Kat Out of the Bag Chapter Two By Steve Rudd

Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

What's a man to do in Kathmandu? Pretty much anything he wants is the steadfast answer. Sick of dull caravan-anchored holidays in Britain that plagued my ill-charmed childhood, adventure called and I responded. I'd previously been to Nepal four years before I decided that I must go again.. to return to a country I loved so much. The first time around, I'd never seen anything like the mayhem that literally littered the streets of the country's vibrant capital in Kathmandu.

People pushed, shoved, fannied around and fiddled all day and all night, with young teen-aged boys, hands full of hashish, sneakily doing the rounds. So-called innocent kids selling drugs in broad daylight, actually openly admitting to selling the stuff in full view of everyone that passed them by. Hashish, hashish, they sang, but nobody responded. Tourists in particular realise that the risk - sometimes - just isn't worth it, especially given the often tough sentences doled out to those fools who can't resist the temptation of getting a little high. I'd much rather 'get high' by climbing Mount Everest, but that was miles away from the city - and the air up there was far harder to breathe than the equivalent air down in the smog-choked Kathmandu Valley.

The first trip I made was as a full-blown tourist. I clearly remember looking around some of the city's exquisite temples and being approached by an elderly beggar woman. Politely she asked if I could kindly drum-up some spare change for her. She looked to have not eaten for a good few days, 'cept for the odd crumb here and there, so I fumbled through my holy pockets and came up trumps. Shaking my head with a tourist's best grin of sympathy, she spat in my face and changed my life. I wanted to help her, I really did. But I couldn't, and that stark realisation hurt.

Relieved at having been granted a month's luxuriant leave from work, I had three weeks to get to know the country and its people as well as I could - and I was already off: to a bad start. It was perhaps just the dirty urban sprawl of the city that brought out the worst in me. For some reason I thought that one of the elderly Sadhu men who lift heavy rocks with their drooping manhood deserved to be laughed at. What kind of way was that to make a living, I wondered, as tourists walked by and gawked, all the while tossing spare rupees their way, finding it difficult to believe that a man could perform such wonders. It was no laughing matter though. And no miracle either. It was simply mind over matter. The presence of divine religion everywhere seemed all-consuming. Most Nepalese people that I met would sooner run over an innocent pedestrian walking on a sidewalk than injure one of the many cows that lazed around in the roads. And it wasn't just 'back' roads but the main arterial roads into the capital city that cows sprawled themselves about on. I wasn't prepared for the amount of time and effort that the majority of the population of the country injected into praying to their God(s) or Goddess(es) above. Back in England I hadn't really had time for religion of any sort.

My parents, I had always presumed, were atheists. I say that I presumed they were because, quite simply, I never truly knew for sure. I just know they never confided their beliefs or their faith in me, which hurt. They were the type of people who rushed about with their daily lives and turned a blind eye to just about everything and everyone else. There wasn't room for God in their busy little lives, which always made me wonder if there would be room for my parents in God's wider world.

I'm young. I'm immortal. Isn't that what most people in their twenties, thirties, forties and even fifties think? I bet many people change their views on religion considerably as they grow older and the harsh learning curve of life's gradient steepens in proportion to each year that passes in due course. As their family and friends gradually die off and they find themselves suddenly very alone in the world, the romantic notion that there might just be an afterlife surely zooms into focus far more briskly. If you think that praying might prolong your life, you do it. If you think you've fallen in love with a complete stranger after knowing them for little more than a few hours, you make sacrifices above and beyond the usual call of duty. And that's what I did. I fell in love and never looked back. Well, at least I didn't look back until the bullets started flying and the screams rung true. When somebody is getting a little too trigger happy for their own good and your own sanity, it's only natural to at least feign interest in what genuinely might be your last few precious moments on earth as a living, breathing man of the world - because even fear is worth savouring..

© Steve Rudd 2004

Continued on www.thisisUll.com...... Chapter 3

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