I Am The Maitreya

Come August, it would be five years since I left home. Yes, home, not a country. I refuse to be bound by any geo-political boundaries, or pledge my loyalty to any tribes or groups, I am happy to make my home anywhere, in that sense I am a true global citizen. I can assimilate into any society, but would they (the host) welcome me as their own, is the question? Quirks of integration…

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My lame progressive attempt to be a global citizen is bogged down by my regressive nostalgia and memories of Nepal at every step–the fondest memories. For me, Nepal is a pristine koseli of all my childhood/youthful memories, there is not a shred of feeling of patriotism or pride—no politics, no ideology, but all emotions and sentiments, when I think of my Nepal. If one doesn’t have a control over where to be born, then why take a pride on something that you didn’t even work for? Nonetheless, I’m happy to be born as a Nepali, I would have been as happy, had I been born as a Mongol, European, a Mauri or a Eskimo.

I love Nepal, not because, it defines my identity or nationality, I didn’t ask for or wish for that–just a sheer fate, what to take a pride in roll of dice. I love Nepal not because, it’s a home to Buddha, Sita Mata or Mt. Everest. I love Nepal for the precise following personal reasons, you can beg to differ as much as you want here, since your pride got nothing to do with mine.

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God! How I miss the warmth of Kathmandu sun, after being shriveled up by snow for years. Verities in seasons make a year look short back home, unlike a dual season here–summer and winter, pretty mono-chromatic, though a stint of fall gets pretty colorful. I could tell Dashain is around the corner, facing the sun, closing my eyes, and taking a whiff of Kathmandu air– lungful, without even looking at the calendar. Come rainy season, it’s even more interesting and eventful, doing acrobatic prancing around the puddles on the road, autumn and spring are the best. Winters I didn’t like. The power shut down every forth night would remind the Kathmandu basi that we still live in medieval period, but I loved it, perfect time to gaze into the sky, where a band of Milky Way would show distinctly, in the absense of city lights.

I sometime wonder; why people even bother keeping taps in their homes, when there is no running water? A jug full of water to wash your head, and a bucket to take a bath would suffice, albeit, everyone looked groomed and preened. Mazboori ka nam Mahatma Ghandhi, a good lesson in Resource Management.

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How I miss that fizzing noise when the marble at the mouth of the colorful soda bottle is popped open in the alley of Ranjana Hall, and how I would be bed ridden for days from that acidic drink with the inflated tonsillitis. The best was having Pani Puri by the road side; occasionally the vendor would scratch his crotch and break open the puri with the same fingers–magic of taste, or the filthy crotch, I don’t know, which one. Or it may be an organized deliberate act of revenge of Madhesi’s on Phadiya. Talking about Madhesi, my family barber from Sarlahi, how he would always give me Amitav Bacchan hair cut with middle parting, and end it off with applying pungent hair oil dripping from my fore head. He had my hair cut since as long as I can remember, so he thought, he was entitled to make a call more than I, on how I looked. It was not intrusion, it was love. With a hair like that I looked like a Mongolian junior Bacchan with a buck tooth. I wonder, how Ram Narayan doing these days.

Ah! That fiery Choila-Kachila and Bara behind the Krishna Mandir in Patan that would make you feel like fire breathing dragon from up while eating, and from rear the next morning. Always made promise never to go back, as your sore ass and throat heals a little, you find yourself back, before you can remember your last torture in sauchalaya.

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And those countless evenings to dance bars, Nepali version of cabaret, and walking home all the way to Maharajgunj with Twaaks and Loore, herding the guys in drunken stupor, or having that dare devil ride on the motor bike while drunk with Loore. I wonder sometimes, how we are still alive. Having brawls getting your skull open, or have someone else’s open, paying visit to police station, and all those visits to hospitals. Sweet memories. Kathmandu is the vault where all my memories are locked away. I want to pay them my visit, my homage. I want to visit all those restaurants where I had my dates. I want to have that taxi ride again where I had my first kiss. Damn memories.

