Lately, I’ve turned writing into a burdensome exercise. There is a lot of self-editing going on in my head even before express something.  The outcome then lacks originality. It kills the very objective of writing. The thrill of putting out your thoughts into words is gone.It turns into a shot gone bad because the object is now self-conscious of the camera lens pointing in her direction. An element of manufactured reality seeps into the picture. Hope you got what I meant.

Nonetheless it has been a long day. There was a lot of Sen, auto-correlation and a bit of money. Classes ran right from 9.30 to 4. This much of freeing my mind for tonight. And here’s my night addiction these days.

Do watch the movie ‘Drive’ to get a better feel of the song.

Prescription for Writer’s Block

My prescription for writer’s block is to face the fact that there is no such thing. It’s an invented condition, a literary version of the judicial “abuse excuse.” Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It’s a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.

THOMAS MALLON

It was about a week ago that the thought of writing something occurred to me in recent times. It was right after I finished watching ‘Julie & Julia’. Julie’s blog was an inspiration. I thought of all the things that could be written throughout the movie. But wrote nothing when it was over and that was that.

Today, I had a brilliant start. Woke up early, played a good game of badminton outside in the cold, foggy weather and still sweat. Then there was Idli sambar. We groan in unison every time(which is all the time) we have it for breakfast. Sometimes Most times we need to remind ourselves that we are in Delhi and not Chennai.Idli, sambar, upma everyday for breakfast is simply unbearable. Last sem we even had a holiday for Onam. The administration has finally realized that this is Delhi not Kerala so the holiday has been removed from the calendar this year. Nonetheless idli-sambar stays. Can you believe that it’s what we get for breakfast 5 days a week here? In Delhi? And if you guessed the other two days are for paratha you couldn’t be farther away from the truth. Paratha just isn’t served here.Not once in the past 5/6 months! So here we are consuming spices rationed for a week or more in Nepal in a day and living with our Delhi bellies.

Delhi is known for its great street food but what tastes good to the tongue is most often not good for the stomach. People visiting Delhi for a short period almost scream with delight at the food options here. One source of joy being take outs for people who are too lazy to cook like me. I did too until Delhi belly set in. Another misinformation Nepali people seem to have about food in Delhi is that it’s cheap. It’s not. Not outside the some hundred acres of JNU, definitely not here in South Delhi. It is cheap only if you can survive on a fifteen rupee plate of plain paratha and vegetable sold in the streets with its aftereffects every day. It’s just that you can find the same menu in different price ranges here. Options are aplenty. The price of a kilo of apples or oranges or any vegetable is comparable to that back home, most times even expensive. It could get cheaper if you got it from the sabzi mandi but as that’s not an easy option for most and prices largely depend on which part of Delhi you live in.

At this point of my writing I am wondering how I got into this food issue here. I started out typing my thoughts with an entirely different agenda on my mind. Must be the Julie & Julia effect.

The Pakoda Menu

That reminds me of the delicious pakodas we had yesterday. The place is somewhere outside Sarojininagar Market, Ring Road Market to be specific and didn’t have a name as far as I could see. But a friend who has been a customer of the place since her 10+2 days told me it’s called ‘Khandani Pakodewala’. According to her the place has been there before Independence. We got all kinds of pakodas the place offered and they were delicious as expected. Moreover it was perfect day for pakodas, foggy without sunlight throughout the day. As long as I was gobbling the pakoras I felt invincible. I was certain I was going to be fine, if Delhites had the stomach for it so did it. It was only later in the evening that the problem set in. Nonetheless that won’t stop me from trying them again on another ‘Perfect day for Pakoras ‘. Do grab some pakoras if you pass through the area. Bon Appetit!

Understanding the Occupation By Ray

Early morning on the 28^th of October, I took a bus to the big city; New York, the current capital of revolution in the U.S. of America. I had just won a war against the Immigration Department, and my partner had come up with a perfect celebration plan; to visit Zuccotti Park and witness the Occupy Wall Street Movement for the weekend.

My curiosity about this movement increased with every city border crossed. Between being half asleep and extremely nervous about the bus driver who was busy either texting or dozing off while also speeding, I was doing pretty good managing my excitement.

