Every time we went to Damak, there was something new happening there.
To those who lived there, perhaps time passed slowly, and they did not realise how things changed every day.
To those of us who went there only once or twice a year, things were radically different every time.. .
**
Most years we had a swing, which Mailobuwa lovingly constructed out of bamboos and ropes the courtyard. We took turns on it, ten times per person. Because she was youngest, Bina got an extra turn called 'fau.' But sometimes that was not enough for her, and Mailobuwa had to build her her own swing, below the wooden staircase. There she swung all day, pouting at us and proud of her private luxury.
**
One of our favourite things to do was play ludo. In the day time we played extremely physical sports like gola or football, but night times were our favourite as the dusk set in, and we tried to drive away the evening melancholia with games. We would get out the old, battered ludo boards and tinkering little dices. we would roll the dice for hours and watch as our gotis climbed up ladders and down snakes. We would debate which way the goti would go if it slid down, right or left. We would debate if the goti gets to go home if it scores 100+ marks, or if it should be exactly hundred. Four of us could play this game, and there were sometimes 5, and sometimes 7-8 of us. Bina mostly stayed out because she was too busy being pyauli with hajurama, and otherwise all of us played this at once.
Maybe we liked even better the other game, where only four players could play. We chose our favourite colours with care, and then strategised for hours about how to get all four gotis home. Again, we debated if we the goti could come out of home at one, or six,
or both. We debate if you get a second turn at one, or six, or both. We debated if the goti could be killed at a star, or could only
be delayed. Since only four people could play this, sometimes two people teamed up and played against others. And then the two would form alliances with two more, to strategise: hey, don't kill my goti, let it pass and ill let yours go too. And then inevitably, one of them would break the alliance and chase up and kill the other goti, leading to betrayal and revenge. JUST when things were getting terribly exciting and all four teams were in a position to either go home or kill each other or both, we would hear LOUD yells. "CHILDREN! THAT'S ENOUGH FOR THE DAY! PACK AND UP GO TO SLEEP!"
And no, there was no arguing with this voice, no snooze period. Off we went, with promises of a more epic game tomorrow.
The next day, old grievances were forgiven and new alliances were made, as if no betrayals had happened, and only great fun was had by everyone.
Once, I tried to take a ludo board form Kathmandu to Damak. Everyone told me not to do so, because it would get lost or damaged or whatever. I agreed reluctantly, but shoved it inside my sweater anyways. I felt it inside me until halfway. After that, I don't remember when I fell asleep and it dropped out of my front.
**
We could also go on for hours and hours on byapari, which grown ups never understood. Looking back, I don't think we fully understood the rules of Hindi-translated monopoly, our game was much shorter than the actual monopoly would have been, but I am guessing we had more fun. On and on we would calculate little loans, moneys, bankruptcies, buy homes and hotels and what nots, with one person becoming the bank, and doling out loans, and others becoming merchants. Our hisab-kitab was crystal clear to us, but any adult who tried to get in edgeways was confused and bamboozled and soon walked out dazed.
**
Another favourite game of ours was to build a house. We would gather little sticks, bundles of dirty hay that had no more use, and weave them together to build a house in the courtyard. We would cover it up with a piece of unused cloth, or a tarpaulin, or maybe with woven sticks and hay. Sometimes we got overly ambitious and started plucking out fresh hay from the stack, or even fresh rice stalks from the fields. That was when we got yelled at and chased all over the fields.
But always we finished building a little structure that we took great pride in. Often, it would fit only one person. Sometimes, it could accommodate us only if we were crouched or lying down. We would bring in a mat and sit inside anyways, proceed to have our khaja there and play the usual games. Sometimes if we disagreed, this too was split up into two gangs and we made two houses, but all was well in the end as we visited each others' homes.
One time I remember, we made a grand house in the backyard where EVERYONE could fit comfortably and luna didi even brought some gobar and did the lip-pot and beautified the entrance with a walkway and flowers. We played games there and I distinctly remember spending the day reading Maha ko drama anthology. The very night, unseasonal Dashain rains came thundering down, and the next morning only the ruins of our house remained.
One time, Jayraj and Ashish took it in their heads to stay in the house at night. The adults tried to dissuade them, but the boys were adamant. Finally, the adults had no option but to let them sleep there. But very soon the boys came in running, saying a ghost in a brown bora scared them. We would know only many years later that the 'ghosts' were our uncles in matching brown sacks!
**
As we grew older, our games got more elaborate. They were no more just play, they had mysterious meanings, connected to our lives. We obsessively played FLAMES, where each letter stood for a word (Friendship, Love, Affection, Marriage, Enemies, and Sisters). This game we played to figure out what kind of relationship we would have with our crush. Often the crush was an unattainable star. Even better for our imagination. This game we played by writing down the names of both the people concerned - this of course could have endless variations if one was dissatisfied with the results - one could have just the first names, first names plus last names, nick names, etc etc. Any matching alphabets were canceled out. The remaining alphabets were counted. Then number was taken to FLAMES, and alphabets canceled out one by one. For example, if you got 6, you would count F L A M E S, and cancel out S (sisterhood gone, phew!), and continue canceling out until you had only one left.
