236. What
are some of the things you observed today?
- A walk
just for half an hour in the afternoon can prove to be very productive. It can
teach an individual a great many things.
- The
grocery store is just fifteen minutes away but it takes longer to get there if
you are registering your surroundings with this essay in mind or if you are
walking with your grandmother.
- People
stare, especially people in Nepal. What is their problem anyway? Haven't they seen
a grandmother with her two grandchildren take a walk in the afternoon? What's
so different about that? But, it may also have been the big, blue jacket or the
green crocs that drew their eyes towards us.
- I
observed a group of old me playing chess under the sun. I didn't know it was so
popular in Nepal, but I saw two groups of men intensely engrossed in the game.
(When I saw a third group of men huddled together, I stretched out my neck to
see if they were playing chess too. They weren't. It was carom, or what I used
to play a long, long time ago.)
- A dead
puppy was thrown on the sidewalks of the road. It was a pitiful sight. Its body
was stretched in the shape of a crescent moon as if searching for sunlight.
However, there was just an old, dusty wall on one side and a concrete road on
another. I didn’t know what to do. When I got back home, I called my sister,
who is a social worker also, and asked her what I could do about it. She said there
was nothing I could, and that the people who collect trash will take care of
it. What hopelessness!
- I saw a
couple of young monks riding bicycles down the empty road. It reminded me of
times when there were strikes and the whole country was shut down. Then, my
sister, my father, and I used to cycle to the outskirts of the little city. We’d
go as far as we could, until below the only international airport, and turn
back around and race back home. Great times were those.
- I noticed
a purple kite hanging against the wall of a shop, gently swaying with the
breeze. Again, it brought back great memories of the times when I actually flew
kites with my cousin brother. He would give the kite attached to a long string
a tug and make it go soaring up in the sky. After it held a safe position, he
would hand me the string and show me moves to make the kite do little tricks. But
after that, the wind stopped blowing, and my cousin brother went abroad to
complete his studies.
- We walk
past a Tibetan restaurant where there is a long blue cloth with decorated white
patterns on the door. Outside, on the foot of the door, there is a black dog.
He looks at me curiously as I walk past. I wonder for a second if that is
Sirius Black. But then again, it couldn’t be.
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