Soul Searching

The spice of life

Okay, so this is REALLY disgusting. Skip it if you’re weak in the gut. I wouldn’t write about it but I’ve seen it, or a version of it three or four times.

Walking through the streets of Kathmandu. The sun is shining. The streets are lined with vendors selling all kinds of trinkets. All yelling “just look!” silver bracelets, and earings, colorful scarves and hand bags, tangerines, peanuts, fresh produce. The streets are kind of raucous. Cars seem only a recent addition, and don’t quite fit in yet. Some of the people manning the colorful tapestries laden with goods for sale are clean, some are not. A regular sight for me was seeing a mother with a child that looked to be cleaning lice from their hair. Okay, bad enough in front of food but then imagine this, a woman, crazy with scratching. The blanket before her covered in roasted peanuts. Her hair completely unkempt. Her clothing disheveled. Then her hands, slowly, rhythmically, with savage determination, migrate upwards, weaving a bloody irregular path to their ultimate goal. Her head. A frenzy of scratching ensues. An orgiastic pleasure glides over her face as she digs trenches with her filthy nails into her scalp. Around her a gentle cloud of slowly falling particles descends, like snow, onto the peanuts….