Black Sheep- A Magnet for Criticism

Sometimes I wonder how two people who grew up together in the same kinds of families (the children of two siblings) can be so different. [This post is inspired by some comments that I got from relatives yesterday.]

My first cousin and I are less than a year apart. She wants to study, get a job, get married, and have kids. She does not care about what job she gets, as well as it pays well, and there are chances for some recognition and promotions. I want to do something I love. I care about the educational standards in my country, and I’m resolute on doing something about it, or at least trying. I want to study something that interests me, something that will challenge me and something I care about. She chose her subject because it has “scope” all over the world. I think taking a year off increased the depth of my understanding about work, life and my country. She would never consider it. She gloats at the thought of finishing her Masters by age 23, by which age I will just have finished my Bachelors. For her, it’s not about where you get, or how rich your experiences are, it’s about how fast you get there.

Cute guy, another cute guy, and sprained ankles

Ouch. Why me?

The phrase reminds me of a chain-mail that I was sent, about a world-champion tennis player who had cancer never asking God “why me?” because God had not only chosen her to suffer from a cancer that prevented her from playing, he/she had also made her a world champion in tennis.

Dreams.

Don’t dwell on dreams, for if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

And from one of my older posts:
At one time, I used to say, “Dreams die but don’t kill.” I’ve realised now, that although dreams themselves aren’t harmful, the death of a dream can be sorrow enough to kill. I remember reading something in a Hindi story by Prembad. It was something like this, “No, Vani, you shouldn’t let any dream be more than life. If that dies, everything in you will die. Then, you will have to live like an empty container that will flow effortessly with the flow of time. It happens, Vani, there is nothing inside the body, and the body just floats more.” It makes me wonder whether I’ve let my dreams be more-than-life. And then I remember yet another saying, “remember that great love and great achievement include great risk.”
I do not want to be an empty container.

Cross Your Fingers for Me

Rejection letters are not fun.  At all.

To cheer me up, or to stop me from whining, people say stuff like “don’t worry, you’ll go someplace you deserve to be.” They even give me examples from their lives, or from that of other friends. Atulya’s been very nice about it, and something Priyanka said made sense “you’re meant to go to a certain place and meet certain people; don’t worry you’ll get there”. Ajju even withdrew her application from two places I had applied to after she got her college. I’ so lucky to have her as a friend.

Despite all that, and the fact that things end up fine, it’s still unfair. People who have the same GPA got into college already, and I have better work experience and SAT scores. I didn’t force myself to work so that I’d get into college; my restlessness was enough of a motivation. But I’d expect it to pay off. With only 7 colleges remaining, it’s hard to stay optimistic. On a better note, I’m more excited at the prospects of India (as a backup) than I previously was.

Please cross your fingers for me.

All I want to say

All I want to say is spread over my head like little clouds in the bright blue sky, or like little islands in the vastest of oceans.

