I salute the God in You
Was in Kathmandu the last couple of days and got back this morning. You wouldn’t expect going to Nepal from Colombo would involve 14 hours of travel, but it does.. (15 if you count home to katunayake!). The flight is via Bangkok and it’s really tiring. As a result I’m looking a bit of a wreck, and even a strong cup of coffee has failed to wake me up. But, it was all worth it. Absolutely brilliant trip, professionally and personally.
On the first day i couldn’t do anything at all, the Kathmandu airport was a bit of a culture shock. Only one of the immigration counters was manned, you have to walk from the plane to the airport, and the baggage moving thing (i can’t remember the word) gets stuck every 5 seconds. When we started driving to the Hotel, Colombo felt like a first world country. There’s not one high rise building, there were ppl rummaging through massive piles of garbage and just overall a hugely under-developed city. I was thinking if the capital is like this what of the rest of the country? no wonder the Maoists are running amock. The experience was a real eye-opener, it’s the first time i’ve been in a capital city less developed than Colombo. Got to the hotel around 4 and just flopped into bed and slept till 7 when I was reminded about the social event that evening.
The evening was pleasant, had to small talk my way through old diplomats and foreign service folk but also got to watch some native dance routines. I was a bit annoyed bc the dancers were doing their best to put up a show and the “audience” hardly bothered to look and just continued discussing politics and what not. If i’d been one of the performers i’d be well pissed off. I wish they’d also explained the meanings of the dances, it’s really fun trying to figure out how the dancer tries to express his/her story but its also damn tough without some clues! There was one dance depicting the story of a medicine man curing a rather spastic patient, another which i figured was Nepalese flirting techniques (the prequel to that evergreen classic The Karma Sutra) and finally a dance showing what i thought was a bull-fight between a hairy man and a harier bull (turns out to be a Yeti taking on a Yak). There was some interesting food on offer, Yak’s cheese and paneer are favourites in Nepal, and the enthusiastic waiters served paneer cooked in about 8 different ways. Paneer is lovely at most times, but this was exceptionally good stuff.
The proceedings began on the 2nd day and they were as mundane as expected. I was getting nervous about the 3rd day bc thats when i had to do my thing. Funny thing happened early afternoon on day 2. The Pakistani delegate sat next to me and asked me when my father is presenting. Naturally this was odd since my father was happily in Colombo running around the new world. She then asked me if the guy next to me earlier was my father. I said no no. Apparently she thought i was the spoilt kid of one of the delegates who had been dragged along for a free trip and was cursing South Asian nepotism! After that we struck a chord and got along really well. She was one of the youngest ppl around being “only 30″. We decided to hang out and explore Kathmandu together over the next couple of days.
This will be the topic of the next exciting episode of: ddm in Kathmadu. (ding ding ding..and other suspenseful background music).
P.s. Namasthe apparently means “I salute the God in you”.
