‘Get out of my house.’ ‘All my sickness is because of you.’ ‘You’re a millstone around my neck.’ Arundhati Roy heard these admonitions from her mother over and over throughout her life.&nbsp; This must be a singular, yet universal experience. There must be very few daughters who make it through life unscathed by their mothers. And vice-versa.&nbsp; How many of our mothers look at us and see in us the potential of all of the lives they could have lived? How many resent us for it, or want us to live those lives in their stead? And how many of us look back at our mothers and imagine what they would have achieved had they not been expected and assigned to play the role of wife, daughter-in-law, mother — had we never existed in their lives? How many mothers project their experiences onto their own daughters and continue the cycle? No daughter seems to escape it — no matter how well-behaved, docile, unruly, or rebellious. Certainly not the child who would go on to become a Booker prize-winning author. Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me chronicles her complex relationship with her mother Mary, or Mrs Roy, as her educator mother had her two children refer to her. In December, Arundhati Roy was in Kathmandu to sign books and briefly interact with readers at two bookshops in the city. She describes a childhood overshadowed by her mother’s volatility towards her and her brother. Mary herself was raised by an abusive father to escape whom she married the first man who proposed — Arundhati’s father who in her mother’s words turned out to be an alcoholic ‘Nothing Man’.&nbsp; Mary left her husband in Assam and eventually wound up with her two children in her town of Aymanam in Kerala, encountering other family members along the way who did not treat her, or her children with respect. The trauma and cruelty her mother endured could not be contained in her body, and spilled out onto her two children, towards whom she was physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive.&nbsp; While she treated her children with disregard, she would build a school in the nearby town of Kottayam from the ground up, educate thousands of children, take up a legal fight that led to the Supreme Court granting Syrian Christian women in India equal inheritance rights, and uplift many orphaned children and women in Kerala.&nbsp; Arundhati lived with both her mother’s brutality and brilliance. And like her daughter, readers must reconcile the indefensible parts of Mary Roy’s personality — the cruelty of calling her nine-year-old daughter a bitch, or shooting the family dog that mated with a stray — with her unyielding drive to educate thousands, fight for equal rights, and challenge the way her world viewed women.&nbsp; Mrs Roy had little kindness for her own children, but plenty for the students, children, and women whose lives she shaped, and made better. And her kindness was not rooted in empathy, but in anger at the hand she had been dealt in life. Eventually, Arundhati decided to temporarily cut all contact with Mrs Roy — not because she did not love her, she writes, but so that she could continue to love her. Her desire to get away from her abusive mother, and her fascination with the ideas inspired by the architect who built her mother’s school, would lead her to the Delhi School of Architecture at age 16. In Delhi, Arundhati became roommates with Hisila Yami before she and her Maoist ideologue husband Baburam Bhattarai went underground to lead Nepal’s decade-long armed struggle. &nbsp; But architecture was not her calling. In Delhi, the heart of India’s statecraft, Arundhati came into young adulthood against a backdrop of the country’s changing socio-politics, which began to take a turn for the hyper-nationalist, Hindu supremacist community that it has now largely become. The winds of those changes have now blown into Nepal. In the city, far from her mother, Arundhati met the man who would become her partner of many years, collaborating with him on several films and screenplays before finding the language (‘I needed to hunt [language] down like prey,’ she writes) she needed to become the writer she is now.&nbsp; She went on to write her Booker prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, but the wealth and status the book brought her did not sit comfortably. So she smashed her newly-built gilded cage, as she describes it, and became more political. Contrary to norm, she published several works of non-fiction, and would only publish her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, in 2017, 20 years after The God of Small Things. &nbsp;&nbsp; Her fierce opposition to India’s nuclear policies, to a dam that would displace millions of indigenous people and ecologically damage the Narmada Valley, her championing of Kashmiri self-determination, and her time spent with Maoist rebels in the forests of Chhattisgarh as they took up arms to defend their land and resources against corporate interests made her an enemy of the state.&nbsp; Meanwhile, being raised by a single mother had never sat well within her Syrian Christian community. ‘I wasn't Christian enough. I wasn't Hindu enough. I wasn't communist enough. I wasn't enough,’ Roy writes in her memoir. For all her love for India, the nation did not seem to reciprocate. The circumstances might be different, but it might strike a chord with readers in Nepal, many of whom marched on the streets in September hoping for a better tomorrow, but were gunned down by the very institutions meant to protect them. It might resonate with those who are not seen as citizens of this nation simply because they might not fit into an imagined idea of Nepali nationhood.&nbsp; Arundhati’s relationship with her mother, who was simultaneously proud and disdainful of her daughter’s accomplishments, continued to be tumultuous until the end of Mary Roy’s life.&nbsp; One of Mrs Roy’s last messages to her daughter before she passed was: ‘There is no one in the world whom I have loved more than you.’ Arundhati muses that her lifelong refusal to stop loving her mother must have finally breached her barriers. One wonders if that final declaration of love was solace enough, apology enough, for all the pain caused.&nbsp; But for Arundhati Roy, her love for her mother and her motherland outweighs the cruelty both have shown her. This, too, must be a singular, yet universal experience.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025122208128_32b171acb09df2184495367b74efd91fe2896b0f5ba75b276e1533276268761c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025122208128_32b171acb09df2184495367b74efd91fe2896b0f5ba75b276e1533276268761c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Mother Mary Comes to Me review"> </figure>

