SHYENGITSI
I’m suddenly awake in the
morning after a fitful sleep, tossing and turning on a hard mattress with my
sciatica sending me reminders of my age and the walking up and down of steep
hills for the past week. Immediately
above my head is a clock with a Tibetan flag on the face. My mother used to tell me she liked the sound
of a ticking clock as it helped her to sleep.
I try to let the sound lull me to sleep but it seems to increase in
volume and I move it to the window and fall into a light slumber at about 1am.
There is a dream I
have about keys. A large woman is trying
to find a place to hide a key. This has
something to do with the Nepalese habit of hanging on to keys as they symbolise
power for the holder. My sister-in-law
in Kathmandu has bunches of keys in various hiding places and only a few of
them are in use.
Opening locks on doors,
of which there are many, becomes a frustrating and time-consuming business. There’s also a lock on the outside of the
bathroom door! As well as the locks,
there are two snibs on the doors, one at the top and one at the bottom, and two
on the fly screen. Then every window has
the same, one at the top and bottom and the same on the fly screen. If there’s a fire, no escape and that keeps
me awake too.
The view of the
mountains makes it worthwhile. You get
up early in the morning before the clouds rise over the peaks and see the most
amazing site – sparkling snowy mountains at over 8000 metres, lonely and still
in the distance towering over the foothills in the foreground. Makes it all worthwhile.
