Finding Round House

March 10 2014

Leaving Lincoln School, we chose the route I would have taken to and from home, riding my bike to Kalamati Road, turning left and pumping hard up the hill before I lost my breath, walking the rest of the way. There was also a short cut my brother and I used to take, cutting off a section of Kalamati and the school road. Dennis and I tried this. We wandered through side alleys lined with newish-looking houses and eventually stopped a guy wearing an Old Navy tee-shirt. I asked if he knew of a white round three-story house in the neighborhood. I might have embarrassed myself by first asking if he spoke English. He was gracious. Nepalese schools teach English, and his was excellent. Anyway, he scratched his chin and thought and could not help. 

We wound our way back to Kalamati and turned left up this road that used to be the only roadway in from India. World travelers used to trudge past our compound's gate when Kathmandu was
a hippie mecca in the 60's. Porters bearing heavier loads hanging from straps around their foreheads moved more quickly than the road-weary Westerners.

I scanned the buildings on our left, hovering on the edge of expectation and disappointment. We stepped in and out of gateways, and then there it was- a white round building with a three-bay window on the first and second floors. The second floor window was my bedroom. We entered the big courtyard through the gate and saw a sign above a door that said Office. We clambered through the dark entrance, seriously wondering if the sign was wrong. The hallway was bare, the walls almost black. I looked to the left and thought oh my god this was the kitchen. We turned right down a narrow hall and on the right was our old dining room, looking unused and coated with 45 years of hard time. We found stairs and with none of the hesitation that I may have had any where else in the universe, I climbed the stairs and found the entrance to my room. It was the office, as advertised. A man greeted us and I told him that my family had lived here 40 years ago and that this was my bedroom, and he lit up. I pointed to the three windows and said I used to see the mountains in the distance and that over the compound's wall were rice paddies and the homes of villagers and farmers.  He asked questions about my family, happy to help. I pointed out my brother's room next to mine. That bank of windows that separated our rooms was still there; the curtains were not. I glanced down the hallway to where my parent's room and the bathroom had been, along with the main stairs to the first floor but there was a wall. Obviously the place had been chopped up. I felt grateful it had not been chopped down.

Our host Mr. Dilip Khatiwada is the manager of the Eshani Club and Mega Catering. His office being my former bedroom. He insisted on showing us around. We went down the same way we went up and crossed the clean bricked courtyard to a building that now occupied the space where our garden and outbuildings had been. A huge banquet hall. Now could there be some irony in the fact that I am closely aligned with the food service and hospitality business? We looked around and admired his hall and asked about his business which he said was slow right now but busier later. Sounds familiar. He caters lots of weddings and other ceremonies, and two thrones rule the hall. He suggested we sit in them so he could  take our picture, we did. and he did. I had no agency of my own at this point, lost in the past, confounded in the present.

We said our goodbyes and I eyed the thin dogs lying in the sun and the nice-looking guard house, which probably did not house a small family like our former chowkidar's. I bet it stores cases of buffet ware.

Nameste