Sidewalks, history, memory, paper and red paint

By Ryan Taylor

Namaste! Good day, from Kathmandu.

At dinner, Dr. Chhetri (Nalini ji, our Nepali professor from ASU and self-declared trip-mom) asked what shocked me. I think it was the second time she asked.

I drew a blank.

Which shocked me! Something, surely something must have shocked me. Am I doing something wrong?

I take in as much as I can. Beeping motorcycles, smoky air, dust in my eyes all draw my attention.

I follow the wall to the Royal Palace Museum, as a lovely Nepali family at the hotel restaurant instructed me to last night. Turns out this is the gate to the Army camp. The Royal Palace Museum is down the street, just follow the wall.

A short walk through history. The Museum was not a museum in 2000. It was the Royal Palace, where the royal family lived and held power. No cameras allowed. To compensate, take this image: built in 1950, two-stories, in a traditional English palace architecture with adjoined halls and rooms for greeting, for hosting ambassadors, for tea, for dining, for resting after dining, for ceremony and so on. Tiger skins stare glassy-eyed beneath paintings of royalty and the Himalayas. Some halls were plastered, some were marbled. Outside the Palace, we visit the site of the Royal Massacre, 2001. America had 9-11, Nepal had this–signs in a garden locate where the Queen, the King and the Crown Prince were shot. The country stopped for two weeks. Who pulled the trigger? Many Nepali royalists say the Indian government, or other conspirators, but evidence incriminates the crown prince, shooting his mother for forbidding his marriage to a woman of unsuitable descent…

I meet Rabindra Kumar Pandit (center) and his friend (right) while touring the palace. He befriends me. We chat easily in English and he makes himself my guide. It’s that famous Nepali hospitality. The only uncomfortable moment is when he jokes he will set me up with a beautiful Nepali girl (“Hi, I’m awkward”). Well, this guy is cool, and I trust him. He invites me to stay in his village, and a small part of me wants to say yes, but that caught me off guard and besides, well I’m sorry, I can’t, my program begins later today.

Over banana lassi he explains that he has never sat down and talked with a foreigner. His English is practically fluent, yet he has never held true conversation with a native speaker. And he will never forget me, he says. He says I am that friendly. He says he will show our dozens of pictures to his parents and sibling and neighbors as proof, yes proof, that today we met. He tells me welcomingly that he believes God put us together. He will never forget.

I am afraid I will forget. This adventure abroad is all about living in the moment, letting my feet take me where they will. Already I fear I let my past die behind me. And if I don’t write about them, will I forget? It’s already 2am and I need sleep.

Perhaps lasting impressions are only made on the subconscious, secretly subsuming memory, words, who we say we are. Would that be sad? To never look in the mirror and fully know where you’ve been, who you’ve met and who looks back? Something to come to terms with. But I believe Rabindra will look back and remember today of all days, though I know not why, and somehow that means a lot.

I have been smart to keep paper with me since my first night. Today I gained Rabindra’s contact information, in his English handwriting far better than my own. He also wrote me this:

This means more than it would if I found it on Wikipedia and it means more than a souvenir at the market. It means the Nepali people, of all religions, castes, and ethnic groups are one from East to West. When you walk streets of poverty in Nepal and study divisiveness that kills kings and undermines public education, the song resonates with the suffering and hope of the entire nation.

The paper is important because it is physical memory. It does not capture everything but I will come to terms with that.

One last thing: I helped paint a fence red with a couple brothers. I picked up a brush and helped with the detail work.

They were really cool, let me help, and I had fun. It felt like we were friends.

If I forget…that’s okay. The fence is still there, but moreover, I spent time in good company.

And this goes for all the people I’ve been so fortunate to join along the way, who are, in the most important sense to me, remembered.