DOWN IN THE DUMPS KATHMANDU

In the imagination of those who are planning to travel to Nepal, Kathmandu appears as a fascinating place with Hindu and Buddhist temples, in a valley among the highest mountains in the world... there is much more than this.

Muddy road after the rain

Roads, for example, are not paved and during the monsoon season they are impraticable becuse too muddy.

Buses in the Ring Road

Early in the morning around the super polluted Ring Road yoy can see the vendors coming from outside with their merchandise carried over their heads.
The lucky ones have a bike, the female ones have a small sedentary market.

Bananas in a bike

Bananas on head

Butcher

Everything is managed by the streets. The sidewalks are occupied by vendors, shoe shiners, butchers, dogs, cows.

Shoe shiner

Strolling is impossible!

IL LATO OSCURO DI KATHMANDU

 Nella fantasia dei viaggiatori che non hanno ancora viaggiato, Kathmandu appare come un paradiso affascinante, templi induisti e buddisti all'ombra delle montagne più alte del mondo... Non è proprio così.

Strada impraticabile per il fango, vicino le baracche

Fine settembre, ormai la stagione delle piogge sta finendo e i diluvi notturni non ci sono più, ogni tanto ancora al pomeriggio piove un po', quanto basta per rendere le strade non asfaltate degli acquitrini melmosi e puzzolenti.

Intorno agli autobus sulla ring road

venditore di banane

Al mattino presto scendono dagli autobus sovraffollati i venditori di frutta e verdura.
Caricano la mercanzia sulla testa e si avviano verso le strade dove poi venderanno.
Di seguito alcune immagini eloquenti su come avviene la vendita al dettaglio.       

Venditore di banane e altra frutta

I più fortunati si avvalgono dell'aiuto di biciclette che spingono su è giù dalle strade di Kathmandu gridando incessantemente il nome della loro merce. Si tratta sempre di una o due cose, raramente hanno più prodotti e le grida si susseguono in modo ipnotico.

Venditore di banane con bicicletta

Mercato femminile

I venditori "mobili" sono sempre uomini, mentre chi si ferma improvvisando mercato sul marciapiede sono le donne, spesso circondate da bambini che razzolano intorno.

Le strade principali sono asfaltate anche se spesso piene di buche e pozzanghere, quelle secondarie sono di terra e diventano fangose con le piogge.
I marciapiedi, quando ci sono, sono ingombri di mercanzie o di spazzatura, in entrambi i casi per la gioia delle mucche.

Ciabattino sul marciapiede

Bancone da macellaio sul marciapiede

Mucca 

Spazzatura sul bordo della strada

Il marciapiede è spesso un'estensione delle attività commerciali dei caffè tipici: un rubinetto a terra o più spesso un insieme di contenitori di plastica, costituiscono la "zona lavastoviglie" del locale.

Chi gode di questa confusione sono i numerosi cani di strada che beneficiano della raccolta degli avanzi.

Lavaggio piatti di un ristorante sulla strada

Lavaggio piatti di un caffè

Cani di strada

Cani di strada

TEEJ Kathmandu - Nepal

Observers from outside can see a giant ladybird around the temple of Pashupatinath: it is a tide made of women all in red, with their beautiful black heads.
The significance of such a festival is for women to ask for a special blessing by Parvati and her husband Lord Shiva, to have a good husband and to pray for his longevity and prosperity. Lord Shiva and Godess Parvati are worshiped on this day for marital harmony.

Married women fast, dance and pray for marital life and unmarried women fast, dance and pray to get a groom of choice.
A bunch of western ladies gathered the other night and called the party Teej and they dressed in red like the Nepali women do, but they ate and drank...like the Westerns do. 

FESTA DI TEEJ Kathmandu-Nepal

Intorno al tempio di Pashupatinath, quello dedicato a Shiva, a Kathmandu si può vedere una lunga massa di gente drappeggiata in rosso sulla quale spiccano tante teste nere: una specie di gigante coccinella danzante.
Ad agosto, il 12, cade l'ultimo dei tre giorni dedicati alla dea Parvati, compagna del dio Shiva. La si onora con processioni al tempio, danze festose e un digiuno rituale che prevede solo l'assunzione di liquidi, in cambio la dea sarà benevola con le relazioni coniugali. Le donne sposate digiunano per il benessere dei mariti e le nubili digiunano affinché la dea conceda loro un buon matrimonio.

Le donne si vestono di rosso come la dea, indossano i loro gioielli che devono essere composti da braccialetti tintinnanti (tanti e su entrambe le braccia) e grosse collane di perline rosse e verdi, i capelli vengono ornati con un fiore rosso e sulla fronte spicca il tika.
Si tratta di una specie di carnevale rosso in cui le donne si sentono molto libere e diffondono un'allegria contagiosa, le straniere sono libere di unirsi alla festa, vengono anzi coinvolte e se sono vestite di rosso non possono esimersi dal festeggiare. 

Questa foto è stata scattata nel giardino della scuola dove sono andata per caso indossando il vestito rosso appena ritirato dalla sarta. Una settimana prima della festa, le signore nepalesi vestite con il tipico sari facevano le prove dei gioielli  e appena mi hanno vista mi hanno praticamente costretta a fare la foto. Volevano proprio che facessi parte del gruppo: ok, il mio vestito era molto "western", ok i capelli non sono neri e non erano acconciati...ma in fondo sono una donna ed avevo un vestito rosso!

