Namaste, Stranger
Copyright© 2026 by Art Samms
Chapter 5
The progression didn’t happen all at once. It happened in fragments—notifications lighting Jack’s phone while he waited for rice to finish cooking, messages sent late at night when the house had gone quiet, voice notes listened to with headphones in, careful not to wake anyone.
Jack and Anjana began messaging more often. Not constantly. Not recklessly. But enough that their exchanges formed a rhythm—like something tapping gently beneath the surface of their days.
She sent him short clips she was filming: children chasing a tire down the lane, an old man repairing a sandal with twine and patience, women laughing while shelling peas in a courtyard.
Anjana:
These won’t make it into a full video.
But I like them anyway.
Jack watched them more than once.
Jack:
They feel like the things you’d miss if you blinked.
Her reply came almost immediately.
Anjana:
Exactly.
She teased him about his Nepali—sent voice messages slowly enunciating phrases, then laughing softly when he sent one back mangled beyond recognition. He told her about his students chanting bhaṅgan like it was a festival slogan. She sent a string of laughing emojis and replied:
Anjana:
Congratulations. You have accidentally invented an environmental anthem.
The warmth between them wasn’t dramatic. It was quieter than that. Familiar. Comfortable. The kind that sneaks up on you because it doesn’t announce itself.
One night, after a long day in the field and an even longer dinner conversation where Jack nodded through Nepali he only half understood, he found himself typing something he hadn’t planned to share.
Jack:
Sometimes I think I came here because I needed to disappear for a while.
He stared at the message before sending it ... and then sent it anyway.
Her response took longer than usual.
Anjana:
Disappearing and starting again are not the same thing.
He considered that.
Jack:
Maybe.
I had two marriages. Both ended quietly. No explosions. Just ... erosion.
He paused, surprised by his own word choice.
Jack:
I didn’t want to explain myself to anyone anymore.
The three dots appeared, staying for an interval.
Anjana:
Thank you for trusting me with that.
No judgment. No probing. Just acknowledgment.
Anjana:
Sometimes people think fresh starts belong only to the young.
I don’t agree.
Jack leaned back on his pillow, phone resting against his chest. For the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel like he was apologizing for his past simply by mentioning it.
They began running into each other more often—not by design, not through messages, but through the slow alignment of routines. At the corner shop, where she bought tea and he picked up biscuits for the Subedi kids. At the temple steps, where she paused to fix her sandal strap and he waited politely a few steps away.
Once, at the edge of the market, where they both stopped short, surprised into smiling. Each time, they greeted each other with careful neutrality.
“Namaste.”
“Namaste.”
Nothing more than a sentence or two. How’s work. How’s the weather. Safe walk home. But something hummed underneath those exchanges—an awareness sharpened by restraint.
Jack noticed it in the way she met his eyes and then deliberately looked away. Anjana felt it in the way he kept his hands visible, his posture deliberately open, as if trying to reassure the watching world as much as her.
They never stood too close. Never lingered too long. Never forgot where they were.
Even so, people noticed.
Jack caught whispered conversations that paused when he passed. Anjana saw the way one of the guesthouse aunties raised her eyebrows just a fraction too high when Jack walked by.
Nothing was said aloud. But everything was registered.
One night, after another of those chance encounters, Anjana messaged him first.
Anjana:
It’s strange seeing someone twice in one day and pretending it’s normal.
Jack smiled in the dark.
Jack:
I was going to say the same thing.
Very convincing performances, though.
Anjana:
We deserve awards.
Jack:
Best Supporting Characters in Our Own Lives.
Her reply came with a single emoji—half amused, half thoughtful.
Anjana:
Good night, Jack.
Tomorrow will be busy.
Jack:
Good night, Anjana.
Jack set the phone aside and stared at the ceiling, listening to the familiar sounds of the neighborhood settling into sleep.
What was happening between them was still small. Still undefined. Still wrapped in caution.
But it was no longer accidental. And Jack knew—deep down—that something like this, once it started, didn’t easily fade back into nothing.
The criticism did not arrive all at once.
It came in fragments—half-sentences, pauses where there hadn’t been pauses before, glances that lingered just long enough to feel intentional.
Anjana noticed it first at home.
Her mother asked, casually, “You’ve been working late these days?”
An aunt, visiting from across town, remarked, “Foreigners notice everything, don’t they?” with a small, knowing smile.
A neighbor’s voice drifted through the open window one afternoon: “The girl at the guesthouse thinks she’s very modern.”
Anjana pretended not to hear. She had grown up learning which comments deserved attention and which survived on the oxygen of reaction. But even she could tell when curiosity was hardening into judgment.
At the guesthouse, one of the older women who helped with laundry began hovering near the reception desk whenever Jack passed by on the street. Another asked—too lightly—whether Anjana planned to “work abroad someday,” as if the question were innocent.
Anjana smiled. She always smiled. But the weight of it followed her home.
____________________________________
Jack felt it too.
A colleague from the ward office asked him, with studied casualness, “You are enjoying Pokhara life?”
Raj Bhatta, during a routine check-in, reminded him gently that visibility mattered—that even innocent behavior could complicate trust in conservative neighborhoods.
No one mentioned Anjana by name. No one had to.
Jack found himself choosing different routes home. Lingering less. Standing farther away when they crossed paths. The effort itself felt like a betrayal, even though it was necessary.
They didn’t plan to talk about it. It happened late one night, after Anjana had spent an hour pretending to edit video while replaying a neighbor’s words in her head, and Jack had stared at his laptop without absorbing a single line of environmental data.
Anjana:
I think people are starting to connect dots.
Jack stared at the message longer than he should have.
Jack:
Me too.
She typed, erased, typed again.
Anjana:
My uncle asked today if foreigners “confuse young women.”
He smiled when he said it. That’s how I knew it wasn’t a joke.