Wagle Street Journal

It’s 12:12 AM as I am starting to type these words. Not exactly a good time to start writing a blog post. May be a right time to dream. Dream about what? Sleeping with a girl? Forgive my lingo (if anyone is reading this but I am alone and I am adult) but it’s, as I said, exactly, 14 minutes past midnight. I know its time to sleep. Was reading the Person of the Year issue of Time Magazine, after watching my favorite show CID in Sony TV, and one line in the introductory article really strike my state of mind. “I am going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bristo down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?” (I usually arrive home at 10 PM from office and the show starts at 10:15. That’s a good timing and I like watching criminal investigative shows of any quality.)

As I was reading articles, I couldn’t resist getting out the bed and opening up the computer. I was compelled to hit key boards. After all, I remember, I used to write about my state of mind back in 2004 when I started blogging. Then, putting that job aside, I jumped on blogging about the state of the nation (on UWB). Why not go retro? After all, the name YouTube also has that retro feel. Article about YouTube guys is informative and quite interesting. I envy them. These three guys are 27, 28 and 29 years old. Damn, I tell myself, I am 28 and will soon be 29. Will I start a YouTube like phenomena by the end of next year? What the hell I am doing here in this small room of a house in Kadaghari, Gothataar Village? I am alone in the room, great grand father is heavily snoring in the next room and I am reading Time Magazine article about “Leila, The Real Lonelygirl.” Ha, where are you, dear? The 20-year-old, according to the Magazine, lives in Maryland, “where she’s studying to be a social worker. Her personal life really is complicated.” F–k (God, I would be censored if I were in UWB), I tell myself, why people have complicated life even before they reach 20? I hate these people. So sex is out of mind, what else I can think about? I go back to the dream of being a sensational YouTube like miracle.

The thing is that I have actually no time to dream right now. I must get some good sleep because the harsh reality is that I must work. Tomorrow is Saturday but, what the hell, I will be going to office anyhow. I don’t remember when I took leave from office last time. I am hoping to do some real work tomorrow, work on some stories that I have been planning for days. Today wasn’t that much work, that’s for sure and that was quite a relief. But I don’t have car or motorcycle so I must wait till office vehicle drops me home. I am still in the phase of dream, mind it, I tell myself. So when I was in home at 10 PM, my CID watching partner Email was not there to open the doors. Great grandpa tells me that he is on his way to Butwal to take a job in a bank. What? I am surprised. He was supposed to complete his study, it’s his last year in the bachelor’s degree, I think. Why job? I called him and ordered him, I am THE big brother after all, to return back. He was staying in a house nearby because our tradition is that members of the family don’t leave home on Saturdays. Email tells me that dai was sending him Butwal. I am pissed off with dai. Who the hell is dai, I ask him. “Return back and continue the study.” I felt like I am the boss of the house. [But he went Butwal in the morning.]

I don’t interfere in domestic affairs normally. Actually, I rarely take any interest in that. Sometime I even forget who else are there in my family. I come home at around 10 PM, eat whatever is stuffed in the hot case and watch TV or play with computer or read books and papers and sleep. Sleep till I feel like sleeping. For instance, when my editor Narayan Wagle called me this morning (at around 11 AM) with a story idea, I was sleeping. “Still sleeping?” he asked. “No, I am already awake,” I lied. Then I woke up. When I woke up, I eat and get out of the house. So the house, for me, is basically a place to take rest. May be a hotel? Not that I don’t love folks here but my nature is like that. So I was talking about not caring much about them but today I was like a dictator. Yes, I might have spoken loudly in front of dai but then I think it’s a nice idea to give Email a year to complete his bachelors. (Not caring about them shouldn’t mean I am a heartless monster, I am the breadwinner, partial, in the family. One good way of consoling yourself, perhaps. A kind of satisfaction, I guess.)

Someone told me, recently and last year, not to compare myself with others. I myself have been telling to some people the same dialogue. What the hell? Why not compare, I say. How can you evaluate yourself if you don’t’ compare? If you don’t set up the standard? I always compare things? Like I compare my writings with those published in New York Times. Hmm, the paper is superior in quality. But not always. I was taken aback by the mistakes I saw in a recent article about Nepal in the Times. I wrote an email to the correction section of the paper (and CCed that to the Public Editor) yesterday. I am hoping to see the correction soon but if they don’t do that I will post the email here. So what do I think of myself? One who don’t do mistakes? Hell not. I also do the mistakes. And I keep on learning. I try not to repeat the f- - - - - - mistakes (Again, forgive my lingo. I am writing my state of mind tonight and you know mind is mind. I don’t know what I really meant by this but I hope the message got through.) We don’t expect such silly mistakes from newspapers like Times, do we? I am sure that’s because of the parachute journalism they practice when it comes to small and insignificant countries like Nepal. They send tourist reporters like the one who did that particular story and silly mistakes are bound to happen.

So what else do I want to write? It’s damn cold here and even more so because I am opening the window. Chilly wind is coming inside. I must open the window to get wireless phone work so that I can connect to the Internet. I can’t afford buying heater, or paying exuberant electricity charge if I buy one. So better I close the window for the time being and open it when I have to connect the net again. So the poverty is all about comparison. I would be in the category of super rich if I compare myself with millions of those who are living openly under the sky and can’t afford to have a bed like mine. (Hmm, this Leila The Real Lonelygirl’s bedroom seems real cozy for me.) If I compare myself with the likes of YouTube guys (well, they say they haven’t seen any of the $ 1.65 billion that they are supposed to get from the Google deal. So I am not comparing with them.) or Google guys, then I am terribly poor.

Today I saw a fantastic documentary titled ‘We Corner People’ by a Nepali filmmaker named Kesang Tseten. The film wonderfully documents the difficult life of the people of a remote village in Rasuwa district and their efforts of building a suspension bridge with the technical help from Helvetas Nepal. “It’s hard being poor,” says a man I his letter sent to his wife from Kuwait where he had gone to find a job. “I live in a corner,” says another man in the film. “I don’t have king’s salary.” If you go by that standard, living in Nepal itself is like living in some remote corner of the world. And it’s hard to be poor in any corner like this. Well, actually I don’t consider myself poor. It’s midnight and my mind is thinking anything it likes to think. So it found poverty as one of the appropriate topic, I think. The film must have some effect.

Talking about “me and my mind” thing, this is really one hell of a contradiction that I find. If that’s my mind, I must be a different entity. If my mind and I are different entity, how can I think? I mean, I say this is my hand or this is my nose. If I were to remove all these “my” things out of me, what would remain at the end? There would be no “me.” So, “me” is the combination of all these “my” and there is no need for that distinction between these two. Really, then what is this? I am feeling some kind of chill in my feet? Whose feet?

Enough with this philosophy which will take me nowhere. It’s been more than an hour I started writing and it seems if I continue writing, I will not go to bed. No, I will. I am already yawning. Haaaai.. It’s a long yawn. But my mind says it still doesn’t want to sleep? Damn, a smiling Leila, the Real Lonely girl is watching me from inside her laptop. Good night, err, Good Morning! 1:22 AM.

F—, it’s 1:47 AM and I can’t post the blog because the connection isn’t so well tonight. A consolation comes from the Time article: even YouTube guys in the US didn’t have the high speed connection required to browse their site. I will start reading the magazine. Oh.. it’s working now.

Filed under: Wagle Monologue