Rameshwor Bhaiya was a mailman and a chowkidar rolled into one. He was stationed at Loreto College, Southfield in Darjeeling for many many years, until he retired.
I learned the other day from a WhatsApp group that he recently passed away at a hospital in Siliguri after battling throat <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-other-pandemic-cancer">cancer</a> for a long time. I had forgotten all about him until I saw the message.&nbsp;
Rameshwor Bhaiya was a petite, agile man, always taking mails to the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/is-nepal-entering-the-post-post-office-era">post office </a>and fetching them back. He was always busy, walking with brisk, soft steps, sometimes stopping in the lunchroom for a glass of water, the last one sitting down to eat because the mail had to be done in the first hour.&nbsp;
For his physical stature, I cannot recall how he managed his guard work as a chowkidar, but he must have been good at that too, because he kept some 500 girls safe everyday.
Rameshwor Bhaiya always wore his hair oiled and combed back with a side parting, neatly. His postal bag slung over his shoulder, the strap falling across his chest was bulky on some days and some days it would be shriveled up and swinging in the air with the lack of weight.&nbsp;
He wore gray or khaki sweaters mostly and a jacket the same tint. His trousers were in the same shades too, and once in a while, he would spot a colourful shirt -- there was a maroon one with a fading collar. The V of one of his V-neck sweaters had come undone and looked like a Y with a short tail instead and I don’t remember that he ever fixed it.
I do not even remember his full name. But we all understood from a way of understanding caste and religion in South Asia that he was a Hindu, North Indian man who had moved to<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Connecting-dots/Darjeeling-and-the-idea-of-Nepal,944"> Darjeeling</a> for work. We never understood where his family was because he lived on campus.
The Southfield building was known to have once been the summer palace of a Maharaja of Burdwan, and by then had become Rameshwor Bhaiya’s home. He lived in a small room on the ground floor of the building, close to the lift. Sometimes, he would point at the lift and explain how the pulley worked. It had to be pulled by men to move the lift users up and down the two-storey durbar. But as chowkidar, Rameshwor Bhaiya was the sole nighttime occupant of that house.
In the morning, he woke up to the nuisance of monkeys from the Mahakal temple right above Southfield. And the morning would get noisier as the cleaners came in and then the girls and the teacher would start to trickle in, first slowly and then in quick steps and in full numbers as the bell for the first class went off.
My roommate Meenu and I were sincere letter writers. We wrote to parents, to friends, to admirers sometimes. Sometimes, to boys we crushed on. (I mean, I did.) Meenu was always more careful about how she put her feelings out there. But she was the one always doing couriers home. Her mother would send her parathas and achar and ladoo by courier, all the way from Phuentsholing, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/small-bhutan-dreams-big">Bhutan</a>, our midnight snack. So, Meenu maintained a cordial relationship with Rameshwor Bhaiya.
Our hostel was at the Convent in Springfield and we were only allowed outings on weekends, which meant mails had to often wait a whole week until Saturday. On Sundays we couldn’t mail. That was when Rameshwor Bhaiya would come to our rescue. If we needed to send a mail to the post office or courier something on weekdays, we would give it to him and he would make sure it was done. For us, the Indian postal service’s efficiency thrived on Rameshwor Bhaiya’s existence.
When we returned to hostel life from our holidays, some of us would bring little gifts to the staff. I used to bring pustakari from Nepal for Rameshwor Bhaiya. He said once that it hurt his mouth to suck on them but he still enjoyed it. He was more of a connoisseur of paan, but he appreciated the gesture.
The campus was always bustling with staff, but when I think of Rameshwor Bhaiya letters instantly come to mind. There was the post office and the smell of mail and the feeling of rippling open an envelope and thrusting the fingers into it to reveal its content to the self.&nbsp;
Once or twice, I had surprise letters from a secret admirer and I was worried they would be discovered. No, having a boyfriend was not encouraged. In fact, we were often pre-emtively reminded of the student who went on a walk to the mall road with her boyfriend and was gang-raped by strangers, an incident Late Peter J Karthak records in one of his novels.
So, we led sheltered lives. Mama’s girls and Daddy’s girls, all huddled together in classrooms, heads buried in textbooks, but our minds wondering who to borrow the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/14-books-to-read-gift-love-this-valentine-s">next romance novel</a> from. Cloistered, free of the world’s strings, we bubbled with hope for all kinds of things. Mostly, for what our <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/scoring-a-better-future-for-nepals-soccer-girls">future as women</a> in the real world would be like.
And in his own little way, Rameshwor Bhaiya made lives possible for us because he brought us letters, documents, exam results, notices from the University of West Bengal.
“Is there a letter for me, Rameshwor Bahiya?” Sometimes he would joke and say no even if there was one. Usually there was no mail for me at Southfield. But there was always Rameshwor Bhaiya with his postal bag -- the bag of hope.
Suburban Tales is a monthly column in Nepali Times based on real people (with some names changed) in Pratibha’s life.

Pratibha Tuladhar

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The man who came bearing letters

