it started at 6:00 am. i had to get to mheypi at 8 am which meant that i had to leave from home by 7:15 am. was meeting a water analyst. although i went to his house for a drawing project, we did talk about water in kathmandu…melamchi, climate change, glacier melt, etc. etc. good food for thought to start my day.
then it was off to shahid gate and by 9:30 am, i was rolling off to kirtipur in the local bus. i went to look at some paintings over at the lalit kala campus in TU which has the MFA program. (technically MA..it’s a long story)…anyways, i didn’t know that i had gotten off at the wrong stop, so i ended up walking all the way uphill until i spotted the lalit kala bhawan. the first year master’s students are being evaluated at the moment…and that’s why they’d set up their works in rooms. the building is nice and spacious but terribly maintained. no windows, no furniture, water spilling all over the floor, it’s a sad sight for artists to be working in. but i do love the rest of the TU environment. someone interested in landscape and foliage could go out and set up an easel in the middle of their many gardens….which are also not properly maintained. but that doesn’t matter. it would be a wonderful exercise to take the class out and paint.
kirtipur is so densely packed.
anyways, after that and after getting stuck in the horrible balkhu traffic jam for some 40 minutes (going and coming back), i finally reached kathmandu mall. i decided to splurge and eat some good lunch instead of opting on a sandwich at sandwich park. so i went up to that restaurant at the top of the mall…the names keep changing..i don’t know it’s name. i ate lunch silently and watched the army folks doing some drill for some occasion. i don’t know.
one of the staff came to chat with me for a bit. ‘how is food? good?’ he asked. and i looked at him and said, ‘dai, ma nepali ho. khana mitho cha.’ hahahhahahah…he laughed and said, ‘i know you are nepali. tara pani tapai sangai english ma boleko..hahahaha’. okay, very funny. sth sth sth sth…we talked for a bit. later he was acting as a tour guide to some foreigners who were at the next table. explaining things about the parliament and singha durbar…places you could see from up there.
i left, promising to come back and when i was winding down the stairs of the mall, i caught a glimpse of dharahara…and i knew i had to go up there. so i bought my ticket and climbed up the tower and spent some 15 minutes before the chilly wind began to hurt my ears. i climbed down, happy to have climbed up :-). hahahahahaha…make sense?
then i went to pick my stuff up at harilo! yeah! that was the highlight of the day. brought stuff home and then went and paid the local carpenter for the table i’ve ordered. and was off to chakrapath to meet a friend for coffee. had some goood hot chocolate and then walked to teaching hospital..yeah. very adventurous. seriously, there is nth much to do in maharajgunj…so we went to the helipad at teaching hospital and looked down at the basundhara and dhapasi area. everything’s changed in our neighborhoods…we were saddened by the view….and then we bumped into some doctor friends and had yet another cup of coffee/tea. apparently, only couples go to the helipad..hahahahaha…that was funny.
finally at around 6:30 pm it was time to go back home. i got home and the lights went out.
with love, from ktm 