I lived, for a while, in a world without words. There was only music and movement. And masks. Frogs jumped. One of them had a mohawk. He swaggered across the stage, swept his arms around. It wasn’t quiet in there; guitars strummed. But when the musicians paused, the quality of silence, when one mask looked at another, was deeper, heavier. It was a wordless world, but the actors were able to demonstrate – by moving their feet, nodding their heads, shaking their hips – glimpses of humour, passion, desperation. I’m talking about Mandala Theatre’s latest production, Jumping Frog. After completing a run in Kathmandu, they had landed in Pokhara for the weekend.
It felt like being transported from one world to another. Because for a few days, I had been living mostly among glaciers and rivers inside the International Mountain Museum. We had spent a couple of days sorting through piles of student work, choosing pictures and words that illustrated the responses of young Nepalis to their environment. On Saturday morning, in order to get ready for the second edition of the Climate+Change, a colleague and I went to Pokhara’s airport to pick up one of the chief guests. Back at the museum, he sank into a plastic chair and said, “So I have to prepare a ten-minute speech. What should I say?”
Later that morning, we listened to the speeches. About spreading messages, creating impacts. Standard Thank Yous and Welcomes. And then, towards the end, two poets. The words flowed, gently. These words were somehow more precious, each vibrating with a higher energy. I was suspended in a strange, beautiful world. The poets took me high, very high, showing me ‘mountains that may be crumbling under your feet’, suddenly bringing me down to Kathmandu’s murky streets where people think only of ‘paisa paisa paisa’. Their story had an emotional urgency, such was the power of their words, the quality of their sounds.
And it was over. I sat still for a few seconds, holding on to the mixture of joy and weariness flowing through me, as if I had just returned from a long journey. I had felt something similar the weekend before in Kathmandu, while watching short films at the Ekadeshma festival. In “Level of Care”, I lived, temporarily, inside an old German woman’s apartment. I watched her sit on the bathroom floor, witnessed her daughter lift her from the ground and help her to the bedroom. The old woman, stuck in a world of dementia and her daughter, alternating between smiles and tears, stuck in her own little world.
There were entries from several countries, including from Korea, Nepal, Lebanon and Iceland. In “Whale Valley” I visited a remote Danish fjord, where two brothers walked along the seashore, amidst tall, wild grasses. Then I was thrown into Mexico’s drug war in “Reality 2.0”. I sprinted between small worlds, and then to the eastern Tarai with Kaala Sangroula’s “Butte Jama”, getting to know sad Baisakhi, who lives inside a mud hut with her grandmother. The only thing she wants, little Baisakhi, is a flowery, colourful skirt. She can’t have it.
All these people and their problems. They enter me. Even the writers trying to make sense of shadows. Sitting under a giant tent behind Nepal Academy Hall for the Literature Festival. They talked about Indians writing in English, casting their shadows on South Asians. Do they really? Or, through their words, have they actually shone a light, revealing worlds that were hidden. What does being a South Asian mean to a Nepali who has spent thirteen years in America? How Asian is he, how American?
They swim inside my head. Indians, Asians, Nepalis, Americans. These people. Their thoughts and ideas. They knock on my doors. At the end of the day, I wasn’t sure where I lived anymore. I had to walk away. I wanted a blank white wall in front of me. And silence. And sleep. They say we make decisions while we sleep. Our memories are consolidated. That’s what I do. In times of uncertainty, I slip out of my conscious world and leave everything else for the unconscious to sort out.
Where do you live? What kind of world do you inhabit? Is your world full of aunts and children and servants? Or do you live mostly inside a television? Have you been spending your life sitting at a desk, punching in numbers and signing documents? Do you live mostly on your legs, walking, hiking, climbing or do you live in a world of traffic jams? Do you find yourself, on solitary evenings, living inside your heart? Do you spend hours sifting through emotions that overflow, blinding you, blocking your vision? Or do you live in a cerebral world? A world made up of words and ideas and concepts that don’t have shape and form.
What does your world look like? Are there frogs and turtles in there? Is it icy and wet? Or is it green and sunny like distant Nepali valleys? Does your world have music and poetry? How much time have you spent building it? How much time do you spend inside your own world? What does it have? Does it have Jhamel restaurants? Tea shops? Lots of momos? Is your world spicy?
How often do you try to escape from your world? How many hours, during the day, do you spend commuting from one world to another? Between the world outside your door where cars are honking and the world inside your computer where your friends are vacationing in a Virginia park.
I also commute between these worlds. I like to travel, to traverse artificial boundaries, fake restrictions, between the real and the virtual, mind and matter. Unknowingly, I have sometimes transcended expectations from society, my parents, friends, my own personal limits.
Movement. Music. Masks. These are important things. When they are missing, one can simply turn pages. That’s what I am going to do now. I am going to reenter the Japanese world that I have been visiting lately. It’s the year 1Q84. I am going to live with Tengo and Aomame. I am going to find out about Fuka-Eri. She had disappeared for a few weeks. Last night she called Tengo. I wonder where she had gone.