Shristi Karki

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The sins of our mothers

<figure><img width="1500" height="990" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151116/636a655c9c7e80680e059925jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Alam gagged by police officer. Photo: SUVRA KANTI DAS</figcaption></figure>On Day of the Imprisoned Writer 2018, Indian author <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/arundhati-and-shahidul-write-to-each-other/">Arundhati Roy penned an open letter to Shahidul Alam</a>, the renowned Bangladeshi photojournalist who had been incarcerated for over 100 days. ‘Dear Shahidul,’ Roy wrote, ‘I believe the tide will turn. It will. It must. This foolish, shortsighted cruelty will give way to something kinder and more visionary.’Shahidul Alam replies in his book, The Tide Will Turn, a photography and text collection lovingly named after Roy’s letter. Combining sketches from fellow inmates, historical work by Bangladeshi photographers, reflections and political commentary, The Tide Will Turn does more than document Alam’s time in jail and his views: it serves as a curated collection of political art and writing, acting as a critique of autocracy.Alam was arrested and detained on 5 August 2018, shortly after a televised Al-Jazeera interview where he criticised Bangladesh's Sheikh Hasina government for its response to protests by young students demanding road safety. The months after saw a worldwide campaign for his release with mass exhibitions, petitions, demonstrations and letters from prominent figures. <figure><img width="1698" height="1254" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151116/636a65609c7e80680e059926jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>In Nepal, journalists and students <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/freeshahidulalam/">protested in front of the Bangladesh Embassy</a> in Kathmandu and lit up the city’s walls with projections of quotes and photographs by Alam during the visit to the Nepal capital by Sheikh Hasina for a South Asian leaders’ summit.Alam, still imprisoned, was awarded the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/shahidul-alam-photo-kathmandu-award/">Photo Kathmandu Award of Excellence</a> on 26 October 2018, both to celebrate the immense impact he has had on generations of Nepali journalists and photographers and as a clear sign of solidarity with one of South Asia’s most prominent photojournalists.‘There is a Bangla saying – “Apnake dhonnobad janie choto korbo na” (I will not belittle you by thanking you),’ Alam writes in his preface. ‘This book is my way of making amends.’Alam dedicates the first part to the prisoners in Keraniganj Jail in Dhaka. Without a camera to document his stay, he uses vivid writing to capture images of his detainment: the surroundings, the guards, his inmates and their stories, and the sparrows he made friends with.The chapter also includes notes, sketches, a mural and even a radio made by inmates who were concerned that Alam ‘a journalist, did not have access to news’. The chapter can almost be read as a standalone, a poignant reflection on <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/shahidul-alam-100th-day-in-jail/">his 107-day incarceration</a>.The longest section of the book provides a detailed historical commentary on Bengali photography, touching on artists who have captured some of the most striking images to come out of Bangladesh, as well as on Alam’s own work. It includes one of his earliest series, which focuses on former sex worker Hazera Beagum.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151116/636a65639c7e80680e059927jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="978">When Shahidul Alam first met Hazera Beagum in 1996, she was a sex worker. Beagum at her orphanage in Adabor Market in Dhaka in December 2014 (pictured right). Photos: SHAHIDUL ALAM<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151116/636a65669c7e80680e059928jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1185" height="1140">The photographs show Beagum first in 1996 and then in 2014, now running her own orphanage and ensuring that all her children receive an education. With photospreads of select iconic images, the chapter also makes for a stunning collection of Bangladeshi art over a century.The third section of The Tide Will Turn centres entirely on Bangladeshi politics. Alam uses the 1971 Liberation War as a starting point to discuss identity, secularism and the failures of the government, detailing his own experience with the 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse and the killing of Bangladeshi-American secular blogger Avijit Roy. There is an underlying critique of autocracy running through the book, but it is this chapter that really reveals to us <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-death-of-democracy/">Alam’s commitment to free speech and democracy</a>.The Tide Will Turn is best summed up by Alam himself in his letter to Arundhati Roy: ‘The tide will turn, and the nameless, faceless people will rise. They will rise against the entire state machinery.’ This deep conviction that underlies his stunning photography makes for a book that leaves readers with much to ponder.The Tide Will TurnShahidul AlamGöttingen, Germany, Steidl, 2019184 pages, 111 images, Hardback€ 28.00ISBN: 978-3-95829-693-0www.steidl.de<a href="https://steidl.de/Books/The-Tide-Will-Turn-1224303445.html"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151116/636a656a9c7e80680e059929jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2328" height="3030"></a>

A photojournalist's powerful portrait from prison

