Getting off in tangents

by Sanjit Pradhananga

If a Hindu priest bore witness to how the Nepalese Diaspora celebrated this year’s Dashain festivities, he would be aghast to say the least. We’d congregated at a Chapel under one skinny foreigner nailed to a cross, while another blessed us by evoking the Gods of our forefathers. To be honest, I don’t even know if the prayer we sent out to heavens that day was accurate, for it was in a tongue I’ve long forgotten. But surely the all-loving G will absolve the audacity of a people, self-exiled from their traditions, trying to cling on to whatever little they remember. Surely the all-compassionate G will empathize with the end, if not our means. I have been told that She holds the ones who’ve been lost, closest to her breast.

I confess I’ve been lost for a while. For four years I have scoured through empty isles in the library, climbed jagged bluffs by the Mississippi, wandered lonely on mirthless nights through virgin snow, lamenting all that has slipped from my memory. It happened very suddenly, I remember. One July, I had swum in the Atlantic during a storm, thinking of my mother’s soft hands. In my mind, I could see it, the texture, the scar, the yellow turmeric tan. But I’d forgotten how it smelt. It was completely gone. I hurried out of the choppy waters, with a tempest stirring within my head. Gone! That first smell, I learned to recognize. That odor of selfless love, that’s a tantalizing mix of curry and lavender. All Gone.

It has been all downhill since then.
Phone numbers, places, voices then faces.
All lost.
Uncle Sam taketh a lot of things.
Uncle Sam taketh my money, my youth, my sweat, my dreams and my innocence.

But Uncle Sam also hoodwinked a veil I had over my eyes, all the years I’d lived in Nepal. So many things were taken for granted back then, the odors, the voices, the faces, the traditions. Dashain, which we try now so desperately to recreate, was a big nuisance to me while growing up. The family gatherings were long and painful, the blessings were phony, and the animal sacrifices inhumane and illogical.

I like to think of my self-exile as a big storm that has blown away all my dying leaves. Now in this winter of discontent, I see the tree that gave life to me for what it really is. I see the sturdy branches of tradition I’d nested in. I see my roots, strong, interwoven and grounded solid. I don’t take anything for granted anymore.

Everything I go through takes me past these rain drenched streets, to back home where my heart lies. I see big cars zooming by and miss those noisy streets back home, the horns, the commotion, and those cows that wandered into the streets. I see nice houses and lavish lawns and remember those huts, those slums where people lived in utter poverty but love. I hear church bells toll and remember those frantic chimes of temple bells, the elderly worshiping at dawn, their purity which I(until now) had always scorned and questioned. I walk into the ARC and find my self back to my high school library, but a couple of isolated racks holding Nepali literature books (that I never bothered venturing into) are gone. Yet my eyes still search for that isolated corner. The prosperity that seethes through everything here, resounds with the echo of the woes my ailing nation. The cry of a mother land whose sons and daughters choose to abandon her in their yearning for prosperity.Being an alien, reminds me of the profoundness of my own culture. It is funny that I had to travel half way around the world into a foreign land to realize it. My family often jokes about how I’ve become an American, how my accent has changed, how I don’t remember phone numbers, and names, and places. I listen and smile, because they get a great kick out of it. But if they only knew! The irony.

For I have transitioned not into an American but more into a Nepali.
“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” –
J.J.


Sanjit is a gadfly. He runs the The Gadfly Rises. Click here.