However, my experience of loss and of suffering is perhaps No 5 on my list anyway, so I might as well go on. Let me explain. In the West, experiences of grief, loss, and in general, suffering are so often masked over that people there go on living in a state of unhappiness, yet not know that they are. This is accomplished through the many everyday diversions not found so freely here in Nepal: Disneyland, Las Vegas, Starbucks and McDonalds, 3-D Movie Theatres, Super-High Speed Internet, Super highways that stretch for thousands of kilometers, State parks that stretch for hundreds of kilometers, and bike paths that stretch for dozens of kilometers.
In America, I was able to deal with extreme unhappiness by just going to work 24x7, and then taking a long road trip, with lots of movies in-between and perhaps a stop in Vegas. Here in Nepal, we are not dealt that hand of many distractions, and have to play our cards straight from a deck of extreme suffering. In other words, there is no place to hide our most basic feelings. We are in the raw, without a fancy infrastructure to mask our humanity and humility – and the truth of our existence. We are temporarily living on the edge of a mountain precipice, and when one falls, we know it.
No 4 on my list has something to do with family, and the way in which they operate in Nepal. From what I gather from my own, there is an extended family of close relatives, distant relatives, and loosely associated family connections, all keeping an eye out for one another. I think it only recent that possessions are regarded more highly than family ties. After all, it’s only within the past few years that Range Rovers, Italian motorbikes and super-fi home entertainment systems have become available here.
No 3 on the list is somewhat tied to No 5, and is what I can only describe as “simplicity.” The simplicity of everyday life has to be appreciated and recognized. You go to work, you get paid, you eat, you sleep, you raise a family, and you repeat the previous steps with some variation. Perhaps it’s more like: You go to the field, you tend to your goats, you eat, you sleep, you raise a family and then you repeat. But whatever the situation, things here are much simpler than elsewhere on the planet, where just getting to work could involve a hundred pre-flight checks and steps easily mistook.
No 2 on my top-five list has to be my dog. I suppose my dog has nothing much to do with Nepal except that in a way, he is an expat like myself. He is a German Shepard that is beloved by all that know him and a bit feared by those that don’t. It’s the same for myself, as I make most Hindi-eyed babies cry on first sight, but I am appreciated and beloved for being different and somewhat scary to look at. Nepal has an openness to foreigners that you can no longer find in the terrorized countries of the West. For example, here I can wear a cozy kurta, but in my homeland of California, I would be assumed Muslim and a suicide bomber when dressed in the same garb.
No 1 on my hitlist formulated over the recent holiday is my wife. Nepali women have to be one of the nation’s most secret of treasures, and forgive me if I am giving anything away here.
No 1 on my hitlist formulated over the recent holiday is my wife. She is related to Nepal as no one other than a Rai descending from Dharan can be. Nepali women have to be one of the nation’s most secret of treasures, and forgive me if I am giving anything away here. Strong, supportive, inventive, and inspiring, with a temper that flares like Mt Vesuvius, but always cools before any permanent damage is done – that’s my wife in a nutshell, and must be a lot like yours from what I see around town.
In stark contrast to women in the West, I think that Nepali women have a sensibility and simplicity that keeps society here glued together, when it seems like everything is about to unravel. This is in stark contrast to what I see back in my homeland, where much of the unraveling can be directly related to the war between the sexes that seems to have gone on unabated since Adam met Eve.
Well, those are my top loves of Nepal: 5) rawness, 4) family relations, 3) simplicity, 2) my dog, and 1) my wife – all hitlist items considered over the holiday. Of course, I could follow this with my top 5 pet peeves, but if anything can be learned from Nepal’s spirit, it would be this: Why dwell in the negative that isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon? (Ke garne.) We all know what’s wrong with Nepal, instead of kvetching about it, we all go on trying to fix it, quietly, and without a lot of hoopla. Amen to that.
Herojig is quirky kinda expat happily living in the Kathmandu valley with Nepali family, friends and a very large dog
herojig@gmail.com
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