
This morning at 3 am I was startled and woken up by loud sounds of honking horns – an incessant string of sharp melodies from Indian-style buses signaled the first ones leaving Basantapur for lower towns. The sounds came intermittently for about an hour and a half in the early morning. Rather than fighting them as noise, I decided to accept them – without judgment and without annoyance. This decision to me represented my arrival to this familiar end-of-the-road town, and my intention to be at home here. Knowing that all the neighbors and my host family along with 28 boarders were all fast asleep, there was a comfort in their peace for me. Their relative comfort in the only ways they knew, which I may have perceived as bad hygiene, noise, dust, pollution, an the overall backward quality of this hillside town felt to me like something of which I no longer held on so tightly. Even though I still needed to boil water and watch out for what I eat, I am also content. Letting go of fear in discomfort, which only exists in my mind, is freeing.
So I took the opportunity this early morning to finish Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a novel set in the mountains of Sechuan during the Cultural Revolution. The two main characters were city youths who were sent to this remote village for re-education. Talented and intellectually hungry, they became master storytellers in their desperate situation. The novel was a quick read with romance, history and a nice dose of country Chinese culture during the time of Chairman Mao. At that time, books other than Mao or communist writing were totally banned; however, these two young men’s lives in re-education completely changed when they got a hold of a suitcase full of translated western novels. Devouring the books, their minds opened to ideas of romance, freedom, and hope. A memorable passage described their overwhelming and dizzying reaction upon opening the suitcase – how extremely thrilling and wonderous it was for them to see these unavailable and unfamiliar books!

Later in the evening while reading in bed, I came upon the suitcase/book scene in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The parallel between this scene and my experience that night dawned on me. The city youths trapped in the mountains of Sechuan receiving brutal re-education, and the lovely Nepalese children trapped here in poverty – both lacked fresh ideas and books, both in need. Mao’s brutality in the Cultural Revolution, and the incompetence of the Nepalese monarchy coupled with the Maoist insurgency brought people to the same place…
