Kathmandu Post
Date | Saturday, May 25, 2013
On Saturday»
SEP 07 -
“...I want to do with you what spring does to the cherry trees.” —Pablo Neruda
Dear You,
Once again, I’m sitting here, writing a letter I have no address to send to you at.
I thought I should tell you the city has started to change. Just at the start of the rains this year, they started dismantling it. Did you see it on the online news portals? Do you read about Kathmandu, where you are? The government said they were going to build a better city. They said they would widen the roads, ease the traffic and push back people who had greedily encroached on public land. So, they drew marks everywhere around the city, where they deemed people had taken more than they needed. They put up signs and told people to push back. And the fall of the city began.
I saw one morning in a newspaper, the picture of a woman standing at the threshold of her mud and brick wall house in Maharajgunj, weeping. Her son held her shoulders. Her sari was raised to her knees. She wiped her face with the end of it.
Such pictures were just things in the newspapers and TV for me for a long while. I think I pretended not to look out the safa tempo window when I went past the broken-down walls and the dismantled door and window frames. Then one day, one of passengers in the safa tempo I was riding in started fidgeting when we entered Lazimpat. The woman looked out the window several times and finally told the driver she couldn’t recognise the entrance to the alley that led to her home. They had destroyed her landmarks. When she got off, she stood on the street a long time, swivelling her head in every direction, trying to find her way. The tempo pulled away. She was still standing—her head turned to the sky.
These past few weeks, I have been walking the streets. You know of my relationship with the streets. You know how I look for solutions in them, for everything—for a thought in snares, a throbbing temple, or even heartache? I’ve been doing that again. Just the way I did after you left Kathmandu so many years ago.
The trick is to retrace our steps. I try to walk our stories on the pavements, to find consolation in what doesn’t exist anymore. But you know how I always tell you the streets conjure you up all over again for me? Yes, they’ve always done that.
And there are my favourite spots. Do you remember how one monsoon we stood near the French Embassy, our jeans folded up to our calves, our glasses spotting sprays of rain, posing for a photo under that black umbrella you’d borrowed from uncle? That one. And the other one, where we’d had our first real conversation? That balcony where they served coffee and vegetable sizzler, where we landed after slipping out of a party, and spent the night listening to the rain fall. And there’s that other place close to the Japanese Embassy that we walked past so many evenings, where you’d once stopped and asked me if I wanted to sit at a chiya pasal for a bit, as it started to drizzle. All these places, you know? How often I’ve walked that particular stretch and imagined it happening all over again.
But with the city crumbling, I think I’m crumbling too.
I see parts of homes broken everywhere. They are like people gaping in shock. Rooms exposed in just their half-walls. No mirrors, no photo frames, no curtains. They are like a testament to what was. It feels like there was so much hidden behind those homes and they’ve suddenly been spilled in public. And the inside is ugly.
It feels like sacrilege. I feel cheated in some way—like they stole my memories. If I walk past where you and I said goodbye for the last time, I can’t find it anymore. The spot. It’s gone.
I can no more find the cherry trees along the Japanese embassy, outside which I stood for hours one day, looking up at the blue sky through the branches. I don’t know how many times I did that in the past—standing there, trying to catch the sky with my eyes. The trees changed all the time. From scrawny branches to pink blossoms to green leaves—these trees have a weird way of arriving, you know? Blossoms first and then leaves. Like falling in love first and blooming instantly, then gathering your senses for the sake of process and starting to sprout bright green leaves.
It rains hard every day now. And the houses sometimes fling down broken bits like bricks and stones, nearly hitting pedestrians. But mostly, it’s just a stretch of debris everywhere on the streets, soaking.
The city is eroding. And so am I. Nevertheless, I have been walking. And do you know what I saw today? The marble pavement in Lazimpat, where we sat down one day, watching the world pass us by—it is still intact. And a faint hope rose from the bottom of my gut. Maybe I can still sit there sometimes and pretend we’re together again. And then maybe, this city will not feel so unbearable. And perhaps, some day, I’ll even find an address to write to you at.
