starry starry night

9.18.2012

I was awakened by the bulb in the blackest of rooms. “Up, eat.”  I couldn’t believe I had slept the whole night through.  It seemed pretty  difficult getting there; a moment of claustrophobia when the lights were turned off and the only door to this room I could palm the ceiling with a crooked elbow was closed and I felt a sucking of oxygen out of me and I wanted to get up and run out but before I could the door opened just a crack so I could hear the falling rain on the banana and guave trees, a scratchy throat, itching bites on the arm, but most of all, the darkness.  So I stepped outside the room and what?  It’s 2am, everyone gets up and eats something, for the women, because for the women it’s their last meal for the day.  They may drink tea, or milk, but no food.  A plate of rice with enough ghee is ok to say ok, I can eat this at two in the morning, and everyone ate and everyone went back to sleep…but me…and at the first light reaching this valley after yesterday’s hour walk straight down coincided with dusk’s descent, Maya’s mother and father were up cleaning and feeding.  I sat on the bed and stared out the door open in front of me.  Maya’s parent’s home is one of four homes all connected together and everyone living in the houses are related to each other.  Their front yard is trees and cultivated land.  “This is,’ as I was told by an 11 year old as we passed the temple with a candle burning inside, “our forefather’s land, land me and my brothers will inherit.”

I wanted to sleep but I knew I wouldn’t so I walked out, found the tiniest loo in the valley, and Maya’s mother first gave me a cup of tea followed a little later by a glass of hot and very good buffalo milk followed by a plate of butter crackers and a masala chai.  People got up and went back to sleep, the atmosphere was one of total and complete relaxation.  In the house to the left, a daughter of Maya’s father’s sister lives with her five children aged eleven to two, and with names that all begin with the letter ‘s’ and that’s all I remember because there were at least ten to eleven syllables to each of those names. 

These are moments when I would pull out the journal and have them write these long names down but I rushed off the mountain and didn’t bring it with me.  I sat on the porch for hours just listening to nature and storylines and descriptions of the homestead were running through my thoughts. 

And so Ramesh had to leave early so I climbed out of the valley with him and I sat on the back of his motorcycle in the rain back to Lakeside where I wandered and found a restaurant with Illy coffee and ordered eggs, toast and potatoes, a mixed fruit juice and coffee that kept coming.  The rain poured ingloriously.  Another day of trek scratched.  If I give up trying to go this month, there is always October, the first ten days, come back to Sarangkot for twelve days and then it’s off to India.  Ok, what in God’s name will I do for the rest of the month, especially if there is a really nice stretch of weather, I’ll be biting at the bit. 

Suraksha, mother, and  grandmother dance in the new dining room.  Other cousins visit, Laxman’s sister’s children.  Throughout the day groups of women came through, shared a coffee or a juice with Laxman, relatives, all connected in ways that leave me exhausted when they’re explained because they are connections not familiar with a more traditional western spread.  Here a Nepali tree line wouldn’t spread out fast and the center would be full or close to full at times. 

What am I talking about?  Time for sleep.  Tonight a sea of stars.  I tell Laxman this is it.  Tomorrow we go.  A new pattern has begun.  Clear skies.  Adios from here until next time.