31. Our Magical Kingdom
NANCYJohn had already traveled around the world four times. He knew which places would be of most interest to Megan and Michael, who were fourteen and ten years old at the time. We decided to spend time in Hawaii, Hong Kong, and Bangkok before setting down for the school year in Kathmandu, Nepal. John had been there, after motorcycling up the length of India, and he had always wanted to show it to me. We could study with the many Tibetan lamas who had sought refuge there after the Chinese invasion. John had a great fondness for Third World countries, and I had cherished memories of the year I spent in Mexico, where Michael was born. Excited about exploring the world as a family, we set off in the fall of 1983 with four suitcases and high hopes. The following excerpts from my journal were written during that year of grace.
October 5
We flew into Kathmandu this afternoon. I was so excited last night, I couldn't sleep. In the Bangkok hotel at midnight, I drew a bath while John sat on the edge of the tub, painting a picture of the enchanting valley we were about to enter, the jade-green rice fields rimmed with towering snowy peaks. When we got here, I felt him watching our reaction, vigilant to see how we are adjusting. With the breath knocked out of us, the children and I kept drinking it in, trying to make sense of sizes and angles and diseases and levels of poverty we've never seen. In the swarm of tiny Nepali people at the airport, we hired two taxis, one for us and one for our luggage which holds a year's supply of things you can't get here (Tampax, spices, prescription drugs). Rickshaws, tukuks (three-wheeled motorcycle taxis), women in saris and men in sarongs, beggars, our first sight of lepers, all rushed past in a blur of color, strange smells, and bursts of sounds.
The Rose Hotel, recommended by the government tourist office at the airport, is funky. We said we didn't care where we spent the first night, later we would look for a home base. The green walls of the room are peeling and look putrid in the light of one bare bulb. This morning we had no hot water for bathing, but the brick courtyard filled with rosebushes makes the whole place bearable. John likes funky hotels; Megan and I do not. He was worried that we might be offended by Kathmandu's filth. I see it as primitive; this level of rawness can only be hidden by affluence. Like an acid rush, I welcome that old Third World seduction. It settles in my body, releasing the American toxins from our pretense that life is not really happening. John is relieved; he has quit watching us. He's gotten the reaction he wanted, that we would love it here as much as he does.
Last night we took the children to dinner at the best Indian restaurant, the Gar-e-Kabab, next to the elegant Annapurna Hotel. Located in a neighborhood that caters to the Nepalese upper class, John chose that restaurant because it is sufficiently westernized. He wants to acculturate them gently. This was the moment he had been chuckling about for years, when our designer-clothed children would discover how the rest of the world lives. He started by telling them about the city, the customs, the incredible history of how the Western world came to Nepal. The Rana Princes ordered their Mercedes from India, which had to be disassembled and carried across the Himalayan foothills on elephants, only to be reassembled when they reached Kathmandu. Since there were no roads, they could only drive around the palace grounds. Loving all things Rococo, the elephants also packed in delicate china, crystal chandeliers, and ornate mirrors, as well as Rolex watches and other civilized accoutrements.
Then Megan and Michael started asking the questions John had expected. "Where's the mall? The closest English-speaking movie theater? Any video arcades?"
With impeccable timing, John delivered the punch line he had been rehearsing for months.
"Guess what? There aren't any." When they realized they were thousands of miles from even the nearest television station, they began to cry. As they drowned in culture shock, we reveled in a perverse delight over their electronic withdrawal. This was precisely why we had taken them out of Boulder's white-bread Disneyland, which was turning them into miniature racist consumers who thought the entire world hung out at the mall. John provided cold comfort when he pointed out that there were places you could rent videos to watch on TV.
October 6
We went to Lincoln School today to enroll the children. It is a school for embassy families. The students were very welcoming but the smug looks on some of their faces caused us to warn Megan and Michael about the white supremacy trap that so many Westerners fall into in Asia. We told them to be really careful about feeling superior. "Your pale skin and designer jeans don't make you better. The Nepalese have a lot to teach us." We don't want them imprisoned in a white ghetto in the midst of this exotic culture. Hoping they will establish a new identity as citizens of the world, we want them to learn how to work the town like natives.
"That way, they will feel at home in any country," John said.
Boulder Buddhists who'd been here told us that the Vajra Hotel is the place to stay, so we checked in there this afternoon. It is an incredibly beautiful place, at the foot of a hill crowned with Swayambhunath Stupa, a towering monument, where the Buddha taught. Born in southern Nepal, his footprints are embedded in stone near the Stupa, where monkeys tumble around the footpaths, mischievously eyeing cameras and handbags. We were told not to look them in the eye, which can threaten and turn them aggressive. This land abounds with the history of characters from our ritual chants and practices.
The hotel is tall, red brick, with the traditional ornate carved wooden windows, a pagoda roof, rose gardens, an art gallery, a theater, and makeshift room service. Owned by Westerners, it is perfect for us. We have rented two large rooms, one above the other, with modern plumbing. I don't think I can ever face a Nepali toilet, a fetid hole in the floor.
