I Am The Maitreya

The friendliest people in the
US are active church going people, but don’t infer from this statement that people not associated with any religious institutions are unfriendly. It seems so, because, the people belonging to God’s house have made their business to be friendly. It’s so conspicuous that sometimes it comes knocking on your door, most of the time catches you on the streets. I guess this is the only time, when middle class Caucasian are interested in people of color, mostly in Sundays.

I wonder sometimes, take the church out of them, would they be as affable? Affability with agenda—to spread the words of God, and mind you, some particular God. But, I should be the last one to bad mouth them, I have eaten their numerous free lunches while I was in school. I have held their hands together, and sang—Glory! Glory! Glory to be thee.  Overall good people, but a little delusional.

Do I find them delusional, because I believe in some other God? Nope! I am teetering on the line of believer and non-believer. Every serious, contemplation on religion pushes me a step closer to atheism. But, you might say, it’s a chic thing to do—to go atheist, but believe me, it’s not comforting to lose a faith. In fact, it is very scary, but I would rather be scared than delusional.

Abrahamic religion –Judaism, Christianity and Islam scares me a lot, Vedics are full of superstitions hence incoherent, I am ready to make peace with Buddhism, if they just drop the word ‘religion’ out of it, and make it a personal practice rather than congregation. 

Why am I ranting? I am ranting because, my friendly neighbors have gone a bit far this time encroaching my belief—sneaking in and shoving ‘Jehovah Witness’ leaflets and books underneath my apartment door, written in Nepali. How do they know I need to be ‘SAVED’ and that I am Nepali? Unless god makes the information public.

There is nothing spiritual about these books, they are full of ideology. It’s a blunt insult to any rational thinking man, to let you know that your sorry ass would be fried in hell for not accepting the ‘right’ god, the earth is just 6000 years old, and why all gods are fake but this one. I always wanted to catch a guy shoving these reading materials underneath my door, and let him know respectfully that I do not believe in any religious teachings. That he is wasting his printed materials and time, go save other sorry asses, and leave this one alone.  

But looks like I am not going to catch this mail man of god, so I have decided to write to the address which they have at the end of every pamphlet, not to send anymore of those materials to my apartment, and what I really feel about them, in Nepali.

Returning the favor in the same language

As the saying goes, ‘in Rome, do as Romans do,’ so I decided to make turkey for Thanks Giving. Have I made turkey earlier? Hell no! Since it wasn’t a rocket science, I had a confidence that I could manage it. I just needed to consult a few culinary books, and I had several TV hours of turkey preparation under my belt. And, if it really did go bad, I could always fall back on my inexperience, and tell my guests, ‘what do you expect for the first timer?’ I hadn’t sent any official invitation to my friends, but somehow, the word got out that I was going to make turkey. And, all of my South Asian friends thought that it was their prerogative to be in the guest list, since it was such an exotic thing to have—whole baked turkey the American style. Everybody might have had turkey over their ‘gora sathi’, but this was the first time over ‘desi’s’ place. I guess, they were more interested in seeing my pretension of being ‘gora’ rather than having dinner, and gloat on my failure rather than on my turkey ( if anyone of you, is reading this, just take it as Jung’s Psycho-Analysis than my personal thought). Before, I realized, the guest number shot over twenty, I was prepared to make turkey, but not a dinner for twenty plus people, it’s a colossal task to make a full course dinner for that crowd, if you have tried anytime, you would know, what I mean.  But, thank god, I was able to save my face, since I didn’t send official invitation to anyone. I dropped the plan of turkey; the news of ‘no dinner’ traveled the same channel that it had found those inquisitives ears earlier at the first place. But, we did have a small dinner with inclusive friends—sans turkey.  

Have I had a turkey party, it would have looked like this, only imagine, the faces little darker. But these children remind me of myself, when we were young, and we would have MoMo party.

‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ 

So said, Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina; the truth in the statement is so universal that even holds for nations. As a nation Nepal is unhappy in its unique way, at this juncture. Yes! There is jubilation at all sides and camps, on reaching the ‘peace accord’. But at the moment, its working is based on hope rather than strategy and method.

Hope emanates from faith, and faith is a dead end to any rational thinking, since it demands miracles, where wish is granted for not having to work any harder for it, if needed to work at all.

War wary Maoists, senile Girija, constipated politicians, beaten and scared King, salivating opportunistic elks and trolls, tired and hopeful ‘janta’, in the absence of any firm solution, would welcome even a fleeting moment of respite in the form of any half baked solution—‘peace accord’, for their own agenda.

