I'm just back from Delhi where our Lincoln School boys won the SAISA football/soccer tournament for the first time in Lincoln's history.
As you can imagine, the boys were beyond thrilled late Sunday afternoon, as the day dimmed in New Delhi, when they finally won a youthful triumph that had eluded their friends & local heroes at Lincoln for the past decade. For each of them winning a SAISA championship was reaching the languid, welcoming arms of championship heaven, at last.
For some of them, like Josh, Tim, Sudip and Narayan, the result was especially sweet, as their beloved Lincoln teams had already lost to Dhaka in the SAISA volleyball and basketball finals this year.
This year, starting with their first stunning win over Delhi on Friday morning, our boys steadily advanced to the final winning all of their games along the way. One by one, they knocked off each team they faced, keeping a 'clean sheet' (no goals against them) in every game except for the one goal they conceded to Lahore late in the semi-final -- when it really didn’t matter. Until, at last, unexpectedly, feverishly, relentlessly, against a team that was expected to dominate them, they beat the favored, much bigger and, possibly, over-confident Dhaka Tigers football team.
There is no doubt, for those of us there to see, these Lincoln boys wanted it, really wanted it. They had trained well and wisely. With their coaches, Jerome and Luke, they started each game with gentle exercises and an analysis of their opponent before joining each other in a sacred circle, arms around each other, raising their fever, their tempo and their exultation in their abilities. Then, sixty exhausting minutes later, they finished every game with a team review session. As they sat quietly away from the pitch, they selected different stretches to ease their muscle aches as they rated their own performances (usually with a modest 7.5), and commented, with humor and gentle teasing, on their individual strengths and mistakes during the previous game.
They knew when they beat Lahore in the morning 1-0, and then learned that Dhaka had beaten Delhi 4-0 on the other pitch, that the late afternoon game against Dhaka would be the biggest game of their young lives. Yet their spirits were calm. As a team, they always know how to keep their sense of friendly humor, constantly teasing each other and never, never letting any one person’s ego rise above the team’s collective intention to win.
At 4 pm, they were on the pitch, dressed in their road red uniform, warming up and concentrating on the moments ahead. Jerome and Luke gave them their final words of encouragement and to the Tibetan chant of “Chik Ne Tsum!!”, the boys gave their official war cry, “LINCOLN!!” that echoed around the pitch. Then eleven proud young men from Kathmandu quietly took their field positions.
With their friends and peers in the stands to cheer them on, the referee blew his whistle, the clock moved and the SAISA 2007 football final began. Lincoln won the first ball, but a short back pass was awkwardly misplayed and a brief doubt crossed the mind. Yet, that sudden flicker of nerves passed quickly while Lincoln kept to their game plan. They moved the ball well in the center, controlling the pace of the game -- although losing many of the goal kicks or headed balls to Dhaka’s taller players, but then quickly, with a few touches at mid-field, stealing the ball back from Dhaka and continuing to control the ball on the ground.
Like calm professionals, our teenage Lincoln boys played as a true team, talking to each other and encouraging themselves on. Adish, Josh and Tim were excellent in mid-field, setting the tempo of the game and taking their time to carefully pass the ball among the open players. Suraj and Dechen kept control of the side wings by racing up the pitch to create opportunities. Tenzin, the lone striker up front, roamed the open field for sudden opportunities. Behind them, Sudip, Yurop, Silash and Yontan formed a formidable, usually impenetrable defense allowing Ez, Lincoln’s starting goalie since 7th grade, fewer serious challenges at the mouth of the goal.
At half time, thirty minutes gone, the game was tied 0-0, to Dhaka's surprise. But, LS wanted this victory, they wanted this SAISA trophy, they wanted this more than anyone else at this SAISA tournament.
Starting the second half, LS again took control of the ground game and were attacking Dhaka persistently; however, no clear shots and no goals. Yet, they kept coming and coming. Finally, with time slipping past, three minutes before the end of the game, Tenzin made a great run to goal with a beautiful patiently timed & placed pass from Joshua from about 40 m. out. But, Tenzin may have waited a second too long and a big Dhaka defender tackled him from behind sweeping down both Tenzin & the ball. Tenzin fell hard and immediately the referee called a foul in the penalty box.
From a distance, we couldn't really tell if it was a serious foul, as the defender seemed to get his foot on the ball, as well. But whether he brought Tenzin down first, then the ball, only the non-existent instant replay can say. But, as we know, winning sometimes means that the g-ds are on your side and those instantaneous, passionate calls go your way. In this case, it was the ref's call and he pointed to the spot meaning only one thing in the beautiful game, "penalty!!"
Three minutes to play and advantage Lincoln.
But, to our equal chagrin, Tenzin stayed on the ground, even after the penalty was called and then five minutes later still lying on the ground was stretchered off, Lincoln's only striker out of the game with extra time looming large.