October 10
John's been shopping for a new motorcycle for the past two days. He brought it back to the hotel this afternoon, a bright-red Yamaha 185. He's downstairs in the courtyard putting a padded passenger seat on the back. I'm stunned. Most men would be tearing around the valley, flaunting their symbol of freedom, but he is fixing the seat so I'll be comfortable. Watching him so painstakingly adjusting the backrest, I could cry at his tenderness. He says he doesn't want to test-drive it around the valley without me on the back.
Far from anyone we know, from anyone who recognizes our name, we are cut loose from the curse of fame. We're simply John and Nancy. The Nepalese have never heard of Steinbeck. Sensing we are genuinely enthralled by them, they like us simply for that, measuring how we speak from the heart, not by appearance or money. John has shed the mantle and the weight of stardust and so have I. It's deeply subtle and incredibly humbling. I didn't know to what an extent I had assumed his karma till I felt this relief. He says he loves being free of it.
October 15
Tonight we were walking home from Boris's restaurant in Thamel to the hotel, across the bridge by the ghat, a place beside the river where bodies are burned. We left the kids to eat dinner and do their homework in the Vajra dining room. I was wary; it was late and dark. In an American city that size, you watch your back. John stopped me in the middle of the bridge and said, "It's not like New York. You don't have to be afraid. They don't have crime like that here." I could feel layers of conditioning dropping away then. These are gentle people; they don't think of hurting or robbing. I practiced feeling safe the rest of the way home, across the bridge, down narrow dark alleys lit only by the moon. I am shedding so much programming. When we got back to the hotel, a guest was helping Megan with her French and Michael was engrossed in a chess game with a Nepali waiter. It feels like a home.
October 16
We rode out to Boudanath to see the Great Stupa, sitting there like a huge flying saucer in the middle of the plaza. It's an ancient, enormous pile of white stone with a dome top, strung with colorful prayer flags, a place of pilgrimage for many centuries. We joined the traditional circumambulation, along with dozens of Tibetan devotees who prostrate every inch of the way. I could have sat there for hours, staring at them. They seem so wild, like a circus you want to run away with. These pilgrims have crossed the border from Tibet for the winter. They live in black yak-hair tents pitched in the surrounding fields. They have a look in their eye that is so primitive, almost Stone Age, as if they have never seen civilization. When I see that, my heart stirs up crazy feelings and I want to crawl into their tents with them and tend their lavender-tinged donkeys.
October 20
This morning we woke up to the kids talking in the courtyard below our window.
"I smell a body burning."
"No, dummy. That's garbage."
"Nuhuh, Michael, that's a body. I know what they smell like."
There is a burning ghat on the river bank below the hotel, a concrete slab where bodies are cremated. Yesterday we attended a Hindu cremation ceremony. Megan and Michael peered into the flames and then started chanting, "There's the rib cage, there's the skull." No shock or horror, quite Lord of the Flies, without an ounce of sentiment. With the detachment of a laboratory scientist, they accept the finality. I'm not that blase. Sometimes I hide in the hotel room, especially after seeing the river-rock smoothness of a limb eaten to the elbow, flake by flake, by leprosy. There are days when I cannot face the beggars. It's the mothers with babies that I cannot resist. I've decided to distribute a certain amount of rupees when I go out. After that's gone, I have learned to say Pice china, which means "no more money." Then they don't pester you.
John handles the Asian people with such offhanded ease. I see so many Western men awkwardly posture to prove themselves; it's pathetic. They act as though they're so magnanimous, like We're all equal. You can tell by their apoplexy when they don't get their way that they secretly believe dark-skinned people should be subservient. John spent so many years in Asia, he grins at the way it kicks the instant gratification out of your agenda. He's loose around these people, he laughs easily and engages them gracefully with a teasing playfulness. This social tai chi melts resistance; with a flick of his innate imperiousness, he lets them know he has all day, no, all year, and pretty soon they're knocking themselves out for him. When I see those uptight Western wimps, I'm thrilled to be traveling with him. He sets a great example for the kids.
October 25
Nanichuri, the Nepali nanny of the German woman who manages the hotel, has become quite attached to Megan and Michael. Tiny enough to fit into a suitcase, she is fiercely attentive to Kim-la, her half-Tibetan charge. We have entrusted the children to Nanichuri's care and traveled west by motorcycle to Pohkara, a resort at the foot of the Annapurna Range.
It was the most incredible ride. John had often spoken of this tropical lake with Mount Machupichari towering 27,000 feet above the murky green waters. It took us seven hours to drive the 200 kilometers on the twisted highway, filled with beings of all kinds. Mostly water buffalo, chickens, and goats, but we did come across a man lying on his stomach in the middle of the road, reading a book. Nepal has an Alice in Wonderland quality, where things look curiouser and curiouser and all you can do is giggle because it's so convoluted. Even the landscape is hard to compute. It's all straight up-and-down mountainsides with terracing on every available inch, which gives everything a rippled, tipsy effect, like when you watch a river moving and then shift your eyes back to the land. The road is chipped high into a mountainside, and below the sheer cliffs plunge down through dark narrow canyons to the twisting rivers fed by melting Himalayan snow.