Frangipani always finds me. The first time, they were strewn over my pillows at a Colombo hotel. I had no memory of seeing the<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/when-flowers-become-feed-for-the-livestock"> flowers </a>before and I fell in love with the fragrance, the fleshy petals, generous just so. Then I never saw them again until I started my life in Chiang Mai. I lived in a gated community, where the avenues were lined with frangipani trees. When Mona and P’Champ took me around house hunting, I zeroed in on houses that had frangipani trees. I eventually had to settle for one with a wall of tall strands of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/bardia-s-birds">birds</a> of paradise, instead. But there were frangipani trees the moment I stepped out of my gate lining the roads, meeting me everywhere I went. They felt like friends.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025021609020_59326ead694a156d5c60523aab070983909e0eabae52b46a8d488fb1629434b2.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2025021609020_59326ead694a156d5c60523aab070983909e0eabae52b46a8d488fb1629434b2" data-rendition-name="original" width="960" height="1280" loading="lazy" alt="Frangipani"> </figure>  Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/suburban-tales/we-used-to-be-flowering-trees">We used to be flowering trees</a>, Pratibha Tuladhar In November 2024, they found me in Goa. I showed up in Pilerne, a village in the north of Goa, to spend alone time at my friend V’s stowed away house. The idea was to learn to make peace with myself. And to finish unfinished assignments. I cannot remember where I picked such a habit, but since the time I was a child, I’ve always had to bury myself in solitude. By the time I had grown into a woman, the need had sort of leveled up and found me sitting at cafes buzzing with strangers for hours, and/or holed up in strange hotel rooms so I could just be. One time in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/a-villa-in-thamel">Thamel</a>, the receptionist looked at me searchingly. He was probably not used to girls renting rooms for a day to be on their own. And now, well into my 40s, the question still gets thrown at me. In Goa, at V’s house, the caretakers of Casa Pilerne were curious about me. Why had I chosen to come live in isolation? How did it feel to be the sole resident in a colony of fifteen houses? What did I do for a living? Where had I come from? Where would I go next? On my first day in the village, the housing manager had told me to strictly follow a bunch of rules. Not to leave the house alone after 5PM. Not to loiter in the village alone as feral dogs were likely to gang up on me. Not to wear shorts. No, I did not wear shorts during my walks. Even in Goa heat. And I tried to keep to the 4-5PM walking slot. On my first day, my legs were aching for a long stride and took me further than I had planned, all the way to the nearest highway. The road is scenic, and is a reminder of some scenes from a Bollywood movie Dear Jindagi, lined with coconut trees on both sides, making way for the golden fields.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250216080252_85f64b65f2393d85fb848a851810b642d5b0cf9f8a66cb96fb80bd59ee6b2ac5.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250216080252_85f64b65f2393d85fb848a851810b642d5b0cf9f8a66cb96fb80bd59ee6b2ac5" data-rendition-name="original" width="960" height="1280" loading="lazy" alt="Goa 2"> </figure>  &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250216080252_0ad78340790912dd155ab81c3d529f8a460ad71e27068828f0e5bf175b52cc3b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250216080252_0ad78340790912dd155ab81c3d529f8a460ad71e27068828f0e5bf175b52cc3b" data-rendition-name="original" width="960" height="1280" loading="lazy" alt="Goa 3"> </figure>  I stopped when I saw birds, to listen, took pictures and walked some more. When a car started to follow me, I didn’t realise. Three men in a white car, they rolled down the window and tried to make signs at me and talk to me. I tried not to look at them and I kept walking ahead, my skin crawling and the air suddenly feeling very hot and humid. I walked on until a bus came towards us from the other end, and then a scooter with two boys riding on it yelled and waved at me. Then the car made a U-turn and left. I just walked on. So fast, I didn’t even stop to glance at the man from Rukum, who ran a small convenience store by the road and had earlier sold me a nail-cutter.&nbsp; The feral <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/kathmandu-s-street-smart-dogs">dogs </a>probably caught sense of the fear emanating from my body. And then it happened. Five of them came at me at once! They barked, snarled and surrounded me. And at this point, I just froze and stood very still. The only people in sight, a couple seated at the bus stand, did not leave their seats to come help me. But an elderly man, carrying heavy iron tools, the kind you use to work the roads, showed up and shouted at the dogs. Chal chal! Chalejao! I shouted my loudest. He brandished his tools at them and they dispersed. He told me not to worry and to keep walking. And I walked at the same pace, barely breathing until I reached the casa. I learned that day to bring a stick with me during my walks. It scathed the dog-lover hubris in me to be wielding a stick to protect myself from dogs. But it was the only way. The <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/repairing-rural-roads-nepal-earthquake,3985">village roads</a> were mostly deserted. Every few metres, I was likely to run into a passerby returning from work or school. They would glance at my stick and look away-- I probably became known as the woman who walks with a stick. Pilerne is a lovely old Portuguese settlement with large, sprawling colonial era houses, and frangipani trees everywhere. Most of the old houses have been abandoned as the residents have mostly moved to Portugal, following a fading bloodline. The incidents with men did not end with the car stalkers. I would encounter a young man near a church every evening, playing on his mobile phone, trying to make conversation with me. Then a man would follow me while calling out to me. And a small group of men on motorbikes would park at the same place every evening and watch me. And everytime, I would step up my stick game. I would stop by a big tree outside the colony, to find a better stick. Everytime I needed reassurance, I would wave the stick in the air a little. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/memories-of-a-country-in-transition">Memories of a country in transition</a>, Pratibha Tuladhar In two weeks of walking the same road to and fro five times to keep up with my steps count, I had learned by heart the nooks and corners of the Pilerne road, the colour of the houses, the smell of the trees, the voice of a certain man from Pondicherry who lives in a yellow bungalow with two frangipani trees that bear pink flowers. And I had learned by heart, the smile of the gardener who used to be out tending to the garden with a massive frangipani in the front yard. He became, sort of, my only acquaintance in the village.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025021609020_97320ff0451ed625718c01246ce96cb5fb1613eac2bc9b3d80543acd0f5433be.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="2025021609020_97320ff0451ed625718c01246ce96cb5fb1613eac2bc9b3d80543acd0f5433be" data-rendition-name="original" width="960" height="1280" loading="lazy" alt="Frangipani trees"> </figure>  By the time I was ready to say goodbye to Pilerne, we had started to wave at each other. And I was no longer as terrified of walking in the village.&nbsp; Suburban Tales is a monthly column in Nepali Times based on real people (with some names changed) in Pratibha’s life.

