<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111136/636cd4379c7e80680e08f9afjpeg.jpg" alt="Author Nirajan Kunwar" width="1500" height="1000"/><figcaption>Photo: SAGAR CHHETRI</figcaption></figure>When Niranjan Kunwar talks about Bollywood, his body language shifts: he sits tall, his face brightens up, his hands flit about in flowery circular motion, and his speech quickens.“I sometimes joke with friends that I have a PhD in 90s Bollywood and they believe me. Because if you asked me who won the Filmfare Award for best actor in 1993, I will tell you, ‘Sharukh Khan, of course, for Baazigar.’” He laughs.Born on June 9, 1981, Niranjan always knew he was different. When being sent off to boarding school, instead of the usual reluctance, he was eager to leave his parents. As a young boy, he was close to his cousin sisters and dressed in their skirts and performed for them. “I feel like I have lost that part of me,” he says. “I want to reclaim it.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111136/636cd43b9c7e80680e08f9b0jpeg.jpg" alt="Niranjan Kunwar childhood photo" width="1200" height="900"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111136/636cd43e9c7e80680e08f9b1jpeg.jpg" alt="Niranjan childhood photo" width="1800" height="960"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>In December of 2020, amidst lockdown and pandemic, Niranjan’s memoir, Between Queens and the Cities, became the first queer memoir in English to be published in Nepal. Although readers may expect the typical coming-of-age or a coming-out story, the memoir is not that.Poet Ocean Vuong once said that queer lives in literature always seem exhaustible because their stories end when they come out of the metaphoric closet. In the same vein, Niranjan’s memoir is instead an honest and heartfelt record of the important, confusing and mundane parts of one queer life set between Kathmandu and New York City, that is not representative of all Nepali queer stories in and neither does it claim to be.Niranjan says, “I chose to write nonfiction because I knew that I wanted to document this story as ‘real’ and I wanted to visibilise it, as most queer stories are often made invisible.”He writes: No one counts our blessings. No one blesses us. We exist outside religion, outside society and culture. We are too Western or too wild. We don’t fit into their traditions. Their rituals don’t guide us. There are no magical mantras for us. Their divine deities don’t do anything for us. Our Dashains and Tihars are forever incomplete. The puranas don’t mention us. No one tells our tales.No one writes poems about our courtships, our commitments, our crimes. Our longings don’t turn into lyrics. No one composes lines about our heartbeats. No guitar strums for us. There is no harmonica; no piano converts our musings into music.In this month’s Lightroom Conversation, Niranjan and I talk about the fears and gifts of being queer, about rescuing hidden selves, re-authoring certain dominant narratives, and about male anger, the complexities of that emotion that we often do not talk about.Niranjan Kunwar: There’s a story that my relatives recount how I wanted to be a cow herder when I grew up. In a way, I had a streak that was a bit unusual; I wanted to be adventurous. I wasn’t attached to my parents. When I was going to Budhanilkantha at age nine, I was eager to say goodbye to them. The appeal for me was the school’s sprawling jungle and all the new friends I would make. And whenever my grandmother used to go to our village in Chitwan, I would follow her. There, I would graze cattle and run around all day.Muna Gurung: Tell me more about Chitwan. What was there?We have an old house there and my grandmother would visit regularly. We would go on a local bus, the roads were bad and I would get carsick. But despite that, I would fight with my parents if they didn’t let me go with her. There was no electricity in the village and I liked that because we would eat under the light from a lantern and there were delicacies like khatte, which was puffed rice deep fried in butter. I realise now that I feel calmer in nature and it was a striking juxtaposition with my life in New York, a culture that had very little space for animals, nature, pets. I used to love animals, but in the city, I felt myself hardening. It’s like in literature, we read about how the city hardens you. I guess that is also the queer experience, that sense of distance that is created between you and yourself.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111136/636cd4419c7e80680e08f9b2jpeg.jpg" alt="Niranjan Kunwar family" width="1200" height="900"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>But there is one line in your book where you say that you had forgotten about the ‘gifts of being queer’. What were and are the gifts of being queer?  As a child I was very influenced by my three female cousins and Bollywood, so I would frequently wear their skirts and dance for them. They also encouraged that behaviour and I remember walking all the way to Chabel Chowk to get a Bollywood film tape in a skirt! When you’re a child, adults accept that, but only to a certain extent. Even in Budhanilkantha, I would wear skirts and perform, but then when the bullying and teasing starts, that’s when you begin to suppress and conform. By 9th and 10th grade, I had begun to conform and even act ‘macho’.