When the smiling couple left the young boy with a crumpled hundred-rupee note in his hand, he swore under my breath in English, and then in Nepalese cursed a rain of rabid monkeys upon them. Nothing happened, not one of the scraggly, golden furred louts made a single malicious move towards the young lovers. They just continued to laze in the sun, licking their testicles and eating the scraps thrown to them by the people who saw this country as one huge zoo. Today’s exhibit, Swayanabath: known for the plague of monkeys who maraud around it like false deities. The boy had once seen a fat man feed an entire chocolate bar to one of them; its eyes had been bloodshot and bulging. It had looked mangy in its faltering, decimated coat. It was easy to see that the monkey was going be dead from disease by the morning, but that wouldn’t have shown in the photo taken by the fat mans fat wife, sweating and smiling in the high humidity of Nepal. That chocolate bar had been three times the value of the dirty note the boy now clutched.
The Monkey Temple is sited on a hill on the western edge of Kathmandu, there are three hundred and twenty seven steps leading up to it. These steps gradually get steeper towards the top, giving the illusion, when looking up, that they curve back on themselves in defiance of gravity. The young boy is a skilled guide; he has walked them up and told them of the Buddhist stupa which dominates the view as they progress upwards. It is one of the holiest Buddhist sites in the Kathmandu valley and is thought to contain a relic from the life of Lord Buddha himself. He talks with passion about the views that can be seen on clearer days, the snow strewn peaks of the Himalayas which his country is famous for. He is too young to realise that they do not care about Buddha and despite the boys good English, his description of the view they can not see only disappoints them. Perhaps this is why they have valued him as a third of a dying monkey.
That night the young boy huddles under a corrugated iron ceiling, the small room he shares with his mother is part of a slum on the Northern edge of Nepal’s capital city. He has a plate of Bhatt in front of him; his mother has not said a word since he handed over his small collection of tatty notes from his days work. Her mood is worsened because tonight happens to be the one night a week when she works to repay a debt to a mean man who once did a good thing. She slops a ladleful of Dharl on top of his meal, though it closer resembles hot water. Silently and by a single candle he rolls the sticky rice into small balls and shovels them into his mouth.
“I don’t see why you’re so hungry; you’re too lazy to be hungry”. She breaks the silence with an acid tone. He has not eaten since before dawn.
“Ma, I’m not lazy, I promise you.”
“In that case you’re a thief.”
“Ma, please”
“Don’t ‘please me’. The money you brought home today, it doesn’t even cloth you, let alone feed you.” This is not true; he eats two bowls of rice a day and has been wearing the same clothes for over a year. But she is bitter for reasons he will never understand, bitter for loving her child and the sacrifices that love has cost. It is really his debt; it was his young life that was saved.
“I’m sorry Ma.”
“Sorry, that helps. I’m going to work. I make sacrifices for us; you could at least do the same. Don’t forget to wash your bowl and don’t let the candle burn too long.”
It is late April in Nepal, pre-monsoon season. Not many tourists come here during the monsoons but in April many of them think they accidentally have. It can still rain pretty heavily. They usually arrive in their white linen shirts and long cotton trousers, compromising between the intense humidity and a false fear of malaria. A taxi from the airport will drop them in Thamel where they can barter over statues of Ganesha, prayer flags, and fake designer labels. They will settle into a cockroach-infested guesthouse, believing they are having a cultural experience. Then they’ll venture out to find a restaurant, usually clutching religiously to their travel guides, and therefore eating where every other third-world explorer eats. I pity their sheltered sense of seeing the world. Maybe they will sample the local cuisine; Dharl Bhat. While enjoying the rice and thickly flavoured sauce with hemp paste and spiced potatoes, they will consult their paper guides. In the morning they could visit Swayanabath, they read that children will guide them up the steps and around the stupa for a small reward. Durbar square is another option, apparently beautiful when glimpsed in the setting sun. This is the centre of old Kathmandu, one of seven different towns in the valley which joined to become the sprawling, dirty city we now know. Durbar square is a protected site and many of the ancient temples and architecture remain in tact. Here also resides the Living Goddess – God’s chosen representative on Earth, at least until puberty when she is turned out and as likely to end up in a whore house as the next impoverished women in Kathmandu. There is a lot to see and experience; for a deeply moving day out, perhaps they will go to Pashupatinath.
As they finish their meal and have another drink they do not notice the silent stabs of lightning speeding down from the slopes of the Himalayas, home to the infamous peak of Mount Everest. There is time for another drink before they hear the pounding of water on their metal roof. They can look from the window as infrequent spasms of light show a million tiny explosions on the street below, and as the rain continues that street becomes a river which swells and gushes through Thamel. This is usually when the tourists begin to panic and rickshaw drivers raise their plastic canopies and double their fairs. People will run for shelter, those who hesitate and hide in doorways will soon find themselves ankle deep in water.
The young couple argue; maybe an affair, maybe an untold pregnancy, maybe a change of heart. Western worries. She leaves and battles the flood. He stays and has another drink, and another. When he finally stumbles from the restaurant, the rain has eased and the floods are receding as quickly as they rose. An Asian man approaches him from the shadows.
“You want smoke?”
The man stumbles on.
“You like weed? Smoke? Hash?”
“Fuck off.”
“I have precious stones?”
“Fuck your precious stones.”