1. This, the first one, is my musings over the events of the past few days. There are some people who get some of the things they want, and some people who get ALL the things they EVER wanted. And there are lots and lots of people in between. There are also those people who think they NEVER get ANYTHING they want, but they’re mistaken. We’re all lucky, although the extent may differ for each one of us. When we think of ways in which someone is luckier than us, we might as well also think of how we’re luckier than them. Like Robert Frost said, life goes on.
2. Picture this: you’ve hung out with a group of people for around five years, sometimes having such big differences that the only reason you stuck to them was because you didn’t have the courage to “ditch” them and hurt them. One person from that group was almost a best friend (only “almost”, even then.) Then one fine day, you find out that that certain someone never liked you. She’s always hated sharing her “best friend” with you. It’s shocking, a tad bit painful, and even amusing. I absolutely DETEST people who establish, or want to establish ownership on another human being- I mean what do words like “sharing” imply anyways?
3. Now for a concept that I’ve written a million times on my diary, but never on the blog. (Imagine how much I can rant when I actually write a diary AND blog.) Anyways, do you know of the times when, for no apparent reason, or for a chaotic jumble of reasons, you wish that you wouldn’t have to wake up the next morning? It’s not the same as wanting to die, not the very least like it. It’s like wanting to hibernate, or to not have to think about anything. Personally, I feel like this desire can be satisfied be sleeping with just a little bit of sun on you, sun sieved perhaps by thin curtains, or the net window (jaali ko jhyal).It’s just that I’ve been feeling a that for the past week, although it’s been quite a normal week.
4. Okay, I can’t downplay the good things that have happened this week. The first was a meet with a friend after (WHAT?!?) two months. We had coffee (and cake), motorcycled through Sanepa, out into the Ring Road, and in again from the __-Bagmati route. Then we had some pizza that tasted like jaad (while I giggled uncontrollably over it for almost half an hour.) The second was a friend’s Bartaman party, where (too) I giggled at how someone (an ex-classmate) kept making jokes that weren’t funny. Going to the jotisi, how scared we were, and how he disappointed we were with his accuracy when we stepped out. A pastry from a friend (guy) who used to be so rude to me at school. Tasty momos full of fat, pizzas so hot they blistered the roof of my mouth, and yummy sundaes.
5. Now for the bad things that happened. (It amazes me how the weekends were the least eventful days of my week.) I had a fight with another ex-classmate when I (apparently) insulted her cousin who had dumped a friend of mine. It didn’t bug me, apart from the fact that one of my closest friends is also really close to that girl. Something else that pissed me off was the lack of any credit whatsoever for the success of a project I had contributed to (with payment, of course). Working a whole day underfed. And the juice that I spilt on one corner of my laptop’s keyboard. At first, a few keys were just a little hard. Now they’re sticky (blame all the sugar in the juice). Just what I thought could never happen to me.
6. Perhaps for the reason mentioned in point number 3, I’ve been reading a lot. An amusing fact: my two mechanisms of defense (not the ones you study about in Psychology) are just the opposites of each other. One’s reading, because it takes me into another world. The other’s writing, because when I write, I become clearer about what I feel. It’s funny that one keeps me from thinking too much, and the other cleanses me by making me think to a point of saturation. Which one I use, depends on the mood of the time. I love the way a human mind (and body too, but not the topic of discussion here) works.

Well, now that I’ve written about why I haven’t been writing, I go. Cross your fingers until the colleges I’ve applied to send me their decisions.

I’ll leave you with a song I love (it just played on my computer). It’s called “Zindagi” from the Hindi film “Yuvraaj”. This one’s especially for Ajju and JJ. Don’t senti nakhau too much when you listen to it, la?

Till I see you again,
Maichyang

Good-ness, etc

I’ve always wanted to believe that there are good people in the world. My friends used to come up with incidents that showed how people are becoming more and more selfish with time, that every progressive generation becomes lesser and lesser helpful. I still tried (sometimes very hard) to believe that people are good at the core, or that even though EVERYONE may not be good, most people are.

Update

It’s 1:47am, and I’ve updated my post on bodhgaya. Please have a look. The pictures are the same, but I found, at the dead of the night- I woke up to catch some electricity- some text that I’d written for that post.

http://maichyang.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/294/

Lazy Lumbini days

I was in Lumbini for a month, working. Besides doing awesomely fun- and sometimes frustrating- work (teaching), I saw beautiful temples and monasteries, met awesome people, and experienced a lot. I came back on the 14th of February (what a day to come back home) so in a sense (in EVERY sense, actually), I’m late to update my blog.

Back from Break

I’m sorry for not updating my blog for obver a month. I was in Lumbini for a month, and there weren’t as many cyber cafes as a friend of my father’s had suggested. And then the loadshedding schedule made surfing the net impossible except on Fridays and one other day of the week. I mean when I’m home I can wake up at 4 or 5 (like I did today) to finish all the work I have that needs to be done on the computer. In Lumbini, running to the cyber to use the computer at midnight is not an option. I hadn’t even been able to accept the three comments I got while I was away.

Will get back to blogging as soon as I get settled. Thanks for understanding.

8 hours of electricity- be thankful for what you have

I wrote this on Sunday. It took time to post becasue when there was electricity, I’d always forget to post it, and when there’s load shedding, there’s no internet.

