| Biswo |
Posted
on 11-Apr-01 05:51 PM
Short fiction:
"Are we approaching Xining?" I asked the gaunt helper. He was
sweeping the alleyway, and wearing a white shirt.I wondered how he
managed to keep his shirt so clean.
"Yes. In about thirty minutes!" He replied, flashing his yellowish
teeth. His eyes were radiant, he was attentive and overall, he had
impressed me during his whole fourty eight hours.
"After Xian, it is all desert,huh?"I didn't ask him specifically,
and still he nodded in corroboration.
There were villages along both sides of the railway. Tractors were
parked in the lawn of each house, and all those houses reminded me
the rural houses of Chitwan.If one sees Chitwan from Mahendra
Rajpath, all he sees is tractor and motorcycle parked in a lot of
lawns, and it was ditto in those places also.The farms were not
particularly mentionable,and looked like the farmers had just
reaped their harvest.Sometimes rails coming from opposite
direction obtruded my observation of those villages, and
again,those rails were mostly carrying freights, and sometimes
some workers could be seen shouting from caboose. They certainly
looked very happy. The graffiti that read 'development is a tough
principle' was almost everywhere in those villages.
"Development is a tough principle. Isn't it?"
I asked the stooping helper. It was just meant to be bantering,
and the boy understood that.He stood up, and looked at my eyes,
and those radiant eyes quickly overpowered me to conviction, "Yes,
it is. It is tough in villages,it is easy in cities, specially in
coastal cities!"
Skyscrappers loomed in the distance. I opened the window, and cold
air rushed inside the cabin. One of the fellow passengers was
smoker,and the ashes he left in the ashtray started to waft randomly in the cabin.The attentive helper quickly controlled
those ashes. Rest of us ,nonsmokers, looked at each others'
eyes with clear disgruntlement towards our fellow smoker
passenger.He probably understood our intent, and offered apology
quickly:
" I wanted to quit smoking, I actually quitted several times. It
is very difficult to quit for good,when others seem to be enjoying
from the same habit."
I had tolerated him for two full days, so I didn't offer any
suggestion to make him feel bad. It is always good to bid a
valediction with a sweet smile.
*************** --------------- *************** ------------------
Xining turned out to be a big city. Big and cheerful. People of
different hues were frolicking in the street,foods of diverse
varieties were advertized in different restaurants, and it was a
big pleasant surprise for me.Tibetans, Uighurs, Hans and Mongols:
everybody was there in the streets.It looked more like
mosaic,than melting pot that I had seen in Shanghai.Everybody was
wearing his own traditional dress, speaking in his own
languag and in fact, entering his own ethnic restaurant.
Streets. Do they represent cities? Do they represent people? It is
so difficult to evaluate a city by looking at its streets,
primarily because now it is not the majority of population that
represents the crux of a city, it is the power and the property of
chosen few that represents the essence of any city. We are in a
separate stage of civilization.
" So, Are you going to Golmud? " I asked a Chinese boy who
actually travelled all the way from Shanghai in the same train
that I also travelled.Only that we didn't talk in the train.This
time,we were together in a bus park.
"Yes." He replied curtly. His uninterest in me was at least an
indication that he wasn't a curious person, and that could make my
journey easy if we had to take the same bus.
"What is your name? " I asked .
"Wang Zhengsheng." He replied.
" How to write your name ? " I asked . This time being too curious.
"Zheng from Zhengjia, Sheng from Shenghuo" He replied. A Tibetan
ragamuffin boy looked at me, and fixated his eyes on my face for
more than a few seconds. When I noticed that, he turned his eyes
away from my face, and moved on.
After waiting for a minute, I offered my introduction myself to
Wang. He looked at me with surprise, and said" You look so much
like Xinjiang people.I never thought you are a foreigner!"
Zhengsheng was a different boy. Very easily distinguishable. His
face was fair, his hairs were well kempt and he was wearing
western apparels and sportshoes. He was diplomatic in his speech,
and was cautious not to mix himself with other local people,
eventhough he tried to demonstrate himself as a proud Chinese
national more than often.
Our bus was supposed to depart exactly after four hours. It was a
rickety old bus, with frazzled seats and dirty surface. People
were already inside the bus, and one bespectacled person was in
driving seat. Another person was shouting from near the bus: "
Going to Golmud, quickly, quickly, buy ticket." When I was inside
the bus to check my seat, a Tibetan boy next to my seat told me
that the person seating in the driving seat was not a driver at
all. " He's actually a helper, just trying to show us that he's a
driver!"
Zhengsheng went to the person sitting in the driving seat, and
said: "Boy, I am with this foreigner. Those seats are ours. Take
care of those seats until we come back!"
Later, in the street of Xining, I asked him if that would work.
"Oh,sure", he said, "they generally try to cheat, but cheating a
foreigner and a Shanghainese is not so easy."