No tips on walking here

“Maybe you are a dragon,” says M.
She wants to know what Mi-malaa in Newa translates to. I say, it is a fire-breathing dragon. And I immediately slide into a ramble about dragons, which is when she says she thinks that I might be a dragon.
I laugh.
…
I am five, sickly, forever dodging all kinds of arrows life darts at me, throwing me into fits of cough that cause asthma. It means I am not as athletic as my cousins or my classmates. I am the youngest in class and the littlest of all cousins. I am the runt of the pack. My oldest cousin sister, whenever it rains, lifts her frock over my head like a broken umbrella.
Stay in bed! I am told that a lot by everyone. Baa brings me Read-it-Yourself Ladybird classics.
One very dry day in March, Yaama, decides I must join the other children for Malaa ja-- the feast of the dragon. Maa is not entirely sure but she helps me put on my pretty pink frock that has a bunch of dolls embroidered to the front. Yaama leads me to the street before the Taleju temple where wicker mats have been spread out and children are seated in rows, like some picnic is underway.
My heart thumps at the sight. I am assigned a spot.
Men and women appear in a file, walking past us, leaving treats, ranging from cookies to cakes to fruits, on the leafy plates set before each one of us. The girl next to me asks me if she can have some of my sweets and I say yes. Drink your juice, she says.
I feel as though I am part of something important, even though I have no appetite.
Yaama brings me home when the feast is over. Maa asks me how it went. I tell her everything. She explains how in the past, it would have been a proper feast of rice and daal and goodies and that the event was a prayer sent out to the dragon to protect the children from itself-- March being a month of storms and strong winds and contagious diseases. Hence, Malaa Ja.
…
Maa has always owned a pendant with a dragon on it. In fact, all her sisters have one, a family tradition of carving the serpentine mythical creature with fins, scales and fire onto little slabs of metal.
While I still had a penchant for jewelry, I used to ask Maa if she would give it to me someday. I would ask her why the pendant has a dragon. “My birthchart warns me against the Malaa. I am supposed to wear the pendant so a dragon can protect me against dragons.”
Whenever it rained, Maa’s elder sister would rush to her rescue with an umbrella and shove her into the house. Stay indoors! She would make her watch the rain from the window. She was not allowed to be outdoors during storms. And so my mother learned to watch the rain from the window and read her books.
And across the sky, she would see the dragons flashing to the background score of thunder, spreading as far as the horizon in its colours, claws, scales and fins-- the sudden outburst of lightning sending shudders through her heart.
…
“On the main entrance of our old home were two massive, colourful dragons. They were beautiful,” Maa recalls. “The house had little attic windows and I would look at the mountains from those windows.”
When they pulled the house down to build a new one, the dragons came off the walls in broken bricks.
Maa has no idea who painted the dragons, but they were a symbol of the great creatures that would protect the house and its dwellers.
…
We have four kinds of dragons, says Deepak Bajracharya Gurju. They are: Mi Malaa, Bajra Malaa, Gongaa Mall, Pa Malaa, each named after their shape and impact.
“A Malaa is truth, but also an illusion,” he says. “It is as elusive as it is omnipresent.” And he shares anecdotes.
In one instance, a Malaa had drowned in a pot of brew and turned to stone. But when the woman who discovered it tried to hold it, the stone quickly transformed into its ethereal form and flew away.
In some instances, Guruju says, when the sky suddenly darkens, rumbles and the lighting strikes, we believe that a Malaa has flown away.
They have been forgotten over the years, he explains, but they are still present in symbols around us. We have seen them carved on to temple struts, to door knobs, painted on walls of old buildings, written by healers on bodies when people fall sick and sometimes inked on the skin. Sometimes, their form stares at us from the ruins of a house struck by lightning.
…
Dragons, Maa says, are representative of who we are as individuals. They are who we aspire to be -- fierce, cold as serpentine scales but bursting with flames that can burn everything to cinders.
She says, there is always that epiphany whenever the Malaa shows across our skies -- the idea of regenerative possibility all humans are. Of how we reinvent and reappear just as dragons do. That was the original hope every parent carried for their children -- that they be like dragons and they protect themselves from other dragons.
Suburban Tales is a monthly column in Nepali Times based on real people (with some names changed) in Pratibha’s life.

We are fire-breathing dragons

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022120710124/6390579b9c7e80680e0ce165jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1480" height="986"/><figcaption>Photo: FREEPIK</figcaption></figure>ChilblainsWinter spills out into my room in the form of jumpers. I happen to call them jumpers. Maa calls them sweaters. Is it because their job is to make you sweat, you once asked me. If so, why are jumpers called jumpers?Maa is always going to insist they are sweaters. Grandmother used to knit them in bright colours and complicated patterns, as though crossing needles all year was a way of mentally preparing for the Kathmandu cold that would arrive at her toes, threatening to bite them off in chilblains.Winters were harsh. Some mornings, she woke up to a layer of ice on top of the water left overnight in the washing tub. She would first crack the ice with a finger and then dip it in slowly, almost afraid.Throughout winter, her toes and fingers would itch from the inflammation caused by exposure to the cold. At night, laying next to her husband, a bunch of babes on the other side, she would turn to him and say: Warm my hands please -- they are prone to chilblains.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/stealing-a-dog/">Stealing a dog</a>, Pratibha TuladharKnitting inSo winter spills out into my room anyway, out of duffle bags and old trunks and the high shelf in the closet. Those are their place all summer. They remain tucked away, their warmth made obsolete by the summer sun. They shy away in different nooks of the house, perhaps sighing and waiting until it's time again.And today is the start of that time.Bring them out and leave them in the sun, Maa says. This should have happened in the month of Gunla, while the sun was still strong. Just at the heels of the monsoon, you know, she says.But Maa, I protest. We lost track of the monsoon this year. Didn’t it rain all the way through Dasain?Right, right.And so today is finally the start of the time. The jumpers are a bunch of colours, ranging from tangerine to black -- a splotch of yellow and blue here and there.Why do you buy so much black? she asks.Do I?And there are three bags of black nylon stockings. Some of them have run ladders from being worn for too many years. Why does a woman need 35 pairs of stockings? Maa likes to speak in hyperbole.I am not sure I need them, actually, I say. I didn’t even buy them. One pair of holey stockings was gifted by Funa last year. But when she was opening the delivery, she accidentally ripped a hole with the scissors into the packet. And so, all of last winter, I walked around in a pair of holey stockings.I don’t know any woman who walks around in torn stockings, you Hippie!Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/memory-of-a-conversation/">Memory of a conversation</a>, Pratibha TuladharWear me outClothing items become worn out when they are worn well. In that wearing out is the residue of the days it has carried our limbs, torso, etcetera. And so they begin to develop holes, collect lint, scrunch up in certain areas where the rate of friction is more frequent.They gather the memory of some wall you were leaning against while you waited for your paperwork to come through in a government office. The loop of wool sticking out of an old jumper is a reminder of how a stray nail gently tugged at you as you stood up to leave your desk one evening to go meet a certain friend.One of my oldest black jumpers has sleeves that hang all the way to my finger tips. In the newsroom, when I worked the late news shift, I would pull them all the way down and roll them in a fist, depositing them on my lap as I watched the late night news, waiting for my turn to get on the air. Gloves and mittens never warmed my hands the same way.Next to me once sat Ram Chandra, asleep on an adjustable office chair, the room heater at his knees slowly eating a hole into his fleece jacket.The almost accident left a charred dark patch on his jacket. Perhaps, if he still owns that jacket he looks at it and thinks of how I might have rescued it by waking him up, instead of sitting next to him gawking at the screen, my nostrils flaring in the air at the hint of something burning.“Not very smart, are you, didi?” Ram Chandra later asked me.Darkness of the streetAgainst an old Kathmandu house, supported by struts, sit three women with their goods spread before them in a molehill. The little hill is made up of fleece items-- colourful trousers, jackets and more trousers and some socks and beanies. Their colours reach you even in the darkness of the alleyway, beckoning at you like winter. But the women do not make an attempt to sell. They merely stare at me, perhaps wondering if I will buy.I have too much winter clothes, I make a mental note.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-light-of-feet/">The light of feet</a>, Pratibha TuladharSun-soakingWhen we were growing up, bringing your winter clothes out during Gunla was a ritual, explains Maa. Kathmandu winter demands that you get prepared in time. So, we used to bring it out and leave it in the sun all day before folding each item carefully and shelving it in cupboards where they were easily within reach as the temperatures started to drop after Tihar.No one has that kind of time now, Maa. Also, we have things hanging in the closet all year now, so what would be the point of having the coming out occasion for clothes?But the pile in my room does seem to be having a coming out per se, as warm colours peek at me. I touch an old cholo belonging to my Ajee, which was passed down to me as her souvenir. Bright red with black flowers, she wore it for many years while Aaja was alive and then it went and sat in a trunk in the store. Like we stock up summer clothes at the start of winter, Ajee’s clothes of colour had all been swiftly stored away when she became a widow. None of them ever saw a Gunla sunny day out. They just stayed there.But today, in my room, the bright red and the dark flowers of the cholo catch the sun.Suburban Tales is a monthly column in Nepali Times based on real people (with some names changed) in Pratibha’s life.Read more:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/memories-of-war/">Vignettes from war</a>, Pratibha Tuladhar