When a senior from school went to college, people apparently asked him two questions when he told them he was Nepali. “Have you climbed Mount Everest?” and “Do you have electricity. It was funny, and there is a rumor that it was him who opened a facebook group called “I live in Nepal. No, I have not climbed Mount Everest and yes, we do have electricity. As I sit at home today, typing this article on my unplugged laptop, I can not quite laugh at the irony.

Starting today, we have only eight hours of electricity in Kathmandu and a large part of Nepal. The saddest part is that most of the remaining part has no electricity whatsoever. Eight hours of electricity in the capital. They say the demand increase, and production is low. But I can’t understand how the demand might have doubled or supply might have halved. It must be a difficult mix of both. I mean people in the villages just use lights and the TV. My grandparents pay the minimum fee of Rs. 80 to NEA. Demand can’t have doubled by the NEA’s “electrification of the country. It’s hrd to believe that industries increased the demand, because the media reports that industries are moving OUT of Nepal.

The Year That Was

It’s a little late to be writing this, but better late than never.

Well 2008, UNlike 2007, will be rememberred for a few special things that happened:

• REJECTION- 10 colleges, 1 not followed up on, 1 accepted with not-enough aid, and the other 8- rejected. Increasing depression with every letter of rejection. Embarrassment, and feeling not-good-enough. Crying (a lot) and people trying to be nice (“you have so many options…”, “they’re missing out on a lot”, “there’s always next year”, “whatever happened, happened for the best”, etc) MARCH-APRIL
• MOVING- (not that I’ll remember it when I think of 2008 but it was a big thing) we moved out of the house we’d been living (in rent) for the past 10 years. APRIL
• FINALS- End of high school. End of my days at RBS. Days of procrastination, organising, studying… trying to fit two years of material into 36 days, and then 35, and then 30 and then 20 and then (panic panic!) 10!!!
  Not revising well. Revising stuff (for the first time after the mocks) the night before the exam. And sleepovers-bless the bandhs. MAY-JUNE
• WORK- Well-paid work in a big organisation with awesome boss. Translation was never that fun. I wish I could enjoy it half as much now. JUNE-AUGUST
• GOODBYES- to friends who went to college AUGUST
• CLS- Civic Leadership School- a lot of fun, lessons learnt in very un-traditional ways, and so much networking. SEPTEMBER 5-9
• LOSING A SISTER- my Mom’s cousin passed away at age 24 because of a cancer they discovered at its last stage. She was my aunt, but like a sister becasue we were nearly the same age. :’( SEPTEMBER 5
• MUKTINATH- to teach nuns English (haven’t written about it in the blog but that’s why I wasn’t blogging for about a month in September. Amazing fun with so much respect and so much learning. SEPTEMBER- OCTOBER
• HARD TIMES- A friend was punished for being in a relationship with someone of the lower caste, and we’re still not allowed to meet. I was scared and lived through 12 days of hell (As did JJ and Ajju) Things ended fine, and she goes to college, but we still miss her, and loads. We miss meeting legally, shopping together, and the sleepovers. But the love is still there, and grows, even. OCTOBER 4
• RE-EXAMS- No, I did not fail the first time. I just decided I could do better. The results aren’t out yet, but I’m hopeful. (I won’t remember the year for that, but still) OCTOBER-NOVEMBER
• MORE TRANSLATION WORK- All I can say is that I hope no one has to do translation to feed their family. Unless it’s a really good piece(s) they’re translating. It’s still very hard work you know, and some people you work for just can’t understand that. NOVEMBER- DECEMBER
• TRAVELLING- Bodhgaya NOVEMBER. (I guess “MUKTINATH’ was also amongst my travels.)
• MORE REJECTION- My ED college rejected me. This time there were no tears. Just sighs. And hopelessness. Even considered going to the jotishi (fortuneteller) until Baba refused to take me. DECEMBER 14
• COLLEGE APPS- again, and to 14 colleges- DECEMBER
• And hoping and being thankful (for everything, including not-getting-into-college last year)- THE WHOLE YEAR THROUGH. Like Manesh sir used to say, hope is what we live on for. Imagine what your life would be if you had no hope for better, for achievement, for happiness. And being thankful, well, I just am.
• And, TWO BOYS- crushes, stories that ended very differently from those of the past, though nothing positive and nothing permanent. Glad things ended the way they did, these two times, and every other time.

