God Defiled

Walk down the street. Keep walking, walk further and past the first familiar place you know. Down the road  that is bustling with the modern progress of automobile that is more than thirty years old. Those cars and buses that are obsolete. Smell that smog in the air, taste the dust in the air. Feel the grittiness in your mouth as you walk. Walk further down the streets of Kathmandu. Find a nice river.

Which one?

Oh I don't know. Just find one that which seems to be flowing.

Grab a chair, a stool or just hop on to a ledge and just sit there and watch.

See all the people in the streets. In the cars and buses. The three wheeler running in the traffic spitting people out ever few stops and devouring another from it's rear end.

Keep watching. Look carefully. Now start counting. Nepali or in English or if you are like me count in Nepali till the forties and then switch to English just because you can't remember how to say the next number anymore.    

Don't start yet. I haven't even told you what to count.

Ok, let's start now. Look at everyone who goes by and count those to pay homage to the river by touching their heart and forehead with their hand. Maybe you won't find too many in Kathmandu, but you will find them. So keep counting and look for them.

Now move along and go to a temple. Look for signs that says "No shoes allowed inside." or "Only Hindus allowed inside." It won't be hard, you know the temple must remain pure. The statue of the god, or the stone where the god resides must remain pure, undefiled.

Try to break the sign. Walk in with a sign that says you are not a Hindu or walk in with your shoes on. Will you be stopped? Will you be yelled at or pushed away?

What would happen if you decided to pee at the doorstep. Not even on the statue, just the doorstep. What will happen?

Now wonder what about that river? Showered by human excrement every second of the day. 

Wheels and I

I was probably two years old running around on a stone paved street of Dhankuta.... well running as much as a two year old can. I always found it fascinating that we can train our body to get faster and faster and when we have pushed our limit we can get on wheels and go even faster.

I got my first taste of wheels on a little tricycle that my grandfather bought me. It was a combination of plastic and metal parts. My grandfather journeyed to two towns over, almost to the edge of our country to get me this tricycle. Back then, the roads were still being developed and there was probably one or two bus a day from my grand parents home town to the next city. So a trip always had to be a few days worth since you could not go and come back on the same day. Well this was back then. Now more cars, buses, motorbikes and better roads people can go in the morning and come back in one day. But not back then.

It had silver handlebars, with tassels. Pink seat, which I didn't care and also there was so sense of colour that was designated for men or women. They were just colours no gender so I loved my first set of wheels. I rode it in my grand parents court yard back and forth on the stone paved yard. Then to the city of Kathmandu I bought my tricycle and rode it around the house. But my body was growing and the tricycle remained the same size. Never growing big with me.

Eventually one day I saw a bicycle on a shop window. All i remember was that it was blue with fender, I was only five or so back then. My parents obviously said NO! I didn't know how to ride a bicycle and they were not keen to me falling and hurting myself. Not that there were not lack of falls off of trees and walls. So I didn't what any kid would do to get what they wanted I cried. Twisted face and somehow I managed to get lots of tears out from my eyes. Yet the answer remained a firm NO!

So after may persuasive crying my parents agreed to buy me a bicycle if I got all A's. let's just say that it was mission impossible for me. Specially when you are going to school in Nepal and teachers having a habit of giving you a lower grade because they didn't like your answer or the answer was not what they told you it was. The teacher was right was the rule.

Here I was growing bigger now with no bicycle, yet the tricycle was still there for me. So I rode it till I was 7 barely fitting on the seat until I got too heavy and it broke. It just broke in two and there I was, wheel less. And wheel less I remained for many year.

It wasn't until few years later that my mom decided to take me to a park and rent a bicycle for me to learn to ride. It was better than nothing, at least I would be ready to ride a bicycle when my parents bought me one. So I learn to ride a bicycle on a rented mountain bike that was almost as tall as i was. I could barely reach the peddle when fully extended but it was a bicycle. Two wheels, I was graduating from my three wheeler to a two wheeler, to a faster ride. So I learned to ride on a dusty park in front of the Kathmandu zoo.

Many years past, there was always a B or a A- that prevented me from getting a bicycle. Never could pull off all A's so I just rode whenever I could get my hands on a bicycle of a friend or someone I knew who would let me ride.

Eventually I was in college and few years later a friend of my dad who lived in town gave me a bike that was left at their place by a former student. I was very excited, i rode around town, to the supermarket and well pretty much even a block away.I was happy with a bicycle that was too tall for me to ride because I had a bicycle.

One day I decided to put the bike on a drive way for few mins while I ran inside to pick up few stuff at Sigma Nu. This was the town where people left their doors open and went grocery shopping in their cars and came back to find everything just the way it was.