<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/featured-videos/between-queens-and-kathmandu/">Between Queens and Kathmandu</a>, Sahina Shrestha<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111136/636cd4449c7e80680e08f9b3jpeg.jpg" alt="Niranjan Kunwar Budhanilkantha School" width="640" height="853"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The thing is, the story of young boys dressing up as girls is not uncommon. I have countless cousins and nephews who do that, and it is celebrated even. But as you said, only to a certain extent, after which they have to become a ‘boy’. Sometimes my family also rationalises a young boy’s ‘femininity’ as simply the remnants of their previous life, as in he must have been a woman before. This is making me think about how perhaps in many janajati cultures, gender queerness is more accepted. For example the maruni dance where men dress up as women and dance is an important part of most Gurung cultures and even celebrated. But that too is perhaps only relegated to that space. I don’t know how much of this has been investigated.You write that because you read a lot as a child, your queerness did not feel strange to you. What did you read as a child that affirmed your being? I would listen to my grandmother tell stories from the Mahabharat or the Ramanyana, but I was especially taken by the month of Swasthani, when my grandmother would read one chapter of the Swasthani tale a day and I would also read chapters with her. The stories were always full of possibilities like gods chopping off heads, or people reincarnating and becoming different; that immediately is a message that one can change form or travel far, or have magic powers. What does that mean for kids?And then I encountered Western literature and it was about humans living very different lives in very different worlds. When I was a little older, I made sure to buy every single Filmfare and Movie magazine.  Whether you call that reading or just studying pop culture and glamour, or looking at stars being themselves, it was a queer activity. Because fashion is also about people transforming into someone else, or something they are not. Today, I feel like I have lost this side of me, and I want to reclaim it. This reminds me of what the artist Alok Vaid Menon once said in a workshop. They asked, “What part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in this world?” I think we all have to do that and it’s a sad realisation, but I think many marginalised groups, especially women, can relate to this question.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111136/636cd4469c7e80680e08f9b4jpeg.jpg" alt="Niranjan Kunwar dancing" width="405" height="469"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>What did you have to destroy? My feminine side. Whether it’s Bollywood, Filmfare, wearing skirts and dancing as a girl, I think I have it in me. I am definitely not ashamed of it. I think it is a really powerful thing if an individual can be a man or a woman, it’s a skill and that’s also what is actually needed in this world today–the fluidity rather than the rigidity. There was one time that I dressed up in drag in New York and even then, I remember I was not completely at ease. The flipside of the question is how much anxiety and fear there is for marginalised people, starting with women. And because of this fear, so many things are hidden, invisibilised, not talked about. That is why I really appreciate younger Nepalis now who are out there in public being bolder than I am or I have been.On being bold, when you wrote this memoir, you were filling it with people who are connected to you in real life, how did you balance what to reveal and what to conceal?  I chose to write nonfiction because I knew that I wanted to document this story as ‘real’ and I wanted to visibilise it, as most queer stories are often made invisible. Although I also know that writing about someone’s life comes with ethical questions and one has to ask for permission, I didn’t do that because I knew that I wasn’t going to reveal any personal details of the characters in the story. But this begs the question, why did I write it? We teach in primary school that we have to write about things that give us strong feelings. While writing about my family, I began to write about certain family dynamics that was bothering me and I didn’t think about censoring, I just had to write it out, but it was only later in revising that I began to get anxious about these issues of sharing sensitive information. But how do you ask for permission from your family? It’s a tricky thing.I can imagine, I mean, the father character. You explicitly write about his anger and your own. It was one of the things that drew me into your memoir because we don’t talk about anger as much as perhaps we should. I struggled a lot with anger. Anytime I was in despair or depressed, my frustration would just short circuit to one person: my father. There was a time I remember when I was in New York, and say, I got really hungry, I would get angry at my father. If