Winter on my skin

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131156/63723b839c7e80680e0c95c9jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683"/><figcaption>Photo: SUMAN NEPALI</figcaption></figure>The thing about Dasain is that I’m never good enough for it.When I was a child, I wasn’t good enough because I was a girl. It meant I could not participate in certain rituals by the virtue of being female.Over the years, I learned to make peace with it. Rituals were not my thing, anyway.One Dasain, after the main practice of sacrificing the gourd, painted as the demon Mahishasur was over, my sister picked the khadga dagger handed down from our Malla ancestors, and started to slice the gourd. It riled the male guardians in the clan. My sister tried to argue that it is after all the goddess who kills the demon, and the goddess is female. Not like her argument would work.After that, the age-old practice of impaling the gourd in our clan met a sudden end — causing our strand of the Tuladhar men to disperse into nuclear family Dasain celebrations.While my childhood memory of Dasain, or Mohni as the Newa people call it, has always been about the Tika big day (this year on Wednesday) when the men came together to perform the violent act against a painted gourd, the festival has changed over the years. Some of those changes are very welcome, including the one that put an end to the simulation of violence performed by certain Buddhist Newa families in Kathmandu.Growing up, I also experienced discrimination shared by some of my cousins, who were not allowed the tika by certain relatives because they were not Buddhist. But wasn’t Dasain a Hindu event in itself? I never understood that. And while I stood on the other side of the line where I was allowed tika, their sense of humiliation for being refused the blessing was mine, too. We were children together.Over the years, I also learned to stage fake periods when I did not want to receive tika. And while isolation during period is something my family has never observed, I still have mood swings the moment I see the tika tray.Lately, they remind me of the Asur people in certain parts of India, who mourn their dead during Dasain. But the tika is also sticky and leaves a mark on my forehead, reminding me that I have the privilege of it because I was born in a certain family.Also, for women, neither having or not having your period during Dasain is a privilege. Either way, it means you spend the festival running household chores or being banished for bleeding. All things become tied to birth eventually—who you were born to, where and how—your gender, your sexual orientation, your religion, your civil status and your social station in life, to mention a few. They make that everything about you. In this case, they is Dasain and Dasain is they.Once upon a time, I worked in a newsroom. The country was declared secular and we stopped calling Dasain the biggest festival celebrated by Nepalis. We started writing: the biggest festival celebrated by Hindus in Nepal. But every other day, one person would change it back. All Nepalis are Hindu by default, he would say. How? I would ask. And he would say: it is just how it is. In my head, I would say: It is just how a newsroom you lead is. Closed to everyone who is not you.Over the years, Dasain has kept finding new ways to defeat me. When it discovered that I am a woman without a man, it naturally relegated me to the lower-station of social life. You need a husband to do certain things in the society that calls me its own. Doesn’t matter that this time of the year is about a woman who rides on a ferocious animal and is independent.I have met Dasain with an entirely new fear recently, because it’s given me fresh reasons for disdain. It tells me I’m not good enough. My hair is greying, and fast. Dasain wants me to discover hair colour. I’m told my cousins who are in their 50s “upstage” me in looks and it is why I will never “find a husband”. I’m also being told I’m too conservative in how I dress and in the topics I like to discuss. And so, I’m too conservative for this festival.It is never going to be good enough for Dasain that I’ve learned to play kitty to entertain my nonagenarian grandfather. Not good enough, that I let the spindle reel against my thumb, flying a kite with my nephews and my brothers.Dasain is often a reminder that singlehood is not even a concept available to one and that we must make the choice of finding a partner. It doesn’t matter that the partner might have been someone who slammed the door on your face or held you to the ground by your hair, or spent his entire time watching pornography on his phone while you sat up in bed wondering. But you must have a partner because that’s what is acceptable to Dasain.I’m never going to be good for Dasain. And that, is just fine.Suburban Tales is a monthly column in Nepali Times based on real people (with some names changed) in Pratibha’s life.

