bad karma

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More drama in the life of Dinesh and Renuka. Saturday night Dinesh and Bom went to the airline office to stand on line at 3am so that they would be sure to get plane tickets for the kids to fly back to the village during their school break. I guess the line starts getting long at 5am, so they headed out at 3am to make sure to get a good place. But before they could even reach the office, they were attacked and robbed. The robbers had big khukuri knives, so there was little they could do to protest. Dinesh lost his cell phone, $400 in cash, and his American debit card. Bom also lost his cell phone and suffered a cut to the chin bad enough for him to go to the hospital to get it checked out. They are both very shaken. The plans to send Sandeep and Sangita to the village have been cancelled, because they say their karma is not good right now and they have to wait for it to get better. So Sangita is coming with Mary and me on our 5-day trek that we start at the end of this week.

It is always hard for me to decipher whether warnings to stay in after dark are a way of trying to protect me as a woman or whether there really is danger. After all, most women do not live by themselves, travel alone, or do very much at all independently here. This society is very sexist, and although there has been a feminist movement to eliminate some of the blatant sexism, there is still this idea (by both men and women) that women should be protected. (I actually conducted research on this during my last trip here and will one of these days send the paper out for publication.)

Anyway, while I know it’s not good to be out after midnight because of drunk drivers and gang activity and whatnot, I don’t think Kathmandu is particularly dangerous compared to any other city. There has been a rise in crime over the past few years because of the huge influx of people fleeing the villages and trying to survive here in the Valley, so I think people native to Kathmandu have become scared of being out at night. But rarely do you hear about foreigners being targeted, except for the occasional house robbery. Otherwise the crime seems to be what it would be anywhere in poverty-stricken areas—pick-pocketing, purse snatching, armed robbery, and sometimes fights that get way out of hand, like the other night at the dance restaurant. Honestly, I feel safer here than I do in the south end of Hartford during daylight.

Mary arrived Saturday evening and was at Dinesh and Renuka’s picking up a water filter yesterday afternoon when Dinesh first returned home after dealing with run around from the police, things like telling him to go to another station, refusing to help him because the office wasn’t open yet, etc. He made a big deal about it, calling all the radio stations and newspapers to complain about the neglect they experienced. He says the police are now angry at him. It’s interesting because people do not fear the police here like they do in the U.S. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to say the police fear the people because people tend to get out of hand and start riots when they are unhappy. Dinesh is trying to make waves so that the police get off their asses and try to enforce the law when things like this happen, rather than just letting it slide.

I am so happy Mary is here! She and I met at Bhat Bhateni and then went to KC’s in Thamel for an early dinner yesterday. Already we make jokes about the unusual stuff we see in Kathmandu (like the fact that there is an up escalator but no down one in Bhat Bhateni), and we’ve started reminiscing about funny stuff that happened the last time we were here together (like a hellish rickshaw ride through Patan Durbar Square). We agreed that everything always seems funny after the fact, even though it might be a nightmare at the time it’s happening. She asked how I am doing, and I told her that some days I just want to go home. She said she knows exactly what I mean, especially because she chose to spend her sabbatical here, while other profs spent theirs in places like southern France. Why she never told me this before, I don’t know. It would have made me feel a lot better and less like I’m being wimpy about the whole thing. But she said you spend so much time just coping here that sometimes it can be overwhelming, and it’s true. It takes so much effort just to get out of my warm bed and get changed and make tea sometimes that I have no motivation to go to yoga or have my Nepali class. I don’t know how Nepalis do it every day… I guess you just get used to it and don’t have a choice.

After Thamel we went to the Fulbright house where she is staying in Dobighat and had a glass of wine until the electricity went out. I then hopped in a taxi and came home. Today I met her at The Coffee Shop at Durbar Margh, then we went back to Thamel to shop for carpets for her son and his new wife. We stopped at Rum Doodle, a famous bar/restaurant, and had drinks on the roof. It turned out to be a fun afternoon.

I’m so much happier to have someone with whom to pal around. Maybe it’s not just the cold that has been affecting me, but loneliness. Sure, I’m surrounded by Nepalis all the time, but it’s exhausting to be around them sometimes just because of the language barrier, even if they speak English. I haven’t really connected with the other Fulbright students much, so my friends are really other Nepalis, a couple of Indians, and a French guy. Having the company of someone who knows where you come from and with whom you can relate is really nice. And now for the next few weeks I don’t have to go to the “expensive” restaurants and have dinner alone!

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