With Tenzin out of the game, Tim, the team’s captain, quietly lined up the penalty kick, stood to look carefully at his target, then WHAM his kick hit the crossbar at the top of the goal but richocheted immediately into the net. GOAL!!! With the football g-ds on our side, again! The boys, as you can imagine, went wild with the flush of anticipation as the clock continued to count down the final seconds.
Then, as the Lincoln boys were jumping and cheering, the Dhaka coach quickly yelled at his team to put the ball in the center circle and start the play. Without a clear signal from the referee to restart the game, and with most of the LS players still on the Dhaka side of the pitch, Dhaka suddenly whacked the ball down the field just as Ez was set ting up with only two unprepared defenders in front of him. Making a slight move to evade one Lincoln defender, the Dhaka striker, got a weak kick off that bounced past Ez and dribbled painfully into the net.
Disaster!
With now less than a minute left in the game and Lincoln's first SAISA football trophy seemingly in hand, the score was suddenly tied again. The LS players & coaches were going wild with anger. They didn't want to start the game again as they felt that Dhaka has clearly bent the rules (or ignored them...) in a cheap trick to try to win. The crowd started booing and the game seemed out of control. The refs brought the coaches to the center of the pitch to discuss the situation while the wiser LS team heads tried to calm themselves down, realizing that there was no way that the refs would change the course of the game or take back the Dhaka goal. When the Delhi coach came over the told the crowd that 'we don't 'boo' as SAISA games.', the booing switched to "Go Lincoln!! Go Lincoln!! Go Lincoln!!"
Finally, with a raw anger and frustration in the air, the refs re-started the game and the last minute of time quickly ran out. After 87 minutes of a 0-0 score line, it was 90 minutes full time over now Lincoln vs. Dhaka 1-1 with added time now needed to determine the SAISA winner.
The LS kids were going nuts in their 'shamiana' tent, yelling, swearing, punching chairs and letting out their agonized pain after having come so close to a final SAISA football victory. But, Jerome and Luke did their best to bring the boys' open emotions back to the game at hand. They held them, soothed them, reinvigorated them and brought them back to the real reason they were in Delhi: to win this SAISA championship. It took some time, but, again, the true leaders of the team stepped forward and brought the team back to their center of their concentration.’’
Back on the pitch, the clock set at five minutes of overtime for each side. Lincoln lifted their heads, stared at the goal and pushed themselves further than they thought they would have to go. There wasn’t an exhausted body or soul among them. The wait for Tenzin’s injury, the time needed to restart the game, then the break before the extra time had given them the rest they needed. The sense of disenfranchisement and anger that their honestly won victory was being taken away from them ennobled their spirits and concentration.
But the first five minutes went by with Lincoln again attacking without a clear result. Their passes were good, but the finishes not clean and the Dhaka defenders kept Lincoln from a clear shot on the goal. Time evaporated and only five more minutes of extra time were left.
Of course, the mind moved to the possibility of a penalty shoot-out if no one scored in the extra time. Ezra was likely the best goalie of SAISA, but the Dhaka strikers were big, strong and would no doubt be determined. Lincoln’s best striker was out injured (with what would be determined later that evening to be a cracked radial bone in his left hand). Lincoln’s strength this year was not in its strikers, but its formidable defense and determination. Those, unfortunately, mattered less in the sudden death of a penalty shoot-out.
The whistle blew and the game began again. No time for future thought. The present was enough to manage. Emotions were still high from the tension of the angry scenes around the pitch a few minutes earlier. It was time to concentrate on the ball, the movement of the ball, the passing, the smooth swift strokes, the threatening legs surrounding yours, patience please to find your fellows in red and the wide spaces of the open goal on the other side of the distant pitch.
Yet, the ball kept shifting up and down the pitch, hugging the sidelines, bouncing into the center, time passing and the pressure growing. Then, a sudden burst, quick movements with Lincoln pushing the ball down the pitch, a long pass, a fearful Dhaka response and the ball sailed over their goal line: corner kick!
Silash lined up the ball with the scoreboard over his head showing less than three minutes left. All eyes were on the scrum of players jostling in front of the goal for position; most of the Lincoln players having pushed up by the penalty box to battle for the corner. Then, quietly, almost serenely, Silash gave the ball a subtle gentle push out of the corner to Tim standing unmarked 15 meters away. Wham! Almost beyond belief, the orb was in the back of the net. The feint having worked; the Dhaka goalkeeper was caught off-guard as Tim swiftly stroked the ball into the left side of the net. GOAL!!! GOAL!!! GOAL!!!
Pandemonium broke out among the Lincoln team, the coaches and their almost unanimous supporters in the stands. A surge of adrenaline, excitement and wonder at the nature of such unexpected, unplanned, unfettered joy. Yet, a wariness from recent experience meant no one needed to tell the Lincoln kids to rush back on defense.
But Dhaka seemed lost, possibly disillusioned by the way that they had tied the game a few minutes earlier. Their spirit was gone. They had the height, the reputation, the powerful legs, but they had lost their will and their desire. The last two minutes ebbed away as Lincoln stood in front of their goal like their native soil. No one was going to pass and nothing was going to enter.
