Déjà vu

Nepal declared 2011 as its year of tourism and all political parties signed an agreement of a bandh-free year. But as the Constitution deadline approaches, again, the tension is rising among various fractions including political parties, ethnic movements, and coalitions of indigenous and religious groups, and the push towards the streets is so high that suddenly, after a very calm beginning of the year, thre are not enough days for everyone to have a bandh on a different day. The major intersections are like rainbows with all possible flags waved around. 

 

The Constituent Assembly term was extended on the very last minutes of the May 28 last year, followed by a political deadlock to pressure the Nepali Congress Prime Minister to resign in the interest of forming “a consensus government” (which likely is a complete myth as such a consensus can never exist in a country, where consensus does not seem to be the consensus of the majority, but the absolute majority). Several months after he stepped down, and the elections for the new prime minister started. Eight months and well over dozen rounds of voting later, the PM from the communist party stepped in power, followed  by a shady secret deals that, when brought to daylight, caused a new political deadlock resulting in a prolongued government formation (almost three months).

Since the extension of their term one year ago, the 601-strong CA sweated altogether a whole 95 minutes in session, and, hardly surprisingly, the constitution is and will not be ready. Once again Nepal is hovering on a brink of uncertainty – whether another extension can be made (Turns out now that the last one was in fact unconstitutional), whether there will be political will to pass it, will the country slide into presidential rule or... nevermind, just read the post from last year. Two-hundred thousand ex-combatants and their locked up weapons still wait at cantonments; peace process is just as incomplete as before.

Wake me up when somethign worth barking at happens

A guess is that, just like last year, consensus will be reached a few minutes before midnight tomorrow, the prime minister will have to resign, the new one has to be elected, a government has to be formed, and so on…

Imagine the frustration of people, especially those who have nothing to lose but everything to win, like the youth, kept away from all opportunities they should as the future of this country be given, by the corrupted, power-hungry old-timer politicians. It is almost astonishing that we are not seeing even hints of a similar phenomenon that took place all over middle-east during the last six months.

How lucky I should feel to be able to choose to leave anytime I want to, and continue building my future re;atively easily somewhere else, even home. I do feel lucky and priviledged, and yet somewhat surprised over how fluently I lied in a recent interview about not getting stressed, frustrated, or pessimistic, “oh no, not at all!”, just in order to stick around longer.

The 800 Nepalis that leave to seek for better opportunities, and the countless others who wish to be able to, would probably consider it complete insanity. I do too, at times. At times I hate it all deeply, and get so stressed I don't know what to do with myself. 

And, yet... you can not not love the many small things that make you think "Only in Nepal", but that's for another posting. 

Puncture

The blog has suffered from a serious puncture that I’ve just not had the time to fix yet. The unacceptable long blog silence bitterly proves the falseness of my illusion of the peace, quiet and tranquility I thought would experience in this Himalayan Shangri-La (which is an ungrounded myth in itself).

Unfinished posts keep sitting in the draft folder, obviously never to be completed, and the almost daily dreams of writing about that strange/amusing/interesting thing I happened to witness, dilute into the (literally) thin air, as the days race by like nobody’s business.

We are well past the one-year-in-Kathmandu milestone and further we get away from it, quicker the time passes by. I can identify a multiplicity of causes for this phenomenon, but mainly it comes down to two interlinked reasons.

First of all, social circles suck one in tighter as the time passes, which leads into more inside information on possible activities to engage in, which are plenty but the only way you’d ever find about anything is if someone tells you about them. The concept of public information does not exist in this terrain. This leads to vicious cycle of hoarding things to do – having come out of the initial phase of not having much to do at all – and struggling to find sufficient time between all those things to do and your demanding social circles. This metropolitan village is difficult to live in without those friends you need to see and talk to, to stay even remotely sane.

