Niraj was different than the rest of us cousins. Even when we were young, he would be knocking out Hardy boys, Nancy Drew and Enid Blyton's novels while we would be trying to wade through our Amar Chitra Katha comics written in English. He had an affinity for Westerners and life abroad in a way that was hard for the rest of us cousins to relate to.
It didn't come as a surprize for us when after spending two years after his SLC, he announced at a family puja that he had gotten acceptance to a college in the States. We knew that this news was coming sooner or later. We patted him on the back, happy for him. His dream since childhood of making it in America had come true. We were all there with marigold garlands and red raw-rice tikas at Tribubhan international airport, the day we bade him good luck and farewell. Many of us were sure that Niraj would never leave the States to come back and live in Nepal.
Niraj blitzed his way through college, landed a job. He spent his evenings watching TV, bar hopping and watching basketball with friends he had made around him. Between having the brunette girlfriend, tail-gate parties and hitting the clubs, Niraj put each layer of brick to the building of his life that he had architected as a child while in Nepal.
This was perhaps why we were surprized to hear bitterness in his voice only eight years after he went to the States. Niraj talked about being frustrated in the States. He had fallen in love with an American girl and had gotten married. Of course it was all lovey dovey and sweet in the beginning. But after a few years the differences rather than the similarities between them emerged. It wasn’t even in the big things. She wanted to eat spaghetti for dinner. He wanted dahl bhat. He wanted to invite Nepali friends over for a momo party, when she wanted American friends over to play monopoly. He wanted to go to Nepal during his two weeks vacation. She wanted to go to Puerto Rico and work on her tan.
He would call us all the way in Nepal to talk to us on the phone. He told us what was going on. It was all in good fun for us. Many of us felt that Niraj had it all, the job, the hot white girl, life in the States. And then, in the angst of the moment when he started to reveal how he was crumbling to pieces, it all didn’t seem so romantic after all.
I have to admit it, for the rest of us cousins, Niraj’s story was refreshing from the ordinary Kathmandu mess that most of us had to deal with day to day. Water was not regularly coming from the faucet. Load shedding didn’t permit us to run businesses smoothly. Bandhs. Exasperation.
And here was Niraj, far away from all the problems that we were struggling with. But, weighed by his own. He said he liked talking to me because most of the other relatives that he called to talk to in Nepal about this subject, they would just brush him aside as ‘bakwas kura.’ But I tried to understand. Don't get me wrong, I did raise my eyebrows. But I listened.
He said the problem started when the Nepali side of him started tugging at the back of his mind for attention. Of all things, feelings of wanting to be in Ratnapark started haunting him. He started remembering his Mamaghar and his cousins. Even the pujas, that he had abhorred going to, that his mother forced him to go to, held an element of nostalgia. He longed to wrap himself back up in the familiarity of it all.
But he couldn't. He knew that the two weeks break that his job gave him wouldn't be adequate enough to explore all the strings that tugged at his heart. He tried to talk to his American friends, but they simply told him that he needed to be practical and positive. He had a wife and responsibilities in the States now. He couldn't just go galavanting off to some third world country whenever it struck his fancy. They just wouldn't understand. Niraj took long nature walks trying to come to terms with his dillema. And then in moments of desperation he called Nepal, hoping someone would help see it all in perspective.
He couldn't.
Eventually, Niraj ended up marrying a Nepali girl that he met at the annual Nepali party in Seattle. I thought he was at peace. But it wasn’t so. A few years later he called me up and told me that he felt a strong need to move somewhere in Asia.
“Asia?” I asked. “Why Asia? Don’t you have everything you need in America now? I hear all your Indian stores are packed with more varieties of curry than we find in Assan.”
“America is too claustrophobic, too suffocating,” he said. I looked outside of my window in Putalisadak and shook my head. There were buses full of red banners going by. A huge crowd of emaciated Maoists were wearing red bandanas and protesting the latest political development, blaming it on Madhav Kumar Nepal. I closed my mouth to avoid inhaling the smoke coming in the window as a huge bus spilling dust, drove by. “Suffocating, huh?” I laughed, covering my mouth with my hand.
Niraj said, “Yeah, Dai, you don’t know what it’s like when someone like me who felt so at home in Kathmandu feels when he is in the States for as long as I've been there. My insides are screaming at me to get out of the States.”
I nodded, trying to understand. I always admired Niraj for his brains. But this time, I had to admit, it was very hard for me to relate. I would love to escape the chaos that is Kathmandu, the dust, poverty, lack of opportunity, etc. But it wasn't easy. Me, living in Nepal, constantly dodging the judgement of friends and relatives, had created space in my life through my social maneuvering. It was hard for me to relate with someone who needed to move from the United States all the way to Asia, just so that he didn’t feel ‘suffocated.’
Though I couldn’t fully empathize, I did admire the luxury and freedom that Niraj seemed to enjoy that he could make such a huge lifestyle change on a whim. His life in America wasn’t working out, so he was going to change it. Just the idea of it made me chuckle.
For me, changing countries, was a big deal. For someone like me who ran a business, there were so many loose ends to be tied up in Kathmandu, in some ways, it was simply inconceivable for me to move. But I knew that if things in Kathmandu continued the way they were, I too may feel forced to leave Nepal the way many Kathmanduites have.
I talked to Niraj recently. He lives in Bangkok and works as an engineer for a manufacturing plant. He’s been there for the last three years. He tells me that he is really glad he decided to move from Seattle.
“You know, Dai,” He told me, “Due to globalization, we don’t need to be stuck in America to get the kind of opportunities that makes life comfortable. True, we might not necessarily get the kind of freedom and lifestyle we want in Kathmandu, but, we don’t have to go the other extreme of going all the way to America either. Asia has developed quite a bit and there are many Nepalese who have found a good balance between the East and the West by settling down in one of the Asian nations that are close to Nepal.”
“Whenever I get homesick, Nepal is only a few hour flights away. And Asian culture is close enough to what I’m used to that I don’t need to feel the coldness and estrangement that I felt in the States.”
I was happy to hear his words. And happier yet because the last time he had come to Kathmandu from Bangkok he had brought my wife a snaky looking thin gold necklace. She looked very beautiful with that golden thread dancing along her collar bone as I made love to her.
Yeah, ok I'll admit it, its nice to have Niraj close by.
Last edited: 21-Apr-11 07:07 PM
