crazy eights

9.2

What started out as a mix of fog and sun has turned cold with rain, wind and of course fog.  Work in the dining room continues at a frenzied pace.  I joke with Laxman’s father about Laxman’s ambitious dining room reforms: ‘this will be the first disco in Sarangkot.’  We laugh and share a cigarette.  Suraksha left for school and returned five minutes later for a sweater and a change of footwear, from her one repaired and cleaned shoe and its companion in need of a polish to the flip-flops.  Baba leaves without corn stalks.  ‘Pani pani, I come back’.  Maya has given the chore of cooking to Kave and there is no difference at all between his dal bhat and curry with Maya and Laxman’s version, except for the chilies.

Ramesh came last night and we agreed on the 8^th or 9^th to begin the trek to Annapurna Base Camp.  I would like to leave sooner but I don’t see a rush though my restlessness tells me to go now.  I suppose the longer we wait to trek the less likely we’ll have heavy rains like we have now to contend with.  And this perhaps begs the question;  who speaks to me of such restlessness?  What is wrong with sitting in a nice dry room, the forest waves under the monsoon, incense burns, the largest spider I’ve seen  to date resides in my bathroom while I write this, and...? 

A pale horse is coming, it’s obvious my restless nature cannot see into the future, why would it take me into the cold rain?  Other spirits, those angels of good nature, listening to them requires more shanti  because really, all I want to do is the right thing and that right thing, #@%, that isn’t always what I need.  Wrestle with the demons, take the hand of the angel, know who’s who, close your eyes, it’s time to eat.

My black linen dress shirt has hung on a hook for a month and today I look at it and whoa! The back is covered in green mold.  Another shirt also suffers the same fate.  I dare not look at the pile on the majlis bench.  My belt, which I haven’t used for a month, and which hangs as well, has mold on the buckle. 

 

A young man and his wife or girlfriend in room five leave their breakfast trays outside the door.  The man introduces himself to me in the garden:  ‘I am a Muslim’.  I suppose that explains the woman in room five?  I don’t know.  The hard rain ends, misty fog flees into the room and the song goes on.

I am advised to listen to cousin with one ear and let it go through the other.  Cousin put in a few extra chilis and Maya and I were hiccupping terribly through the dal bhat and curry.   The fog recedes at noon-time, the cooler than usual temps remain, and it is awfully bright.  To think I haven’t lost or broke my sunglasses yet. 

Yesterday Suman and I watched most of “Never Cry Wolf” with Swedish subtitles.  I think he was somewhat bored but didn’t wish to verify this because it is one of my favorite films.  Why?  The wolves, the story, I could see myself doing something like the scientist did if I was that kind of intelligent.  The mountains.  The  flight with Brian Dennehy fixing a stalled engine still makes me feel  primordially manly.

  I think he would have enjoyed it if we had speakers and could have heard it better, we had started the movie from the beginning, and there were Nepalese subtitles.

Pronounced iss-kus, the vine-growing squash, it is a major source of food, eaten primarily in curry.  Breaking in a new pair of Indian-made cross trainers, I climb further up the vines to find the largest iss-kus, whack them with a stick if I cannot reach by hand, and hopefully locate them below after they fall.  Off the tree the vegetable is hard and furry, its color is an off-shoot of the key-lime family, and a large one can weigh up to two kilos.  Strangest of all they have no taste.  When I eat it in a curry I know I am eating something with curry, softened up it goes down nicely.

Lamjung poked out of the clouds for the first time in a week, clear skies behind it, north.  On the roof with the tower taking photos, mostly those that will not come out, I find a small round tobacco tin.  Folding up a five rupee note  and one of Suraksha’s red ribbons, compulsory school attire, I put the note and the ribbon in the tin and closed it, and for ten minutes tried to open the darn thing, even used a rusty hack-saw blade to no avail until it finally opened as if I was trying too hard, so I gave it to Suraksha and with three village kids sitting with her in the garden whispered in her ear, ‘don’t open this, please don’t.’  I know you tell a kid not to open something and the kid is gonna open it, well she couldn’t get it open and gave it back to me.  I said there was money inside and she didn’t believe me and tossed it off the mountain!  I laughed and told her there was also a ribbon in that tin.  Why did she not believe me?

And while on the roof two tourists walk down, one of them an attractive woman wearing a black top and tight gold spandex kind of trousers and high heels and above them on the steps three of the local ladies were having a good laugh at someone.  One of those ladies, Laxmi, married to a bald-headed manager of a radio station in Pokhara who isn’t round, sorry, isn’t around much, is one of the eight sisters.

And to end on a golden note, a golden moon rises in the East, starry skies long not seen are welcomed once again.