The orange mud-and-straw thatched huts look particularly elegant at this time of harvest, hung with golden strings of braided corn, creamy garlic, and puddled orange pumpkins. From their elaborate black carved wooden windows, faces peak out at us in surprise. Westerners on a motorcycle are an unusual sight. The winnowing, threshing rhythms of working with nature softens the mind as the body blends into the mountains' curves. You could cry with every passing sight, the goatherd, the rapid "Hello! One rupee? Goodbye!" echoing from the children. Golden raspberries sold by the roadside in paper cones look and taste like jewels. The high mountain air is so intoxicating, I feel constantly giddy. Each moment of the ride held something unexpected, exploding constantly varying textures, accompanied by the rock and roll blasting on our twin earphone'd Walkman. Johnny would dip and sway the motorcycle in rhythm with the music. We felt like we were sailing through Paradise, velcro'd to each other, dizzy in love, and enraptured by the spirit of this magical kingdom.
It was dark when we arrived in Pokhara. I never saw the mountains until this morning, just the smoky town and men sitting on blankets, selling parts of used flashlights and ballpoint pens. John had made reservations for us at the Fishtail Lodge, on the far side of the lake. We parked the bike and signaled for the hotel boatman, who pulled a raft silently through green water, hand-over-hand on a rope strung from the other bank. It was so tropically soft and quiet, we fell asleep soon after dinner. This morning, John woke me and told me to turn my head to the right, but keep it on the pillow. "Now, open your eyes!" The view astonished me. There was the Annapurna range, with Machupichari's crowning peak. Only 15 miles away, the towering thirty thousand foot tall mountains rise so dramatically from the valley floor, I felt I could touch them.
Today I am speechless, just staring at the snowy peaks, from the pillow, from the deck off our room, from the boat we paddled about on the lake for hours. To the Nepalis, the mountains are goddesses and as I commune with them, I feel myself falling passionately in love.
October 28
We have lazed every day away in Pokhara, enthralled by the scenery. Yesterday we took a precarious jeep ride up a dry creek bed to the Tibetan refugee camp to visit a shaman that our friends in Kathmandu told us about. Powa Anchuck is famous among Tibetans and Nepalese for working miracles, especially in the cure of rabies. Without breaking the skin, they claim he sucks a litter of tiny puppies from the patient's stomach through a human thigh bone. The brood is always the exact replica of the rabid dog. Holding the creatures in his palm, they say he then eats them, bones and all.
Upon arriving at the camp, we paid ten dollars for a tiny hotel room where he set up his makeshift shrine, wearing a cardboard crown. After four hours of ritual ceremonies meant to purify the room, we were ushered in. He is old and ugly and rumored to beat his wife. Although he looks quite poor, the Queen of Bhutan consults with him regularly and he salts away her payments.
He didn't look up when we entered, continuing to make offerings to the deities. Suddenly his head snapped back, his eyes rolling, his raspy voice turning into a shriek. He used a small bone to suck out what he claimed were blood clots from the back of John's neck. He asked if John had fallen in the past year. We remembered his tumble down the long marble staircase at the Boulderado. There were five tiny red clots lying in Powa Anchuk's palm and the atmosphere in the room was charged and crackling.
October 30
Our return to the Vajra last night held more surprises. We went straight to the children's room, and found them in bed. They had come down with a fever while we were gone. As they were telling us how sick they had been, a tall woman with long straight black hair, wearing a traditional Tibetan dress, flew into the room. "How do you do? I'm Hetty MacLise. I've just returned from India and found your children ill, so I tended them when Nanichuri was busy."
Hetty is the British mother of one of the rare acknowledged Western tulkus, a reincarnated lama. Her son is the sixth highest incarnation in the Kargyu Lineage, with His Holiness Karmapa and the Four Regents preceding him. The child, Ossian, is now fifteen years old. As a young boy, he had spent many years at the Kargyu monastery up the hill at Swayambhu. Hetty has just returned from visiting him in Sikkim, where he has been pursuing his studies at Rumtek, Karmapa's monastery.
Hetty tells us Ossian's father, Angus MacLise, was a beat poet and a drummer with the Velvet Underground who died in Kathmandu many years ago. She is an artist and lives here at the Vajra. She looks like a cross between an Acid Queen and a Tibetan matron, very flamboyant and colorful. We sat up half the night, captivated by her stories.
November 5
We have become fast friends with Hetty. This morning she and I took the children to the King's Royal Game Reserve for an elephant ride. Sailing along twelve feet off the ground to the peculiar sway rocking sway, the beast undulated like a plodding water bed through the jungle. Our heads were level with golden monkeys dangling from sun-dappled treetops. We watched in fascination as the trainer, called a mahout, steered with his bare feet placed behind the huge pink-freckled ears. There was one terrifying moment when the mahout's mallet bounced off the elephant's head as he was guiding her. As we halted on a steep slope, she stood perfectly still while he climbed twenty yards down the hill to collect it. We sat there holding our breath, at the mercy of this unattended behemoth, fully expecting her to bolt back to the stable like a riderless horse. Hetty started chanting mantras for protection, and we all joined in, giggling somewhere between giddiness and terror. Patient and still, the elephant stood silent as a mountain. She lifted the mahout gently back to his seat with her trunk and continued past monkeys scurrying out of her way on the trail far below us. We sang all the way back to the barn.
