And then there was this

One week back. sitting in the kitchen, glass of wine, laptop in hand. Melbourne. Today a memory came back to me, my old landlord in Kathmandu, who would pump water from the well at around 6 every morning, so that we could have our showers, wash our dishes, flush our toilets. He called this, and many of the other things he did, 'duty'.

"What did you do today, Mangal-Dai?"
"My duty."

He was always adorned with either a smile, or a shrewd business-like face. He never talked about being a famous painter, and you would never have known. This image floated to me from so far away, it feels someone else's memory. Where has it all gone?  के भयो? Even the handy little transliteration button, that allows me to write in Sanskrit sometimes, this has stopped working. I must copy a word from somewhere else and paste it, such great lengths to write two words. I considered whether it might be easier to hand-write it and take a photo. But I have no pen at hand, just some chalk

This is Nepal, it's still inside me, the image of a key, being lowered from a third-storey window. Lowered by a lady who has tied the key to a piece of string, and has tied that string to another piece of string, and that one to another again, and on and on until at last it is long enough to let her friend through the front door. I read back over the old blogs, remembering all that time spent fretting over them, the mundane drivel, the pointlessness. And now, when I read them, I remember just how meaningful, how purposeful the act of drinking a glass of water can be. So, rather than mince words, I will write what I am trying to say.

Malaai Nepalle samjhayo. The grammar is not perfect, it never is. Nor is the spelling, but it's almost right. It could be translated to 'I miss Nepal'. It could also be translated to, 'By me, Nepal is remembered'. Or even,  'Nepal is understood by me'. These translations are all valid. 

The meaning though, well that just is what it is.