Wednesday,
November 12
A moment in Bhakitpur
A surprising
amount of daily life happens on the streets, in public, we
found as we wandered.
There
are public water faucets periodically, and you would see women
there washing their clothes or dishes. Women gathered on street
corners, crouching or sitting together, talking and making
handcrafts. One man sat on a stool on the sidewalk, and his
wife hovered over him, shaving him. There was a row of houses
in the sun with some women in front winnowing grain, maybe
rice or millet.
Everywhere
you could hear people inside, tapping on bracelets they were
making or doing other work. And some of the women carried
loads of rocks or gravel to a construction site in conical
baskets on their backs held with a tump line around their
foreheads. Industrious people, seemingly comfortable with
their lives, but not wealthy by our standards.
We had
lunch by a school, and the sounds of the kids playing exuded
irrepressible enthusiasm. And I was impressed there, as I
had been in the Khathmandu Durbar Square, as how much the
temples were visited by the local people. Not necessarily
for worship, either. The school children climbed on the temples
when they were released from the school yard, and people of
all ages gathered there to talk and sit.
The
temples were part of their daily lives; they grew up on them.
More
of this day
The next day
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