Ganga, Parameshwar and the Illness in Thamel

In 2015, Ganga lost her job as a quality control inspector with Vantage Foods. As she searched for a new job, she decided to offer some of her free time to a local government program that would match volunteers with seniors requiring social connection and a small dose of supervision. Born in Nepal, and one of eight siblings, Ganga left her home country when she was only nineteen, making her way to Japan where she lived for several years before emigrating to Canada where she settled, found a job, bought a home, and eventually became a citizen.

My father died in February of 2016 and suddenly my mother, caregiver to my 96-year-old grandmother, found it difficult to leave the house with a clear head and perform even the most menial of tasks that took her outside of the house like fetching groceries. My mother would never forgive herself if she left, even for a short while, and something awful happened to her mother and psychologically, even before my grandmother became bedbound, my mother became housebound. A notorious do-it-yourselfer, my mother finally accepted that she needed help and reached out to the local seniors’ assistance services where she was paired with Ganga.

In the summer of 1999, my brother travelled to Nepal where he volunteered at a clinic in Bhaktapur. He had just started medical school and took the opportunity to volunteer and combine travel with the chance to earn some real-world experience. He worked a month in the clinic, travelled south to Chitwan, trekked to the basecamp of Everest, and even travelled into China to make a short visit to Lhasa, the holy city of Tibet. At the same time, I was preoccupied with my own university studies and my own travels, and all that I could recall about those times were the stories my brother would tell, or what he was able to capture with his disposable camera. There were photos of majestic mountain peaks and my brother riding a yak. His stories were about things like drinking yak-butter tea, witnessing Hindu ceremonial sacrifices, and exploring the cities and jungles of Nepal. As someone who has never been able to contain their curiosities of foreign places, all I saw was the magic and wonder that my brother had experienced. To hear my mother relate my brother’s experiences of Nepal paints a very different picture. She recalls only one incident by whispering with dread: “the phone bill was over four hundred dollars”.

There is one lost week during my brother’s visit that he never talks about where he ended up in the hospital with some kind of gastrointestinal infection. Landlines were still the way people got in touch using the telephone and long-distance charges could be as high as several dollars per minute. My brother was in distress but had the presence of mind to call home to let the family know what was happening. He became pale and as thin as a matchstick but his body was able to fight the infection and he survived and returned home and went on to finish medical school and become a surgeon. The illness he suffered in Nepal is well behind him, but with my mother, that memory lingers.

Needing an onward ticket just to be allowed to enter Oman, I made the decision to visit Nepal for a few weeks as a staging point for eventually travelling to Vietnam – after all, flights between Muscat and Kathmandu were cheap. When my mother heard about this decision, her mind immediately returned to that time where she was stricken with helplessness and dread over her son’s health. A mother is always going to worry about her child whenever they go off wandering, but in this particular case my mother was informed by experience and that fear was heightened long before I stepped foot in Nepal. My mother decided to exercise the only measure of control she had at her disposal and reached out to Ganga.

After my father’s death, I would go out to see my mother every so often and whenever I would visit I would hear stories about Ganga and her visits with my grandmother, but we never had the chance to meet. The first time Ganga and I spoke to one another was when I was in Oman and my mother arranged a conference call for us just so that we could touch base and she could give me some tips and advice for my visit. Using social media, Ganga put me in touch with her youngest brother, Parameshwar, who I reached out to right away and a couple of days after my arrival we had a casual first meeting in Patan over a milk tea.

The next day, Parameshwar took me, along with his son, and his brother and brother’s wife, out to their native village of Bhaktapur where they showed me around the various palace and temple sites, the famous peacock window, and even showed me their childhood home. We drank tea and ate local snacks at a rooftop café owned by one of his friends and that night I was invited to his brother’s home where I was cooked a traditional Nepalese meal of dhal and rice, cooked spinach and mustard greens, and chicken. It was a special day where I was able to travel to a distant world and be invited to live as they live.

