The Last Night in Thamel

There are people who live for the rush of blood to their heads. My parents had always made it clear to me that I wasn’t one of them. I belonged to a clan whose first reaction to the unknown was fear. So naturally, my decision to take a solo trip to the distant land of Nepal was met with incredulity and dismissal.

Nepal. What is a mysterious, mystical country for many, is practically my backyard. My home state shares a border with this tiny nation. A bus would take me to Raxaul, a sleepy little town at the border. There, a quick horse-cart ride across the scantily guarded border, and then, a 2-hour flight in a rickety airplane would get me to Kathmandu, the capital. I didn’t even need a passport, it was that tame. That was possibly what convinced my parents to let me, their 26-year-old dutiful scion who let go of delusions of making a career in music to instead get a respectable degree and a corporate job, go away on his own for 10 days to a meditation camp.

The camp itself was rather interesting, until it was not. I was ready to leave well before the last day. I am all for introspection, but after 12 hours a day of meditating, you hit sheetrock. The waking up at 4 didn’t help, so I brazenly dozed through several morning sessions. All I left the camp with was a craving for meat.

Thamel (Boo”th” but with the tip of your tongue touching the roof of your mouth + “male”). Imagine a sober, less raunchy Amsterdam. The streets are lined with shops that would make you lose all perception of the bare necessities of life. The shops didn’t sell groceries,  work wear, or everyday hardware. Instead, they sold hand-printed t-shirts with proclamations about Tibet. Hawkers on the streets walked around with stringed wooden instruments carved in the shape of an elephant’s face, playing simple, three-note melodies. There were bars and restaurants selling their version of white people food. But the chilies were a little hotter, the “medium” a bit too “well done” and the coffee a tad weaker than something that could keep you awake.

If you dared to step outside what was comfortable, the city had a lot to offer. Just like any other cuisine, Nepalese food developed organically over generations, depending on what could be freely sourced. In the mountainous, rocky lands of the country, there wasn’t much that fit the bill. So, every part of an animal that could be eaten, was. Newari cuisine, of a community of urban, more prosperous Nepalis, had mastered the art of stripping a buffalo for food so thoroughly that only the horns and hooves would be left once they were done.

A sidebar must be taken for Momos. They are cheap, filling and reliable, and helped me survive most of my college. Think of them as a cultural equivalent of Ramen noodles for a broke college student. So, having lived on them exclusively for months on end, I thought I knew momos. Shovel, meet face.

Nepali momos are to every other form of momos I’ve ever eaten, what an NBA game is to a bunch of elementary school kids waddling behind a ball. The steamed shell is delicate and doesn’t intrude an inch beyond keeping the juices locked in. Nepalis have mastered the art of making boiled meat taste juicy and flavorful. Of all the things the British took from this country, they possibly left behind the one thing they needed the most.

On my last night in Thamel, I stepped out for one last rendezvous with momos. I found a small street-side shop and had a quick dinner. It was around 7:30 and the place had started to light up for the night with people from all walks, speaking different tongues, milling around.

Even though I was in the most happening place in the country, all I could think of was that I hadn’t spoken my mother tongue for weeks now. I hadn’t had those soul-baring 3AM conversations with friends , since God knows when. I knew no one here. Suddenly, I felt utterly and completely alone. The exhaustion of every new interaction I’d had in the past few weeks came crashing down all at once.

The lights and thumping music from the clubs on the street suddenly felt gaudy. The people around me, with friends, with someone they found on this very trip, in this very hamlet in the mountains, now felt alien to me. They all belonged to a life I had never known, as I stood trapped behind the glass with everything that I had been. And try as I may, I could not break through.

And just then, I heard it. “Here Without You” by Three Doors Down. I stopped in my tracks and frantically looked around. I spotted a club to my right with a big guitar-shaped sign. I started walking towards it. The music got louder, drowning out the crude pounding of the clubs behind me. The chords got clearer, and I could tell the singer had raised the song a half-step above the original. I fought back the tears, the memories of performing this song at half-empty clubs in Delhi night after night, at parties where no one cared, and broke into a jog.

I pushed open the door, my eyes adjusting to the dimly lit bar. I stumbled in, in a trance, and looked for an empty table. I needn’t have bothered. It was all empty. The band was all young college boys. The vocalist wore his long hair in a bun and was dressed in a t-shirt and large, roomy pants. The guitarist and bassist stood flanking the drummer. The guitarist had his eyes closed, bending a note just the way I liked it.

I sat on the table right in front of the band and ordered a drink. The music sent me back to my days as a musician, a drummer, just out of college, eyes full of dreams of making it big. Sometimes travelling hours to play a 20-minute set, for money that barely covered the gas I burnt lugging equipment to the venue. Somewhere along the way, I just broke. I had bills to pay, parents to look after, debt to repay. Every month we stared down the barrel, not knowing where the rent was going to come from. If we would have to choose between groceries or the utilities bill. Hardly the safety net conducive to the career of a struggling musician.So, I quit the band, spent a few months studying and got into a good business program. Two years, I got a ‘respectable’ job in a firm selling cigarettes. No one had cared I didn’t smoke.

‘Hey man! You got any requests?’ I was brought back by the vocalist.

‘Yeah. If you guys don’t mind, can I play the drums with you?’ I said meekly.

The guy turned to his drummer who shrugged.

‘Sure man. You’re the only one here anyway. You wanna play some AC/DC? Guns N’ Roses?’ he listed out the easy to play rock and roll bands. I could play those in my sleep (I was sure I had played them drunk at some point).

‘Sweet Child O’Mine?’

‘You got it!’

I played two songs that night. Bought the band a round of drinks after their set was over. They asked me if I wanted to come back to their place and hang out but I had an early morning bus out, so I refused.

Thinking back on the night on the rickety bus headed home, I realized the familiar and the unfamiliar are two sides of the same coin. And travel brings them together. It gives you new experiences, makes you grow as a person. But familiarity and comfort let you be who you are, without fear, without hesitation. Too much of the unknown can be scary and confusing, but hanging around the familiar can be stale and boring too. But together, they create something magical. They give you stories that last you a lifetime. They turn you into something more, something greater than who you used to be. The unfamiliarity of the foreign land led me to the familiar songs of my younger, happier days. And the familiar led to the unfamiliar of buying a rock band in Nepal a round of beers and sharing the stage with them.

So the next time you are confronted with either of them, don’t worry. The other is on its way. The adventure that awaits you will come out of the blue, sometimes wrapped in the familiar, sometimes dressed in the unknown. And just like when you traded your mac and cheese for a tarkari made of bamboo shoots and buffalo meat, you would come out wiser of it.

And as far as I am concerned, you were just reading the words of an international rockstar.