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How I have come to detest order in life, now I pine for that chaos of Kathmandu, where a normal day is a collection of petty squabbles with taxi driver, tempo driver, bus driver, teller at the bank, clerk at the government office, and with your parents to top it of. Even the trite activities like paying the bills demand a wit to avoid standing in the queue for hours. How you need to have a connection with Wada Adyakchya to get a cylinder of LPG gas, and to make it worse, your mother’s nagging, 24/7, to get your lazy butt to get that unwieldy LPG cylinder. It’s the chaos that makes your life eventful, and among these events you find those memorable moments.

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Going back many many years, I miss those roads, where I have run half naked with a perennial running nose, with a shiny coat of mucous on my sleeves by rubbing off my nose, a filthy toddler that I was. I’m pretty sure; my parents would deny claiming me as one of theirs’, if they ever caught me in the public frolicking, with a tousled hair, torn short-pants, catapult around my neck, and a Hatti Chaap chappal with a knob that goes between your toes broken and now it hangs on your knees rather than be under your sole. I was an unruly kid, embarrassment to my folks, and a good example for other parents to scare their kids.

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As a kid, there is not a single pond, creek or a river in the Kathmandu Valley, I haven’t swam, be it—Sundari Jal, Bagmati, Bishnumati, Tukucha, Chobar, I have swam with buffalos in Gahana Pokhari in Hadi Gaun, Rani Pokhari got spared since it was barred. Water body in the valley was comparatively clean, pre-urbanization of Kathmandu. And there isn’t a mountain around the valley I haven’t scaled. And there isn’t a tree that I have not stolen a fruit form in the whole of Wada No: 4.

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I was a Nepali Huckleberry Finn, at least in spirit.

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My Huck Finn adventure of Kantipuri Nagari in the next post…

Yes, that’s what I am having now–a mental constipation. I sit down to write something, and my mind goes blank, I can’t even put a few meaningful sentences. I’m having a Writer’s Block.

I guess, I need some kind of inspiration, I don’t know how and where I am going to get it, but I better get it soon.

Until then, my friends, bear with my void. I promise, I will be back with something, very soon. Hang on, don’t get frustated and leave. I value your readership.

Caution: A little too heavy, if totally incomprehensible, do not worry, I didn’t get it myself, though I wrote it.  

I think, the darker traits of human like—envy, vanity, pride just to name a few, come form the ability of brain to register these emotions through complex chemical processes, which are catalyzed through social parameters, which are equally complex. Net result of such a chemical/social ultra complexity is: how you react in social frame work—ranging from simply emotionally hurting oneself/other, or to the extreme of taking ones/others life. All the adult human brain is capable of doing this, as long as the chemical reactions in it don’t cross the line of sanity, in the lab of social experiments.

Interestingly, rather bizarrely, it’s the social parameters that DRAW this line of sanity.   It’s the reason, why for different societies, different benchmark of sanity, on different issues running from covering your toes in burkha to mutilating your genitals for social acceptance.

For instance, for Evangelical Christians, life begins at inception, so every embryonic cell has soul. Destroying it would be equivalent of taking life, you can imagine what would be like destroying a fetus, but at the same time, has no compunction whatsoever, while eating beef. On the other hand Hindus have no compunction* whatsoever splattering human fetus like any other poultry eggs, while revering bovine as a mother/father. Yet on another hand (my argument has many hands like Hindu Goddess) for Islam, Judaism have similar stringent canonical directives.

It doesn’t mean that only the religious societies are within the arbitrary frame work of insanity, even the ones without it, would have some equivalent sets of rules and regulation to religious one, only to be handed by humans, instead of God—good example would be Mao and Stalin for communist, and tribes of Amazon or Aborigines of Australia by their kabila ka sardar. My lack of knowledge of their values/virtues on these societies stops me from giving any apt analogy to make my point hence  handicapped by ignorance here.

Interestingly, the line that demarcates between sanity/insanity is—equally abstract notion of MORALITY for the God fearing societies, for the others—LOYALTY to whatever they have pledges their loyalty to, political ideology or their tribes. And the one who totally refuses to be strapped within this template of framework are—ANARCHIST.