I've asked Hetty if I could tape the story of how Ossian was discovered to be a tulku. I've been praying for something to write about. Since we're staying at a hotel, I don't have a domestic reference point. Without cooking, shopping, or cleaning up, sometimes I'm a bit lost about my identity and dismayed at how much it's been wrapped up in being a caretaker. I've also seen how those actions are more than drudgery. They were ways of showing my family how much I love them, by creating grace, beauty, and order. Now that energy is transmitted by spending time listening, explaining, and exploring together.
I found a wonderful room at the top of the hotel to practice my ngondro. I'm just starting the 100-syllableVajrasattva mantra of purification, and the flow of Sanskrit words comes very slowly. Out the window I can see across the entire misty blue valley, past the medieval city to the mountains beyond. I am so blissed out when I finish, it's heaven. So when I'm not hanging out with John and the kids, I practice, read, write letters, wander through the streets just looking-looking as the Nepalis put it. Sometimes I miss "work" Most Westerners are here to study or trek, very few have jobs unless they teach or are employed by an embassy. In fact, it's considered rude to ask "What do you do?" This is to avoid the same awkwardness you feel when you're just a mother or a homemaker and someone asks that; you secretly want to smack them because you don't have a better answer.
Things move at a slower pace here and so little can be accomplished compared with American efficiency. It's very humbling, and many Westerners can't take it. Their egos feed on habitual hurry. Soon they're off, buzzing from one lama to another, then down to India to check out Sai Baba's ashram or the hippie-infested beach at Goa. It takes a certain amount of stamina to make a life here. Interviewing Hetty will be a welcome attempt at creating the feeling that I'm accomplishing something.
December 2
Yesterday was Michael's eleventh birthday. We managed to put together a great party for him, with one amusing mishap. There's a bakery in town where you can order real Western birthday cakes and so we had one delivered by taxi to the hotel this morning. About an hour later we heard a great commotion in the courtyard below our window. Apparently, the wrong cake had been sent up. Unbeknownst to us, you can order cakes laced with liberal amounts of marijuana from that bakery, and a loaded one had been delivered by mistake. The bakery was delivering the dope-free cake and trying to get the other one back from the kitchen manager. We all had a good laugh, but it would have been dreadful if Michael's young guests had bitten into the wrong one. Hetty told us a similar thing had happened to her when she'd ordered a cake for one of the lamas. Often, when you walk out of the monastery up at Swayambu, a Nepali hustler will whisper, "Smack, cocaine, marijuana?" Since the sixties, Westerners have been coming here for the drugs. I hate what it's doing to the Nepalese, a genocide in the making.
The children played soccer in the courtyard, and then the hotel served them lunch. After the cake, we all went upstairs and watched videos.
December 12
Hetty and I have been getting up early every morning and taking a taxi to Choki Nyima Rinpoche's monastery across town in Boudenath where he is giving a weeklong Three Yana seminar. After his talks, the monks serve a lovely lunch and then they offer Tibetan language lessons. I'm struggling with the letters, which I love drawing. It's considered a sacred language and I feel the energy when I'm practicing.
While Rinpoche lectures, you can hear the high voices of the youngest monk-lets, some of them only four years old, reciting the alphabet. They are so adorable in their miniature red robes, earnest and sincere, far from their homes and parents. I wonder if they get lonely. I remember Trungpa Rinpoche talking about missing his mother "as only a small boy can" in his autobiography, Born in Tibet.
December 26
We actually celebrated a Christmas of sorts. A German family brought over some pine boughs hung with handmade ornaments, stuck in a pottery urn, so that we would have a tree. John had been cruising the Tibetan traders at Bouda for the rare perfect pieces of coral, and he made me a beautiful mala, a string of dark shiny wooden beads interspersed with fat bright-red round pieces of coral, like cherry tomatoes. A mala is a Tibetan rosary, used for counting mantras.
Hetty joined us as we opened our presents. We feel as if she's a part of our family now. The children adore her. Often she lets them do their home work in her room, and then tells them stories. She comes with us to their performances at Lincoln School. With Ossian gone, she showers them with her leftover maternal affection. It's quite touching.
December 30
Just for an adventure, John and I took a taxi ride above valley this afternoon. We told the driver we wanted to do some mountain viewing, as the Nepalese call it. He took us over the crest of the foothills that ring the valley. We reached a viewpoint just as pink alpenglow touched the frosted tips of the Himalayas. A hundred miles of snowy peaks stretched across the horizon, towering four miles above me, culminating near the southern end with Everest. This is nature's "Ode to Joy," and my heart burst with awe.
January 1
Last night was New Year's Eve. The Vajra held a dance with a live band which has been rehearsing here for days, mostly by playing "I'll Be Watching You" by the Police, over and over till we wanted to scream. We were up in the ballroom when the dance started. It was packed with young Nepali men. No females in sight. Nepali girls aren't allowed out of the house at night. When the band started up, they only had each other to dance with. There was no awkwardness, they simply grabbed partners and started to gyrate. It went on way past midnight. At one point a gang of boys came from up the hill from the Thamel neighborhood, and whispers went around the ballroom, "Thamel Boys coming," so they all went out in the courtyard to protect their motorcycles. John moved ours just before a whole row of them was pushed over like dominos.