“Women, you want women?”
The drunken man pauses and turns to face the persistent salesman, traitor to his own country. He nods.
“Yes, yes, good. We have women. Very good women,” he is grinning as he maps out a voluptuous form with his hands, most of his teeth are missing, his hair is black and greasy, “you like pussy, we have good pussy.”
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” He says, while at the same time motioning for him to lead the way. They set off and immediately turn down a street he would never have guessed existed; it is a narrow alley, poorly lit. The guide drags his left leg as he hobbles along, it seems natural for him to limp like this but the pace the drunken man. The decision to follow though has been made and even if he wanted to leave, he is now lost in a warren of back street alleys.
He is on his way to fuck a Nepalese woman in a hidden part of Kathmandu; there is a Guesthouse with lots of rooms where nobody sleeps. In the various rooms you will find young boys sucking off old men, young girls with their tiny white thighs spread wide as their struggle to straddle the girths of local politicians and business men. There are rooms with men who allow themselves to be violated by other, richer men, just so they can fund their addiction to crack or to pay debts they made with yet other, darker men.
His guide stops at an innocuous doorway on a quiet street, a large, well dressed Asian man opens the door and glares out, he is lit from behind by a lone candle. The guide speaks rapidly in a local dialect; he seems to be uneasy now, keen to be away.
“Twenty five US dollars,” says the doorman, looking straight at the drunken man. His tone makes it clear that this is not negotiable. The drunken man looks from his guide to the doorman and back to his guide. His guide nods enthusiastically and forces a smile. Twenty five dollars are exchanged. He is shown to room number 205; the second floor has a single woman in each of its rooms, they all have their own stories. The woman in Room 205 was raped when she was sixteen, a complicated birth to a bastard son in the backstreets of Kathmandu left her indebted and poor; her father disowned her as a disgrace to the family. Ten years later this woman now lies on a single bed, unresponsive and naked; she is stunningly beautiful. He closes and locks the door behind him and then looks at her. Her breasts are perfect mounds, her nipples large, and almost black. He walks over to the bed and takes off his clothes, standing above her, erect; he grabs a handful of her hair and begins to masturbate. She continues to lay unresponsive; he comes quickly as the coarse strands rub against his circumcised penis. He then twists and pinches her nipples, they harden and so he takes them in his mouth and bites them. He is hard again but can’t stand the sight of her expressionless face and so rolls her over and takes her from behind. This annoys him, he turns her back over and slaps her, suddenly there is expression on her face; it is fear. He likes this and so hits her again, this time with a closed fist. She shrieks, it is the first time she has made a sound. He smiles and before he knows it has beaten her to death.
Pashupatinath is a sacred place on the banks of a sacred river, the Bagmati. This is the eastern fringes of Kathmandu; here the poor are burnt on pyres of drift wood, built on the muddy shore side. Families watch their corpses, shrouded in rags, turn to ash, and then they tip the smouldering remains into the water. Downstream a group of children will wash and play, sailing crudely crafted plastic pop bottles as the ashes float by. The father of the whore, who had abandoned her in life, stands by her side in death and sheds shameful tears; he is old and widowed and full of regrets. He has collected every scrap of money to pay for a proper cremation. Large blocks of dried timber are criss-crossed upon a stone plinth standing beside the Bagmati, there are many such plinths along the rivers length, some are already smouldering. Once this is done the father of the whore walks down a set of steps and shaves his own head in the sacred waters; a spiritually cleansing ceremony for the men of the family. In continued silence he returns to the pyre and lifts a delicate body, shrouded in fine and brightly coloured muslin, onto the awaiting wood. Kerosene soaked grass is laid upon the body and then a match sets everything a smoke.
A young boy sits on the opposite bank, there is a viewing platform and he has brought a young couple as spectators, to observe the culture of his country and the burning of their dead. As they watch, the smoke clears as the grass burns down, the shroud moulds to the body of the young woman beneath. The father is now grinning; death here is a celebration even if the manner and mode was violent and sad. He has a pocket full of powder and sporadically dashes handfuls of it onto the flames, they flare up in response. Dancing around with shamanic authority, always grinning, he supervises the journey of his daughter to the next life. Occasionally he will throw on more grass which will smoke and screen the action, each time the grass burns away and the smoke clears the body is more skeletal. The heat of the flames eats away at the flesh, the bloodied face blackens, and suddenly a burning foot breaks free and tumbles down the stairs. It stops one step away from the cool relief of the Bagmati, sole down, charcoaled toes with warped nails, and flesh randomly split to reveal the white bone beneath. All shrouded in an ethereal flame. The crazed father prances down the steps and scoops the burning foot in two handful of grass, he throws the bundle onto the pyre and once again all is lost in smoke.
Before the smoke clears the couple decide they have seen enough, they stand to leave but their young guide remains seated, eyes fixed on the burning woman, as if hypnotised by the fire. The lady swings her camera over her shoulder, the man takes a hundred rupee note from his wallet and lets it fall from his bandaged hand; they are already walking away before it has floated down and settled on the boys lap. There are many sad things this the morning, many things that a photo of a burning foot will not show. The saddest thing is that the boy is considered too young to even shave his head; later when it is all over. After the sun has set, he walks down to the banks of the Bagmati and shaves his head with a blunt and discarded razor.
On Writing 