This game was Lincoln’s and everyone knew it. Tim’s goal had sealed the victory on the pitch, in their hearts and in the minds of everyone who had watched. This SAISA was Lincoln’s. For the first time in SAISA history -- the only history that counted for these boys on that day -- the SAISA football championship was going home to Kathmandu, where it belonged for 2007.
How sweet it was. How very sweet it was…
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
A Day in the Life of Rolpa Cont'd
The snow fell as we crossed the winding ridge-top Satobhato Pass above the Liwang Valley, capital of the decade-long Maoist movement, below.
It was late afternoon and, for the first time in Nepal, I was in a car driving in a mild snow storm. The winter, X-mas-like scene softened the surroundings, particularly the steep protruding hillocks surrounded by barbed wire where remote, tawny military outposts looked down above us. There was a haunting sense of Mordor in the isolated, almost world's end landscape as the sky began to darken and the journey seemed close to an end.
As we wound down the hill Liwang came into view, a snuggly-settled, modest-sized district center. It has been all-day eight hour drive through Dang and Pyuthan districts from the main East-West highway.
Yet, for all of the self-proclaimed "Maoist Capital of Nepal" the place appeared quite benign, quiet actually with the normal accoutrements of a government outpost in place, the local police chowks as we entered the town, the CDO (chief district officer) office & residence on the edge of town and the usual assembly of laggard, insouciant dogs lingering around the bus park hoping for a free meal.
The only modest sign of the Maoist revival were the hammer & sickle flags flying over the basketball court. There weren't even many posters of Comrade Prachanda, 'the Fierce One', glued to the concrete & muddy walls around the town that are plastered relentlessly everywhere around Kathmandu and Patan. In some ways, it seemed more like a Maoist ghost town than the center of a resurgent communist showplace. The Potemkin village, it seems, had been packed up, rhetoric and all, and shifted, literally, lock, stock & barrel to Kathmandu where the pickings are better, it seems.
Yet, these appearances were also deceiving, as so much appears to be these days in Nepal. Although there were no high-profile, visible signs of the Maoist presence in Liwang, their so-called capital city, the influence in the district appears to be quite pervasive and hardened after ten years of force and struggle.
Behind the softer national image being cultivated in Kathmandu, the local Rolpa leaders we met here in Liwang, both civil society and political party, were united in their common concern that although the structure of the Maoist local governance had begun to be dismantled (as instructed by Prachanda as part of the peace agreement), their party people were still out in the villages carrying on as they had often beforehand, through threat and intimidation.
They had been told by the local Maoist party cadre that "the war is not over, we're just stopping for awhile". Local leaders we spoke with said that some of the PLA soldiers who had been in the district before are still there -- just w/o their uniforms or visible weapons.
The Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) that had been signed on Nov. 21st, we were told, had not yet been internalized by the Maoist cadre, nor been widely understood by most of the people living out in these remote villages. In truth, there had been little public dissemination of this key national peace document by the government, the political parties, the human rights activists or the international development community. It had been signed in Kathmandu and mostly left on the table in Kathmandu...
These local Rolpalis explained to us that of the 51 Village Development Committees in the district, the police are only permitted in 7-8. In the rest, the Maoist simply tell them that it's dangerous for them b/c the villagers don't want them there. Of course, if it's the people themselves or the Maoist militia or cadre, no one can legitimately say. All they can say, and did, is that in the present circumstances, although it is getting slowly better compared to full-on conflict of past years, there are not the necessary conditions for a 'free and fair' election. Nor do they think that this environment can be created before the June 2007 deadline that's been set by the Maoist and Seven Political Party leadership nationally.
Not now. Not soon. Not easily. was the message. But, they shrugged their collective shoulders and said, "Would our senior and distant national party leaders listen to us??"
One person said clearly said that "if the Maoist don't publicly also agree to postpone the planned Constituent Assembly elections, then a return to conflict was a very real possibility." The government couldn't decide this w/o the Maoist publicly agreeing. Otherwise, as the Music Man sang decades ago, there would be trouble in River City...
Not, as you can see, quite encouraging. In fact, in some ways, rather disturbing, especially since none of the major parties or leaders has yet acknowledged that a bad election in June would be worse than a postponed election. But there are only three+ months before this tryst with destiny for the Nepali people to elect their representatives to a Constituent Assembly to write a new supposedly people's oriented, New Nepal constitution.
Not much time in any country. Particularly not much time in a country used to the slow lane, like Nepal, with a mental, cultural and physical landscape that overwhelms as much as it sanctifies the natural world around us.
Clearly, there are a few surprises ahead, not just out here in the isolated Maoist hamlet of Liwang, Rolpa, but for all of the long-awaited and often promised New Nepal.
Jai Desh!!
It was late afternoon and, for the first time in Nepal, I was in a car driving in a mild snow storm. The winter, X-mas-like scene softened the surroundings, particularly the steep protruding hillocks surrounded by barbed wire where remote, tawny military outposts looked down above us. There was a haunting sense of Mordor in the isolated, almost world's end landscape as the sky began to darken and the journey seemed close to an end.
