I took a walk to get out of the house and kill time before futsal in the evening.

I walked through Bishalnagar to Dhumbarahi, where I stopped at a chiyā pasal for tea. The sāhuni and a girl were sitting on stools in the front of the shop, chatting. I sat down and ordered tea and asked them if the Rāprapā office up the road had any flags. They said they didn’t know, but I could go there and ask. They looked confused by my inquiry. I explained that the flag wasn’t for myself, since I’m not a supporter, but for my friend’s son, who is a big fan of cows, and there’s a cow on the flag. I added that he was two years old. The sāhuni laughed. She had nice decorations in her tea shop, mostly pictures of wildlife and himals cut out from calendars. Much nicer than some of the stuff you see around.

I paid Rs. 12 for my tea and left. When I walked by the Rāprapā office I saw two old Bahun-looking men coming out, one dressed in a topi and regular office clothes, the other in an oversize t-shirt and baseball cap with the brim pointed slightly to the right. Maybe he was a “youth leader”. I didn’t go in. I didn’t want to deal with the people there and pretend to be a supporter or anything. And they probably wouldn’t have given a flag to a khaire like me anyway.

I walked out to Ring Road. Once I got there I wasn’t sure which way to go so I wandered out a road beside one of the tributaries of the Dhobi Khola, thinking I’d walk and see how long it would take before I came across some open land and agriculture, some feeling of a village. I didn’t come close. I just saw a few empty lots and gardens here and there. But I did meet an American study abroad student along the river, who sheepishly gave me a namaste from the other side of the road, and I asked him what he was doing there. He said he was from L.A. and that he was on a gap-year program after high school. The program was called “Where There Be Dragons”. He said Kathmandu was really different from Los Angeles but I didn’t ask him if he’d seen any dragons yet. I said goodbye and that I had to go meet friends. He seemed a bit lonely and I felt sorry but I didn’t want to give my number away to someone I had just met or anything.

I walked on until I realized I had come in a circle back to the Ring Road. Then I asked a Madhesi or Indian bicycle fruit-wālā which way was Mandikatar, and he pointed to the right, and I went that way, but I should have gone left. I walked to the right until I realized it was the wrong way and then I turned back, but on the way I found out what a false ceiling is. I found this out at the “False Ceiling Shop” in Sukedhara, which aroused my attention as I passed by the first time and when I stopped in on my return I discovered that a false ceiling is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. I was expecting something like a secret space for storing contraband, or something to do with magic tricks like the kind Houdini did. But it turned out it’s just a style of office building ceiling, with foam tiles. Like the ceiling in my university hall in the US that was said to be covering up asbestos insulation. Maybe I got my hopes up because of the place Kathmandu used to be in my youth, or because of my youth, a place where there might be hidden dragons somewhere. Like on one of the abandoned upper floors of the International Club in Sanepa, or down a narrow Thamel alley on a winter evening.

I walked to Mandikatar but it was still over an hour before futsal so I walked on, past the Kastamandap Madhyamik Vidhyalaya and an empty lot where cement mixers were being stored, on the edge of an escarpment from which I could see a view of the city out towards Bouddha. I was thinking that if I were a photographer I would have taken a picture of that scene, the empty lot and the urban sprawl in the background, the afternoon light on the houses that are eating up what little open space is left and leaving only the occasional empty lot like this one, used to store cement mixers.

I went to another chiyā pasal and this one was run by an older Limbu or Rai sāhuni. At first it was just me and one balding guy whom I took to be a Bahun or Chhetri drinking tea, but as time passed some young men and an older pair of Sherpa friends came in to have beer and kodo ko raksi. The balding man seemed eager to chat with everyone, and we got to talking. He told me he had worked as a cook in Dubai, Lebanon, and Iraq. I asked if he could cook falafel and chawarma and he said yes. I mentioned that I was on my way to play football and one of the Sherpas asked if I was going to the facility in Mandikatar. I said yes, and he asked if I knew that the place was owned by a Sherpa. I said I knew, he’s a friend of mine. He laughed and was obviously proud of this. He did not seem wealthy. He said he’d just been working for a trekking group in Pokhara and came back to Kathmandu in the past day or two. But he also said he had 55 yaks and chauri-gāi in his village in Khumbu.

Two thin, old Bahun-looking men came in wearing topis and ordered chiyā, which the sahuni served them in whiskey glasses. I heard them muttering to themselves about the whiskey glasses, and I jokingly asked if their drinks were spiked but they answered no without apparently appreciating my attempt at humor. They just said they didn’t drink. But the younger Bahun chimed in from behind me, saying nowadays only 2% of the world’s population doesn’t drink, implying that a lot of the world’s population (e.g. high-caste Hindus, Muslims, children) are drinking more than we think they do. I said I lived for two years with African Muslims and never saw them drink. He agreed, saying Africans are very “sojho” people. (I wonder whether he really thought this or if he just wanted to agree to be polite. A lot of Nepalis ask me questions about African-Americans with the apparent preconception that they’re all gangsters.) A young Limbu or Rai guy at the table next to us asked how black people got to America. I said a lot had been stolen from their homes at gunpoint and brought to America as slaves. He considered this and then said that that was like what happened here, where the Kirant people had been forced to become Hindus. He added that all “Mongol people” were originally Kirant before their forced conversions. The Bahun elders grumbled about this, and the young Rai man said it’s just what he’d read in textbooks. The old men grumbled on about textbooks but the young Bahun and I tried to reason with the Rai a bit. Sherpas were “Mongol people” but they had never been Kirant, we pointed out. The young man accepted this but eventually he went into the back room and the older Bahuns left without saying goodbye. I had a feeling they would both talk about the others’ foolishness behind each other’s backs, even though they seemed to avoid a direct argument in the teashop.

I said goodbye to the young Bahun and the two Sherpas and went to play futsal.