(written last week of February, 2008)
It’s idyllic what I’m experiencing right now. That’s the only word for it. I’m sitting in a room that over looks the flower garden to the north and vegetable garden to the west. The carpet is green, which just adds to the outdoor feel of this room. Laxmi is cooking some paneer (cheese-like substance) and aloo (potatoes), saag (spinach) and dhal (lentils) in the kitchen – which my husband and I will gratefully enjoy for lunch this afternoon and dinner later this evening. Nisha is walking with Anusha in the dining room, giving my back a break. This is what I needed when I was 6 months pregnant until my daughter was at least 6 months old. But, I’ll take it now.
This place is called Nepalgunj, which literally means, Nepal “place.” Candy, the American lady who owns the Travellers Village – a local hotel – reported that her brother said if Nepal were to get an enema, Nepalgunj would be the place that it would be inserted. I haven’t found it to be that bad, not yet at least. But what do I know? I’ve only been here for one and half weeks and haven’t ventured much past my own luscious gardens.
When I do leave my compound, what I find is something out of National Geographic. Trash along the dirt road, cows contentedly grazing on grass or hay, dogs lazily napping, people staring as I walk down the road with my ten month old daughter in my American baby carrier, happily staring back.
What also makes this idyllic is the type of lifestyle we are living right now. I call it Gandhian. I really believe he would be proud. Our living quarters are relatively large for a three person family. When you enter our home from the front door (porch/patio), you find a living room to the left, complete with windows on three of the four walls. There are built in shelves with sliding glass doors. These look bare with only a dozen or two books on half of the shelves. There is a ceiling fan in the middle of the ceiling – this is the quietest and least frightening of all the ceiling fans.
In the hallway, you proceed into our dining room, a baby blue dungeon of a room. You are greeted by a “Putumayo” calendar, with colorful graphics and marking of holidays from all over the world. There are no windows and no natural light except for whatever manages to pour in from the front and back doors and the rooms that surround it. On our dining room wall is a calendar from United, the pressure cooker company Anuraj bought our lovely pressure cooker from. You’ll find another built in shelf with more sliding glass doors. Here you will find odds and ends, a guitar pick – for which no guitar can be found, an empty Nepali picture frame, a picture of my mother’s family (nine children and her parents) from nearly 50 years ago, a UN report, and a pad lock. In the corner is our washing machine which is still in its box. In the middle of the room is a square carpet, red, blue and yellow, which my husband bought at a Gandhi cotton store in India, 15 minutes from our house.
Move to the left and you’ll enter our kitchen. This is one of the most substantial rooms, and the one place that proves there is life in this otherwise empty house. The fancy stainless steel microwave/oven/grill combo sits on the corner of one of the counter tops, two feet away from the double burner gas stove top. A rice cooker (that also doubles as a vegetable steamer, which we have yet to use) sits between these. The small shelf above the microwave sports Anusha’s baby cereal and bowls, a sippy cup and bottle, bibs and a washcloth. One tin cup holds our six piece silverware set and our new wire basket holds the rest of our ladles, wooden spoons, our one cutting knife, peeler and three FBCU tablespoon/teaspoon plastic measuring spoons. Three spotless glass containers showcase loose leaf black tea, iodized salt and raw sugar. Underneath the counter is a cardboard box filled with a few odds and ends that are waiting for a home. Plastic containers hold rice, lentils, cashews, almonds, spices and cookies. Our new small red waste basket sits in the corner where we hope a refrigerator will soon be.
On the opposite wall, our steel sink sits in the corner with a Styrofoam plug that my husband made from our rice cooker packaging. Hand wash, dish soap, plastic dish cleaners, glass cleaner, Lysol (spelled “lisol” here) and Fantastic – my favorite cleaning agent which I was lucky enough to find in Katmandu – sit in the corner of the sink and counter. When clean or dirty dishes aren’t occupying the precious stone slab counter space on the wall opposite the sink, it’s empty. Another small shelf above holds juice, some fruit, cookies and my Purle Pura drinking water. Underneath the counter is a shelf where I’ve placed our Teflon cookware – the nicest cookware I’ve ever owned – some warming pots, yellow microwave safe containers in various sizes and a set of white plastic bowls with blue lids and flower accents. Another Gandhian rug also graces this floor, and currently serves as our “dining rug” until we get a table and chairs.
