<figure><img width="3000" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d11589c7e80680e0a9881jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>The mustard fields of Chobhar have been turned into an amusement park. All photos: SCOTT FAIIA</figcaption></figure>Nepal is known the world over for its majestic mountains and historic monuments, but for American development worker <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19735#.YX-M7FVBypo">Scott Faiia</a> there are two more reasons why Nepal is irresistible: “The people are very amiable, and they smile a lot.”Turn to any page in his picture book Changing Kathmandu and this is evident: children and the elderly are captured in a state of sincere bliss without affectations. What is more, Faiia follows the same people in the same places over the decades, as a visual record of the passage of time.  In a neighbourhood in Bhaktapur, Maiya Shahi sits in her fruit shop in her black-and-red haku patasi garb. The year is 1992, and she is turning a cotton wick in between her fingers. Faiia returns to the shop in 2009 and 2018 – besides fruits she now also sells clothing and other merchandise. Despite the intervening 26 years, the shopkeeper still looks directly at the camera with the same spontaneous smile.<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/portrait-of-a-photographer-in-rural-nepal/">Portrait of a photographer in rural Nepal</a>, Monika Duepala <figure><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d115c9c7e80680e0a9882jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d11609c7e80680e0a9883jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d11639c7e80680e0a9884jpeg.jpg" alt="">Change is the central theme of Faiia’s meticulous repeat photography. Ever since 1988, the former Nepal country director of Oxfam has seen the Valley transformed. Neighbourhoods have become unrecognisable, neighbours have moved on.  The undulating mustard fields of Chobhar have been turned into an amusement park. The crisp view of the Boudhanath stupa as seen from Gujeswori is now obstructed by a concrete jungle, and a layer of smog. “Life and places are not static,” he says. “But the problem with Kathmandu Valley is that the changes are unmanaged and out of order.” This is evident from the pictures of Asan road photographed in 1988, 2009 and 2018. The changes are dramatic, with the fronts of the houses dangling with mannequins, people peep out of the windows with a sense of loss.  <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/making-nepals-history-colourful/">Making Nepal’s history colourful</a>, Kanak Mani Dixit <figure><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d11679c7e80680e0a9885jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d116a9c7e80680e0a9886jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d116d9c7e80680e0a9887jpeg.jpg" alt="">Still, many things remain the same in this eternal city. The people Faiia follows have grown older, frailer in some cases, but still flash that happy smile. Concrete high rises have come up, but the city cores of Bhaktapur and Patan have been built back better after the 2015 earthquake. Faiia is not against development, his work documents progress as well. The enamel on a carved torana of a Ganesh temple in Patan has been removed to reveal the original texture of the wood. The Akash Bhairab temple in Indra Chok has been restored. And in the midst of it all there are always people, devotees, shoppers, children returning from school, witnesses to the transformation -- all smiling.<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepals-past-present-and-future-in-a-photo/">Nepal’s past, present and future in a photo</a>, Bhumi Ghimiré <img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d11719c7e80680e0a9888jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d11759c7e80680e0a9889jpeg.jpg" alt="">The enamel on a carved torana of a Ganesh temple in Patan has been removed to reveal the original texture of the wood. Meme is a resident of Bouddha, and when Faiia first photographed him looking out of his window in 1988, he was 47. The photographer went back to take pictures of him again and again in 2008, 2017 and 2018.  “When I went to see him again in 2017, he opened the door, asked me to wait, went inside and brought the picture I had taken of him in 1988,” Faiia recalls.  Each of the added years brings out in Meme a deep sense of contentment with life.  His eyes have seen everything, but they are not tired. In fact, they look beyond to the future, anticipating further transformations. <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19789#.YX-e4S8w3u0">The first photographs of us</a>, Kanak Mani Dixit <img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d11789c7e80680e0a988ajpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110151156/636d117c9c7e80680e0a988bjpeg.jpg" alt="">The Ganesh Mandir in 1991 (left) and 2009 (right).Faiia did not receive any formal photography training, and it is a personal hobby he took up as a way “to keep balance in life”. During his time in Ethiopia in the 1980s, the country was going through the horrors of a civil war and famine. He was managing food distribution for millions of internally displaced people, and Faiia lost several of his own staff.“It was very grim. Photography was a way for me to get away from the violence,” he says, “not to connect the dots in a war but to turn my attention to something else.” It was his Nikon that helped him find beauty and meaning in the world’s other trouble spots where he has served: Somalia, Sudan, Haiti. Faiia first came up with the idea to do a picture series of the same people and places of Kathmandu Valley when he was going rummaging through some old boxes of prints. “I found many old photos that I had taken in the past and the idea was born,” he says. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/photojournalism-looking-for-solutions/">Photojournalism looking for solutions</a>, Min Ratna Bajracharya

