KATUNJE - 1981

Katunje gao

First of July, 1981.

[Found in a diary after opening at a random page a day after meeting Ed Brown in Glasgow.]

Amazingly, Ed arrives [in Kathmandu].  Having had no word from him about his arrival, he appeared on the doorstep.  He took a plane to Delhi and a taxi to the train station where he took a train to Patna, one of the dirtiest, noisiest, saddest cities not only in northern India but in the whole of the country.  He said, "I stayed the night, freaked and blown."  From Patna, I guess, he then took a plane to Gaucher in K'du.  We have a zillion things to talk about.

Already, a vulture-like Ram Bahadur Thapa (TBT) is hovering about trying to capture phrases and sense in what's being said. A feeling that I'll need to protect Ed from the vicissitudes of life in Katunji Gao.

In one way, Ed is a pioneer:  but on the other hand, he's a bit reckless like me.  Splitting from Sarah, he looks cut-up about it. But I didn't let him go too far into the telling of it as there's time for things to settle.

It's now 5.55 am and my students have not yet arrived, neither has the bus, so they may be coming on foot...

Ed is taking a long time to become acclimatised to the different weather, culture and his own crisis...his coming to Nepal is not hard to understand.  Sarah was giving Ed a rough time, goading as a woman sometimes does when a man doesn't change his behaviour enough or is too slow to change.  She has some obssession about anti-abortion and medieval Welsh or English whereas Ed likes the peace of good dope, a guitar and good food...

Seventh of August and Ed has flown.  And I'm all alone.

View towards Thimi

BANGALORE TO BHOD GAYA

TRAIN AT THE STATION

The Sanghamitra Express to Patna was only two-hours late.  By Indian standards, more or less on time for December when the mist delays trains on main lines by as much as 24-hours or more.  So, our journey from the sunny climes of Bangalore in Karnataka to the tohubohu of Patna in Bihar took fifty-hours instead of the proclaimed 48-hours. Thereafter, a 3-hour journey in a car took us finally to Bhod Gaya, the place of Buddha’s enlightenment under the bhodi tree.   

OUR FISHBOWL VIEW

You have your books, your crosswords, soduko (easy), a neighbourly colonel from the Indian army and a berth with a reasonably comfortable bed – two-tier –with me struggling at first to climb the ladder at the end of the bunk but at which I later became tip top.  The feeling of being so enclosed gradually erodes the natural proclivity to breathe fresh air and see open skies and spaces.  There were windows, double glazed to keep out the heat, in fact.  Somehow, moisture had collected in between the panes and the flashing views of neatly ploughed winter fields, the jumbled houses of villages, people and animals had us peering out as if in a cloudy fish bowl at the passing scenery.

The state of Indian rail is symbolic of Indian’s decline since the first euphoria of independence, undampened then by the subsequent massacre of up to 1-million people during the ensuing partition of the country.  The 1947 baby-boomers are all midnight children; and the transition from war, rationing, the largest mass refugee movement in the known history of the world, the slaughter of 2.5% (60m+) of the world’s population, had induced a painful rebirth for all.  Shackles imposed by austerities had to be broken, but piecing together the jigsaw of life that comes with freedom has left the world split into the haves, the hads and the have nots.

NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED

Now, as a rat scurries about the baggage under the bunks and anopheles mosquitoes buzz around the ankles and the train rocks along with starts and stops and I become increasingly habituated to the ubiquitous smell if urine from the toilets, I try to piece together the early remnants of memory that brought me here.   But like a mote in the eye, the more I look inwardly, the less I am able to focus on that early innocence that instilled a sense of wonder and awe kept me spellbound.

        

        When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse

        Out of the corner of my eye,

        I turned to look but it was gone

        I cannot put my finger on it…

And I relax into the moment feeling comfortably numb as a blind is drawn on the past and I climb up the ladder to my bunk and nod off to the rhythm of the train’s wheels clicking over the sleepers.  History will take care of itself: we can learn only from our own experience.  That’s wisdom, I think…but the thought passes like clouds in the sky.

PASSING CLOUDS