Megan's Nepali boyfriend is a prince in the Newari tribe. His family owns vast amounts of land near the Tibetan border. He isn't allowed to bring her home, or even acknowledge that he's dating a Western girl. Megan is fascinated by this racism. She wants to wear saris and wonders how her copper hair would look dyed black. She and Michael are learning to speak the language and when we're in the hotel dining room, they eat Nepali-style, with their hands. John and I are delighted at their assimilation of the culture.
After midnight, John and I took a ride over to the center of the city. He brought along some trick flash paper, the kind that explodes into a ball of fire when you light it. Within seconds, he had a huge crowd around him. Giggling hysterically, they started chasing him as he rode his motorcycle in circles around the plaza. He had everyone going. No wonder he was a cult hero when he lived in Vietnam during the war, famous among the American soldiers and the Vietnamese. His charisma is magic, intoxicating; it rides the razor's wild edge. Nights like this, I wish we could stay here forever because I know how things are heightened here, and they will inevitably go flat when exposed to jaded Western attitudes.
This is us, this is the epitome of us and it feeds our adoration of each other. Few Westerners know how to nurture this level of delight. Will we have to work to keep it alive, amidst the speed that will inevitably claim us upon our return? Sometimes I wake up late at night while John's reading and he says he's been thinking about how much he loves me. There's time here to do that, to languorously appreciate the Beloved. Because nothing is hidden, not death, or excrement, or disease, everything is relaxed. There is no need to strain at the bit to keep from acknowledging the shadows, the filth, the poverty, the way we homogenize all those negatives in the West and come out desperately trying to look like we're Having a Nice Day. Here there is no Sani-Wrap on pain and so the lid is lifted and joy can soar. I am beginning to savor every minute with gratitude, and for the first time in my life, I feel at home on the planet.
Michael paid us a supreme compliment yesterday. "You guys are so polite to each other, you sound like Chip 'n' Dale." I asked Johnny what that meant.
"They're always saying things like 'You first!' and then she says, 'Oh no, you first, please!'" When the four of us eat in restaurants together, the other tourists eye us as they sit silently, having run out of things to say. They wonder what our secret is as they see us jabbering and giggling away.
January 5
This afternoon, Michael and I walked down to the bridge below our hotel. A body was burning at the ghat on the opposite shore of the river. We perched on a stone wall and watched a mountain shaman conduct a funeral ceremony for a small child on a sand spit in the river below us. He lit a pile of neatly crossed logs and prayed over the tiny shrouded body. The family sat near him and during their silent mourning, they would occasionally pull out a plastic jug of homemade liquor from the cooling river and pass it around. The mother sat slightly removed and stared at the sacred waters flowing past, her head averted from the body and the ritual. This river, the Bagmati, is like the holy Ganges to the Nepalis.
Water pollution through natural processes is insignificant in Nepal. Domestic sewage and industrial effluents are the major contributors of water pollution. Haphazard urbanisation and inadequate sewerage facilities have accelerated the discharge of domestic liquid wastes without any treatment. Almost all the urban areas have no wastewater treatment facilities. The cumulative effects of wastewater discharge have a striking negative impact, particularly, in the rivers flowing through the Kathmandu Valley. The holy river Bagmati is biologically dead due to discharge of such domestic and industrial wasters, particularly in the stretch flowing through urban areas.
Biological contamination is generally noticed in the supplied drinking water as well. Frequent incidence of water-borne diseases indicates the deterioration of the drinking water quality in both urban and rural areas.
Although the contribution of the manufacturing industries to the gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to be around 10 per cent, most of them discharge the effluents and solid wastes without any treatment. According to the latest Census (1996//97) of industries, the number of establishments and persons engaged in all VDCs were about 1,594 and 92,344 as against 1,963 and 1,04,364 in all Municipalities. Compared to the previous 1991/92 Census, carpet and rugs, garments, bricks, distilleries and printing establishments have decreased in numbers during 1996/97 Census.
With a concentration of 56.76 per cent of total manufacturing establishments, the Central Development Region (CDR) is found to be the most busy region in manufacturing activities. The region shares 70.54 per cent of the total employees, and 73.04 per cent of total wages and salaries. It has also shared 76.04 per cent of the total value added with 66.84 per cent of input and 70.5 per cent of the total output.
In contrast to the CDR, the Far-Western Development Region (FWDR) shares only 3.74 per cent of the total number of manufacturing establishments.
Localised industrial pollution is also on the rise. Wastewater is directly discharged on to the terrestrial and aquatic systems without any treatment. The wastewater generally contains a high load of oxygen demanding wastes, disease causing agents, synthetic organic compounds, plant nutrients, inorganic chemical and minerals, and sediments (Devkota and Neupane, 1994). Total industrial wastes have been estimated at 0.076 million tons of TSP, 8.557 million cubic meter of wastewater, 5.7 thousand tons of BOD, 9.6 thousand tons of TSS and 22 thousand tons of solid wastes. Industrial TSP release in the Kathmandu Valley exceeds the total load discharged in all other development regions. A recent sample survey of 36 industries throughout the Kingdom revealed that the population equivalent (PE) of industrial effluent ranges from 416 to 9,540 (Devkota, 1997; Table 2.8.3). It is generally accepted that local human PE is about 50 gram per day.