<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101132/636a22909c7e80680e041795jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Arundhati Roy with Maati Ke Laal in her flat in Delhi. Photo: SHAHIDUL ALAM/DRIK/MAJORITY WORLD</figcaption></figure>Indian author Arundhati Roy <a href="https://pen-international.org/news/arundhati-roy-writes-to-shahidul-alam-day-of-the-imprisoned-writer-2018">wrote a letter</a> to imprisoned Bangladeshi <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/oct/15/jailed-bangladesh-photojournalist-shahidul-alam">photographer Shahidul Alam</a> on the 100th day of his incarceration on 14 November, which was also the <a href="https://pen-international.org/">PEN International</a>’s Day of the Imprisoned Writer, 2018. Alam was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/20/bangladeshi-activist-shahidul-alam-released-from-prison">released on bail</a> on 20 November, and he wrote back to Arundhati. Nepali Times brings you both letters below:  --Dear Shahidul,It’s been more than a 100 days now since they took you away. Times aren’t easy in your country or in mine, so when we first heard that unknown men had abducted you from your home, of course we feared the worst. Were you going to be ‘encountered’ (our word in India for extra-judicial murder by security forces) or killed by ‘non-state actors’? Would your body be found in an alley, or floating in some shallow pond on the outskirts of Dhaka? When your arrest was announced and you surfaced alive in a police station, our first reaction was one of sheer joy.Am I really writing to you? Perhaps not. If I were, I wouldn’t need to say very much beyond, ‘Dearest Shahidul, no matter how lonely your prison cell, know that we have our eyes on you. We are looking out for you.’Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/shahidul-alam-100th-day-in-jail/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shahidul Alam 100th day in Jail</a>If I were really writing to you I wouldn’t need to tell you how your work, your photographs and your words, has, over decades, inscribed a vivid map of humankind in our part of the world—its pain, its joy, its violence, its sorrow and desolation, its stupidity, its cruelty, its sheer, crazy complicatedness—onto our consciousness. Your work is lit up, made luminous, as much by love as it is by a probing, questioning anger born of witnessing at first hand the things that you have witnessed. Those who have imprisoned you have not remotely understood what it is that you do. We can only hope, for their sake, that someday they will.Your arrest is meant to be a warning to your fellow citizens: ‘If we can do this to Shahidul Alam, think of what we can do to the rest of you—all you nameless, faceless, ordinary people. Watch. And be afraid.’The formal charge against you is that you have criticised your country in your (alleged) Facebook posts. You have been arrested under the Section 57 of Bangladesh’s infamous Information and Communications Technology Act (ICT) which authorizes ‘the prosecution of any person who publishes, in electronic form, material that is fake and obscene; defamatory; tends to deprave and corrupt its audience; causes or may cause deterioration in law and order; prejudices the image of the state or a person; or causes or may cause hurt to religious belief’.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/shahidul-alam-photo-kathmandu-award/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shahidul Alam Photo Kathmandu award</a>, Alisha SettWhat sort of law is this, this absurd, indiscriminate, catch-all, fishing trawler type of law? What place does it have in a country that calls itself a democracy? Who has the right to decide what the correct ‘image of the state’ is, and should be? Is there only one legally approved and acceptable image of Bangladesh? Section 57 potentially criminalizes all forms of speech except blatant sycophancy. It’s an attack, not on intellectuals, but on intelligence itself. We hear that over the last five years more than 1200 journalists in Bangladesh have been charged under it, and that 400 trials are already underway.In India too, this sort of attack on our intelligence is becoming normalized. Our equivalent of Bangladesh’s ICT Act is the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act under which hundreds of people including students, activists, lawyers and academics are being arrested in wave after wave. The cases against them, like the one against you, are flimsy and ludicrous. Even the police know that they are likely to be acquitted by higher courts. But the hope is that by then, their spirits will have been broken by years in prison. The process is the punishment.Read also: <a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/freeshahidulalam/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#FreeShahidulAlam</a>So, as I write this letter to you, dear Shahidul, I am tempted to add, dear Sudha, dear Saibaba, dear Surendra, dear Shoma, dear Mahesh, dear Sudhir, dear Rona, dear Arun, dear Vernon, and also, dear Tariq, dear Aijaz, dear Aamir, dear Kopa, dear Kamla, dear Madavi, dear Maase, dear Raju, dear hundreds and hundreds of others.How is it possible for people to defend themselves against laws like these? It’s like having to prove one’s innocence before a panel of certified paranoics. Every argument only serves to magnify their paranoia and heighten their delusions.As both our countries hurtle towards general elections, we know that we can expect more arrests, more lynching, more killing, more bloggers hacked to death, more orchestrated ethnic, religious and caste conflagrations— more false-flag “terrorist” strikes, more assassinations of journalists and writers. Elections, we know, means fire in the ducts.