Secondly, as the Lonely Planet correctly states, Nepal is an early to bed country. Social gatherings from Monday to Thursday die before they even start as people start yawning at 8 pm and disappear half an hour later to crawl to their beds, and then weekends become full months in advance. The luxurious two hours between finishing in the office and the beginning of the yawning time vanish. At home, bed starts inviting one even earlier, as it is either freezing cold anywhere else in the house or there’s no electricity to pass your evening in the net or in front of the TV. No more of this staying up late for no apparent reason business.

Another cold season finally is over so there’s a little more energy in me to waste for other things than merely keeping warm. Electric energy however is not much better, and effectively guarantees no internet time during my so called spare time and causes other unfortunate incidents – the latest being the stabbing of the newly appointed energy minister, which occurred during one of the rolling 14-hour power outage.

Excuses, excuses.. It’s all about time management, I'm guessing? I have accustomed myself to the local climate way too well, but realize it’s time to find the puncture kit. Let’s see how long it takes to find it.

 Inspecting the damage

A Contradicting Happy Note

Having browsed through blogs related to Nepal, I suddenly feel a little sorry that  in my notes I am not in a similar manner able to share the exiting elephant safaris, the thin air of the Everest base-camp, the adrenalin rushes of the para-gliding adventures, or the crazy hazy night-lights of Thamel.

I seem to have been slipping more and more into the wrongs and the even more wrongs that puzzle me, puzzle this country.

I realise that the the pictures I am painting may appear gloomy, although it is not, not at all, entirely as black and white a way the world refelcts on my lenses. Perhaps I am just hopelessly affected by the reporter's disease of 'good news is no news'. Thus I have dipped myself in a bath of curing liniment and am changing the tone slightly. At least for this one.

Getting out of Kathmandu is always refreshing, but this time it was simply the best: Two ladies, two kids, a lot of food and accessories from games to umbrellas packed into the coolest van ever, and off we drive. Surviving the maddening traffick of Kathmandu where the only rule is to let the biggest go first and in which the worst chaos is created by a traffick police at work, we head towards the northern hills along the windy, bumpy roads leading towards Tibet.

The stops for biscuits, drinks, views, water springs, even the stops to collect hats the fellow-passengers have dropped along the road, delay us but all we have is time and the road ahead. Reaching the more remote, the surprise on a face of a young Nepali selling tomatoes along the road in the middle of nowhere when a van of white women pulls over, is definately worth remembering even months after. The faces of the armed police at road stops drop, and while recovering from their shock of having seen a female driver they forget to search our house on wheels for a possible load of Sal tree, commonly smuggled to China. Not that it would have been worth it, we are simply enjoying life as it appears after each steep turn of the road.

Towards Tatopani (Cold Water) a perfect spot for dipping in a fast running water awaits the pack of travellers. All the million little streams running down the majestic mountains collects into one huge monster of a river which gives us an ice-cold embrace we welcome as a bliss after many sweaty, although happy hours of chats and sing-alongs in the scorching hot van.  Standing in the stream, the fine sand under our toes disappears within seconds, probably only to eventually end up to the countless construction sites of Kathmandu. 

But Kathmandu is only a distant memory. Our moment turns into a self-made lunch under a shack buil on the river bank, followed by peculiar exercise of collecting all the left-behind flip-flops we find on the beach into a long line of abandonment. The quickly rolling clouds of the starting monsoon suddenly burst, forcing us to escape the newly-found beach life, and into the heavy rain we drive, a few kilos of sand stuck into the folds of or soaked pants, shirts and hair.

When the beating rain, already dripping through the seals of the windows, stops visibility we pass a non-cultivated paddy field cum our camping spot. Later that night, after a simple but one of the tastiest dinners ever prepared, in the kitchen section of the van, after the chilling out with a few card games, stories and a bottle of wine earlier cooled down in the cold of the river, I step outside, and stand not only in the rain water gathered and risen up to my anckles but more importantly in the midst of the perfect dark, in the lap of the mysterious mountains. 