Push for ‘peace accord’ might be a promising solution on the table, what worries me is not what’s on the table, but what’s underneath it, where everyone is whetting their knives, to stab at the piece of the pie. If not happy with the size of their portion, the same knife would be stuck at each other’s throat. So, at the moment, everyone is reassessing the chunk of their rightful pie, hence their distraction appears to be commitment towards peace.

Strategic sounding phonetics like ‘Peace Accord’, ‘Arms Management’ and et al. are just mumbo jumbo, that’s not going to stop the fight. Let’s be honest, what we need is a ‘METHOD’ to cut the pie into EQUAL portions, to keep everyone happy. So, their knives are busy cutting their pie than your throat.

No philosophies, economical theories or intellectual garbage have ever stopped quarreling hyenas; make the bones into equal halves that should do it. But some hyenas are intelligent enough to paint their fight over the bone—a struggle for greater good, and they usually come with ‘dhaka topi’, ‘combat beret’ or ‘a crown.’

                                   Run Girija Run, Run Prachande Run, Run Rajaute Run 

I don’t see; why a hard working, honest people should be happy over fighting hyenas, but at the end, it’s again a HOPE, hope that these hyenas don’t bite your ass.

Being apolitical, this is best I can do with a political commentary. Lest my realism is mistaken for my cynicism, I see no brighter days ahead, and I am uhappy in my own ways.

A friend of mine called over the weekend, to give me a good shouting. She was mighty upset with my last entry, which was eons away in blog time dimension, five days to be exact, but only few inches away in space, which is my last entry, right above this one.

Ah! It’s a classic example of relativity, where space and time is wrapped to form a blog-hole, in which my lethargy completely sucks me in; as a result my entries are like sporadic shooting stars, rare to see, but when  appeared, do make a wish.  

For the friends, who can’t comprehend semantics of words anymore, and wants everything pithy and concise (all the engineers and science folks), I presume for lack of time, or may be a pretension of appearing so, nevertheless, I have devised a graph showing my activities against time.

Did I tell you, I have Attention Deficiency Disorder (ADD)? The reason for this entry is, my friend, making a call over the weekend, and I end up drawing a graph. Talk about digression. As one of my friend used to tell me, ‘su-man’ stands for ‘sustha manasthiti’, I guess she was right.

Anyway, this lady was particularly upset with me for degrading an act of love making into a mere house chore. For having her thrown off the board with my ‘insensitive misogynist pig’ [sic] remake, she thinks I owe an apology to all the female species.

By the way to refresh your memory, my original comment was:

‘We burn more calories in bed, and since the bed is within the four walls that qualify for house chores.’

‘If you think so, why don’t you have sex with garbage bin, that’s within the house walls too?’, she shot back from the other end of the phone, if the communications were to take place through conduits, I would have died at the spot with that noxious fume of rage coming from my cell phone. Lucky for me, all the communications take over wire less these days.

Forget wining an argument with angry women, needs miracles just to reason them out. And worse, my transgression was to pee in theirs’ (lioness/tigress) turf. Now, you can’t expect to come out of it, cheap. Do you?  For some reason, I represent the whole male species, who owed an apology for all the recorded/unrecorded atrocities committed towards the fairer sex for all the recorded/unrecorded history. She expected me to apologize for Adam having taken his ribs out to create Eve too, and for all the male species in the Noah’s Arc, who might have treated their the other halves bad, during the flood. For Mangale’s failure to provide all the luxuries to Malati, in Malati-Mangale.

With such a grave responsibility, I was out of words. Unfortunately, she took my silence for guilt, and that encouraged her to pound me more, the verdict was out, and I were to be hung for all living things with testicles. I am to be their martyr and example too.

Sensing my helplessness, she thought, it was enough, and we moved to other mundane topics, but before we wrapped our conversation, I repeated her statement back to her.

‘If you think so, why don’t you have sex with garbage bin, that’s within the house walls too?’

And, she asked, what with that? I whispered on the phone, fearing my life ‘may be all husbands think just that of their wives, and I am happy I am not married.’

And we had a good laugh.

I like going to book stores. Every visit makes me feel like a kid in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. First thing I do is: grab a cup of coffee, and loiter around aimlessly from isle to isle, suspicious attendants always catch up with me, to see, if I were lost or needed any help. 

Occasionally, they ask me– ¿Tiene que usted ayudar? (Do you need help? In spanish) Mostly, these are the young kids who want to practice their high school Spanish, with an authentic Chicano. Yep! That’s me. Not to break their hearts, my reply is always: ¡No! Gracias, Sinoriata. They shoot back some more, which I don’t understand at all, and I just nod my head and smile not to give away my true identity with occasional Gracias. Eventually, they leave me alone to dawdle through more isles.  

