“यहाँ वाग्नर कोदाली खनिरहेछन्, शेक्सपियर हलो जोत्ता हुन्, टिसियन र टर्नर भेडा चराउँदा हुन्, सोक्रेटिज गुफामा घोत्लिरहेका होलान्... यहाँ कति साहित्य छ, जो लेखिएकै छैन, न लेखिनेछ।” Wagners and Shakespeares could be ploughing fields here, Tissiens and Turners may be shepherds, Socrates must be living in a desolate cave ... there is so much literature here that is not written and will never be written. This excerpt from the essay के नेपाल सानो छ? (Is Nepal Small?) by poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota that most Nepali students have to learn in school, alludes to treasures of Nepali literature that remain hidden because people are too busy trying to survive.&nbsp; While Devkota’s dialectic may still be true, Nepali writers like Samyak Shertok are taking their literature to international platforms and giving it global recognition. Samyak Shertok is the recent recipient of the 2024 <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fawpwriter.org%2FAWP%2FAWP%2FContests%2FAWP-Award-Series%2FDonald-Hall-Prize%2FOverview.aspx%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2rtN6pn1xy9O42GhznnQekY96bavYGwHz6pDtNaSGh4qaKXsZKSyvCKDU_aem_bsY7bnUoJoSxEpfxw1UdVQ&amp;h=AT0QnfORyOboQ6xeVZYe-r4CLjYIjtZwIcEsR3r54yeHGbMqiMHTjcoT3CP2CD7VXUn9jytxX4FtFmLhINdF8UwGvLy9urNtzxIeUNLOuwLVhSH6hmbVx3oA8rZIY3WNkMani8g6I1c">Donald Hall Prize for Poetry</a>. His poem collection ‘No Rhododendron’ is being published next year by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Pitt Poetry Series. His poems have also appeared in top literary journals and publications in the US, such as Best of New Poets, Iowa Review amd Kenyon Review.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241013131056_630058ef31163af4def47cbcc247089ee3df925ff6c1bd2014f1008db515f9c0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20241013131056_630058ef31163af4def47cbcc247089ee3df925ff6c1bd2014f1008db515f9c0" data-rendition-name="original" width="1365" height="2048" loading="lazy" alt="Samyak Shertok"> <figcaption>Photo: CHANDRA S MAGAR</figcaption> </figure>  ‘If poetry is, as has been defined, a species of magic, Samyak Shertok has conjured an elegant and sophisticated collection that is full of hybridity in form and subject…’ writes Donald Hall Prize 2024 jury member Kimiko Hahn, an American poet. ‘We are given a view into the conjuring, his view on how language expresses and depresses, how language as noise can mix into cacophony or clarify home.’ Hahn goes on to add, ‘There is abiding grief and, in that, surviving to tell and retell stories. This debut collection is an absolute marvel.’ Shertok’s poems immerse themselves in the idea of a mother language, of motherhood, home, ongoingness and his relationship with them, leaving behind a part of himself in each poem. His poems have a haunting grief and memories, and leave food for the soul to dwell upon. “Poems are a permanent home that I can always return to,” Shertok told us in a zoom call. He moved to the United States to pursue a psychology major as an undergraduate which he completed in 2011 from Brigham Young University, and has been there since. Samyak was born Shertok Lama, the youngest child in a Tamang family from Yurung village of Sindhupalchok district. He had always thought a poet had to be someone senior with a PhD, or a long white beard like Nepali poet Lekhnath Paudyal or the Bengali Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. ‘Samyak’ means the Buddha’s middle way and ‘Shertok’ is the Tamang word for a golden steeple. Nepaliness is a recurring theme in Samyak’s verse, but he has a fraught relationship with his motherland. As someone from an indigenous community, Shertok grew up feeling stereotyped and judged which is why he opted for a surname that would not denote his ethnicity. He was eight when his older brother recited the poem he had written himself while walking to their school, an hour across mountain paths from his home. “The poem my older brother wrote was about love and destiny. I don’t remember the lines now, but the seed was planted sometime there,” Shertok recalls.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241013141012_e562220a7461f09924480bb991319bfc420ba275b672885815382bb526833301.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20241013141012_e562220a7461f09924480bb991319bfc420ba275b672885815382bb526833301" data-rendition-name="original" width="1100" height="1600" loading="lazy" alt="Samyak Shertok"> </figure>  Shertok has frequent references to his mother who played a part in shaping his career as a poet. He explains: “I believe my Ama is a lived poet. She doesn't know about poets, or how to write poems, but she naturally comes up with her own phrases that are poetic and deeply meaningful.” By Grade 11, Shertok was writing poems mostly in Nepali, but also English. He was prolific, penning short stories, essays, ghazals and managed to impress another <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/writing-about-nepal-from-afar">US-based Nepali writer Samrat Upadhyay</a> and publisher <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/a-novelist-talks-to-his-translator">Ajit Baral of Fineprint</a> when he won the Writing Nepal competition organised by Lalit. "Samyak Shertok is a poet of great nuance and emotional depth," says Upadhyay who was the judge of the Lalit contest. "Even then I had been wowed by the poetry in Samyak’s prose, and it’s no wonder he’s emerged as a poet of considerable power now." He adds: "The fact that Samyak’s poetry is speaking to a diverse and international audience is evident in his numerous publications and awards. The Donald Hall Prize is a big deal. It boasts of many illustrious poets as its previous winners, such as Angela Ball and Reginald Shepherd. Samyak’s win is a win for Nepalis all over the world." Shertok struggled to adjust to a new culture and milieu. He did not feel like he belonged, and strived to feel appreciated. He finally had a MFA in poetry, but no job. “Poetry as a career is never fully secure, there is a compulsion to financially depend on something else,” says Shertok who now teaches poetry to students in Hendrix College in Arkansas. While he has been reading and writing poetry for most of his life, writing still does not get any easier for Shertok. “With practice, devotion and dedication, one might get better at techniques but writing a poem means starting from nothing,” adds Shertok, who is now working on his second book collection. “Something more challenging is to not repeat what I’ve already done in my previous poem.” While he still likes to explore different literary forms, poetry provides him ample room to explore life, living and longing. Even Shertok’s spoken words, carried over from the other side of the planet over Zoom is versified: “Each poem is a being. A poem begins with a haunting, and ends when you are able to release the haunt.”&nbsp;

Pinki Sris Rana

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Finding a permanent home in poetry

“I’m standing by the post office. You won’t miss me,” promised Alok Vaid-Menon over the phone. Sure enough, there he was. 
At the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where temperatures dip so low even the red carpet is sometimes a parade of cosy sweaters, — the US-based gender non-conforming performer was dressed in cold-defying femme fashion. Indigo pumps, a blue-and-yellow frock ending in a cloud-shaped skirt, swirls of the same colours lining the eyes.
“I want to show that it is possible to look good here,” said Alok cheekily. 
Words from one of Alok’s own verses seemed apt for the moment: “They will say that femininity is not powerful, but I have stopped traffic simply by going outside.” 
On the day we met, the 32-year-old stopped traffic for another reason too. They were the face of a short documentary ALOK, directed by Alexandra Hedison and produced by Jodie Foster, which had just premiered at the festival.
For over a decade, Alok has combined art and activism. They tour the world with poems about queer and trans experiences, self-acceptance, and love. 
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/eleganza-extravaganza">Eleganza Extravaganza</a>, Sahina Shrestha
They will be in Kathmandu presenting a blend of poetry and comedy at the Spoken Fest on 16 February. “I haven’t been to Kathmandu since 2017, so shout out to Nepal,” Alok shared, with a beam.
The film ALOK spent two years in the making, after photographer Hedison chanced upon Alok’s work online and asked if she could trail them — as a “professional groupie” or “consensual stalker”.
The deep dive that followed, she said, “didn’t just inspire me intellectually, it moved me emotionally”. The 18-minute film, Hedison’s first, features Alok’s questioning of the gender binary, their imaginative force, and glimpses of their family and friends. 
Quoting Greta Lee, star of the Oscar-nominated Past Lives, Alok said: “For so long I’ve been cast as the best friend but this is my first time as the main character and now I don’t know if I can go back.” 
“The mainstream needs to move beyond token diversity. We deserve to have our stories be centered.”
Alok was born into a family of thinkers and academics, with roots in Kerala, Delhi, Malaysia, and the US. Although the Texas milieu they grew up in was conservative, the film shows their home was conducive to queer expression. 
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/a-mother-celebrates-pride">A mother celebrates Pride</a>, Durga Rana Magar
The poet’s aunt Urvashi Vaid, a noted LGBTQ activist in the US, became their protector: “Because of that I was able to articulate myself and be taken seriously from a very young age.”
Where most media representations of South Asian families tend to be opposed to queer and trans kids, Alok noted their South Asian family grew up and transitioned with them.
Approaches to queer rights on the eastern side of the globe are quite progressive, in the poet’s view. “LGBTQ rights are often framed as just recognition in the US, but in India, for instance, there is actually an acknowledgement that there needs to be reparations, there needs to be economic support.”
What is the creative process like? “Procrastination is my process,” Alok chuckled. “It starts out like I’m writing for the first time every time and that’s so daunting. But if it was easy, it wouldn’t be as rewarding.”
As a performing poet, the writing is woven with sound, considering the music that lives within individual words. “Poetry is a kind of spell-making, you have to think about how to pitch and tune each word.” 
So the poet reads aloud as writing progresses and edits based on the listening experience. Language is constantly evolving, Alok reflected, but people get upset when LGBTQ communities evolve it. 
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/right-to-marry-in-nepal">Right to marry in Nepal</a>, Aastha Dahal
Many object to the use of non-binary pronouns. “It is interesting when people say ‘Oh this stuff is all so new’, then why have you always had slurs for us in your languages? So there’s always been a context with which you acknowledge us, it’s just been pejorative.”
In several US states, disapproval of trans people is at risk of being written into the law. Our conversation took place in Utah where the House recently passed a bill seeking to criminalise trans adults for using bathrooms inconsistent with the sex on their birth certificate. 
“Hopefully it’s not going to pass the Senate and get approved into law but the fact that they’re even indulging it is obscene.”
Through art, Alok would like to loosen the hold people have over gender. “Me and my friends are finding a way of looking at each other as individuals, not as categories. So this is not some idealistic future, it’s something that’s being lived right now.”
Equity will depend on people’s willingness to feel a sense of community with everyone around them. That is why Alok opened the film saying: “The most controversial pronoun I have is ‘we’. It’s not ‘they’, it’s ‘we’.” 
Read also:<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-is-ahead-of-many-countries-in-lgbtqi-rights"> "Nepal is ahead of many countries in LGBTQI+ rights"</a>, Nepali Times
Alok Vaid-Menon will perform at Park Village Resort on 16 February.