As I watch the only sources of light against the hips of the mountaisn, the last of the home fires slowly die and turn into the flickering lamps of the hundred fire-flies, I cannot but believe in good.  

A child who has had an opportunity to shower under the pouring skies of the top of the world, a paddy field as their smooth marble floor and the clouds as their shower curtain, a crab crawling by their feet like a bath toy, they can - in reference to the last posting - after all, turn nothing but good, respectful beings?

 

Thanks Angelique for the Perfect Road Trip! 

(The other, much more extensive adventures of the cool van and its cool driver can be followed further here.)

Fine then, I call it another Stink

One morning leaving for work I was irritated about being delayed for not finding the things someone had misplaced. In my annoyance I happened to stumble into a messy kid's room - never a promising combination from the child's point of view, and quite right, the verdict was to have the jumble cleared up by my return. To my great surprise, it was, but it was so perfectly done, I grew suspicious: "Who cleaned this room?"

An innocent voice stated it was didi, "of course", as if it was only to be expected. The newly arising annoyance in me was taken as foreign: "Why not?" Yes, I live in a boring adult world where it's just not ok, just like it's not ok to be sending didi to the shop whenever a fancy for a packet of crisps strikes, nor getting your tea and toast made - regardless of what's on tv. 

The scene above is a mild version in comparison to the hard-core aid crew's offspring born on some god-forgotten elbows of land, from bad to worse to bad. Parents in full demand to dedicate maximum time and energy to the organisations and the people they came to serve, it's almost as if at home they want to compensate the hardship - the stink outside- by striving to make the reality the complete opposite. Children get raised in parallel worlds of big houses and huge gardens protercted by great walls, surrounded by nannys, maids, guards and drivers.

A child who, at the height of a birthday party resembling more of a fancy fair, makes a snappy remark about the cake which is bigger than an average sized dinner table and covered with an amount of candles one would think requires pyro-technician's supervision, has never had a chance to run to a corner-shop to count out what their pocket money pays for. Never have they had a real chance to learn the value of money. Enough does not exist.

A child who, having jumped off a shiny landrover in front of a cinema, in blunt annoyance shouts at a begging street-kid of about the same age, "to disappear", has most certainly never lacked anythign in life. All is provided.

What about a child who does not react to a baby left on a street? Perhaps it is just as a common site as abandoned puppies on the street.

In reference to previous post - children, I suppose, are just as or even more vulnerable to the blindness that deceases us. The question that puzzles me concerns the future of these kids. Their parents, majority of them raised and born in their respective countries, chose to come, out of a burning social conciousness, desire for change, or whatever the reason was, but what will eventually come out of this generation who was born or brought to it, never having had to question it, easily mistaking white as a synonym for rich?

How to teach compassion, if nothing is ever difficult? How to teach self-initiation, if everything was always done and ready?

Before I left for Nepal, I was asked whether I worried about the things my children would be deprived from. I did not worry as I could not really see what those things would be. I considered the question foolish.

I am changing my mind now - about the nature of the question as well as about worrying about it. The minor detail is whether this is the very issue they had in mind, or was it perhaps about lacking an opportunity to play ice-hockey or missing out on the well-balanced school meals and fabulous PISA tests?

These days the amount of questions outnumbers the amount of answers I have.

                                                                   Contemplating

Stink

 In one of the poorest countries of the world it wraps you within and never leaves you alone. It's right in your face as soon as you leave the safe haven of an AC'd office. It grabs you by the hand if you close your eyes from it, it talks to you in a language you don't  understand but still there is no way you could not get a gist of it.  

It'is on your skin as permanently as the dirt on the faces of the litter of children, hurdled around the countless mothers sitting by the roadside in their hopeless hope to sell a few leaves of spinach, a pair of used shoe laces, a worn-out watch strap for a few rupees to make an evening meal. It's unwashable. It's stinks worse than the holy Bagmati river.

The day on the return from New York it touched me, after ten days of non-exposure. Ten days upon return it still stank but the resistance had been developed. I could smell it, but like with any bad smell, one slowly gets used to.