Although urbanisation and industrial development is at an infancy stage, water pollution is rapidly increasing in most of the areas of the country, both in urban and rural areas. Water quality is degraded through the discharge of untreated domestic wastewater and industrial effluents. Continued efforts are required to minimise pollution load through the enforcement of pragmatic standards for specific types of industries, provision of incentives for use of cleaner technologies, and effluent treatment facilities. Industries should also be promoted to comply with the environmental regulatory measures. Industrial operators should also be encouraged to minimise the waste load through good house keeping practices, appropriate water management, stocking of required raw materials, optimum use of chemicals, and adoption of recovery and reuse process and complying with discharge standards.
-- WATER POLLUTION, by FORUM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH -- NEPAL
On the far bank, beneath a towering pagoda, the other body had almost totally been reduced to ashes. John wandered down from the hotel looking for us and we sat on the bridge for several hours, absorbing the two funerals. Huge pigs and water buffalo wallowed under our dangling feet. A Sherpa mountain guide stopped to chat. He showed us where he'd lost two fingers to frostbite on his most recent successful Everest expedition.
As the torch was put to the child's pyre, across the river the other family was shoveling the charred remains of the cremated body onto a bamboo mat, which they then spilled into the slow-moving water. We watched the blackened fragments of bone flow downstream. The huge buzzards wheeled above the pagoda and the snow mountain tips leaned gracefully over the valley in watchful reverence. I felt a simultaneous rush of impermanence and fulfillment, bliss and emptiness.
January 6
John wrote this poem about yesterday:
Subtly, recognition binds me. Wonderfully
Isolated this afternoon, waiting like
A dumb Sioux Indian waiting for a vision,
I've been sitting on a narrow bridge overlooking
A tiny river at the base of a Nepali hill
Crowned by the Buddhist Stupa of Swayamhu.
Marpa the Translator studied some Sanskrit
Waited and rested here for three years before
Attempting the convection heat of the Indian
Plain, and the luminous incandescence of his
Teacher Naropa.
Today, my view of the Bagmati River is bracketed.
A small child is burning on a pyre at the
Prow of a little sandbar. The flames are
Licking at the rubber shower shoes of a Tamang
Shaman. He chain-smokes, Bell and Dorje in hand.
As he points the direction for the child's spirit
To travel, helpful relatives guzzle rakshi, the
Whitest of lightning from the plastic jug kept cool
In the river. They totter a bit and toy with the
Embers. A cheap Buddha Amitabha thanka flutters
On a stick in the wind.
On a riverbank a few yards away to the east,
An old Hindu woman, dissolving on her own pyre,
Has exposed her rib cage to finally embrace the
Sky. Her scalp has popped open like a lychee to
Offer her shiny skull as a reminder.
Between these curious columns of smoke, naked
Children are playing in the shallow brown
Water, while handsome male ducks quarrel mildly
For the affection of a particularly splendid
Other. She quacks indifferent concern about the
Whole business of her Bagmati.
After many years in Asia, the scene is not
Too strange for me. A peace that long ago
Passed misunderstanding flickers through my
Mind. Still, Sacred Outlook becomes fragile as I watch
The ashes of the dead glide down the river.
Tears from my eyes, nose, and throat
Mix with the green flotsam of this tropical
Himalayan river, slashed clear and open by
Manjushri's true sword. Double-edged wisdom
Rings through this poor man's Burning Ghat.
January 14
We took the kids to Pohkara last weekend. Megan and John went on the motorcycle and Michael and I flew. With the plane at 20,000 feet, the mountains are still two miles above you, which is mind-boggling. I'm so used to flying over the Rockies, where they're two miles below. The children made instant friends with the Nepali kids who live near the Fishtail Lodge and they're gone all day. They've learned to fashion slingshots from twigs and shoe leather, to fish with a branch and twine, floating on rafts, diving from the boats, coming home waterlogged, Third World Tom Sawyers.
We love to imitate the Nepali children's gentle pidgin English. They will sit forever watching John turning the motorcycle headlight off and on for them, chanting "Light coming" as it goes on and patiently waiting till he turns it off, saying "Light pinished" in hushed voices filled with awe. When one of them got in trouble with his father, the brother told our kids he couldn't play anymore that day. "He crying-sing," he relayed sadly, in their wonderfully poetic way.
John and I drove into town today. He wanted to buy me a shawl of purple velvet embroidered with red strawberries. This is a status symbol among the women of the mountain tribes and he thinks I should have one too if I'm going to be completely Nepali. Last week as I was browsing in the gift shop of the Annapurna Hotel, I overheard the owner saying to someone, "You see her, she lives here. Actually, you could say she is a Nepali." That is the highest compliment you can receive from the locals. It's also something John teases me about all the time. Wherever I go with him, I'm not content until a strange town is familiar enough so that I can navigate it by myself. When I come back and tell him about my forays, he then calls those places that I've conquered "My Bangkok, My Hong Kong, My Kathmandu." That's what he meant when he talked about the female duck in the poem, about "her Bagmati." It makes me laugh, but it also makes me feel very pleased with myself, and I know he's proud, too, because that's the way he likes to see the world. It's all about making your oyster wherever you are.