Honestly though, I wasn’t really interested in what this “occupation” looked like or how it was different from the one here in Greensboro, North Carolina. My anticipation was based more on the prospect of getting to understand and, hopefully share the same sentiment that my partner had claimed to have experienced during her first time getting the whiff of this revolution in the big city.

Our arrival there was accompanied by more wind and snow. The park from a distance looked smaller than what I had imagined. But it took me less than few minutes to realize that the illusion was the result of my unintentional comparison of the site with the giant concrete buildings surrounding it. As I made my way inside the camp site, I saw more of how big the Occupation was, in more than just one way.

The images I had seen on most social networking sites and then later on main stream media hadn’t really impressed me. As a citizen of a colonized “third world country” , pictures of Caucasian kids (maybe just Caucasian looking) with Keffiyeh around their necks and Om tattoos on their skin, holding signs of revolutions don’t really convince me. Nor does my nineteen years of living in Buddha’s country allow me to jump in the bandwagon of angry protestors being extra and unnecessarily violent. Unfortunately those were the only images being fed to me. Fortunately though, those images did not really match up to what I was seeing in front of me at Occupy Wall Street.

I fell in love with that moment right there, when I passed by waves and more waves of black and brown faces; different ages, different genders, different personas. I felt powerful and strangely at home for some reason, comfortable in my skin and confident with my accent.

We walked all over the campsite more than just a couple of times. We talked to anybody who wanted to hear us and, we listened to everybody who wanted to talk to us. The only thing bothering our expedition was the all-pervading and prodding cameras that I had to avoid in order to prevent certain immigration risks. None the less, even with the dodging and the ducking in every two minutes, I felt more contented and connected than I had felt before in any activism, or attempt at that, in this country. I felt more whole- like I wasn’t a token or just an awkward immigrant; a feeling that “southern hospitality” doesn’t always bless me with.

Being there, I also understood why the movement was being written and read as a “white people’s fight” by the outsiders. Most media groups, professionals and students from the surrounding universities, were going around interviewing people with certain images. White young people with facial tattoos and piercings attracted these journalists and their cameras while older and “simpler” looking non-white participants seemed to be too “boring” for them. Whether it is an intentional strategy to debase the movement by painting it as being racially un-diverse and un-unified, or an unintentional, subconscious journalistic decision to select what looks “hip” yet “safe enough”, it is very clear that the media isn’t doing a fair job at representing OWS.

Our rescue from this let-down came in the form of a young African-American woman named Ijeoma Iheanacho, who was wandering around the camp with her camera and a recorder. She stopped us and asked us for an interview and a picture. I had to refuse; again curtsey of my lack of the right to Freedom of speech; but my courageously extrovert and beautifully eloquent partner spoke about the need of black and brown communities to be more involved and active in fights like these. Ijeoma shared her aggravation about the media bias against “non-white women” and her mission to forever fight against this frustration. We left her to share more stories with more strangers after thanking this young journalist for her opinion and efforts around something that my partner and I both, very passionately feel and fight about.

Another unexpected encounter was the NYPD stationed all around the camp. Not their presence of course, but their civility and diversity. It felt  as if the presence of so many national and international media houses and human rights groups had led to the NYPD intentionally deciding to send groups of ethnically and racially diverse officers who were told to act polite with passersbys.

To have our voices heard, to fight against corporate greed, to unite, to assert our powers, to build a better, more fair, system, to reclaim from the 1% what belongs to us and the universe …Yes all that but furthermore, for now, to experience, to share and to spread the taste of a revolution and of the new America.

At a quick glance the Occupation at Zuccotti Park looks like a giant crowd of chaos but as your eyes and mind slowly adjust, you start to notice an order; a seemingly chaotic order that to me seemed and felt like it was functioning with a grace often absent from a large and diverse group activity such as this one.

For instance, the “human microphone” technique not just assured that people could hear the speakers and announcements without the conventional (and now boring to me) megaphones but also gave life to the words making the speeches more powerful and persuasive. This dependence on each other to communicate united people in a way that to me was innovative, efficient and very impressive.

