A rooftop barbecue for Holi, a haven from streets where at any moment coloured powder, balloons or buckets full of water, could fly in your direction. Over there, all of the young Nepali cool kids were sitting and talking. I sat in my little group of Western foreigners, watching them longingly, just as I watched the cool kids 12 years ago in high school, when I was restricted to that small group of nerds concerned principally with science, role-playing and hacky sack. Eventually I summoned the courage to go and sit with them, try and cross that difficult bridge. They weren't unfriendly, but they also weren't about to drop everything and involve me in their conversation. My grasp of Nepali is restricted to the kinds of conversations you don't have when you're kicking back with friends at a party, so I mostly couldn't understand. Someone came with a tray full of what looked like iced coffees, just enough for all of them. I asked one of them what it was.
"It's called bhang, it's what we drink on Holi. Would you like to try some?"
"Sure, thanks!"
"Careful though, it gets you a bit high"
I assumed that this was just a simple mistake, and she meant that it was a bit alcoholic. I've heard people say 'high' to mean 'drunk' before. I didn't think much of it. It was tasty, a little spicy, later, in the kitchen, someone offered me one, and I saw them mixing a thick dark syrup into some yoghurt, adding sugar. I can be pretty slow at times -precisely the reason I don't like weed - and still didn't think much of it, until it was far too late. This is not like being drunk at all, I realised. And what had they called it, 'bhang'? The travellers in Pokhara had talked about drinking 'Bang Lassi' in Varanassi, and getting stoned out of their brains. Of course the pronunciation was different. But this was intense, much too much. I went to find the guy who made it, a lovely Nepali guy who likes to reminisce about his college days in New York, being a typical American college boy.
His eyes widened, "I made it way too strong, I didn't really know what I was doing!"
Holi is a Hindu festival, celebrated in India and Nepal, which is renowned for its epic colour-and-water fights. It's tempting to do a quick Wikipedia search and find out a bit of background information on this festival, but for the sake of ambiguity, I won't. What is Holi actually for? It came up in my conversational English class, and all of those important, respectable hindus had a little discussion and after some disagreement came up with some kind of dubious explanation. Dubious enough that I didn't bother to remember it, something about someone's sacrifice of someone's son. And what is a religious festival without a bit of ambiguity? After all, the pre-Christian god Mithras (along with a bunch of others) was also born of a virgin mother on the 25th of December, and also died and was resurrected, before it was cool. What is certain is that we give each other presents on Christmas, and we throw colour at each other on Holi. Good.
It was 3p.m. and I absolutely had to leave, to seek sanctuary in my own room. I made the bare minimum of obligatory-farewell-conversations, made a cursory attempt to wash the colour from my face, hair, arms, and left. In my state of overwhelming wibbly-ness, it really didn't help that the world had been turned into a Pollock-apocalypse. The aftermath, colour strewn, speckled, spewed over ground, walls and people. People moved around and behaved like real people, but they looked completely out of control. On the way, I encountered all kinds of trials. First there were the European girls in fairy costumes, who thought that I was unfairly clean, and unwilling to listen to my protests and pleadings, forced me to dance around them, under them, twisting and turning in my stoned and ungraceful way to avoid their attacks. I somehow managing to avoid each of their advances, and ran off down the street, fleeing from the fairy girls, it must have been a sight to behold. For the rest of the way I shadowed the older Brahmin-looking types, seeking refuge under their aura of respectability, so long had it taken me to wash the colours off. And then, so close to home, a strange man with wooden movements approached me. He explained to me with no small effort that I would have to buy a ticket to visit historical Patan.
"But I live here,"
"This is....... um....... counter" He ventured, pointing to the ticket booth,
"मा यहाँ बस्छु. पतनमा," I attempted.
He launched into the spiel from the beginning, clearly he had practiced it. Clearly this was going nowhere, but I also had no money on me, and getting home was absolutely top priority. I felt like I had to keep a lid on it, by doing as little interaction as possible, maybe no-one would realised how horribly mashed-up I was. This was a difficult situation, it would be impossible to avoid dangerous amounts of social interaction. Of course it wouldn't have mattered if he'd realised how stoned I was, it probably would have helped, but at the time it was absolutely out of the question that anyone find me out. This was, after all, an accidental bhang lassi situation, I couldn't have them all thinking that I was one of those debauched Western tourists who give us all a bad name, who make it even harder for me to fit in to the strict culture here, who make Nepali men think that it's ok to shamelessly grope Western women on dance floors, and in the street (so my line of thinking proceeded). I was at a loss how to proceed with the ticket-man, when finally, a third person stepped in, and, understanding what I'd been trying to say, put a sticker on my t-shirt. With this, the wooden-man let me pass, and finally I made it, to my room, to shut my door, draw my curtains, and stay in bed for the rest of the day. Sanctuary.