The most controversial pronoun is ‘we’, not ‘they’

On a usual bustling March morning in Karachi, roads choked with traffic and the air thick with trumpeting horns, the clock is ticking for Ramu Kharel’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=529015909314191" target="_blank">morning show appearance</a> on Geo TV. A physician of Nepali origin who teaches <a href="https://vivo.brown.edu/display/rkharel" target="_blank">emergency medicine at Brown University</a> in the United States, Kharel was on his way back from Nepal after training staff in hospitals. Karachi is only two-and-half hours flying time away, but since there are no direct flights from Kathmandu, he had to overfly Pakistan all the way to Dubai and fly back after a long layover. Kharel was in Pakistan for the first time and it was at the invitation of <a href="https://www.aku.edu/mcpk/cete/Pages/directors-message.aspx" target="_blank">Dr Junaid Razzak</a> of <a href="https://plsp.org.pk/Pages/home.aspx" target="_blank">Pakistan Life Savers Programme</a> (PLSP) at Aga Khan University. It aims to educate 10 million lay persons over the next decade on cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and bleeding control. Cardiac arrests <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1649189" target="_blank">claim up to 47 lives per hour</a> in Pakistan. <div class="embed-block"><div><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="//cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FbCxUc71CqTo&key=87ca3314a9fa775b5c3a7726100694b0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div></div></div> “The possibility of resuscitation increases if a person is trained in CPR and choking prevention,” says Kharel. “It typically takes 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, but by then the brain suffers irreversible damage.”&nbsp; Kharel was in Nepal to introduce a similar program, training frontline providers, police officers and bystanders who are often first responders. Kharel was born in Gulmi district, and experienced first hand the devastating consequences of poverty and poor health infrastructure. He lost his mother when he was just eight because she could not be taken to a hospital in time, and this fuelled Kharel’s determination to improve healthcare access to underserved communities. His uncle was a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/my-uncle-died-in-qatar" target="_blank">migrant worker in Qatar who died</a> while making infrastructure for the FIFA World Cup. His employers in Qatar only listed his death as ‘cardiac arrest’ as the cause, since they did not have to pay compensation for&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2023061205064_e0ebc99527e1c9e16aacb0e4da2ac6808398634b2179c7c4d294abff0da5b636.png" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="2023061205064_e0ebc99527e1c9e16aacb0e4da2ac6808398634b2179c7c4d294abff0da5b636" data-rendition-name="original" width="1184" height="1493" loading="lazy" alt="Ramu Kharel on screens"> <figcaption>Ramu Kharel on screens at the Geo TV studio as he talks about the Pakistan Life Savers Programme and recites Urdu poetry.</figcaption> </figure>  A member of the <a href="https://southasiapeace.com/category/sapan-news-network/" target="_blank">Southasia Peace Action Network (Sapan)</a> that works for cooperation in the region, Kharel says Nepal can learn a lot from Pakistan’s experience with trauma care. “Our mountains unite us and we even look alike,” he says. “Sadly, it’s the petty egos of those in power that keep us divided.” Highway crashes claim some <a href="https://extranet.who.int/roadsafety/death-on-the-roads/#deaths" target="_blank">half a million lives</a> a year in South Asia, and as a member of <a href="https://youtu.be/bCxUc71CqTo" target="_blank">Sapan’s road-safety</a> group, Kharel has been trying to find region wide solutions.&nbsp; When cataclysmic floods swept one-third of Pakistan last year, the government of <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/press-release-nepals-humanitarian-assistance-pakistan" target="_blank">Nepal promptly donated</a> relief goods, including tons of food, shelter, and medical assistance for the victims.&nbsp; And in 2015, when a deadly <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgkksrd/revision/5" target="_blank">earthquake</a> killed over 8,500 people in Nepal, <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1178334" target="_blank">Pakistan helped</a>, sending four aircrafts with a 30-bed hospital, special search and rescue teams including Army doctors and food items. <div class="embed-block"><div><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="//cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FUGLikHax0OQ&key=87ca3314a9fa775b5c3a7726100694b0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div></div></div> It was in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake that Kharel established a health advancement committee in Nepal in collaboration with local communities to provide more decision-making power over their healthcare systems. Working with local governments, he led a program to overhaul local healthcare systems. &nbsp; In coming years, Nepal and Pakistan are likely to face more flood disasters due to accelerating climate change. “Since local communities will be first to react in an emergency, preparing them for disaster response and developing their healthcare systems is crucial,” he says. When he is not working on ways to improve healthcare, Kharel is actively creating content on social media as @namestedoc on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/namastedoc/?hl=en" target="_blank">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@namastedoctor" target="_blank">TikTok</a>. While his target audience is largely Nepali, Kharel has a TikTok following of nearly 100,000 with over 3.8 million likes on his videos. It was during the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/news/a-little-help-goes-a-long-way-in-home-isolation" target="_blank">Covid-19 pandemic</a> in 2020 that he began <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtV5j7DdJT0" target="_blank">using social media </a>to spread health awareness, starting with <a href="https://vt.tiktok.com/ZS8om7XeM/" target="_blank">a TikTok video</a> from Nepal appealing for vaccines.&nbsp; Kharel also loves basketball and Urdu poetry. Guided by his mentor <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/mes/faculty/hydersa" target="_blank">Syed Akbar Hyder</a>, an associate professor of Asian Studies and Islamic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, he is a fluent Urdu speaker.&nbsp; <div class="embed-block"><div><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="//cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FvtV5j7DdJT0&key=87ca3314a9fa775b5c3a7726100694b0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div></div></div> The Nepali doctor’s love for Urdu poetry started when Hyde shared a couplet by Ghalib at an introductory class. “We spent the entire class discussing one couplet. I was hooked by the ‘ibham’ (ambiguity), the beauty and the depth of the lines, and I knew I had to learn this language,” he recalls. Under UT Austin’s <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/asianstudies/news/hindi-urdu-flagship-student-wins-two-prestigious-awards" target="_blank">Hindi-Urdu Flagship programme</a>, he along with six other students lived for a year in India in 2009, travelling and immersing themselves in Urdu language and culture. Kharel interned with an organisation in Lucknow working to raise the standard of living and education for Muslim women in India.&nbsp; He believes that poetry has the power to heal and inspire, and often turns to Urdu verses to make sense of life’s mysteries.&nbsp; In the car, he recites lines from Faiz Ahmed Faiz by heart: “Chale chalo ke woh manzil abhi nahi aayi.” (Let’s keep going, we have yet to reach the destination.) Abdullah Zahid is a student of mass communication at the University of Karachi.<a href="https://twitter.com/abdullahhzahid?s=21&amp;t=Yib5Dr6ZPTJCb9WElKcEJQ" target="_blank">@AbdullahZahid</a>. This article was first published in <a href="https://southasiapeace.com/category/sapan-news-network/">Sapan News</a>.

Nepali doctor's love for Urdu poetry

&nbsp;
<div class="embed-block"><div><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="//cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FVvNCLTlOiCs&key=87ca3314a9fa775b5c3a7726100694b0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div></div></div>
 