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-death-of-democracy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The death of democracy</a>, Aditya Adhikari Your Prime Minister, who claims to be a secular democrat, has announced that she will build 500 mosques with the billion dollars the Government of Saudi Arabia has donated to Bangladesh. These mosques are supposedly meant to disseminate the ‘correct’ kind of Islam.Here in India, our rulers have dropped all pretense of the secularism and socialism that are enshrined in our constitution. In order to distract attention from the catastrophic failures of governance and deepening popular resentment, as institution after institution—our courts, universities, banks, intelligence agencies—is pushed into crisis, the ruling power, (not the Government, but its holding company, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,) is alternately cajoling and threatening the Supreme Court to pass an order clearing the decks for the construction of a giant Hindu temple on the site where the Babri Masjid once stood before it was demolished by a rampaging mob. It’s amazing how politicians’ piety peaks and troughs with election cycles.This is what we are up against, these neat definitions of the perfect nation, the perfect man, the perfect citizen, the perfect Hindu, the perfect Muslim. The postscript to this is the perfect majority and the satanic minority. The people of Europe and the Soviet Union have lived through the devastation that these sorts of ideas caused. They have suffered the matchless terror of neatness. Only recently Europe marked the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht—the event that marked the beginning of the Holocaust. There too it all began quite slowly. There too it began with elections. And there too the old murmurs have started up again.Here we’re going to witness our own scorched-earth elections in the coming days. They will use their fishing-trawler laws, they will jump at shadows to decimate the opposition.Fortunately, we are an irredeemably untidy people. And hopefully we will stand up to them in our diverse and untidy ways.Dear Shahidul, I believe the tide will turn. It will. It must. This foolish, shortsighted cruelty will give way to something kinder and more visionary. This particular malaise, this bout of ill-health that has engulfed our planet will pass.I hope to see you in Dhaka very soon.With loveArundhati <figure><img width="700" height="400" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101132/636a22929c7e80680e041796jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>Shahidul Alam is released from the prision.</figcaption></figure>Dearest Arundhati,It was a letter I read and reread long before it appeared before my eyes. It was through layers of metal bars that I strained to listen to Rahnuma’s words. At over 130 decibels, the noise made by us screaming prisoners, straining to hear and be heard, was akin to a crowded stadium or a fire siren. As she repeated her words over and over again, I faintly heard, Arundhati. Letter. It was just over a hundred days that I had been incarcerated. A hundred days since I’d slept on my own bed, fed my fish, cycled down the streets of Dhaka. A hundred days since I’d pressed my shutter as I searched for that elusive light.Those words, screamed out but barely heard was the nourishment I needed. Did you write it by hand? What was the paper like? In this digital age, you probably used a keyboard. What font had you used? What point size? And the words. Words that you so gracefully string together. I relished the imagined words. Your words. I missed words as I missed my bed, my fish and Rahnuma’s touch. When they asked me what I needed in jail, books were on top of my list. The first lot of books came in. Mujib’s prison diaries, Schendel’s History of Bangladesh, and the book you’d given me when we last met, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. I’d been meaning to read it ever since we said goodbye in Delhi, but our lives had been taken over by the immediacy of our struggles. Now I had the time.I imagined other letters. The one Shiv Viswanathan had written when Binayak Sen had been sentenced for sedition, or the one Rahgu Rai wrote asking that I be freed. But this one was not to a prime minister. It had been written for me. To me. There are no pigeons in Keraniganj, and sparrows are perhaps too small to carry letters. As I fed them from my window, I could imagine one carrying across a tiny wad of paper, carefully tied to its feet. Paper I would unfold gently, smoothing the creases. It would have been a letter I had read before it was written.I could read your letter, not because I remember you sitting across your wooden table in your open kitchen. Not because I remember you rubbing noses with Maati Ke Laal as she interrupted our chat, insisting on not being ignored. Not because of Sanjay’s book on Kashmir, which we had opened together. My reading relied on our shared legacies, on our collective griefs, on the struggles we both face as autocrats rule our lands. You have Kashmir and we have the Chittagong Hill Tracts. You have ‘encounters’ and we have ‘crossfire’. ‘Goom’ we both share. We both live in what are called democracies, though we know we lack voice.Your book weaves complex characters, the absurdities and the beauty that is India. It finds the calm within the chaos. A moment of kindness, within the grotesque injustice. I look around me and see hijras in the high security cells in Surjamukhi. Occasionally they walk out, their bright saris, glowing amidst the drab clothes of other prisoners. They remind me of your Anjum. Of your Saddam, as I see Koutuk da feeding the cats, making his way to those pretentiously named jail buildings, Jamuna, Meghna, Korotowa and Padma, seeking out the one that might have missed its meal. As I speak to prisoners falsely charged, and left to rot in a legal system that lets people be forgotten, and the Sharbahara man Tipu Biswas, his eyes glowing with passion, insisting on justice even in jail, I am reminded of  your Musa, defiant against the odds.It was here in Keraniganj that I met Badal Farazi, wrongfully charged by Indian courts, and eventually sent to Bangladesh. Ten years in jail for a crime, the courts knew he could not have committed. My government too scared to speak against this utter wrongness of Indian justice. Too scared to upset the big brother. Keraniganj was where top terror Joseph had been. Released through a presidential pardon, whisked away in the middle of the night and sent overseas. In my case it had taken six attempts before bail had finally been granted. They had tried to block my bail just as they had tried to stop me from sleeping on a bed, or getting access to a doctor. Even after bail was granted, they