I missed a train, I would immediately think of my father and feel rage in me. And that I knew was not ‘normal’ because he was not even there and it was not his fault. So, what was that about? That needed investigation. When emotions don't get processed properly, or when there's depression and a history of not talking about it, the repressed stuff comes out, you know. I knew it was unfair to him, and that it was no one’s fault. So, I had to write them out and put things in front of me so that I could sift through them and understand better. Some of it was my fault and my immediate situation having a stressful job in New York, or that I was drinking too much… some of those, I had to take responsibility.But sometimes anger is also important or useful because it moves things, it is an energy.Some people have told me that sometimes when I am angry, I am my most honest and articulate self, and I say what needs to be said. Sometimes, anger can be a shortcut to get to the truth of a matter. The outburst that I wrote about in the memoir, it needed to happen because it was repressed emotions that had not found an outlet. I was a very angry child but I grew up never being able to express myself. And in New York, instead of finding an outlet, I was distracting myself with alcohol and clubbing. I didn’t write about this part in the book, but the morning after that outburst, my father came into my room and said that it was the first time he had seen that side of me.The outburst was almost necessary.Yes, and just the day before, I had another huge blowout with my father. So, I’ve had this anxiety with my memoir because my relationship with my father has shifted and it is better now. When I was writing, I felt like I didn’t care about anything or anyone, I only knew that I had to tell my story honestly. But later, the anxiety started brewing. Even throughout the book launch, I was anxious because I hadn’t told my father about the details of the book and I didn’t know how he was going to take it if he found out. It is also sad because I have written a book but I can’t even share it or celebrate it with him. That is, in many ways, I guess a very queer aspect about having written the memoir. But after this recent blowout, it is almost like that anger ate up that anxiety and I was able to own a little more of myself. This time round, I feel a lot more justified and I don’t feel anxious like before.What I also loved that you were able to show to the readers was the tenderness of the father character and not just his anger. For instance, when he says “goodnight” or comes into your room the next morning after a blowout. It is a language, a gesture, a slight vulnerability. The accountability issue is what gets me, though. I would be fine with my father having an anger issue if he were to come around and fix it. You must fix what you break. If only he knew how to apologise. But that just does not happen.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111136/636cd4489c7e80680e08f9b5jpeg.jpg" alt="Niranjan Kunwar teacher USA" width="1434" height="1434"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Poet Nibha Shah said that we are not taught how to love, and I was thinking, perhaps it is the same with apology, too.  And how much we need that education. This is why I wanted to become a primary school teacher. One of my first encounters in the US was in a preschool classroom where the kids were learning, through story books, how to treat one another and the people in their communities with respect. I immediately saw that it was completely lacking in my life and in Nepal. It really moved me and when you think about family dynamics or even politics, I maintain that we learn our behaviours in the primary school classroom. If you don’t learn how to listen or respond to each other with respect, you won’t automatically learn it in parliament or after you get married. It’s too late by then. There are many of us who didn’t have this education or opportunity, and it is just something that we have to carry with us and try to do better.Lightroom Conversation is a monthly page in Nepali Times that features interesting figures in Nepal’s literary scene. <a href="http://www.munagurung.com">Muna Gurung</a> is a writer, educator and translator based in Kathmandu.

Muna Gurung

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Niranjan Kunwar: Queering the story

<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101132/636b73dd9c7e80680e062361jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1095"/>If you like Nepali folk songs, you must have come across a hirsute man on Youtube, singing old, familiar songs with an unusual accent and lilt. The backdrops to the music videos are always mountains wrapped in clouds and B rolls of smiling Nepali children. The singer strums his ukulele gently, and through melancholy spreads calmness and positivity.This is Arko Mukhaerjee, a Bengali who grew up around Darjeeling, walking the mountains and dales on the other side of the border from Ilam and Sandakphu. The hills were alive with Nepali folk music, and he grew up steeped in its melody and beat.