…To hell with poetry, with memories, &nbsp;
with my mother’s food- maybe not my mother’s biryani-&nbsp;
To hell the memory of turning nineteen&nbsp;
in quarantine. To hell with waiting. To hell
with this poem. To hell with how long.
(<a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-115260978/359-cooking-by-mukahang-limbu">Mukahang Limbu</a>)
Your friend sends you half a poem by <a href="https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poets/mukahang-limbu/" target="_blank">Mukahang Limbu</a>, with a note at the bottom: Found this gem online and thought to share with you. You go back and read it a couple more times, the way you do with poetry that reaches into you to touch certain chords and you instantly know you’ve found a place to go to.&nbsp;
But home can also be just a memory and you find out why as you read When I first came from Nepal by Limbu:
Missing the feeling of home&nbsp;
I smell the iron rust
of the Municipal Gardens.
The sour tang of home still sits&nbsp;
on the tip of my tongue&nbsp;
like the zest of sweet citrus fizzing.
There are nights when you turn to poetry for reprieve. The world closes in upon you sometimes and sometimes pushes you away, leaving you on the fringes, staring at the inner circle, where you feel you do not belong.
You discuss the imposter syndrome with your friend. What can one really do to become authentic in a world that constantly tests? Often, there is only so much to do. Perhaps it is to be and to live as you are and bare yourself to the core, even between strangers.
<a href="https://www.voicedairy.com/spoken-word">Deepa Bohora</a> beams at the sight of you, asks you your name and smiles as though you are not a stranger but an old friend. She instantly engages with you in conversation about her childhood, about her struggle with Lupus.
“It is poetry that salvaged me. And Yukta Didi, who showed me that I could also write poetry,” she says of Yukta Bajracharya, poet and writer.
<div class="embed-block"><div><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="//cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhM1ds0v9NSg&key=87ca3314a9fa775b5c3a7726100694b0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div></div></div>
As you navigate a busy street in Patan together, Bohora tells you about her father’s work in India and about a fan that was her friend when she was a child. And there is that poem she narrates, about this fan. The fan.
The fan is her friend. But in her poem, she becomes a friend to the fan. The fan goes on to tell us the story of the little girl with Lupus, strung in her own metaphor of healing. The device, which has been sitting in her house for years, gathering dust, warped with spider web, becomes a symbol of her own yearning to recover.
When the fan is repaired and once again starts spinning off cool air, Bohora writes a second installment about its restoration. And as the fan rises from its ashes to become a device of use again, what we really see is Bohora’s recovery.&nbsp;
“I write poetry because I like to tell stories. There are so many stories in me and in the people around me. That’s why I write poetry,” says Bohora. But poetry comes to her like a song, like the humming of the fan on a hot summer’s day in Surkhet, so she becomes the little girl again, who runs around her village telling everyone the fan has been fixed.
That healing she finds in poetry is shared experience for many. “They say we are all poets at least once in our lives. And that is when the heart breaks,” says Saras Chari. He says he started writing poetry as a form of expression away from a childhood scarred by bullies.
“First it was that, and then at some point, I realised that I had some talent, but as I grew older, I realised it was my only talent. And so I write to see where I fit in this society and to talk about issues that are misinterpreted,” says Chari.
<div class="embed-block"><div><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="//cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FhTYmhSVUWJM&key=87ca3314a9fa775b5c3a7726100694b0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div></div></div>
When a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/peaceful-physically-distanced-protests/" target="_blank">series of anti-government protests</a> were staged in Kathmandu in 2020, Chari noticed how at each one of those events, the public was pitted against the government security personnel. “They’re not our foes. They’re one of us. Their families are one of us. But when they’re out there, defending the line, they become the ones who stand against us. And in that, they’re oppressed by the government, while being tasked at oppressing us,” says Chari.
And so his poem, Pyadha, traverses the minds of traffic police, police and soldiers:
Those toes locked inside boots bleed, too,
They get sucked on by leeches and
They yearn for the feel of the grass…
(translated from Pyadha)
&nbsp;“Look at how many ways poetry has been used in history,” Chari says. “Poetry was taught to us by pundits to propagate religions. Poetry was used to teach, but also to control. It has also been the medium for expressing love, just as much as it has been used to stir rebellion. Poetry is powerful,” says Chari.
Anand Vijay Gurung, who sits in the audience as Chari performs his verse on stage says that poetry serves its own purpose. “Or wait, why must it even serve a purpose? That’s a difficult question to answer. If a piece of poetry inspired you to feel more intensely, it has served its purpose,” says Gurung, who likes to think of poetry as a word game. And so in his poem, We Are All Migrants, he writes:
…to navigate their way in a world and find
The elusive perfect nest
etched in their mental maps.
“Poetry is pretty much everyone’s game,” says Chari. Like Deepa Bohora, he too found a community in <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Review-from-the-page-to-the-stage,593" target="_blank">the Word Warriors</a>, a spoken word poetry group. And while Gurung calls writing a lonely task, Slam poets like Bohora and Chari have formed their own circles where poets come together to write and perform.
Chari and his friends Prakash Zimba, Rupesh Bhattarai and Shuvangi Khadka perform together under the name, <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Finstagram.com%2Fkavindrapur%3Figshid%3D16dc04x37mx12%26fbclid%3DIwAR0ODA8yTZBhHrFb4mDQXWyuTGANf04wl47UtkeeXhUMfXYrbaqfhdMyG2A&amp;h=AT2gylLtbTPg2QgDfSfe3jOP_z3o2IwdJ-yQvnn-hAhN4_ue4tA2asN8zbjw06-pJ9a8kCnD1cSi8qxEOy3QoDxQJJ1s4uPHlW8nn8UO2pq9D-n4CrO61UUIryNapDw0LA1iB8Q0pxA" target="_blank">Kavindrapur</a>, in memory of the &nbsp;forgotten poets that frequented a sattal rest house next to Kastamandap, during the reign of Pratap Malla.
The king was the patron of the poets. And there in a rest house in the heart of old Kathmandu, the streets would reverberate with verses as poets wove a mesh with their words. It is this memory that has been created into a legacy by the young poets, even as they struggle with other challenges of being poet.
“Poet, but paid” is painted in white on the black tee shirt Chari wears. “We get invited to events, often to perform or to judge, but no one cares to pay for our time or expression. Poetry is not respected,” Chari expresses his frustration.
And his sentiment is seconded by Gurung: “Nepali society respects writers and poets but there is no support system to serve that vocation. There is no reward monetarily and often, poets pay for their own books to be published.”
Gurung’s anthology of poetry, Dandelion Snow was published in 2020, and most of the people who bought his books have been friends. Poetry books are published with the expectancy of a prolonged shelf-life, he says.
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And yet that does not deter the courage of Bohora, who hopes someday to pull together a book of her poems. “That’s the dream, I’ve been carrying. Someday, I’d like to do a book of my own,” she says. “My words have done what my father’s sweat hasn’t.”
When the likes of Rupi Kaur and Nayyira Waheed stormed Instagram’s little boxes with their anecdotes, poetry appeared to have found a new platform for revival. While it has also given birth to debates about what really is poetry, then, if it can be dashed off in incomplete sentences and expressions.
“At least it’s helped other poets see, that it is possible to sell,” says Gurung.
In Kathmandu, a surge in performance poetry was seen in the last decade with Word Warriors performing at different events, raising pertinent personal and political questions, while also creating space for young writers to form their own groups.
But poetry has also been used to challenge. In the recent anti-government protests, the crowd cheered as Sapna Sanjeevani recited: Ab hum Sita Nai Banbo, refusing to the submission that Sita had to adhere to. And it is a sentiment that resonates with many women writers of the decade.
My country cries over&nbsp;
burnt flags,
borders,
the birth lore of gods,
not the bodies of desecrated dead girls;
My country says I am a Goddess.&nbsp;
Neha Rayamajhi's a poem published in <a href="https://lalitmag.com/my-country-loves-me/">LaLit magazine</a> is steeped in sadness and anger. There is sarcasm. There is mostly protest in her words:
My country asks me&nbsp;
for my father’s name.
Men who are dead,
or have become ghosts
they own me more than the women who birth me:
My country asks me to love this motherland.
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“Writing poetry is creating something beautiful out of sometimes messy and ugly emotions. It also means clamining and reclaiming power from those experiences,” says Rayamajhi.
Her words are representative of the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/everyday-as-if-it-is-womens-day/" target="_blank">new generation of Nepali women</a>, who dare to question traditions passed down to them and laws that threaten to bind them. The refrain carries the irony of the idea of motherland while being force to disrespect mothers, who are allowed to birth children but never allowed to be citizens.
But to not be citizens is not limited to being <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-waits-for-an-unequal-citizenship-law/" target="_blank">unable to pass down your identity to your children</a>. It can sometimes be tangled in memories of who we were and who we have become.
Away in Oxford, Mukahang Limbu’s life unfolds to his audience on his Instagram stories as he cooks meals with fellow students and lives the life that has the semblance of a typical university life. But this award winning poet recreates the idea of home in his posts through foods as much as he does in unfinished, dangling sentences.
Away from home, we often discover ourselves more closely. Home, then becomes an idea. Home can be the taste of a vegan ice-cream made from cashew milk in Manhattan, sometimes. But home can also be fried-rice eaten on repeat when you live far away from home.&nbsp;
Home can also be friends who do not ask you questions, just as home can be a tandoori sandwich eaten during a conversation with strangers you have just begun to trust.
And so these lines by <a href="https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/poem/when-i-first-came-from-nepal/">Limbu resonate</a> with so many of us:
I know now 
In this place, where I did not know, the things I did not know embrace me in ways 
I didn’t know.