had tried to prevent my release. But we triumphed in the end, and we held hands and sang songs as I left the jail gate. The case still hangs over my head and the threat of bail being withdrawn is the threat they hope will silence my tongue, my pen and my camera. But the ink in our pens still run. The keyboards still clatter.Yesterday we were in Dhakeswari Mandir. It was Taposh and Haimanti’s daughter Riddhi’s ‘mukhe bhat’, her first solid food. As they lit candles and circled the tulshi plant, I wondered if they would dig up the temple because they had heard of a mosque underneath. One more mosque to add to the 500 our prime minister has promised using Saudi money.They swore in the new cabinet yesterday ‘I will faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter according to law: That I will bear true faith and allegiance to Bangladesh: And that I will not allow my personal interest to influence the discharge of my duties as a member of Parliament.’ Given that their very means of being there was based on an election where every rule had been flouted, the constitution abused, to protect their personal interest, this oath was particularly perverse. A slap on our face with sandals, a terrible insult in South Asia. They will sit in their duty-free cars, flags waving. They, the biggest lawbreakers in the land, will sit on boards of banks and schools. They will pass the new laws. They took their oath as a mother of four was writhing in hospital, gang-raped by party faithful, for having the audacity of voting the ‘wrong’ way.But yes, Arundhati, the tide will turn, and the nameless, faceless people will rise. They will rise against the entire state machinery, now reduced to servility. They will rise as they did in ’71. They, who never clamoured for muktijoddha honours, who never claimed benefits for their children, who never wore Mujib coats in public. They, their children and their children’s children, will rise to bring back the core principles they had fought for. We will have secularism. We will have democracy. We will have social equality. We will win back this land.I’ll see you in Dhaka. A humongous hug awaits.Love,Shahidul Dhaka. 7th January 2019First published in <a href="http://www.newagebd.net/article/61212/they-will-rise-shahidul-alam-replies-to-arundhati-roy">The New Age</a>

Arundhati and Shahidul write to each other

Ancient heritage meets dern distillery craft as the US-based The Nepali Spirit Company this month makes its global debut with Kathmandu Ayla. Inspired by Nepal’s ancient rice whiskey tradition, the product is the first of four handcrafted spirits that brings Kathmandu Valley’s 1,000-year-old ayla tradition to the world stage. “The first four products combine history, culture, and tradition and it has taken eight years to get to this launch point,” says CEO of The Nepal Spirit Company Kashish Das Shrestha, who is also publishing a book on the history of alcohol in Nepali culture. The other three ayla products are Masala Whiskey aged in Brazilian Amburana casks and spiced with black cardamom from Nepal, Annapurna Ayla, and Haku Chaku Himalayan Espresso Liqueur made with organic Nepali coffee, and chaku (dark molasses).  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251216141244_ab74945dc60ce5ff83fe7a88596fc032c18705e7cda9dc62df21694d3ad83b85.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251216141244_ab74945dc60ce5ff83fe7a88596fc032c18705e7cda9dc62df21694d3ad83b85" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="The American Ayla NT"> </figure>  “I started visiting international whiskey auctions six years ago and after reading about distilling, my passion for spirits grew, and I felt the urge to tell the story of Nepal’s heritage spirits to the world,” explains Shrestha. Once poured in Nepal’s royal courts, ayla is a clear rice whiskey that is a millennia-old living heritage of Kathmandu used in rituals from birth to death and traditional life milestones of its inhabitants. Ayla is distilled to capture the classic aromas and flavors, with a soft sweet after taste. It can be enjoyed neat, sipped through meals, or enjoyed as shots. With more than 15% of Nepal’s population living and working abroad, there is a cultural demand for ayla in the diaspora from Asan to Amstredam to Australia.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251216121236_0db0ec396832736fef60b636d7012a917be65471408c81383a40613f928f9e78.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20251216121236_0db0ec396832736fef60b636d7012a917be65471408c81383a40613f928f9e78" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1270" loading="lazy" alt="The American Ayla NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251216141236_a84ede74c67a61e75af2f0cc1c985b4d04ff2292c6bd0bd0b841f4d2c7b593aa.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251216141236_a84ede74c67a61e75af2f0cc1c985b4d04ff2292c6bd0bd0b841f4d2c7b593aa" data-rendition-name="original" width="1778" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="The American Ayla NT"> </figure>  &nbsp;“We also believe ayla is a wonderful way to tell Nepal’s story to the world,” says Lilu KC Shrestha, Chief Operating Officer of the company. “We intend to use our platform to promote Nepal in any way we can, and also find ways to give back to the country. It was high time a world-class Nepali spirits brand entered the global market, and we are proud to take the lead.” Aside from the ayla itself, the bottle and packaging was conceived by New York-based designer Sahara Shrestha to reflect a complete Nepaliness. “Each bottle and box is a love letter to Nepal, and every detail is an expression of respect and appreciation of Nepali heritage and our desire to share it with the world,” says Kashish Das Shrestha. “And ayla itself is a sacred part of our culture, so we wanted to make sure the bottle reflects this reverence.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251216141244_d2746204c64802ff81453d7a8749f516bf3c62538fe3c98400a9b3978c03b273.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20251216141244_d2746204c64802ff81453d7a8749f516bf3c62538fe3c98400a9b3978c03b273" data-rendition-name="original" width="1920" height="1475" loading="lazy" alt="The American Ayla NT"> <figcaption>Aylarita</figcaption> </figure>  The bottom of each bottle has an embossed Mandala representing the universe and its interconnectedness. A glass molding of Himalayan peaks Chomolungma and Nuptse signifies the earth and heaven. The bottle cap is a black and gold rendering of the metal plates that hang from Kathmandu’s temples. The logo of The Nepali Spirit Company is also inspired by the unti, a traditional vessel used to pour ayla. While its top is typically adorned with a peacock, the company’s design replaces it with rice stalks. This motif is also on the label of Annapurna Whiskey named in honour of both the mountain and the goddess, the giver of grain. For a new take, ayla can be paired with a lime wedge lathered in honey, cumin, and salt, or on the glass rim. It can also be mixed into cocktails to make Aylarita, Aylatini, or Aylapolitan. <a href="http://www.thenepalispirit.com/" target="_blank">www.thenepalispirit.com</a>, @TheNepaliSpirit

