I Am The Maitreya

This is one of those paralytic moments of boredom, when you stare at things deliriously while the mind is totally blank. And these Zombie states are quite perilous at times, I have been caught by the owner of the breasts staring at her cleavage, very innocent stare in my part, devoid of any lust and want, but recipient of my ogle thought otherwise. Explanation seemed pointless, when I have been already branded a lecher. In retrospect, that wasn’t even a great cleavage, to be judged upon so harshly. So, I said to myself, that’s how the world works, let it be—branded as a lecher, and alleged as a heart-full of lust, not scared at all to fry in hell after I have been incinerated by her judgmental look.  

#———————————————————————–# Verbose me; can’t help it, I have stories for everything; boredom seems to intensify my ranting. Enough of digress, ok, where was I? Yes, deliriously being Zombie out of boredom, and swinging back and forth like a pendulum in my swiveling chair in front of my computer at work, with my chin on my chest, slouching on the edge of my butt cheeks at the edge of the chair, in the posture as if about to melt away in the chair, and staring at my buttons of my half hearted ironed shirt—half ironed half crumpled, which reminded me that I needed a gharelu wife. Then got a jolt of reality, what if, instead, I end up ironing her shirts, yet worse her under-garments? Joitingre I would be, not a good prospect at all.  

#———————————————————————–# Then, I mused to myself, how easy it was in our bau baje ko palama, when all the activities and responsibilities were neatly categorized by gender. Wife knew exactly what to do, and husband did their part—that is: do nothing at all in the house. Why would they? It’s their wish granted, wives keep their grueling fasts, and visit all those numerous temples at un-godly hours, and dance all day in red, begging to the lord for the same husband one they have at home. Don’t they realize their husbands are god sent, fruits of their toil? How can they complain? Ingrates. What you get is what you ask for. Congratulation, Nepali women! Your prayers have been answered.  

#———————————————————————–# Come 21^st century all gender roles are smudged, there is no fine distinction between hunter and gatherer anymore in the jungle of concrete. Gatherers have turned into hunters, and precariously turning into predator, demand of ironing your shirt of these newly evolved species, you would be crucified for political correctness, and lack of sensitivity towards women emancipation. It’s not at all a worthy cause to go on a crucifixion; a cross is not for such an unworthy cause, it has to be as grand as dying for someone else’s’ sins—rightful place for Jesus. On such a grim prospect, I would rather advocate for research on crumple free synthetic fibers. Moreover, I don’t want to stir a hornet nest for my personal grooming, I would rather be alive than go with meticulously ironed shirt into my grave.  

#———————————————————————–# All this, for my crumpled shirt, I believe in Chaos Theory*, a flutter of butterfly will get a hurricane at the far ocean, chain of magnifying events, so are my thoughts. All this was going in my head, while I was staring at my button of my crumpled shirt; second one from the top to be precise, and still swiveling in rhythm in my chair, by now a little dizzy.  

#———————————————————————–#  Then I noticed, my shirt isn’t just crumpled, it has an ink stain too at the corner of my pocket. I have no idea how it got there, I don’t remember using a pen or of any sort that scribbles, since I got my first PC (personal computer, not politically correctness) that would be the final year of Bachelors (again, not my marital status, but my education degree), I haven’t used pen and paper to write since then, I mean serious writing that is more than two lines. Pen has become a thing of the past, and I haven’t held it for long long time. Come to think of it, it’s pretty funny, how I chuckled, when I got here (the US), where all grown ups use pencils, not holding between theirs index finger and thumb, but grabbing it like a dagger, as if to murder the paper that they are writing on. But looking at their ugly hand-writings (almost everyone’s), these people do not deserve anything better than pencil, so they can erase their ugly hand-writing as many time as they want. Inedibility of such an ugly writing would have been a curse on mankind, worse than Herpes.  #———————————————————————–#