Sahina Shrestha

Pratibha Tuladhar

Young Nepali poets in search of poetic license

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b793c9c7e80680e0646efjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="5616" height="3744"/><figcaption>Pragati Rai. All Photos: MONIKA DEUPALA</figcaption></figure>As a child, Pragati Rai was called fattyauri, someone who would not stop talking. “I did not like that when a daughter was born in family, they would say, ‘Oh great, a bottle of whisky is born,’” she says to me when we meet in her home in Thecho. “I knew from very early on that these things didn’t sit right with me, that I had to speak about them somehow.”Born in 1977, Pragati grew up in Khotang along with a younger sister and four brothers. Although she is widely known for her first novel, Lekhak Ki Swasni (The Writer’s Wife, 2014), Pragati burst into the Nepali literary scene with a slim collection of powerful poems called Badi Bigyapti (Baadi Press Release, 2009), written after she had witnessed naked Badi women protest outside Singha Durbar demanding their right to citizenship in 2007. In the titular poem, Pragati writes:My name is nakedMy people are nakedWhere I stand, therethe ground is seen as naked, todayI have been made into a promiscuous woman, sir!I cannot cover my shame withthe sari of democracyPeering into the empty vessel that is your assurance, I cannot wait for the road to freedomListen to the word of someone who has been made naked for generations, or–Listen to the dangerous decision of this disgusting name:If you do not want to make me like you, sirI most certainly will make you like me. https://youtu.be/owxitV1LRp8Last year, she published her second novel, Birseko Mrityu (Forgotten Death, 2019), and Pragati has just completed writing her third novel, Thakra (Stake), which is forthcoming later this year.In this month’s Lightroom Conversation, Pragati and I talk about the process of building a novel, how to tell women’s stories to reluctant audiences, the importance of humour in writing, and why it is necessary for women to write their own stories and be their own writers.Pragati Rai: It’s like making a child swallow medicine. The medicine is bitter, so you will have to put some sugar in it. You have to trick that child into consuming something they never wanted in the first place, but that we all know is very good for them. That is how I wrote Lekhak Ki Swasni. At first, I was writing this novel called Saya, and it was just a long stiff lecture on ‘women’s issues’, and how men and the state ought to behave. I guarantee you that no one wants to read a novel like that, least of all, men.Muna Gurung: So you made it sugary.Yes, with Lekhak Ki Swasni, readers think they are reading a story about a writer and his family drama, but what they do not realise is that they have gone through an entire book and in the process, they have actually read and closely experienced the pain of being the wife of a writer. Lekhak Ki Swasni was actually a short story I wrote while waiting for my husband to come home for dinner. He said he was on his way but hours went by and he never showed up.He is also a writer? Yes, he is an established and award-winning writer. But we live separately now. He is with someone else. People keep thinking that the novel is about our life together but it is not.How did you meet? I was fourteen and my friend took me to his house. His village was just over the hill from mine. He was in ninth grade and deeply heartbroken. The girl he had fallen in love with had just been married off to some lahure. My husband was inconsolable and spiraling into depression. His family thought this was the best time to find him a wife. My friend was his mother’s niece and she had apparently told my mother-in-law about me and how I like to write poems. My mother-in-law explained to me that theirs was a family of writers and if I ever wanted to get into writing, they had all the connections. She also said I could venture into music, education, art… I agreed to marry her son, and  so I stayed put.You stayed there that night and never went back home?Pretty much. I slept in my mother-in-law’s room for a long time and then after a while she sent me to sleep with my husband. He and I barely talked. I was enrolled in 8th grade then and a month into the academic year, I was pregnant, so I stopped going to school. My ama sent for me, but I did not go back home.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b793f9c7e80680e0646f0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="5616" height="3744"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Did you know this big step you had just taken?I had absolutely no clue. I just thought that I had secured my future of being a writer, or doing something in this one life I have. But nobody told me about children. Up until I had my first child, I didn’t fully understand what was going on with my body.It must have been terrifying. It is hard to be afraid of what you don’t know. But you know, my aama, I guess was far-sighted. After my second son was born, she told me that a day will come when I will become very unattractive to my husband because he would be much more educated than me, an 8th grade drop-out. She told me to come home right away so that I could go back to school, I was 18 then. I took my sons and went home to my mother. After SLC, I went to Kathmandu where my husband was already beginning to establish himself as a writer.Read also: <a href="http://Nibha Shah: Nepali poetry’s mansara" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nibha Shah: Nepali poetry's mansara</a>, Muna GurungYou said in an interview elsewhere that many people would not know who Pragati Rai is, but that they would know Lekhak Ki Swasni. It is ironic now knowing that your husband also writes.   I was always known as my husband, the writer’s wife. Even when I wrote a good poem, my name hardly came forth. They all thought he wrote my poems for me. Or if I spoke at an event, he would receive a call at home from one of his ‘boys’, who would say to him: Oh,  Pragati spoke well today. You’ve done a good job schooling her. And the worst was this one time when I saw a short review of Badi Bigyapti in a national daily, and I was surprised to see they had quoted me when I did not remember being interviewed. Later, my husband tells me that the newspaper had called and he had spoken to them.That is terrible. I was furious.How else was it like to be one of the two writers in a marriage?Maybe people think that writer couples spend their days writing together in some blissful reverie. None of that is true! (Laughs). If two people in a family are in the same field, there is bound to be some sort of competition, it is only natural. I would share an idea with my husband and find that a part of it has somehow made it into his book, and vice versa. Some days I would want him to listen to my stories, but he would be busy trying to share his with me. Writers are obsessive people. But you know, when you are with a writer, you can say something using minimal words and trust that the other is able to extract, elaborate and expand as needed. Writers are also more open than other kinds of people, I think. When we separated, my husband told me honestly about his lover. Plus, this was not the first time he had strayed in our marriage. I always knew about his affairs because he would tell me, or write about them. Many male readers have also asked me why I did not make the writer husband character in my first novel a politician, or someone with another profession -- but my husband never once questioned that decision. I appreciated his openness.Maybe it is also because you tell the entire story with so much humour. I laughed out loud in so many of the scenes. I think humour can be one of the hardest things to write.My baba was a comedy man. For instance, when we did not listen to our ama, she would scream at us: Must I repeat the same thing to you twelve and twenty-seven times before you begin to listen? And our baba would step in and say, Your poor mother who does not know math is now having to put together twelve and then twenty-seven—that is half of her day gone right there!  We would laugh and then go do whatever she wanted us to do. I realised early on that humour can make difficult situations a little easier. So in making my first novel, I spent a lot of time carefully weighing out the serious scenes against the humourous ones and deciding where and how to place them so that my readers would follow along and do what I want them to do. (Laughs).<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b79439c7e80680e0646f1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1620" height="1080"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Who are your readers?I write for our parents’ generation, my generation and those who will come after me. People from my grandparents’ generation, I do not even try. Their  thinking is set in stone. I wrote for women, but I quickly realised that the problem is that not enough women read. So what is the point of writing for women when our audience is clearly male? Women in Nepal have written for decades but the reason we still struggle to be heard and seen is because we are writing for women, which makes it easier for male readers to snooze. If we write for men in the manner that pleases them, then our stories become heavily edited, and ultimately incomplete.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/featured-videos/bimala-tumkhewa-putting-kinema-on-the-map-of-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bimala Tumkhewa: Putting kinema on the map of Nepal</a>, Muna GurungWhat about stories about women that men have written?I feel like exactly how my character Numa feels about the way her husband writes. Numa is not a writer, but she finds that her husband, Sushant’s words lack something. Women must write their own stories, men can try, but it will be incomplete. For instance, I remember reading Abhi Subedi’s powerful article once where he writes about replacing the concept and language of  maiti ghar with that of afno ghar. It is a beautiful idea because why must we call our husband’s home our home, or afno ghar, and the place and family we were born into and grew up in and around our maiti? But what Subedi never brings up in the article is the importance then, on a policy level, for women to be able to claim that space as indeed, afno ghar. Where is it in our law? What kinds of property rights does a daughter have in her father’s home? Changing a word is a good start, but it is not the end of a larger problem.I also found the way you write about Numa’s desire as a sexual being very refreshing. I love that she lifts lines out of her husband’s unpublished book and sends it to Prabhakar in a flirty text. You don’t always beat around the bush with some lofty metaphor, you write clearly and unapologetically. (Smiles). I wanted my readers to know that women, too, have desires. I especially wanted my male readers to know that they are always replaceable in a woman’s life. Many of my male friends who have read the novel do not like the character of Prabhakar. I think they see themselves as the husband character and Prabhakar as Numa’s boyfriend, and therefore a threat. The novel I just finished, Thakra, is actually a sequel to Lekhak Ki Swasni, so we will follow the same characters in a different future. My male readers urged me to get rid of Prabhakar in the third novel. But I assure you, he is going nowhere. In fact, there is a scene where Numa is told by her father-in-law that since she cannot give them a grandson, that it only makes sense for her husband to remarry. Numa is hurt by this and she gets drunk with Prabhakar one evening. Some readers, I know, are not going to like that. (Laughs).<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b79469c7e80680e0646f2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="5616" height="3744"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>How long did it take for you to write your last novel? Two years–I have not worked for money in those two years. I am deep in debt, so I must begin to work again now that the novel is done. It took me 7-8 years to write Lekhak Ki Swasni because I was working then at a school first as a teacher and then later in the exam department, typing up papers. I had a computer where I worked and I had created a folder for my novel, and I would steal some time everyday to write it. My colleagues soon found out and complained to my boss. He began to bring me large piles of random papers to type, just to keep me busy, I think. Every hour, he would walk in and ask if I was done. In another universe, I would have just put my head down and said, No sir, not yet. But instead, I would snap at him with Do you think I’m a photocopying machine? (Laughs). I was incorrigible. They even made me sign a sheet of paper that said, “I will not write during work again.” But the very next day, I wrote.So you finished your first novel while working there? No–later, someone deleted the folder and I lost everything. I had to write it all over again. We had a computer at home, but there was something electrifying about stealing time to write at work. When I came home, I never wanted to write. (Laughs). Just when the school was about to kick me out, I left for Korea to work with my new novel in a pen drive.When was this?2010. We were struggling financially. I felt like it would be a good idea to go abroad and make quick money. My husband wanted to join me, but his writing career was taking off and I knew that going to Korea would ruin it--all that effort for nothing. So he stayed back with our two sons, who were already in their late teens, early 20s by then. In Korea, I had to do manual labour in the agricultural sector. My roommate was a woman from Myagdi and super strong. She would work all day and be fine at night, whereas I would have all sorts of joint and muscle ache. There was a computer in our room, but she was always using it to chat with her husband. I never got a chance to sit at it. I remember complaining to Sudha Tripathi didi that I was not able to write because I didn’t have a computer. She clicked her tongue and said, Why don’t you just sit on the floor and write on a notebook with your hand? Why do you need a computer to write? I took her advice. Eventually, my employer kicked me out of work because I was spending my nights writing and he would see my light was on all night; and in the afternoon I was unable to work. For three months, I stayed back in Korea, unemployed trying to finish my novel. Everyone was scolding me. When I think about all the things I went through to write this novel…it is a lot.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepali-literatures-thulnani-toya-gurung/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Toya Gurung: Nepali literature’s Thulnani</a>, Muna Gurung<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b794a9c7e80680e0646f3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="5616" height="3744">What happened after you finished writing the book?I experienced the deepest kind of satisfaction–that I had arrived on this earth and left a small signature.A signature, that’s a powerful image. My mind keeps circling back to the naming and how common it is for women to not have proper names. Twice a year, my family sets out a feast for our ancestors, and we invite them to come and eat. My baba has a long list of their names and when he goes down the list, I notice that the men have proper names but their wives are just their names plus a ni. So, Gopal’s wife is Gopalni. How we continue to rob women of so many things, starting with their names. I say it in my poem, Rukh (Tree), how our great-grandmothers gave up their lives in the name of tradition, and when it was time for our mothers, they gave up their names, it was a price they paid to uphold their traditions, any tradition. We keep following in each others’ footsteps, one generation of women after another. We may alter things here and there, but unless we uproot that tradition, nothing will change.Lightroom Conversation is a monthly page in Nepali Times on interesting figures in Nepal’s literary scene. Muna Gurung is a writer, educator and translator based in Kathmandu.  www.munagurung.com<h2>The Basket</h2>Pragati Raitranslated by Muna GurungAfter she gets the basket,the little girl forgets everything elseShe forgets food, forgets her motherAfter she gets the basket,she forgets her mother’s lap–A mother has no right over a daughter who has left her lap.The little girl has a basket to fill,she forgets everything elseWhen she places a flower in the basket,she likes the moon better,When she replaces the flower with the moon,she likes the stars more...And even more than the stars, she begins to likethe wind, water, butterfly, cloud and what else–She has only one basket,but she has so many things to keep in itShe keeps one thing in the basket, takes it out for anotherKeeps, takes, keeps, takes, and suddenlyevening sets inThe little girl begins to cry, the basket is emptySeeing the basket as life,The little girl’s mother begins to cry with herIn the midst of trying to fulfill each desire,life remains empty.And so–In between her sobs,The mother tells the little girl:Fill the basket with one thingthe rest, keep as memories that fill your heart.