As we wound down the hill Liwang came into view, a snuggly-settled, modest-sized district center. It has been all-day eight hour drive through Dang and Pyuthan districts from the main East-West highway.
Yet, for all of the self-proclaimed "Maoist Capital of Nepal" the place appeared quite benign, quiet actually with the normal accoutrements of a government outpost in place, the local police chowks as we entered the town, the CDO (chief district officer) office & residence on the edge of town and the usual assembly of laggard, insouciant dogs lingering around the bus park hoping for a free meal.
The only modest sign of the Maoist revival were the hammer & sickle flags flying over the basketball court. There weren't even many posters of Comrade Prachanda, 'the Fierce One', glued to the concrete & muddy walls around the town that are plastered relentlessly everywhere around Kathmandu and Patan. In some ways, it seemed more like a Maoist ghost town than the center of a resurgent communist showplace. The Potemkin village, it seems, had been packed up, rhetoric and all, and shifted, literally, lock, stock & barrel to Kathmandu where the pickings are better, it seems.
Yet, these appearances were also deceiving, as so much appears to be these days in Nepal. Although there were no high-profile, visible signs of the Maoist presence in Liwang, their so-called capital city, the influence in the district appears to be quite pervasive and hardened after ten years of force and struggle.
Behind the softer national image being cultivated in Kathmandu, the local Rolpa leaders we met here in Liwang, both civil society and political party, were united in their common concern that although the structure of the Maoist local governance had begun to be dismantled (as instructed by Prachanda as part of the peace agreement), their party people were still out in the villages carrying on as they had often beforehand, through threat and intimidation.
They had been told by the local Maoist party cadre that "the war is not over, we're just stopping for awhile". Local leaders we spoke with said that some of the PLA soldiers who had been in the district before are still there -- just w/o their uniforms or visible weapons.
The Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) that had been signed on Nov. 21st, we were told, had not yet been internalized by the Maoist cadre, nor been widely understood by most of the people living out in these remote villages. In truth, there had been little public dissemination of this key national peace document by the government, the political parties, the human rights activists or the international development community. It had been signed in Kathmandu and mostly left on the table in Kathmandu...
These local Rolpalis explained to us that of the 51 Village Development Committees in the district, the police are only permitted in 7-8. In the rest, the Maoist simply tell them that it's dangerous for them b/c the villagers don't want them there. Of course, if it's the people themselves or the Maoist militia or cadre, no one can legitimately say. All they can say, and did, is that in the present circumstances, although it is getting slowly better compared to full-on conflict of past years, there are not the necessary conditions for a 'free and fair' election. Nor do they think that this environment can be created before the June 2007 deadline that's been set by the Maoist and Seven Political Party leadership nationally.
Not now. Not soon. Not easily. was the message. But, they shrugged their collective shoulders and said, "Would our senior and distant national party leaders listen to us??"
One person said clearly said that "if the Maoist don't publicly also agree to postpone the planned Constituent Assembly elections, then a return to conflict was a very real possibility." The government couldn't decide this w/o the Maoist publicly agreeing. Otherwise, as the Music Man sang decades ago, there would be trouble in River City...
Not, as you can see, quite encouraging. In fact, in some ways, rather disturbing, especially since none of the major parties or leaders has yet acknowledged that a bad election in June would be worse than a postponed election. But there are only three+ months before this tryst with destiny for the Nepali people to elect their representatives to a Constituent Assembly to write a new supposedly people's oriented, New Nepal constitution.
Not much time in any country. Particularly not much time in a country used to the slow lane, like Nepal, with a mental, cultural and physical landscape that overwhelms as much as it sanctifies the natural world around us.
Clearly, there are a few surprises ahead, not just out here in the isolated Maoist hamlet of Liwang, Rolpa, but for all of the long-awaited and often promised New Nepal.
Jai Desh!!
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Post-Revolutionary in Rolpa
Nepal has an amazing quality of being able to not change even as its own world is changing around it...
Josh & I are just back from a short trip to Liwang, the district center of Rolpa district, where the Maoists had their capital over the past ten years of civil conflict. The ride from the East-West highway along Dang district up through Pyuthan district, over 1800 m. ridges w/ magnificent views of the winter wheat fields below along the Rapti river, was breath-taking. Stunning snow-capped mountains peered over the nearby horizon. Slate-covered stone homes sat like contented toadstools on the terraces.
Snow fell as we crossed Sato Batto, just above the Liwang valley and we stopped for Josh to make his baby snowmen, draw a heart in the snow for his girlfriend, Lisa, and for all of us to enjoy the rare pleasure of feeling snow drop & drizzle among us in the rough-hewn middle hills of Nepal.
After many years hearing of Rolpa as the Maoist stronghold in Nepal, it was fascinating to reach there, passing Nepali army outposts on steep ridges, like scenes from "The Man Who Would be King", newly re-established police checkposts and isolated villages living as they have for decades.