Most of my time is spent at the ‘Graphic Novel’ section—Japanese Manga. Few of their series are excellent, the ones I like are—‘SamuraiX’, ‘Kyo’ and ‘Samurai Champloo’. Had I been born in old
Japan, I would surely have been a samurai, I guess. Though, I am not a macho type, but the idea sure is romantic, at the slightest provocation make a ‘kima’ out of another guy, and sit down to write a poetry or origami as if nothing happened after a dual. I would have my ‘Katana’ made by the finest sword-maker, probably from Hitori Hanso in ‘Kill Bill.’ Their blades are metallurgical wonder for such a low tech era.

The other day, I bought a T-shirt of ‘Samurai Champloo’, and wore it proudly. Friends mocked– how can you wear a cartoon T-shirt? I shot back ‘same way you enjoy Salman’s movies.’ At the core both—Anime and Salman are outright stupid, nevertheless we enjoy them.

Characters from Champloo

General perception is that—magnas are for kids, something like Mickey or Daffy, but my friend was at disbelief to find pencil sketched characters having sex in these books.     

So, you read these cartoons for sex? My friend asked, at that, I couldn’t help conjure up the image of SpongeBob SquarePants panting away while banging Little Mermaid from the rear, porno style.  Now that’s called comic sex, in literal sense. I laughed at the crazy thought inside my head, and reassured him that I no longer derive a pleasure watching cartoon sex anymore. I have long graduated from ‘get-horny-on-pencil-sketched-female –genitals-in-Biology-textbook’ class. I explained to him, how the story flows in these novels, how the animators build the characters that you grow to like or dislike them by the end of the book, as if the pencil characters would spring out of the pages with full of attitude, vileness, amicability or raunchiness whatever they inherit inside the rectangular frames of comic strips. Unlike Disney characters—dead and bland, and yes they do have sex.  My friend reluctantly seemed to concede to my explanation, but I know, deep inside, he still thinks I read them for sex. Otherwise, why would a grown up man read comics at all?   For that matter, I still enjoy reading ‘DC’ and ‘Marvel’ series, the Indian series ‘Indrajal’ was classy too, but ’Nag Raj’ killed it. I liked European series too—‘Asterix and Obelix’, I must have read each one of them over hundred times, but for some reason I didn’t like ‘Tintin’, I always wanted to beat a shit out of that brat, if I ran him around the corner.

While talking about sex, I found ‘Kamasutra’ under ‘Eastern Philosophy and Arts’ section. I mused to myself, how our (South Asian) deprived-ness has become philosophy and art for Westerners. I guess abundance turns anything into an art form, especially for the anatomies concerning belly and one right below that, for instance food, for us simply means calories for them cuisine and culinary, sex for us– procreation and for them–recreation.

I took the book out of the shelf sheepishly, and turned few pages. Every position had a detail explanation on its astrological significance and health benefits, and the pictures were paintings of some disproportionate ‘Maharajas’ with their concubines at bizarre positions with their sexual anatomies almost a feet away from where they are supposed to be, just to reach a right place. With such an acrobatic prowess and misplaced sexual anatomies, one would qualify for a mutant.

This wasn’t the first time, I was looking at ‘Kama Sutra’, but this book was a little different than its predecessors, in the sense, every picture had a neat table at the side of the page, with what to eat before the act, and how much calories would a couple burn during the act. Calories were divided by gender, female burnt more calories than the male for every single position, while men seem to be doing all the acrobatic works, talk about gender equality. And, how they (women) always complain we (men) don’t do much around the house. Duh?? We burn more calories in bed, and since the bed is within the four walls that qualify for house chores.

No matter, how ridiculous the book was, but you can’t help wondering at the marketing genius of these (white) people, beside– sex sells. 

Dawdling further down the isle, I came across Samrath Upadhaya’s ‘Guru of Love.’ I have spent a good chunk of money in the past buying worthless and stupid books, and I had already picked ‘Calvin and Hobbes’.  That was a moral dilemma, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ or ‘Guru of Love’, ‘Guru of Love’ or ‘Calvin and Hobbes’. Finally my sense of patriotism prevailed over my addiction of cartoons. I said what the heck, $12 for my country man. So I bought it. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a good read.  Certainly, you can’t compare Mr. Upadhaya with literary giants like – Hemingway or Steinbeck, not even with ex-pat writers like Naipul or Rushdie, but hey, these giants didn’t get big overnight, and beside their societies had hundreds of years of literary culture behind them.  

I commend Mr. Upadhaya for breaking into the Western market, all right, I concede, his books are not that great, but he can always get better, more importantly, he has shown that ‘it’ can be done. He has given a confidence for the other young English-Nepali writers, who knows there might be Marquez or Dostoevsky in making in the gullies of Kathmandu? We might be reading shortly—‘Ek Satapdi in Solitude’ or ‘The Brothers Moktans’.