Easy trekking

October 28

Dashain: time to escape from Kathmandu; time to try an easy trekking.

On the way out, from the bus, it's early morning: the vendors are on their way.

Trunk water tank refilling hauses' water tank, fruity bikes.
Going out of the city we can see the busy morning outside. Sidewalks are full of people, luckily we are on the bus,                                                                 it would be impossible walk on the pathway.
The street to Pokhara  is busy too.

All sorts of living being on the street...

GOD HELP THE CHILD – Toni Morrison

This book can be read on many levels : feminine point of view, racism,couple relationship, mother/daughter relationship...it provides many stimuli for reflection.

This book is about relationships, it starts with one falling apart, seems to be something normal, a simple book for girl with a broken relationship. The reader waits for some dis-adventures and a sweet big love as a happy ending but...

After two pages you can get that the language is rough and there are too much colloquial words for a romantic fiction.

And then, by reading, you get that as reader you are aware of everything, the writer lets you know the thoughts of each character, she gives you the illusion of being the writer herself.  The reader knows more than the characters, because they do not understand what is happening to themselves. The main one, Bride, after the break is quite discombobulated. Her body is slowly changing and going back to her childhood. Her mind, that initially was going super fast toward a rich and sparkling future is jumping back and forth. The reader is guided, not nicely, in front of a past life where violence and abuse were seen through child’s eye, astonished and ingenuous eyes that try to explain situations they can not understand.

Bride has a Post Traumatic Stress “Attitude”, it's more than a disease, it's a sort of mood. She does not have a solid background of love (maternal love) to help her to cope with the difficulties she tripped on.

She is unconsciously searching for what she knows, and what she knows best is to be abandoned, left because of her skin, her being the wrong one.

She is filling her life with beauty, richness and luxury to compensate for the lack of caring love.

The fact that her body is magically going back to her childhood stops her mind from thinking rationally. Her mind that initially was going super fast toward a rich sparkling future is now jumping back randomly remembering memories.

The Author accompanies you inside Bride's thoughts, you can feel how scared she is, how puzzled and shocked, but at the same time you (ommiscent reader) can see the solution and the first instinct is to ask the character why they do not change their behavior, why they do not follow another path...

The writer lets you feel the Bride’s frustrating situation, she is impotent and you are impotent as well.

It's like a “beat romance” but the road is Bride's life and the trip is in her past, while you are traveling you can see how difficult it  was to be black at that time (unfortunately not so ancient) in America.

When you read the thoughts of the persecutor you immediately get how people think: nothing is related to others; when we do something we persecute our goals, no matter how it makes other people suffer. What people do are things and those things can affect other lives, we do not care, because we do not know.

This is a book about motherhood seen through childhood eyes. The main character is progressively becoming a child meanwhile she is becoming a mother. The real cruel mother, her mother, has no remorse: she has done her best for those  times with those believes...

The style is crude and perfectly adheres to the contents. The solution of letting the reader to put himself in the character's shoes is super smart...Ken Follet's style, totally different plot, definitely less commercial.

ONE DAY– David Nicholls

This book is almost in every part hilarious and funny, but it is a reflection of the real life.

This book is about a special relationship, it starts describing the first meeting between the main characters. They are two high school (college) students, a boy and a girl, they are in Edinburgh but they have big dreams, they want to live in a bigger city, considering Edinburgh provincial.

The first encounter is around their graduation, Dexter comes from a rich family, he is the dreamer, Emma comes from a poor family, she is a good-student, and a dreamer as well. They started a weird relationships: sex at the very beginning and friendship based on solid shared values for all the second part of the book.

The title “One day” is perfect to describe the style of the narration. The Author opens a window onto the characters' lives every 15th of July, for many years. Emma and Dexter seem to be a winning team from the first chapters, all their friends know it but they live separate lives: Dexter travels a lot, Emma works a lot (Lower class work in a restaurant); Dexter has a lot of relationships and occasional lovers, Emma is strictly concentrated on making a life with a small income she has no time for dreams or a love life; Emma writes long letters to Dexter, he writes back short postcards...

We know what is happening between them thanks to the 15th of July, sometimes they meet, sometimes they talk on the phone, once they go on holiday together. That holiday in Greece is the revelation for the reader. Even if you know that they are probably in love from the beginning you are never sure, but during the holiday the author writes the thoughts of the couple: they desire each other but they resist the temptation with the intent of protecting their friendship.

They both live in London, but they have separate lives, swinging up and down with luck in alternate moments. They meet sometimes but Dexter is now “famous” as TV presenter, he is posh and drunk most of the time, his life is going very badly and his mother is seriously sick. Emma is angry with him because he is a different, horrible person now. She is still modest, a teacher with some time to write and realize (partially her dream). They have different relationships again, Dexter is almost married and saved from a bad destiny by a rich and pretty girl, Emma is a  writer for teens, she quits teaching after a love story with her (married) principal, she is wealthy now ...and they meet again. The reader is waiting for the love story... but no! All this plot is revealed with a sparkling style, you can't stop reading, it's intriguing. “Envy was just the tax you paid on success”, Dexter said when he met Emma and they fight, she left him in the restaurant, really angry again. After nice descriptions of two ordinary lives (always on that day), they met and finally start that super relation you are waiting from the beginning! Wonderful love life with high and low moments, projects, successes and frustrations...but life is life and sometimes it's too hard for normal people.