A Sunny Saturday in Khumaltar

Little Man ushered us along our local street amongst the Saturday hustle and bustle. Passing the packs of street dogs, locals out drinking and passing the time of load-shedding, and the usual sound of beeping horns. Our home.

We entered the basement of a house, converted into a local hangout and lit only by the outside sunlight, through the door. The usual male onlookers, chickens scrambling around on the dust floor outside, and the nosy cockroach poking its long antennae through the slats of the table all squeezed into this homely space. A woman, swamped in layers of material, slaved over a gas hob. She was surrounded by different local delicacies at one end of the cramped room, whilst at the other, behind a door of slatted wood; the stench of the hole in the ground permeated through the cracks cheekily.

Our first taste of 'chang…Made of fermented rice, with a milky consistency it’s mildly alcoholic taste is that of gone off wine. They drank warm ‘Raksi’ a clear, alcoholic liquid, with floating ghee and black bits (resembling dead flies) on top. A chicken plate and a crunchy soya bean delicacy was placed on our table, (wary of the chicken as the place looked like it could have been called 'food poisoning café’, been there, got that t-shirt) we stuck to the soya beans until it looked rude, and so we demolished the chicken to, in the hope that it wouldn’t reappear later.

Amongst the sounds of ‘My name is Sheila’ the latest Bollywood beat, alternated with a Westernized rendition of Beiber’s ‘Baby baby baby’ playing off of a locals phone, the atmosphere created the ultimate definition of happy.

We discovered that Little Man was involved in a bomb blast in Yugoslavia. As in much of our verbal exchange, broken conversation ensued. We learnt that nineteen pieces of shrapnel had hit him in his head, his wrist and his buttocks. Disturbingly, he then went on to say that he was left for dead for two whole days. He was found and spent two months in hospital. Abruptly, he then generously offered us the use of his gun. To which we respectfully declined. An obvious language barrier, this conversation will stay with me forever.

We left, happy, and almost like a dream returned to the humdrum Saturday of a Khumaltar sunset. Load-shedding over, and Little Man laughing and chatting with our veg man, is an image of happiness that will be in my heart forever.

‘Home is where the heart is’, and I know some of mine is here, on a sunny Saturday in Khumaltar.