Ashish Dhakal

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Kathmandu’s passage of time in photos

<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171116/63692f4d9c7e80680e03c09cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2902" height="2223"/>The third edition of Nepal’s international <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Photo-Kathmandu-in-Patan,2669" target="_blank" rel="noopener">photography festival</a> is all set to kick off on Friday for a month-long festival of images. As a sign of the times, the shows will zoom in on gender, identity, as well as explore how patriarchy and sexuality affect power dynamics in societies around the world.This year, the extravaganza of images will spill over beyond <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/Patan-town-as-a-museum-piece" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Patan </a>to Kathmandu. The walls and alleyways of the two cities are once again plastered with photographs, projections, murals in preparation for the shows, exhibits, panel discussions and installations. They will use the visual medium to bring together the city and its citizens, join its past with its present and future, and connect it all to the outside world.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171116/63692f509c7e80680e03c09djpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">“This year Photo Kathmandu is curating works on gender, power, identity, patriarchy and sexuality through its exhibitions,” says festival director Nayantara Gurung Kakshapati.Read Also: '<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=14825&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hippinis</a>', Lucia deVries'<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=14836&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Gangster of Love</a>', Lucia de VriesThe festival will be inaugurated by Minister for Women, Children and Senior Citizens Tham Maya Thapa on 12 October. There are 14 print exhibitions, four slideshow nights, 17 talks by artists and panel discussions, and eight workshops and exchanges, and mixed media residency programs. This year <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/photography-festival,3322" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Photo Kathmandu</a> will also host a South Asia Incubator program. The media residency is a platform where artists will work for a month on individual projects to showcase it at the end.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171116/63692f549c7e80680e03c09ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">More than 90 national and international artists, including photographers, curators, editors, writers from 25 countries are taking part in the festival which the organisers estimate will get half a million visitors. Artists and photographers from Italy, Germany, Bangladesh, India, United Kingdom, South Africa, USA, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Finland, Iran, Spain, Turkey, Canada, and Pakistan will be exhibiting.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171116/63692f579c7e80680e03c09fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="631" height="443">Kakshapati adds: “This year <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/blogs/mycity/2015/11/04/photo-kathmandu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Photo Kathmandu</a> is more focused on the process than the product itself." There will be a month-long mixed-media residency with Indian curator and art writer Veerangana Kumari Solanki and Nepali artist Sujan Chitrakar who oversee artists work together. Other artists include Nhooja Tuladhar and Bandana Tulachan from Nepal, Marco Panzetti and Valentina Abenavoli from Italy, Pakistan’s Fiza Khatri, and Ilgin Denix Akseloglu from Turkey who will delve into the intersection of photography, video, stage performance.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171116/63692f599c7e80680e03c0a0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">The ‘Multimedia Storytelling and Web Documentary’ workshop by Uwe H Martin and ‘The Self and Representation’ workshop by Robin Hammond are highlights of this year’s festival. UK-based artist Robin Hammond is also exhibiting ‘Where Love is illegal’ creating a space for LGBTQI+ participants to share stories of discrimination and survival. There are also shows in Freak Street showcasing images and stories from <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/hippinis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the hippie era</a>.The month long Photo Kathmandu festival creates space for conversation with people around the world with multiple exhibitions, collateral events, workshops, public programs and much more.Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Philip-Blenkinsop-and-Tuomo-Manninen-in-Photo-Kathmandu,2682" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Real people, real lives</a> , Hannan Lewsley<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171116/63692f5d9c7e80680e03c0a1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">