Muna Gurung

Pragati Rai: Her Own Writer

Bimala Tumkhewa: Putting kinema on the map of Nepal

Usha Sherchan: Humming a tune of her own

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110815110/636a61599c7e80680e056ecbjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1162" height="638"/><figcaption>Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s 110th birth anniversary is being marked on Sunday 27 October. Photo: KAMAL DIXIT</figcaption></figure>Kalidasa’s Sanskrit masterpiece Abhijnanasakuntalam based on the story of Shakuntala in the Mahabharata was written nearly 1,500 years ago. It was first translated into English in 1789 and later into 12 European languages. But among the many translations into South Asian languages, the one that stands out is its adaptation into Nepali by Laxmi Prasad Devkota, whose 110th birth anniversary falls on Sunday, 27 October.Devkota’s Shākuntal Mahākāvya (1945) is the most accurate in retaining the original shrigara ras classical poetic style in Nepali. Experts have said Devkota’s Shākuntal is neither a translation nor an adaptation, but a ‘transcreation’.Devkota’s Shakuntal is one of the three versions he undertook -- a smaller work called Dushyanta Shakuntala Bhet and an English Shakuntala. It is extraordinary that a poet creates three distinct renditions of the same work in two languages. Devkota, who died in 1959, is also the only poet to write an English Shakuntala with a poetic structure and style totally different from Kalidasa’ dramatic form.Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=17114#.XbUEiOgzY2w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reaching America</a>, Rabi ThapaThe ancient epic has been translated into Persian, Arabic, classical Tamil, and modern translations in Urdu in both poetry and prose, and other regional Indian languages. In Nepali, there are eight other translations of Abhijnanasakuntalam besides Devkota’s three versions.Reading Devkota’s Shakuntal Mahakavya gives the sense that there is two-way communication going on between two great poets of two distinct, but related cultural and poetic traditions, separated by many centuries.Devkota and Kalidasa engage in a spiritual and poetic dialogue when they bring out the meaning of ‘re-cognition’ (abhijnana) of Shakuntala. The mystical symbolism and poetic rhythms of Kalidasa are perceptible only through suggestion (dhvani) and Devkota’s text captures this subtly but surely.Kalidasa’s epic describes Shakuntala’s birth as the abandoned daughter of the sage Vishwamitra and the celestial singer Menaka. The king of Hastinapur meets her in the forest, and leaves her with his ring to be presented when she comes to his palace. Vishwamitra is made to forget the pregnant Shakuntala, and she loses the ring enroute to the palace.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/written-locally-read-globally/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Written locally, read globally,</a> Sewa BhattaraiThe opening lines of Devkota’s Shakuntal take the reader closer to Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhavam where the erotic tension between Shiva and Parvati is the cause of celebration and creation of the world.Kalidasa’s text has multiple symbols of Shaivism which Devkota did not just recreate it Nepali, but also imbued it with the symbolism of the original epic. The closing lines of Devkota’s rendition comes a full circle with the idea of ‘kalyan’ as Shakuntala’s happiness.Even though Devkota does not recreate the dramatic form, he retains the sense and purpose of the original with his invocation to the Shiva/Shakti principle that forms the basis of the cosmos. As in Kalidasa, Devkota’s Shakuntala ceases to be a person or a character but becomes an embodiment of Shakti and her happiness is the fulfillment of the universe.Devkota’s Shakuntal Mahakavya is infused with the power of the shringara style with its various elements coming together in explosions of creativity. The long and elaborate description of the process of Menaka seducing Vishwamitra is poetically stunning in its deployment of the visual and aural sensual imagery.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110815110/636a615c9c7e80680e056eccjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="440" height="662">While in all the other translations of Kalidasa, the episode of the seduction is either obliquely referred to or assumed to be understood, it is only Devkota who focuses on both the poetic and symbolic significance of the scene.The birth of Shakuntala is seen as an extraordinary cosmic event as it is the result of the Vishwamitra’s incomplete tapas. It was Rabindranath Tagore who referred to Shakuntala’s suffering as her own attempt to gain full knowledge of love by continuing her father’s interrupted meditation.From the male to the female tapasvi, the meditation reaches its climax. While Vishwamitra was seduced by not being aware of Indra’s plan, Shakuntala’s suffering is a result of her being in the dark about Durvasa’s visit to the ashram. While Menaka abandons her child and leaves Vishwamaitra, it is Dushyanta who abandons his child (in the womb) and temporarily leaves Shakuntala. It is only in Devkota’s Nepali version that this sense of continuity and poetic symmetry become clear.Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=4100#.XbUEougzY2w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">We all make each other</a>, Manjushree ThapaDevkota’s genius lies in his careful delineation of different chhanda for each section which actually has more variety and detail than Kalidasa’s original. Devkota declares in the introduction that his intent is to bring Nepali mahakavya to a higher level of excellence, and he succeeds in doing this.Devkota’s English Shakuntala is a long poem in nine cantos with each marked with a theme: from ‘Vishwamitra: the Terror of Heaven’ to ‘Strife and Unity’. In this work, Devkota keeps his focus on Shakuntala in the manner of the Romantic theme of hero and the quest for self.Devkota is a major South Asian poet for many reasons, but it is his version of Shakuntala that testify to his genius. He actually completes Kalidasa’s masterpiece with the use of extensive meters, both classical and folk, the detailed refinement of shringara rasa, spectacular descriptions of events and subtle use of symbolism make Shakuntal Mahakavya a classic in modern times.Namrata Chaturvedi, PhD, teaches English in SRM University in Sikkim, India and is editor of a forthcoming volume of critical essays on Abhijnanasakuntalam.

