I moved from window to window to grab a picture of the visitor and send it to my boss in Republica to print his photo with my brave article following. I was ready to click on any moving image outside. I spent half an hour but no one appeared for the screening. I was disappointed.
I stopped after a while. Why I was acting strange, I thought, in the middle of the night? Some sort of a sign of mental disorder, I assumed. A sensible person, I suppose I am. I am a good teacher, they say. I live healthily. Not a vegetarian but certainly a teetotaler! But why am I creeping from window to window for a picture of a thief? I should make noise and chase him away instead of wikileaking him for the newspaper.
I promised never to repeat such foolish acts again. I was scared of myself for a while. The most embarrassing thing would have been the reaction of the thief. He would have laughed at me for my stupidity. A thief should be caught by moral and legal law, he would have thought. I steal and you police. But taking a picture of a thief in such a situation signals some sort of confusion.
I was scared of myself for the thief being scared of me. Who would go to steal in such homes where the host tries to snap pictures of thieves? I pondered over the nocturnal behavior and wondered about the law of causation. Why did I do that?
Is this all because of the plight of electricity? I would have been studying or sleeping if there was no load shedding. Who made me a funny photographer out of a good reader? This is a paradoxically funny example of what we have done to us as responsible people as engineers, administrators, and leaders.
A supposed metropolis must not behave like this. The culture of urbanization does not allow a capital to plunge in darkness so early. People must work, life should be lively in the night, and people should be seen outside, working a bit late.
Making fools out of sane people: Groping in the darkness to take pictures of a thief. This is just metaphoric of our states of mind. Darkness is not bad as its follow-ups are: What do you do in the darkness? You switch on the light and work or you switch it off and go to bed. But the darkness is leading strange effects on our lives from business and industry to education and viewing television.
Now, answer my question. If a teacher is trying to take pictures of a thief in the darkness what will the industrialist do without electricity? What will the student read? What will the common Nepali housewife do? To me every Nepali looks foolishly helpless amidst load shedding these days. We are becoming bizarre night by night.
Betrayed, alienated, and humiliated! A country which boosted immense hydro-electric potential has made a stupid photographer out of a good teacher, for half an hour though. Do not take it as an individual case of foolish adventurous fun. There are more stupidities to come, graver in content and form.
Take example of Kathmandu. There is an eerie silence in the neighborhood after around even seven in the evening. A supposed metropolis must not behave like this. The culture of urbanization does not allow a capital to plunge in darkness so early. People must work, life should be lively in the night, and people should be seen outside, working a bit late.
But life goes dozing except in some exceptional corners of the city lanes. Kathmandu looks ghostly at many places and dogs start barking very early in the evening. The sound of the early night is disturbingly unnatural than the essential night. The middle of the night is supposed to be silent but we have a time distortion.
Our mid-nights are prolonged, it drags on longer. Times are distorted; nights are distorted amidst ghostly silences in the houses. I have never read the nights so fearfully—not the fears of the specters of the night—but now have anxieties for all sorts of ghostly people who are ruling us in the day.
I was returning late, one weekend. It was past 11 o’clock. Near Nagpokhari, I saw a man staggering left and right. I gathered he was drunk and was obviously out of his senses. I passed by him slowly to avoid bumping my machine onto him. He looked at me dejected and observed, “Such darkness!” (Kasto andhyro cha!). Even such an unsubstantial wanderer is aware of the things around.
orungupto@gmail.com
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