As for myself, they (mankind) should ban me from using pen or pencil altogether, my teachers at the school thought that I write in Arabic, I had to convince them otherwise. You might be wondering; how bad is my hand-writing? Let’s put it in context, you have a bad case of diarrhea, and you need to GO urgently, but the gate keeper to the toilet wouldn’t let you in, unless you write a Statement of Purpose in thousand words—that writing would be mine. But, I know of other people, who have worse hand-writing than I do. Twaaks are you reading this?  #———————————————————————–# 

God! I always hated other kids with beautiful hand-writings, just envy. How they would puff their chest out in pride on doting of those sadist teachers (mostly females teachers) where Marques de Sade would have paled compared to them. These diligent bastards would practice hand-writing hours and end in those special notebooks that would come with sets of four parallel lines, which was called ‘English Capi’, under the tutelage of their parents, as if their sons/daughters would be called upon to scribe the new Bible, Koran, or Geeta when the next messiah decides to appear. Sadly for me, teachers prescribed that I write on the notebook with square boxes–‘Math Capi,’ so that one letter would go in one box, not looking like Chowmien all tangled up. Other kids finished their homework in two pages, it took me ten pages. Talk about saving rain-forest. My father really didn’t give a fuck about my hand-writing, as if he foresaw the future, where no would use pen anymore, very intelligent man. And, knew very well that no Prophet would summon his son to scribe any holy books.  #———————————————————————–# 

Where was I? Yes, staring at the ink stain. It isn’t dark enough to be conspicuous, that may be the reason, I myself didn’t see it all this time, just a small blotch at the lower left corner of the stitching with an irregular pattern, but spreading outward in con-centric ovals. But, my first instinct was—eh! Looks like vagina, but no one’s in particular. Now, please do not jump to conclusion, just because, ink pattern looked like vagina to me, my ogling at those breasts, the one I mentioned earlier, was deliberate. That would be incriminatingly judgmental of you. These two are exclusively independent events, and probability of them being related is null, readers taking Statistics would understand my innocence.  #———————————————————————–# 

An inch upward the abstract vagina, was the brand name of my shirt ‘Arrow,’ beautifully embroidered in calligraphic style with blue threads. I suspect; it’s the color faded by these threads that made the blemish on my shirt, not any ink. Had my shirt belonged to Picasso or Pollock, they would have made millions off of it, auctioning the shirt. The art critics would rave on the ingenious idea of using a shirt as a canvas to paint an ultra-post-modernist abstract pussy, and all the feminist would go ape shit on how they wouldn’t let men have their pussies in their pockets. And all chauvinist pig would counter by arguing, that is precisely where all the pussies are—in the pocket of men, but a thick pocket at that.   #———————————————————————–# Then my boss walks in knocking at my cubicle, asking if I had finished the last report. And, I reply, ‘almost,’ taking my chin off my chest and eyes off Picasso’s pussy.  

Choas Theroy* Read a book by James Gleick

I have come to realization, after struggling much with myself; the word ‘desi’ neither has a derogatory connotation nor a sense of exaltation to it. It is just another word which represents certain demography of population—of South Asian Diaspora. I am pretty sure other migrating communities too have words to represent themselves, which I am unaware of.

In the beginning, I didn’t find myself a part of desi solidarity– in a cultural sense, nothing to do with politics and opinion, moreover, I made a conscious effort not to associate myself with the phrase, though I hail from Nepal–a quintessential desi sub-culture. My apprehension might have been the word itself desi, which sounds more of a Hindi than any other South Asian language, and how weKathmandu basi are blindsided by the aura of that superiority over the dhotis, definitely derogative, not surprisingly for the same reason Madesh is burning.

How that reminds me of a story of Manjushree cutting a gorge to let the water out to make
Kathmandu valley inhabitable. Allegorically speaking we are the toads that were left behind, when the water drained out, and who have never ventured out of the well—Kathmandu, furthest we have gone is Thankot check post that too for selfish reason, to bargain with god–Manakamana.

