Early Memories, NEPALESE CHILDHOODS

-


PRIMARY COLORS

The sun hot and drowsy, the mat with the faint musky fragrance of new straw scratching under my skin. My grandmother, slowly peeling the membrane of an orange and popping them in my unresisting mouth. I am absorbed, absorbed in my playmate Parvati, a strawdust stuffed rag doll slightly taller than me. I try pushing little orange bits in her mouth too, but they just fall on the ground, squelching on the clean ochre straw, getting coated with a layer of white powdery dust of the ground. It is warm and drowsy, and the hum of bees is in the air.Then red silk everywhere, and glittering sequins. A wedding. My mother is carryi ng me. There is loud music and laughter, and the air is weighed down with the heavy smell of perfume, tears and turmeric. Turmeric mixed with cream, and rubbed on the soft white body of the bride. And I am crying, my tears loud as my inarticulateness. My mother gets angry at me, because I am incapable of explaining with my two year old vocabulary that the tiny, glittery stars on her sari are rubbing my skin raw. Green, everywhere would be green then. Lime green of the magnolias, dark green of the bamboos. Wheat, ripe in the sunlight, waving under the load of its ochre grains. The sky a bright blue stone. I’d run, running barefoot over the hot tin roofs, chasing the string as what seemed like hundreds of colorful kites filled the air, tying the sky together in one giant web. I’d be holding my cousin’s hand. Clapping my hand in glee as our brothers’ kite cut off a rival one, and it floated slowly away from the sky. Then the battle would start all over again. And again. Again. Again. Again... until the night caught us unawares, when a coalblack sky would take over the turquoise and we could no longer distinguish the colors of the kites from the light of the burning stars. (Text by Sushma Joshi, ECS Magazine, 2010)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

REVIEW: Bitter Gourds Short Story Collection

-
THE BITTER TRUTH Sushma Joshi, February 2002, Kathmandu Post The stories are small, but with a spicy aftertaste that could be from nowhere else but the subcontinent. Talat Abbasi's Bitter Gourd and Other Stories is a collection of nugget sized, delectable tales laid out, in typical desi fashion, amongst the detritus of social stratification, family ennui, economic marginalization and diaspora. Gently dousing her stories with a generous portion of irony and satire, the Karachi born writer brings to the fore the small hypocrisies and the mundane corruptions of everyday life in Pakistan. Whether dealing with a birdman or a poor relation, a rich widow or an immigrant mother, Ms. Abbasi touches the mythic heart that ticks besides all these caricatures. The ghostly narrative influence of Virginia Woolf, with a pinch of Victorian lit thrown in for good measure, is discernable, although most of the voices are centered around the "how kind, how kind" echoes of South Asia...
Read more

The jyotish astrological analysis of Robin Williams' death

-
I took a look at Robin Williams birthchart through the jyotish system of astrology today (note this is NOT the same system as the horoscope people read in the newspapers, which is sun sign based astrology.) There is really nothing surprising about his suicide once you see the chart. Williams has a formation that’s common for celebrities: His Moon is with Rahu, in lagna, or ascendant. Rahu signifies great fame, glamor, and also electrical lights and methods of communications. Rahu also signifies alcohol and drugs. Together with Moon, it often signifies mental illness as well. Rahu matures, or shows its full strength, at age 42. Actress Catherina Zeta Jones, who came out saying she had bipolar manic-depression at 42, is one of many other celebrities who manifest this.  When Rahu is placed in the First House, Ketu falls in the Seventh House, the house of marriage and relationship (Rahu and Ketu are always 7 houses away from each other). Ketu is a signifier for detachment ...
Read more

JYOTISH, THE SCIENCE OF LIGHT

-
ECS Magazine, July 2017 My family’s surname is “Joshi,” derived from jyotishi, or astrologers. According to family lore, they fled the Mughal invasion and came to Nepal via Nainital, where they became court astrologers to the Shah monarchy. By my grandfather’s time, nobody on our side of the family knew anything about astrology, nor did they show any interest to pursue this arcane and antediluvian subject. My father, who has a BA in science, and my mother, who has a Masters degree in Nepali literature, both profess a steadfast disbelief towards the subject. There were, however, enough relatives around to provide glimpses of a more interesting family history. I remember in particular one elderly relative in his eighties who did read charts, and who was treated with great respect not just because of his ability to read the future but also because he was rumored to be short-tempered. He was known to walk back and forth in his wooden balcony in the middle of old Kathmandu, and hurl...
Read more