The genius of Shakuntalā in Nepali

Nibha Shah: Nepali poetry’s mansara

Shanti Chaudhary: Poet-at-large

One smoggy winter morning in February 2019, Ekta regretted coming to her sculpture class. It was the first day of her period, and the 19-year-old wished she was home, curled up in bed with a hot water bag to soothe her cramps.
Her class was at Kalapremi Ceramic Studio, a dark room on the ground floor of a house in Maharajganj, and Ekta’s teacher was the artist Gopal Das Shrestha ‘Kalapremi’, a noted sculptor.
Two other students were already there, using all their muscle strength to knead the sculpting clay. Ekta, now 24, recalls how Kalapremi asked her if she was feeling all right. She avoided him, as she did not want everyone to know she was menstruating.
Kalapremi repeatedly asked Ekta what was wrong. She finally muttered that she was having her period, after which he grabbed her hand and led her to a partitioned corner of the studio and sat her on a chair. Before she could stop him, he slid his hand under her dress, and started massaging her abdomen.
“I was horrified,” Ekta recalls. “I told him to stop, but he didn’t listen, asking me not to be shy, saying he knew how to relieve my pain. He stopped only after I protested furiously.”&nbsp;
The art tutor then said, “You’re like my daughter. I’m doing it out of love to make you feel better, but you’re so stubborn.”&nbsp;
“Instead of saying sorry he acted like I was the one having crazy thoughts,” remembers Ekta, adding that from April 2016 to August 2020 beginning the time she was 16, the artist sexually abused and harassed her on several occasions. &nbsp;
Now, Ekta and the artist’s other former students are finally sharing their experiences and some are pressing legal charges against him, hoping that others do not have to endure what they did.&nbsp;
Award-winning artist and teacher Gopal Das Shrestha ‘Kalapremi’ (the name means ‘Art Lover’) is known for his ceramic art, sculpture, and contemporary pottery. He was <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/the-house-of-kalapremi">profiled in Nepali Times after a collaborative exhibition</a>, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ at the Siddhartha Art Gallery three years ago.&nbsp;
His pieces, titled Gaalis, featured sculpted female figures with the heads of dogs, sheep, and donkeys (pictured) to depict derogatory terms for women. Some critics said the collection was a satire on feminists.
Kalapremi started his artistic and teaching career in 1983 and over the years taught at Bhanubhakta School, Kathmandu University School of Arts, Lalitkala Campus and at his private Kalapremi Ceramic Studio. He has also lectured at Jeonju University in South Korea and recently at Tabor Academy in the United States.
Seven of Kalapremi’s former students were interviewed for this story. Five female students said he touched them inappropriately in his studio or at Kathmandu University. Two male students said they witnessed him abuse and harass the women. In all cases, the students struggled to recognise the abuse when it occurred, and the lack of reporting systems left them to cope on their own for years.&nbsp;
Earlier this year, students shared a social media post hinting at Kalapremi’s history of abusive behaviour following which more students of the artist reached out sharing similar experiences. Some students spoke of abuse that happened as long as 20 years ago.
Kalapremi, 60, has denied the allegations. He told Nepali Times: “Some years ago, there was a movement encouraging people to hug and kiss. I used to do it purely out of friendship and love. But after seeing posts on social media last year calling out my behaviour, I realised my actions may have hurt some people. I understand now that I should have been more mindful.”
He added: “I am also an auxiliary health worker, so I know the exact points to massage to relieve menstrual pain. It’s not just menstruation, I take anyone who is ill to the hospital.”
Sexual abuse is much more rampant than reported given how difficult it is to prove it in court. The law defines sexual abuse as occuring when someone touches another’s private parts, coerces them into touching theirs, uses vulgar language, shows degrading images, or behaves indecently towards them without consent.&nbsp;
Ekta and her fellow students are consulting lawyer Suneeta Regmi Pokhrel, who says they know that even if the court decides in their favour, it is difficult to survive after speaking up, and influential men defend themselves saying they are being framed.&nbsp;
“They are in a lot of pain and weep when recalling how he abused them,” Regmi Pokhrel told us. “They are angry and have filed a case against him, but they are also terrified. They know he is a powerful man and they have seen how our society treats women who speak up against abusers. Unless people speak up, perpetrators will be emboldened.”
Art and academia in Nepal simply reflect the power imbalances in society where people with intersecting identities experience worse forms of abuse. Theatre actors Raj Kumar Pudasaini, Rajan Khatiwada, and Sunil Pokhrel were called out during the #MeToo movement in the Nepali theatre scene in 2019. Even after the allegations Pokhrel went on to receive national awards, while others continued to work without repercussions.
“If you speak up against abusers, you gradually get sidelined from projects,” explained a theatre artist who wished anonymity fearing professional setbacks. “The theatre scene in Nepal is quite small, you just have to make peace with the perpetrators and work with them if you want to sustain yourself.”&nbsp;
In academia there is a history of faculty members sexually harassing students and getting away with it. After Tribhuvan University (TU) lecturer Krishna Bhattachan was accused of harassing women students, the university said it would follow Nepal’s sexual harassment law and set up a reporting mechanism. But nothing happened to the professor, who had already retired. Instead, he counter-accused the students of 'attacking the indigenous people’s movement with baseless allegations' as <a href="https://kathmandupost.com/letters/2019/01/29/bhattachan-responds">he told the Kathmandu Post in 2019</a>. He continues to be featured as a prominent speaker including at TU.
Other faculty members previously accused of sexual harassment include Jagadish Murti Koirala from TU, Bishnu Prasad Acharya from Ratna Rajya Campus, and Bodha Raj Tripathee from Lalitpur Madhyamik Vidhyalaya. A woman staff member from TU also filed a sexual abuse complaint against Dambar Chemjong from TU.
Prominent figures like <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-nims-purja">mountaineer Nims Purja</a> have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/sports/mountaineering-sexual-harassment-abuse-nims-purja.html">accused of sexual assault</a>, and cricketer Sandeep Lamichhane, actor <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/celebrity-rape-case-spotlights-nepal-laws">Paul Shah</a>, and former speaker of Parliament <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/mahara-arrested">Krishna Bahadur Mahara</a> have been accused of rape, but society-at-large has let off the alleged perpetrators amdist a larger debate about justice for survivors and punishment of perpetrators.&nbsp;
‘Gaushala-26’ is the court name given to the 18-year-old who accused Sandeep Lamichhane, former captain of Nepal’s national cricket team and skipper of Biratnagar Kings in the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/here-comes-the-nepal-premier-league">ongoing Nepal Premier League</a>, of rape. She left the country citing society questioning her character affecting her mental health while Lamichhane got an outpouring of support. In May, the Patan High Court overturned a prior verdict that found Lamichhane guilty of rape and had sentenced him to eight years in prison. During the 23-month legal battle to pursue justice, Gaushala-26 faced threats of gang rape and acid attacks.&nbsp;
Exhausted by the struggle, Gaushala-26 sought to “move to a new world” where she could live free without hiding her identity.
Actress Samragyee Rajya Laxmi Shah in an Instagram video now deleted detailed the harassment she faced from a filmmaker during a movie shoot. She did not name any name but veteran actor Bhuwan KC filed a defamation case against Rana, but the court ruled that the charge lacked sufficient evidence.&nbsp;
Former Kathmandu mayor <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/theytoo">Keshav Sthapit also mocked the #MeToo movement</a>, calling accusations against him by journalists Rashmila Prajapati and Ujjwala Maharjan “a rape of men’s rights”.
Serial Abuse
Back at the Kalapremi Ceramics studio, another former student, 24-year-old Rajiv, says he felt the need to speak out after seeing his female classmates being abused.&nbsp;
“He frequently kissed them on their cheeks,” he told Nepali Times. “Whenever they walked into the studio he flailed his arms like a child asking for a hug. They awkwardly hugged him from the side, but he pulled them closer, held their chin, and kissed their cheeks.”&nbsp;
Rajiv says he also saw Kalapremi pull the women’s bra straps, touch their breasts, and slap their buttocks. The young students would freeze, not knowing how to react, and if they protested, he would say it was “normal in art”. Rajiv, 19 at the time like his classmates, remembers thinking perhaps the well-respected artist was right after all.
Another student, Luna, who took lessons at Kalapremi’s studio from 2020 to 2022 did try to confront the tutor after he made an obscene proposal to her. She recalls: “One day when the other students had left the studio and it was just the two of us, he told me that God had given him special artistic talent and he could transfer those powers to me. But to do that both of us will have to be naked, inside a dark room, and have sex.”
Luna, who was 18 then, was livid and told him she did not want any of his powers, but she says he laughed at her as if he was joking. She did not tell her family about the incident because she thought no one would believe her.&nbsp;
“They were all in awe of this famous artist and felt I should be grateful that to be learning sculpting from him,” she says. “I was scared to be alone with him in case he talked about sex again. My coping mechanism was to be rude so he wouldn’t try to come close to me.”
Seeing how some classmates were standing up to Kalapremi, Ekta too tried to push back against his advances, but she said he found ways to coerce her. Since Ekta, Rajiv, and Luna could not afford Kalapremi’s Rs30,000 monthly fee for lessons, he had offered them all a stipend to assist him in the studio.
“He had spondylosis and took me to his therapy sessions to learn massage techniques, then he often made me and other students massage him,” says Ekta. Whenever she refused, he would feign pain to make her feel sorry for him. “He would insist that I put my hands under his shirt so that I could massage him better,” she adds.
The art tutor often tried to “seduce sympathy” from Ekta by sharing how he had never been loved as a child and was “sexually frustrated” as an adult.&nbsp;
“At 7PM, he would pour himself Signature whiskey and immediately go off again about how he was sex-starved. I didn’t know how to respond. It took me time to realise alcohol was just an excuse to talk about sex,” Ekta says.
If convicted, Kalapremi could face financial penalty and/or a prison sentence of up to three years according to Section 224 of National Penal (Code) Act 2017.&nbsp;
Data suggests that victims of child sexual abuse on average take nearly 24 years to tell someone about their trauma, and some may never disclose it at all.&nbsp;
“In our culture, children are rarely taught about boundaries. They often react, show anger when adults pinch their cheeks. But adults insist they did it out of love, and force the children to accept it,” says Sita Lama, a psychotherapist at Manka Kura. “And even when someone touches them inappropriately they struggle to identify and verbalise it.”
When perpetrators claim to be “acting out of love”, Lama says survivors are likely to perceive it as something safe, rather than recognising it as abuse.&nbsp;
“It may take years for them to realise they were abused,” she explains. "And even when they become aware, the power imbalance with the abuser and the associated shame often prevents survivors from speaking up."
Other former students from the School of Art at Kathmandu University have also come forward years later, saying Kalapremi sexually abused them. As young adults, they felt his behaviour was off but were uncertain if it was inappropriate, illegal, or they did not know how to respond. After having understood that it was indeed abuse, they say they are speaking out now to protect others.&nbsp;
Amina Singh, a visiting faculty member at Kathmandu University, says there is no clause against sexual abuse in contracts of teachers, and there is no formal grievance handling mechanism for the students.&nbsp;
“So the only way students can to deal with sexual abuse is approach someone they trust,” she says.
Eight other former art students of Lalit Kala Campus and Srijana College of Fine Arts of Tribhuvan University and other private art studios in Kathmandu say they were also sexually abused by their art teachers. Three faculty members interviewed from these institutions said they saw the abuse, but felt it was futile to report it given how powerful the teachers were.
In the absence of a formal system, some longtime women artists warned each other about “problematic” artists. They shared &nbsp;a “heads-up” to be more cautious when collaborating with them, and avoided responding to their calls and texts after work hours.
To ensure art institutions are safe for all, galleries, museums, artist studios, and smaller art spaces need to develop policies on sexual harassment. This would include a code of conduct or studio policies that hold the leadership accountable and outline the principles of professional ethics.&nbsp;
Students and employees should inquire about accountability mechanisms for raising concerns, both formally and informally, advocates say.
Three years after Ekta left the ceramics studio, she learnt that Kalapremi had harassed many other women. Still trying to get a footing in the art industry, she attended a workshop in Kathmandu where women artists discussed ways to stay safe in the art sector.&nbsp;
Since it was a close-knit group Ekta opened up about how she felt violated and realised she was not alone, he had been abusing underprivileged students for years, and this was common knowledge among artists in Nepal.
Ekta says that even after she quit, Kalapremi continued sending her text messages like ‘I am thinking of you’, ‘Why have you stopped speaking with me’, or ‘I am waiting for your call’.&nbsp;
But what really forced her to act was when Ekta found out that he was sending similar texts to her younger sister.&nbsp;
“I’ve had enough,” she told us. “He abused me all these years but I won’t let him abuse my sister.” &nbsp;
Ekta, Rajiv and Luna are not the real names of the students.&nbsp;

