Dubai Days manuscript

A Lesson Learnt Living Up the Mountains in a
Nepalese Village


In Dolakha, a remote village in Nepal 3000 metres
above sea level, nestled in the verdant hills bristling
with plush Nepalese flora and lying prostate at the
foot of the Himalayan mountains, I met the happiest
family in the world. The Shresthas were the
apotheosis of unfettered, joyous contentment.


Narayan was the indomitable and charismatic father
abounding with sunny optimism and pearls of
spiritual wisdom uttered in basic English and through
a thick but lovable South Asian accent.

His wife was a burst of radiant joy; jocular, jocund,
always smiling, always laughing.

His daughter was a tall, slender teen with charming
good looks, patience and impeccable manners.
His elderly parent-in-laws were wizened, affable
beings always meekly, gently smiling as they looked
upon their brood with warm pride.



The earthquake of 2015 tore the Shreshthas world
apart like a wrathful tourbillion. They lost their
home, their business and their life savings. Narayan
was forced to take out bank loans to pay to have the
school he had built using 40 years of his life savings,
demolished and get the debris and rubble removed
from his land. They now lived in a corrugated
aluminium shack held together with nylon rope and
formidable hope. In the space it would take to
uncomfortably house 2 cows, lived 8 people
(including me and 2 young helper boys who were
rebuilding the Shreshtha’s home and a small 4
classroom school to replace the resplendent 3 storey
one that once stood there). They had been living in
the shack for more than a year and a half.


I lived in that aluminium home of hope and hearty
laughter with the Shreshthas for 10 nights. The wife
bounded about the garden picking spinach, garlic and
leeks and joyfully dished up every night the most
tantalising meals. They chattered excitedly, joked
and laughed profusely at the smallest thing morning
and noon. They had a small Hindu shrine at which
they placed flowers and rice and prayed every day
after which they pressed the palms of their hands
together as an act of humility and prostration before
God.
No one was ever morose or showed a sliver of
despair.



No one was ever frayed or expressed anger or
resentment.
No one ever complained or cursed their wretched
fate.


In the mornings, I would walk a mile with Narayan
through the sumptuous pine and lime green forests to
help local government village schools. The vistas
that flanked the meandering road between the fir and
pine trees were breath taking; soaring hills and
swooping valleys and ragged ravines through which
tumbling rivers dashed themselves against the rocky
banks; and in the far distance the awe-inspiring
Titans of Mother Nature - the Himalayan mountains.
The jagged contours of their summits thickly caked
with pristine white snow contrasted oddly with the
soft pastel lavender, powder blue and velvety lilac
hues of the rest of their colossal rocky bodies.


When the sun shrunk behind the horizon at dusk, the
blast of bone-chilling mountain air made its
menacing presence felt. And dusk turned to chilly
Nepalese winter night. Then the stelliferous night
sky was a jet-black velvet shawl draped across the
heavens speckled with a thousand sparkling stars
startling in their multitudes. The crescent moon to me
looked like a smile on the face of the night.
All this time, while the obscene self-indulgent
profligacies of the West ran wild and the well-to-do

urbane epicures of Paris and Rome, London and
Dubai wined and dined themselves ad nauseum or
baked themselves under carcinogenic sun rays on a
beach, the Shreshthas quietly soldiered on with their
little lives.



While the consumer orgies that we call Christmas
and Thanksgiving banged on unabated, in which the
already overfed eat themselves into obesity and
damage the environment and degrade other nations
into slave labour so they can rejoice at the bargains
they found as they ran around buying things for each
other that they didn't really need, the Shreshthas were
huddled in their humble, cramped, unheated but cosy
hovel feeling gratitude for a boiled egg and some
morceaux of chicken on their plate and laughing
raucously at nothing in particular.


Despite our western privileges and voluptuary, we
are often anxious, discontent and in despair driven to
drink and distraction.

Despite the Shreshthas tragedy and poverty, they are
joyful, hopeful and grateful for every boon for
nothing to them it seems is a curse.
There is a lesson to be learnt here by the rest of the
world.

It’s a lesson the Shreshthas taught me upon nights on
which I stared up ensorcelled by the bloated stars and
the grinning moon.









Counting Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds


Mar 18



We can talk it out.
Walk it off.
The past is devouring the present by the second and
I reckon
We won't be around forever.

How's your father?
Do pass the liquor.
No doughnuts for me;
I'm watching my figure.

I saw today photographs of yesteryear.
They were dog-ear tattered and faded
Showing as they did oblique images of abstract
figures
With mutilated faces blurred with blood and
smudged by shadows.
Their names escape me;
As does my own...

The Arab is bilious in his starched lab coat
As I float past, 30 feet off the ground.



The boys at the back tittering. Cumming and going,
like the sun.

Across the snowscape, a flash of lightening.
Upon a tundra, thunder rolls.

I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers in a fold
walking along Jumeirah beach with all the other
marooned souls.

O it's you I haven't seen you for years what was her
name panic okay play it off how you've grown so
happy you’re doing well do I care about her or not I
don't recall

There's a bus that relies on me.
My feet are in the sky.
The clouds blanket my toes.
I'm suspended comatose.
I don't know why
I am so high.

I am looking down on the world that looks up to me
as I am
Crushed under the feet of more ruthless giants.
All the pernicious shenanigans
Say "here be dragons".
Or at least I was triggered
Rifled
Stifled



In a distant dream
At a time my subconsciousness has blotted out of
sight and mind.

Effulgent diligence and fortitudinous determination
Has not perturbed my procrastination.
All those irksome labours
Pinch my vexation.
Whatever happened to blithesome days of hazy
sunshine and rested bones?
My genial spirit has been bottled.
My dove neck has been throttled.
Embattled with time, felicity sing a song for me.
A reverie.
A dream.



D H Lawrence in a Kebab Shop

25th Sep 18

The wheels swallow the asphalt miles.
Head race.
Furrowed brow upon clenched face.
Somewhere in another world
A corpse and a light burn
For you.
And this day too
Is a dagger
In your bloated heart.
Roar of city traffic
And the lights flash
To hide
The hollowness
Of concrete buildings.
D h Lawrence stands in line
For his kebab
Grumbling
About the vulgarity of it all.



















Death by Consumption



11th Feb 19


The revolution

Will not be televised.

But it will be monetised

And merchandised

And sponsored

And turned into a meme.
And if that seems cynical,

It’s because it is.

Babes in arms

Making predecessors

Who are not even dead

Spin in their graves

Is nothing new.
You

Are the seeds of your own destruction.

The big wigs were always the fools

And in the land of fools,

The depraved village idiot is king.

Try bringing decorum to a mental asylum.
The pigs

Are eating their babies

And consuming their own faeces.



















Destruction



May 18


Your scolding contempt

Crawled out of the gutter

And sliced through me

Like a hot knife through butter.



Brooding resentment gives way to swirling fury and
then volcanic eruptions.

I run for cover as the bolt-studded thunder rumbles

And my puny world tumbles in the unholy
destruction.