“As a boy, I hiked along the border with Nepal and have done the Singalila trek, walking up to the base of Kangchenjunga many times,” recalls Mukhaerjee, who has fond memories of tongba and sukuti sessions with Nepali-speaking friends who remain his best friends. He came to understand the difference between dai (brother) and daju (respected brother). It helped that his name ‘Arko’ (‘sun’ in Bengali) means ‘next’ or ‘another’ in Nepali, an icebreaker that is still the subject of endless jokes.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=40220&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Moving songs from the boys next door</a>, Sewa Bhattaraihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK0jZL0SlXcMukhaerjee was 11 when he heard his first Nepali folk song, Resham Firiri, from his trekking guide Arjun Sherpa. The whole village of Mane Bhanjyang, where the India-Nepal border runs through a house, would shut down for evenings of song and merriment, and people would dance to Mohani Lagla Hai and Tulsi Aagan ma Ropaunla. Because of Mukhaerjee’s background in Bengali music, it was easy for him to learn the songs from Sherpa.“My family came over to West Bengal from East Bengal, and as refugees we did not have much,” he relates. “Families like ours hold on to the intangible heritage, which is all they bring with them. In my family that heritage was classical music.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0bJkyoGHd8But Mukhaerjee rebelled against the regimented nature of the classical tradition and turned to exploring and experimenting with melodies that touched his soul. He gave up formal training and learnt music by jamming and practicing. Today, he performs folk music in more than 20 languages and plays five different folk instruments, but he keeps coming back to Nepali music.Mukhaerjee’s connection to Nepal was forged in the Darjeeling mountains, through his friendship with Nepali-speaking Indians who sang songs of migration and their motherland. “Nepali music contains traces of the places Nepalis have been – Burma, Malaya, fighting world wars,” says Mukhaerjee. “Some Nepali musical instruments are similar to those found in Mongolia or Afghanistan, and there are also some harmonic aspects from British influence on Rana music.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101132/636b73e19c7e80680e062362jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="974">And then there are the characteristics of Nepali music that are typical of mountain music around the world: the use of more major notes and fewer minor notes, as with Irish, Mongolian, South American, and bluegrass music.Among Nepali singers, Mukhaerjee is fond of Jhalakman Gandharva, the pioneering minstrel. He first heard a Gandharva song on a taxi ride from Tribuvan International Airport to Thamel. “Jhalakman’s voice is unique not just in Nepal but in the whole world,” he says. “When you sing to the accompaniment of a single instrument for many years, your voice automatically follows the instrument. Jhalakman sang with the sarangi, and his voice had acquired some micro tonal aspects of the sarangi which are impossible to replicate.”Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/eastern-melodies-in-kathmandu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eastern melodies in Kathmandu</a>, Sewa BhattaraiWhile in Pokhara to perform in January, Mukhaerjee visited Batule Chaur, the historical home of the Gandharvas, and says it was an emotional moment. “It gave me goose bumps,” he says.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r6bDmdNl_kMukhaerjee has sung many of Jhalakman’s songs, including Timro nai Maya, Allare Nani Kesi, and Bala Joban. He understands some of the lyrics, but gets a native speaker to transcribe the correct pronunciation. Ultimately, though, what matters to him is the feeling that the music inspires. Mukhaerjee recently discovered Mitrasen Thapa, and has started to upload videos of his renditions of the master’s songs.“When I sing to the Nepali communities in India, everyone sings along. That is so rare. You just forget all intellectual abstractions and enjoy the emotion the songs bring out,” says Mukhaerjee. “My objective in performing Nepali music is to spread love and connect people.”

Arko, the Nepali minstrel from Bengal

Usha Sherchan: Humming a tune of her own

In the black and white photograph, General Wangdu smiles broadly in front of the dusty cactus garden in Kathmandu’s Annapurna Hotel. With an ill-fitting jacket and shaggy hair he looks benign enough, but this was the last leader of the Tibetan freedom fighters who led the resistance against the Chinese from their remote mountain hideouts in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/comings-and-goings-in-mustang">Mustang</a>. Five months later, Wangdu was dead. Snapped in March 1974, I had only recently arrived in Nepal. How did I meet this legendary fighter? Possibly with his devoted camp follower, Lynne Klapecki, and probably in the Om Restaurant near Freak Street which was the preferred <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/hippie-trail-nostalgia-in-kathmandu">hippie hang-out</a>. Om Lobsang and his brother Yeshe were <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/earthquake-brings-back-memories-of-camps-for-tibetan-refugees">refugees from East Tibet </a>whose cafe offered a friendly welcome and<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/momo-loco"> the best momos</a> - they became my in-laws after I married their eldest brother Tenzin, but that was a decade later.