Breath, Smell, and the Sound of Fifteen Minutes

Dilip Nepal 

A typical, dusky, winter evening at Sukedhara Chowk, Kathmandu, Nepal.  As is the norm, a congested crowd that I observed between 6:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, 8th January, 2025, braved the city’s usual chill and suffered the smog-filled air.

Some five yards west of the traffic police station -- at one of the busiest junctions of Kathmandu Valley at the Ring Road -- I sighted a roadside shelter raised with aluminum pillars and a corrugated metal roof.  It was occupied by a solitary, elderly, vendor woman, whose display held only a few, lonely, stacked packets of tobacco and eight bottles of drinking water on the ledge of public rest. I watched as she was sadly visited by only the occasional customers.

A messy crowd of mixed ages milled about outside this shelter, oblivious of one another even while pressed close together. Except the few couples and family groups, most waiting for public buses bent their heads down utterly preoccupied in play with their smart phones. A few could be seen wearing masks to protect them from the deep, dark smoke that vehicles spewed  and dust that flowed swirling the side of the road. 

The public buses arrived so frequently that the gaps were but a few seconds.  They halted momentarily for this stop of the many in their endless navigation around the city.  A bus would be slowing to a halt and passengers would rush to board even before it stopped.  Pushing and shoving, young and old competed to mount the steps and forced themselves in.  An unlikely seat or standing all the way and crushed together: it did not matter. Every bit of space occupied, the offloading passengers were forcefully shoved and maneuvered down the aisle toward an exit, stepping down -- but more accurately -- almost squeezed out through the doors. 

The road was intensely busy with the non-stop movement of all types of vehicles, be they motorcycle, taxis, a heavily loaded trucks, the public buses, or the private cars, all driven at full speed on the same double lane narrow  road. And, in all that chaos and no matter the vehicle, there was total unconcern about the traffic indicators. 

A vehicle riding in one part of the road could be seen abruptly changing its route to and fro it caused other vehicles to stop abruptly. The repeated instances of this inevitably resulted into jams. To ease the problem, a middle-aged traffic policeman with official blue jacket, navy blue pants, gloves, and smartly-styled beret could be seen running here and there with his commanding whistle attempting to bring some order to the flow of the public buses rushing to pick up passengers. The drivers all seemed to have birds eyed focus from afar to pick up their next load of passenger and hurry off to another station.

In addition to the chaos on the road, all the surrounding areas were crammed, as well. There was a small canal break beside the main road. Across the canal there was another small subway, by the edge of which the pedestrians were walking. The subway was filled with light vehicles like taxis and motorbikes and it all looked to be a dysfunctional ballet of metal and rubber with the accompaniment of endless honking of horns. 

Terrified, young, nursing students, in their pure, white uniforms, walked along the edges of the subway, chatting and laughing and munching chips in their hands, holding their ears as honking bikes and taxis sped by them at top speed. 

(Nepal is an English teacher at Mangal Secondary School +2 Wing/ Reliance Public School)