 BIKRAM RAI |
Mine was crap, thanks to work, leavened only by the brief sight of the empty streets of Kathmandu during our tika expeditions and the lovely turn to autumn that I have been enjoying from my study.
So you're back again, along with the hordes that clog this city to distraction. Well, come back you have, and I don't resent that in a manner that claims "raithane" status. After all, none of us slithered out of the Lake of Kathmandu, we all came from someplace else. I mean to say it's nice to see you again, but I would rather they kept the people out and let the vegetables in for a change.
My Dasain wasn't great, but it's not only because I just didn't have the time to eat, drink and be merry. It's because Dasain is really mostly about being with your family – as far as its extensions take you – and I felt I missed out on this variegated privilege. As I dashed about town with my father to receive tika from our elders, I congratulated him on timing it so we caught them right before they themselves dashed out into the city to their own elders. My father, however, wasn't happy, as it meant we literally walked in and out, our relatives' reaching for the tika even as they greeted us. I could understand. He saw his cousins so rarely it seemed a travesty to not even have the time for a cup of tea.
But onwards. Things are more or less back to normal. That dreary peace process is still dragging on. Thanks god Prachanda Dahal has decided that as a communist-without-a-soul he will be devoting his full head of hair's attention to concluding it, over plates of masubhat and glasses of raksi. Doubtless that's why he decided to limit his part in the funeral proceedings to setting his old man on fire.
We've also survived the horrors of the food scandal, even managed to log on a kilo or two. But not much else has changed over the festive season, and neither have we Nepalis, hitherto unknown for our mannerlessness. Only the other day, seeking to dodge the scummy cabbies that gather around a certain chowk where I live in Kupondole, then to dodge the traffic jam at the Bagmati bridge, I walked on into Kathmandu. As I waited fruitlessly for a taxi, fretting about whether I would make the movie I was scheduled to see, a man came up and accosted me with his cellphone. "Ask him where I should go," he said in Hindi. "I don't understand Nepali." As I explained to the voice on the phone that his "maanche" was in Thapathali, not Maitighar, an empty taxi flashed by. I pointed my man towards Maitighar, and he walked off without a word of thanks. I failed to spot another cab, and gave up on the movie.
I slouched back home, pondering the casualness with which Nepalis explain to foreigners, "We don't have words for please or thank you," as if implying that we are so naturally nice that such formalities are superfluous. This may hold true in certain contexts, and certainly within an extended family or a rural setting. In urbania, with all the other rules of conduct expected to apply (whether they do or not), why not the most basic rules of decency?
Heading to a recent event organised by Nepal Unites – an unabashedly self-declared bastion of common decency – I was asked directions by two northern European girls. I obliged, and further down the road witnessed an ice-cream man stop to hand over a filled cone, gratis, to a beggar child looking on longingly. On the way back, filled with the milk of human kindness, I espied two more damsels in distress, local variety. They had dropped a cheap plastic garland of flowers from the road into the shrubbery next to the Kalmochan Temple on Tripureshwor. Seeing me, they demanded: "Oh, you have an umbrella, tyo nikaldinus ta!" I obeyed, getting my knees dirty and risking a tumble into monkey territory. A few false jabs later, I managed to rescue the garland. And the women?
They took it from me, wordlessly, and simply walked away.
What did I expect? A simple acknowledgement, even just a smile? It was not forthcoming. It reinforced my idea that Nepalis, renowned the world over for being smiley, hospitable types, have unlearned how to live with each other. Sure, it's hard to get the community vibe when you only know your neighbours by the timbre of their nuisance value. But how about a little more Dasain spirit this Tihar and beyond, the kind you extend as a matter of course to your extended family? Pretty please?