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_4573b34282b0f5395c007243d6bef12c7ba76bfd520419e994cdcea048d795a1.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2025052403054_4573b34282b0f5395c007243d6bef12c7ba76bfd520419e994cdcea048d795a1" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1583" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>Photo: LISA CHOEGYAL</figcaption> </figure>  Wangdu’s English was enthusiastically rudimentary, but even riding around town with him on the back of an aging <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/kathmandu-s-new-motorbike-museum">motorbike</a>, he was a commanding presence. Always flanked by armed outriders, impressive scars marked his forearms and a pistol hung from the cord around his neck. A charismatic guerrilla leader, Wangdu was celebrated by his followers for his tough commitment and respected for his measured pragmatism. He seemed so young to have shouldered such a responsibility of command, leading hundreds of hardened <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/50-years-after-the%20raid-into-Tibet,1012#google_vignette">Khampa combatants </a>through what had been a particularly <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/heavy-snowfall-over-nepal-himalaya">brutal winter in Mustang</a>, the last bastion to hold out against the Chinese invasion of their Tibetan homeland.&nbsp; The freedom fighters of Tibet, known as the Chushi-Gangdruk, had emerged to resist the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/territorialism">Chinese takeover</a> of Tibet during the 1950s. Estimated to be 80,000-strong at the time of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/what-or-who-after-the-dalai-lama">the Dalai Lama</a>’s final escape to India in 1959, the sheer number of Chinese deployed into Tibet eventually forced the Chushi-Gangdruk to retreat to Mustang, From this high Himalayan stronghold, they continued cross-border raids on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) throughout the 1960s.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_8a4a935ba25ae79dc3a63bb5c14626927020e5ec098093c45ccb9a5982e009fd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="2025052403054_8a4a935ba25ae79dc3a63bb5c14626927020e5ec098093c45ccb9a5982e009fd" data-rendition-name="original" width="1114" height="676" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>Guerrillas known as the Chushi-Gangdruk emerged to resist the Chinese annexation of Tibet during the 1950s. Photo courtesy: MIKEL DUNHAM</figcaption> </figure>  Their Kathmandu base was a small discreet lodge in a back lane near Rani Pokhari. Sipping sweet tea from a blue mug with a chipped lid, I sat bemused in a corner of the Mustang Hotel room whilst Wangdu and his cohorts received a battered brown suitcase from their CIA connection, a tousle-haired American in a leather jacket. Heaved onto the dingy bedspread that covered the thin mattress, it was clicked open to reveal piles of neatly stacked dollar bills.&nbsp; I cannot think why Wangdu allowed me to witness this handover but I was clearly no threat, a newly arrived world traveller with no understanding of the stakes nor any Nepali or <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/tibetan-music-in-nepals-sacred-valley">Tibetan language</a>. Despite armed guards in the corridor,Wangdu radiated confidence and bravado, and there was a practiced familiarity to the tense transaction. This deadly dance for many years had been funded by the Americans, tolerated by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-kingdom-within-a-republic">Mustang’s residents</a>, and permitted by King Mahendra and the Nepali authorities who it suited to turn a blind eye.&nbsp; But Mahendra died in 1972, and times were changing. Richard Nixon’s ping-pong diplomacy thawed the cold war and signalled a fresh entente with China. Nepal’s yet-to-be-crowned <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/if-birendra-was-alive-nepal-could-still-be-a-monarchy">King Birendra </a>was under pressure to curb the irritating incursions against the PLA launched from the Nepali territory of Mustang. Keen to appease his northern neighbour, on several occasions the King summoned Wangdu for peace talks but, despite increasingly overwhelming odds, Wangdu refused to surrender.