Buttertea at Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page B

it looks like a stampede. Villagers sit or stand behind their goods, and a huge crowd of people rushes around, trying to buy as much as possible as fast as possible.
    The supply is limited and not particularly diverse: piles of chillies – red and green and of various sizes; spinach leaves bound with dried grass into bushy bundles; a basket full of sugar cane; some green beans; a few tins filled with colourful powders that smell rather pungent; tennis-ball-size white cakes of stinking cheese wrapped in banana leaves; and a few brown eggs packaged carefully into cans filled with cracked corn.
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    F I R S T E N C O U N T E R S
    I stand helplessly and watch the chaos. Pieces of conversation in a foreign language whirl all around me. In some areas, heavy bargaining raises an argument. An old lady shouts furiously at a thin Indian man who is busy filling an entire load of potatoes into a heavy hemp bag. Beside me, three different people are thrusting their well-worn plastic bags at an old man selling gnarly carrots.
    Intimidated, I try to figure out the cost of all these delicacies. It seems that for everything, some one-ngultrum and maybe five-ngultrum notes are the highest value needed. Even if not plentiful, food is definitely cheap (twenty ngultrums are not even one dollar). But how do I ask for anything? Desperately I look around for a sign of Pema or Karma.
    A young woman, carrying a woven bamboo basket on
    her back, pushes past me. She is barefoot, and her dress is carelessly wrapped and hitched up above her ankles. Like all the women at the market, she wears a kira , a long piece of rectangular cloth wrapped around the body and fastened by two buckles over the shoulders. A belt around the waist keeps everything in place. Her jacket, the toego , is flung over her basket. She stoops to pick through a pile of beans.
    Ever-increasing floods of people push through the
    undesignated aisles and elbow their way to the preferred sellers. I can hardly see what is displayed on the ground.
    Young lads, fat women, little girls and endless numbers of thin, wiry Indian men equipped with huge sacks stoop to the best bargains. Like a frozen statue, I am fixed to my patch of mud and stare at the turmoil. Everyone is moving fast, talking loudly and filling their shopping bags. Everyone except me.
    A steady, warm rain continues to soak sellers, buyers and the earth-smeared goods. I start to wander aimlessly between piles of vegetables and fruits, trying not to step on anything, trying not to get pushed over. Soon I realise 33
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    B U T T E R T E A A T S U N R I S E
    that the amount of food for sale is dwindling fast and further dallying will cost me my vegetables for the coming week. Yet, how do I get the stuff laid out on the ground to end up in my backpack? There is no one to ask. I wait to see a familiar face, but receive only a few stares of old, wrinkled women, sitting beside their daughters who are busy bartering. ‘ Nigzing, nigzing! ’ someone cries. ‘ Mangi, meme, sam! ’‘ Sam mala !’‘ Gila, meme! Sam! ’ the shouting continues. By the time I am ready to choose something, all is sold out. Gone. Finished. Everyone is packing up.
    Frustrated and drenched, I shoulder my empty backpack.
    On the way home, I meet one of the hospital employees, fully loaded with two woven bags overflowing with
    vegetables.
    ‘You must go to bazaar,’ he advises, pointing at the façade of houses along the main street. ‘You will get things in shop there. All foreign things. You will like.’
    I am lucky. In one of the shops, I discover a man who speaks English, and I recite my shopping list. He nods cheerfully and immediately shows me an assortment of tea, all in its original leaf form, which causes more confusion. I