Did you know that Odysseus had gotten almost all the way back to Ithaca, when one of his crew accidentally opened his bag full of god-wind, and blew the ship all the way back to Aeolus' island? The bag itself had been a gift from Aeolus in the first place, so it was an awkward situation, to say the least. I like to remember Odysseus when I'm having a hard time getting home.
I apologise to you, my valued reader, because I don't have time to edit this just now. You'll just have to read it the way it is.
Happy Holi.
"It's called bhang, it's what we drink on Holi. Would you like to try some?"
"Sure, thanks!"
"Careful though, it gets you a bit high"
I assumed that this was just a simple mistake, and she meant that it was a bit alcoholic. I've heard people say 'high' to mean 'drunk' before. I didn't think much of it. It was tasty, a little spicy, later, in the kitchen, someone offered me one, and I saw them mixing a thick dark syrup into some yoghurt, adding sugar. I can be pretty slow at times -precisely the reason I don't like weed - and still didn't think much of it, until it was far too late. This is not like being drunk at all, I realised. And what had they called it, 'bhang'? The travellers in Pokhara had talked about drinking 'Bang Lassi' in Varanassi, and getting stoned out of their brains. Of course the pronunciation was different. But this was intense, much too much. I went to find the guy who made it, a lovely Nepali guy who likes to reminisce about his college days in New York, being a typical American college boy.
His eyes widened, "I made it way too strong, I didn't really know what I was doing!"
Holi is a Hindu festival, celebrated in India and Nepal, which is renowned for its epic colour-and-water fights. It's tempting to do a quick Wikipedia search and find out a bit of background information on this festival, but for the sake of ambiguity, I won't. What is Holi actually for? It came up in my conversational English class, and all of those important, respectable hindus had a little discussion and after some disagreement came up with some kind of dubious explanation. Dubious enough that I didn't bother to remember it, something about someone's sacrifice of someone's son. And what is a religious festival without a bit of ambiguity? After all, the pre-Christian god Mithras (along with a bunch of others) was also born of a virgin mother on the 25th of December, and also died and was resurrected, before it was cool. What is certain is that we give each other presents on Christmas, and we throw colour at each other on Holi. Good.
It was 3p.m. and I absolutely had to leave, to seek sanctuary in my own room. I made the bare minimum of obligatory-farewell-conversations, made a cursory attempt to wash the colour from my face, hair, arms, and left. In my state of overwhelming wibbly-ness, it really didn't help that the world had been turned into a Pollock-apocalypse. The aftermath, colour strewn, speckled, spewed over ground, walls and people. People moved around and behaved like real people, but they looked completely out of control. On the way, I encountered all kinds of trials. First there were the European girls in fairy costumes, who thought that I was unfairly clean, and unwilling to listen to my protests and pleadings, forced me to dance around them, under them, twisting and turning in my stoned and ungraceful way to avoid their attacks. I somehow managing to avoid each of their advances, and ran off down the street, fleeing from the fairy girls, it must have been a sight to behold. For the rest of the way I shadowed the older Brahmin-looking types, seeking refuge under their aura of respectability, so long had it taken me to wash the colours off. And then, so close to home, a strange man with wooden movements approached me. He explained to me with no small effort that I would have to buy a ticket to visit historical Patan.
"But I live here,"
"This is....... um....... counter" He ventured, pointing to the ticket booth,
"मा यहाँ बस्छु. पतनमा," I attempted.
He launched into the spiel from the beginning, clearly he had practiced it. Clearly this was going nowhere, but I also had no money on me, and getting home was absolutely top priority. I felt like I had to keep a lid on it, by doing as little interaction as possible, maybe no-one would realised how horribly mashed-up I was. This was a difficult situation, it would be impossible to avoid dangerous amounts of social interaction. Of course it wouldn't have mattered if he'd realised how stoned I was, it probably would have helped, but at the time it was absolutely out of the question that anyone find me out. This was, after all, an accidental bhang lassi situation, I couldn't have them all thinking that I was one of those debauched Western tourists who give us all a bad name, who make it even harder for me to fit in to the strict culture here, who make Nepali men think that it's ok to shamelessly grope Western women on dance floors, and in the street (so my line of thinking proceeded). I was at a loss how to proceed with the ticket-man, when finally, a third person stepped in, and, understanding what I'd been trying to say, put a sticker on my t-shirt. With this, the wooden-man let me pass, and finally I made it, to my room, to shut my door, draw my curtains, and stay in bed for the rest of the day. Sanctuary.
Did you know that Odysseus had gotten almost all the way back to Ithaca, when one of his crew accidentally opened his bag full of god-wind, and blew the ship all the way back to Aeolus' island? The bag itself had been a gift from Aeolus in the first place, so it was an awkward situation, to say the least. I like to remember Odysseus when I'm having a hard time getting home.
I apologise to you, my valued reader, because I don't have time to edit this just now. You'll just have to read it the way it is.
Happy Holi.
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