The stranger

I had to go to Sankhu from Purano Bus Park. The minibus was on the stand. Passengers were coming on board. I was on the seat just behind the driver. Another passenger would fill up the seat.

A young handsome slightly built man of average height boarded on the vehicle. He had a large backpack that he dropped beside me and looked around. His pale white skin and clean clothes revealed he was a foreigner. He was wearing a beautiful round hat with a feather on it and he had a black silky moustache though he was clean shaven. I guessed he could be a Korean or Chinese or Japanese. When he saw space in my seat, he smiled at me and asked in English with Asian tone, “Can I sit here?”

“Of course!”, I smiled back at him.

When the bus moved ahead, I studied the stranger from top to bottom. He was wearing a light grey shirt and cream pyjama. He had carried a navy blue backpack, half his size, with a camera port hanging out from its hood. He was a small young man with average Nepali height. 

It was going to be a long route of about two and a half hours. I didn’t know where he would go up to, so I decided to start conversation with him.

“Hello, Where are you from?”

At first, he smiled at me and then, politely said, “I’m from Tokyo, Japan.”

“It’s a famous city. I know your city”, I said in an effort to extend our conversation.

“Have you been there?”, he fired back.

“No, never”, I said hurriedly, “But I have heard and read a lot about it”.

“Oh”, he smiled nodding his head up and down.

He was not an extrovert person. So, he kept quiet as soon as he had answered. I had to resume the talk.

“By the way, what’s your good name?”

“My name’s Ken Okura”.

“When did you come to Nepal?”

 “I came here three days ago from New Delhi, India.”

“From New Delhi?”, I asked in surprise, “Why?”

“I am in a tour of South Asia. I have taken 6 months’ holiday from my company. I’m going to travel around as far as I can. This is my hobby.” This was the longest he had spoken since we met.

Ken could not speak English fluently, so he preferred using signs and body movements to make me understand what he was saying. I enjoyed his way. Some other passengers were also curiously staring at us. They might have thought we two were foreigners.

“How old are you?”, I asked him again.

He said he was twenty one. He said he was an employee of a famous restaurant in Tokyo that has its branches all over the world.

I felt a bit jealous of him. How a Japanese man less than my age could manage so much money that he was going to travel all over the South Asia!

“Are you alone?”

He felt uneasy with this question. He looked around once, and said, “Yes”.

He told me about his plan of journey. He was going to stay in Nepal for two days more. Right now, he was going to Nagarkot. Then, he would go to Swayambhunath Temple and then to Lumbini. After that, he would go to India again, and to Sri Lanka from there.

“How do you communicate with the local people you meet in your journey?” I was so curious to know that.  

“Sorry”, he gestured he didn’t hear me properly. I cursed silently the bus that was coming from the opposite direction for its ear-piercing honking.

“How do you ask for food, shelter, water, etc. to the local people at places because they might not understand English or Japanese?”, I explained my question to him.

“It’s easy”, he smiled at me again, and took a small pocket book out of his backpack, “I take help of this”.

Turning the pages, he showed me how he would read the typical sentences in Nepali. In that book, necessary phrases for conversation (like: What time is it now? Do you have a room? Can I get food?, etc.) were written in Nepali in Romanized form besides English and Japanese. Any country he would go, he would turn the respective section where he would find the phrases written in local languages. He had bought the book in Tokyo.

Suddenly, we were surrounded with din and chaos.  Our bus stopped at a point in Gausala- chabahil section. The passengers were pushing and pulling each other in the crowd. Somebody’s hand hit Ken’s hat from the back and it dropped on his lap. He looked a bit disappointed but smiled at me and resettled it on his head. It was a usual traffic jam. So, everybody looked habituated.

“Are you ok?”, I tried to check his mood.

“Yeah….little bit”, he said, “How far is Sankhu?”

“Still more than half”

My answer disappointed him.

“By the way, what did you like about Kathmandu?”

“I have yet to decide”, he laughed.

“Anyway, what difference did you find between Kathmandu and Tokyo?” I was curious to know what impression Kathmandu had had upon him.

“Well”, he looked interested, “Here, people can cross the roads anytime and anywhere they like. The drivers stop the vehicle at any place. They do not follow traffic rules if they don’t see the police. It’s different in Japan. We follow the road rules even in absence of the police.”

“You people are educated and self-conscious. Many of us are not”, I don’t know whether I said the truth.

“But your people should love their lives”, he said, and smiled at me again. That pricked my heart.

Really my people don’t love their lives? The most recent data published by Nepal Police shows that the number of accidents and people killed in the roads are increasing every year. In 2011/12 alone, there were 21,577 accidents that rose by 10.22 percent against last year’s. The number of people killed was 1,664 with 5.4% increase in the last year’s killings. The number will certainly rise this year, too, for almost every day the news of accidents and deaths is being heard, read and watched. 

I remembered the pedestrians, who go across the road unheeding, the cyclists and motorcyclists, who prefer to compete with large vehicles for spaces in the road, and the drivers, who do not stop or slow down when they see pedestrians in front of them crossing the road through zebra-crossing.

The minibus resumed its journey almost after half-an-hour. Then, pushing and pulling began again. The insatiable hunger of the driver and the conductor for passengers had created a lot of troubles, but who would care?

My Japanese friend looked weary and sleepy. I was willing to speak to him more. But he had closed his eyes. So, I looked out through the window until the minibus finally arrived at Sankhu. It was almost dark in the evening. Perhaps the bus conductor would ask him for more than the usual fare, but he saw me helping the stranger. He looked at me indignantly while taking the bus fare from him. I was ready to help Ken, but he didn’t seem interested. Therefore, I bade him farewell.