Yours as ever,Me
Posted on: 2012-09-08 10:22
Chasing pavements
SEP 07 -
“...I want to do with you what spring does to the cherry trees.” —Pablo NerudaDear You,
Once again, I’m sitting here, writing a letter I have no address to send to you at.
I thought I should tell you the city has started to change. Just at the start of the rains this year, they started dismantling it. Did you see it on the online news portals? Do you read about Kathmandu, where you are? The government said they were going to build a better city. They said they would widen the roads, ease the traffic and push back people who had greedily encroached on public land. So, they drew marks everywhere around the city, where they deemed people had taken more than they needed. They put up signs and told people to push back. And the fall of the city began.
I saw one morning in a newspaper, the picture of a woman standing at the threshold of her mud and brick wall house in Maharajgunj, weeping. Her son held her shoulders. Her sari was raised to her knees. She wiped her face with the end of it.
Such pictures were just things in the newspapers and TV for me for a long while. I think I pretended not to look out the safa tempo window when I went past the broken-down walls and the dismantled door and window frames. Then one day, one of passengers in the safa tempo I was riding in started fidgeting when we entered Lazimpat. The woman looked out the window several times and finally told the driver she couldn’t recognise the entrance to the alley that led to her home. They had destroyed her landmarks. When she got off, she stood on the street a long time, swivelling her head in every direction, trying to find her way. The tempo pulled away. She was still standing—her head turned to the sky.
These past few weeks, I have been walking the streets. You know of my relationship with the streets. You know how I look for solutions in them, for everything—for a thought in snares, a throbbing temple, or even heartache? I’ve been doing that again. Just the way I did after you left Kathmandu so many years ago.
The trick is to retrace our steps. I try to walk our stories on the pavements, to find consolation in what doesn’t exist anymore. But you know how I always tell you the streets conjure you up all over again for me? Yes, they’ve always done that.
And there are my favourite spots. Do you remember how one monsoon we stood near the French Embassy, our jeans folded up to our calves, our glasses spotting sprays of rain, posing for a photo under that black umbrella you’d borrowed from uncle? That one. And the other one, where we’d had our first real conversation? That balcony where they served coffee and vegetable sizzler, where we landed after slipping out of a party, and spent the night listening to the rain fall. And there’s that other place close to the Japanese Embassy that we walked past so many evenings, where you’d once stopped and asked me if I wanted to sit at a chiya pasal for a bit, as it started to drizzle. All these places, you know? How often I’ve walked that particular stretch and imagined it happening all over again.
But with the city crumbling, I think I’m crumbling too.
I see parts of homes broken everywhere. They are like people gaping in shock. Rooms exposed in just their half-walls. No mirrors, no photo frames, no curtains. They are like a testament to what was. It feels like there was so much hidden behind those homes and they’ve suddenly been spilled in public. And the inside is ugly.
It feels like sacrilege. I feel cheated in some way—like they stole my memories. If I walk past where you and I said goodbye for the last time, I can’t find it anymore. The spot. It’s gone.
I can no more find the cherry trees along the Japanese embassy, outside which I stood for hours one day, looking up at the blue sky through the branches. I don’t know how many times I did that in the past—standing there, trying to catch the sky with my eyes. The trees changed all the time. From scrawny branches to pink blossoms to green leaves—these trees have a weird way of arriving, you know? Blossoms first and then leaves. Like falling in love first and blooming instantly, then gathering your senses for the sake of process and starting to sprout bright green leaves.
It rains hard every day now. And the houses sometimes fling down broken bits like bricks and stones, nearly hitting pedestrians. But mostly, it’s just a stretch of debris everywhere on the streets, soaking.
The city is eroding. And so am I. Nevertheless, I have been walking. And do you know what I saw today? The marble pavement in Lazimpat, where we sat down one day, watching the world pass us by—it is still intact. And a faint hope rose from the bottom of my gut. Maybe I can still sit there sometimes and pretend we’re together again. And then maybe, this city will not feel so unbearable. And perhaps, some day, I’ll even find an address to write to you at.
Yours as ever,Me
Posted on: 2012-09-08 10:22
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