Similarly, the camp was carefully organized with taped off walkways, so that people- protesters and the tourists could commute easily. Then there was the division of the site into various categories; a makeshift medical facility, an information booth, a kitchen, a media area, “comfort zone” with clothing and other necessities, a library, drum circle area, newspaper distribution table and some more. The resources inflowing, both human and materialistic were striking to me. In spite of the abundance of donated goods that protestors were welcome to, I did not see anybody trying to abuse this opportunity at bagging free supplies just out of greed. People came and asked for what they needed at that point and the volunteers kindly, without any questions, gave it to them. There were volunteers with trash bags cleaning the campsite. There were volunteers running the various different resource areas, there were volunteers giving away the Wall Street Journal (their official newspaper). These volunteers, large on number, and all of them were also stopping by occasionally to check on each other and everybody else in their current home if they were doing okay. The lawyer sneaking legal books from his firm to the OWS Library, the Chinese food restaurant delivering boxes of hot soups, the “ex-bank robber” sharing his wisdom, the genius street philosopher looking out for camp safety…these people, their actions, their intentions were inspirational to me.

We didn’t get to attend any GA while we were there but I have heard from couple of folks how their meetings are frenzied and, often lack consensus. But to me that doesn’t matter as much. The decision process does not have to be perfect or in a particular way as long as the outcomes are as impressive as what I found at this campsite.

The weekend was filled with moments that I will relive in my head and heart whenever I think of America’s possibility of finally, truly being “the land of the free.” Meeting Angela Davis, whose speech was as powerful as her intellect, witnessing a rare moment in U.S.A. where a scholar was given more attention than a rapper (Russel Simmons), watching couple of hundreds of Brooklyn residents march around the park and join the protesters inside and then watching my love tear up from joy to be able to be with and be part of a rally that represented her childhood and her hometown Brooklyn, listening to leaders of various faiths come together to sanctify and support this struggle…this to me was the glimpse of the better America.

I then  understood the “feeling” that my partner had so passionately been talking about. And as I left my prayer beads in that little “temple” (with symbols of almost all faiths and religions) on the campsite and walked towards the bus station, I also understood the mission of this movement a lot more. To have our voices heard, to fight against corporate greed, to unite, to assert our powers, to build a better, more fair, system, to reclaim from the 1% what belongs to us and the universe …Yes all that but furthermore, for now, to experience, to share and to spread the taste of a revolution and of the new America.

.

Half of my mind is unable to understand why you think I need something to drink, something chilled to cool me down. The other half doesn’t remember what just happened. It is unable to remember what went on in the past few minutes. It is just blank. Perhaps the emotions the events triggered caused a mental blackout.

A year is a long time. People produce small replicas of themselves in a year. Others travel to geographical extremes during that period.  A single year can change the course of your entire life. A phenomena repeated continuously during of a year can affect one’s psyche can’t it? So I need a cigarette for the psyched one year I have lived. A cigarette for the room which drove me crazy. A cigarette for all those trees that looked like spots where people hanged themselves. And a cigarette just to carry on.  I wish to light a cigarette and burn all those days in raging fire. I wish to see them lie in a heap of ashes in front of me.

Nothing exists anymore. Everything’s an empty vessel pretending to hold something that isn’t.  Humility was a good trait wasn’t it? Now it isn’t. They say bragging is a virtue. Everyone’s busy selling the hollow selves they are. I don’t understand if I am old school or if anything I ever believed in were ever true. I just know that I need a cigarette. I’ll put it in a corner of my mouth and inhale deeply and exhale a wisp of smoke. I wish the world around me would vanish in that thick smoke. And I think of you. Of how lucky you are to be there no more. To put up through this bullshit called life and all that it is supposed to do you. To see everything we believed in crumble right before your eyes. I merely envy you.

My own freedom is limited to a saying on the mirror. ‘Everyone’s cage door is open.’  – George Lucas It’s just another illusion I have created for myself. I buy the statement during good times. I buy that ‘a world of possibilities’ crap more than I should. But happiness is a poor judge of reality. What wouldn’t we do to believe in ‘life’?  Clarity comes in times like these. My own cage door is not open. I open one cage door and enter the other taking freedom to be that momentary stay outside of what I perceive to be a cage. The fact is all cages are contained in the larger one. There’s no freedom at all. Doors, cages everything exists to merely reinforce our blind faith in freedom.  I am so tired of forcing myself to believe in things that are not. Of trying to find things to indulge in so that I can just continue leading the life I am expected to. How far can one feign enjoyment in indulgences which hold no meaning at all?