Not satisfied with the half a dozen options that FLAMES gave, I invented something. In fact, I don't remember if I invented it or borrowed the idea from somewhere. Anyhow, I did come up with the
options to write out, because I was not satisfied with the original ones. It was similar to FLAMES, except we came up with all the permutations of 0, 1 and 2, from 000 to 222. Each number had a meaning beside it. "This is your dream," or "this person hates you," etc etc. Our creativity was endless. We invented many stories about your crushes from these games, which, I guess, were a form of wish fulfillment.
Finally, we came across the Ouija Board, which was the ultimate in terms of story telling and wish fulfillment options. At the time, we did not know it was called Ouija Board. In fact, I don't even know how it infiltrated our gang. But someone told us about this practice of bhoot bolaune or summoning the spirits. We had to have a board (no sooner was it said than we made it, ourselves), which had all the letters of the alphabet, and numbers, and yea and no, around it. We had to have a candle, and a mysterious summoning atmosphere. Then we would have to place a coin there. With two people's fingers on the coin, we would ask a bhoot to come. And then, any question we asked, the bhoot would answer it, by moving the coin to the appropriate letters.
I, the young skeptic who had read the story of Houdini and thereafter vowed to not believe in any ghosts or spirits or anything from out of the world, of course scoffed at this new device. But I would not be left out of the fun. I put my finger on the coin along with one other person, and very soon it moved. I was forced to admit that some mysterious spirit was moving it, when of course I knew that the other person was moving it (it was obvious, for example, when the other person asked the question - do you know anyone who has a crush on me, and the answer moved to - 'yes'). Annoyed, I tried to tug it to 'No', and the ruse was nearly broken with a tug of war in a distinctively non-spiritual way. Still, it managed to yield us may hours of fun and got us to share many secrets of the teenage heart.
**
One game we never tired of was quizzes. We took turns to devise quizzes - scouring general knowledge books and magazines, and coming up with several rounds of questions for gangs. Sometimes Richa and I spent months devising the quizzes - making up questions from all the current affairs magazines and history books we read. We prepared and played with such sincerity that older relatives who wanted to mock us were baffled, and we truly dazzled each other with our research, dedication and competitive spirit. This was very unlike byapari, where people would steal money from the bank all the time, and also unlike ludo, where everyone was always looking for loopholes to win fast.
Usually, we had one or two questioners, and the participants divided into two groups. When Richa made the quizzes, Bina was the assistant, and we harassed her quite a lot by getting the assistant to bring us water. We had not expected Bina to do much of a quiz, but she surprised us all by coming up with quite standard questions when it was her turn to ask. Yes, we had prizes, some notebooks and chocolates in the end. By the end, we were always proud of how much we had learnt and how well we had played!
Coming to prizes, one year we decided to play a new game: lottery. We made some lottery tickets (by hand), 'sold' it to adults and collected money, and bought some prizes. The trick was to have high-value prizes for some people, low value prizes for some others, and no prizes for a majority of people. I don't think we kept any profits. It all went well, except that hajurba looked so very sad that he won nothing, that we manipulated things and gave him a high value prize which left another person high and dry. And the manipulation, of course, was done clumsily in front of everyone, and let's just say that people were not pleased! Everyone criticized us for leaving some people with nothing, and they suggested we give everyone at least one chocolate or something. I don't think we ever played it again!
**
One thing that continued to surprise us every year was that there was always SOME thing new going on in Damak, a current zeitgeist that was only there on that particular moment, and would be lost and forgotten the next time we went. One time, for example, I went and found radios everywhere. All over the house, there were radios. Some big, some small, one that was a perfect black cube and had no visible featured to turn it off and on, one that was bulky and had the old mechanical dials to turn the volume, ordinary battery charged medium sized ones, one walkman, one tiny one, etc. And it was not as if radios were a novelty, that was an era when televisions had already entered our home, so there was no need for so many radios. Nor were people were greedy for their private devices by then. But mysteriously, every corner I turned and every blanket I lifted, there would be a radio. When I asked everyone for the reason, there was none. And the next time I went, they had all mysteriously disappeared, just as they came.
One year, everyone would be learning crochet and making crochet bracelets and table covers. Another year, everyone would be fashioning roses out of ribbons and framing them. Another year, everyone made flower vases out of nylon rods. Another year everyone wore the same blouses or hairstyles. One year people had decided to revive the craft of their mothers, bringing out embroidery design booklets and cross stitching birds and flowers on pillow covers, canvas frames, and nanglos. I learnt whatever was in fashion at the moment of my stay (yes, I know how to crochet and cross stitch, though I don't do it anymore). Bina learnt each and every thing that came her way, we still have her framed roses on the wall. And yes, mysteriously, all of them would be gone the next year.