Reasons for disdain at Dasain

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720c889c7e80680e0b7875jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1053" height="1012"/><figcaption>Photo: PRATIBHA TULADHAR</figcaption></figure>On nights when things got unbearable, Laxmi Maya always stepped out of the house in the quiet of the night. There was nowhere to go, really, but the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=7121#.YiRUsy8w3u0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">gully</a>. The gully or galli, as she said it, was the long tunnel that went from under the house on the main street into a courtyard where one of the four houses flanking the square, brick-paved space, was hers. Her husband’s family’s rather.The bickering over the house had gone on for so long. Every few weeks, government officials showed up at her threshold, and asked her innumerable questions. Where was the infamous husband? “I don’t know,” was Laxmi Maya’s consistent answer.As time went by, she had learned to say those words without at all batting an eyelid. And as she said it on repeat, the words became more believable to the government officials, as they did to her. She had started to believe she had no idea about his whereabouts.In her mind, Calcutta was a distant country of which she did not know anything. She did not know what its streets or nooks looked like or how the tram she had heard about operated. And so knowing that her husband was in Calcutta was tantamount to not knowing where he was. So, her statement was not entirely false.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/coping-with-the-patriarchy/">Coping with patriarchy</a>, Bhumi GhimiréThe government officials always appeared in a pair. Laxmi Maya would hurry upstairs to her baiga after asking them to sit down on the wicker mats and quickly poach two eggs and pour a dash of aeila into little copper kholas and present them before the men.“So you do not know where your husband is?” one of them would ask between taking a sip.“I don’t,” she would say quietly.“We are only letting you live in this house because you have three small children. By law, he is banished and so everything he owns is now government property, we hope you know.”“I know, Sarkar. But this house was given to me in dowry by my father,” Laxmi Maya would lie again. It had become a drill.Promptly, the officers would leave after polishing off their snack, setting in motion for Laxmi Maya, the wait for another such visit.Did she miss the husband? She could not say. His presence had been punctuated by his time spent with the dancers, or neighbourhood events from where he always came away as the feared. What was there to miss of such a man, besides moments of imagined intimacy when his limbs were hers to hold? She wondered, had she been a dancer, would it also have kept him from straying? Yes, they said he had strayed.Read also: <a style="font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepals-unequal-marriages/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepal's unequal marriages</a>, Anjana RajbhandaryBut the women in her clan did not dance. They had not been taught to. Dancing, they said, was for women who were “loose”. They had taught her to speak softly, tread softer and to hold her tongue and restrict her movements to grace. That was who she was-- all those things they said she should be.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101136/63720c8a9c7e80680e0b7876jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="126" height="150">Standing in the darkness of the galli, Laxmi Maya often felt streams of hot tears soak her face. She had never learned to cry before others, so the quiet of the night was a good time. On one such night, she had seen rows of carriages go by, carrying large boxes. They were followed by rumours that the Ranas were getting their belongings removed to India because some kind of revolution was afoot to throw them off. They said that was why the king had left for India.Tonight, though, there was no such activity. It was quiet. As Laxmi Maya stood there, tears finding their way down her jaw, she thought she saw a light flicker near the Naradevi temple. It was followed by the clanking of a door and then of ghangala, the bunch of bells worn by the goddess. Wafting in with the sound was the goddess herself, stepping out of her temple, draped in a long red frock, a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/getting-behind-the-divine-mask/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mask</a> on her face. As the deity started doing the familiar dance, lilting her hands in the air, feet shuffling, Laxmi Maya froze, but her tears ran down in thick rivulets. She stared in awe and trembled.…“The wedding was fun?”“The ratyauli was fun.”“The what?”“Yes. Ratyauli. I had heard about it but never seen one before,” says Mamu.I ask her to explain, but she says she cannot because it would embarrass us both. She will not divulge any detail, but tells me how she felt a tinge of envy that <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/parodying-patriarchy-at-tij/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">women had the liberty</a> to engage in that kind of lewd talk without being judged while singing and dancing and acting.Read also: <a style="font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/boys-will-be-boys-is-never-an-excuse/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Boys will be boys is never an excuse</a>, Anjana Rajbhandary“How come women in our community don’t dance?” I ask.“We have the gods and the goddess, the masked dancers,” she says.“But they are all men wearing masks,” I remind her. Then Mamu goes on to explain how apart from the Jyapu community, women from other clans had never been given that kind of freedom.“Don’t you think that is so unfair? Taking the right from you to revel, to be in tune with your own body. When else do you explore the joy of being in your body as you do with dancing? It is so much to take away from a woman.”“I don’t know, I never thought about it. My movements don’t sync and so I don’t dance.”Mamu often sits in a corner watching others dance. When asked to dance, she will sometimes try, but her footwork never matches her hand gestures or the music: “I guess, I just watch people dance.”Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/patriarchy-in-an-oligarchy/">Patriarchy in an oligarchy</a>, Editorial…Dance! My senior, who is having a “ragging” session with me, orders. Do the twist, she says, and sings a Rafi number. What is a twist, I wonder. She says, if you do not obey your seniors, you measure the entire campus with a one rupee coin. In my heart, I wished I could just dance and get over it. But I can’t. Like Mamu, my feet are wooden, too. I just stand there, my face burning in shame and fury.Here, she says. Take this coin and now go measure the entire place with it.As I bend down at her feet and place the coin on the ground, I wish I could have told her I cannot dance because women in my community <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/letter-to-a-nepali-aunty/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">are not expected to dance</a>. But saying that, would also require a dance-- of the tongue. So, I bend down and start flipping the coin inch by inch across the campus.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/anger-management-for-nepali-women/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Feel angry? read this</a>, Anjana RajbhandarySuburban Tales is a monthly column in Nepali Times based on real people (with some names changed) in Pratibha’s life.

