First Day
I just returned home after eight years in the US. I never expected to be subjected to such reverse cultural shock.
Except my parents, I had not seen any of my family members in eight years. So when my plane landed, I was eager to get out of the airport. While waiting in line for immigration formalities, I felt like a kid, stuck in an elevator with a severe diarrhea. Restless indeed. Then came my turn.
The immigration officer behind the counter paid me no attention. He was busy picking his nose. As I watched him, he inserted his index finger into his right nostril and started drilling his nose. He carried the mission for about 30 seconds—his index finger set in cruise control doing an auto pick.
When he was finally done, he looked as satisfied as a diver who had caught a rare fish from the bottom of the sea. He looked at the product that he dug from his nose, and immediately started sculpting it by rubbing it in between his index finger and thumb. Within seconds, he had transformed the product into a round compact mass of thick mucus—dark brown in color. At that point, he tossed his invention at my direction by striking his index finger against his thumb. I saw this compact crust mucus fly towards me. I ducked to avoid a direct hit. The product could have landed on my chick or lips, had I not ducked.
It was very surprising that the immigration officer was making an eye contact with me while he was indulged in his nose picking adventure. After his mucus launch, the man suddenly realized that I was waiting for him. He looked at me and asked, “Where’re you coming from?”
“I flew here from Doha, but I‘m coming from the US,” I obliged.
“When were you last here in Nepal?” asked the booger man.
“This is my first time returning home in eight years,” Though disgusted by his actions, I answered politely expecting a kind welcome.
“Then you filled up the wrong form. Fill this form, and go to the end of the line,” said he annoyingly, handing me a new form that looked exactly like the previous one.
“Why should I go to the end of the line? I’ve been in the line for 30 minutes already.” I protested mildly.
The agitated mucus man replied, “It’s not America, and this is the way we do things here. If you want to bring changes to this system, then don’t quit your country.”
Like Chaplin, I bit my lips and cursed him silently. I could easily relate him to the white woman who had checked me in at the Dulles Airport in DC. Even though their language was different, the tone was identical. A sense of identity crisis hit me. I did not fit in either world.
I went back in the line and filled up the new form. After 25 minutes I was at the counter waiting for the same person’s attention. To my complete disbelief (and I swear on my project manager’s life I am not exaggerating), the man was engaged in a different sort of activity this time. He was meticulously picking leftover with his little finger from the spaces between his teeth.
With his mouth wide open, and his little finger still drilling every nook and cranny inside his mouth, he made a hand gesture suggesting me to wait. Another 45 seconds later, he successfully dug some stuff out. He looked at the stuff and smelled it. Whatever it was, before addressing me, he put it back in his mouth and started chewing it.
There were no computers in the airport. He entered my arrival information into a tabloid size paper ledger. I saw him misspell both my first and last names. I had no energy to correct him. When he was done I grabbed my passport. I made sure that I did not touch any part of the passport that the man had laid his fingers on.
I had officially entered my motherland after eight years. I was not sure if Nepal was prepared for me.
My first hour back in my country was not very pleasant. It was gross and uninviting. The next hour was even worse. When I was done with the human-orifice driller, I walked to the luggage belt where I waited for an hour looking for my suitcases. Not a sight of any of my suitcases. I was extremely frustrated. I was so jittery, I felt and looked like Jim Carrey on cheap cocaine.
A thin guy wearing a red half coat, a V-neck shirt underneath the coat, and a pair of green corduroy pants, who looked like he had his last meal and haircut during Renaissance period pointed to me my suitcases. I thanked him and ran towards my suitcases. The thin guy followed me like a bad actor doing a detective role in a B movie.
As soon as they had found out that I was returning home after a long time, some workers at the airport had hidden my suitcases to blackmail me. From what I understood after a drawn out conversation with the thin guy was, he and his crew had apparently kidnapped my suitcases. The ransom they commanded was “Only two thousand rupees.”
When I said that I didn’t have any Nepalese currency with me, the thin guy, the mafia boss of the ‘Hide the Luggage’ plot, quickly converted the payoff amount, “Then give us 30 Euro.”
Don ‘The suitcase’ Corleone had already done the math. I gave him 10 Euro. He took the money, and at the same time, I heard him curse my genital muttering under his breath. Now you may ask, how can one curse just the genital? It’s not explainable in any other language. Even in Nepali, that cursing is only applicable to male genital.
When I walked out of the airport, everything looked like a reduced size dark photocopy of what I was used to in the US. People looked undernourished, cars looked smaller, and the roads looked narrower. Everything looked dirty. The pollution is so bad that I could hardly see anything hundred yards away. There are more bicycles on the road than what I had seen in Beijing on television. The population of the city has quadrupled. There are houses built everywhere imaginable. I saw bicycles overtaking cars and motorbikes, and I also saw pedestrians overtaking the same bicyclists. It was a survival of the un-fittest. There were no traffic rules and regulations. In every sense, Kathmandu has deteriorated beyond mind's eye.
At one intersection, about an 18-year-old kid on a bicycle looked into our car and mischievously winked at my 39-year-old sister. My father quipped, “Perhaps he wants you to adopt him.” I thanked god for letting my family keep their sense of humor. From what I had seen at the airport and outside, I knew I seriously need humor for the next 32 days.
When we reached home and I looked at everyone closely, I saw changes in everyone—physical and otherwise. My parents have grown age-wise, my siblings have grown widthwise, my nephew has grown vertically, and our helper, Raam, who is also a part of our family, has grown dimmer.
When I left Nepal in 1998, Raam was in the third grade primary school. After eight years, for some classified reasons, I found him preparing for his second grade final exams. Nobody in the family had any rational explanation on Raam’s reverse progress. There was a rumor that after failing the third grade six times, Raam was demoted to the second grade by the school principal. But he still is the same Raam. He is loyal, spirited, cheerful, and my mother says he still bathes every third week of June and the second week of September.
To be continued...
and course, its a good thing~ have fun in N-E-P-A-L (ifurstillthere)! 