Street Vending IN Kathmandu (VIDEO)

Street Vendors in Kathmandu

Dashain time, and it is impossible to walk the sidewalks of Kathmandu, without jostling past people. The over-head bridges and the foot-paths are packed with people selling and buying things. And you could buy anything from vegetables, to stationery, to clothes, on these side-walks.

One of the reasons for people to buy from the streets, instead of shops is the comparatively low prices. You would pay half the price of a proper shop, for some of the goods available here. However, business is not always good. Laxmi Lama has been doing business on the footh-paths for a couple of years now. She makes a couple of hundred rupees a day, which is just enough to buy her meals. "Business has become more competitive now. In the past there were only a few street vendors. Now there are so many, that you don't get many customers, even if you sit here all day," she says.

Moreover, these small businesses are also hounded by Municipality employees, who illegally collect a daily amount from them, as rent for the space. Saraswati Karki, who is selling vegetable by the foot-bridge in Jamal, smiles when I ask her how much she pays the municipality employees for the security of her little business, "It's just a small amount every day to buy tea. We have to help each other for the sake of business."

Municipality has not been able to relocate the Street Vendors, despite continued assurances to relocate them. Rain, sun and the metropolitan police that often chase them from one place to another, there are plenty of problems faced by these people doing business under an open sky. But come the festive season, and there’s always hope for better business.

Street Vendors in Kathmandu

Why should it matter?

Why should it matter,
that you're not here to see me
walk in stilettos,
shine my lips with gloss,
or do my eyes in dark, dark blue mascara?

Why should it matter, love
that I'm walking the streets in my flip-flops
mistaken for a tramp,
sometimes for a foreigner?

Why should it matter, my love
that my hours of despair,
are never yours,
and my tears- passé?

Why should it matter
that in staring at the blinding blue of the sky,
my tears get mistaken
for the bubbles that float in space?

What should it matter, my darling
that in staring at the blankness of the computer screen,
in drinking hot water absent-mindedly on a warm day,
in forgetting to stay in touch with the world,
I've build a world within?

What should it matter?

In all my absentmindedness and masquerades,
my skin ripples with the acknowledgement
of your movement within.

Favourite "Hand" poems

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
-- e. e. cummings


Hand-Journey

How is it, my love,
that your hand,
though small,
seems as wide as that longed-for land here in mine?
The clouds on your nails,
the ravines on your fingers,
their thin brooks of hair
and the changing of the seasons,
of cold and heat as you quickly pressed,
let go and held tightly
each time we met,
but why did it have to be in secret--
everything seems neverending
how can this,
my dizzy,
shy,
hasty kiss,
take the trip.
-- a translation of Fr. Alejo's poem Lakbay-Kamay

STILL

Do you remember
my clinging?

Clinging
to life,
as though
it were you?

Shampoo

The shampoo’s fragrance transported her to a murky afternoon when her father had walked her through the streets of Darjeeling. Houses clustered, the narrow streets covered with potholes, just the way her chest felt crammed. The air smelled heavy with rain. The decay it left
behind, hovered permanently over the little hill-town like an umbrella.

Her father had bought her a big tin of Wallis cookies, Mongines’ cakes, Bikaji Bhujiya, soap-dish, a bucket, a flask and a 500ml bottle of Sunsilk shampoo. These were her last minute needs before she entered the Loreto Hall as one of its occupants. Later in the evening, she would work up Sunsilk black into a froth, so it stung her eyes, and think of her father saying goodbye to her in the parlour. It was her first time away from home.

And now, sitting on the floor of the bath-tub, something about that day seemed to return. The chemical inspired a tightness in her chest that travelled in a lump up her throat and made her mouth bitter. Her temples throbbed.

She held the edge of the bath-tub, as she felt a convulsion arise from the pit of her stomach. She was retching. For some time, she stared at the lather sliding off her head like an avalanche. It landed next to the slimy patch on the tub she had just released. The fluid looked like a trail left behind by a slug carrying a parasite.

In the open, she would have confronted questions. The women in the house. Was she pregnant? The solitude of the bathroom was a solace. No questions asked.

She turned on the faucet and guided its force against her mess, washing it down the drain. Then she drew her knees to her chest and rested her face on it, her body a rhythmic shudder. The water formed a warm, triangular pool, where her thighs and stomach met. Her nostrils were on fire. She spat. But the choke stayed in her chest.

By the time the shower rinsed out the lather, her eyes were a blistering sore. The shampoo’s fragrance clung to every strand of her hair, just as the voices inside her head; accusing, mocking.

She would never experience motherhood.

Blue Diamond Society

It took me sometime to find their office. When I finally did, it removed all my inhibitions about homosexuals, as I had percieved from a distance (TV and the like).

I was looking for some literature on the society and Bhumika Shrestha (Kailash) offered to help. Clad in dark jeans and a very bright pink shirt, Bhumika easily gave me a complex. She looked beautiful! And the red Tika on her forehead, actually gave her a deeply feminine look.

