A walk through the dust

by Max Geraldi (Indonesia)

A leap into the unknown Nepal

I criss crossed through the smoky alley of Nawarian temple in Kathmandu. Men gathered around playing dices with dhaka topi clutched lazily around their silver hair. Walls of red bricks painted red, cables dangled loose inna hazy daze of an afternoon. Everyone is lazy, sipping chai, telling lies, selling stories they read in a hum bum pages from the newspaper stall. Poetries drowned in lentil soup freshly cooked this morning and patriarchy rise tall like an invisible giant, shadowing mother beggars with brown sleepy kid sucking away for nourishment. I got bewildered by the sagas of kathmandu valley, absorbed by the nagas and the echoing memories of Gunga Din the black water bearer. Men with holy vermillion mark on their forehead spitting red to the gutter, next to Ganesha's small shrine where passer-bys stopped and gave a bow on their way back en masse from work. Everyday life is slowly rising up as I unknowingly walk straight into it, band of men anteing up for a morning shower by the side of the street, old women arranging masks of demonic deities opening their antique shop, and Buddhist priests marches somewhere leaving trails of saffron in a slow march. I kept pausing and shrugging, kicked a squished can of soda and turn into blind alleys addicted for more things to see. O well, o well, o well! figured out how to roll a smoke today, how to stash spices that was supposedly reserved for the holies in yellow newspaper stained with coffee marks. I kept on going, penetrating bazaars and flower markets, following a trail I cant seem to pin down, the only way I know is to follow it and not to think about it. As if these back roads where the canopies are bright blue and badly ripped, is a place that only that cuts through the in between. A place i shouldn't gone through. A place beyond my logic. The street turned crooked, to a square of shadows and empty buildings. Where sadhus and holy men, seekers of divinity dressed in garland made of purslane, night-flower, and golden marigold, preparing their saggy bodies for the night to fall. Their teeth glimmered gold, their chat reeked of laughters, filling the unseen corners of freak street with reclusive hopelessness of those who orient themselves to Nirvana far far east. I pulled myself into this street, seeking for insane conversation with men who claimed to be holy, men drenched in ganja and keef, men who left live of the mass in the pursuit of otherworldy aesthetics. Men of the books, whichsoever they quote, the puranas, the gitas, the upanishads - telling me tales of black gods and names too sacred, i can't remember. Yet i found a man i liked. He didn't say much, he just sat there. Not listening, not talking, just staring. "You better not try to take my photo, or I'll kick you’re a--," I can read his gesture saying that. So i sat with him for a little while . I saw a beautiful cloud hovering over as the other holy men huffed and puffed to Shiva, Shankara and Mahadevas. Nobody cared who i was, the island where i came from ocean miles away, stories of my life disappeared, i drowned away at one of earth’s greatest crossroad.