and vague acquaintances and drinking tea while the light failed. I was hungry with that mean hunger that hits your head before your belly. Our presumed hosts hadn’t been contacted, and I wasn’t at all sure anyone knew the way to their house, so I thought we should at least try and arrive before they went to bed. Finally we set out as the stars came out along with a bright half-moon. ETA: 20 minutes. No, said a didi from a saree shop, it takes 25. Ah, I thought—here people are precise. But I steeled myself against any thoughts of a prompt arrival, and wisely bought 10 rupees’ worth of peanuts for the road. It’ll be an hour, I thought. After half that, I asked the local man who had volunteered to walk us up how long it would be. What can I say? I was curious. 10 more minutes, came the reply. He pointed out a distant speck of light on a ridge above us and far across the valley. In the end we made it within an hour after a relentless uphill march. Amazingly to me (though I knew in my head that it would be so) we were received warmly but with no fanfare or expression of surprise. Rarely-seen relatives showing up after dinnertime, plus an American—sure, put on some more rice, make a little tea, get out extra blankets and let’s do this thing.