Monika Deupala

Photo returns to Kathmandu

Sha Bahadur Gurung was 30 years old when he was arrested for participating in a peaceful protest. He died aged 65 last week in Bhutan’s Chamgang Central Prison. He was among 31 prisoners of conscience in Bhutan, many of whom are serving long sentences for opposing the regime’s forcible expulsion of 100,000 of its Lhotsampa people in the early 1990s. ‘Mr Gurung died on 15 December in his prison cell under circumstances that raise serious concerns about custodial negligence and long-term abuse,” said a statement by the Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan (GCRPPB) based in The Hague which demanded an external probe, justice and release of remaining political prisoners. Gurung was from Chirang and was arrested in 1990 while serving in the Royal Bhutan Army, and accused of having sympathies for the Lhotsampa people. He was mostly held at the notorious Rabuna Prison in Wangdi Phodrang District.&nbsp; Gurung’s relatives in the United States said he had endured prolonged physical and psychological abuse during his imprisonment, and repeatedly subjected to torture and inhumane treatment. They believe the decades of ill-treatment had damaged his health, ultimately leading to his death. Earlier this month, Gurung was transferred from Rabuna to Chamgang Central Prison. On 14 December. He had gone to bed after dinner without any visible sign of distress. He was found unconscious in his cell the next morning.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224151248_5fc8305ecd320d89b9e343c04a1a897dc1353353da55b6d277f5398034b265ea.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251224151248_5fc8305ecd320d89b9e343c04a1a897dc1353353da55b6d277f5398034b265ea" data-rendition-name="original" width="902" height="1103" loading="lazy" alt="Sha Bahadur Gurung NT"> <figcaption>Sha Bahadur Gurung, who died at age 65 in prison in Bhutan after serving 30 years for expressing political opinion.</figcaption> </figure>  He was referred to a hospital in Thimphu, suggesting that he was still alive during transfer to a local health post. But it appears that he had already died before being taken from prison. Gurung’s death occurred two days before Bhutan’s National Day on 17 December, when families, supporters, and human rights advocates worldwide had hoped for the release of political prisoners through a royal amnesty. Instead, the death of one of the longest-serving political prisoners has caused grief and anger in the Bhutanese diaspora.&nbsp; “We strongly condemn the treatment and death of Gurung, a peaceful and justice-loving Bhutanese citizen,” the V statement said. ‘This tragedy raises serious questions about the treatment of political prisoners in Bhutan and stands in stark contrast to the country’s international image under the principles of Gross National Happiness, compassion, and mindfulness.’ Earlier this year, The <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/wg-arbitrary-detention/opinions-adopted-working-group-arbitrary-detention/opinions-adopted-working-group-arbitrary-detention-its-101st-session" target="_blank">United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention</a> said the Bhutan government was detaining citizens without parole for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/detainees-in-dire-straits-in-bhutan-s-prisons" target="_blank">expressing political opinion</a>. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in 2023 that there were least 37 <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/13/bhutan-free-long-term-political-prisoners" target="_blank">political prisoners</a> in Bhutan’s jails. Of them, 32 belong to the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa community, which has faced <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/06/18/nepal-bhutanese-refugees-rendered-stateless" target="_blank">decades of discrimination and abuse</a> and eviction. Most of them were convicted because of prohibited political activity between 1990 and 2008. One political prisoner, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/no-country-for-dissent?fbclid=IwAR07lpitMBWAYSkny_3d_smQBlmoxAOQm1OxdNtl-27h8mV0RNO9IxVY2qs" target="_blank">Madhukar Monger</a>, who was released in 2023 after serving 29 years described brutal conditions in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/asia/bhutan" target="_blank">Bhutan</a>'s jails. Political prisoners were not given enough food, and medical care, he said, urging the internaitoonal community to press for the release of prisoners of conscience.&nbsp; In March, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/about/people/meenakshi-ganguly" target="_blank">Meenakshi Ganguly</a>, Deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, urged Bhutan’s international partners to call on the Bhutan government to release all remaining political prisoners immediately.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224161216_9d11a78ed5490091c595341900e4c26f5c0dd0328718f6930ef19c1e9b7f95a6.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20251224161216_9d11a78ed5490091c595341900e4c26f5c0dd0328718f6930ef19c1e9b7f95a6" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1422" loading="lazy" alt="Bhutan political prisoners NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224161216_176855f3d3df42d24ac7e77372bbf49115695b732a6c094a66267e969111dfca.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20251224161216_176855f3d3df42d24ac7e77372bbf49115695b732a6c094a66267e969111dfca" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1420" loading="lazy" alt="Bhutan political prisoners NT"> </figure>  &nbsp;