There were others at the office and there were some in the library, where I sat alongside them, reading books on the homosexual in Nepal and India.

I caught CA member Sunil Babu Panta unawares. But he sat talking to me for almost an hour, telling me how the BDS was organized and how the homosexuals have suffered in the past in Nepal, just as they still do in several parts of world today and will, unless they are understood for who they are.

I think I'm going back to their library to do more reading soon. I feel the need to understand.

Yours

1.
What is it about you,
that makes you feel like
my second self?

2.
Why must it feel like
all my years
were converging
to a point
I call-
you.

3.
I'm light again
- with you.

4.
I found you again
in words

and within me.

5.
Yours,
with fervent abandon.

Mid-night verses

1.
When I wake up
to a nightmare,
I grope the darkness
for a listening you.

2.
If days have felt
like forever,
how will I survive
an eternity
without you?

3.
I can't bear this silence
-this condemnation.

4.
Come back and unwind it.
Take me back to the days
of which
I have no memory.

5.
I wake up to the stillness
of the night
to scribble verses
for a forgotten you.

September 8, 2009 (Tuesday at 1:30 am)

At Random

1. I pressed "The Reed Cutter" against my chest, as I skipped puddles and made my way to the cafeteria.

2. I stopped by a pavement in Lainchaur and thought of two people, who sat there staring at the world, on an evening at the brink of rain.

3. I walked home as it started to drizzle and wondered what life might have been like, if it allowed you the liberty of walking with just the person you want to walk with.

4. I stared at the blank "To" space in the "compose" section of my email box and wondered how it could possibily be that I don't have an address to write to you at.

5. And I also wondered how it could possibly be that the person who speaks to my soul, may never speak to me again.

September 7, 2009 (Monday at 4:37 pm)

"Incoherent, blind, deaf and dumb"

I'm feeling a little disconcerted this morning. Just one of my reflective days. Thinking about your own life will always do that to you. Well...it does to me. I want to speak for myself. Not for an audience. I wish I was like Salinger who wrote in a room without windows. Remember, he talks about playing the piano in a closet if he were really good at it?
I want to go back and read "The Catcher in the Rye". And this time, I'll read it for you. I want to explore it all over again, discover what I didn't years ago. I'm sure a book has something new to offer every time you go back to it. It has happened to me before.
I'm tired of the way my writing has become so incoherent. I feel incapable of prose. I don't know what I'm saying right now, dear reader.
It's just that I miss my Catcher in the Rye terribly much :(
But I have the liberty to act up with my page right? This weblog is the only place where I don't have to worry about being discovered. So, please allow me.

September 7, 2009 (Monday) 12:49 pm

A House of my own

Not a flat.
Not an apartment in back.
Not a man's house.
Not a daddy's.
A house all my own,
With my porch and my pillow.
My pretty purple petunias.
My books and my stories.
My two shoes waiting beside the bed.
Nobody to shake a stick at.
Nobody's garbage to pick after.
Only a house quiet as snow,
a space for myself to go,
clean as paper before poem.

A HOUSE ON MANGO STREET, Sandra Cisneros

Just another morning

Kathmandu wakes up...to automobiles, dust-laden lanes, garbage-heaped roads and footsteps rushing everywhere.

I wake-up to a single memory.

My mornings linger on your words, pauses, phrases, unfinished sentences and suspends itself on an infinite ellipsis. I search my mailbox for you.

I discover abandon.

I have no way of knowing if the words etched on my mind are yours too.

- Sept 6, 2009/Sunday (7:30 am)

(P.S. Please read all "pm"s as "am"s and vice-versa, until I learn how to fix the clock on my blog)

YOU

If ever there was a thing

I understood

about myself,

it has been you.

PERMIT ME A DREAM

In my dreams-

I'm free

to read the characters

on our hands,

measure

the shape of your nails,

trace the lines

on your palms

- and hope that somewhere,

they run into mine.

The city

This city-
still mine in its drudgery.

You-
mine in everything.

INDRA JATRA

My favourite time of the year in Kathmandu, felt desecrated this year.

Every year, when the Indra Jatra week begins, I pick my camera and make rounds of the city- Basantapur, Hanuman Dhoka, Naradevi and the vicinity. Until a few years ago, I made the trip without a camera, usually with cousins. And even before that, it was my father who took me to the Kathmandu Durbar square to see the Jatra. He would carry me on his shoulders like a little monkey. It somehow made me feel secure to know the crowd would not crush me as long as I was on his shoulders. But what about Baa (my father) himself? I never seemed to have thought about it back then. But I would be most thankful for his shoulders when the Pulukishi and the Lakhe made their appearance. They are my favourite part of the festival.

The Lakhe, with its energy and rhythm is a character I'm always in awe of. Red hair, face and the rest of the attire. And the movement reminds of something I fear, as well as adore.I've carried that with me since the time I was a toddler. I still live with that childhood impression and I'm unable to think of it as a human being behind the mask. To me, the Lakhe is the crimson face with fangs, it's frock and the bells that jingle as it moves with such amazing grace and vigour. A premonition. But I love it!