They told us we could buy the material at a tiny shop on the outskirts of town. We parked the bike under a banyan tree and walked in. They did have some of the coveted purple velvet, which comes all the way from Hong Kong. As we were ordering a length of it, I turned around. The shop had suddenly filled with a horde of incredibly silent Nepalis, just watching us. I whispered to John, "If you were blind, you'd never know that they were in here." You couldn't even feel their vibes, they were so gentle, but fascinated that Westerners would want to own one of their status symbols.
Sometimes we load the kids on the bike and ride around with all four of us, Nepali-style. They love to get as many people on as possible. When they see us do it, they laugh and point hysterically.
January 18
We're moving into a house. Hotel life is wearing thin. We lost our cover when the Western managers returned from America where they heard from William Burroughs that John and I were living here. Apparently the two women are employees of a multimillion-dollar cult which owns property all around the world. They've told everyone about the Steinbeck thing, as if to gain prestige. Whenever we walk into the dining room now, there are whispers and knowing glances. The regular guests used to treat us in a relaxed manner, but now they want to engage us and there's often that underlying push to prove something, to come away with something. The Nepali staff couldn't care less, thankfully. They still treat us with the same gentleness they bestow upon everyone. We feel like we've fallen from grace, but maybe there's something better in store. We're going into culture shock, slimed with their sicko-sycophantic fawning. I'm disgusted. They have no notion of protecting our privacy, and they don't give a fig about me and the kids, it's all groveling over John.
January 29
I contacted a rental agency in Kathmandu and found a huge furnished house. For $450 a month we have Gopal, the cook; Serita, the maid and nanny; and Krishna, who sleeps in the guard house and seems to live only to open and close our gate. He lazes around the kitchen all day, but whenever we leave the compound or come home, he stands by the huge gate at strict attention. For an extra $5 a month he will grow a vegetable garden. It's a house built for an embassy family, two-story brick with a roof garden that looks over the valley. We just finished eating lunch up there, cooked by Gopal and served by Serita. Now we are Sahib and Memsahib. They bring us breakfast in bed and ask what we will be wanting for lunch and dinner and what time we want to eat. Gopal shops, Serita cleans the house and does laundry in the bathtub. When the kids come home from school, she fixes them a snack. The Lincoln School bus drops them off at the corner, and you can tell they're coming, because the little kids line the street and shout, "Michael-el! Michael-el!" I don't know if it's his strawberry-blond hair or his equanimity, but he's certainly inherited John's ability to charm and he walks in the door beaming.
This morning we hired a sign painter to write "STEINBECK" on our gate in Nepali, as is the tradition. We stood there watching while he did it and, as he put away his can of red paint, we looked at each other in delight. No one would ever know that strange script had anything to do with our name, and we felt safe again. We would never have written it in English. Escaping the connection is part of the healing that's been occurring here.
February 1
We're on our way to Ossian's monastery in Sikkim with Hetty. Megan decided to stay behind with friends so she wouldn't miss school. Yesterday we flew to Patna, India. The endless boredom of the flat plains is a heart-wrenching contrast to the awake and vertical textures of the magical kingdom we've left behind. Like John, I've already decided I much prefer Nepal to the chaos of Mother India, whose citizens seem like spoiled children compared to my noble Nepalis. Last night, when the heat subsided, we hired a rickshaw to take us to the Ganges in the moonlight. When we arrived back at the hotel, we stopped at a bookstore next door. Suddenly the driver came up to John and slapped him on the shoulder, insisting that we owed him more money than he'd originally asked for. John pounced on him like a wildcat and shoved him up against the wall, yelling, "Don't touch me. Don't you dare ask for more money. Get out of here or I'll call the police." As the driver peddled furiously down the street, his rickshaw tilting behind him, John explained that India was a far cry from the protected enchantment of Nepal was impressed by how quickly he assessed the situation. Had he stood there bargaining, a crowd would have gathered, opinions would have formed, and that's how all those Indian riots start.
At midnight, I got violently ill. Johnny heard me retching in the bathroom and called out, "Oh, you poor sweetheart. That's the loneliest sound in the world." It was true, I'd been thinking the same thing. If it weren't for his presence and his protectiveness, I would have felt like I'd been shot into a distant galaxy. India is so foreign and I missed our gentle Nepali home. My heart melted when I heard those words drifting around the cool tile floor. John always knows how to say just the right thing.
Outside our window was the most romantic courtyard, wild with flowers and ancient ruins scattered among the palms and banyans. We sat on the window seat, drinking in the cool moonlight. This morning I felt stronger and ready to tackle Mother India again.
After flying into Siliguri, we hired a leather-lined British taxi to drive us up the vertical road to Darjeeling. Past tea plantations and the small Himalayan people who plow up and down the steep 8,000-foot hillsides like sturdy Shetland ponies, past the most curious Victorian gingerbread houses built during the Raj period, all hidden and then suddenly revealed between thick fog and brilliant sunlight. Tonight we're staying at the Windermere Hotel, complete with a library and fireplaces in the rooms, yet run by Tibetans. I keep pinching myself, to think we're actually in West Bengal. It's so exotic, it's intoxicating. I feel at any moment a tiger could leap from the forest, or a maharajah could ride by on an elephant.
