Returning the Lost Smiles

Chapter One

The Game It was a gloriously hot day. My friends Kumar and Raghu were with me. By the edge of the bridge was a path down to the river. And there we were, pushing each other in, swimming across the current to the other side.

‘Come on, Amar, you slowcoach! Bet you can’t beat me over!’

I took the challenge, launching myself into the water.

I was only ten years old, but already a strong swimmer.

Days Such as These Days such as these were part and parcel of growing up in Taldhunga. We were a small village of around seventy houses at the time, most of them made with a mixture of mud and stone. Our families had lived on the western slopes of the Narayanthan Hills for over 300 years.

In fact my family, the Timalsinas, are a big family.

Together with my uncles, aunts, cousins and distant relatives, we took up nearly half of the village.

I loved life there. I was known by everyone and loved by most! Like most young boys, I could be trouble. It was fun to steal eggs from the neighbour’s hens. It was fun to pick the mangoes from the old man’s garden down the hill. Even if he saw us, my friends and I were far too fast in running away. We knew all the shortcuts, all the paths around the village.

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Returning the Lost Smiles

At that time in the mid-eighties, there were no roads through our village, just paths. Not even real tracks for the occasional carts that arrived in our village to sell vegetables.

Neither did we have electricity. Water was from the river.

The nearest town was a two-day walk.

The village was basic for sure, but such fun for a boy to grow up in.

We had the only school in the region as well. The nearest village to us was thirty minutes’ walk and some children had to walk up to two hours to get to our school. But for me, it was on the doorstep.

Including all the children from the surrounding villages, there were around 300 of us. Ten classes and twelve teachers. It was the biggest of the buildings in the village by far.

When I arrived as a five-year-old, Miss Asha was my teacher. I liked her. She was a lot kinder than some of the teachers, many of whom were quick to use the cane and slow to ask the reasons why we appeared to be contravening school rules.

Despite the proximity, I rather considered school as voluntary. Some of my friends hardly went at all, often because their parents were not about to encourage them to do so, needing them to help in the fields.

But my dad was different. He had taught himself to read and write and appreciated the need for education. Hence, along with my four brothers and three sisters, we were sent off every day, irrespective of any sickness we may be feigning in order to get out of the lessons.

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The Game

Family I’m number four in the family, born in 1977, at home in our single-storey stone-and-mud house with its thatched roof; born to Beni Bahadur and Khadka Timalsina, my parents, still in their late twenties at that time. My sister Mithu is the oldest, and brother Prabin the youngest. Eight of us altogether: five boys and three girls. The house was crowded as a result. We all slept together in a big room, all washed from the same jar, all ate at the same table.

We didn’t have much as a family. Even by local Nepalese standards, we were poor. We may have lacked a reasonable diet and faced a number of other hardships, but one thing I didn’t lack was love.

My dad was my hero. Because he had taught himself to read and write, this had brought him to the attention of the whole village and it wasn’t long before he was leading their meetings, heading up their committees and helping to manage their daily affairs. Dad was also a member of the management committee of the school.

I was my mother’s darling boy. No mother is allowed to have a favourite child of course, but I tried as hard as I could to make sure that it was me that was chosen to accompany her when she left to visit her parents’ house! Most of the time I won that particular battle and I remember many visits over the years, often at the time of a local festival, which added to the excitement.

Mum did her best to keep an eye on us all, feeding us, washing us, sending us off to the school she herself had never enjoyed. Unlike Dad, Mum was unable to read, but it didn’t hold her back. She would be at work most days in the fields or the vegetable patches, securing some basic income and food for the table.

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Returning the Lost Smiles

Dad worked at whatever needed doing – whatever would bring in an income. He farmed the land and was often away working as a porter for local businesses, carrying their wares.

When he was home, Dad was lord of all he surveyed, sitting out in the yard, inviting friends around to sip tea and eat the rice dishes Mum prepared. Often the invites from Dad were first known about by Mum when the guests arrived. This was a constant point of frustration – and hard work – for Mum! That’s the way I learned at first – listening in to the conversations around the table in the yard. The gossip. And the politics. And growing up, there was a lot of politics.

