NORCHUNG’S
We’re staying in a little
house in the village, different from the surrounding houses. This one’s made of concrete while the others
in the neighbourhood are made of stone.
We are nearly 9,000 feet up the valley and the air is thin, leaving us
breathless with the uphill climbs.
Around the hills are chortens
and stupas dedicated to various
deities. Multi-coloured lines of prayer
flags billow in the breeze like tattered sails on a pirate ship. Miniature homes far away in the valley button
down the patchwork blanket of wheat and saag, furrowed earth and rice, millet
and mustard.
Norchung’s wife has the
face of a South American Indian. Surely,
I think, there must be some genetic link.
Her chiseled features reflect the hardness of her life, bringing up
three boys and looking after the house without any of the accouterments we have
in the west to make life easy.
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| NORCHUNG'S WIFE |
Pema, Urken and Nedup are
well-mannered boys. When I ask for anything
they are up and running and appear immediately with a notebook, a pen, a cup of
warm milk. Their father, Norchung, is
extremely high energy and never sits still for a minute, offering tea, noodles,
chang, again and again. On our visits from house to house, all the
families are the poor relations of Fulmaya. The limitless generosity of the
villagers bestows upon us small kindnesses that envelop us in a warm cocoon of
love.
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| FULMAYA WITH THE THREE BOY'S
Early in the morning, the
stonemasons arrive to continue working on a shed which will double as a place
to keep the cows and bison and as a still for making the local rakshi of millet spirit. The come in to the house and are served a
dish of hetousi – fried potatoes and
squash – and a glass of thick, rice beer.
They go outside and dress the stones with small, heavy mallets, tapering
on one end. Inside we hear the clunk of
iron on stone as the pieces are dressed and fitted, a grey jigsaw wall standing
solid on the earth, immovable except by time and weather.
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| A WORKMAN WITH A NATURAL HAT |
The walls are nearly a
foot thick. In the middle of the
enclosure is a deep hole, constantly being replenished with water to provide the
mud clay which bonds the stones together.
In an adjoining field, the
boys are flying home-made kites and there is a kind of partyish atmosphere with
much shouting, hammering and laughter.
We visit a neighbour who
is staying in Fulmaya’s parent’s house, built by her great, great
grandfather. Fulmaya tells me she was actually
born in the jungle and left Helambu for Assam before she was one-year old. There were six-children living in the one
room above the cow shed. An adjoining
toilet was a hole at the entrance and excrement dropped below to the chickens
which were locked in at night. This
practice still persists and now I’ll leave eggs out of my diet. Surprisingly, there’s a photo of the family
in Assam and I’m at the front of the group, black hair and clean shaven. Must have been taken around 1986. We both look young and fresh.
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| INSIDE A HYOLMU HOUSE |