Back in the safe haven of the air-conditioned office I was struggling through another pile of freshly produced, shiny-covered reports dealing with the complex causes and outcomes of it, turning the numbers into human-interest facts about dying children, hungry mothers, and stories on lost lives with faces, so shocking that I even managed to shock myself in between cups of Nescafe, certain to change some cash-flows.

Poverty. Stinks.

Then I stumbled on photos, also designed to change the cause of some cash flows, but not to make the poor a little less poor, but to make the rich a little richer. I am deeply ashamed to confess, that from time to time I have to pinch myself hard to feel it through my resistant skin, but at least I am here and in the job still because I smell the stench and feel the pinch. Because I find it deceptive, but still not fashionable nor sexy.

A $200 umbrella modelled by an Indian man, in Vogue India.

Two-thirds of Indians live on less than $2 per day.

A child models a designer-bib that costs $100, in Vogue India.

Would you buy it knowing the same amount would buy a year of schooling for perhaps that particular girl, immunise her against deadly diseases or provide her nutritious meals for several months?

(Added Sep 2010)

A Nepali model modelling for a designer dress in Nepal.

With admiring street children in the background.

Holiday from Life

On the sixth day of the bandh from the window of the white elephant in a convoy of white elephants -a popular description of our vehicles - six hours before the flight, I watched the sea of red turning restless, and no longer it seemed like an over-reaction having had arranged an evacuation plan and a chain for the children who I now was leaving behind. The red sea was done with dancing, now it was time for bricks. The paralysed country was getting tired and frustrated.

Literally a minute before I boarded the plane an sms told me the unexpected: the strike was drawn. The journey ahead would be a touch more bearable.

I felt I landed into some parallel world, first welcomed by a demand of finger prints and a set of akward questions by an unfriendly customs official, and then by the silhuette of a city the yellow cabs were approaching in a speed that to me seemed like a speed of light, faintly familiar from movies I must have watched, the most striking phenomenon being the hundred traffic signs giving instructions of left, right and centre, hazards of curves, speed, heights and weights.  I smiled  at the biggest one of them all, a wall sized thing warning of a bumpy road ahead: "The whole of Nepal would be littered with a batallion of this particular sign if we had traffic signs, but ha, even in New York they have bumpy roads," I thought exultantly, eagerly sitting forward in anticipation.

It never came. The bumpy bit.

Everything seemed so organised, and yet friendly: "Hi sweetie", they would shockingly say to you at a shop counter and keep talking if you just had the time for a chat, making you feel the most interesting person on Manhattan, and then repeat it to the next one in line with the same passion. In the pub they would ask for your ID for buying a pint, and if it got late enough they'd close the curtains and doors and serve the last crowd till the early hours. After six months of being exposed to constant staring, it felt liberating to realise that not a soul would've blinked an eye had I decided to take an evening walk in a bikini, or without it. 

In between the long hours of the workshop, I shopped for everything from underwear to shoes unavailable and worn and washed out, I ate nothing but bread and cheese all week, sat in the philharmonics, rode public transport, moved as an anonomous among anonomous. All those things that I had missed.

The holiday from life towards the end of the week however grew into a regret that the flight back wasn't the earliest possible. The amusement over the signs started turning into a relief of not having them, or more importantly not having to have them:

"Exit only when the doors open" (in an elevator)

"It's illegal to have a toy gun looking like a real gun and a real gun painted to look like a toy gun"

"Cop Shoot  - $10,000 reward for a witness that leads to an arrest and conviction"

"For assaulting the train staff you can face up to fifteen years imprisonment"

"If you fall ill on the metro, don't panic: You will NOT be left alone"

So much I had started to miss coming back to my life, but before we had even landed I suddenly felt pure despair and irritation with the Nepalis switching their mobiles on well before the plane had even landed, shooting up to retrieve their luggage the minute we touched the ground, creating undescribable chaos and cacophony to the deep desperation of also the flight attendants. But every step along the corridor littered with fallen bricks and planks of wood  leading up to the sweaty, urine-smelling luggage hall began to diminish my irritation again, and by the time I was out in the open and deep in negotiations with the cabby called Prince I was extaticly reliefed to be back, back in what seemed like normalcy.