February 2
This morning Michael and I got up at 6:00 A.M. to look at the sunrise on Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the Himalayan range, floating over the steep hills and narrow valleys of Darjeeling. We walked around the hotel grounds till we found the best view, and there she was. She had lifted her foggy veils for us, her snows were seeped in the pink tinge of dawn, framed by the dark towering firs. We sat there for the longest time, in silence, in awe.
The distance from Darj to Cantok is 180 kilometers. We descended one steep mountain, followed the Tista River with its innocent sandy white shore; crossed the Sikkim border into a gentle land of fifteen-foot poinsettias, Day-Clo bougainvillea, and thatched huts covered with orchids; climbed another perpendicular mountainside; and there was our destination, Rumtek Monastery. Mostly we traveled in first gear. When we crossed the Tista, Johnny leaned over and whispered, "Someday we're coming back here, just you and me on the motorcycle, to camp out on that sand."
We reached the monastery courtyard at dusk. The splatters of young monks in red robes ran to crowd around us, staring at Michael's blond hair. We set off down a corridor of shadows to find Ossian, and suddenly he was there, beside us. He had a warm, slightly devilish twinkle in his eye. Since no hugs were allowed in public, he could only smile. We all piled back in the jeep for a short ride to the house where we'd be staying, and then Ossian really hugged his mother. The narrow alleys leading up to the monastery compound were filled with whispers about the Western visitors. As we climbed higher, a single sound began to swell from the shadows. "Michael, Michael-el." The Tibetans had seen the golden-haired boy and learned his name. We marveled at the speed with which he could magnetize an entire village.
February 6
We are staying with a Tibetan family in a simple house that overlooks the valley. Tonight, as we climbed into our sleeping bags, John turned on the shortwave radio and suddenly, in this remote mountain village, surrounded by Tibetan lamas and peasants, we heard the familiar lines of a BBC production of The Red Pony. We felt lineages of all kinds converging upon us, from the valley below, from the vast stretch of mountains zooming down into India, flying across China to England where some anonymous actors had gathered to read John's father's book into a microphone. Our world feels small and cozy and close to the gods in their heavens.
February 8
We have been privy to the inner workings of the political system of the Kargyu Lineage, in a very intimate way. The lamas have confided in us about their concerns for Ossian's state of mind, considering how much time he has spent away from the confines of monastic discipline. We are caught in the middle, because we know how much Hetty misses her son. We also know how much Ossian misses Western culture -- motorcycles, girls, videos, music. Hetty worries that if Ossian leaves the monastery, he will not be able to fit into the outside world. I sense a deep confusion in the boy. I fear he will not stay the course.
John had a man-to-man talk with him this morning. "I told him I was selfish. I want him to grow up and become a great teacher. Ossian knows he's in a tough position. He wants to leave, but he's also ambivalent because he knows about the myth of freedom."
This evening, we had a serious conversation with the Regents about Ossian's fate. They fear his exposure to Western temptations has spoiled him beyond repair. We asked them to give him another chance. They said the only way they could rectify the situation was if he were not allowed to see his mother anymore, because they feel she stirs up too much unrest in him when she visits. There is no easy answer in this situation, and we feel badly for everyone.
February 10
Tonight we're staying at the Tashi Deleg Hotel in Gantok. John and Michael have gone down to the marketplace to sell our tape recorder for Indian rupees to get us home tomorrow. In our Western arrogance, we assumed there would be an American Express office here, in case we needed more cash. The manager has sent up tea and biscuits and I'm looking out the window, down to the vegetable stalls hundreds of feet below the cliff side on which our hotel is perched. The tumult, the energy, shouts, flapping prayer flags, bustling, trading, all blend together in shocking contrast to the tiny silent curve of buildings I can barely see through the mist on the opposite mountain. Like Brigadoon, Rumtek Monastery sits veiled and mysterious, holding our hearts and the exotic story we left behind.
February 12
On the way back from Sikkim, at the Biratnegar Airport in Eastern Nepal, in spite of our tickets, there weren't enough seats available for us on the plane. Rather than spend the night in the funky hotel, John in his infinite Asian travel wisdom told the airline attendant that our daughter had been involved in a motorcycle accident in Kathmandu and we had to hurry home. Royal Air Nepal squeezed us on a charter flight along with a squadron of Ghurka soldiers returning from training in Hong Kong with their wives. Michael sat on the jump seat, which he loved.
Waiting for the plane, we left Michael in the coffee shop of the airport with his Pac-man and strolled out to the empty airstrip. It was there that I really got a hit of what Johnny's nine years in Asia must have felt like. In that thin winter sunlight, everything was utterly simple and unencumbered. No moving parts. I wanted to stop time then. Johnny pulled me against his chest. "You're the only person in the world whose mind I really trust."
"I feel the same about you."
That's the supreme compliment between us. Better than love you forever or you're really good in bed, it's a victorious, rock-steady love that goes beyond impermanence.