With all of the promises made by the Maoists and past governments, the truth of Liwang Bazaar appeared no different from it had been for before this People's War. Rough, isolated poverty in a setting of absolute beauty. The 'hotel' where we stayed was as basic as anything I've stayed in over the years in Nepal. Definitely nothing you would write home about or take one's spouse to visit.
The ironies pre-dominate. For all of the high rhetoric of the Maoist achievements and commitments, the health & education facilities appeared no different after their stay than they were before. For all of the government's antipathy to the Maoists, the government offices remained open in Liwang throughout the war. In fact, it seemed that it was safer to be a GON official in Liwang than any other district. There appears to have been a mutual agreement that the GON would not attack the Maoist stronghold while the Maoists would not attack the GON offices/officials in Rolpa. Strange bedfellows indeed...
The red hammer & sickle flag waved above the basketball court by the muddy bus park while the police chowk and policemen lingered by the entrance to the bus park as we drove through. Inspirational paintings of children in peaceful marches had been painted on concrete walls above barefoot Magar village women who sat crouched on the damp ground patiently selling their dokos of oranges or firewood.
Little there was on the surface to imply that the politics of Nepal has revolved around the revolutionary fervor of this distant district for the past decade. Until, of course, we sat and spoke with the civil society & political leaders the next day...
(it's late tonight, so i'll continue w/ my impressions of post-revolutionary rolpa 2morrow...)
Josh & I are just back from a short trip to Liwang, the district center of Rolpa district, where the Maoists had their capital over the past ten years of civil conflict. The ride from the East-West highway along Dang district up through Pyuthan district, over 1800 m. ridges w/ magnificent views of the winter wheat fields below along the Rapti river, was breath-taking. Stunning snow-capped mountains peered over the nearby horizon. Slate-covered stone homes sat like contented toadstools on the terraces.
Snow fell as we crossed Sato Batto, just above the Liwang valley and we stopped for Josh to make his baby snowmen, draw a heart in the snow for his girlfriend, Lisa, and for all of us to enjoy the rare pleasure of feeling snow drop & drizzle among us in the rough-hewn middle hills of Nepal.
After many years hearing of Rolpa as the Maoist stronghold in Nepal, it was fascinating to reach there, passing Nepali army outposts on steep ridges, like scenes from "The Man Who Would be King", newly re-established police checkposts and isolated villages living as they have for decades.
With all of the promises made by the Maoists and past governments, the truth of Liwang Bazaar appeared no different from it had been for before this People's War. Rough, isolated poverty in a setting of absolute beauty. The 'hotel' where we stayed was as basic as anything I've stayed in over the years in Nepal. Definitely nothing you would write home about or take one's spouse to visit.
The ironies pre-dominate. For all of the high rhetoric of the Maoist achievements and commitments, the health & education facilities appeared no different after their stay than they were before. For all of the government's antipathy to the Maoists, the government offices remained open in Liwang throughout the war. In fact, it seemed that it was safer to be a GON official in Liwang than any other district. There appears to have been a mutual agreement that the GON would not attack the Maoist stronghold while the Maoists would not attack the GON offices/officials in Rolpa. Strange bedfellows indeed...
The red hammer & sickle flag waved above the basketball court by the muddy bus park while the police chowk and policemen lingered by the entrance to the bus park as we drove through. Inspirational paintings of children in peaceful marches had been painted on concrete walls above barefoot Magar village women who sat crouched on the damp ground patiently selling their dokos of oranges or firewood.
Little there was on the surface to imply that the politics of Nepal has revolved around the revolutionary fervor of this distant district for the past decade. Until, of course, we sat and spoke with the civil society & political leaders the next day...
(it's late tonight, so i'll continue w/ my impressions of post-revolutionary rolpa 2morrow...)
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The Coming Third Andolan in Nepal?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony is innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
WBEYeats, "The Second Coming" 1919
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony is innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
WBEYeats, "The Second Coming" 1919
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Rain or Is Anarchy Better than the Ancien Regime?
It's been raining all day today, a week before Shivaratri, soon the darkest night of the year here in the Hindoo universe, as Kathmandu peers cautiously into the abyss ahead.
Personally, although I'm nursing a head cold (acquired during my walk up the hill behind our home last w/end w/ Nick & Christopher...), I enjoy the patter of the rain outside. This morning, we wandered in the back garden w/ Lapsi & Gumbi (our two favorite dogs...) under the overcast skies. Gita was out picking the luscious green & burgundy salad, while Ms. Leah frolicked amid the baby flowers of early spring. Shaks, wrapped in her Chinese blanket, like a hill Tamang-ni, admired her newly budding orchids while I sat by the stream watching the water trickle over the translucent pebbles that I'd collected from our land.