So just get me a damn cigarette. Or the shiny, slim cases from which people drink alcohol in the movies.  A cigarette, that should do…maybe that’s what cigarettes do…restore your faith in humanity so that you can put yourself through a few hours of bullshit called life and animals supposedly ‘humans’ and then go for another to forget it all….

Dashain 2011 By S. Thapa

Our Dashain was a small private affair: five girls, a bit of dressing up for the occasion and lots of photos. Dashain was barely acknowledged last year so it was mine as well as everyone else’s first Dashain away from home. My day started by reading news about Jobs’ demise which saddened me deeply but all thanks to the girls here who cheered me up and helped me get ready for the occasion. Walking out with the big red tika on our foreheads with people staring at us, students from elsewhere asking us for the tika as well….it felt so good to be different. It was as though we had taken up the herculean task of preserving and promoting our culture here. Big words, I know.

Lastly, my heartfelt thanks to the spirited Nepali girls for just being there…

Click to view slideshow.

आजको खाजा – गुन्द्रुक

यस ब्लग हेरिरहनु भएका सबैजनालाई विजयादशमी २०६८ को हार्दिक मंगलमय शुभकामना ।

Dherai bhayecha kasaile mero mongoloid looks notice nagareko.Dhanya this reminder  

I am in Pashupati as I type this on my Nokia. A flock of pigeons just flew past the main temple right in front on me. I am sitting on a window of a stone structure that houses a Shiva linga just across the temple. The temple of the ever emerging Kalki lies across the river. There’s another temple to its left with a lotus/chakra like structure at the top where people keep throwing coins for reasons unknown to me. Real time update: A dead body arrives wrapped in yellow cloth. Someone’s blowing a conch. A boy startled me from the back by making a  ‘dyau’ sound and scratching my right arm. What the hell! I was too startled to react, left the spot and now am sitting in a different place. His nail marks stay on my arm. He could’ve been hiding in the place as I saw him in the corner as I stood up to leave. Maybe this is what happens when you look like a Chinese here!  (Late observation: the guy looked like a teenager and wore his jeans very low. Saw this as he walked out of his dark hideout.)

Jehos, I wanted to write something else but the scratch boy has put me in a different frame of mind. Hope dirty nails aren’t vector of diseases. (I know they are.) Kya yaar, here I was minding my business and get scratched by a moron? A man doing a monkey’s job in Pashupati? Nonetheless, people are still throwing coins at the temple discussed above. No sooner the coin touches the ground few boys rush to collect it. I don’t know what coin throwing is supposed to do. Maybe it will bring wealth, luck, happiness or whatever is the belief. The only thing that I see is an act of coin throwing and instant collection. Those coins will be smoked like I can already see some of those boys doing. That’s all. That is reality to me. I guess the coin gives some consolation or fun for people who do so and luck and happiness to the ones who collect it. A win-win situation.

There’s life around me. There’s talk. A guy to my left is talking about his HIV related NGO. There’s the sound of a huge bell and other small bells coming from the temple. Their sounds are distinct. ‘Shambhoooo’ someone just called out.

A dead body lies in Brahmanal, another awaits its turn in the waiting area with ‘Narayan’ written on a wooden frame above it. Death continues as gracefully as life does. I come here now and then for the ambience of this place; to experience this atmosphere of belief, the smell of death and listen to tolling of the bells…But I know that mere observation of death is not the realization of the transient nature of life. No uttering of ‘Narayan’ is going to liberate me from my sufferings…neither is Shiva…It’s just easier to think someone else is going to clean up our mess isn’t it?

Amen.

(July 4, 8:41 am)

View from Tughlaqabad (Pic by Shamima)

Mausoleum of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq( Pic by Shamima)

Situated on the outskirts of Delhi it offers a magnificent view of the city. It is no hill (for a Nepali) but on climbing the ruins you find yourself on an elevated point where you can feel the cool breeze across your face. It’s the USP of the place apart from the ruins. Destruction can indeed look very beautiful at times.Half a part of a wall, an underground passage and the massive fort wall visible from the main road make Tuglaqabad Fort what it is. Across the street lies the mausoleum of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq.  It is a well-kept unique structure with sloping walls surrounded by green grass.Coming to think of it now the place is ironical in a way. The fort where people once lived is in ruins. The building which houses the tombs of the dead, however, is well maintained. But all of it corresponds to the fact that Delhi is a place which celebrates death. The most beautiful places here are built around tombs like Lodhi garden or tombs themselves like Humayun’s Tomb.