Chiming bells were heard, and Tibetans monks in their habits were
spotted walking in the street.They were walking slowly, as if they
were suffering from some agonizing pain. There were so many street
vendors in the roads,they were selling almost every thing that
could be bought in Kathmandu, and that made me feel as if the city
was a kind of superset where Kathmandu belonged to as an
constituent element.Zhengsheng told me he wanted to buy some
clothes for his girlfriend back in Shanghai, but he didn't enter
any of those shops. I bought some garlics to get relief in case I
suffered from asphyxia in my way to Lhasa.
"So , why are you going to Golmud?" I don't know why I asked him
that question.
"Just to walk around Potassium mines. " He spoke with utmost
carelessness, but that trifle reply actually concentrated my mind
to his next sentence:" My dad is police chief there."
It is so difficult to express in words how great that news was to
me.I just tried to suppress my glee by pretending carelessness. God, the worst nightmare of any tourist seeking to go to Lhasa is
the interrogation by those dreaded police in Golmud!
"How long has he been stationed here? " I asked him, just to
connect myself with him.
We kept on talking about the things that mattered us almost
nothing. We wallowed in trivia, we just bothered to talk, and we
also tried to talk about latest economic situation, and the
current status of stock market of Shanghai. He asked me to drink
beer, but being a teetotaler, I politely turned down his
offer.Then we talked about beers, we talked about whores of
Shanghai, we talked about almost everything and we laughed loudly.
We became good friends. At least, we pretended as if we were good
friends. The other people in the street looked at us with surprise
and curiosity.I didn't know whether we were so misfit, or whether
the combination of we two was so peculiar.Again, pretension is not
done for everybody. Pretension is mainly to delude oneself eventually.
"I guess all these people take you as a man from Xinjiang, and it
has been so rare to find a Han talking with a man from Xinjiang so
cheerfully in streets."He offered an explanation of those prying
eyes."Racial tension is very high here. I am not a
communal(person), but I am afraid of talking to these people.
Minority always thinks that majority is trying to impose some sort
of autocracy on it.People belonging to minority group are always
suspicious. Even when you give them everything, they want more,
they are always ingrate and unsatisfied.Even when you want to love
them, they think we have some ulterior motives."
Trying not to contravene with my friend, I offerred my own
supporting statement: "Oh,yes. We are also majority in our
country. Our minority is like a voracious guest in the house of
starved host. Why the hell these people never say thanks,and
always think,even when you give them a lot of things, that we are
not giving enough, that we could give them more!"When I finished
those statements, I regretted making those statements ,and became
afraid that I appeared ingratiating with him!
"The barrier for love is an entrenched suspicion. You can't love
people when the love itself is questioned ruthlessly." He
explained his posits poetically.He then tried to talk some
policial stuffs, which I didn't bother to listen carefully.
-----********* --------------************* ---------**************
The bus was in deed a problem in itself. I discovered it when I
found rain dropping from the ceiling,hitting straightly at my
pate. I was squeezed between several people among which only
Zhengsheng had the ticket and thus the right to seat there. When
there is crisis, rules are not obeyed. The only consolation was
road, Chinese roads are not patched irritatingly and irregularly
and the bus was running very smoothly.It was surprising for me to
know that we were travelling in the desert and I was feeling
extreme cold because of midnight rain.
Everybody in the bus was sleeping. I never slept in any vehicle in
motion,may be my organic mechanism becomes very active at the
time. In the night, I could still see the sprawling Gobi desert,
the range of sand mountains were parallelly running with the road
in the left, and the expanse of sands and only sands were gazing
the vehicle from the right. It was as if I was travelling in the
blackhole of earth, semi-conscious of myself only, and only
knowing that I was running , running very fast, with the celerity
comparable to the light,and in the desert.People sleeping in the
aisle were so happily sleeping, their exhalation was so obviously
audible and their slumberous posture was so enviable that I
regretted my inability to adopt to all environment. Being
privileged means losing the immunity from privation. Privilege
disables people from inside.
As the dawn slowly appeared in horizon,I could figure out what
exactly were sorrounding the road. The road was straight as a
yardstick, and there were pylons of electricity in the left side,
and heavy guys were suspending from those pylons.Slowly,herdsmen
appeared following the foraging sheep ,they were wearing hemp-made
shirts, and a dress similar to cowl and mounted on plucky ambling
horses.They looked disheveled, and unkempt, and were probably
singing some songs. It is also possible that they were just
uttering invective to the grazing herds, and I guessed those
vituperation to be songs. Unless you hear,songs can be anything.
It was also a surprising thing: how and why were they foraging in
deserts?Apart from occasional grasses, and oases, the desert was
totally barren.Small canals seemed to exist, but I couldn't see
any arable land around. Some military outposts seemed to exist,
and most probably they were taking care of those oases and those
electricity.It was so tiring to look at those things
incessantly.Again, I didn't have any alternative.When I looked at
passengers in the bus, I contrasted them with the passengers of
public buses in Nepal:I don't remember any travel of more than
five hours completed without a fellow passenger vomiting in the
bus in Nepal. To my consolation, nobody was vomiting there in that
desert.Emetic wastes are often very noisome,and are capable of
inducing chain reaction among fellow passenger, I was well aware
of that.