By early afternoon the drizzle started, followed by the patter of rain in earnest. From our new reading room (behind the fireplace), I stood peering out at the garden . Rain's seductive on a Sunday. There's a gentle rhthym to the patter of rain, particularly watching it dance on the pond outside the sliding glass doors. The water gently poured over the lip of the pond down the stone weir, that we'd built a year ago, into the deep rivulet that trundles down the eastern perimeter of our land. As my breath fogged up the glass, I moved to a new window to watch the water flow through the bamboo tubes that we'd placed on the roof to keep the rain from collecting above us.
Shakun had gone down into town by microbus, since we still don't have petrol for our Vitara. She was off to Franny's Losar (Buddhist New Year) party with a gathering of the faithful. I'd hung home, feeling a bit fluish, but wanting to finish Josh' applications to schools outside Nepal for next year.
I also simply wanted to stay home. Nearly seven years in this house, I feel a remarkable inner appeal to be at home. While the skies drizzled, I stood at the window longer than I would have imagined. Just standing. Looking. Dreaming. Seeing. Imaging what Hokusai saw when he looked at nature. Watching the water drip off the bamboo leaves. Observing the water swoosh down the weir between two chiseled stones. Enjoying the splash of water on the pond. Counting a dozen types of bamboo we've planted along the perimeter of the land.
There's a security, as well, in being home that isn't common to our larger Nepal. Nepal is in a chaotic mood this year, with shortages of most essential needs, water (ironically...), electricity, petrol, cooking gas and employment. Reading my recent posts, Dave and M&D ask if Nepal's current anarchy is better than the ancien regime. I wonder...
Alas, unlike Proust, we can't go back to the past. Our childhoods are over and retreating further into the distance. We may try to look over our shoulders (or in the mirrors...), but the memories of yesterday are forever fading, pushed back by the stream of our consciousness and the waves of time.
Such is the truth of Nepal, as well. Her lengthy period of adolescence is over and there's a long queue of issues that all require attention at the same time. The anarchy of the present is the price to be paid for her casual metamorphosis into a 'modern' country. As innocent or bucolic as was the past, the present is simply too complicated for easy solutions.
There is no either/or with regard to our historical choice. We are here, here is a mess and here is where we need to move ahead from. The mistakes of the past cannot be undone. (Like the US in Iraq, I suppose...) Any hopes that the peace accord with the Maoists of November 2006 w/ a wave of the magic wand from the UN was the panacea to solve all of Nepal's problems has proven more than elusive...
So, in brief some predictions: On the downside: more troubles, more violence, more disintegration in the near term, more economic pain and less likelihood that we will have the promised constituent assembly elections in June 2007. On the positive side: more voices from outside the power elite will demand to be heard, greater participation in the political process from previously under-represented ethnic and caste communities, and, hopefully, the realization that the suffering finally hurts everyone...
The path forward... with wisdom: peace, investment and new creativity, with insincerity and greed: more insurrection, disorientation and intimidation.
I know which I'd prefer... otherwise I may have much more time to stand in the rain and watch my garden grow...
Goodnight Rain!!
Personally, although I'm nursing a head cold (acquired during my walk up the hill behind our home last w/end w/ Nick & Christopher...), I enjoy the patter of the rain outside. This morning, we wandered in the back garden w/ Lapsi & Gumbi (our two favorite dogs...) under the overcast skies. Gita was out picking the luscious green & burgundy salad, while Ms. Leah frolicked amid the baby flowers of early spring. Shaks, wrapped in her Chinese blanket, like a hill Tamang-ni, admired her newly budding orchids while I sat by the stream watching the water trickle over the translucent pebbles that I'd collected from our land.
By early afternoon the drizzle started, followed by the patter of rain in earnest. From our new reading room (behind the fireplace), I stood peering out at the garden . Rain's seductive on a Sunday. There's a gentle rhthym to the patter of rain, particularly watching it dance on the pond outside the sliding glass doors. The water gently poured over the lip of the pond down the stone weir, that we'd built a year ago, into the deep rivulet that trundles down the eastern perimeter of our land. As my breath fogged up the glass, I moved to a new window to watch the water flow through the bamboo tubes that we'd placed on the roof to keep the rain from collecting above us.
Shakun had gone down into town by microbus, since we still don't have petrol for our Vitara. She was off to Franny's Losar (Buddhist New Year) party with a gathering of the faithful. I'd hung home, feeling a bit fluish, but wanting to finish Josh' applications to schools outside Nepal for next year.
I also simply wanted to stay home. Nearly seven years in this house, I feel a remarkable inner appeal to be at home. While the skies drizzled, I stood at the window longer than I would have imagined. Just standing. Looking. Dreaming. Seeing. Imaging what Hokusai saw when he looked at nature. Watching the water drip off the bamboo leaves. Observing the water swoosh down the weir between two chiseled stones. Enjoying the splash of water on the pond. Counting a dozen types of bamboo we've planted along the perimeter of the land.
There's a security, as well, in being home that isn't common to our larger Nepal. Nepal is in a chaotic mood this year, with shortages of most essential needs, water (ironically...), electricity, petrol, cooking gas and employment. Reading my recent posts, Dave and M&D ask if Nepal's current anarchy is better than the ancien regime. I wonder...