I am thankful for my family, my brother (whom I miss becasue he’s in Chitwan), my friends and life.

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Load-shedding

You know what annoys me (I DO seem to be getting annoyed a lot these days)? Well, the list is long, of course, but one of the things that annoy me is how people love complaining, without understanding the issue. One example:

Although I am not, in any case, and to any extent, a supporter of the Maoists (in fact I am a ghor birodhi- anything BUT a supporter) the increase in load-shedding hours has nothing to do with them. Even if the Gordon Brown government (a successful government in its place) comes to Nepal, it will not be able to search up and build alternative sources of energy in 4 months. The serious lack of electricity that we now face is actually because of the corruption that officials in NEA have taken, and the fact that the low demands of the past gave NEA no reason to increase supply, and that suddenly this year, the demand has risen. It is due to inefficiency on the part of the NEA and otherv things, but it is NOT related to who’s in Government.

There was a rumor that a few days ago, one of the Ambani brothers was in Kathmandu to talk about investing in a new hydropower plant. But the Nepalis asked for Rs 5 crore under the table, so he went back. Not sure it’s true, but it IS a possibility, especially the corruption (money under the table= corruption). Well well…

Overly Concerned

I was just thinking a few days back, and I phrased amazingly once of the most all-embracing truths I ever stumbled across. Have a look:
“Relationships don’t work out becasue although we love the other person and want him/her to be happy, we want them to happy according to how we define happiness. We don’t want them to define happiness in their own terms and then be happy”
And I learnt this only after I tried to define happiness for someone else (a friend) and then realise my mistake.

I am SO sick of overly concerned relatives who want me to start studying. I mean, it’s not like I’m planning to stay a “high school (only) graduate” for the rest my life. But I’m taking my time, working a little and figuring out what I want to do.  And I am NOT going to be addicted to earning money.

What Patriotism Isn’t

• Patriotism IS about being concerned about your country, but it IS NOT about staying in another country, and ranting about what’s wrong in your own country.
• Even worse, patriotism is NOT about complaining that the people who still live in their country are making it “go through hell”. Yes, there are untruthful insincere people in Nepal. But there are people who do the best at whatever they do, and actually care about the country they live in, and it’s people. Sure, we can’t decrease the amount of loadshedding per week or make the availability of petrol better, but at least we’re not running away from the problem.
• What annoys me more about these cranky whiny NRNs (non residential Nepalis) is that they whine about things:
  they don’t have to live with,
  they don’t have a solution to,
  they don’t even care about fixing.
• The whiners should mind their own buisness. Or they should invest in Nepal. AND they should stop saying bullcrap about how “No lights, No Gas, No Security” correlates to “No King”. You know, those of you who live in forward un-StoneAge countries should know that most of the countries in the world (including our very own USA and France and Italy and Singapore and India and China and blah blah) are republics. Or at least you should know about Google and try to verify stuff before making statements.
• Of course I can understand the fun of working at a “gas station” (the thing that a petrol pump suddenly starts being called once you step into America) and whining about a country that’s literally on the other end of the world. But for those who have to listen to the amazing quantity and level of bullshit whining you do, it’s TORTURE.

Well, CLARIFICATION: I AM planing to go abroad to study. But I’m not gonna stay there forever, or whine about my country (and complain about how different people have contributed to it’s bad state) from a “gas station” abroad with no intentions of coming back.

Of course, Patriotism, the concept, is itself interesting. For some people, borders don’t matter. Borders are just for the rulers, the kings who capture lands to feed their own egos. They think that, at least to them, their SOCIETY is more important. Depending on the people, this may be ethnicity or caste or religion. But for someone who comes from a so-called “upper” caste (not that Brahmins have more to eat than anyone else in the same conditions) those don’t really count. For me, my society is more or less my country. (and then there’s Asia and then the World, but those come later.) Anyways, my thoughts on the “patriotism” issue also apply to other forms of  “responsibilty towards one’s society”, which I think HAS TO exist.