The light of feet

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111128/636cd2c49c7e80680e08f931jpeg.jpg" alt="girl with an asthma inhaler" width="1280" height="720"/><figcaption>Photo: ScienceMag.org</figcaption></figure>My aunt would lie on her side on raised pillows, wheezing. She would speak between coughing and wheeze some more. Then she would pull out— what I considered a toy as a child— an inhaler, clamp it in her mouth and press, then suck in for a while before repeating. She would fall asleep when the wheezing eased.I would soon learn her toy was actually an asthalin inhaler for asthma patients. And in the years that followed, I would soon be using them.As a school girl, my bag had a pile of books like most children going to mediocre private schools in Kathmandu do. Nestled between them, always, was the inhaler, reading “salbutamol” on its label. I was likely to forget my lunch box some days, but never my inhaler.My memory of how I first experienced an asthma attack is feeble. But I remember hearing the same wheezing sounds my aunt used to make, from inside me and thinking: okay, so this is what it was. My chest would feel tight, as though it was contracting to squeeze the breath out of me. And I would feel like my nose had stopped breathing in the air.A puff, and I would slowly relax and go to sleep— incomplete homeworks giving me nightmares.During Games classes, I mostly stood under the trees watching other children play. Running around left me quickly out of breath. But not being a participant in the sports my friends played, also made me feel left out. It gradually shaped my personality as a ‘loner’, pushing me into a place of introversion.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111128/636cd2c79c7e80680e08f932jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2010" height="2635"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>As a teenager, when I was studying in Darjeeling, India, the attacks suddenly stopped. It felt like a miracle, but mostly like my lungs had finally been set free. I would walk up and down the hills with classmates, or alone, breathing in the pine trees, and the moist air that carried nothing of the hydrangeas, azaleas or orchids, but pure rain. I lived.But the one time we went down to Calcutta for a mock-parliament event, my lungs were clogged again. I felt a heaviness I had not missed. Only, it was worse than the feeling I had experienced in Kathmandu. I longed for the Darjeeling sky.My trajectory as an asthmatic child was shared by my sister. But as someone who has mostly lived in Kathmandu, she graduated from asthalin to rotohalers and occasional nebulizers. As a working woman who rides around on her scooter through Kathmandu smog most days now, she is constantly coughing and wheezing. They have become a part of her countenance. What has it done to her lungs? I dread I will have to find out.I read somewhere that our lungs grow to their best extent when we are children and much of our adult life depends on how much they expand in the first few years of development. At five, my nephew is already experiencing breathing difficulties. I cringe when I think of the possibility of him having to experience a childhood that is shackled by breathlessness, as the Air Quality Index constantly hovers close to 200.Every time I read the index, I happen to think of my late grandmother, another asthmatic in the family. She would climb up the stairs slowly to get to the kitchen on the fourth floor and collapse at the landing every single time, sitting there for a long while to catch her breath before saying a word. In the last years of her life, she needed a constant supply of oxygen, blown into her nostrils through a thin pipe that she wore like a halter around her face. It left a permanent dent on her cheeks.I recall her sitting still on her bed, moving as little as possible, because movement would leave her out of breath. When she passed away exactly ten years ago, Kathmandu air was still not as terrible as it has now become. There were still mornings when we would still wake up to the mountains. Now, we wake up to haze almost all the days.My aunt, who goes on morning kora around Boudha Stupa every morning tells me there is always a layer of thick black particles on her jacket when she comes back from the perambulation. It has become the new normal. And she tells me, “Maa would not have survived the dust that Kathmandu has become. It’s a good thing she didn’t live to see what we have come to.”

Into thick air

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111120/636cd1129c7e80680e08f892jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1125" height="1500"/><figcaption>Photo: PRATIBHA TULADHAR</figcaption></figure>Her hair is up in a pony tail some days. Some days, she wears it in pigtails. I rarely get to see her face up-close, but watching her from my balcony I can tell that she is mostly laughing. Her eyes, if not her throat. She is called Jyoti.I have known Jyoti for less than a year.When we moved to Kathmandu’s suburbia, we came to a place packed with three-storey houses that had quickly replaced paddy fields. All houses here look similar. Each is two and a half-storey, mostly built on chaar-aana lands, with pointy rooftops, popularly known as ‘namaste’ in the local construction lingo.The only thing that gives the houses some character is their colour. They come in the brightest hues you can imagine—from parrot green to fuchsia. This is the post-civil-war, new Kathmandu —stretching in whichever direction it can, both horizontally and vertically.Even with <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-year-of-living-dangerously/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the lockdown</a>, new houses kept cropping up in our neighbourhood. They went up overnight, sometimes. Jyoti’s father is one of the realtors in the area. His job is to slice the fields into little plots, and find buyers for them.Another of his jobs is to make sure Jyoti doesn’t go out to play with the neighbourhood boys. But the kids show up anyway, and often I overhear conversations like this one:“Jyoti! Jyoti!”“What do you want?” Jyoti’s father puts his torso out the window and shouts at the boys standing below his window.“We want to go play. With Jyoti,” they say.“She isn’t here. Go away!”“We want to play with her.”“She isn’t here,” he tells the kids.“Where is she?”“She’s gone to the temple.”“I know! I know!” says one of the boys. “It’s some festival today when all women go to the temple. Let’s go there and find her.”“No need to go there. Go home!” The father shouts.“I’m going to start fasting, too. Next year onwards,” shouts the first boy.“How old are you?” asks the father.“Nine. And he’s seven,” he says, pointing at the boy in his tow.“And who told you that you would have to start fasting? Fasting is for women,” says Jyoti’s father.“I know. But boys could do it as well. I am going to start fasting next year,” says the nine-year-old. They race off on their bikes.Jyoti returns. She’s dressed in a red kurti and walks alongside her mother, who has donned a red sari. Just like the other women in the neighbourhood. She follows her mother obediently inside the gate and disappears..…“Jyoti! Jyoti!”“I told you boys to go away. She won’t be playing with you all anymore. Badmasharu!”“Okay, we will come back for her later.”….Jyoti tries to wrench a pole from the roadside, employing all her strength.“No!” the boy screams. “That pole is to keep the electricity wires from sagging. They’ll kill us.”“Okay, but we need to find two poles to build us a badminton court,” says Jyoti. And they disappear in the neighbourhood, returning after a few hours with two poles, Jyoti dragging one of them.….“We need to build a kennel for the puppy. I shall get him a box from my house. It will be your job to dig up space, so we can build him a kennel,” says Jyoti.The <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/woof-of-fresh-air-for-street-dogs-in-kathmandu,4132" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">puppy</a>, barely a few weeks old, cuddles in the warmth of Jyoti’s arms. Other children wait their turn to hold the puppy. When Jyoti’s hands tire, she hands the puppy to other children.By the end of the day, a cardboard kennel has been built. One of the boys has brought a piece of foam to serve as the mattress.“We will call this one Bruno,” announces Jyoti. No one contests it.Bruno also has a bowl for milk now. They put him in the cardboard box and leave him in the open space in front of Jyoti’s house, before parting to return to their respective homes.….Bruno has gone missing.The children confirm from some people in the neighbourhood that a woman was seen dragging the puppy towards the wasteland. The day is spent in search, but Bruno is nowhere to be found.Next day, Jyoti deploys her team in different directions. They speed off on their bicycles. Some walk, interrogating random people in the village about Bruno. No one seems to have an idea.On the third day, Jyoti and team interrogate the adult community dogs.“Blink twice if you’ve seen Bruno,” orders Jyoti.“Blink once if he went left. Blink thrice if he went right. DO NOT blink if you haven’t seen him.”But the adult dogs stare at Jyoti and team, huff a little and lie down on the badminton court, turning their backs towards the sun.….Jyoti is sitting in front of her house with Mahi. They are sitting close and talking in whispers. When they walk by my house, I see that Jyoti is holding a kitten, wrapped in a scarf.“You adopted a kitten,” I say.“Yes,” she smiles. Then she asks, “You cut your hair?”“Yes, I cut my own hair,” I say.“It looks nice. I like it,” she says, smiles and then walks away with the kitten snuggled in her arms.….Jyoti is wearing a loose top and her hair is up in a pony like one of those girls from <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/k-pop-in-k-town/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Korean dramas</a>. She clings to her mother, who stands on the terrace, talking to a neighbour. She has not been allowed to leave the house for days. Neighbourhood kids show up asking for her and then leave, disappointed.“Bring your bicycle up to the terrace and keep it there now. You’re a big girl. You can’t be riding around when you have your <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/that-time-of-the-month/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">periods</a>,” I hear Jyoti’s mother tell her.Jyoti drags her bike up to the terrace, leans it against the kitchen wall, then grabs it and sits on it, astride.Suburban Tales is a monthly column in Nepali Times based on real people (with some names changed) in Pratibha’s life.