Straight across from the kitchen (through the dininr room) our bedroom has the only two pieces of furniture in the house, a mattress and an armoire. If it wasn’t for the people before us who left this two closet, three shelves, three drawer armoire, we’d have no place to hang our clothes. Our mattress has a sheet and my feather comforter, which by now is detestably dirty. A built in shelving unit – perfect for an entertainment center – is keeping our towels, lotions, contacts, glasses, and a random assortment of things. There is one calendar on the wall. It’s from the Harrisonburg Children’s Museum and the pictures remind my of my former Shenandoah Valley hometown. It’s February, so a picture of Bridgewater College covered in snow is what we’ve been looking at. There is a ceiling fan in this room too, but this ceiling fan scares me. We started turning it on at night, but it makes so much noise, it sounds like it’s going to come unhinged and kill us all with its twirling blades. Two mismatched bed sheets cover the windows – the only “curtains” in the house. This is where Anusha naps, where I usually feed her, where we go to get dressed.
The second bedroom, just next to the first, serves as Anusha’s play room. It has bright green carpet that looks like artificial turf and the walls are a dusty pink/peach, just like the other bedroom and living room. This is the room that overlooks the lawn/flower garden to the north and the vegetable garden to the west. This is one of my favorite rooms in the house. The shade of the palm trees and guava trees cast a nice shadow in the morning and afternoon. This room is bright and alive and makes me feel like I’m in one of the glass enclosed rooms in a botanical garden. Here you find our family calendar – pictures of Anusha and her cousin Adria grace the entire calendar, along with other family members. In one corner of the room sits Anusha’s potty, a gift from her Aunt Shilpi, which she has used at least once a day for the past week. Her walker, which I call her “bumper car,” also is in this room, ready for use whenever I need a break from hunching over and walking with her! Anusha’s toys are in a basket which I had never seen in the states. It’s made out of the wood used for making those cheap little wooden drying racks and has two orange baskets with a Japanese looking dog that’s saying “Hi.” Anusha also has a built in shelf (the same entertainment center looking kind of shelf as is in our room). Her books and blankets are just within her reach, to give her something to pull off the shelves. Bags of 12 and 18 month clothing are in space saver bags at the bottom of this built in, and lotions, diaper stuff, baby carriers, The Baby Book (aka my Baby Bible) and one of those little “Baby’s First Year” books are on the other shelves, along with Anuraj’s puja (worship) things and my Irish Celtic cross. Anusha’s clothes are in a suitcase, until we can get some shelves bought or made. Our electronics sit in a corner of the room, underneath a funky corner shelf that has a picture of Anusha.
There is one more little room, just beside Anusha’s playroom, which we are using for storage. It has our landline telephone, LG vacuum cleaner, suitcases, empty plastic bags and Space Saver bags, and all the boxes, Styrofoam and plastic that our appliances came in. This room also has a little space above the door that looks like the kind of hiding place someone would have used during the Nazi regime.
In the very back of the house, right before you go outside, is a small hallway which connects to the bathroom. The bathroom is a pretty typical Nepali bathroom: a shower and faucet (with no shower curtain, no bathtub, and no type of enclosure for that shower water – it goes all over the floor). The water “geezer” (i.e. heater) is attached above head on the wall. But right before I came, it stopped working. This is the reason for my cold showers in the morning. A very nice pedestal sink is next to the shower and a chincy mirror is hanging above this. An old toilet, with cement poured around the base (to fix the leak, which is still leaking) is in the corner, next to another faucet which is for “washing” (i.e. bidet) – this faucet, we hope, will be the water source for that washing machine which is sitting in the dining room. You might be surprised to find Marnier Fructis shampoo and conditioner sitting on the sink (I was surprised, and quite pleased). There’s also a mini bottle of Pantene (which my sister in law thought might be a duplicate – i.e. fake – but I know my Pantene and is definitely not fake!). My electric toothbrush, some toothpaste and the cheapest toilet paper you can imagine finding is on a shelf next to the toilet on the wall.
Out back, there’s a pump, a clothes line, the “guards” outhouse, a separate house (which is the size of our living room) and an outdoor covered cooking area. Above us are our landlords, whose space is laid out pretty much the same as ours except they have stairs that lead to the roof on top.
So that’s it . . . the place I call home. The surroundings are mostly idyllic and our living space is Gandhian, (with a few electronic exceptions). And it is all home in this little place in Nepal.
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