Quite a heavy topic there, huh? Comments please.

Alarming fact!!!

I just don’t have the words to comment on this right now… maybe later. But here’s the article…

“Nepal ranked 57 out of 88 nations in the Global Hunger Index 2008, a malnutrition survey of developing countries and countries in transition carried out by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The Himalayan nation fell into the “alarming” category, ranking below Sudan and North Korea.”

“One of the world’s poorest countries, Nepal receives more than 60 percent of the cost of its economic development from international donors including the United Nations.”
Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/04/asia/OUKWD-UK-NEPAL-UN-FOOD.php
(The International Herald Tribune website)

Bodhgaya

I’m sorry for the long silence, and it’s partly because I’ve either been traveling or busy making ends meet (okay I don’t really need to feed a family, but that doesn’t mean I can get away without working.)

Anyways, so this post is about Bodhgaya, and how an utterly unreligious person like me had nothing to do but do koras (which is basically going around in clockwise direction) around a temple when the nuns I went with (my students) were doing their puja. I used to sit in the park of the Mahabodhi temple (which is a world heritage site and very very beautiful) and write, but then men: mostly Bihari but also Nepali and Tibetan used to peer over, sit next to me or try to make conversation. At one point, this guy put on shades, walked up to me, and said “Where are you from?… Myself Rajeev, I am a sportsman.” I freaked out, and when it got too freaky I went inside the puja and sat inside the whole remaineder of the day, and the next day. I was known as the girl who sat alone and write and a young monk, on the last day, asked if I was lonely.

As a whole, the trip was pretty good. I don’t know what about it was good, but it was. I enjoyed going to places of religious importances to see them, and even felt, at two different occassions, a type of faith. I’m still not religious enough to convert (or even start to believe in the supernatural) but my 9 days in Bodhgaya did increase my curiosity about world religions, and especially about Buddhism. (I did spome reading after I got home and my faith still hasn’t increased.) And like every other experience (especially those away from home) this one helped me grow.

I experienced Bihar, which was, unfortunately, not very different from how people say it is. There are beggars on every road, and cheats at every corner. You hardly pass a woman in the streets. Oh, and people LOVE spitting (not quite different from Kathmandu) and when they do spit, it sounds like they’re trying to spit their intestines out. (“Ktthhhhh thhuuu”) The places (mostly place of religios importance) were beautiful. There were places of worship inside caves, under trees, and on hill-tops. There was a place where you had to imagine you were dead, and the person would act like he was chopping you up for the vultures like they do in Tibet and cut a little part of your hair to burn. And EVERY place of religious importance, without fail, about 40 beggars, half of them children who admitted that they wanted to eat chocolates with the money I gave them.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.

The statue of the Budhha inside the Mahabodhi temple. You have to see the ornaments to believe it.

The statue in the main temple

A random sunset in Bihar, picture(s) taken from the bus on the way to Bodhgaya.

 

 

Part 2

Well, yes, I haven’t posted anything called “Part 1″ yet. But this is the second part of a story I’ve written somewhere in this blog, and that I will not mention for reasons I alone will understand (actually it’s because I’m a scaredy-cat.) Yes, ANYONE can figure it out when they read this post. Thankfully the people I’m scared of are not as smart as everyone else. Haha. Sorry Dude, but ur DUMB.

After sleepless nights and disturbed days, failed calls to the National Helpline for Women and Children which was closed for the holidays and never-ending phone conversations, the day arrived. It was the day when Kingg’s college (and I don’t mean the college in Kathmandu that runs by that name) opened, and we (as in I and The Other One) couldn’t but be hopeful that Kingg would be sent to school. Actually, I think I was the more hopeful one; The Other One had more or less given up.

So I called the college and asked the receptionist if Kingg had come to school. “We can’t say… they’re in class right now… Doesn’t your friend have a mobile phone, Madam?” If she did have a cell phone, why would I call her college, for heaven’s sake? “We’ll find out, can you call after a while?” I couldn’t wait, so I decided to use my contacts. I called a cousin who could find out for me, and told her the whole story. She said she’d call me back. I went back to studying, not very hopeful.