CILLA KHATRY
I have over a dozen handbags, countless pairs of shoes, and a room bursting with clothes and knickknacks that desperately call for a garage sale.[break]
There’s not a day when I don’t buy something. Not a single day. If I don’t have a shopping bag with me when I return home from work – sometimes I stuff things in my handbag to avoid lectures – Mom is so shell-shocked that it’s a wonder she’s able to formulate a whole sentence to express her surprise.
I wasn’t always like this. Or maybe I was. I can’t remember. It’s just that I like the feel of new things. There’s nothing that carrying a new bag, donning a new pair of shoes, or writing in a new notebook doesn’t cure.
It’s like instant therapy, and it comes at a much cheaper price than actual therapy. Not to forget, the price is oh so worth it.
When I’m depressed, I go out shopping to cheer myself up. When I’m bustling with happiness, it calls for a celebration; so I indulge and buy something new.
When I’m bored, I stroll around Bhat Bhateni or Saleways and go back home with at least a bag filled with chocolates, juices, and if it’s a good day, something to pep me up from Hallmark or Archies – usually a fun keychain that I don’t really need, or some weird mask with angry birds on it that I’ll use once and toss aside.
I’m on first-name basis with almost all the store owners in my area. If they haven’t seen me in a while, they make it a point to ask about my health or inquire if I had been away.
Makes me feel slightly awkward having to answer personal questions, but I guess it’s a small price to pay to avail of good discounts when I check out.
I feel something is amiss if I haven’t spent any money someday. That rarely happens, but when it does, I go to bed calculating my chances of shopping before I reach work the next day.
On one such unfortunate day last week, I was sitting and brooding about how inundated I had been the whole day and didn’t even have ten minutes to stop by at Bhat Bhateni.
Then to console myself, I started playing Temple Run. I realized how addicted I was to shopping when I played the game till five in the morning just to collect enough coins to buy and activate a character.
If I couldn’t shop in the real world, I would make up for it in the virtual world. And it was as satisfying as actual shopping. The next day, though I did scour around New Road, I didn’t feel that compulsive need to buy the first thing I laid my eyes on. Instead, I was all set to head to work empty-handed.
But my friend gave me an incredulous look and questioned why I wasn’t even buying that pink bag I had so vehemently admired. I didn’t want to disappoint her and walked away with yet another carrier bag. Sometimes these things are way beyond my own control!
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Movie Fanatic
NISTHA RAYAMAJHI
I can’t deny the fact that I am a movie buff. Whenever I can lay my hands on any good movie, I just can’t wait to just sit back and enjoy the show. But it is sad that the movie theatres here hardly put up any Hollywood movies, and if they do so, it is usually the commercial and hyped-up ones.
Since I am more into the unconventional movies where the stories are not clichéd and so are more realistic, I solely depend on DVDs to get my regular movie treats.
I still remember the time when trying to find a movie would be so much hassle as it was not easily available. There used to be a trend of hiring movie cassettes from shops.
Though I don’t recall this, I heard that it was not only expensive to hire a movie but sometimes people had to wait in a queue to return the movie the same day. Later, there even used to be 2/3 CDs made available for just a single movie. Then life became much easier when those were replaced by DVDs.
The scene was even more different many years back. People from the older generation say that in their times it was a luxury to even watch a movie. My grandfather used to tell me that when I was not even born, we were the only ones with television in the neighborhood and all the neighbors used to gather up to watch television shows.
I can imagine how the scene must be with all the curious eyes glued to the television screen. I am more than glad that the situation isn’t the same now and I belong to a generation where everything is so easily accessible.
Whenever I watch a good movie, it just moves me. It sometimes leaves me numb, sometimes keeps me thinking a lot, and there are some that gives me the shivers as well. There are even some that make me really emotional and a roll of tissue paper is just not enough. And there’s always fun to discuss those movies and share the DVDs with whom you can relate as well.
There have even been times when I have watched a few movies on one go and my mother almost had to snatch the laptop away from me. Once I even watched a foreign language movie without the subtitles as I was so much eager to watch it and didn’t have the patience till the subtitle thing was fixed.
Whatever the case, I am just glad that watching movies are so much easier now as it is by far one of my favorite ways to not only kill time but to immerse myself into a completely different world.
