Good News

On the way home through the backstreets of Baluwatar I felt someone watching me. He was tall and extremely handsome. Shining blue eyes, marble white skin, rosy cheeks. A Westerner, wearing a Nepali outfit. He fixed his eyes on me, and his smile filled the grey autumn day with vibrant colours. The houses seemed to loose contours, everything turned bright yellow, orange, purple and red. I felt mesmerised, and just walked toward him as if drawn by an unknown power wondering what`s gonna happen next. When I finally reached him, he said with a radiating smile: “Jesus loves you. God bless you.”

Buddha`s Orphans

I was staying in Kathmandu this June, trying to recover from a difficult Kailash trip. Couldn`t really do much for about three weeks, just stayed in bed, and read books to immerse in different dimensions of reality to ease the pain. One day I decided to leave my confinement, and aimlessly wandered down on Kanti Path jumping like a grasshopper in my flip-flops to avoid the bigger puddles left behind by the monsoon rain, letting the sight of the brightly sunlit brick walls and the steaming pavement fill my heart with warmth, browsing the colourful street stands offering oddities from lime juice, mobile cases, plastic knickknacks, ayurvedic herbs to piles of fruits, DVDs and knitted baby clothes. I noticed a bookshop I haven`t been to before and saw with surprise a new Samrat Upadhyay book advertised in the shop window. I got suddenly energized by recalling his wonderful collections of short stories I read the year before, ‘The Royal Ghost’ and ‘Arresting God in Kathmandu’. No doubt, I had to buy the book immediately, called ‘Buddha`s Orphans’.

Samrat Upadhyay is a Nepali writer, who is teaching creative writing at Indiana University. He is not only a master of character portrayal, but also a spiritual man, who understands even the tiniest stir of the soul (or whatever different systems of thought call the core of being). I was thinking how to describe ‘Buddha`s Orphans’, and I found that the first sentence of the book says it all: ‘Raja`s mother had abandoned him in the parade ground of Thundikel on a misty morning before the city had awakened, and drowned herself in Rani Pokhari half kilometre north. No one connected the cries of the baby to the bloated body of the woman that floated up to the surface of the pond later in the week.’ This is the axis of the novel in a way, cause and effect. The story follows Raja and people who become his family to see the effects of this tragic moment in the future, but in the same time it looks back to the past for short moments to understand the causes which led to it. We recognize ourselves in the characters replaying roles inherited from our/their parents, get to know all the joy and sorrow a man can go through, and become familiar with the turbulent events of Nepali history, which provide a fascinating historical backdrop. And when I think about it, it is more than just a backdrop, political movements and events determine and change dramatically the life of Raja. Anyway… Certain characters, feelings and thoughts burnt their mark into my mind, and after reading the book in more or less one go (only the power cut could stop me:) I felt an urge to look around in Kathmandu and take photos of places where the novel was set, secretly hoping that I will bump into the characters of the story, too. On a sunny afternoon I walked out of Thamel, down to Thundikel and Rani Pokhari lake taking photos of people and places, thinking of Raja`s immeasurable pain of missing his never-seen mother. At the lake I happened to pass by a young boy who I thought had a striking resemblance of my imagined Raja. He had so much sorrow on his face, he was so still and enveloped in his painful longing that it occured to me for a moment that I might have left my own Kathmandu reality and ‘walked into the novel’. I really wanted to take a photo, but in the same time I was so afraid to be noticed. Unnecessarily. He just stared at his own train of thoughts, never realizing my presence. It was a perfect moment when time stands still. Here is the picture:

After another two months in Nepal I went to Beijing, and from time to time I had a look at Raja`s photo and thought of the novel when missing my friends, places, and the relaxed Nepali way of life in general. The smiles exchanged with strangers on the busy alleyways, the moments of joy when the electricity came back after a long blackout, the fresh monsoon rain cooling the heat and sweeping the streets clean. I thought I should send the photo to the author, but it felt so awkward. I`m not the kind of person to write to people I don`t know, I reasoned to myself. But one day just couldn`t reason any longer:), found the e-mail address on the internet and sent the photo to Samrat Upadhyay. His reply was so friendly and nice thanking me for this sudden surprise, that after reading his e-mail a few times I sat with the biggest shiny smile on my face for a whole day as if all the suffering and pain of the world was just fiction of ancient times. Must reeeeeeeead!

Zen black, zen white

'This new bamboo shoot hangs over my neighbours wall

- hasn't yet learned about boundaries -' /Satish Gupta/

Whenever I end up in Delhi, the first thing I do is to go to Connaught Place and start circling around till I find a newspaper wallah to buy a copy of the First City. It is a monthly magazine of listings of events and places to go, but nothing like the usual expat magazines you find in big Asian cities. More of an upmarket publication on culture and art for the people of Delhi with some amazing columns and interviews. My favourite column is Satish Gupta`s Zen black, zen white, a painting and a haiku (or sometimes a longer thought) arranged perfectly on a whole page. Every time I`m so excited to see it, that I have to open the magazine already while handing over the money, and only then I`m able to walk to a cafe and read the rest. Satish Gupta is an Indian painter, sculptor, writer and poet. In the 70ies when studying art in Paris, one day he walked into a second hand bookshop opposite the Notre Dame, and came across a book called Zen flesh, zen bones. Since then Zen philosophy moves his brush, pen and chisel. Now that I`m back in Hungary repacking my stuff accumulated during the last few years of travel, I found my diary written in 2003 with this haiku above and his ink painting of a bamboo. And it moved me just the same way as seven years ago.

Lungta

Guest house

'This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them all at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.'

Jelaluddin Rumi

Seat 8-9 freedom fighter only

Mt. Everest from Rombuk Monastery