The American Ayla

When Winston Churchill addressed the Canadian Parliament in December 1941, he recalled that generals of Nazi-occupied France had said that England would “have her neck wrung like a chicken”. Churchill went on to quip: “Some chicken.” As the laughter and applause subsided, he added: “Some neck.” (Even longer laughter and applause) We do not know who first started calling the narrow corridor that joins India to its northeastern states a 'Chicken’s Neck', but there also was the hint of a Churcillian connotation. Akhilesh Upadhayay in his new book In the Margins of the Empires: A History of the Chicken’s Neck, uses this strip as an entry point to explore a region adjoining Nepal, Bhutan, China, Sikkim, Darjeeling, India’s northeast and the tectonics that shaped its geo-strategic terrain.&nbsp; Upadhyay’s Chicken Neck is an organic whole, connected through centuries by transboundary traders, travellers, monks, spies, missionaries, mountaineers, and more. And as infrastructure and connectivity improves, smaller countries like Nepal and Bhutan (and earlier Sikkim) are caught up in the region’s rivalries. The tri-junction of the Chicken’s Neck is a potential flashpoint that has obsessed India’s military strategists ever since Partition in 1947 and the formation of East Pakistan, and the Chinese annexation of Tibet. India found itself squeezed between Chumbi Valley in China to the north and Pakistan to the south. So, when Sikkim started acting too independent for its own good 50 years ago, India engineered its annexation and turned it into its 22nd state. The 1962 Sino-Indian war elevated its strategic importance even more. Alarm bells ring in New Delhi each time there is trouble around the Chicken’s Neck: the Naxalite uprising had to be swiftly crushed, the Indian military moved in to liberate Bangladesh, Gorkhaland and ULFA activities were dangerously nearby, Bhutan had to be appeased. Every once in a while things would flare up between India and China, as in the 2017 Doklam standoff.&nbsp; And last year’s regime change in Bangladesh has rattled New Delhi enough to deploy its Rafael fighters and BrahMos cruise missiles in the Chicken’s Neck. It is now the most densely militarised strip of real estate in this part of the world. &nbsp; As a journalist and former editor of Kathmandu Post, Upadhyay also peers at the Chicken’s Neck through Nepal’s perspective. After all, Jhapa (where the author is originally from) sits right there astride India’s strategic lifeline.&nbsp; Geopolitics is at the front and centre of the book that takes readers back to the time Nepal was a closed Himalayan kingdom.&nbsp; Nepal may be a yam between two boulders, but it may just as well be a thicker Chicken’s Neck as far as New Delhi and Beijing are concerned. Nepal’s rulers have always had to walk the tightrope between China and India. Khampa guerrillas, covertly helped by American and Indian intelligence, raided Chinese military convoys from bases in Nepal, and King Mahendra had to do some intricate diplomatic footwork. India is often described as Nepal’s closest friend, but our relations with China go back as long in terms of the Lhasa trade, Bhrikuti and Arniko, religious exchanges and people-to-people relations. While Nepali researchers are wary of touching on Chinese, Indian or American sensitivities, Upadhyay’s journalistic background means he has no qualms about tackling the subject head-on, and objectively. He spent more than a year researching the book, sniffing around Siliguri, Bagdogra, Naxalbari, Darjeeling and the villages on the Jhapa side. Then he travelled to Olangchung Gola to listen to ordinary people of the Himalayan rimlands. Despite the perception about rigid frontiers between nation states, the book hints at how absurd the notion is. The Chicken’s Neck is also a wild elephant migration corridor, disturbed by the India-Bangladesh border fence, new expressway embankments, airport runways, and expanding cities. Similarly, the people on the Nepal-tibet border used to cross over to graze yaks — this expanded the gene pools of not just the yaks but also the nomadic humans who moved with the herds.&nbsp; Despite the hard borders, trade flourishes. Upadhyay marvels that a shop in Phungling in Taplejung has embroidered saris from Siliguri and fluffy jackets from China. he finds that residents in the northeastern and southeastern tips of Nepal have more in common with kin across the border in Tibet or India than with someone from Kathmandu. Nepal was once one of the biggest trade hubs in ancient times, and our products were treated as equals in Indian border cities. People too, could move freely, especially if they were and are from bordering Tarai cities.&nbsp; Nepal’s rich history and culture was shaped by the proximity to neighbours, and despite borders it is still cemented by marriages and trade — especially in the Nepali-speaking lands to the east. Its geographical positioning makes Nepal not landlocked but land-linked, adjacent to the largest emerging economies of the world. Nepal needs to deploy its soft power with effective diplomacy to take advantage of these two empires, and not be choked by their rivalry. The book was going to press when the GenZ protests ignited in September, but Upadhyay nevertheless managed to insert the current political transition into the pages with deft editing. &nbsp;The final section of the book examines at least three possible scenarios that may unfold as South Asia continues to be shaped by great power rivalries and imperial contests that have weakened the unilateral influence of the west.&nbsp; Akhilesh Upadhyay extrapolates from the Chicken’s Neck, zooming out for a wider perspective on the Subcontinent. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025121912124_0ae772e7736a65f53a99599b5724ca133a64fdea0e61c7170ea81f9dd95c7af0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025121912124_0ae772e7736a65f53a99599b5724ca133a64fdea0e61c7170ea81f9dd95c7af0" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="In the Margins of Empires: A History of the Chicken’s Neck NT"> </figure>