Logically it should not make any sense to feel joy about being back and stuck on this god-forbidden-god-forgotten elbow of land, where the political drama continues to hold the rich and the poor of this country a hostage from opportunity, where life can really stink and shout in your already half-deaf ear - and most likely you end up dealing with it, whatever it is, in the dark. With a rat.

But in this moment of time, even if I am just a lucky visitor, it is home, and perhaps "home" needs no logic.

We have signs in Nepal also. 

Understood!

Dancing Revolution

As the Reds are sharpening their batons in Bangkok, the Maoists in Nepal are dancing the streets.

The lead-up to this nationwide shutdown was, if I dare say, fearful. A few weeks before the 1st May the Maoists started training members of their youth wing, cadres, school teachers and pretty much anyone who they managed to get hold of, in "self-defence" in the districts. Masses of busses packed with people then started arriving to Kathmandu, and it became pretty clear why all the private schools had been forced to shut down for the week leading up to the May Day. Weapons from khukuris to materials for making Molotov Coctails were found in police raids. In the dark hours fake accidents took place, injuring some of those unwilling who were ordered to stand in the front lines on the 'big day'.

Having left Kathmandu for a short holiday, it seemed almost evident we would not be able to return again. The mind terrorising information dropping in began to turn my stomach. 

Yet, landing to Kathmandu on the 1st May was like landing into a ghost town and never has the ride from the airport to home been as quick and botherless. The shutters of the shops were pulled down in the fear of Maoists collecting "donations", the vehicles stayed off the roads in fear of flying bricks. Armed police forces were nodding off in herds around aboned street corners, while the hundred thousand cadres were holding a mass meeting in Ratna Park. People stayed at home waiting for the televised address to the nation by the PM Nepal, and as he refused to resign the few restaurants that had remained opened, quickly in fear of trouble closed the doors and curtains and took the last orders - indefinately.

What happened after all? This revolution does not sound like whispers, but more like Hindi tunes from Bollywood movies, spreading to streets from gigantic loudspeakers set in the middle of roads, dilluting the worst fears of a violent uprising and changing the mood into one of festivity including nightly torch rallies, a spectacular human chain on the 27 km ringroad circulating the city, and dancing. Everywhere.

Everything having been shut down, there's suddenly enough electricity, and the only decision people have to make is whether to go out and watch the live entertainment, or stay at home and watch tv. I decided to go to work, but having been stopped at a road block on my first attempt to cycle there, I've now abandoned the bicycle and on foot  in the midst of the carneval wonder if the demonstrators know themselves whether to have a party or a revolution. 

The press, one of the few among the ambulances and diplomatic vehicles allowed to move on wheels, reports on spreading diarrhoea among the protestors packed in empty schools and construction sites (i.e.  those who haven't actually forced themselves into private homes and hotels), and on some cadres demanding to take a break to return to work in their fields as it's been raining. This gave a momentary ray of hope that we don't have to wait for the unforseen resignation of the PM giving way to a new unity government...if such a thing could exist in this country under any circumstances, I wonder. 

But, diarrhoea or not, they still keep on dancing, just like the Balts once kept on singing. Just like they sang themsleves free from the communist rule, can the communist rule be danced into the lives of the Nepalese? Have no time to ponder on it further, as the daily two hours the shops are allowed to open is getting close. It's good to go and check how much food stuff still remains and how many more rupees do we need to pay for the tinned tuna and beans today.

Countdown

So folks, the magic number today is 99. And no, this is not about olympics or eurovision or any of those important events the world is currently focusing on. This is about Constitution. There are 99 days left to finish the drafting of the Nepali Constitution, as 28th of May is the day the Interim Constitution, based on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement marking the end of the bloody conflict, seizes to exist.

