Ifs and buts will bes | Broadside

It's easy to be swallowed up by life, swallowed so entirely that we forget we breathe, live and feel. Swallowed whole, bones, flesh, and soul. Mind-numbingly mind-numbed. It's easy to forget ourselves. That's when you want to remember, want to stay still for a second, minute or hour, crave for the random chiya times of Nepal, the ease with which Kathmandu is able to wake you to life with its noise, smell and colour. Life gains vigour there. It seems to flail in the bubbles we live in as university students abroad, caught between books, papers, and deadlines.

There are three of us sitting outside a coffee shop near a cross-section in an artsy American downtown neighbourhood. Two of us settle for Starbucks tea but no tea in here ever tastes as good as the chiya in the small street stalls of Nepal. It's a rare autumn evening, grey skies and red-golden leaves. For once, we've decided to forget the stress of work and deadlines that make the life of a graduate student. It's Tihar. Kathmandu will be erupting with firecrackers and sel-rotis, the Deusi and Bhailo tolis will be making their rounds. Houses will be lit up and the city will look dazzling from Swayambhu.

I'm not sure, says my friend, adding five packets of sugar to her New England coffee and waiting for the creamer to turn the liquid a milky brown, the colour of Kathmandu's chiya. Life does run at a reckless pace here, she says, but I am not able to get as much work done in Nepal. People are so laid back and set limits on themselves. Work takes a back seat, nobody shows up on time and the government doesn't care.

The government? The tea drinkers chime in. Where did that come from?

Well, you can argue that too, I guess, she says, frowning at the bitter brown coffee and adding more creamer. Convenience makes life too easy here but not as alive. I do miss the streets strewn with marigold garlands and the festivities.

This side of the world, it is festive too. The houses are lit up in the eerie colours of orange and black. It's nearly Halloween. Plastic skeletons, white ghosts, carved pumpkins with evil grins and fake cobwebs adorn the neighbourhood houses. In a few days, there will be trick-and-treat tolis going house-to-house, dressed in masks and scary costumes. A cop car rushes by, furiously blinking red and white and blue. My coffee-drinking friend starts laughing. "We should use those cop car lights to light up our houses in Tihar. It would be brilliant!" she snorts.

The government-thing still bothers me, says the tea-drinking friend. We blame the government for everything but perhaps we should stop blaming them and start looking at ways we can get things done ourselves.

We talk about the hairdresser in Kathmandu who told us how he regretted not having left Nepal long ago and why he thought we were foolish to even think of returning. We talk of friends who've returned home, some stayed and some who flew away. We talk of Madhav Nepal and Barack Obama, of Girija Koirala and Prachanda, of fallen kings and missed holidays. We talk of ourselves and others like us. We laugh, we think, we wonder.

There is no certainty to such conversations and perhaps never will be. When the evening is over, life will resume its hurtling pace. Questions will simmer and perhaps boil over. We will give in to the swallowing of time and perhaps next Tihar, sit and reminisce again of ifs and buts and will bes.