Right now, I am very comfortable being anarchist, but as I said, it is just the sum game of chemical balance in your head and social parameters, little in my control; I might evolve into something else in the future.

Sorry, to break your surreal delirium—that you thought, you have a Free Will—the highest of the human traits. No, you don’t, that’s just your illusion, and you are just a minion of the Social Matrix (counter part of  the evil software in movie: Matrix).

Your every action is controlled by chemicals in your head, and what chemical to brew in your head is controlled by collective thought of the society—a very complex network and phenomenan, where your loved/near ones have the highest weights in the chemical process, like— God you fear followed by parents, family, friends, followed by teachers, preachers, leaders, followed by total strangers.

Let me prove my point here, why do I not wear a pink shirt in public, because, chemical in my head stops me from purchasing/wearing one, chemicals in my head are prompted in this particular pattern, since I fear that total strangers in the street would think I am a gay, while disposition of color got nothing to do with your sexual orientation. Pink shirt might be insignificant, but actions like what to eat from whom to marry, or who to marry on who eats what, are apparently significant decisions, but you don’t have much say in it, do you? It’s been already laid out for you, you just have to accept and follow—you are a slave to your social parameters, set by your society.The only way to break out of this vicious Matrix is: either be a retard, which is a whole inspiration of writing this crap, which I got from watching the movie Forest Gump last night on TV, or still be aware of your environment, and not give a shit, and be a moral decrepit hence be labeled insane. Going insane, while perfectly sane, would be rather demanding, so the easy way out is to be chemically challenged—a retard. 

On a different note:    Stupid fucking retard—the Forest Gump, fails to register any jealousy, envy, pride, while Jenny—his love interest, keeps running away, and he keeps taking her back, loving her more. Ineffectiveness of his social conditioning makes him perfectly happy and content.   And, how I wish I were Forest Gump, when it comes to love—devoid of any envy, ego, pride and jealousy.  If someone demands unconditional love from me, I am ready to be her Forest Gump, but is she ready to love a RETARD?* I am not aware of any Hindu/Muslim pro-life organization.

I wasn’t as lucky as DiCaprio in the movie Titanic to have a beautiful Kate model for me in nude. Above is my dabbling at pencil sketch. And yes, no one posed for me, all figment of my imagination.

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I wanted to have it scanned, but the scanner wasn’t working, so I had to resort to a digital camera, hence the dimness. The sketch was done on A4 8.5”X1″ paper.

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A friend asked me, but why nude, and always a woman? A simple, but at the same time a very profound question. Our disposition with nudity is quite a mystery from the perspective of aesthetic as much as carnal. May be it is the primal and pristine form of art—unaltered. Woman, may be she exalts desire, lust, warmth, compassion—concoct of mystery into an art form.

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Let’s hear, what you have to say.

I had this DVD—Maine Ghandhi Ko Nahi Mara at my place, lying around for long long time. I am not a Ghandi’s fan, man who glorified poverty; made one billion people believe that it’s wonderful to be hungry and cold, and non-violence–the mighty political machete, a sweet deceit in a humble conceit.

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I had decided not to watch it ever, Bollywood pseudo-intellectual on patriotism that abrasively turns into kitsch jingoism, spooks me. Bad taste of Gadar, Rang De Basanti and likes still lingers. I would rather watch stupid partially naked-partially bald Salman Khan—no—good—actor than Hindi cinema with message.

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But, boredom almighty, I had to give up my stance. This evening I had nothing to do, insanity due to lack of activities, I was about to pull my hair out and chew them. So, I said to myself, “Golay beta, …Ghandi Ko Nahi Mara…dekh le, before boredom ke mare tum marjawoge.”

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It turned out to be pretty good, besides mumbo jumbo do goodies Ghandi message at the end. What struck me was the recital of the poem at the end, it was beautiful.

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So, I googled it, and learned that it was written by, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, yes, father of the Bachcha—Amitabh.

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Someone had the poem in Hindi Roman, below is my feeble attempt to convert it in Hindi, using Nepali Unicode Converter. Pardon, my lack of Hindi.

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Enjoy!