Health Food Store

Today; sometime during the day, I walked into a healthfood store. Not that I could afford it, just walked into the store. I mean you got to see those prices. They got to be joking. But sadly they were not.

While I was there all I saw were people trying to escape the world they have created.

Letter to my people

To the people of Nepal,

I understand that may of you are like to be involved in politics. I understand that most of you are frustrated about many things. May of you are forced to grow up before your time. Most of you are not given the childhood you want. You are socially restricted, you are mentally held prisoners, and your emotions run in circles within you. So what if you were not taught to be emotionally intelligent. Just think before you lash out. Next time you are told to shut up for your thoughts, just keep speaking. If you are ready to spill blood, then let that blood be that of yours, not that of your enemies.

Sometimes I wonder looking at this political events. These rallies, demonstrations and vandalism of public and private properties. All in the name of social changes. I can understand that political changes does require some state of chaos, yet social changes require the change of mind. The more you fight, the more there is division amongst people.

I use to hear every day that we are a Hindu nation. Yet that is not native to our country other than Sita from the south. Other than Ramayana, all the other doesn’t matter to us. Buddha was probably the only Nepali philosopher ever existed. So what if he was a Hindu before that or not, he was a Nepali, and that’s all that matters. Now that we are a secular state some Hindus are not happy. They claim that we as a nation have lost part of our identity. I just wonder if they were ever thinking that if we lost our whole identity to Bollywood. I hear that Hinduism is a very tolerant religion. Everyone when I was growing up preached that we Nepalese are very tolerant people. So WHAT! We do not need any tolerance. Why are we tolerating out own people? We shouldn’t be tolerating these things. We should be accepting our people. So stop tolerating your own neighbors and embrace them. Nepal doesn’t need not tolerate anymore.

To you those you are Buddhist, or claim to have gone to be Buddhist. It doesn’t matter what religion you choose if you are going to think the same way. In Nepal, we have may Buddhist, may Hindus and many who are Hindus and Buddhist and amongst all of this, I barely meet those who are Nepali.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not mad at all the Hindus and all the Buddhist and all the other people in Nepal. I am just mad at some or even many.

To the lower cast and people who have suffered. Stop fighting with sticks, stones, guns and bombs. Stop marching in angry demonstrations. You are here to change the minds of people. Change their mind so that may be not in your generation or your children’s generation but at least someone in the future from both sides can hold each other in embrace and go to same school. May be your son and daughter might get married and bridge the gap in the family.

Here is a funny story. Sometime on the news you hear someone people committing suicide, or attacking another. My parents and their friends always laugh that those people must have had something wrong in their love. Every time they say this. Every time they laugh, my heart drops a tear. NO! I cry. No there was nothing wrong with they love. Just the mind of their parents. Just the mind of the society. Just the world they lived in didn’t want them. Just because we all are something else before we count ourselves as Nepali.

Here is a drop of tear that I am spilling for my country. Just one drop. I cannot afford to spill anymore, I will not spill anymore. At least not yet.

Song Below

Just thought that I would do a little translation to anyone who decided to watch the song below.
I am open to any corrections in translations.

We will never surrender ourselves to anyone.

Even if this country is small.

We are ready to let the blood flow.

This is our Nepal.

We will never surrender ourselves to anyone.

Even if this country is small.

We are ready to let the blood flow.

This is my Nepal.

This is your Nepal.

This is our Nepal (x4)

On the red colour,

The moon and the sun

On this soil we were born.

Decorated with high mountains.

This is my Nepal.

This is your Nepal.

This is my Nepal.

This is our Nepal.(x4)

We are the brave sons of our Nepali mother.

Our history is written with blood.

My country is dear to me.

This is my Nepal.

This is your Nepal.

This is my Nepal.

This is our Nepal. (x4)

We will never surrender ourselves to anyone.

Even if this country is small.

We are ready to let the blood flow.

This is my Nepal.

This is your Nepal.

This is my Nepal.

This is our Nepal.

P.S. I am trying to find any Nepali Philosophy. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. I just found it sad when my dad told me Upanidash. We might follow the same religion but that is not the philosophies from our people.

Hamro Nepal

To my shoemaker

Strange how things are now compared to when I was young. Growing up in Nepal and seeing the United States as only the shiny clean place in the post cards. Then there came television, and still it was this clean place with tall buildings. Not the same when the cab we took from the airport drove through 125^th street (Harlem). This was before Bill Clinton moved his office there, before all the economic development.

Nepal when I was small was different. My country, the way I saw through those innocent eyes. Not a care of social and economic discrimination or ethnic discrimination.

New York, city full of stores and big shopping areas. From SoHo, NoHo and Chinatown to the midtown crowd and tourist. Here I am free to purchase what I want with the money I have. Strangely, those who don’t have money, purchase what they want with the money they don’t have.

Here I am in NYC, twelve years away from where I was born. Shopping for new shoes. Here I am in a crowd, a walking number that the government identifies me by. Purchasing something through plastic which has the numbers that my bank identifies me by. When I want the shoes on the shelf, I ask for the model number. Once paid for the shoes, I get is a “Thank You” with a smile; granted the sales person is in a good mood; and my receipt. Never to see the person again. Never to say hi, hello, or how are you.

Every Year I got my shoes made by the shoe makers. My grandfather would take me over to the area of the town where all the shoe makers lived. They would measure my feet, every year they would measure it because I kept getting bigger and bigger, and gave us a date when it would be finished by. If my grandfather thought that it was too long then he would ask for an earlier time. No care for the style. There were none. It was a school shoes. Well actually I wore it everywhere and I didn’t buy sneakers till I was about 7 or 8 years old.

Now I go buy my shoes, in Macy’s, Foot Locker, Sketchers and all the big brands. Have shelves upon shelves of designs to choose from. Colours to pick, brand to pick, look of the shoes to pick, fell of the shoes. I walk wearing the shoes down the street admiring the newness of it, cursing at it if it hurt my feet. No a care about the shoes. Just how I feel.

Yet all this time, I never got a chance to thank my shoemaker. I never knew his name. I was socially restricted to invite him over for tea. He made the shoes that have lasted in my memory all this time. Not that they were any better than all the brands here in the US, but they were made by him. Not that I still remember his face but I knew that there was a person making my shoes and he put all his skills and care into making it. I knew that he would make it the way I wanted it.

I went back to that area few years back in Nepal. I disliked the town when I got there. I love the people there, yet they all had moved away to the western housing. All mixed in between the beautiful Nepali houses. I am not complaining on the western aspect of it, I am complaining at the impracticality of it. Not to our weather, our comfort and our cultural values. Just to show that I have more money than you.

Then I went over to the shoemaker area. Just to walk by, I didn’t go looking for the shoemaker. I don’t remember how he looked or even if he is still alive. I just wanted to walk by, and there it was. The place I knew. Unchanged. The buildings, the people. Yet the sadness is that our culture is preserved through poverty and segregation of our people. The shoemakers were still there because they were not allowed to move up. If only people moved up and still held on to what is ours.

The shoemaker kept his ways, kept his area looking beautiful, kept it Nepali, kept it because of poverty and social segregation.

So here is to all the hardworking people who make our shoes. To that special shoemaker who made my shoes.

Thank You.

The Beginning

Here is a start of what is know as an Identity of onself described with 0's and 1's. I am a floating blob of Nepali DNA in NYC. Just one of many that are around me. Just one who encounters few. From here I am just a blob from another world living in another.

Just bear with me. This is the first time I am posting and starting. Might take me some times to post and organize things. I am hopping to write my thoughts and get comments on things. Just be nice, but you are free to disagree with me.