Bhutan political prisoner dies in detention

‘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>

The sins of our mothers

Nepal’s Gurkha soldiers have a well-deserved reputation worldwide for uncommon valour and loyalty. However, what happened in Hawaii in 1986 and the long struggle for fair pay and pension shows that the formidable fighters from Nepal also do not tolerate injustice. The Hong Kong-based 1st Battalion of the 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles was in Hawaii for jungle warfare training exercises at the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center when they beat up their commanding officer, Major Corin Pearce. &nbsp;&nbsp; The Gurkhas said Pearce had insulted them, and 111 soldiers were dismissed. Pearce suffered broken ribs and a head injury, and was himself also discharged. The incident got worldwide publicity and enforced the belief that the Nepalis were not treated fairly in the British Army. It also led some retired soldiers to begin a decades-long struggle for compensation at par with their British peers.&nbsp; Retired British Gurkha soldier Shankar Rai in his book Triumph and Tears revisits the Hawaii incident which he witnessed, and also his experience in the Falkland Islands/Malvinas war in 1982.&nbsp; He has lots of grievances: unequal treatment and injustice from the British Army towards himself and his comrades. This is an indignant and disillusioned account of the good, the bad and the ugly of being a British Gurkha, which he says let him down despite his service and belief in it.&nbsp; The book could also be a cautionary tale of how one person on a power-trip can tarnish two centuries of the shared history of Nepal and the UK, as well as ruin the lives of those involved. It also is proof that loyalty should never be taken for granted. Four years after defeating the Argentinians in the Falklands, several companies and platoons of Gurkha rifles were stationed in Hawaii in 1986 for joint US-UK ‘Exercise Union Pacific’ military exercises. The goal was to ‘perfect the art of marine warfare in collaboration with the US Marine Force’. The rules were that a British Gurkha company commander needed to have the rank of major and pass a Nepali language test. Captain Pearce was the son-in-law of a British Brigadier on extra-regiment employment, and this rule was waived. He was appointed Acting Major. Pearce didn’t bother to learn Nepali language or culture, and from Rai’s account took every chance to belittle and embarrass the Gurkhas as poor, stupid, rude, backward, and lucky to be there. He writes: ‘After Captain Pearce reached Hawaii, he began to project himself as a master and the Gurkhas as servants, to show off to the Americans.’ The author also recounts other slights, such as only receiving a fourth of the rations they were due during hard training, being forced to train even when some of the soldiers had high fever, and claims to have ‘civilised’ the Nepalis.&nbsp; Pearce had been to eastern Nepal before the training and seen the grinding poverty. He kept telling the Gurkhas how lucky they were to be in the job, and that they were making ‘more money than Nepal’s prime minister’. During the final farewell party in Hawaii, Pearce set up tables to form a saluting platform, and asked the Gurkha pipe and drum band to march around him while playing. The enraged soldiers could not take it anymore, and after the party an inebriated group ran Captains Pearce and Chandra Kumar Pradhan out of their tents and beat them up. Both officers broke ribs, and the major needed 15 stitches on his head. ‘This sorry and unseemly episode is considered to have been entirely at odds with the Brigade of Gurkhas’ tradition of loyalty and gallant service in the British Army. It is regarded as an isolated and untypical event, which will not be permitted to detract from the high esteem in which the Brigade is held,’ reads the report of an investigation. Most of the 1/7 company soldiers were dismissed whether they had been involved in the assault or not. The author describes the shame that followed, with dismissed soldiers returning to Nepal with lost face.&nbsp; ‘I burned with humiliation, and life scared me,’ writes the author, whose father told him that he was ashamed to call him his son. ‘Many of my friends’ girlfriends left them and married other people. Rifleman Khem Gurung (21162015) of Itahari committed suicide,’ writes Rai, adding that those dismissed were blacklisted, and could not get other jobs.&nbsp; They tried to pursue legal action against the British Government, but backed down when they could not afford expensive hotshot lawyers, and would not have the money to cover the British government’s legal fees in the likely case of a loss in court. Gurkhas who had served for four years in the UK were allowed to move there, an option that many of those dismissed in the Hawaii incident took, including the author, who now lives in Oxford. Rai pours out his hurt and emotion in the book. Towards the end, he writes: ‘I depend on small jobs for livelihood. In the remaining time, I actively raise the issue of the victims of the Hawaii incident. We are burdened with insults, hatred, and contempt for a lifetime. It was harsher than a court martial, too heavy to bear.’ The is a slim book, and is a quick, engaging read of an incident 30 years ago, and Rai writes with a soldier’s precision. Even though the anger shows even after all these years, there is no over-dramatisation in the narrative.&nbsp; The first part of the book is about sailing across the South Atlantic in the QEII, which had been converted into a troop ship to take the Gurkhas to war. The soldiers from landlocked Nepal were mostly sea-sick, but were happy to get two cans of beer a day. Barclays Bank even had a branch on board. Rai’s descriptions of the friendships he developed in the Company and on the battlefield are poignant. They braved Argentinian bombs, dug trenches and fought through the rain in the Southern Hemisphere winter. There are vignettes of sharing tea with fellow Nepalis, seeing comrades fall, and finding pictures of wives and children in the pockets of dead young Argentine soldiers. Behind the prestige, honour and myths of being a Gurkha soldier, it seems this is just another job with nepotism, horrible bosses and bad pay. But such is the desperation that up to 20,000 young Nepalis still apply for 300 openings in the British Army every year. &nbsp;&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251227041256_694a253e782c83b0bf89fc1b9840b0ade3f7beca2d0b01dbc4fcd3e63c207f50.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251227041256_694a253e782c83b0bf89fc1b9840b0ade3f7beca2d0b01dbc4fcd3e63c207f50" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Triumph and tears book details NT"> </figure>

