Yaha Hune Lai Tyaha Chaina, Tyaha Hune Lai….

Excerpt from the personal diary of a Nepali girl in the United States

By Blogbahini

Today on campus sun is generous and smiling; so students are letting their exhausted selves take a hippopotamus-dip in the sun and are replenishing their dehydrated bodies with lemonade. Finals week is a disaster; rummaging through scattered papers or getting frantic about your laptops shutting off on you is normal. Diving to the ground flat and sleeping for straight two hours, forgetting about everything else in the world is also normal.

After the hustle-bustle on campus all day long, I slump my fatigued self on the lazy couch. It is past midnight, but my clock just stopped ticking. I look around; there are dishes piled in the sink, frozen veggies sitting on the table, and clothes scattered all over, making it look like a market. They nudge me, so I start functioning like a machine. Roommate isn’t home yet. She should be coming, dragging her own tiny little self to reach the door knob. No, she doesn’t drag herself. I don’t either. We’ve been trained to walk tall, so we walk the tall walk; amidst the darkness that looms large around us, while the buildings quietly cover themselves with blankets of snow and lull asleep.

“Aren’t you gonna eat?” I ask my African pal with curiosity as I ready spices for Aloodum.

“Well, No. I will drink though” she pours a glass of cold milk and stares at Jerry Springer stupefying people on T.V. “Is that your spices again?” she throws a glance at me.

“Well, I thought you loved my food! Open the window”. Onions in oil sizzle and my stomach’s started to giggle.

“Oh well, that pork you cooked…that was a killer!” she laughs; I narrow my eyebrows and stare at her. She then finishes the glass of milk, looks into the pan once and enters the bedroom.

I step out the door and stare at the sky; it is just amazing- stars twinkle while the fresh snow on the ground drizzles with delight, like diamonds. White, its white everywhere, like tiny pieces of diamonds were scattered all over the ground. During these times of nostalgia I get those recurring dreams. A wedding. A wedding night in Birgunj floods my memory with long forgotten chapters; chapters that have dilapidated in acidic rains within my mind, with stacks of memories being dampened.

How, as 17 year olds, we pulled stupid jokes on guys from the groom’s side; how we ostensibly demanded to be served food at the table, and they inclined. How we had ‘booked’ a beil-gada and ventured into the void…into the remote villages that stretched long and wide, with little white mud-houses standing close to each other like friends. The smell; fresh smell of cultivated soil as it rained. It might as well be cow-dung smell, but it fills the void in me and I start a tomorrow with a new vigor.

Oh the travelogues I chanted about the numerous bus rides to villages. I’d look out the window and see figures dance in the darkness. While the bus slid through winding roads of Nagdhunga, I’d hear chimes singing to me in solitude. Trishuli River scared me; but I’d look down and hear it gargling in delight. Old Hindi songs would drag themselves out of the boom box and whine in little interruptions as they relayed another story of undying love.

As I reach out to capture those memories and cherish it for a while, the clock starts ticking; I come jostling down to reality. I wonder if life will ever be like that again? Carefree, cheerful and immersed in childish hallucinations! In fact that child who used to gather a crowd at home and dance her will out. I could give anything to live that moment again where I cuddled up against my aunts in a small Rickshaw and carefully listened to the Clock Tower shout another Ding!

If there ever were a need to express discontent over a hooliganous life that I was leading here, alone, I would seek refuge in consolations from the loved ones back home. Someone used to tell me “Yaha hune lai tyaha chaina, tyaha hune lai yaha chaina; swarga ma sukha chaina kina bhane tyaha dajna ko laagi dukha chaina”. It was true, and soothing in its own way. “It can’t get any worse” I’d tell myself, and head for a challenging day ahead.

8 Comments »

hi BlogDidi,

I called you didi, coz’ you sound like so to me.

I did read ur blog carefully and found myself somewhere in between. The quote you’ve quoted deserves to be qouted, and I know that’s why you have qouted.

Got inspired to quote more qoutes like that!
Hope to see more qoutes of yours.

Ur BlogBrother,
Udayan

Comment by Udayan — 5/5/2005 @ 5:02 pm

Hey Blogbahini!

I understand you. Did you ask your friends about it: I guess every student in the US goes nostagic at the end of the semester (Indeed, signs of a “good” student)? Who loves exams, papers, research, presentations and what not??? Come summer, New York looks great not because the snow has melted away, but because there are not exams!

“Man” is (more than selfish) a lazy animal!!

Comment by Save Nepal (savenepal@gmail.com) — 5/5/2005 @ 5:28 pm

lord krishna says in geeta : “the joys that spring from external associations bring pain ;they have their beginnings n their endings .the wise man doesn’t rejoice them.”

he further says in another chapter ” all creatures are the product of food , food is the product of rain , rain comes by sacrifice , and sacrifice is the noblest form of action.”

so pujaniya mata in new york , let me tell u that this selling of feelings on UWB is quite absurd . u r in a material world n u r in that never ending race of acquiring material pelf.so the race taht u n this planet is in will only lead u to void … an eternal void .so for that sake , plz do not sell ur feelings …. this is not a world for anubhuti …here money is the doer n everthing else is action ….so , plz at least try to avoid being a hypocrite.adoring snow n telling ur agonies is an easy job.even some beggars under the branches of blue mimosa at ghantaghar can , anyday , do that . hope u will edit urself in this passion of selling ur feelings
ps: this is to wagleji. hey is it that i can also do a weblog as u people do? wat is the process. plz let me know .plz plz .

Comment by sisyphus sharma — 5/5/2005 @ 7:02 pm

के गर्नु माया लाग्छ,त्यो ठाउ को तर समयले पदचाप हरुलाई जिबनको अर्को पाटो तिर मोडे पछि कस्को के लाग्दो रहेछ र?

Blogbahini,
Thanx for rejuvinating my memory.

Comment by Himal — 5/6/2005 @ 9:43 am

Sisyphus, first off- I’m not ’selling’, they don’t pay me to write here :S Second, as they say it, in democracy, You can choose not to read it, or as you did, choose to read and rant against it.

“Telling your agonies is an easy job”

Really? I have such a hard time telling people what I go through I had to plead in a public forum for consolation! But thanx for your Geeta teachings, next time I’ll try to disassociate myself from external pleasures, and may be will preach ‘quantum physics’ as is the trend in this website these days!

Comment by Blogbahini — 5/7/2005 @ 10:12 am

Is it the failure of American dream which promises people all sorts of happiness and a hope of new beginning? Yes, you are right, despite the knowledge that People in the US are not happpier (in mind) than people in Africa, people here still love to spend their time imagining smogly about BILLS and BlONDES.

Yaha Hune Lai Tyaha Chaina, Tyaha Hune Lai….

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