By the mid-1990s, there was even an armed conflict with Maoist guerrillas. But most of the politics was local, and Dad was very much part of it.

Village Life Despite the later conflict, most days in our village were peaceful. The village is so remote that we were not often troubled. Everyone knew each other and life was slow and, for the most part, undisturbed.

Most of the adult conversations I overheard in our yard related to gossip – marriage, scandals, unexpected pregnancies, family feuds, murders in other villages. And crops. So much talk about the crops we grew. The successes and failures. The sun or lack of it. The rains. When would they start? When would they end?

Sometimes when Dad was home, the yard would double up as the village court, where local laws solved every problem. I can’t remember a single case that was ever referred to the police.

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The Game

We really were a long way from anywhere. Our main contact with the outside world was via the radio. We had access to Nepal Radio and from them were able to learn what was happening in the rest of the country.

I remember Dad coming home from one of his work trips very excited. He said he had witnessed a new kind of radio.

It was one with pictures too – you could look at this radio and see what was happening! Despite the introduction of television to Nepal, it would be many years before it ever reached Taldhunga.

I mentioned that I treated school as voluntary – I would try to get out of lessons whenever I could. I’d pretend to be ill. Sometimes, I’d just not turn up and go walking in the nearby forest or swim in the river with my friends. We were caught of course. Not all the teachers were as kind as Miss Asha and I felt their displeasure on numerous occasions, being unable to sit down as a result.

Most days, as I walked home from school with my friends, it was with a skip in my step. Taldhunga was such a great place to live. Nepal itself was such a great country. We lived near the mountains, the Himalayas, including Everest, the highest mountain in the world. We lived on the edge of the forests. West of us was our capital city Kathmandu and to the south were the main plains of Nepal. Most of the population lived in these regions. But even on those plains, there is so much space. And so many tribes and ethnic groups – over 100 of them throughout Nepal, most with their own languages or dialects.

Hills and Forests As kids, we were fit. We had to be. There were so many hills! Our village is situated among a number of hills. Hill 25

Returning the Lost Smiles

upon hill, and themselves surrounded by fields and forests.

The forests were old. Cedars, pines, maples, birch and alders, all fighting for the sunlight. Spindly sal trees are common, there for generations. They are evergreens and produce a hard wood often used by local builders. Having said that, the villagers revered the forest and did not cut down many of the trees. Trees are seen almost as part of our family and we are careful in how we treat them. Some trees in the forest were hundreds of years old.

Beneath the tree branches, the rhododendrons grow. So beautiful and so many colours. The plants, in shades of pink, purple, white and cream – and some more vibrant shades of yellow and red – would blossom each year between March and May. I collected the petals as a child, to present them to my mother.

It was good to be alive. So good to live in Taldhunga.

Being a two-day walk from the nearest town gave me such an appreciation of the wildness around us, untainted by industry. I would help the farmers with their crops in the fields directly surrounding the village, sowing and harvesting corn, maize, sugar cane and grasses, the latter for feeding the cattle. Further afield, there were areas growing rice, potatoes and millet.

Alongside the cattle, the village owned a number of buffaloes, goats and sheep. My father personally owned four buffaloes, three cows for milking, and a number of goats. There were hens in the yard. All seven of my siblings joined me in helping with the animals.

One of my particular jobs as I grew up was to look after our cows and buffaloes. I would be out in the fields at the edge of the forest for days at a time. Here I would find my food for the day. There were berries galore. So many tasty varieties.

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The Game

And looking after the livestock was a good way of getting out of school. I was happy with that! The adjacent forests were also very useful when I didn’t want to be found by my parents, in case they thought that school was, after all, more important.

The local river was central to all of village life. It provided our water, and, for the boys in the village, it was the place to play, swim – and catch fish. When the river was low in winter, we used branches and stones to divert the water and build small pools to trap and catch the fish. We would then gut and cook them on the banks of the river. Occasionally at night, my friends and I would sneak out of our houses and go down to the river to fish, eating the catch over an open fire.

