The Woman By The Lake

It must have been about 6 or 7 oclock judging by the golden, almost ominous glow cast on the surroundings by the setting sun. I was sitting at a rickety metal table in the garden of the Pumpernickel Bakery sipping my evening pot of black tea. Contemplating the day's events, sights, experiences, while lazily counting the number of swelled bug bites on my legs and arms. Maybe 20, 25 I noted to myself while observing the various sizes and shapes and degrees of redness from itching. My table had an amazing view of Phewa Tal lake. I watched as a dozen or so dogs fought playfully with one another. Women carried bucket fulls of laundry to the lake for washing. The entire shore line was lined with small paddle boats painted brilliant yellow, green, blue and red at one time. Now they were chipped and peeling. Gangs of children frolicked by the boats. Old men sat with bamboo fishing poles in their hands, cigarettes lolling out of their mouths. Water buffalo ambled around not sure whether they wanted to snack on lake plants or rest on the shore. The general feeling was joyus as the day had almost come to an end and it was now time to relax. In the distance were hills sprawling in everywhich way; lush green from which came the chorus of bird songs. A cloud blocked the setting orange sun creatng a striking effect of rays emulating from the cloud. A light evening fog set over everything making the scene reak of a Thomas Kinkade painting: almost too fantastical to be real. Something caught the corner of my eye. Amid the evening glory a tiny woman sat crouched, alone. She had a dull gray cloth thrown over her bony shoulders. I noted this was a bit odd because most of the women, no matter how poor, wear brilliant red patterned saris with shiny beaded jewelery looking impecable even when hard at work in the fields. Something was odd about this woman. I continued to watch. Her skin was taunt on her body, on the verge of being a human skeleton with skin stretched tight over her bones. Her hair was different than the usual lusterous, long black hair of the Nepalese women. The common cascading braid adorned with red ribbons and beads was not attached to her list head. Instead a stragley, oilly mass. It was limp, lifeless, looked incredibly thing like it had been falling out in chunks. Her movements were strange; she moved as though she were 200 years old, although must have been about 50. She ever so slowly sifted though the mass of garbage she sad in. Her movements seemed to be in extreme slow motion. She had no strength to do anything. It was like her battery power was about to run out. Her fuel tank on empty: like a warning light that had been on for 5 days, in danger of going dead. After sifting though the garbage she found a few choice pieces, which to me just looked like crumpled paper. Getting up from her crouching position took about 10 minutes, she hardly had the strength to move. Then she took her garbage pieces with her and ever so slowly shuffled about 20 feet to a tiny tin hut which took about 25 or 30 minutes. Here, she crouched down where 5 dogs came over, sitting in a semi-circle around her, organizing themselves quite well: black, tan, black, tan, black. It took all the energy she could muster to toss the garbage pieces to the dogs. They sniffed at the pieces distastefully and decided to go back to playing. She stayed crouched here and she looked over at me. She must have been 80 feet away from me, but even at this distance her eyes drew me in; fierce, angry, tired and dull at the same time. By her eyes I could see her suffering. I couldn't help feeling a wave of guilt crash over me as I looked at my pot of tea, my book open on the table, my nice clothes, and my array of pencils scattered on my bound sketchbook. My main worry at the moment was swatting away a few flies from my tea cup and trying not to itch my mosquito bites. I sheepishly went back to my book trying to brush off this guilt caused by the gap between me and this emaciated woman by the lake.



About half an hour later the Nepali young man at a garden table in my vicinity had struck up a conversation with me. He deemed me a good candidate to ell of his exploits with drugs, travel, and life experiences. I listened carefully through his broken English. In the background a club on the tourist strip was blasting 50 Cent "In Da Club" rap music. I chuckled and thought how odd it was to be listening to gangster rap whiloe watching the sun setting on the scenes of Nepali country life. What a strange and comedic juxtaposition! Purna (the exuberent man at the neighboring table) and I chatted away for a few hours about travels, his woes in India, working for the UN someday, family, friends, and fun. Soon a shrivled middle aged man strolled about in front of us. He was muttering strange things to himself and nodding to us. Every pile of garbage dotted about the shore line he set fire. This man, said Purna, was the emaciated woman's husband. A long time alcoholic with mental problems as well. He spent any money that came his way on liquor and sorely neglected his wife. A few months ago, he said, the woman had elephantitis of the legs and the husband didn't even notice because he was continually in pursuit of a new bottle of vodka, rum or gin to drown his suffering temporarily. He was no longer right in the head, and neight was his wife. They both lived in the tiny tin shack near by and had no food, health care, or electricity and survived on scraps of rotting garbage.



The sun had now set and garbage fires dotted the shore. "Why you don't go to your wife?" Purna asked the man good-naturedly. The man looked over and muttered a few things, smiling to reveal his rotting teeth. We decided we should get some food for the woman in the hut, so we paid for our tea and went out to the street to the chapatti vendor and purchased 4 pieces. Then we walked through a winding path of back alleys which spit us out onto the pitch black shore line. "You wait here, you might get scared," Purna said. "No, it's okay. I'll come," I replied. So we made our way to the tin hut. The husband came up to us, still whispering jibberish to himself. Purna extracted a tiny LED light from his pocket and shined it into the hut. It was about a 4 feet by 4 feet, filled with piles of garbage. No beds, no chairs, no blankets, no kitchen. Just garbage. I peered inside to get a better look. I tried to act like I saw 4 by 4 foot shacks that housed two people all the time. But on the inside I was thinking, "How in the world do two people live in here?" "How in the world do they contineu to exist every day?" "What keeps these people going?" "What could possibly drive them?" The flashlight shone on the ground to reveal the woman with the lifeless hair, stretched skin, and gray cloth thrown about her listlessly. She was crouched on the dirt floor where she had pushed away a space through the waste. She had been sitting like this for, who knows, probably hours in complete blackness. Among trash, cockroaches, and empty liquor bottles from her husband that represented shattered hope. The liqouor bottles strewn about like a chain that held these two captive in their life. She suffled about and we handed her the bag of chapattis. She took the bag with great effort, hardly noticing that there were two people in her presence. I said "Namaste" to her in the dark which she did not respond to. Purna chatted with the muttering alcoholic man for a few minutes before we left. As we turned to leave the man shouted something to me in Nepalese. I asked Purna what he said, and he told me that the man requested I buy him some alcohol. I quietly declined and said goodbye. Back through the alley ways we retraced our steps. Back to the light and hustle and bustle of the street. We emerged on to the road where the dreadlocked, barefooted, tye-dye wearing hippie types played in the night. In the dimmed light was the scene of Pokhara night life: fueled by food and fun. But back through the meandering pathway, away from the light, shrouded in darkness lay another scene. The scene was suffering. Hidden in corners where the light does not shine, and people do not notice. In these shadowed corners suffering rears it's ugly head. I sighed and walked farther and farther away from this woman's life, away I walked from the shackles that imprison her day in and day out. Away I walked as another tidal wave of guilt crashed over me. Away from her life and closer to mine, away from her garbage masses, and closer to my pillowy soft bed. Away from her filt and closer to my shower, away from her darkness and closer to my light.