Alas, unlike Proust, we can't go back to the past. Our childhoods are over and retreating further into the distance. We may try to look over our shoulders (or in the mirrors...), but the memories of yesterday are forever fading, pushed back by the stream of our consciousness and the waves of time.
Such is the truth of Nepal, as well. Her lengthy period of adolescence is over and there's a long queue of issues that all require attention at the same time. The anarchy of the present is the price to be paid for her casual metamorphosis into a 'modern' country. As innocent or bucolic as was the past, the present is simply too complicated for easy solutions.
There is no either/or with regard to our historical choice. We are here, here is a mess and here is where we need to move ahead from. The mistakes of the past cannot be undone. (Like the US in Iraq, I suppose...) Any hopes that the peace accord with the Maoists of November 2006 w/ a wave of the magic wand from the UN was the panacea to solve all of Nepal's problems has proven more than elusive...
So, in brief some predictions: On the downside: more troubles, more violence, more disintegration in the near term, more economic pain and less likelihood that we will have the promised constituent assembly elections in June 2007. On the positive side: more voices from outside the power elite will demand to be heard, greater participation in the political process from previously under-represented ethnic and caste communities, and, hopefully, the realization that the suffering finally hurts everyone...
The path forward... with wisdom: peace, investment and new creativity, with insincerity and greed: more insurrection, disorientation and intimidation.
I know which I'd prefer... otherwise I may have much more time to stand in the rain and watch my garden grow...
Goodnight Rain!!
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
'O pure, O beautiful.'
There, he imagines looking up "at the evening star, his favorite, applying to it simile after simile, finding nothing on his evening walk more beautiful. . . .
Suddenly it speaks:
"Foolish man! What are you excited about? I'm a world too, not like the one on which you live, but noisy and dark like yours. There is sorrow and coarseness here too--and if you want to know at this very moment one of my inhabitants--a poet like you--looks on that star you call 'Earth' and whispers to it: 'O pure, O beautiful.'
Victor Nabokov
Suddenly it speaks:
"Foolish man! What are you excited about? I'm a world too, not like the one on which you live, but noisy and dark like yours. There is sorrow and coarseness here too--and if you want to know at this very moment one of my inhabitants--a poet like you--looks on that star you call 'Earth' and whispers to it: 'O pure, O beautiful.'
Victor Nabokov
Monday, February 5, 2007
The Weather Report: No Electricy No Petrol No Cooking Gas
Inspired by a note from my friend Helen in Dorset, saying she actually reads these images, I'm adding a short post to my blogspot while sitted at my desk in the National Human Rights (Wrongs?) Commission on a dark, blustry and bleak afternoon here in Katmandu.
If, as Herr Profeesor Sigmund Freud was once quoted as saying, "Ze weather iz a reflection of ze collective zexual zeitgeist of ze society.", (or something like that...) then today's sky in Nepal may accurately describe our national mood.
Unlike days of yore, a decade or two ago, when we'd open "The Rising Nepal" in the morning over a sweet cup of Nepali tea with the soothing words at the top of the masthead, 'All is fair throughout the kingdom', alas, the halcyon days of the Himalayan Camelot are long gone from our further tarnished kingdom of Nepal.
Tis more like the winter of our collective discontent here on the mean streets of this once magical kingdom. Not exactly King Lear, although madness may have set in the palace w/o anyone particularly noticing a generation ago, nor quite Macbeth, although the excruitating sound of 'out, out damn spot' may have been uttered within the palace compound during the now renown murder of King Birendra and his extended family over five years ago.
While Shakun kept saying 'anarchy' over the past months, her more sober (almost...) husband was in denial (not, as we know, just a river in Egypt...). But, I fold. I give in. If what we have experienced in Nepal over the past couple of weeks is not a fair mimicry of social anarchy, I'll burn my Doestevski (well, maybe just my Doonesbury or Calvin & Hobbes...).
Let's just say, 'it's a mess...'
For those of you not addicted to the Nepalnews websites (you're forgiven...), the country is splintering and rollicking (chose your metaphor...) with ethnic and political tension. The Terai, the southern districts along the Indian border, have basically been in rebellion for over two weeks, closing the only highways to Kathmandu, burning government offices, attacking police posts and writing the "Madesh Nation" on signboards, signifying their radical intent of separating from the once soothing sacred image of a regal Nepal to create their own linear country, dividing the hills from the terai and leaving Kathmandu to survive on its own.
Interesting, no? Of course, after decades or centuries (depending on how you count...) of basically ignoring and condescending to the more Indian-like Maithali-speaking communities in the eastern plains of the country, these people, fresh with the initial enthusiasm & hubris that democracy and independence offer, have decided to remind the hill people that all roads run through the terai. It seems as if our ever-pompous, greedy & miasmic male high caste political leadership have missed that message along the way to the signing of their Comprehensive Peace Accord with the Maoists late last November... Oops...
