in-the-making

There By The Sea

Paper Parasols

But For Now, This Is How We'll Talk

Communicating through speech comes to a stop after some time. With basic vocabulary learned over a span of just two months, there's only so much you can say. There's only so much to talk about. There's only so much miming and gesturing you can come up with. So I sit back and feel a little frustrated as my brain tries hard to make sense of what they're saying. I try and slow them down saying "Khoy bo khao jai" (I don't understand). Being honest and trying to find a way to give myself a break at the same time. Yet they persist. So I smile and try to get myself interested. They want to teach me how to dance. They try to remember the steps and begin to sway their hands and move their bodies. Their fingers make delicate movements as their hands sway from left to right, right to left. I've seen the actual dance with the accompanying music. Suffice it to say that the girls' version sans the music is so much better. They beckon me to join them. I get up and try to get my pace right, my fingers begin to move slowly to their delicate rhythm. So we dance for a little while as the girls try to sing a song, the words to which they try to remember. But we dance.

I then sat back and watched them dance; thinking, "Communicating through speech comes to a stop after some time..." But when it does, we find other means through which we still try to communicate... even though it's just our bodies swaying to the humming of a half-remembered song.

Hnff!

No, I didn't go snorkeling. But I went Lao river-fishing. Of course I didn't wear that. This was just for a photo. We hardly caught any fish. But it was quite fun. We had to go on boats down the river to the other side. I screamed like mad when two of the girls took me on a test ride. The boat bobbed around like crazy. I don't know how to swim and I don't know how deep the water was but if I've had a near-drowning experience in the shallow end of a pool, you know what I can be capable of.

One of the girls was a fisherman's daughter. So she knew her stuff. She knew the pretty waterfalls and the way around them. She knew how to steer the boat. She knew what to do. She led me by my hand and took me into the foliage, up to the falls, cautioning me to place my foot on this rock not that. She knew the place. I almost felt like calling her "Pocahontas". She even had her long hair tied up in a side pony tail. Not that Pocahontas ever did, or could have. You never know.

Since there was nothing much happening at the fish-catching front, I ended up collecting some shells on the river bank and chewing burnt buffalo hide tossed in coal over an old woman's fire which we kinda took over.

Humpy

On the way down to Vientiane from Luang Prabang, there's this place, almost half-way down, I think. It offers you a spectacular view. I'm used to seeing hills, but the hills around here are different. More... dramatic, I'd say. So... humpy. I mean like the humps of a camel, of course. There's a picture of me sitting on the bench. But I think this looks much better.

Along the river Nam Khan and the Mekong, Luang Prabang sure can light up pretty

Stew Or Something Like It

So after a really long day, I came home with the girls. I was starving. We had some meat left in the freezer. So I delegated duties to the girls to take charge of the rice. It took me some time to "defrost" the meat in a tub of hot water. Then I struggled to slice them into really thin pieces so that they would get cooked real fast. I had some idea of what I was doing, trying to remember the taste of some meat stew cooked with some squash which I'd eaten many times back home. There was nothing much in the fridge, so I didn't have much of a choice. Garlic always does the trick for me. Well maybe tonight, it overdid it a little 'cause the entire house still smells of garlic, but anyway, the stew was made. I became a little conscious as I laid the dish on our small table... the girls eager to see what the "falang" (Lao word for "foreign") had cooked. I muttered "Ah, bo seb!" (Ah, not tasty!) a little nervously. They tasted it and one said "Seb, seb!", nodding and urging the other to go "Seb, seb!" in agreement. Of course, I knew that they were only being nice. But I was too hungry to care by then. I had three helpings. Ehe. I think the girls actually enjoyed it though. When a dish meant to last for two meals almost gets over in one, either the diners were really hungry or it was a damn good dish. Either way, I'm stuffed, happy and droopy-eyed.

Some change. Pun intended.

Sweeter than finding change in the pockets of old denims--- finding two hundred dollars neatly folded inside an envelope in my laptop bag.

The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Of late, I had really been thinking how blessed I am. I have been provided for in ways that are incredible over the past few months. In many ways, I have found my faith to be encouraged as I saw Him to be my Provider. I wanted to consciously make an effort to make the blessings that came in to flow out. Silly though the gestures seemed, I tried to bless others in small ways- buying food, filling up the gas tank, etc . though I was beginning to run short on cash. I think today's pleasant (an understatement, recollecting how I squealed) incident has encouraged my heart that I'm on the right track; that this could be a way of life, a way to be. I sheepishly grin to think that it took more than loose change to convict a cynic a like me.

November~ Chronicling Memories.

It's the first of November. For some reason, winter always has a way of surprising me. Like a guest arriving unannounced a little earlier than expected. Okay. Lousy metaphor. Simply put, when I woke up this morning, the air was chilly and I had to wear something warm. Assuming that the climate here is tropical, I came unprepared. How I miss my winter clothes...
I walked to work this morning. The sun was out and it was a beautiful morning. I'm normally not very generous with compliments to or what I say about mornings. Suffice it to say that I'm not a morning person. But it was a beautiful morning today. For the first time this year, I could smell winter in the air. I usually claim to smell many things in the air. For instance, I've uttered things like, "I can smell Kohima" or "It smells like Aunty So and so's house." Smells, like music, hold memories... Rushdie said that in one of his books, I think. And indeed, there are a myriad of experiences one can attach to such peculiarities.
I guess I thought that I could "smell winter" because on the way to the school, I got whiffs of some burning branches. I remember cold Kohima evenings when unused or bare branches of the pine for the Christmas tree would be burned. One could also smell yet other branches from other houses being burned in the local garbage dump. That's a "winter smell" for me. The smell of pine trees remind me of a particular evening one winter. My mum and I went up to a hill in the forest with her friend to get our Christmas trees (I don't think we can do that anymore :D). Our annual contribution to deforestation, one could say, before an ersatz one made a permanent substitution. Anyway, it was a beautiful winter evening. I can remember the tall pines silhouetted against the dark blue winter sky. I get reminded of this often, especially whenever I think about winter... and this memory, among others, is so poignant because it was just a few years before my mum's friend would die of cancer.
November makes me nostalgic about my school days. November meant the approach of the final exams. November meant the completion of S.U.P.W projects which involved the burning of the ends of satin strips to make flowers of some sort, and exhibiting them and finally having them hoarded away by the nuns. November meant religious math tuition till the night before the exam, the scrubbing of desks and benches on the playground, setting up the classrooms, and finally taking the exams. And sure, November also meant that school's nearly out for a good two months. Better still, November was a herald to glorious December.
...Glorious December. Much of it seems to have worn off as I've grown older though. I've heard the same thing being lamented by others. Maybe age has got something to do with it. Somehow, the farther removed the memories are from the present, the sweeter they seem to be. And the more fragmented they become, the lovelier they begin to seem.
It's the first of November. For some reason, winter has surprised me once again by arriving a little earlier than I expected. And yet again, it has succeeded in making me slip into a reverie of days long gone. November does that to me. Makes me want to chronicle memories.