Not taking loyalty for granted

This is the 77th episode of Diaspora Diaries, a Nepali Times series in collaboration with Migration Lab providing a platform to share experiences of living, working and studying abroad. I was in Grade 3 when my father left for Saudi Arabia. Letters he sent occasionally contained photos. We had to get used to matching the person in the photos with him when he came home. Over two decades later, I left behind my son a day after he was born to go to Korea.&nbsp; He was five when I returned, and he just could not believe I was the same person he spoke on video calls. To convince him that it was indeed me, I had to call him on video from the other room.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224021240_3eead7a26ee34bab17e1b462d3e53ae8b4dc95151478e55b09f2855989364015.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251224021240_3eead7a26ee34bab17e1b462d3e53ae8b4dc95151478e55b09f2855989364015" data-rendition-name="original" width="1080" height="960" loading="lazy" alt="Jumli coffee DD"> </figure>  Technology, it turns out, is no replacement to proximity and physical presence.&nbsp; When my father was in Saudi Arabia, my mother died. My father could not return to Nepal immediately, and my grandmother took in my two sisters and me.&nbsp; My studies took a hit. I started working in a shoe shop, and earned Rs2,100 a month. I wanted to start a shoe shop with support from my father when he returned. He did not, and neither did my other relatives. Perhaps they doubted my business sense. Or they had other priorities.&nbsp; Whatever it was, this feeling of not having someone to back me up hit me deeply but give me confidence. Without alternatives, I decided to prepare to migrate to Korea. I studied for the language exam and was among the first cohort under the G2G scheme. When I was finally matched with a Korean employer, I could not be happier.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224021248_5f681863a9aa99f31f3241158e636b32aca9fdaa7c3f5c19dd67e3de2068a3b5.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20251224021248_5f681863a9aa99f31f3241158e636b32aca9fdaa7c3f5c19dd67e3de2068a3b5" data-rendition-name="original" width="1064" height="823" loading="lazy" alt="Jumli coffee DD"> </figure>  Not having received any support from those around me, the Korean offer made me feel like I had won in life. My grandmother was happy because it would increase family income. She had three additional mouths to feed, and we were quickly growing up. She worried about getting my sisters married. My first stint in Korea, however, was not what I expected. I had to change jobs multiple times, either because the company I worked for was unable to pay me, there was no work, or I had an accident. The odds just were not in my favour. The global financial crisis had taken a toll on the economy.&nbsp; Even so, I managed to help pay for my sisters' weddings and had modest savings. But there was not much to show for it compared to my peers. Never again, I thought, as I said goodbye to Korea.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224021240_f303dd30f922776a30a1871b38e5420534e73b99b7b1444b4658c4eca535d043.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251224021240_f303dd30f922776a30a1871b38e5420534e73b99b7b1444b4658c4eca535d043" data-rendition-name="original" width="856" height="1279" loading="lazy" alt="Jumli coffee DD"> </figure>  I came home and got married. I started a mobile repair shop. But it did not work out well either, and I was soon headed back to Korea despite my misgivings. I left a day after my son was born, and this time I was determined to make it work in Korea. I was placed in a company that made golf balls. It paid well, but the job was just for money, I needed to do something more with my future that would help me stand on my own feet once I was back in Nepal. I was intrigued by the three-in-one instant coffee sachets in Korea that had coffee, milk and sugar. Back home in our village in Kaski, our cooperative grew coffee that either went to waste or fetched very low prices. My sisters and I used to pick the sweet and tasty coffee cherries.&nbsp; I saw a great business prospect in turning the beans into coffee sachets, and started exploring this. That was my mission: to make instant coffee packets widely available in Nepal. It was just a matter of understanding the process so I went to a migrant resource centre in Korea to inquire about where I could learn this.