It is the usual Satdobato to Chabel route; but sometimes the wait at Koteshwor stop is slightly longer. This means I get more time to relax, catch my breath but not breathe too much of the dust around; and just be my own self. But breathe is not the only thing you catch when you are at the Koteshwor stop; you catches glimpses of faces and the stories behind them.

Koteshwor bus/micro/tempo stop is full of what you can call: “working class people”. Working class people are those people who earn their living out of daily wage, hardwork is probably their only weapon, and they do not have the luxury to be picky. Working class people makes a place urban. Well, that is my person opinion so don’t go around asking experts what makes a place urban.

I believe, an urban place is not only a hub for the elites, the housings and the malls; an urban place is where people who rely on their manual skills and perseverance to survive. Darwin was wrong in saying the survival of the fittest (now again, do not go asking the experts). He was wrong is saying so because the idea of survival or the fittest is so rigid and normative in his vocabulary. For me, “survival” and “fittest” are processes, fluid in their being and becoming. So, while Koteshwor might not probably be the best place to be in early mornings, it is probably the place that will allow you to run into those people who are in the transition of “survival” and “fittest”.

While you will probably witness a lot of youths; clad in their urban wear (predominantly comprising of cotton pants or jeans, and checkered cotton/polyester shirts for guys; and jeans/jeans slacks and kurti pieces for girls in sandals); they aren’t the ordinary youths of the “urban Kathmandu”.

Another site common to Koteshwor is oldies; in their pilgrim attire; with sandalwood tika on their forehead, a zebra bag clutched to their sides with their grandchildren; waiting for a micro that will turn sour at how slowly the “bajai” climbs the micro or how bothersome her “jhola” is. She will climb off the micro exhausted and short of breath. And, then there are the middle aged men; in their usual thin cotton pants and shirts; putting on a thin layer of imitation North Face; with a muffler round their neck; who clambers into the micro with the smell of work.

Koteshwor is no ordinary place; it is packed with aspirations running wild in the mundane gloomy Mondays of Kathmandu; where survival is not of those fittest but of those who persevere. 

 

Microphile loves to travel however, since her fantasies of travels into the Egyptian pyramids and Saharian deserts are, well, mere fantasies; she makes do with the hazardous amount of traveling she has to do in micro-buses, aka, micros. She loves to read while traveling in micros. All that traveling has most probably caused some spinal/brain injuries that she is unaware of; while she continues to travel by micros every morning; observing the mundane and writing about them in this blog.

http://www.parakhi.com/blogs/2012/02/15/survival-of-the-persevering