Clock ticks for this nation to settle its future, while spectators, and that is pretty much everyone within the borders of Nepal as well as the big neigbours India and China, hold their breath in anticipation following the events evolving around the process, seemingly still far from near-completion.

January saw a formation of a high-level political mechanism to solve the political deadlock between the rivalring parties to take the peace process to a logical end and allow the Constituent Assembly to finish their work in time, even seeing the Maoists calling off their planned indefinate strike. But, like nothing that has anything to do with politics or consensus in this country seems to not last for very long. As differences cannot be ironed out, the various fronts suspecting one another of fiddling to make the constitution as a tool for them to rise into power, the momentum seems to have been lost already. The Maoists cadres have received an order to remain ready for a revolt in case the Constitution lacks to become "pro-people". And that, of course, could mean almost anything. At the same time there are a numerous other parties and fronts organising disruptions, campaigns and strikes to pressure the nation to adopt federalism, not to adopt it, have 14 federal states, or two, elect and restructure this or that way, have rights for one, second and the other, include this, exclude that.

While the political leaders and wanna-be-.political-leaders hold speeches in on-going events accusing one and another of hampering the constitution drafting process, the CA is not considerably more unified. The Constituent Assembly members have recently been prohibited from leaving the country for foreign visits to concentrate on the most important task at hand, The Public Relations Committee and the People's Opinion Collection Committee are heading out  into the districts to inform the people over the progress made, in un-unified, competing teams. And yet, it seems fairly obvious that the people out there are notthat bothered about who tells them what but are more concerned about equal service delivery, owning their little patches of land, ending impunity, cutting the ties of bonded labour, and the various basic issues allowing the man and the woman of the street and land and any caste an opportunity to live in peace, maybe even prosper.

Every morning the newspaper stalls and immediate street corners and tea shops are flocked by those men of the street, reading the latest of the political drama, occasionally taking forms or a farse, to read and guess the future. Some see reaching the deadline with still so much to do and decide on, an absolute impossibility. But then, Nepal is known to do things and reach unity at the very last moment to avoid the nation crumbling down for good.

The big question remains, what will happen on 29th May if the Constitution is not promulgated. The fairly scary answer is: no one knows. It remains unclear whether the interim constitution can be extended, and if not, it will mean the Constituent Assembly as well as the Parliament dissolving, the state drifting into an extra-constitutional state and into a state of statelesness. The only elected body to remain would then be the President, and as we know it, would mean dictatory.

On top of this there is the issue of the two armies, the Nepalese and the People's Liberation Army, currently in negotiations over integration. If the integration issue won't be solved along with the CA not meeting their deadline, it feels uncomfortable to think about the scenario that could rise, in that statelesness, between the two fronts that fought a decade long savage guerilla war, only a couple of years ago.

"Ghe garne*," they say, and just keep counting down now.

_____a picture may follow when I return from a weekend escape and taken there is light at appropriate time________

*Ghe garne must be the favourite saying of the Nepalese, meaning "what to do", said in an indefferent, fatalistic manner, accompanied by a shrug of shoulders. Can be used any time and any situation anywhere, and once said, you simply just go on with your daily routine.

... in to the spring

The mandarin tree beneath the balcony has begun to blossom. I take it as a faint promise of the spring coming. Leaves and grass beginning to turn - slowly, slowly - greener.

Festivities have taken over Nepal this weekend again.

Friday marked Shiva Ratri, a day to celebrate Lord Shiva, one of the most worshipped of all Hindu gods, the Destroyer of Evil. Holy men and pilgrims from all over Southeast Asia have gathered to Kathmandu days, even weeks in advance, to celebrate the special day, known as Lord Shiva's birthday. Interestingly, it is believed that Shiva fancied marijuana, and thus an important part of the day is to indulge in smoking it. As it happens, it is also the only day in the year when it is legal. I decided to indulge myself, however, in activities such as getting a hair cut, shopping, and exploring new parts of this crazy, bubbly city that seems like neverending and with a growing realisation I begin to accept that a day off once in while will never allow me enough time to know it all, nevermind understand it.

