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Poetry & Prose

Kasthamandap

by Norbu | March 2006

4AM, Kathmandu.
A day contorting in indecision attempts to awaken a town in repose. Foggy streets refuse to let go of the night's dirty deeds and hold onto prevailing calm in desperate bid to stop the slumbering organisms from peeling eyelids. Kathmandu floats within a dithered space at 4AM, hovers listlessly, indecisively in icy December-morning air. Unaware of its filthy alleyways, rusty shutters, plastic bags, insects, open sewer, mangy trees, scruffy people, injured vehicles, flaking paint, decaying woodwork, empty temples, overfed mice, half eaten lepers, golden steeples, moss-covered pathways, substance peddlers, freelancing prostitutes, murky history, post-modern economy, mansion dwellers, gutter residents, mutating street fauna, somnolent authority, indolent subjects, writing on the wall, walls with writings, hungry cops, political henchmen, pious grandmothers, mythical specters, monkeys, monks, demented housewives, ersatz elite, fishmongers, dappled skin and midnight pyres now gone cold. Unaware of its own caustic belly, nestled all smug and comfortable in a little green bowl with the multi-coloured patchwork of human infestation, Kathmandu loses itself in a moment of incomparable zone-out at 4AM. For a tiny point in time Kathmandu with all the pebbles in its squalid pouch, disappears from everything that is.

I was out for a walk one particular morning in cold December many years ago—4AM, muffler around my neck—when the entire historic city of Kathmandu, what with all its heritage sites and social classes, just disappeared. Gone. Just like that, without warning. Didn't even sound a gurgle or a swish no 'pop', no sparks, no confetti, no smoke, no smell, no fanfare, parades, goodbyes, no jatra, no rath, no Bhaktapur farmers wobbling about with kharpan-full fresh vegetables for the mad, mad morning markets. As if the entire city was only a thought bubble all this time

Does this ever happen? Maybe I miss it because oddly enough, I don't usually go for walks at 4AM in the morning, hands in pockets and everything. I was left in denial for a whole confused minute before I could even acknowledge this nonsense. There I found myself suddenly in the middle of an endless expanse of colourless dusty ground for as far as I could see. If I walked a little the horizon would shift a little. No hills even, just shifting of horizon following movement, followed by the same original view of bleached ground a thousand miles in every direction. Daman, Nagarkot, Dhulikhel, Phulchoki, Shivapuri—all them mighty hills swallowed by the proverbial thin air! Like one day at 4AM the bastards suddenly decided they had had it and just got up and left! As though monstrous hills, with forests and animals and army barracks and all manners of miscellaneous articles still clinging to the soil as they would, casually tore themselves free and staggered off as far away from Kathmandu as possible. One fine morning, at 4AM, cold month of December. It was icy and fog sat everywhere like suds in a tub. I was out for a walk. Everything POOF! What am I to do when something like this happens? I was weirded out, more so than all the other times in my life.

This was a problem because my house with my family within it would have disappeared also. I was still a strapping young lad in those days and concerns arose in no time for the safety of loved ones, video games, music tapes and such. I would have walked towards where my house would have been in heavy unwavering strides no question, to check on my family and the pet monkey, but then the roads were gone too. All this theoretical scenario where Kathmandu actually existed when in fact it didn't anymore made me a slight bit confused as to what I was thinking, what got me thinking about what I was thinking and where I was headed with these thoughts, given the rather confounding state of affairs. After standing there like an unused dildo for about five minutes, struck with awe of course, I finally came up with a smart idea. I closed my eyes and in my mind I saw Kathmandu as it had been. Within seconds my admittedly swift brain of those youthful, heady days began drawing outlines of roads, houses, electricity poles and other defining landmarks, filling in appropriate details. Using this roadmap, and pretending I was a blind person, I turned right around and started walking. Blind folk have sticks to help them poke on things or smart canines or some such navigational aid, but I was stuck with neither a dog nor a stick. And I would have probably just poked the dog with the stick anyway, and turned him blind too. That's how disorienting it can be when cities disappear like that without prior notice.