&nbsp; I was advised to take barista classes, and I found out that sachet coffee is actually not healthy and I should instead learn about fresh brewed coffee. That seemed even more exciting. How coffee beans could be ground and sold for over Rs450 in Korean cafes that people waited in line for bemused me. During my free time, I spent all my energy learning about coffee. I took training in barista, coffee sensory, machine repair and roasting. I had to rely on the generosity of Koreans who were willing to take a chance on me as I had different constraints such as lack of network, a busy work schedule at my regular job but even then, people offered to help.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224021244_86bbfcdcbe8925c46efac526225aea226b7987290f8107e991d8e764cbb01155.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20251224021244_86bbfcdcbe8925c46efac526225aea226b7987290f8107e991d8e764cbb01155" data-rendition-name="original" width="1280" height="960" loading="lazy" alt="Jumli coffee NT"> </figure>  I was so obsessed that whenever I spent time on leisure activities during days off, I felt guilty. My golf ball job was just for income, I had to invest in my real post-Korea life. Balancing work and learning everything about coffee was not easy. Not only did I pay for some of the lessons, I even skipped overtime hours for them. But this was for my future. I must have consulted over a dozen coffee experts in Korea to share their experience and connect me to people. I could not afford to be shy about asking strangers for help. When the pandemic hit, we were granted a one-year visa extension, and I took it as an opportunity to invest in myself. I had seen great business prospects for coffee machine repair service in Pokhara because people had to rely on Kathmandu. But to learn machine repair and maintenance, I had to spend more time and weekend classes were not going to be sufficient.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224021248_18996ee0b6292070add202cf948f5b0b5a09e5b11022b9d961a68a5a886fc5f4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20251224021248_18996ee0b6292070add202cf948f5b0b5a09e5b11022b9d961a68a5a886fc5f4" data-rendition-name="original" width="1138" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Jumli coffee DD"> </figure>  I moved to a training company and worked just enough to maintain my legal status. I did not take overtime shifts. Even my roommates barely saw me because I used to come home long after our duty hours from my coffee training. I also needed actual job experience so I asked my trainer to let me shadow him at work.&nbsp; The on-the-job exposure to repair and maintenance work gave me more confidence and expertise. When I returned to Nepal, I came home with a suitcase full of coffee machine parts. I have started a coffee shop called Jumli, provide machine repair services and have also started growing my own coffee. The idea is to be a one stop shop for all players in the coffee industry, whether it is farmers or coffee shop owners who need Nepal-grown coffee or machine repair services or coffee lovers.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224021248_0fd28dab75d1eddbc16ab0aeda2ce7fcd4aceb07e7a381d4ce872b5184bea086.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20251224021248_0fd28dab75d1eddbc16ab0aeda2ce7fcd4aceb07e7a381d4ce872b5184bea086" data-rendition-name="original" width="1321" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Jumli coffee DD"> </figure>  It is not always easy being an entrepreneur in Nepal. Sometimes, when I am on shaky ground, I close my eyes and talk to my mother in my head for clarity. Some of these conversations are replays of the things she told me when I was growing up. I didn’t take them seriously then, but now they offer important nuggets of wisdom about life, society, and how to navigate difficult times. I have a lot of hope for the future. I am now laying the groundwork to one day export Nepal’s specialty coffee to the international market, meeting global standards of quality. Programs like the Returnee Innovators for Nepal (RIN) help in equipping you with the skills to better pitch your business and give exposure and networks. Even now, I rely on my trainer in Korea for guidance or to access spare parts that are not available in Nepal. I have come a long way from the day I cluelessly chose ‘American-O’ coffee because it was the easiest drink to pronounce in the menu. I never thought I would be making a living from coffee back home in Nepal one day.&nbsp;

international-photographers

Kathmandu’s passage of time in photos

Photo returns to Kathmandu

Bhutan political prisoner dies in detention

The sins of our mothers

Not taking loyalty for granted

From ‘American-O’ to Jumli