Unanswered Questions

I just finished reading Narayan Wagle’s Palpasa Café, and I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the best books I have ever read. I am not amazed, for I always knew there were such talents in Nepal, only waiting to bloom, and how beautifully this one has blossomed. But I am not satisfied with what I learnt. I am not sure if the story is true (but it was so real, I could picture everything he had described so vividly), but I can blindly put my life on the line when I say that such instances and cases happened a lot during the insurgency—unknown disappearances, bombings and forced participation, cries and blood and death. But this is not a book review.

Now I am left with many unanswered questions and nowhere to look for solutions. I am sad, hurt, overwhelmed, infuriated and helpless, all at the same time. I am awestruck by the way I was so unaware of what was going on around Kathmandu, the way blood flooded the gallis and pakhas of my nation, and bullet-shells and gunpowder filled the open air in the most purest of places and in the lives of the genuinely innocent, all while I sat enjoying a cold lemon soda on the roof of Brezels’ listening to live music from Shisha’s right across the street, talking about how awesome it would be to go to Nagarkot yet again for a night-out. I find everything unreal and how all that was happening—people dying, buses exploding, infants being killed—instances and pieces of which I had read in newspapers on a daily basis but never really pictured so vividly (which the book helped me do). I had not the remotest idea of reality. I was indifferent, these things did not touch my life personally and so, I had no concerns, no responsibility or any reason what-so-ever as to why I should be concerned. This book has made me realize how terrible life was in places affected by the conflict, and now, I feel guilty. Not just guilty, but more disgust at the shallow life that I've been leading, and how ungrateful I have been.

Palpasa Cafe is about civil unrest and the Maoist insurgency that took Nepal by its roots and shook its foundations, with the destruction of lives and properties of proportions previously unknown to Nepalis. But like I said earlier, I am not a critic and my opinions are not about the book, but about the picture it showed me of Nepal, one that I had never known and how it made me uneasy from the inside. I am just not ready to accept the fact that that was how life was outside of Thankot and this is how teenagers from Kathmandu are. I am not stereotyping anyone here, but I had quite a number of friends, and friends of friends I knew who’d have friends I had met once or twice, and I can downright say that no one was remotely interested in anything happening outside of their oh-so-pretty-lives; I am no exception, and it hurts a little.

But who is to blame? I am not looking for an excuse or poking fingers, neither am I covering up for the shallowness of my own generation, but I really have no idea who is responsible for us being so uncaring about our nation’s state and the plight of our brothers and sisters. Is it a lack in the schools that they don't get students involved in social projects that might help city-dwellers better understand the world outside of their comfy homes and homely couches? Or is it the parents’ fault in trying to shield their children from the harsh realities of other lives, so much so that  that their worlds begin and end within the four walls of their room and the peripheries of Kathmandu and only opens up for a holiday to the lakeside. Or is it the government’s fault in not doing anything to bridge the differences that exist between a preppy primary level boarding school girl and a 6-year old fetching firewood for the dinner-fire in places that have yet to see a bulb glow in the darkness? Who is to blame, who is responsible?

Finger-pointing would be to no avail either, but this restlessness within doesn’t know any better. Neither can I acknowledge reality as it is—that the state of my country is in ruins and no one is doing anything for its resurrection, nor can I let alone the thought of how blinded we were by the smog and the brouhaha of Kathmandu that we failed to hear the ear-piercing shrieks and cries of the unfortunate, innocent victims or the deafening explosions that shredded both—the human bodies, and the lives of the loved ones that were left alone to cry their eyes and heart out. I can’t help but wonder how the city-denizens were so lost in their materialistic quest for wealth accumulation that they chose not to see the emotional upheaval of their counterparts and ignored any calls for help or support.

While people in Kathmandu are complaining about the nine-hour load shedding causing them to miss their favorite soaps on t.v. and not having cold water to drink since their refrigerators don’t work without electricity or how the Nepal Yatayat was too packed on the way home or that the taxi-fare was too high, there will then be old, helpless buda and budi waiting to die as they have nothing to live for after having lost their young sons and daughters in the war; there will still be eyes, dried out and hollow, looking at the horizon for the sons, daughters, husbands, wives, lovers and anyone else who disappeared without a trace; there will still be the 5-year-old daughter pulling her mother by her sari and asking her where her dad has gone.

Now, I am alarmed, enraged, troubled, distressed, disturbed, hopeless and lost. I don’t know what can become the father figure in a child’s life or what can bring a smile upon the wrinkled faces that have lost everything that ever meant anything to them. I just don’t know, and that makes me restless. I can’t describe how I feel at this point, after having poured all of my frustrations and agitations and complaints, but it makes me uneasy, and this isn’t helpful in any way either. But I just don’t know any better.
 

This blog was originally published on pukurey.wordpress.com on January 23, 2010.