Besides spending that special day together, Parameshwar and his son were very helpful in offering advice when it came to seeing the rest of the country and a couple of days later I left Kathmandu and travelled all over Nepal. I explored the jungles of Chitwan National Park, the holy city of Lumbini, the trekkers’ mecca of Pokhara, and some of the smaller mountain towns between Pokhara and the capital. While I was off exploring, every couple of days Parameshwar would check in with a message to see how I was doing and I would send him a few words and a photo to reassure him that I was well and having fun.

When I eventually returned to Kathmandu, I settled in at a hotel in Thamel and reached out to Parameshwar right away hoping to have one final visit before leaving for Bangkok. He had already been so kind and I was excited to see him and his son again so that I could repay the favour and treat them to a meal in the city.

I have a step counter on my cell phone and while I was in Nepal I was easily getting my ten thousand steps per day, on some days even achieving as many thirty thousand steps. But that next day in Kathmandu, the day I was supposed to meet Parameshwar, my cell phone recorded zero steps. I was plastered to the hotel bed for the entire day completely unable to move but for the occasional overwhelming urge to get to the toilet. I was disoriented, my body ached, and, though I had no appetite and did not eat a morsel, my body could not hold anything in. I had not experienced such misery in years. Worse was knowing that I was scheduled to fly in two days.

After a very hazy twenty-four hours and just a day away from leaving the country, a very concerned Parameshwar reached out wondering what had happened to me. My stomach was still queasy and I was still suffering through the worst of it, but I found the energy to get the words out and explained what I was going through. Parameshwar found out where I was staying and said that he would be over in a few hours with a doctor.

Meanwhile, with small ounces of my strength returning I reached out to my friends and family to explain how I was feeling and inquire if my hivemind could piece together what may have happened. My worst fears were that I had contracted typhoid again because the symptoms, though more sudden and severe this time, were similar. The consensus was that, no matter what it was, that given all of the places I had been in recent weeks and months that were high risk for all sorts of nasty pathogens, I should get to a hospital and have all of the tests done. My mother, biting her tongue, not wanting to come across as an obsessive and nervous mom, observed the messages that came in and waited for me to give her a thumbs-up, having faith that I would know when it would be the right time to do so.

Later that afternoon, the fever broke and I began to come around and get my senses back. Parameshwar arrived and let me speak with his cousin who was a doctor and, given my symptoms, he explained that it was most likely traveller’s diarrhea that I had contracted by eating contaminated food – an all too common experience in Nepal. I was given rounds of tinidazole and ciprofloxacin to combat whatever germ I was contending with and, as I was so weak and needed hydrating, I started on oral rehydration therapy supplements as well. It was good to see Parameshwar and he was smiling as always and all I could do was apologize for my condition.

My appetite wasn’t normal the next morning and I could not keep anything in. My recovery strategy was to stay ahead of it and keep as hydrated as I could, but Nepal is a land of strange smells and even the slightest assault to my senses could prod my sensibilities to seek a nearby toilet. I met Parameshwar at a café before he took me to the office where he worked as an account manager and stocks investor. We had a quiet cup of coffee and he asked me how I was feeling. I put on a brave face with my flight just a few hours away and told him that I was doing at least well enough to fly. It was only a short 4-hour flight and I was praying that my body would hang on, but I swore to myself that I would make getting those tests run a priority when I got to Bangkok.

The hour was approaching and I told Parameshwar that I should be heading off to the airport so as not to miss my flight. I could not stop apologizing. I had had such lovely plans to treat him and his family and laugh and chit-chat as we had weeks earlier, but that illness after returning to Kathmandu had knocked the wind out of me. You can tough your way through some of those small bugs, but this one left me feeling like a used dishrag. Parameshwar called to his driver who dropped me at the departures gate and, in the end, I survived my flight to Bangkok.

A couple of days later my appetite returned and I checked in with Parameshwar and thanked him for all of his help and for having had the chance to get to know him and his family. I gave the thumbs up to my mother who was relieved to know that I was well again. She in turn passed on the message to Ganga and somewhere in the heavens my grandmother, who no doubt was looking down from heaven with her army of guardian angels, would have been smiling in satisfaction in having been the critical connecting point in assuring that her grandson was safe and well.