Foreign perceptions

Reviewing what I've written lately, it seems rather lopsided, maybe a bit inane. It doesn't reflect a side of life here that is also familiar - the underbelly of lack of opportunity in this country. I've hesitated to write about these weightier realities, and issues of confidentiality and unsought exposure quickly emerge.

However, as a "bideshi" (= foreigner) living in Nepal, I'm mostly well - buffered against the chronic insecurities and precarious existence of most Nepalis. While I've changed their names, the sketches below are about real people I know.

There's Vishnu, who walks a long distance to his office every day to save a meagre bus fare. With six people dependent upon his income, he saves as much as he can, and eats the cheapest possible lunches. He knows his job is precarious in the NGO (non government organisation) where he works, but he has few options should he lose his current job.

Phul Maya, a tiny and ancient grandmother in her seventies, has cleaned and cooked for foreigners for thirty years. Going the extra mile, these employers had long paid the school fees for her grandchildren. Now that she can no longer draw upon the gifts of foreigners, her grandson has begun abusing her. He needs some money urgently to pay for fees for career training that he is about to commence. Her son, who is considered simple, is away from home most of the time trying to earn some income outside the city. Her daughter - in - law, who earns an income sweeping the grounds of a hospital, refuses to pay anything to help her son. The two women barely speak to each other, maintaining a long standing feud. Dysfunction reigns.

Kanti, recently widowed, has recently spent the required thirteen days of mourning fasting in her white widow's attire at the sacred Pashupatinath temple. She despairs that her son, frequently drunken and out late like his father had been, will come to a bad end. Cleaning houses and washing clothes for foreign aid workers by day, she runs a small street stall selling mobile phone accessories by night. Her closest relatives, who are good to her but live at a distance on the fringe of the city, want her to take a room nearer to them, but she insists that her two young daughters need to be able to stay at their current school. There's been too much change for them already, she reasons. Since their father's death, the daughters have had to stay with relatives while their mother fulfilled all the requirements of Hindu mourning and shift rooms from where their father died. They are understandably quiet and withdrawn.

Lal Kumari, thin as a stick, pokes her dishevelled grey head around glass shop doors along the road to Jawalakhel, extracting gleaming one and two rupee coins (about 3 cents) from staff who pay her to move on.

Such glimpses of people's situations emerge easily enough. Some days things are "tic byo" (ok again) and other days it's "costo neramro cho!" (how bad is that!).

I read in  Samrat Upadhyay's "Arresting god in Kathmandu" the other day, about "Nepal -crazy foreigners...people who lived in the country in a romantic haze, love-struck by the mountain beauty and the simple charms of the people, but grossly naive about their suffering." I'm more aware than that of people's real lives, but there remain no easy answers about how to respond.

[Samrat Upadhyay is a Nepali author based in the USA. This volume of his short stories was published by Rupa on the Indian subcontinent in 2001; this reference appears on p.45.]