‘Art Lover’ accused of sexual abuse

It was 8:15 in the evening of 25 March 1968 when everyone in the village of Batulechaur near Pokhara heard a deafening sound like thunder as a bright flashing object hurtled down to land in a field.&nbsp; That field belonged to Kul Timilsina, and the next morning he retrieved a sheet of metal about 2m by 1m and carried it home with the help of a few others, thinking it would be useful for his buffalo shed.&nbsp; Before he died at age 83 three years ago, Timilsina had told photo archivist Sunil Ulak that the black metal sheet was not rectangular and had rounded corners. There are a few witnesses still alive who have a clear recollection of the object that fell from the sky that night.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024120707128_75cc85aac56b9cc4a77366471f058d7b3eb6868776811b0923845c2d0a61f014.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2024120707128_75cc85aac56b9cc4a77366471f058d7b3eb6868776811b0923845c2d0a61f014" data-rendition-name="original" width="1170" height="601" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> <figcaption>The field in Batulechaur belonging to Kul Timilsina where fragments of a flying object fell from the sky in 1968.</figcaption> </figure>  One of them is Timilsina’s wife Gyanu, who was 22 at the time. She had been at home, and remembers hearing the big bang and the sky becoming very bright. “We saw the thing in the field in the morning,” she told us. “It looked like a lid, a covering of some sort. The way it was stuck in the ground, it must have fallen from the sky. We thought we could use it to dry clothes on, and took it home.”&nbsp; Another witness is Kul Narayan Paudel. “I was only eight then. We ran to the field to see what had fallen. It was a four-sided metal sheet. The elders took it away, and I don't know what happened to it.” &nbsp; Ram Bahadur Baniya, a teacher at the local school, says he had heard the sheet had been brought to the school, and later handed over to the Zonal Commissioner at the time, Nanda Prasad Malla. “But that is all hearsay,” he says.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024120707128_0bf207a12063fb8155b3c8d9a00a94887b126380c9e0627527c84cf5e1101f54.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2024120707128_0bf207a12063fb8155b3c8d9a00a94887b126380c9e0627527c84cf5e1101f54" data-rendition-name="original" width="1170" height="610" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> <figcaption>Gyanu Timilsina, wife of Kul Timilsina.</figcaption> </figure>  There are two versions of what happened to Kul Timilsina’s metal sheet. One is that an American Peace Corp Volunteer teaching at the nearby Bindyabasini School took it, and another is that it was handed over to the government. Recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and US State Department documents from the time say that the US Embassy in Kathmandu tracked down the object two years later and had it shipped back to the US. A telegram from the Department of State and Department of Defense tagged as ‘MOON DUST / Space Fragments’ dated 1 March 1972 stated: ‘1. Restored space fragment will be on board Embassy support flight 115 arriving Kathmandu on or about March 10. Fragment is packed in shipping crate (cargo no. 72-33365) marked in care of DAO.&nbsp; 2. State and Defense representatives examined fragments prior to shipment finding restoration acceptable.’  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241207071212_929d903ee06d41baa4f6040e981cd7c7d7bd75cc9c37c9b617d307fc8538d2df.png" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20241207071212_929d903ee06d41baa4f6040e981cd7c7d7bd75cc9c37c9b617d307fc8538d2df" data-rendition-name="original" width="856" height="568" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> <figcaption>Declassified CIA documents about the investigation into the object sighted in Pokhara. </figcaption> </figure>  The documents show that the US government, military and intelligence agencies investigated this incident thoroughly when it occurred, and have continued to revisit it ever since, as recently as five years ago. What is even more intriguing is that the object that fell in Pokhara was not the only unidentified space object that fell to earth that year. There were similar sightings of objects falling from the sky in Ladakh, Sikkim and Bhutan between 19 February and 25 March 1968.&nbsp; These mysteries were the subject of a CIA investigation in 1968 titled ‘<a href="https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81R00560R000100070007-8.pdf">Sighting of Unidentified Flying Objects in Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan</a>’, and the report is part of the recent online declassification of 800,000 top-secret documents from the period.&nbsp; &nbsp;Although unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have a connotation now of being alien craft, it could be pieces of satellite, missile, rocket or even aircraft. The CIA report documents six sightings in 1968 and quotes local sources as describing all of them having similar characteristics: bright blue or red streaks in the sky accompanied by loud sounds like lightning and thunder and objects falling to the ground. Aside from the metallic object that was found in Batlechaur, there were other items also found nearby in Tallakot, Tureypasal, Armalakot and Maidan. Whatever the object was, it seems to have disintegrated even before it hit the ground.&nbsp; The CIA report records the first sighting on 19 February 1968 in various parts of Sikkim and Olangchung Gola and Ghunsa in eastern Nepal. The light was said to be ‘long and thin’ and giving out ‘green and red light’. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241207071212_c3c825027d966a2aedc846970390eebe063957503c7eacc8e01e0517843f9bbb.png" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20241207071212_c3c825027d966a2aedc846970390eebe063957503c7eacc8e01e0517843f9bbb" data-rendition-name="original" width="892" height="596" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara "> </figure>  Two days later on 21 February, a soundless blue object was seen traveling fast across the sky above Thimphu in Bhutan. Then on 4 March there were multiple daytime sightings or white streaks in the sky at Chang La Pass, Fukche and Koyul in Ladakh. There were more sightings in Ladakh on the very day fragments fell near Pokhara on 25 March 1968.&nbsp; After the sightings in Pokhara, rumours started flying in Kathmandu that these were aliens trying to land on Earth, it could be Russian or Chinese spy planes or satellites, and some even say it as a sign from heaven that the end of the world was near. This was at the height of the Cold War. The Russians and Americans were testing their thermonuclear devices as well as intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems. The Washington-Beijing rapprochement had not yet happened, and China was making quick progress testing atomic bombs. Within two years after its first atomic test, in 1966 China exploded its first hydrogen bomb at the Lop Nur site in Xinjiang, 3,000km to the north from Nepal. After neary six decades, what is still intriguing is that all the sightings within a few months of each other in 1968 were along the Himalayan arc bordering Tibet: from Bhutan, Sikkim Nepal, to Ladakh. The US military intelligence seems to have concluded that this was not a coincidence and there were frequent research trips to the site in Pokhara by American officials in the months after the incident. With the help of the Royal Nepal Army, the region north of Pokhara was thoroughly searched.&nbsp; A confidential memo dated 25 June 1968 by Jerry C Trippy to a ‘Mr Farley’ mentions that the US Air Force’s Foreign Technology Division had decided that the debris could be important because it may be related to a Chinese missile test or a Soviet ‘Vehicle Venik’ rocket.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241207071216_feb5425692dc36b20187de4e4fcc2ce9fd12b6d9e1b8724398e50bcdbf9032fe.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20241207071216_feb5425692dc36b20187de4e4fcc2ce9fd12b6d9e1b8724398e50bcdbf9032fe" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> </figure>  On 28 August 1968 the US Embassy in Kathmandu sent a letter to Washington DC saying that the object could be of Soviet origin, possibly from when the rocket carrying the ‘Kosmos 208’ satellite re-entered the atmosphere. But why were the fragments falling to earth several weeks apart, and in the same region? No one knows where the metal sheet that Kul Timilsina recovered is now. It was definitely packed in a crate and taken to the US, and although it is rumoured that it was returned that is not very likely. Archivist Sunil Ulak heard from the Timilsina family that CIA officials had returned to the site five years ago. &nbsp; Interest in UFOs peaked in the US in the 1950s, with the Cold War space race and tests of atomic weapons and delivery rockets. CIA and scientists were being sent to investigate sightings, both publicly and privately. Could the Pokhara fragments as well as the sightings in Ladakh and Bhutan actually be alien craft falling to earth? The renewal in interest in space travel in large part due to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, UFOs and sightings are again subjects of public interest.&nbsp; Even 57 years later, even if there was definitive proof about whether the Batlechaur fragment was from a Chinese missile or a soviet rocket, it has not been made public in documents declassified so far. We may never know.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241207071216_b6938795f40731e7657fd6dcbb3cf460a326186a15eb11d4f832f602201ff598.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20241207071216_b6938795f40731e7657fd6dcbb3cf460a326186a15eb11d4f832f602201ff598" data-rendition-name="original" width="642" height="320" loading="lazy" alt="UFO over Pokhara"> </figure>  Sunil Ulak speculates if the debris actually came from an American aircraft, perhaps on an intel mission upon China. “Which could explain why they were so thorough in collecting the fragments in Pokhara,” he says. But that still does not explain the multiple sightings weeks apart in 1968.&nbsp; Indeed, US military aircraft were at that time flying frequent night-time missions from air force bases in India to supply weapons to Khampa guerrilla camps in Nepal located north of Pokhara in Mustang. It could very well be that the Chinese shot down one such aircraft. The other sightings could have been contrails of US spy planes, or Chinese anti-aircraft missiles.&nbsp; There were quite a few developments regarding UFOs in 2024. In a US congressional hearing in July, former intelligence officer David Grusch claimed that the government had long been involved in a program to investigate and retrieve non-human craft crashes, and then try to reverse engineer them. However Grusch did not show any evidence.&nbsp; The UAP Disclosure Act of 2024 was signed into law by Joe Biden in December 2023. It plans to oversee the public disclosure of UFO information. However, there is a clause in it that prevents disclosure if it would cause threats to military defense, intelligence operations or foreign relations.&nbsp; It is unlikely that the declassified documents about sightings in the Himalayan will cause any real surprise about definite evidence of alien life even if it was found. It seems humanity will continue, at least for now, to wonder about curious lights in the sky and whether there is anybody out there.&nbsp;