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Tea talks
UJJWALA MAHARJAN
And so we’re around her kitchen table again, cups of tea in our hands. As usual, it was strong black tea for me, milk tea for them, namkeen dalmoth in a glass jar, and we’re talking, laughing and teasing each other.
But today we fell silent amid our bursts of laughter too many times. R and I would look at each other and D – she would seem lost. I bet she had many thoughts swirling in her head. We just had one – D’s actually leaving.
Her kitchen was where we spent most of our time when we went to her house – not her bedroom or the living room but the kitchen. It had been our joint for the past six years we’d known each other – better than family, better than siblings, better than boyfriends.
This was where R tried her first hard drink – a spoonful of whiskey. This was where I revealed to them and to myself that I had fallen in love for the first time. This was where D offered us numerous Hajur Aama-style suggestions with all the wisdom and wit along with the cups of tea and dalmoth straight from the jar.
R is a great tea maker, D, a great raconteur, and I, a great listener (my friends say I really am). Our trio was a perfect set and her kitchen was a perfect setting to our seamless friendship.
It’s not that her bedroom, the terrace and the familiar lane from Kusunti to Jawalakhel we usually walked saw any less of us three together. But it was something about the kitchen that had us pouring our hearts out to each other.
Today, as I sat sipping the last tea R made for us, I realized I was going to miss our tea talks more than anything else. I even imagined recreating this over the virtual world, but there would be just too many of concessions to be made – D would have to do without R’s perfect tea, and R and I would have to do without D’s live(ly) presence.
Of course I knew no distance, no matter how great, was ever going to make us distant. But the nearness and the comfort shared over warm cups of tea in and around the familiar kitchen table would be lost with her gone.
In many of our cherished conversations, we also talked about even when we were whiny old ladies with grandchildren we would still get together like this.
By then, R says (chuckling) she will have perfected her tea skills no one in the world could match, with its sweetness and warmth that instantly sparked conversations; D says (topping off R’s chuckles) she will have acquired more wisdom to bestow and more interesting stories to tell, stories that could captivate and amuse listeners for days on end; and I – I guess I will have waited enough for all of it to come true.
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Defying conventions
ASMITA MANANDHAR
A year back, one of my sisters had a serious conversation with all of the cousins and her closest friends who were against her decision on investing in a particular business.
Then, she had calmly listened to all the opposing views, without producing any counter argument but answering at the time she was asked to defend her decisions and nodding quietly to all the cons of the venture. But at the end of the conversation, she stated, “Well, sometimes, you have to go against the flow.”
It was just a clichéd phrase, one that has been with me since my handwriting practice days. But, an audience throughout the discussion, I had been silently sided against her decisions, supporting the cousins and her best friends.
However, when she said about going “against the flow,” I wanted to believe her side of the decision, no matter how many faults it had.
I remember the incident after a year, while right now I am contemplating on the question of conventions in our lives.
We all live inside a certain frame marked for us, within a certain underlining principle. And if not all, most of us look for ways to go against the conventions. But there are different ways people fight back against the conventional structure.
If we turn the pages of history, psychedelic art came out as an alternative to mainstream; likewise, Che Guevera’s ideology was taken as a radical one.
Both of these alternatives are highly appreciated in terms of the messages they once sent to society and for the symbols they stood for change. Though both of them have now become the products (or victims) of capitalism (in terms of Che Guevera, his icon).
Nowadays, we hear, read and see pictures of Lady Gaga in every media outlet. There are many speculations on her makeup, hairdo, costumes and attitude. And here, I am compelled to think: is she going beyond conventions? You may think I’m a loony for trying to make sense out of the leotards and horror makeup.
But I saw a girl in Civil Mall this week which made me think about the “Lady Gaga” effects.
The girl was wearing a normal top, quite a decent one with full sleeves, but nothing except that. Her legs were bare; in fact, one could easily see her innerwear while she was standing straight. No, she was not drunk and it was 2 in the afternoon and it seemed as though she was hanging out with her friends.
I have no idea what the girl was thinking while she decided on her “fashion.” But that definitely is the kind of “going against the flow” that I will never be sold to. And since it’s the same history that tells us that whatever has come against conventions has been incorporated in the same mainstream bracket after a few years.
And then, I go back to the girl I saw in Civil Mall and would like to ask me, you and everyone, “Is that going to be the hot thing
very soon?”
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