Appeasing the Gods The wild weather was always said to be as a result of angry gods. Most of our fights with nature were associated with gods needing appeasement.

Over the years, our families were influenced by Hinduism, and this became the prevalent religion with its multitude of gods and goddesses. To this we added even more gods, linking them back to our ancestral beliefs. Many of these related to the forest and the river, and many of the older gods in our village were created through carved wood from the forest.

Buddhism is also common in Nepal and this, too, found its place in the village.

My parents were not particularly religious though. There were a few Hindu ornaments in the house but no real formal kind of worship. If we were ill, the gods would be placated 27

Returning the Lost Smiles

with an offering and the local healers would be fetched in order to ascertain the sacrifice required. Often this would be a goat or other animal. I couldn’t help noticing that when a sacrifice was made, the religious rules required that only the priests and healers were allowed to eat it.

A clever way to ensure a full stomach at no cost.

The Pain Game What child doesn’t want to be liked? I was no different.

I enjoyed being the centre of attention. I liked it when I won the swimming races across the river. I loved playing games at school.

Football was a favourite both at school breaks and back home. My friends and I would roll paper up inside an old sock – and this was our football! It wasn’t great, but better than nothing. We never saw a real football, even at school.

We have some unusual games in Nepal. Dandi Biyo is one I love to this day. The idea is that you flick a stick into the air with another stick and then hit it again, catapulting it as far away from you as you can. At the same time, your friends are trying to catch it and throw it back into a hole.

This was actually the official sport of Nepal until volleyball took over!

Kabaddi was another national game – and again it’s still very popular in Nepal to this day. The name is derived from the Tamil words ‘kai’ and ‘pidi’, which can be translated as ‘holding hands’. The idea is that you cross to the other team’s side, repeating ‘kabaddi, kabaddi’; points are scored by tagging as many opponents as possible without being caught or taking a single breath before returning to your home territory.

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The Game

But I played another game too.

At the age of ten, I began to notice that there was a lack of feeling in my left foot, just beneath the toes and on the sole of my foot. In fact, I found that I could even prick the skin with a pin and there was no pain at all. On the day of my discovery, I sought out one of the needles my mother used in her embroidery. It had some thread still attached.

In trepidation, I pushed the tip of the needle into the sole of my left foot. No pain. I pushed the needle further in, horizontally along the length of the foot. Eventually the whole needle was embedded and I began to pull it out. The thread followed the needle and again, there was no pain.

I was magic! No one else could do this surely! The gods had been kind to me. They had given me a gift.

That afternoon, I threaded the sole of my foot, passing the needle through again and again. It wasn’t long before I began to use this to my advantage.

I decided to challenge my school friends to a game of pain. That first day, I called out to a gang of four boys standing down the path from our house. We gathered on a piece of grass and I told them of my new game.

The idea was that we would each thread a piece of cotton through our flesh. I said I would pay each of them a rupee if they could stitch their foot, but if they could not and I could, then they must each pay me a rupee. They were confident that their rupee was safe, and so the pain game began.

I let them go first. They each tried, but cried out with the pain. The needle hardly touched their skin before they gave in.

Then it was my turn.

There in front of them, I carefully threaded the needle through the insensitive skin on my foot. I pushed the 29

Returning the Lost Smiles

needle through the sole of my foot again and again until there was a maze of threads. All with no pain at all. There were gasps of astonishment from my friends, and four rupees found a home in my pocket as a result.

I was able to play this game with significant financial success for a period of months. Even when others gave up trying to do the same, there were still requests for me to do my ‘magic’.

I felt so important. The wonderful magician! The boy who felt no pain! I became the talking point of many at the school, popular for my party trick and welcomed into the numerous schoolyard gangs that existed.

Little did I know that the same trick that earned so much friendship would soon be the reason for so much loneliness.

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