Patan: Through my eyes

Growing up in the heavily urbane Kathmandu I never really knew about Patan. I had only been there once but how this foreign place, many kilometers away from my home became familiar place to me, I could never have imagined. But some places have a way of staying in our minds, sometimes amidst hazy clouds of our dreams and also in the way we seek the same familiarity in other places. Patan became a hauntingly recurring dream; its dark brick paved alleys, the mysterious wooden temples, the clanging of bells remained etched in my memories. It seemed almost as if they were calling out to me in their despair and sickness after the Earthquake that hit Nepal on April 2015. 

As I walked the streets of Mangalbazar, I knew the Patan I had seen would not be the same again. From a distance I could hear the devotees chanting the morning prayers, bells clanging in unison, the smoke of incense heavily flowing from the tiny windows like oil spilled on the floor, the very sight that introduced Patan for what it was. Yet the ugly wooden poles that supported the temples was what caught my eye at the beginning. The majestic temples looked as is an old man stooping on a crooked wooden stick. Finally it revealed Patan for what it was; utterly old despite its breathtaking beauty. 

It was evident that the Earthquake had hit hard; leaving scars open and bleeding through the cracks that had struck its walls. Some monuments lay half broken on the ground, its piece slumped on the ground like a beheaded head, and the half part that remained like an ugly stump. And yet despite such a devastating damage, nothing had changed around it. Patan had not ceased to be Pat

an. Its aesthetic beauty, its inviting spaces filled with people,the surreal atmosphere around had not ceased to exist. People crowded near it, some deep in conversation with a cup of tea, its steam melting in the air, some staring into distance and some capturing the moment in their cameras. There were occasional glances towards me and snatches of conversation I could hear close by. 

I could do nothing. I could only see, hear, feel and think. I could only absorb all the sights and sounds around me. And for a moment I felt like I was but an outsider, looking into an elaborate painting placed on a huge white wall in a gallery somewhere far away. And yet my feet were on the old path of Patan, in some places already worn away. At that moment, I could only think if Patan was so old, how many feet had landed on the same spot as mine were mine at that moment. And what of the person who had owned those feet? Where were they? Some had indeed already perished. They as I had stood on the same threshold and relished the beauty of Patan as I was doing at the moment. But yet here Patan was, outrunning so much death, storms and earthquake, standing even with the support of the wooden poles.