But, however cozy we are in our little bayou, we have to venture out once a while for different personal reasons mostly to the south of the border. And when we do so, our toad spirit is ruthlessly crushed by UPites, Bhiharis and Bengalis sharks at the border. Our bruised ego <b> (remember the bravest in the world)</b> clouds our rational thought, and we conveniently clump the whole nation—India as a thug. Matter of fact, every society has its criminal elements, and those goons do not represent their society, moreover they do not reflect the values/virtues of the society they live in. Likewise there is no shortage of mean spirited Neapli bastards among us, who often prey on hapless or Indian vendors on the streets of Kathmandu.  

Leaving arrogance and ignorance behind, ultimately it’s the matter of perspective, on what you want to see–similarity in dissimilarity, or dissimilarity in similarity. And all this time I had been working hard to do the latter. My conceit was hilarious; I was no pearl among the gems, desi community has nothing to lose from my indifference and my apathy. In fact, I was at loss, loss of opportunity of experience nearest to home—continent sub-culture.

Oh, how we (Nepali) love to hate, and poo-poo the idea of associating ourselves with sub-continent culture, predominantly Indian. We are the most chic among the bunch, while rest of the sub-continent was getting over the colonial hangover, we had the flower children flocking the gullies of

Kathmandu, foraging for local pots and hollow nirvana. When rests of the continent were listening to Nehru and Jinnah, we were listening to Hendrix and The Beatles, and we were so delighted to have the social rejects of the White societies—the hippies. (But I have to concede, they were far more interesting than those righteous conservative bastards, only White non-hippies were the missionaries, spreading the word of Jesus, nonetheless high on the divine directives, on the same breath, how we love to hate all Christians, but often miss the point that all the prestigious schools in Kathmandu were established by them.)

Coming back to desi-ness, among all the immigrants, only people I can relate to are Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Bhutanese, in a cultural sense, since, I don’t give a fuck about religion, but undeniably that’s another strong bond. My language, food habit and even those social eccentricities* match closest with these communities.

How we drive the distance almost to the effect of KTM to Pokhara just to watch a Hindi movie, it becomes our obligatory duty to try any/every Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri-Lankan restaurant in every town we visit, and how we love to bitch about getting duped—selling same food with different names in these restaurant. And how we are bound to bump into at least ten Nepalis in every Indian stores anywhere in the US at any given time of the day.

Earlier, the thing I despised the most was, when any Indians would walk up to me and start taking in Hindi, taking for granted I speak Hindi. I do speak Hindi, at that better than most of the Nepalis. That put my mercury up, I was mistaken for their ignorance for arrogance. Then I realize, I do the same when I see some Tibetans, or Manange from Mustang, I talk to them straight away in Nepali. For these minorities, my ignorance might have come as my arrogance. But not that we are part of India, and we are supposed to know Hindi, as opposed to other minorities in Nepal ought to know Nepali. My analogy was just to shed some lights on disparities of cultures, and our presumption of them.

More than Indians taking to me in Hindi, I despise on how Nepali talk in Hindi. After watching hundreds of three hour long movies, and thousands of hours of Indian TV, and three years of Ramayan, and another four years of Mahabhara on TV, we speak a pathetic Hindi. What are we a dyslexic? With so much of practice for so long, even a dog can learn Chinese. There I go for the people, whose lives revolve around Bollywood, and can’t construct a decent sentence in Hindi—or may be they are just pretending not to know Hindi, in order to stay chic.

I don’t have to like my sub-continent brothers personally, but I can’t deny the fact I am one of them, and we are bound together with similarities than dissimilarities, like it or not. Then why not take delight in my desiness rather than deride it. 

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Now, let me go and have three somosas, four gulab-jamun, and freaking spicy curry over some cheesy Salman’s number playing in background, probably from the Appu’s store from Simpson.

Social eccentricities* Digging my nose, scratching my crotch, clearing my throat loud and spitting mindlessly in public, smell like walking garam-masala, shamelessly haggling for price, and thinking all white women are promiscuous.

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