Zhengsheng woke up, and looked around, then looked at me and
smiled. Then slowly other passengers also started to move,rise or
talk.The bus regained its vivacity, and the bus driver started
blaring the music.
" Liu lang de ren zai xiangnian ni,
Qin ai de ma..ma..."
Zhengsheng told me he didn't like the music."It's a folk song,I
like pop music."I tried to figure out whether he was telling that
to impress me, to represent himself as a new generation boy who
jibes with the music in the plush discotheques of Shanghai,
rocking and rolling his body in the new zeitgeist or just to
separate himself from the minority travelling in the bus.It is
often very usual in some so called sophisticated (Chinese) people
to have tendency of seggregation from their fellow community. May
be they think they are distinct.Or may be they think I am a
distinct, and they need to equate themselves to me, in the process
disregarding their fellow people.I remember that a boy in
Jinan told me in English that his compatriots 'don't have manner'
and 'spit everywhere'.Generally, in all third world countries,
foreigners are considered to be rich and mannered, and I was
probably benefitting from the same prevalent concept.
Then the villages came. I learned that there were several villages
in those deserts, mostly inhabited by tribals.My observation of
different tribals have found that often they are music lovers.
Most of the tribals have small repertory of music, but they
emphasize their creative works. The Tharus in Chitwan used to
produce their own distinct music with the stick dance in Jitiya,
and the ladies of that community used to dance and produce
beautiful music with the clappings of the hands and intermittent
jangle of their bangles.The tribals in Gobi were mostly wearing
colorful flamboyant apparels, and were also prone to humming some
music which in style resembled to the allegro of Italian opera. We
stopped in a village for breakfast.
The driver parked the bus in a corner of a restaurant. There were
very few choices for us.Exactly, there were only three
restaurants. One was big,and others were small.I remembered the
restaurant of Naubise-Mugling route,they had always ripped me off
big time whenever I travelled my way to my college from my house
in my teenage. The main problem with teenage is a compulsive
proclivity to spend money.I wanted to spend money, I wanted to
eat in restaurant and I never really liked what mom prepared in
the house,so I always ate something in those restaurants only to
regret later, and get rebuked by dad for being 'vulgarly'
prodigal.
I went to the big restaurant. The best thing about the restaurant
was its menu. It had a wide choice of dishes available. However,
when I skipped the beef and pork section, the menu shrunk to
smallness. "Why the hell you don't eat so many thing? " Zhengsheng
asked me irritatingly.
We ate a lot. It was not a breakfast for us, it was almost a
lunch. We ate gongbao jiding, we ate prawns, we ate everything
that we liked. People looked at us with envy and suppressed
desire.Some just pretended not to be caring anything about us.He
sipped Coke and I sipped ice tea. "You don't even drink Coke?" he
was surprised. The helper from bus arrived in the restaurant,
asked every of us to be ready.The restaurant was almost empty.
"We are moving, come to bus, we are moving, hurry up, hurry up. "
he shouted loudly, which should have cost him some of what he ate
there. Then I finally saw the driver of our bus receiving some
present from the restaurateur. Zhengsheng signalled to me.
" What now? You want to go to restroom?" I asked him.
"Ate a lot. " He said.
"They are yelling at us." I said.
"They will wait for me." He replied.
I went back to bus and informed the petulant driver my friend was
in restroom."We can't wait for him, he will come later." The
driver yelled angrily, and some of the passengers also supported
him and urged him to drive the bus. I knew that buses were so rare
in that area, and the driver couldn't do what he was thinking of
doing.
But he drove the bus. With such disregard to my pleas that I felt
humiliated.The bus again picked up the speed. The music again
started to blare and all other passengers reclined in their seat
and in aisle.Nobody seemed to bother at all.I stood up from my
seat, and went to the driver.
"Why don't you drive back? Why are you leaving him? He is a
teenager."
"Why do you worry? He is rich, he can come in a next bus."
I again looked at other passengers. Nobody bothered even slightly
to support me.Then , I tried my final weapon:
"You know, his father is the police chief of Golmud. I shall
report to him that you wittingly left him in the restaurant."
The driver's face paled. Fear started to overpower him, and his
eyes started to become unstable and beclouded with helplessness
and he looked in the desert for support.
"You know , laowai, it is not my fault. He is late. He is very
late. We can't go back for him. We have to move in schedule."
"yes, sir. He is very late, he is wrong. I agree with you. But,
he is teenager,and he needs help now. " I know what he was
looking for, a respect and an acknowledgement to culpability.
He looked at the distant horizon, all of which was desert,and
turned the bus to the direction from where we were coming from.
Some of the passengers protested loudly.But the bus kept on
moving, those oases we just passed reappeared,and I looked at them
more carefully,because I almost ignored them with worriness
and sadness last time we passed them. The herdsmen appeared,
probably they were not there when we last passed the area, and it
was a sheer luck that I saw them. The bus kept on moving fast, and
the driver, who either lacked other cassettes or loved the song
very much, kept on playing the same song repeatedly.Until we
reached the restaurant.
<>
|