Some chicken, some neck

This is the first instalment of our new series Nepal Made, where we profile world-class Nepali products and the people behind them. The Himalaya is the home to Ayurveda, the preventive and curative medicinal practice that relies on the tremendous diversity of plant life. This is where Hanuman is said to have come to find a specific rare herb when Ram was wounded in battle. When he could not find it, he tore off a whole mountain and hauled it down to Lanka. Since then, herbal medicines and care products have been steadily modernised in India and Nepal. Now, one Kathmandu-based company, Herveda, is going global with an all-natural skincare brand that blends traditional knowledge of medicinal plants with modern technology. Originally a Sanskrit word, Ayurveda literally means ‘the science of life’ and promotes physical and mental wellbeing through a holistic knowledge system that is 4,000 years old. Ayurvedic products have gotten more popular as global demand rises for all-natural, chemical-free cosmetic and wellness products, instead of wasteful fast fashion and beauty trends. Herveda was founded by Prativa Pandey, a scientist-entrepreneur and mother of two. She did her PhD in nanotechnology chemistry from Northwestern University in the United States and returned to Nepal in 2015 after the earthquake, staying back to explore the market and launch her brand.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251218141216_b699e74ee82333951b99b22648705dc916deb8eef3d425c77c1e2f3b1058a64d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251218141216_b699e74ee82333951b99b22648705dc916deb8eef3d425c77c1e2f3b1058a64d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1500" loading="lazy" alt="Looking good by doing good NT"></figure>  “I wanted to do something in Nepal, but didn’t want to be a doctor or engineer,” says Pandey at the elegant Herveda showroom in Jhamsikhel. “Whatever knowledge that I had gathered, I wanted to spread it in my own country.” Nepal is rich in traditional medicinal herbs and Ayurvedic plants, but proper utilisation and mobilisation has always been lagging. Most of the benefits are reaped by large companies and not local farmers. Pandey wanted to change that. To ensure that it gives back to the community, Herveda collaborates with farmers and local traders for fair trade. “I have always been fascinated by the medicinal herbs found in Nepal, and wanted to create high value products with them. It was a way to combine valuable indigenous knowledge with my academic research background,” adds Pandey. “I did not require a huge investment, just a proper marketing strategy.”  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251218141216_350f6eb1511523ea54a8aba468f20a7dffcb5def3fade4dcced30324417f83bc.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20251218141216_350f6eb1511523ea54a8aba468f20a7dffcb5def3fade4dcced30324417f83bc" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Looking good by doing good NT"></figure>  According to the Trade and Promotion Center under the Ministry of Industry, Nepal’s import of cosmetic products is increasing every year, driven by demand from a younger population. These younger customers are also more conscious about the products they use. For brands like Herveda, it is important that customers engage in wellness and skincare in an ethical and sustainable manner. Apart from being all natural, Herveda’s flagship store in Jhamsikhel has a reuse box where consumers can drop used bottles, which are then recycled. The store also displays products from 35 local businesses. Pandey believes that Nepali brands should cross-promote and complement each other: “Rather than competing, I believe we should support each other. 1+1 can be 11, and not two.” Effectiveness and functionality hold great importance for Herveda. which employs 25 scientists to develop and lab test its products at its research institute. Currently, there are products ranging from Rs400-2,000, which include lip balms, serums, and essential oils. A signature product is the Berry Boost Radiance Mask, which contains Spikenard (Jatamansi), Ashwagandha, Orange Peel, and Rhododendron.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251218141216_7ec1104e0dd63db2fbbfe666034b468fe5b7e6876fde8b5446cb9d9fe27566cf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251218141216_7ec1104e0dd63db2fbbfe666034b468fe5b7e6876fde8b5446cb9d9fe27566cf" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Looking good by doing good NT"></figure>  Herveda exports to the United States and plans to expand to China and Europe. The products get a 50-100% markup in the international market. The company recently received a grant from UKAid to expand the market as well as build capacity to scale up. It has partnered with Agriplayer software to help to develop QR codes on its products, which consumers will be able to scan to track the product sources and evaluate pricing. Nepal lags behind in rules and regulations, and the lack of monitoring has allowed low quality cosmetic products to penetrate into the market. Herveda has got an international certification from USFTA, which is important for its foray into the export market. “For the cosmetic industry to scale up, there should be a central testing facility that is well equipped and meets international standards. Additionally, export should be made easy,” adds Pandey. “If there are too many barriers to entry, no one will be willing to invest.”