The trends also encompassed words. Every year we went, we encountered strange new words - bittak, for example ('big talk' said really fast), or tyas tyas (as in तँलाइ के को ट्याँस ट्याँस)। Like other physical trends, they too were heard only that one year, and if you tried to continue the conversation next year, people looked at you strangely as if you were speaking Greek.
The most mysterious and hilarious of these trends is something I call 'amoeba water.' Someone had put, what I can only imagine, was an amoeba or paramecium or whatever, in water, and the thing, let's call it amoeba, would grow and divide itself into two in a week or so. It was claimed that drinking a cup of this water every day in the morning and evening could cure all sorts of ailments. So people kept this amoeba in glasses, jars, and sometimes big buckets and wide tubs (normally reserved for washing clothes). And if the amoeba had "children," they could share it with others in need. The amoeba itself was brownish in colour and scaly, and looked like sponge, or like poofy mushrooms. The amoeba water was similarly murky and brown, and gave off a decidedly horrible smell. People who drank it were not immune to the smell, and advised you to pinch your nose tightly as you drank.
Even as I stared in disbelief at this unusual phenomenon, which was stored in a big washing tub in our courtyard, one person after another who visited us spoke of its benefits in glorious terms. A neighbourhood woman said she had been cured of gastritis that had
been ailing her for years, and an uncle said he was even cured of
cancer! Someone said she did not need to operate on kidney stones because the water had washed them all away! Sugar, pressure, arthritis, joint pain, kidney stones, everything became a minor ailment now, for this drink that could easily cure cancer!
Strangely, this was one of the few Damak trends that followed me everywhere. When I went to Dhankuta Muwa was singing the same glorious songs about it, and when I came back to Kathmandu someone came to gift buwa a bottle of this amoeba water, in a specially crafted cylinder made of the finest bamboo. It was all I could do to not gag when the cylinder was opened. Of course, my father's diabetes was not cured by this magic potion.
Mysteriously, on my next visit to Damak the amoeba water was nowhere to be seen, and the people who had claimed to be cured by it had all got their ailments back. If you ask them what happened to the amoeba, people grew vague and stared into the distance with glazed eyes, and some people had even forgotten that such a thing had once existed!
One thing that did not change from one year to the next was the 'Top Ten' of Nepali filmy songs on TV. We watched so little TV at home that everything we watched in Damak was new to us. (There was always something new going on with the TV at Damak, which is another full story in itself. For example one year it was hit by lightening and the volume was always super loud and could not be turned down, so it was ALWAYS wrapped up in thick layers of sirak.) So we always watched the top ten of Nepali film songs religiously. One year, the songs of the film Aago was at number 7, going up on the charts. The next year again it was on number 7, this time going down on the charts. This was perhaps a note not on Damak but on Nepali cinema then - so few movies were made that they stayed on the charts for a year!
**
Of course our fun and games were not always idyllic, and there were rivalries and jealousies and gangs - as easily broken as they were made, and different combinations and permutations of it made and remade every day. I will never be allowed to forget that I was once a part of a gang called Shri Luna Bhattarai. Because, apparently, the others were a part of a gang called RAJA (Richa, Ashish, Jayraj, Arvind), so we who were left out named ourselves Shri Luna Bhattarai made from the initials (S, L, B) of those of us who were left out (Sewa, Luna, Bina). Till today I refuse to believe that such a ridiculous name existed, while the other gang continues to insist that it did! Well, the truth is now forever buried in the annals of time, and will not be unearthed! (Or I will not let it!)
After our Ludo games were (forcibly) ended, we all went to sleep on the same bed - sideways. yes, we all fit there, until we were too big. One thing that bothers me till now is that the grownups stayed up much later than we did, talking and eating mysterious things, and in the wooden house with porous borders, we always heard mysterious traces of their guffs, and mysterious crackles of food. Sometimes they would throw down wrappers of junk foods or covers of food or whatever it was into our room, and I was left wondering what delicious things those cruel grown ups must be eating all alone!
Any how, in the morning it was blissful to wake up in a gaggle of arms and legs, complain about who was pinching whom at night, and talk until we woke up properly. We were forbidden to wake up too early (I don't know why, maybe so that we don't disturb the adults in their works?), and we were ordered to stay in bed until the Jay Kali bhajan played on radio. Those blissful hours more than made up for the wrongs of last night, and we got ready for another day of gola, football, quiz, and ludo.
**
Arvind. Luna. Jayraj. Sewa. Ashish. Richa. Bina.
