dasain

10.21.12

I do things that I wish I did not do but eventually I see the meaning, even if it takes a long time.

Suraksha dealt the uno cards and then I did it, I pulled out the Kit Kat Dark and said winner gets this.  Five minutes into playing she tells Suman who is serving guests and now he wants in and the goddess of games did it again.  I don’t know how she does it, we stay on her about the cheating if it looks like the game is getting away from her but she’s lucky and so instead of opening the candy bar and sharing it, she’s got it and having brushed her teeth last night I don’t know if she has remembered her non-blood uncle this bright chilly morning.

So, two months to go.  You’d think if there really was something to the Mayan calendar the universe would be gracious enough to shoot a flare or something to let everyone know there are sixty days left of at least one person’s sanity and belief in God if nothing happens.  I will be so disappointed. 

Meanwhile a full garden of tourists having breakfast, quick peel  garlic, one garlic soup.  Who eats garlic soup for breakfast, of course the middle aged Chinese couple in room two.  Having checked out I find towels on the floor, used as a mat between the beds, and that unmistakable odor from feet that requires serious ventilation.  Sigh.  Suraksha continues to win at uno.  Trying to get that chocolate back she holds it like a miser, waiting for that one moment she’ll best enjoy the spoils of card playing. 

 

Twenty one seeds consumed, knowing nothing will happen though every day they must be getting drier but not to that level where they work do I find them today.  What to do.  A big group presumably comes today at one, so busy Maya you are with that bad back, the stereo decided to not work on the morning of the 16 elderly Chinese, a omen perhaps because we were going to play Tibetan music.  I feel sometimes like my hand is being slapped.  If they were 16 20+ somethings from Beijing do you think the stereo would have worked?  Absolutely. 

I leave for Kathmandu in three days.  How will I pack I think I know and unfortunately I’ll have to take a check-in size bag.  Do I really plan to stay out of Nepal for eighteen days?  If the Salalah account is done then I will have to exercise shoe-string measures and crawl back to the country. 

Didi calls me from the roof.  I never have any idea what it is she is saying unless it’s for a cigarette.  The stomach grumbles.  In the rush I got two cups of coffee and a tasty lemon pancake.  Now it’s dal bhat time.  Last night I could not eat the chicken parts given to me in my bowl.  There was one piece of white meat and the rest just looked like a car wreck.  Suman said beforehand tonite’s meal was bad, a chicken was cooked for the broth and the meat and now we were eating the rest.

9:18pm—I came up this morning and joked maybe it was a good day to go to Pokhara and buy flowers.  Instead, I went with Laxman and with a dozen men from Sarangkot bought five mountain goats.  There had to have been a thousand maybe more people and goats all celebrating this Dashain Festival.  I told Laxman I’d help him prepare for tomorrow’s slaughter but I will not watch Gary the Goat get it. 

The Brazilian in room three stands next to the router, occasionally coughing in a chilly evening with a brilliant quarter moon.  Rooms 1-2 are taken by a big family from Kathmandu and a family that came up on a donkey, all the way up here ain’t that something, they’re in rooms four and five.  Sounds like American educated kids with a with a white mum and Indian father.  And then there’s me.  An Indian group of 15 from Calcutta will take all the rooms on the day I'm enroute to KTM, and Laxman and Maya joke room six as well, but I don’t know if they are kidding.  Maybe I should come back early and catch someone in this bed.  Sniff, I can’t call it my own. 

Below near the Banyan tree a buffalo bellows a mournful dirge. The Brahmins don’t eat buffalo but lower castes will and one big one can feed a hellava lot of people since most don’t have refrigeration, no one can take more than the amount they can eat before it goes off.  And yes, when I think of buffalo getting slaughtered it’s always an Apocalypse Now flashback.