Met a man. His head was shaved clean but he sported a bushy moustache and his eyebrows were bushier still. He constanly winked. When he talked it was as if he was the most adventureous man to ever grace the seat next to you. We were at a bar near downtown Pokhara - which is amazing by itself because Pokhara, the most important tourist destination in Nepal, does not have a downtown per se. Quite a beautiful valley, adorned by three lakes, but no real financial district to boast the luxury of any city center. It sprawls and ends at the foothills of the mountains that surround it. The most happening place in Pokhara is Lakeside where the poles by the road are covered with signboards, posters and screens advertising numerous hotels, bars and restaurants. I don't think that the bar we were at had a sign displayed by the side of the road. This hole was for the locals and for those tourists bold enough to venture outside the prescribed haunts from the guidebooks. So Malcolm, which I learned was his name, stuck out not just because of his owlish physical appearance but also for being who he was - a foreigner.
"So you do this for a living?"he asked.
"Do what?"
"This and that, you know," he winked.
At the time I did not know that he was a winker. I explained to him that I did neither this nor that.
"I am a taxi-driver," I said.
"I used to drive a cab once," Malcolm said readily. It was as if he would have said that he used to lay bricks, if I had said I was a bricklayer. "Back when I used to live in Chicago. That was until the damn Pakistanis stole the business from me," he said with a smirk.
"Where is that?"
"Chicago?" he raised his eyebrow. "It's in the middle of America. Crappy town, if you ask me. They call it the Second City which is not really a compliment-" he winked, this time at the banality of a silly name of a town that I had never heard about -"Other cities are more original, they aspire to be the first, the most, the best. But Chicago, hell, it settled for being the second best."
"So you were born there?"
"Nope. My hometown was an even crappier place called, Evanston. Same state. Small town. When I tell these people here that I am from America, they think of tall buildings, nice green lawns, fast cars, and blonde chicks. And free sex. Evanston was nothing like that. Heck, we used to sit on the lawn and drink beer and that was fun."
By this time he had lost me but I did not let on. In front of foreigners I know how to look as if I am listening.
"...Dad worked in the steel mill, that was until they moved to set up shop in the f*cking-Honduras. Mom was the head of the Library Council. I left that hell-hole When she started reading Henry James and picked up drinking tea. Tea! for crying out loud;I said read Hemingway and drink absinthe, at the least...I hate tea!"
"We like tea here. That is the first thing they offer me if I go to anybody's house."
"As far as I am concerned it is syrupy piss." A wink again.
We were drinking beer and not sipping tea. I remembered my grandmother telling me when I used to visit her during my winter vacation that alcohol was just "a bitch's pee." That was long time ago.
"Well, drink beer and be happy man," I said. It was time to leave, drive the taxi home and get to bed. A group of Norwegian tourists had reserved service to Baglung the next morning; they wanted an early start. I finished the drink and got up to leave. Malcolm raised his glass in farewell and winked.

mG.
@ work, : ) smile cause it's friday!