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_a8efd5cfb92cd997bd7cb74296a936fef46e2f7428f9cd642b03f1ac4ea11ecb.jpg" data-media-id="editor_14" data-image-id="2025052403054_a8efd5cfb92cd997bd7cb74296a936fef46e2f7428f9cd642b03f1ac4ea11ecb" data-rendition-name="original" width="1055" height="885" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>General Wangdu flanked by two Tibetan resistance fighters in Mustang in the 1970s. Photo courtesy: MIKEL DUNHAM</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_75969125a745847a2ef82b6fe8b9106c0b21a116d85b8efdf5d2ee89a347bb31.jpg" data-media-id="editor_15" data-image-id="2025052403054_75969125a745847a2ef82b6fe8b9106c0b21a116d85b8efdf5d2ee89a347bb31" data-rendition-name="original" width="1044" height="792" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>King Birendra with General Wangdu (right in dark glasses) taken in 1974 possibly in Mustang after one of their few attempts at negotiation. Photo courtesy: RAJRNDRA KUNWAR</figcaption> </figure>  While I naively rode pillion around Kathmandu in the spring sunshine, Wangdu was in the midst of what turned out to be his final round of negotiations with the Nepal government. Refusing to cease hostilities with the Chinese, Wangdu must have suspected the cost of his decision, making his cheerful smile in the photograph all the more poignant and brave. It was only much later that I appreciated the significance of the moment. Wangdu had been sent to replace the first resistance leader in Mustang, Baba Gen Yeshe, a much derided corrupt character who stole money meant for his troops and exploited fleeing refugees by seizing their treasures. Baba Gen Yeshe never forgave Wangdu,and sought revenge in May 1974 by betraying him and his commanders to the Nepal authorities. Renewed Chinese incursions from the north, active PLA collusion with the Nepali forces under the new King, and treachery from within the Chushi-Gangdrukranks combined to seal their fate.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_e0987a7c90d76431b0d7d5e6115ebfe3dbda7ab939e5941e079c18d722e884c0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_16" data-image-id="2025052403054_e0987a7c90d76431b0d7d5e6115ebfe3dbda7ab939e5941e079c18d722e884c0" data-rendition-name="original" width="1400" height="769" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>British television journalists George Patterson and Adrian Cowell embedded themselves with Khampa guerrillas and accompanied them from Tsum Valley on a cross border raid on a Chinese Army convoy in 1964. Photo: ESSAYS ON NEPAL / SAM COWAN</figcaption> </figure>  Mikel Dunham, renowned author of Buddha’s Warriors, writes: ‘It is possible that Wangdu was waiting for some cue from the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. It is equally possible – during that last, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/the-human-cost-of-nepal-s-yarsa-gold-rush?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR31-Cqw8oyIwMPzf_35e4Skr0ululJvLf3_vDkzHn-AYG2h8uPw2rqqErg_aem_tGVn5coY1-jA7fze_xqhew">desolate winter </a>– that he made the decision to go out in glory rather than admit defeat. Over the last fifteen years, Wangdu had experienced Tibet’s organized resistance being squeezed and shoved around by every conceivable outside force.&nbsp; First they had been pushed out of their own country by the PLA; then they had been refused sanction while on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/borderlines/nepal-india-trans-boundary-bonds?fbclid=IwAR0PpJ5zUEbwdug3g_U3ar6FUugngRY0S8Tl2v_7wqzrsHmXWcXsKjvL4t4">Indian soil</a>; then they were abandoned by the Americans because, apparently, Nixon wanted to make friends with Wangdu’s mortal enemies, the communists; then they had been betrayed by the vampiric Baba Gen Yeshe – a Tibetan and, even worse, a fellow Khampa; and now, finally Wangdu’s army was being evicted by the Nepalis. One thing was certain: Wangdu was a warrior. To imagine Wangdu simply giving up and settling down in the pacific squalor of a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/elderly-left-in-bhutan-refugee-camp">refugee camp </a>was unthinkable.’  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_8fc1ffef4ae751628b90ae781b66e11e51e4fdde2787207c9042efbee345ce49.jpg" data-media-id="editor_20" data-image-id="2025052403054_8fc1ffef4ae751628b90ae781b66e11e51e4fdde2787207c9042efbee345ce49" data-rendition-name="original" width="500" height="746" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>The much derided Baba Gen Yeshe, the first Tibetan resistance leader in Mustang, who betrayed Wangdu for personal gain. Photo courtesy: MIKEL DUNHAM</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_b1d833cdb00d3ac4416b844d8730475cd88c238caaaf8da69889a584eea229a3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_21" data-image-id="2025052403054_b1d833cdb00d3ac4416b844d8730475cd88c238caaaf8da69889a584eea229a3" data-rendition-name="original" width="500" height="656" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>Aditya SJB Rana of the Royal Nepal Army whose team ambushed Wangdu and his cohorts at the top of Tinker Pass in Darchula, West Nepal. Photo courtesy: GAUTAM SJB RANA</figcaption> </figure>  By August 1974 the game was up. Wangdu and six of his exhausted party were killed on their horses by <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=7270">the Royal Nepal Army</a> on the brink of escape. The officer in charge, Aditya SJB Rana, cleverly predicted their route into India after they failed to silence a police radio in Yari. A carefully laid ambush trapped them near the summit of the Tinker Pass in Darchula,at 5,000 meters the highest military operation of its time. Wangdu’s body was helicoptered to Kathmandu, and a big show made of the royal Nepal victory.&nbsp; The Tibetan armed insurgency against China had reached its end.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250524030520_3ff9c6fc85a65bc9a2c3afe9736d9f5f9413de752e790a5d9dca0981ea94f9b4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_23" data-image-id="20250524030520_3ff9c6fc85a65bc9a2c3afe9736d9f5f9413de752e790a5d9dca0981ea94f9b4" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> </figure>