Welcome to suburbia

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

The Last Days of the Khampa

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

Turkish to Seville

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

Digital protection for Nepal’s art

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/prabalgurung/" target="_blank">Prabal Gurung</a> left Nepal for New York in 1999 to escape years of bullying, sexism and homophobia, and to pursue his dream of becoming a fashion designer. He <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqN0VaoAI5w" target="_blank">realised his dream</a>, but did not escape discrimination and racism in the new world. Propelled by passion for fashion, Gurung overcame everything America threw at him. He has attained <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/prabal-gurung-recalls-his-first-met-gala-when-zoe-saldana-was-at-his-side?srsltid=AfmBOooy-H0oGgxMit864FnW_Pmw8mUnV8rYrh-co-f6OyYK6m2ip5hP" target="_blank">fame and recognition</a> for his haute couture dress designs while remaining true to his Nepali roots, and is even more resolute in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSmNauyzACk" target="_blank">fighting prejudice</a> in all its forms. Prabal Gurung’s newly-released memoir <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Walk-Like-Girl-Memoir/dp/B0DG11HCDQ?fbclid=IwY2xjawKZfpxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHuZcIJO2OXyXcRm1oq1iG6wzeoF7VJFrQ7GXOFI0YxuZZ4id_CNvSZSZZIna_aem_pG_mOKG73RTnYvN8JaC4fA">Walk Like a Girl</a> is a saga of harrowing abuse in boarding schools in Nepal and India, only finding himself facing a different kind of bullying in the US. He prevails over it all to be where he is today: an award-winning American fashion designer with his own label. Walk Like a Girl was launched last week in New York at a time when everything Gurung fought for — tolerance, inclusion and diversity — are in retreat in his adopted country because of a president who has espoused a culture of bullying. The book is a searing, raw exposé of how cruel and abusive people can be even at a young age in school. On the other hand, it also shows that there are generous, compassionate and open-minded souls out there. In his book, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4le_uWX7YE">Prabal Gurung</a> calls out those who tormented and tried to hold him back (some of their names have been altered). The moral of his story is: resist, never stop believing in yourself, do not let others define you, never lose sight of your dream, and help those who have been kept out. “Walk like a girl” was a slur used by bullies back in school in Nepal and India for Gurung’s effeminate ways. He fought back then, and he is still resisting by turning those words into something to be proud of.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519170544_4ffc9c3f565dd2cfa754d10b224816897b82bb31ebaee91b6d79d469fc96f14e.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250519170544_4ffc9c3f565dd2cfa754d10b224816897b82bb31ebaee91b6d79d469fc96f14e" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1253" loading="lazy" alt="Prabal Gurung NT"> <figcaption>Prabal Gurung at home in Kathmandu in the 1990s.</figcaption> </figure>  “Living through it all was one thing, but writing about it is one of the hardest things I have done in my life,” admitted Gurung during the launch. “I broke down constantly during the six-year writing process.” He continues: “I did not want this to be a victim’s book. I did not want to burden my readers with my emotions. I wanted my struggle to be an inspiration for others facing what I faced. I am grateful to those who bullied me in school, they made me a stronger person ready to face the world.” Indeed, this book is a departure from his earlier one titled simply, Prabal Gurung (Abrams, 2019), which was a lush pictorial autobiography of his career in fashion. Walk Like a Girl is not a typical fashion book, it is an intimate tale of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=16997">Gurung’s travails and triumphs</a>, and how he willed himself to succeed. Prabal pays a lavish tribute to his mother Durga Rana. We find out she is a descendant of the first wife of the eldest son of Jang Bahadur Rana who was banished to Palpa in the late 19th century. Prabal’s father served in the Singapore Police and that is where he was born before the family returned to Nepal when he was four. Gurung relates with brutal honesty about the violence his mother endured from his father. Durga raises three children as a single mother in Nepal, and Prabal credits her for his fierce determination to resist patriarchy and injustice, which in time manifests itself in his hyper-feminine and subversive dress designs. Writing the book has been a cathartic experience for Gurung, who says he is now relieved of the burdens of his past. It no longer haunts him, and he does not have to prove anything to anyone anymore. Walk Like a Girl has life lessons not just for the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DJmOcSgxdWz/" target="_blank">fashion industry</a>, but for every other profession. How can my job serve a greater cause? Gurung tells us his work is <a href="https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/why-designer-prabal-gurung-doesnt-want-just-stick-fashion" target="_blank">bigger than just making clothes</a>, it is about making the world a better place because it could do with a lot of improvement.