The alternative Queen's speech

HAPPY CHRISTMAS / HOLIDAYS / CHANUKAH / DECEMBER and as they say in Nepal
LA SABAILAI X-MAS KO HARDIK SUBHAKAMANA lovely people! I hope that you all (or those of you who celebrated it) spent your Christmas stuffed with turkey, tofurkey, mincepies and cake. I hope that you laughed at the cracker jokes, drank too much, ate too much and fell asleep in front of a fire. I hope that you got to celebrate being surrounded by family goodness and friend fueled drunken ness. I hope that you got to raise your glass to the future and the past and most of all I hope you all got/get to rest your weary heads, cos man 2005 was a toughy (and a goody in many ways) and I know that you all needed to put your feet up, take a break, juvenate, refresh, refuel and prepare yourself for jumpin back into whatever 2006 has in store.

As for me...I did none of those things. But Christmas in Nepal was cool and fun in its own way.

Christmas eve I celebrated Nepali style - i.e. start the night at 6pm, laugh, drink, eat, SING but be home by 10.30! In fairness to my Nepali-saathi (friends / colleagues) this early to bed plan is partly to do with the present conflict situation (the streets are heavily patrolled by the army after 11 and it's just not nice being out and about on your motorbike) and partly to do with the fact that most of them still live with parents. But man! Between 6-10. so much random fun was had. At one bizarre point, one of the guys at our table started singing cheesy ballads. Now this was not in a drunken fool way, but in a full on "heart and soul, man I am feeling those words" kinda way. By this point the restaurant was mainly filled with just men (girls tend to leave first) and as our guy tripped over the words for the second verse of "have I told you lately that I love you", a group of streetwise looking Nepali lads started whispering amongst themselves. I was just waiting for them to start hurling abuse at our table, but instead they were simply conferring on the words and before you can say happy Christmas in Nepali, they had joined in with just as much gusto! After 'Have I told you lately', there was a perfect rendition of 'Last Christmas' then 'I haven't stopped dancing yet' and then some crazy 50s ballads that I had never even heard of! And I don't think this was just a result of Christmas spirit - as far as I can tell Nepali's love to sing and they love to dance and when they sing or dance they give their whole heart over to it and jitterbug or croon like their lives depend on it. I love it. No inhibitions, no worrying if you look cool or not, becasue no one judges you, everyone else is too busy winding and twirling and singing to notice!

So that was Christmas Eve Hindu / Nepali-style.

Christmas day I did Buddhist style. At one point on Christmas eve it looked like it was going to be Christmas day loner style, but I suddenly realised that I wasn't quite ready for Christmas on my own, so I joined my one non Nepali friend Simone and some 0ther people from the local meditation centre on a Cora (i think that's how you spell it - it means to literally walk in a clockwise circle around a holy place). So we wandered around a nearby temple (Soyambol or monkey temple on account of the many vicious monkeys) turned prayer wheels, threw rice, got attacked by monkeys, lit candles, chatted about life, saw amazing views of kathmandu, laughed, smiled in the sunshine and generally flowed. We even got invited to paint our own mini stupas (temples) that are then placed inside the big temple. A group of local people had been sitting making and painting hundreds and hundreds of these mini temples for weeks, just giving time when they could to sit in the sunshine, catch up with friends and paint! For Christmas lunch I had tibetan soup and nasty Nepali maize based-alcohol (why not we said! It is Christmas after all!) and I ended the day eating pizza in bed and watching american movies on cable.

So all in all it was a good day. The temple was stunning, the sky was blue, Simone is an inspiring lady with a laugh that seems to come up from her toes and I liked the way that the day just unfolded, no pressure, no stress, no preplanning. Also it helped that it was unique and in no way tried to be like Christmas day - having said that, as much as I enjoyed my very different Christmas day, next year I am going to pull crackers and sit by christmas trees and stuff myself to the gills with turkey and wine and cake and family!

ps: I am also liking the Buddhist way of thinking. At times during our day Simone would stand still and just be in the moment, which means that you take a moment to absorb your surroundings, realise you are there, breathe it all in and it helps stop the day dissappearing from you, so at the end of it all you don't have that feeling was I even there?

So yay that was my day!

The end.