The Mushroom Man

About 15 minutes drive from where I live, few hundred meters beyond Patan Hospital (where virtually every member of my family were born), is a stretch of a fruit and vegetable market. If you are trying to get there for the first time, you will easily miss the lip of the entrance, which is deceptively narrow. Once you enter the threshold and the sunlight disappears behind you, you might feel like entering into a new dimension- or, to be more accurate, a busy tunnel leading into it. It is a long and narrow space, flanked left and right by vendors selling their wares.

Immediately on the left, you see few fruit stalls. They are completely overwhelmed by impossible heaps of oranges, mausambis and apples. The selling ploy is tried and tested- an unsuspecting shopper is drawn into the stall by the colorful displays, and within seconds, he is cupping the juiciest orange with his one hand, and caressing the curves of the watermelon with his other. All this while his eyes wander over the opulent green bumps of avocado. Unmistakably, hands of bananas are propped from several knots in ropes that hang down from the ceiling. Few more such ropes and they might pass for a yellow curtain. You will have to peer through this into the shop, before you can finally make out the vendor. He would be sitting on a platform raised so high that you find it hard to know if he was able to quote the exorbitant price without a ripple of expression on his face.

Beyond this, the narrow brick-laden path lead you into the depths of the market. It is banked on both sides by small vendors selling their usual wares of seasonal vegetables- tomatoes, string beans cauliflower, cabbages, and okra, laid out in groups on their spaces, and heaps of potatoes and purple onions in crates. Some offer bunches of scallions and green garlic leaves folded and bound by straws, and fragrant bunches of cilantro and mint. Sometimes some display yam and sweet potatoes. Occasionally, you see yellow pumpkin that reminds you of thatched village roofs where they were allowed to ripen.

The incessant collective human chatter creates a signature cacophony of a typical vegetable marketplace. The combined smell of growing pile of organic rubbish on the sides of the path let you know that you are definitely in such a place. As you walk deeper into it, politely ignoring the friendly but firm solicitations from the sellers (what do you need, brother?), you find yourself walking past few rows of butchers and fishmongers. These are constantly busy folks, tending to a horde of anxious buyers that are unmindful of flies and dogs swarming at this place. And before your mind can spell out ‘unhygienic’, you reach a spot where you try not to register the stench emanating from the pay-per-use toilet on your right.

Interestingly, this stench seems to demarcate a border. Laymen buyers usually do not venture in this far so as to avoid the unpleasant odor. Only a frequent visitor like me know that, beyond this spot, more stalls are occupied by real farmers selling products that they grow on their own farm. Whereas, sellers in earlier stalls offer items that they bought merely from wholesellers in Kalimati. I like to believe that farmers’ products are fresher and more real. Due to this, I find it worthwhile to go beyond the meat-sellers and the toilet.

After about twenty paces into the second section, on your left, you will find the Mushroom Man, probably chatting with other fellow sellers about anything and everything.

He hardly has a stall. He occupies just a spot where he lays down about 4-5 tin boxes that are full of mushrooms. Buttons, shitakes, and hen-of-the-woods.

(to be continued)

'a' is my Blue Note

"Yeah!", Jacek yells as he strums his guitar, feet thumping, creating a solid 16-bar jazz framework. Creating variations across the fret and across the octaves, offering plenty of spaces for me to fill in, in this small jamming room at KJC.

I fumble, stumble, and internally grumble as I try to strumble along. I had just been able to get a finger hold on the rhythm, and had just magically flashed out a series of notes that evoked this outbreak from my mentor.

Jacek looks at peace with his guitar. Once he settles into his position, nothing moves except his mouth, his hands, and occasionally his right foot to tap along the rhythm. The guitar is part of his body and mind. His hands blend into it.

"Build it... build on it. More!"

Paradoxically, this Jacek's reaction and prodding shatter my fragile grasp of my mind, sending out shards of thoughts everywhere. Embarrassment, self-awareness, panic. My fingers freeze, my dumb mind frantic and chasing madly at that escaping rhythm just a quarter note ahead. I try to get back to the flow and listen intently to discern the escaped pattern. Trying to find out where we had progressed in that damned 16-bar prison. But I am running behind a tantalizing balloon string, just inches above my reach, floating into the sky.

It must be my guitar, I think. It doesn't seem to accept my hold. I notice a developing strain along the length of my back and shoulders.

In the end, I heave a sigh of exasperation, and stop playing. Pentatonic scale. Jazz. Natural, mellow and easy. Bhutro pani haina!

I mumble a few apologetic incoherents, staring at the floor (the sight of dirty, synthetic Nepali carpet sending out another tangent of thoughts). I feel like a a guy who just accidentally bumped into a Doko full of chicks, confused and dazed by the spill of the tiny birds escaping in every direction.

'Aarghhh', I try to voice out my internal frustration, and look helplessly at Jacek's hand making pefect jazz shapes in the guitar neck, moving up and down the fret. His head moves now, eyes encouraging me to catch up. I just return the gaze stupidly, futile, hopelessly lost.

After about three or four bars, he stops. "Milan, Milan, Milan...", he says, disapprovingly. I absurdly feel like a child, back in a classroom.

"Yes, I know", I say, "It's-"

"You need to practice more. You need to take this more seriously". He goes on, saying it's just a waste of time if I get stuck in what he called was just a basic (implying that it was his time that is wasting). I nod a few times, accepting his blame. Need. More seriously. I hear the rest of his words, but stop comprehending as I get hypnotized in his lips lined with whiskers. (how can he be so still and move just his mouth?)

"You should let go and enjoy the flow", he was saying, "It's just the the 5 notes of the Pentatonic scale. Play whatever combination you want."

But in my mind, I know that I have already given up for this lesson. Next class. I think. Next class, I'll show this guy what I can do.

But I'm like a sponge right now. Each object in that room triggers a sensory explosion and takes me to a new timeline. I am a supernova, a collapsing star going out with an explosion of thoughts, triggering and flinging out mental bombs of memories and reveries from the core of my heart into the deep space. A supernova of Pentatonic notes. Not linear and mellifluous, weaving into the strand of time. But instead a jangling ball of cacophony, a playing of all the notes in a spot, them radiating out like an exploding pentagram of a star. A real time-traveler.

My name's Pentatonic too: M.I.L.a.N. 'a' is the Blue note.