Looking good by doing good

Mithila art has represented Nepal’s indigenous culture, passing down through generations in the Madhes. Now, noted artist S C Suman explores this tradition with a bit of modern touch that gives it added relevance. Each of his paintings at the ‘Mithila Cosmos VII: Journey of a Pilgrim’ exhibition at Siddhartha Art Gallery exudes culture, colours and feminism, but with added improvisations that make it contemporary. “Mithila is an art form that is mostly used by women. Women have been the ones who preserve culture and pass it to other people and upcoming generations. The art form is what it is today because of women,” explains Suman. Inaugurating the exhibition on oMonday, art historian Julia Llyod Williams spoke fondly of Nepal and Mithila art, relating how she once bought a Mithila painting she liked without knowing its historical and cultural importance to the Mithila civilisation.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251216031232_729d03089084a1bc79b0678766a09e13dcd9236ebd628795eb3b8c3aafcf8981.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251216031232_729d03089084a1bc79b0678766a09e13dcd9236ebd628795eb3b8c3aafcf8981" data-rendition-name="original" width="1080" height="720" loading="lazy" alt="Mithala exhibition NT"></figure>  Suman is a self-taught artist, textile designer and a radio host from Biratnagar, and one of the country’s most celebrated artists, with national and international honours. He has held 14 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows in Nepal and all over the world. “With Mithila Cosmos, Suman brings his artistic evolution into a deeper, more traditional realm, where pilgrimage is shaped not only by movement but by cultural memory and sacred stories,” says Sangeeta Thapa of Siddhartha Art Gallery. The seventh edition of the exhibition explores and displays reflections of pilgrimage, sharing the artist’s physical and spiritual experience with viewers. The first of this series was exhibited in 2007. “I am confident that this edition will also win visitors’ hearts. In the past, different dimensions of Mithila art were presented through this series. This time around as well, I have tried to give viewers a new perspective,” says Suman.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251216031232_2626f5a28e0051157af5d7f414128a1893645ddda02c955448103f4e92078385.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20251216031232_2626f5a28e0051157af5d7f414128a1893645ddda02c955448103f4e92078385" data-rendition-name="original" width="1191" height="1500" loading="lazy" alt="Mithala exhibition NT"></figure>  The exhibition is displayed on two floors of the gallery and includes paintings of Swayambhu, Pashupati, Lord Ganesh, Krishna, Ram Sita Bibabah among other renderings. Explains Suman: “The Pashupatin painting depicts the evolution of the temple, and since I live near Swayambhu, the mantra chanted there gives me energy, inspiring me to paint the shrine.” Use of colour, especially hues of blue, grab the attention of the viewers creating a sublime experience. ‘Samundra Manthan’ depicts how Lord Shiva drank poison to save the world. All the elements of the episode including Vasuki Nag, Kamdhenu and others are elaborately depicted. This carries on the Mithila tradition of telling stories by showing them through art. ‘Ram Sita Bibah’ shows the story of Ram and Sita in an intricate and intimate manner, and this is followed by the Banbas series, where Lord Ram is expelled from the palace, owing to family politics for power. In ‘Banbas I’, when crossing a river, the person rowing the boat asks to cleanse Lord Ram’s feet and then only allow him to board the boat, and pictorialises the storyline of the Ramayana. Similarly ‘Nava Durga’ is painted over canvas, has mantra painted all over the background and comprises ten avatars of Goddess Durga that is worshipped throughout Dasain.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251216031232_7a24f7f8d264d7bd204b8f475d1e86dc6fe70765487c37ebed85da8117081a80.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251216031232_7a24f7f8d264d7bd204b8f475d1e86dc6fe70765487c37ebed85da8117081a80" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1570" loading="lazy" alt="Mithala exhibition NT"></figure>  “I finished the Nava Durga painting in the ten days of Dasain. Each day I used to wake up, do my daily puja and then sit for painting. No matter what, I separated time to paint even during festivities,” Suman says, showing how the paintings are a deeply reverential devotional artform. ‘Geeta Saar’ is an equally breathtaking exposition from the Bhagavad Gita, the blues once again giving the show a tranquil ambience. Visitors at the exhibition do not just walk past the works hanging on the walls of Siddhartha Art Gallery, they stand in front of each of them for a minute or two, almost in prayer. The Mithila Cosmos exhibition series started when the Maoist conflict was still taking place, and today it is taking place in the aftermath of recent protests during which government buildings surrounding the gallery were all torched. Suman’s ‘Journey of a Pilgrim’ makes us ponder how it all fits in with Nepal’s history, culture and faith. Says Suman, “My aim is to bring stories of the Valley, Madhes and other cultures into a single canvas. I have tried to find ways to incorporate Nepal’s diversity in every single painting.”  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251216031236_89a12ff1908123e079cb08b77e37a4a875544e6baa6c9c1f4bfdba52b99e4287.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20251216031236_89a12ff1908123e079cb08b77e37a4a875544e6baa6c9c1f4bfdba52b99e4287" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1015" loading="lazy" alt="Mithila exhibition NT"></figure>  Mithila Cosmos VII: Journey of a Pilgrim Siddhartha Art Gallery, Baber Mahal Revisited Till 10 January 11:00am – 5:00pm