Writing...

The last few weeks, I've spent my days at Boudhnath stupa, a large, whitewashed dome where Buddhists from all over Nepal (and elsewhere) come to pray. Many of the women wear traditional Tibetan dresses, and in particular, the clothing of various mountain people are on display as worshippers make koras (circumambulations) of the stupa. It's a beautiful and peaceful place, my favorite in Kathmandu, and my preferred location for the more introverted part of my project: the writing of stories.
I am gradually putting together a collection of short stories about my experiences here, almost all of them pieces about the deaf in Nepal. While they are fiction, all are based on real stories in one way or another-- the isolated deaf Tamang farmer I met near the Tibetan border, the young woman at the Naxal deaf school who was terrified at the prospects of getting new hearing aids, or the Naxal student who was a child soldier in the Maoist army before escaping (eating only leaves, practically starving, with a dwarf as his guide). These are stories you can't make up. As a writer, fiction allows for a different kind of reality, a conflation of events, a liberal dose of imagination-- but my hope is that these stories will ultimately ring true to some part of the deaf experience here.

I recently had the opportunity to workshop my first finished story with several writers: two American expats as well as Manjushree Thapa, the author of a novel, short story collection, and non-fiction. They all offered excellent advice, and I'm looking forward to getting involved in Kathmandu's literary community, even if I'm only on the periphery.