But it was not meant to be for me. That driveway was not the same when I got back outside. My bicycle was missing. Left again without my wheels, left to wonder who would take something that didn't belong to them. I guess at least whoever took my bicycle was feeling the joy that I feel when riding a bicycle.

Few years later I decided to stay for summer to take summer classes so I saved up and bought a mountain bike from Toys R' Us. It was almost $200 and that was pretty much all I had. Didn't know the difference in the types of bikes so I just bought one that could handle Galesburg road, mostly paved some dirt. No experience in maintaining the bicycle or knowing the ratio or my height to the seat height, I just peddled from place to place. The humid midwest sun beating down going as fast as 5 miles per hour was still fun.

Again few years past and I was graduating and moving back to New York City. I had to choose between lots of my things so I donated my roller blades to salvation army and my bicycle to my dad's friend so maybe his daughter when she got older or someone else who likes to ride could use it.    

Years have gone now. I have a new bike, DD Bhaisi, and I have not looked back other than to make sure I don't hit a car coming my way or another bicycle passing me. I just ride and when I get tired I just loop Enter Sandman in my head, and pretend I am a timberwolf running thru concrete and steel trees that reach the sky. Avoiding the bumps on the road and may other creatures on the floor. I keep peddling because I know when I peddle during the night or day I can see the wonders of this city instead of the darkness of the tunnel as I ride the belly of a metal worm.     

Speck on a pale blue dot

Have you thought about who you are? How important you find yourself to be, your culture, your god? How men and women wage wars over territories we have created for ourselves? Then, have you looked down on the ground and saw yourself as a giant? Found yourself to be an intelligent being.  Feel the air, breath it in. Dip in the water and feel the ground beneath your feet.

Zoom out a bit. Fly where the birds are. Look down. See how all the people look like ants. The boundary you drew on the map isn't there. The map of your country isn't there. The music and the culture of your people aren't there. Everyone looks like an ant.

Zoom out a bit more. Stand between the moon and the earth. See the land and the sea. The forest and the rivers.

Zoom out further and stand on the moon. Look again and see the oceans, the Saharan desert. Look carefully and you will see that the greatest achievements of man aren't there.

Go further and see the earth, moon, the sun and the other planets. See them just going around.

Go further and see the stars the universe and turn around. Where is the earth? Somewhere, a dot in a milky way. If you get closer it might be a pale blue dot, but for now even this earth is nowhere to be seen in the vastness. So how important are you in the whole of cosmos? 

She waits on the wall

There she hung, on the wall. Tension on get neck from all that winding, never to loosen till the strings start to rust with all the sweat and grime. She hangs there alone till i give her company. Hangs there waiting for me to put my hands on her neck. Strum her gently, hitting the right notes so she can sing, weep and cry all in one song.

Cup of Cappuccino, Cup of Love

It was cold and the sun was hidden behind the clouds. No matter, it was evening and even the sun at a horizon would have disappeared amongst the tall buildings of Manhattan across the East River. The streets were filled with puddles and piled snow. The buses ran and the subway ran and I stood still on the sidewalk waiting for her.

How lonely it seems when she is not around. So there I was a bit chilled, yet eager waiting for her to come up the stairs. Which stairs? Now that was a question that I had no answer to. So I stood there in the middle, waiting for her.

But, this isn't about the wait, the walk and the hands that were holding each other. It's about a brief stop before we parted for the day. It was a cup of cappuccino she drank and few sips I stole.

Not that I haven't had any cappuccino before, well when I could drink it without being sick because of the milk and coffee, but I still can sometimes. There was something that was there when I took that first sip. That coffee, the froth and the sprinkle of cinnamon that floated on top like feathers lifted by the air, the air that was froth of the milk that swished below as the cup turned sideways for every sip she took.

I could have stayed there the whole night watching her sip from the brown paper cup. Slowly as her lips touched the froth. The way her eyes matched the cinnamon that floated on the cloud of milk made me just lose my self in her and that cup of cappuccino. The moment, in slow motion. May be it was the cinnamon acting as an aphrodisiac, but it doesn't really, not like sandalwood.

Yet, I lost my self in her embrace that she projected with all her love through the space that existed between because the chair would not let me get any closer. The sudden thud of the stool knocked behind her by a kid didn't matter, nor the cold wind that blew in as the father of the children opened the door. I was lost at the exact place I wanted to be in.

The door, opened and the sweet pastries drifted away as we walked out. Her still with her brown eyes, slowly sipping on the cappuccino. Through the slushy streets and the cold wind, toward the train station. All in slow motion, a moment to last a life time I my eyes. Time only sped up when she stood on the platform and I stood on mine. Her taking her home and mine towards mine, two of us, in two directions. But, my heart stayed there with her sipping on the cup of cappuccino.