I kept walking though, my shut eyelids quivering in search of guiding images exhumed from memory. Things had boiled down to basics in this non-Kathmandu, 4AM, icy December morning, covered in fog like the 350 million Hindu gods had an all-out aerial orgy and jizzed all over our precious little valley that now resembled a gigantic pancake floating in a misty mid-air somewhere obscure, relentlessly monotonous. The situation was quite unfunny to me, comical as it might appear. Then again, it is hard not to postulate what the many gods could teach us mortals about debauchery if they chose to divulge to us their mode of merriment. I hypothesized an overpopulated heaven of 350 million divinities, each with at least a trick to show us fledgling organisms of indulgence the godly way to coax chemical secretions in the mind for various pleasurable effects, both carnally and mentally. In this way, as thoughts digressed by leaps and bounds and shot off in tangents in my mind, so did my path within a vacant Kathmandu. By now, I couldn't say for sure whether there had been a dog or not, and if there was one, then was it blind? Because I was giving undivided attention to dogs and gods, the map began dissolving in my head and the dog assumed its place, barking and walking around wagging its tail. The gods joined soon after of course, prancing about with all varieties of dogs. There were labradors, spaniels, chihuahuas, terriers, bloodhounds, bhusiyas, crossbreds, inbreds, mongrels, even foxes and jackals, some with sunglasses, some split in half, some with multiple tails, some that bleated, some that howled. Some dogs performed fluid amoebic reproduction and became two while the tails wagged in different directions. Gods and dogs mingled rampant in a stadium of featureless Kathmandu where no urge was barred, none deemed too impure. I looked on with closed eyes and saw more than reflected light. The entire scenario was getting so twisted and nonsensical that I gave up and opened my eyes.

A town wakes up each morning—chaotic, but self assured, crawling, sliding, whizzing past in confusion but never quite interrupting this magical flow of activities. Kathmandu is too quick to leap into a sunny winter morning—cold but warm as long as you stand under sunlight. Pretending like yesterday didn't happen, a soup-bowl of everything from everywhere busies itself with the purity and innocence of a newborn. Used condoms, garbage, stench, burnt truck tyres, even stale piss and infected smack gear from a fetid alleyway somewhere cry out to acknowledge the sinful night that had been. But sunshine, vegetables, temple bells, incense, crisp newspapers, teashops and a hypnotic drone of verbal exchange clearly stamp out any notion of impurity that might dare sneak out into the bright, unadulterated open of a Kathmandu morning. Nobody caught the 4AM twilight yet again, a clandestine non-event that dupes the slumbering townsfolk with ridiculous ease each new day. Defying any sense of rationale or reason, a wise old city fans its sweaty face with a soggy Dhaka topi, and wilts its back to its heart's content at 4AM. It sheds the baggy load momentarily to dredge and oil its grubby spine ever so gently at the deep dense moment of 4AM. Haggard, senile, creaking in places where there weren't even any joints, each 4AM it deeply contemplates a halt. Maybe wait for auspices of another tomorrow, it ponders. Grinding through another day that starts smug, grows a liver and a bile-duct, jabs at every dry vein and scuffs a knee—through another beautiful, crisp, sunny day—Kathmandu lugs and yanks and shoves and drags, droops, drips, spins out of control waiting for another 4AM—only one more will do. It crunches every last bone and strains its antique desiccated muscles all it can, to touch one last 4AM so it can rest its back once and for all. Kathmandu surprises its subjects and leaves only one random unfortunate early morning ambler to witness its vast, bleached, silent, unending rage on behalf of the rest of the daft amblers that inhabit the amazingly beautiful city of Kathmandu.

I opened my eyes, like I said, and there was neither a dog nor a town. Kathmandu had well and truly given us all a slip and pissed off like a pickpocket around a bend in one of its own meandering streets.

Comments

March 12th, 2006

1 | directHIT:

What a Rubbish article!!!!

March 12th, 2006

2 | Chankhe:

it is a great depiction of Kathmandu today!

March 13th, 2006

3 | Binod Maharjan:

Norbuji, You have strong sense of realization of practical life that has changed over years. I would to use word transformed rather than change in these context. Forcefully transformed…. There must be others like other Norbu, who would have wanted to take a walk 4:00AM for the freshair and hear the tingling ghanti from our sacred mandirs and buy a fresh vegetables with bhaktapure dai. Life has really come to a stall at 4:00 AM.

I am rather optimistic with the lives of Nepalis down the hill. If there’s no pain, there’s no gain. This ancient proverb is really a powerful and strong. Things will definately turnaround and life would never have to stall at 4:00 AM.

Thats great. I liked the way you presented.

Thanks for your article.

Binod Maharjan
Lubbock TX

March 14th, 2006

4 | Dvorak von Newman:

The flower consumed,
but objectified in an instant,
it’s stem crushed underfoot.
- A whirlwind of descriptive prose. I enjoyed it’s percusive persuasion.

Dvorak Vienna

April 9th, 2006

5 | Sanj:

Haahaha…..nice one!

April 21st, 2006

6 | battlefield:

Norbu, of course….who else

i had a similar experience at 2 am somewhere that is non kathmandu…like POOF!

July 20th, 2007

7 | UMa:

very pessimstic optimism…..liked your mystic style….good work

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