ping pong table: Kaczka: George Saunders on Nepal's "Buddha Boy"

When the editors at GQ asked In Persuasion Nation writer George Saunders to travel to Nepal to write about Ram Bahadur Bomjon—before he abandoned his spot a couple months ago, the 15-year-old “Buddha Boy” was making headlines around the world for meditating under a tree and not eating, drinking or moving for months—Saunders said no. But he couldn’t get the kid off his mind. The account of the trip Saunders eventually took appears in the June issue of GQ. Though Saunders’ story is more about the writer, really, than the Buddha Boy, it does provide an interesting look at what may or may not be an elaborate hoax as well as a Nepal in turmoil.

The level of noise, energy, and squalor of Katmandu makes even the poorest section of the most wild-ass American city seem placid and urban-planned. Some guys squat in a trash-strewn field, inexplicably beating the crap out of what looks like purple cotton candy. A woman whose face has been burned or torn off walks past me, running some small errand, an errand made heartbreaking by the way she carries herself, which seems to signify: I’m sure this will be a very good day! Here is a former Pepsi kiosk, now barbed-wired and manned by Nepalese soldiers armed for Maoists; here a Ping-Pong table made of slate, with brick legs. I cross a mythical bleak vacant lot I’ve seen in dreams, a lot surrounded by odd Nepali brick high-rises like a lake surrounded by cliffs, if the lake were dry and had a squatting, peeing lady in the middle of it. Averting my eyes, I see another woman, with baby, and teeth that jut, terrifyingly, straight out of her mouth, horizontally, as if her gums had loosened up and she had tilted her teeth out at ninety degrees. She stretches out a hand, jiggles the baby with the other, as if to say: This baby, these teeth, come on, how are we supposed to live?
About half of Saunders’ story is available online, along with a photo gallery and an interview with him and photographer Jeff Riedel.

Posted by Michael Yessis • 5.29.06