I am angry because I can't find my people

The downfall of the Nepali culture has not been of the recent times. Our culture has declined for a while with the dominant culture of India over powering the cultures that exist. Yet this blame cannot go to Bollywood, for they are not in the business of culture. They produce movies and distribute them where there is demand. Yet we as Nepalese have created this demand for the foreign good, this demand that over takes that which is ours.

Yet this downfall began not from adopting this glittering world of Bollywood but rather forgetting the small stories from within our nation. We have never been very big on writing things down. Our history has very little of written things and those that we have we have never bothered to analyze and make open to the rest of the people. We pride ourselves in Bhanubhakta translating Ramayana in Nepali from Sanskrit so we all can understand. Yet what importance is Ramayana compared to the writings from the early Newari kingdoms, the stone tablets from the Khasa kingdoms, the stories from the thankas? Have we even bothered translating these into languages so we can share out national diversity with our brothers and sisters?

No we never bothered spreading our cultures, just taking in the cheaper commercialized good from the abroad. Throwing our simpler lives, throwing ourselves and replacing them with foreign goods. In this process we left our stories and took time watching Bollywood movies. Instead of telling our kids our stories we threw in a tape of the new bootleg copy of some Indian start that probably didn’t even know that how different Nepal was from them. We made our selves similar to what the bollywood world showed us and said “yeah our cultures are the same.” We said this just so we can have that glamour’s feel which we didn’t think our own cultures could provide.

Now we wonder why are the young kids on the street? I have one answer that keeps coming to my mind. Take away those stories that your parents told you when you were kids. Then the young kids have no stories to hear or read. Replace them with the Bollywood movie, what will they learn? Well probably nothing other than some new culture that isn’t ours. Look at our old stories, they scared us and those things only scared us as long as the authority was there. When one learns to overcome that authority then those stories will not have any effect. So all these time, all we lacked were moral stories that didn’t scare us, but taught us something. When time came, stories that made us think instead of look for that authority around the corner and rebel against it if we could overcome them. When time came, those stories stopped us and make us think of morality, showed us right from wrong. No we didn’t grow up with any of those. We grew up with glamour of Bollywood that we used to hypnotize ourselves into a better world while we left our world to rot around us.

In these many years, we still go no. Never really explaining proudly no this is Nepali culture. Nothing like Indian or Tibetan or anything else. We are Nepalese, people of Nepal and this is our culture and our country and we will stand proud once again because we have earned it by doing something for our country our selves not just because of our ancestry.

Moles moles digging digging under the WTC

Yesterday was fun. Ditched Statics class to go to WTC site. That was the only way I could get to go. Ah well, missing two HW isn't bad so far I guess.

Got down there on the 45th floor after having been lost for few mins. on the street b/c of the lack of building numbers on the buildings. Then got my free hard hat, protection glasses and bright orange vest to wear. Waited for an hr doing nothing other thank snapping few pics. here and there and chatting with few people from CUNY. Should have gotten there later. I was running on 3 hrs of sleep and looking down was pretty interesting.

Then we went got a little lectures on what they were doing on the site, which was pretty interesting b/c we got a clip of the 4D model of the area. Can't wait for them to finish building the site and see the actual structures.

Then went around down to the digging area saw large cranes and what not. Then went past a #11 reinforcing bars and then realized how big they really are and how heavy they really are. I mean all our class room designs are dealing with #5 right now. But wow, #11.... you can get a good workout just carrying a foot of it.

Learned about slurry wall and then saw few of them, then went to another site where a guy told us this technique they use to get a water from effecting the work where they pour liquid nitrogen into the soil and freeze all the water underneath. I which I could have heard him more but it was kind of noisy and for some reason all the taller people like going to the front which left pretty decent group of us Asians on the back trying to look over their shoulders. I think I was the tallest Asian in our group.

Then there was more walking around until we got to go underground under the subway and below the water table. That was pretty cool. Saw what actually exist underneath the streets we walk on. Old vault walls, wires running, sewage pipes, gas pipes, steam pipes (which I am still not fully sure what the buildings really use it for all the time), water pipes and lots of mud and soil which was fun to walk on.

All in all it was cold, fun and interesting and then when we got back to the 45th floor we got cold lunches. Which I really don't understand why people in the US like cold lunches. Then back uptown to finish the Bus station planning to be handed in by 7pm that night. No computers empty then finally one got empty which no was really using but someone was logged on. Then I got on it when the person logged on came and logged off then realized half of the keyboard was stuck b/c of coffee or something. I wish people would not drink in the lab or at least be careful if they are and if they spilled something let the tech there know so they are take care of it.

Ok that is it for now.