This crazy city has today been decorated with tacky pink heart-shaped balloons, for Valentine's Day has landed even to this far end of the world - still prominently a nation of arranged marriages, making celebrations of romantic love seem a little absurd. But what else can you expect from a city and a country that can happily mix everything and anything - communism and hinduism for one - and make it seem all natural?

And as if this was not enough,  it is (yes I know, this is getting repetitious now) New Year again. Losar, the Tibetan New Year, recognised here as the Sherpa New Year, 2137, the year of the Tiger, has kept government offices and schools shut today.

I don't imagine my restricted mind could come up with a way to combine and melt these two events falling on a same day, but at the same I time have no doubt it has easily been managed by the festive Nepalis, with their amazing ability to adapt.

Anyway, in the midst of recovering from last night's charity party for relief aid to the people of Haiti,  I take this chance to wish eveyone happy all the mentioned and whatever else you may happen to be celebrating. I celebrate the beginning of the spring by slowly abandoning a layer of clothing after another, in faith of warmer times to come.

Walking through the wall of rain...

My pockets, bags and diary full of bits and pieces of notes hastily written on the back of receipts, business cards, even notes and napkins, that eventually get thrown away by mistake or sold (by didi, not understanding the so called importance of my scribbles) to a waste paper collector, put somewhere safe which is so safe I cannot get to them anymore, handed on over into the endless flow of cash exchange, or used for wiping off dust, dirt, or - and this felt amazing - rain drops.

Sudden rain fell down two days ago, starting in the morning as just a little drizzle, shy and unsure of itself, and no wonder, not having shown itself for months. The shops remained shut on my way to work, the street sellers had abandod the scene as if they knew. As the hours passed, the rain gathered its courage and by the afternoon, it was pouring down the city obnoxiously and full of confidence, washing everything and everyone, whether they wanted it or not, clean off the collections of the dusty season.

As the time of going home approached I started to wish I owned an umbrella, only to find out later from didi (yes, again) being one step ahead of me as always, that the only ones available in the Patan side of town had holes in them, like pretty much anything you wish to desire - unless of course a hole is an essential, accepted and expected charasteristic of that particular item.

The Kathmandu night was gently drawing in with the last bits of grey light slowly disappearing as I walked the last leg of the road, not having been able to observe much through the taxi windows steaming up and blurred by the falling wall of rain, wanting to expose myself to that something familiar and yet strange and new, after all feeling happy I had not that umbrella. From underneath it I may not have seen my neighbourhood invaded by an army of buckets red, and blue, and green; by pots and pans and everything that had no (unwanted) holes in them (strangely enough). A delightful scene, and to make it even more so, I heard no one cough their lugns out, nor did I have to, for once, take side steps in avoidance of having my shoes spat on.

I slowed down the pace of my steps just to enjoy the magic of the rain a little longer, and magic it was, not only to my perhaps a romantic soul but also, and more importantly, to those tens of thousands of farmers accross the country who probably sighed with unimaginable relief of knowing their families just having been saved from facing hunger in the next times to come.

I would never have expected to have been so touched by something so simple as rain, but then, it is easy to impress me these days. Today I am impressed and, well, maybe not touched as such, but close, that I have sat through a whole evening with light and connections. Electricity off half the hours there is to a day, at the most unconvenient times of course, the battery never having enough time to properly charge up, it is hard to keep up the correspondance. Thus the long blog silence.

Currently this blog  gets written on those pieces of scrap and onto the pages of a diary with cheap Indian ink that fades away by just looking at it. Apologises for the inconvenient and unsufficient dissemination of these thoughts, but then again, at the moment they evolve round these simple things many of you, dear friends and readers, will probably find awfully common anyway.