I spent June in Kathmandu trying to recover from a difficult Kailash trip. I couldn’t really do much for about three weeks, just stayed in bed and read books to immerse myself in different dimensions of reality to ease the pain. One day I decided to leave my confinement and wandered aimlessly down Kanti Path, hopping like a grasshopper over the puddles left by the monsoon rains. The sight of the bright sunlit brick walls and steaming pavement filled my heart with warmth as I stared at the people selling curios on the pavement. I wondered about the strange selection of things, the possible market demand for lime juice, mobile phone cases, Ayurvedic herbs, DVDs and knitted baby clothes. I noticed a bookshop I hadn’t visited before and was surprised to see a new book by Samrat Upadhyay advertised in the window. I was suddenly inspired, remembering his wonderful collections of short stories I had read the year before, ‘The Royal Ghost’ and ‘Arresting God in Kathmandu’. No doubt I had to buy the book, called ‘Buddha’s Orphans’.
Samrat Upadhyay is a Nepali author who teaches creative writing at Indiana University. He is not only a master of character portrayal, but also a sensitive spiritual being who understands even the tiniest stirrings of the soul (or whatever different systems of thought call the core of being). I pondered for a while how to describe ‘Buddha’s Orphans’, and found that the first sentence of the book says it all: “Raja’s mother had abandoned him in the parade ground of Thundikel on a misty morning before the city had awakened, and drowned herself in Rani Pokhari, half a kilometre to the north. No one made the connection between the baby’s cries and the woman’s bloated body floating to the surface of the pond later that week.” This is the axis of the novel, cause and effect. The story follows Raja’s life to see the effects of this moment in the future, and at certain points it goes back in time to understand the causes that led to the tragedy. We recognise ourselves in the characters who play roles inherited from their parents, experience their joys and sorrows, and become familiar with the turbulent events of Nepali history, which provide a fascinating historical backdrop. And when I think about it, it is more than just a backdrop. Political movements and events sometimes come to the fore to dramatically change Raja’s life. Certain characters, feelings and thoughts were etched in my mind, and after reading the book more or less in one go, I felt the urge to look around Kathmandu and take photos of places where the novel is set, secretly hoping to bump into the characters. That sunny afternoon I walked out of Thamel, down to Thundikel and Rani Pokhari Lake, taking photographs of people and places, thinking of Raja’s immense pain at missing his mother, whom he had never seen. At the lake I happened to pass a young boy who I thought bore a striking resemblance to the Raja I had imagined. There was so much sadness on his face, he was so quiet and enveloped in his painful longing, that for a moment I thought I had left my own Kathmandu reality and ‘stepped into the novel’. I really wanted to take a picture, but I was afraid of being noticed. Unnecessarily. He was just staring into his own thoughts, oblivious to my presence. It was a perfect moment when time stood still.
After another two months in Nepal, I left for Beijing, and from time to time I looked at Raja’s photo and thought of the novel as I missed my friends, places and the relaxed Nepali way of life in general. The smiles I exchanged with strangers in the busy lanes, the moments of joy when the electricity came back on after a long blackout, the fresh monsoon rains that cooled the heat and swept the streets clean. I thought about sending the photo to the author, but it felt so awkward. “I’m not the kind of person who writes to people I don’t know” I told myself. But one day I just couldn’t reason any more, found the email address on the internet and sent the photo to Samrat Upadhyay. His reply was so kind and nice, thanking me for the sudden surprise, that after reading his email a few times, I just sat there for a long time with the biggest smile on my face, as if all the suffering and pain in the world was just a fiction of ancient times. Must read!