Pumpkin Season

One thing that I find so frustrating about Nepal is the seasons. They claim it to be the only country in the world with six seasons, but it actually has the worst weather. When it’s hot, it stays hot for months and months without dropping even a degree, and I’m talking about 40degrees and above for days on end. When it’s cold, its 2degrees constant for a whole week. When it’s misty, planes don’t fly for many days.

In the two photos above, taken in Malekhu, a small town on the highway from Kathmandu to Chitwan, fish are on sell. I don’t think they ever go out of seasn.

In terms of the food, I’ve never been so frustrated in my feeding habits. Not only because they eat lunch before breakfast, which means that when I go out to look for meals at the proper lunch time, this being about 1pm, I only find ‘breakfast’ foods on sale, snacks like momo.

The thing with their food is that once something is out of season, it’s totally unavailable. At least in Uganda, even if something is out of season, you can get it somewhere, though at a higher cost. But here, if mangoes are out of season, you can’t get it – so last year, mangoes were only available between May and October – I think, can’t remember too well.

Anyway, mangoes are back. Oranges are out. I was sort of used to the oranges, but I’m glad to have the mangoes back. Only that at the moment, only the sourish types are available. I’m waiting for the really sweet and juicy babes to flood the market!

I don’t know what the guy in this photo is selling, but they were popular during the winter, and then all of a sudden, they vanished. Now, ice-cream is the in-thing. Everyone is selling ice-cream, at least in this oven district of mine. What amuses me about the ice-cream vendors is that peddle in on bicycles, with the ice-cream in a wooden box and the wooden box wrapped up in heavy, brown, sisal sacks, or jute, maybe to keep them warm. So whenever I see these peddlers, at first I think they are garbagge collectors, or maybe scrap collectors, until I hear them screaming eye-c-krim! And children run to them with coins. The ice-cream itself is often in a container that looks wooden from a distance, you might think they are eating chocolate, or something, not ice!

And with vegs, peas are out, cabbages are in. Egg plants seem to be available all year round. For a while during the winter, I ate nothing but peas, and I sort of liked them. But then I went to the market one day and was stunned to find nothing. Absolutely nothing, yet the previous day there were piles of them. That’s how the stuffs go out of season. One day, there, the next day, nothing.

So what happens is that for months, you have to eat what’s available. When I’d just come, it was daal (lentils) and rice. Daal also seems to be there all year round. Then it was egg plants and rice, until I got so fed up of egg plants. Then it was peas and rice. Now its cabbages and rice. At least pumpkins are also in season, so I’m eating quiet a bit of those as well.

In these two photos, a convoy of carts takes revelers to a Tharu wedding feast.

Weddings too come in seasons. Unlike Uganda where any Saturday is a wedding day, here, there are specific months for weddings. And even in those months, only certain days, according to the astrologers and priests and whatnots, only certain days are auspicious for the marraiges to take place, so while one day the whole village would be silent, the next day there would be five weddings happening in the same street.

Like today, there are two happening in my street, and they are competing in playing music. It’s like they want to see which party makes its guests the drunkest, who dances till late. I’m running mad for the music is boring nails into my skull.

I can’t sleep. Which is why I’m idling on this stupid blog. Which is why I should stop doodling and watch one of those silly films of the Marx Brothers.