The Last Days of the Khampa

Starting 17 September Turkish Airlines will fly daily to Seville, one of Spain’s major tourist draws. This is Turkish’s sixth destination in Spain after Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga, and Bilbao. Seville is in the Andalusia region on Spain’s south coast with a rich Moor history. There are approximately 30,000 Nepalis living in Spain.&nbsp;

Turkish to Seville

The newly-formed Himalayan Art Council is set to launch Nepal’s National Art Protection Platform that seeks to preserve <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-history-of-heritage">Nepal’s unique cultural heritage </a>using<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/artificial-censorship"> AI-powered tools</a>. The Council seeks to safeguard <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/nepali-art-going-places">Nepali art works</a> from neglect, theft and counterfeiting as well as preserve existing artwork and celebrate living masters by giving them a cultural space to continue the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/sacred-survival">sacred art traditions</a>. "We are introducing a new digital platform designed to preserve, verify and elevate <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-new-generation-of-alternative-artists">Nepal’s art for generations to come,</a>” says a statement from the Council, adding that the digital platform will use AI told for authentication and blockchain to keep track of works of art. Artists can now be protected by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/ayo-ai?fbclid=IwAR1uwmTVq4gUB70ljfRezjzukD9ArWXPuMnUikopeQ8PoiZMjicToPSwhKE&amp;=1">AI tools</a> that detect forgeries, identify their work even when unsigned, and ensure they receive proper recognition and credit. The archives will be searchable with translated inscription and interactive guides. Says curator Meena Lama: “AI and blockchains are tools that give us the power to detect fakes and identify unsigned paintings and track every piece. With these tools we can restore trust, secure authorship and give artists the dignity they deserve.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250514170544_2ab58f6313c0458f75114a692b0016bd9efb3b59d5f8f07f0da72e1e37b82f53.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250514170544_2ab58f6313c0458f75114a692b0016bd9efb3b59d5f8f07f0da72e1e37b82f53" data-rendition-name="original" width="1300" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Artwork at the Traditional Art Exhibition at Patan Museum."> <figcaption>Artwork at the Traditional Art Exhibition at Patan Museum.</figcaption> </figure>  The Council is also holding an exhibition of Nepali cultural masterpieces with 50 historical <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Buzz-the-art,671">thangka and paubha </a>by past masters and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/between-the-sacred-and-everyday">contemporary works by current artists</a>. This curated collection is a living tribute to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/when-yaks-go-so-does-culture">Himalayan culture</a> with economic depictions of deities, mandala and sacred narratives. The exhibition at <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/a-portal-into-patan-s-past-and-present">Patan Museum</a> also provides an opportunity to meet painters and custodians of art and culture. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/golden-deities">Golden deities</a>, Sewa Bhattarai ‘The exhibition is only the first step in a long journey to ensure that Nepali art is no just seen but fully understood, <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Narratives-of-Faith-and-Memory-Remembering-the-Lost-Sculptures-of-Kathmandu-exhibition,987">protected and remembered</a>,’ the Council says. Artist Kailash K Shrestha of Artudio has spent decades promoting thankha and paubha traditions because of their beauty and devotional meaning. But he also says artists are underpaid, exploited and ignored. He adds, “AI and blockchain are not just buzzwords, they are powerful tools that can protect Nepal’s artists from fraud, verify authenticity and build a permanent record of provenance.” Traditional Art Exhibition Till 17 May Patan Museum

Digital protection for Nepal’s art

Fenerbahçe Beko won the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague finals in Abu Dhabi, held 23-25 May, defeating Monaco 81-70 in the final. Olympiacos, who defeated Panathinaikos 97-93, finished the series in third place. The Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the final match, Nigel Hayes-Davis from Fenerbahçe Beko, received a prize of 1,000,000 Miles&amp;Smiles from Turkish Airlines’ Chief Commercial Officer Ahmet Olmuştur. The carrier has been the title sponsor of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, a top tier tournament, since 2010.