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519170544_d75296ad8bfdc00d88935f40d23543c6fea3d4d6a10e61a99d6cfc6127f2ee5b.png" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20250519170544_d75296ad8bfdc00d88935f40d23543c6fea3d4d6a10e61a99d6cfc6127f2ee5b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1516" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Prabal Gurung"> </figure>  This story of chasing the American dream may sound familiar to many immigrants: knocking on doors for jobs, rejections, trying to survive from day to day on expensive rent, and dealing with subtle racism in white America. Gurung finds racism is rife, and he is often mockingly called ‘gaysian’. He writes: ‘There was a strong hypocrisy — this idea of independence felt like a marketting ruse … and for all the talk of feminism in America, these high society women were trapped by the patriarchy just like in Nepal and India.’ After a trek to the Khumbu region in 2013, Gurung is inspired to use the colours, palette and textures of Nepal for his collection exhibited on Manhattan’s 8th Avenue. A major buyer tells him bluntly: “Stick to making pretty dresses … if I need to see a collection like this, I could buy a copy of National Geographic.” The New York Times was equally dismissive: ‘The designer tries to draw connections between blistered techo-fabric used to construct it and the topography of his homeland, Nepal. But, at the moment, he has lost his map.’ One potential investor tells Gurung he cannot design for Americana because “you do not look American”. Gurung wants to use expletives, but restrains himself. After a fundraiser in New York for the Nepal earthquake in 2015, some belittled his effort, saying: “Here comes the saviour."&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/prabal-gurung-by-prabal-gurung">Prabal Gurung by Prabal Gurung</a>, Kunda Dixit The Gurkha DNA must be dominant in Prabal Gurung’s genes because he does not take such mistreatment lying down. When asked by a fashion publicist why he was designing clothes for fat people, he snaps back: “Because of people like you.” He joins the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, launches the Shikshya Foundation charity in Nepal, and has powerful allies among celebrities who wear clothes he designed: Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Sara Jessica Parker, Kamala Harris, Deepika Padukone … it is a long list.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519150556_48a5f4211991a23fa85b64bbd5377575ca7081d97309d7542035591dda5180fe.png" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250519150556_48a5f4211991a23fa85b64bbd5377575ca7081d97309d7542035591dda5180fe" data-rendition-name="original" width="1114" height="1534" loading="lazy" alt="Being Prabal Gurung by design"> <figcaption>Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wearing Atelier Prabal Gurung’s design for Met Gala 2025 in which the theme was ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’. </figcaption> </figure>  “I don’t dress women to look beautiful, they already are,” Gurung says. “I try to bring out their innate strength and grace.” <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17908766880140171/" target="_blank">Admirers</a> tell Gurung he makes it all look so easy, but he used to put up a strong facade to not show his own vulnerabilities in public. “I was closed because of my childhood experiences,” he says. “I was always on guard to defend myself because I never knew where the next punch would come from.” But in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPVepzPA210" target="_blank">Walk Like a Girl,</a> Gurung comes to terms with his vulnerability, and bares his soul. It has not been easy, it took sustained will power and support from his mother, sister Kumudini and a circle of close friends. “I made unbelonging my power,” he says. “Nepal is where I still have my heart and soul. Nepal grounds you. It is where people go to find themselves. But I escaped.” Recently appointed vice-chair of the <a href="https://cfda.com/about-cfda" target="_blank">Council of American Fashion Designers</a>, Gurung says: “I can’t believe I am here, it feels like it is happening to someone else. Writing this book, the healing has finally begun.” <h2>‘Everything is better in color’</h2> The Met Gala was two weeks later, and my table was an example of everything I’d been fighting for all these years as my guests represented everything I believed in: dynamic, powerful, influential women who were unapologetically original and unabashedly graceful. I was grateful to Anna for inviting me to host and dress a table that reflected my ethos—and for her guidance in doing so. I was also aware of the privilege as one of the first-­ever Asian fashion designers—not just from Nepal, but from the entire continent— to get the opportunity to do so. That fact was not lost on me. I reached out beyond the expected Hollywood celebrities and well-­known socialites to curate a table of exceptional women who inspired me. I invited Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt for their first-­ever Met Galas, as well as Michelle Yeoh, Mindy Kaling, Camila Cabello, Ashley Park, Denée Benton, KiKi Layne, Quannah Chasinghorse, and Grace Elizabeth. Together we checked many boxes: Asian, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous, each woman undeniably chic and powerful, a dazzling array of skin tones and experiences that proved my decades‑in‑the-­making hypothesis: everything is better in color. Excerpt from Walk Like a Girl Viking © 2025 by Prabal Gurung  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519170520_6b91d560e9f072c37d16876901058c073a51ffa05e7ad1b9461d19e1c9c28215.jpg" data-media-id="editor_16" data-image-id="20250519170520_6b91d560e9f072c37d16876901058c073a51ffa05e7ad1b9461d19e1c9c28215" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Prabal Gurung book details NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519170520_345240c21be400e2ce2ec629b52bd82bb53890e5bd86fe95b48340d84b5f1748.jpg" data-media-id="editor_17" data-image-id="20250519170520_345240c21be400e2ce2ec629b52bd82bb53890e5bd86fe95b48340d84b5f1748" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Prabal Gurung book details NT"> </figure>  &nbsp;