So, this morning, with no trucks or transport coming up to Kathmandu from the terai for over a week, we awoke with the three post-revolutionary no's. No Electricity. No Petrol. No Cooking Gas. Not to mention a dark and forbiding sky... Welcome to the New Nepal, as the self-congratulatory politicians have been saying. Or, as they can announce to the non-tourists at the Tribhuvan International Airport: Welcome to Nepal! Re-Visit the Sublime, Mystic Charms of the 19th Century!
And, imagine, dear Helen asked if I'm pessimistic about Nepal. ;-) As a favorite Jewish guru, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said when asked about the peculiar world that man's created, "I'm an optimist, against my better judgement..."
So, borrowing more metaphors on this overcast day, we row on, ships against the current, doing our best to maintain our collective sense of humor and personal priorities while the country appears to be disintegrating around us. As messianic, millennial Yeats would have asked, "what rough beast slouches toward Kathmandu..."
I wonder. But, in the mean time, it's getting dark, dear Helen, darker than Dorset these days, I imagine, so I'm going out on Pulchowk to look for a taxi, then pick-up Shakun at her boutique on Durbar Marg, and plod home to distant Budhanilkantha sans car, sans certainty, sans a bit more elusive sense of sanity, but, remarkably, still with that eternal, although possibly misplaced, sense of human hope... ;-)
Good night, sky!!
If, as Herr Profeesor Sigmund Freud was once quoted as saying, "Ze weather iz a reflection of ze collective zexual zeitgeist of ze society.", (or something like that...) then today's sky in Nepal may accurately describe our national mood.
Unlike days of yore, a decade or two ago, when we'd open "The Rising Nepal" in the morning over a sweet cup of Nepali tea with the soothing words at the top of the masthead, 'All is fair throughout the kingdom', alas, the halcyon days of the Himalayan Camelot are long gone from our further tarnished kingdom of Nepal.
Tis more like the winter of our collective discontent here on the mean streets of this once magical kingdom. Not exactly King Lear, although madness may have set in the palace w/o anyone particularly noticing a generation ago, nor quite Macbeth, although the excruitating sound of 'out, out damn spot' may have been uttered within the palace compound during the now renown murder of King Birendra and his extended family over five years ago.
While Shakun kept saying 'anarchy' over the past months, her more sober (almost...) husband was in denial (not, as we know, just a river in Egypt...). But, I fold. I give in. If what we have experienced in Nepal over the past couple of weeks is not a fair mimicry of social anarchy, I'll burn my Doestevski (well, maybe just my Doonesbury or Calvin & Hobbes...).
Let's just say, 'it's a mess...'
For those of you not addicted to the Nepalnews websites (you're forgiven...), the country is splintering and rollicking (chose your metaphor...) with ethnic and political tension. The Terai, the southern districts along the Indian border, have basically been in rebellion for over two weeks, closing the only highways to Kathmandu, burning government offices, attacking police posts and writing the "Madesh Nation" on signboards, signifying their radical intent of separating from the once soothing sacred image of a regal Nepal to create their own linear country, dividing the hills from the terai and leaving Kathmandu to survive on its own.
Interesting, no? Of course, after decades or centuries (depending on how you count...) of basically ignoring and condescending to the more Indian-like Maithali-speaking communities in the eastern plains of the country, these people, fresh with the initial enthusiasm & hubris that democracy and independence offer, have decided to remind the hill people that all roads run through the terai. It seems as if our ever-pompous, greedy & miasmic male high caste political leadership have missed that message along the way to the signing of their Comprehensive Peace Accord with the Maoists late last November... Oops...
So, this morning, with no trucks or transport coming up to Kathmandu from the terai for over a week, we awoke with the three post-revolutionary no's. No Electricity. No Petrol. No Cooking Gas. Not to mention a dark and forbiding sky... Welcome to the New Nepal, as the self-congratulatory politicians have been saying. Or, as they can announce to the non-tourists at the Tribhuvan International Airport: Welcome to Nepal! Re-Visit the Sublime, Mystic Charms of the 19th Century!
And, imagine, dear Helen asked if I'm pessimistic about Nepal. ;-) As a favorite Jewish guru, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said when asked about the peculiar world that man's created, "I'm an optimist, against my better judgement..."
So, borrowing more metaphors on this overcast day, we row on, ships against the current, doing our best to maintain our collective sense of humor and personal priorities while the country appears to be disintegrating around us. As messianic, millennial Yeats would have asked, "what rough beast slouches toward Kathmandu..."
I wonder. But, in the mean time, it's getting dark, dear Helen, darker than Dorset these days, I imagine, so I'm going out on Pulchowk to look for a taxi, then pick-up Shakun at her boutique on Durbar Marg, and plod home to distant Budhanilkantha sans car, sans certainty, sans a bit more elusive sense of sanity, but, remarkably, still with that eternal, although possibly misplaced, sense of human hope... ;-)
Good night, sky!!
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