Hope the pictures(below) inspire you to visit the place if the text didn’t.

The fault is all mine. I underestimated Delhi heat. In the beginning of May I’d thought when everything got over I would stay back for a week or so, relax, enjoy Delhi and then go back home. If relaxing means absence of thoughts because I am unable to think straight when I am in my AC-less oven(room) then I am surely relaxed. It has only been a few days but it feels like weeks of leisure. I just can’t think clearly in this heat. In the past few days I watched as many as 3-4 movies a day and way too many Ugly Betty Episodes. I watched Rio ( loved it), Hangover ( didn’t find it funny at all, someone tell me why it was such a big hit?), Letters to Juliet (cheesy) , The Kids are All Right ( Mark Ruffalo’s unkempt look suits him), Chalo Dilli , I Am ( Good movie ) etc. As for Ugly Betty I’d begun to think that Matt and Henry were not Betty’s but my boyfriends. Just kidding. Nonetheless it reminded me of all the good times I had when I wore braces. I even missed them.  And how can I forget the Glee Episode ‘Funeral’ where Sue Sylvester’s sister dies. The day the episode was aired Sue Sylvester was trending on twitter. Sue’s a mean person with a tongue sharper than a knife (no wonder I love her ) but her speech in the funeral moved me to tears. So this, my friends, is one way of keeping your mind off extreme heat. Watch lots and lots of TV on your laptop

Before the temperature started hovering around late 30s to early and mid-40 degree Celsius I’d planned to spend my days in the beautiful, spacious parks of Delhi.  One of the best things about Delhi is its green spaces. As a Kathmanduite I was initially overwhelmed by the parks here.  A friend of mine recently came to Delhi and I suggested we go to Humanyun’s Tomb. The ticket for entrance is priced at INR 10. It’s a beautiful place and if you don’t believe me you can ask Bill Clinton and Obama. So, once we were done strolling around the place my friend said ‘This is such a big place and it costs only 10! We pay 80 for going to Garden of Dreams which is way smaller than this!’ You can’t compare the two places on any regard but the public spaces in Delhi deserve nothing but praise for the way they are maintained. Most of them are free. You can stay in the parks for as long as they open. All praise to the fact that New Delhi is a planned city. But with this heat my plans of spending leisurely afternoons in the park seems like the clichéd expression ‘Water, water everywhere not a single drop to drink’. I just can’t dare to step out in this heat.  Therefore, I am still glued to my computer. (Meanwhile, I had to turn on the fan.)

Humanyun's Tomb

There are a few other fascinating (to me) things I have learnt about extreme heat. They are:

1. Opening the windows during the day does NOT cool the room. It only brings hot air inside.
2. Sweating profusely is not related to work. You can sweat like nuts even if you are just sitting idle on a chair.
3. Perspiration from hair (technically it’s head) occurs without playing any sports. This fact has made me consider going bald.
4. Jeans are NOT made for the Indian weather conditions. Fools are they who wear skin-tight jeans in Indian summers. Seriously, crazy people don’t you FEEL the HEAT?
5. The number of mosquitoes has reduced considerably since the temperature started skyrocketing.
6. There are two types of mango shakes in Delhi. The first kind cools your brains (literally!), it may not exactly be the brain region but you feel the chill deep inside your head. The other kind cools your throat. The head cooler mango shake doesn’t make you feel anything in your throat and vice versa. The two types of mango shakes are mutually exclusive.[This observation is personal. The juice vendor won’t understand what you’re talking about if you ask him for ‘head’ or ‘throat’ cooling shake.]
7. Strangely, the north facing rooms in this building are hotter than the south-facing ones.
8. You need to live in Delhi to relish curd. [I have always been a curd-hating vegetarian especially the Dahi-chuira combo in Dashain. Now, I can’t imagine having Paranthas without curd anymore!
9. Trees shed leaves twice in Delhi. The first time it is during winter. Spring brings new leaves. But as the temperature starts rising it is patjhad once again.
10. The only way to fall asleep in a room without AC is to pour water on the mattress and sleep on it. It dries faster than you can imagine.
11. There is no point in trying to survive hot weather when you can simply escape to a cooler place. See you soon, Kathmandu!