UFO over Pokhara

When Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) president Rabi Lamichhane was arrested in October on charges of defrauding depositors of cooperatives, the party’s vice president Swarnim Wagle gifted him Fareed Zakaria’s book, Age of Revolutions.
Since then, Lamichhane has been shunted around from Kathmandu to Pokhara to Chitwan and back to Pokhara to attend police investigations and court proceedings. He was being flown to Birganj via Kathmandu on Buddha Air on Monday. There is another pending case in Janakpur.
Human rights groups and civil society have criticised the government for hounding Lamichhane with inhumane treatment that borders on physical torture. The two parties in the coalition, Nepali Congress (NC) and the UML, see Lamichhane’s RSP as a potentially formidable challenge to their power.
Even if the fraud charges against Lamichhane are true, the Nepali public is increasingly looking at the government’s actions through the police and courts as political vendetta.
Despite all the travelling, sometimes by plane and often by road at night, Lamichhane appears to be in high spirits, waving to supporters who often gather if they know he is going to be driven around. A social media video shows him giving high fives to fellow passengers on a recent flight to Pokhara.&nbsp;
In the past weeks, streets in Pokhara have erupted with parallel protests by Lamichhane’s supporters as well as depositors of cooperatives who lost their savings to the scam.&nbsp;
Although family visits are allowed, prison officials in Pokhara told Nepali Times that not many people visit Lamichhane these days. He added, “When he does get visitors, he asks them to bring him books.”
Lamichhane is currently Nepal’s most high-profile public figure in custody, and highlights the stark difference between how influential prisoners are treated compared to ordinary inmates.
There are six prison cells at Kaski District Police Office’s two-story detention centre, three on each floor. And while authorities pack prisoners into already overcrowded cells, Lamichhane has an entire room on the second floor to himself.&nbsp;
He has also been allowed to call his family every few days. Other prisoners are not permitted phone calls except for emergencies.
Meanwhile, Lamichhane’s former business partner Chhabilal Joshi, an ex-Deputy Inspector General of Police with whom he established his Gorkha Media Network, is in custody under the same charges in the prison cell next to him.
Lamichhane is accused of siphoning off depositors' money to the tv network in which he was part-owner and anchor. &nbsp;
Both Lamichhane and Joshi are able to buy food from the police canteen instead of being served the regular meal like other prisoners. Joshi has also given his statement to authorities in Rupandehi and Kathmandu for his alleged role in the scam. Lamichhane is yet to be presented in Kathmandu for questioning.
While he was in custody at the Kathmandu District Police Complex, Joshi expressed his desire to sleep in a police officer’s office, reportedly assuring authorities that he would not run away and he was entitled to certain facilities as a former officer of the law.
“He seemed to be under the impression that he is still a police officer,” says a source at the Kathmandu District Police. “We made it clear to him that as someone accused of a crime, he was not entitled to special treatment.”
Former ministers Balkrishna Khand and Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, and ex-home secretary Tek Narayan Pandey, who were arrested in connection with the fake refugee scam last year, were similarly housed in the offices of law enforcement officials instead of prison cells. Khand has since been released after six months in jail.
While there is no legal provision to keep high-ranking officials in separate detention centres when they are arrested, authorities granting them special facilities is not uncommon. Law enforcement officials say VIP detainees expect preferential treatment while in police custody.
Among those is former Kosi Province minister Lila Ballav Adhikari, who was arrested from Biratnagar on 10 November over his alleged involvement in human trafficking and brought to Kathmandu. Adhikari had flown to Japan without government approval with three individuals on 29 October to attend a cultural conference, but had been sent back to Nepal from Narita.&nbsp;
His three companions were arrested at Kathmandu airport upon their arrival, but Adhikari was able to exit unscathed from the VIP lounge. Adhikari had resigned as the Kosi Province Minister for Internal Affairs and Law when it became public that his companions had been taken into custody, and was himself arrested shortly after. He has since been cleared by the courts.
Throughout his detention, Adhikari was kept separately from other inmates. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Basant Rajouri, head of the Bhadrakali complex, says that while there is no separate detention area for VIPs, some detainees are kept separately depending on the nature of their crime.
However, sources say that arrangements were made for retired judges and others to visit Adhikari frequently worked at the office of a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) during his time in custody.&nbsp;
“He used to constantly pester the authorities to let him sit outside in the sun, and to be able to use the police officer’s shower area,” added an officer.
Adhikari was released on 25 November after the government prosecutor’s office decided not to charge him in a move that was seen to expose the government’s double standards.
Over at Kathmandu’s Dilli Bazar Prison, former Kist Bank CEO Kamal Gyawali emerges from his prison cell into the courtyard of the prison’s ‘Ka (क)’ block every morning with a thick book in his hands, ready to give his daily sermon.
With his long beard, Gyawali, who is serving a prison sentence for banking fraud, looks the part of a religious guru as he implores his rapt listeners to “walk the right path, abandon bad thoughts and turn to scripture and spirituality”.&nbsp;
Afterward, the attendees gather to discuss politics and current affairs. Inmates at his daily sermons at the prison include other high-profile detainees, including former MP Ichchha Raj Tamang, who is in jail for money laundering and cooperatives fraud, former joint secretary Chudamani Sharma, who was convicted of corruption, as well as NC leader Chandra Bahadur Lama and Krishna Bahadur Upreti of the UML both of whom are on trial for embezzling billions of rupees.
Victims of the cooperatives scam that former lawmaker Tamang was involved in have made trips to the prison and requested visits, but he has refused to meet with any of them.
“Tamang often complains that the state has prevented him from returning the money to the victims by locking him up,” says a police officer at the Dili Bazar jail.
“All you hear every day from the VIP prisoners is that they have been framed,” adds the officer. “No one admits that they were involved in misdeeds.”
But while most high-profile prisoners complain about prison conditions, one exception is former provincial lawmaker Deepak Manange, who is serving a sentence at Dilli Bazar Jail for attempted murder.
“He is the happiest prisoner here,” says a warden. “Unlike the others, he doesn’t claim to have been framed, in fact he doesn’t seem to care that he is in prison.”
Manange is detained in the ‘Kha (ख)’ block of the prison complex, which he renovated at his own expense. The block previously housed female prisoners, but Manange used his influence to transfer them elsewhere. He faces no shortage of visitors, who range from political leaders to people from the underworld.
Along with Manange, other well-known prisoners in this block include Nepal Telecom Managing Director Sunil Poudel, and former executive director of the Surakshan Printing Centre Bikal Poudel, who are serving time for corruption.
Former prisoners at Dilli Bazar prison include ex-ministers Khum Bahadur Khadka and Shyam Sundar Gupta, NC leader Ganesh Lama, Maoist MP Balkrishna Dhungel, Nagarik Unmukti Party leader Resham Chaudhary, as well as former IGs Ramesh Chand Thakuri, Om Bikram Rana, and Hem Bahadur Gurung.
Section 54 of Nepal’s Prison Act assigns each prison’s internal administration the
responsibility of governing its prisoners, which means the more favourable the jail management is, the more comfortable it is for prisoners.
Dilli Bazar prison has been the prison of choice for many high-ranking prisoners, especially those convicted of white collar crimes, due to its more accommodating administrators. The prison, which has the capacity to house 700 inmates, is also less crowded than other jails.
Anuj Bhattarai, spokesperson of the Department of Prison Management, says that there is no legal classification in Nepal for felons to be assigned prisons based on the nature of their crimes.
“That Dilli Bazar Jail has a higher number of prisoners convicted of crimes like corruption is most likely a coincidence,” says Bhattarai. “There is no provision for influential people to be able to choose where they will be incarcerated.”&nbsp;
Translated by Shristi Karki from the Nepali original published in himalkhabar.com

What Nepal’s VIP prisoners do in jail

If you were raised in Nepal, you must have picked up its unique set of vocabulary: आन्दोलन, चक्का जाम, बन्द, राँके जुलुस, आफ्नो मान्छे, हाम्रो दल, कर्फु and many more words connoting political protest.
We became familiar with the acrid smell of burning tyres, and eyes smarting from tear gas. And yet, everyone speaks of another revolution in the making. Not by desire, but by suffocation.
We heard speeches about नयाँ नेपाल, but the New Nepal never arrived. The governance system changed, but it did not reflect on people’s lives — except for those close to centres of power. The state is still unreachable and is not bothered about <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/matter-of-life-and-debt">victims of loan sharks</a>, cooperative scams and other injustices.
Politicians continue to speak in sound bites, but fail to deliver. They have mastered the game of pointing fingers towards an external enemy and convincing people that they are never at fault. The political narrative is so disconnected from the actual analysis of the problem that suffocation doesn’t go away after every revolution.
No genuine effort has been made to deliver at all, which is why there is a palpable sense of disillusionment in the air forcing us to seek another revolution, even if Nepal may not be able to afford it.
How has the current system successfully held power, even if the public is deeply frustrated? How is it that for three decades we continue to be led by the same faces, who have time and again, proved to us that they may be great politicians but not national leaders?
<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/improving-internet-governance-in-nepal">My experience at the epicentre of politics</a> has led me to identify three cultures that have enabled political parties to keep a tight hold on power: acceptance, silence and dependency.
We accept things the way they are. We use fatalistic phrases like “नेपालमा यस्तै हो” or “नेपालको कानुन दैब जानुन”. While this resilience enables us to rise back up from devastating calamities, it is also a reason for our compliance with the status quo.
Despite so many ‘revolutions’ that have led to significant reforms, these phrases keep getting reinforced, to the point that the upcoming generations have made it their lingo.&nbsp;
This acceptance is not a symbol of law-abiding citizens, but citizens living in fear of those in power, unable to ask the whys and why-nots.
Innovation suffocates in this culture of acceptance of the status quo. This is manifested in remarks like “but we don’t have any laws for this,” or “we don’t have the capacity to implement this”. An innovator or entrepreneur therefore has to spend that energy to become a political lobbyist, often educating and convincing the bureaucracy.&nbsp;
Remember when locally assembled <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/designed-and-made-in-nepal">Yatri motorbikes</a>, despite having willing customers, had to suffer to secure license numbers because of a lack of regulations? Instead of creating new laws, the government kept chanting the “We will promote Nepal-made goods” mantra, leaving entrepreneurs in a labyrinth of bureaucracy. The weight of acceptance of the law lies heavily on innovators. Fatalism is a tactic used by those in power to generate mass fear in society.
When we accept, we become silent. This is a pervasive phenomenon. We are trained to keep quiet, lest we ruffle feathers, burn bridges, or not get the help we need in future. We know, yet we don’t speak.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/bureaucratic-hurdles-in-researching-nepals-bureaucracy">Bureaucratic hurdles in researching Nepal's bureaucracy</a>, Daniel W Edwards
Here is one example: the 2021 census shows that the number of baby boys born for every 100 baby girls is 112. This is a clear indication of female foeticide because of boy preference in society.
Despite such horrifying realities, there is finger-pointing within the government between the Ministry of Health and Population with the Ministry of Home Affairs. At the citizen level, we know those who are involved in killing girls. Yet, we don’t speak up. The Nepal Medical Council reports state that despite this gender imbalance at birth, there is no indication of any action.
But why would anyone speak against one's own fraternity, no matter how vile the act is?
When we accept and keep quiet, we become dependent on those who yield power. From getting our government procedure completed on time to getting transfers, to accessing any of our legally protected rights as well, we are forced to depend on our networks of चिनेको मान्छे people we know by blood, village, relations, political affiliation.
The culture of dependency has been the established way in Nepal. If you drive a two-wheeler or four-wheeler, and you get into a small accident, you will be asked to sort it yourself, dialing up the most powerful person you know. It becomes a competition of who knows who.
Recently I was told that there were calls from the Ministry of Health and Population and another from the Prime Minister's Office for just one medical position in a private hospital. Each was pushing its own candidate. Guess which candidate got the position.&nbsp;
The dependency of people is not on the laws or the state, it is with people in power, a reliance on the network of somebody who knows somebody, including those not officially in power.
These cultures are deeply ingrained in our heads, and in society. Collectively they form a vicious circle that helps those in power to retain power. This is not the society we want to live in.
Then, what do we do as a collective to break away from this? How do we break away from the cultures of acceptance and silence that have created this dependency? What can we do to ensure that our children do not have to learn the jargon of आन्दोलन before they learn about the state?
These are the cultures political parties need to shed rather than use them to perpetuate their power. This is what <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/an-alternative-to-alternative-politics-in-nepal">alternative politics</a> needs to be about.
Sumana Shrestha is a member of Parliament’s Education, Health and Information Technology parliamentary committee and represents the Rastriya Swatantara Party.

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