Braindead

Dasain.

Right now, it spells surfeit, glut, excess, braindead, toomuch, kites, beer, marriage, late nights, upset stomach, overflowing refrigerators, chiura and chhwela, mutton, sagun eggs and dried fish, curds, cloying burfis and rasbaris, red tikas, tv, holy fires, conch shells, goddess Durga, excessive dasain offers, 'happy dasain' SMSes, strange people in streets, empty streets.

Too many orders from mom, forced early gettupings and cold shower, nothing good on tv, too many people in your abode, contacting siblings, friends not available, hanging out with relatives, trips to your original homes, hangouts in terraces, crisp vermilion-stained rupee notes, scorching sun and skinburns, chilly mornings and warm blankets, cross-legged stances and aching spines, strange body pains.

unsuspecting goats, buffaloes, their siblings, chicken, duck, decimation of their entire lineages...

And nothing else in your mind except for booze, feast, merriment, and 'good times'. It's almost you can make the name 'Dasain' to describe a dazed mind... "I've got a bad case of dasain..."; "Doooode! You look soo dasain today".

Phlogging for Mili @Bhaktapur

(This blog was inspired by Sid's 'phlogging')

Bhaktapur is a great place to be. I especially love the narrow alleys and old houses there. Although, I do not hold the durbar square in much regard (too touristy and 'touched'), except for that temple in one of the corners... I forgot the name.
This is my sister, Mili. She is obsessed with video making... at least was, while she was visiting KTM. she's currently doing Masters in Fine Arts in State University of New York in Buffalo, USA. She has no remorse of videoing anything and anybody, and thinks privacy and personal space can go to hell. You see, she is quite a rebellious photographer/videographer. That having said, she usually strikes a chord with the photo/video subjects. Once in a while though, she gets cross eyes. But that doesnt usually deter her.

When she was visiting KTM, I accompanied her to Bhaktapur for one of her videotaping sessions.

Mili managing to gather a crowd. she's good at that. i guess its a photographer thing.

This is a very interesting house. You can see Mili in this pic too. An interesting facade to a house, don't you think? The small wooden structure on the top looks like a small room atop a cliff of bricks. the structure is precariously balanced by the column on the right hand corner, which already seems bent. you can also see that on the left hand side, a lump of bricks seems almost ready to fall out... it would seem that right after the picture was taken, the whole thing fell down. it didn't, and it is definitely a fragile but a very interesting house.

There is a small coffee shop facing this house. The shop was manned by a small kid who JUST knew how to make coffee. His parents were gone somewhere, so we had fun teasing and talking to the kid. We were talking to the kid in Newari. The Newari dialect of Bhaktapur is markedly different than that in Patan or Kathmandu, so it was fascinating just to listen to him.

the kids enjoying sucking off the flavored ice from a plastic tube... brings back so much childhood memories. all this would exactly seem like what Patan was when I was a kid. The coarse shawls of women, the cover for the bucket, the old gaudy clothes and shoes of the kids, ill-fitting trousers, simple treats, and a strong sense of security. Believe or not, I did not even venture more than 100 meters away from my mom's home (mamaghar) when I was a kid. I was too afraid, and life outside seemed too complicated!
Whenever I meet our old neighbors in Patan, the adults still pinch my cheeks, and hug me- which are extra embarrassing in parties. You know, I had a super large pair of cheeks that even distorted my mouth. It was so remarkable that my elder cousin Chhayan persistently had the 'frightening' dream of pulling my cheeks which stretched long like a chewing gum.

A dark narrow path leading into a sunny opening. The stone paved narrow-ways are a common sight in Bhaktapur. Most of them are half as narrow as this one, and so dark that not a beam of sunlight would ever pass through.

These narrow-ways are so quaint and natural that I wish I could spend a week there, and walk around the town till I know the ways around. There are so many small lanes that thread the town that you are bound to get lost if you do not have a good sense of direction. I do not, and Mili was too engrossed in her camera. But that allowed us to get to undiscovered places. It was just pure fun.

Sharing smiles.

Mili's Poem

I took the liberty of copy-pasting
some parts of Mili's poem...
it was too good to not to.

Dare Me
Rapunzel! Rapunzel!
no prince’s coming up that tower.
Cut your hair and make a rope.
Climb down and elope.

Here's another line
Vanity Vanity, I ditch you for sanity.