Then there's the Pulukishi, playful, silly, and always finding ways to run into girls who scream away in fright. Imagine, the sexual politics at play even at events like these. As a kid, you always want to avoid standing next to young women, if you want the Pulukishi to stay at a distance.

These things never change. But so much had changed this year at Indra Jatra. The Durbar Square was crowded like never before. Last year, I had been able to stand on one of the pavilions, watching. This year, there was no space to even squeeze myself in for a glimpse of the Living dieties. Then there were Dohoris playing to madals, at the pavilions, as though it were not Indra Jatra, and something else. Most of the people I overheard in these crowds, only had questions about the festival. You could have counted the locals on your fingers.

I know these things will keep changing steadily.

It all makes me long for the Kathmandu of my childhood. The courtyard, where you could walk freely and run into all your neighbours and relatives and still enjoy the Lakhe, the Hatu Dyaa, the Pulukishi and the chariots. The crisp evening, where youngsters wore their pre-Dashain bests and shared laughter.

Indra Jatra has lost its essence for it as it becomes more and more politicized with every passing year. First there were the Malla Kings, then the Shahs, then Girija Prasad Koirala, then Prachanda and then Rambaran Yadav. I wish we could learn to leave festivities out of politics. If tomorrow, we have a Muslim head of state, are we still expecting him/her to grace the Kumari ceremony and accept the "holy Khadga" and everything else that comes with the package?

I also hope the capital will be moved to Birendranagar or elsewhere. Kathmandu cannot bear the increasing numbers anymore. She has wilted already. I'm afraid she will soon crash.

FROZEN

My face on my knees, my hands around them and my eyes on the floor. I feel like a painting. You know, those abstract ones without a face in the frame? And my head is in a pool. I feel as though I left myself behind somewhere, where I experienced a proximity of souls. I made it eternal.

My arrested limbs, my frozen gaze, this still mind- they all stem from a moment of knowledge, that when souls fit in together correctly, they also fit in together as physical beings. That's when there is no discomfort of elbows, ribs or craned necks. That's when you can find abundance, even in a split embrace.

Raining inside

Looks like it will rain

as you hover over the city,

push through the clouds,

and move on.

And I, in a silence

too feeble

to speak of how much

you are missed.

READING YOU RUMI

1.

Why fumble with your books, your candle,

When something else has taken light inside you?

2.

You come but I am nowhere.

No when. No why. No you.

You leave, and you are everywhere.

No me.

3.

You the sky, and I the astonished earth.

What makes you grow new again inside me?

How should the earth know what you have sown with her,

It is enough that you know: she is big with you.

4.

Before you, there were shadows, fears.

After you the same.

Why do I feel transformed?

5.

What is that knocking?

Who goes there?

Not you, or he, but I.

I knock at my own door

And no one answers.

6.

You move me

Out of stasis.

I see your reflection in the mirror.

I can't tell me from you.

7.

Asleep, and being comforted by a cool breeze,

Suddenly, I saw a grey dove

Soar above the trees and sob with longing;

In her anguish, I heard my own.

8.

These words, my wounds, a homesickness.

A bird calls above the sea.

A light on the shore, a light.

9.

When you left, I did, too.

No I at home any more.

Only this candle, this quiet burning.

10.

My hand

Your hand

Connected

Over

His hand.

No division in

Our hearts.

11.

Down this street, down that one,

To the center of the maze.

Nothing waits us but silence.

12.

And yet, in this abandonment of both

in both, what did we give each other?

In the arms of the cross of our crossing,

what flowers and what thorns

did it gather on the road without end?

YOU GIVE ME POETRY AGAIN

1.
Who did you awaken in me
last night?
She felt like a person
I used to know.


2.
Rains.
It has poured heavily this month.
Let's listen to it
-together.

3.
A voice.
Just a voice-
and you changed so much.

4.
When you return
I wonder
what will have changed.

I know what will remain unchanged.
-me.

So, come back?

5.
What if you never know?
What if you never find out?
Never.
I didn't know it was such a powerful word until just now.


6.
Chequered table-cloth,
Rain,
A courtyard in quiet bustle.
Phrases, eyes and hands.

When these are over,
the waiter clears the table,
fixes the table-cloth,
pushes the chairs back in.

And nothing ever happened on that table.

7.
You pass
like a day in stasis,
pausing
like an old man,
awkward
like a boy in a new school.

The cars pass us by.
The street
keeps stretching before me
as far are you're walking

-slow,
uncertain,
as though you had left behind
yourself.

8.
Half-emptied cups,
words lingering in air,
Courage,
Aspirations,
Dreams,
Tomorrow.
They all begin with you.

9.
Lazimpat
-busy like every day.
You and I
at nothing.
You just left.
I'm missing.

10.
I searched your face
for
a memory.

It's all you've left behind.