<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181148/636be8299c7e80680e087842jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2405" height="1604"/><figcaption>All photos: MONIKA DEUPALA</figcaption></figure>Traditionally, the average lifespan of a Nepali used to be 40-45. Child mortality rate was high, and very few people lived to a ripe old age.Which meant that living long was a cause for celebration in the family, clan and community. People in Kathmandu Valley's Newa community celebrate 'Janko' or 'Buda Pasni' at milestones of 77, 82, 88, 99 and 105 years.Look at it like a birthday, but is performed every decade or so after a person crosses 77. In case of couples, the Janko is performed according to the husband's age. For a single person, the date of birth and birth charts are consulted.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWfPedYI9Nk&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;fbclid=IwAR10NOtHZJuTaE5G5KhforoSFRPhTDA6f_-UED6-W5mG8UnXujuDUajACMkThe first Janku known as Bhim Ratharohan is performed when a person is 77 years, 7 months and 7 days old. The grandchildren pull the chariots and the family tours the city and temple amidst much fanfare.The second is Chandra Ratharohan performed at 82 years, 4 months and 4 days. Dev Ratharohan is the third Janko at 88 years, 8 months and 8 days. Divya Ratharohan at 99 years, 9 months and 9 days and the last one when a person reaches 105 years, 8 months and 8 days.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181148/636be82c9c7e80680e087843jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4096" height="2730"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181148/636be8309c7e80680e087844jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2520" height="1680"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181148/636be8339c7e80680e087845jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4096" height="2730"><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181148/636be8379c7e80680e087846jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4096" height="2730"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>As people live longer, the processions in which elderly citizens are paraded around town have become more and more common. Photographs from a Jankothis week of Bishnu Bhakta Deupala and Jas Maya Deupala, who are celebrating 77 years, 7 months and 7 days.

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Long live tradition

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191116/636bef224b0ad905ca02ef8bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2405" height="1604"/><figcaption>All photos: MONIKA DEUPALA</figcaption></figure>Traditionally, the average lifespan of a Nepali used to be 40-45. Child mortality rate was high, and very few people lived to a ripe old age.Which meant that living long was a cause for celebration in the family, clan and community. People in Kathmandu Valley's Newa community celebrate 'Janko' or 'Buda Pasni' at milestones of 77, 82, 88, 99 and 105 years.Look at it like a birthday, but is performed every decade or so after a person crosses 77. In case of couples, the Janko is performed according to the husband's age. For a single person, the date of birth and birth charts are consulted.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWfPedYI9Nk&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;fbclid=IwAR10NOtHZJuTaE5G5KhforoSFRPhTDA6f_-UED6-W5mG8UnXujuDUajACMkThe first Janku known as Bhim Ratharohan is performed when a person is 77 years, 7 months and 7 days old. The grandchildren pull the chariots and the family tours the city and temple amidst much fanfare.The second is Chandra Ratharohan performed at 82 years, 4 months and 4 days. Dev Ratharohan is the third Janko at 88 years, 8 months and 8 days. Divya Ratharohan at 99 years, 9 months and 9 days and the last one when a person reaches 105 years, 8 months and 8 days.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191116/636bef254b0ad905ca02ef8cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4096" height="2730"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191116/636bef284b0ad905ca02ef8djpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2520" height="1680"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191116/636bef2b4b0ad905ca02ef8ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4096" height="2730"><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191116/636bef2f4b0ad905ca02ef8fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4096" height="2730"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>As people live longer, the processions in which elderly citizens are paraded around town have become more and more common. Photographs from a Jankothis week of Bishnu Bhakta Deupala and Jas Maya Deupala, who are celebrating 77 years, 7 months and 7 days.

Monika Deupala

<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108181148/636a96999c7e80680e05dc75jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="875"/>Many of the everyday items Nepalis traditionally used in their homes are going or gone. So have the words that described them. Plastic buckets have replaced brass gagro. Linoleum floors have taken the place of sukul straw mats.Most young Nepalis do not know what petaro, sakari, chulesi, dalo, doko, theki, dhiki, dheri, kolhu, sandook or mandro mean. Nepali words that described many of these objects are now extinct. Tharu words for utensils, Gurung vocabulary for household furniture and Rai or Limbu terms for farm equipment are all endangered.Judith Conant Chase has been in Nepal for nearly 50 years, and has made it her life’s work to collect and preserve many of these traditional objects. In 2012, she set up the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Return-of-the-past,907" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Living Traditions Museum at the Amatya Sattal in the Changu Narayan</a> complex to house her collection, so it could be seen by as many Nepalis as possible. By preserving the objects she has also saved the Nepali words for them.When the earthquake struck on 25 April 2015, Kathmandu Valley’s oldest monument zone was badly damaged. Some of the 1,300-year-old Licchavi era temples went down, the museum was damaged, but the exhibits were intact (including the Tharu clay pot hanging from the rafters in the photo, right). The structure has now been rebuilt, and Chase is trying to have the museum reopened in the new year.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108181148/636a969b9c7e80680e05dc76jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="803" height="516">Travelling across Nepal in the 1970s, Chase admired the simplicity of people’s lives, their cheerfulness despite hardships, and the everyday handmade objects they used around the house — like the umbrella that Gurung villagers in Bhujung wove from nigalo strips and leaves, which Chase found ingenious because it also kept a farmer’s back dry while bending over to tend the fields.Maithili jewellery fascinated her, especially the sculpted silver bracelets that had strips joined into a ripple pattern. Over decades of being worn during work, the metal was weathered and polished into a shiny metallic brilliance. Doko baskets are perfectly crafted through a technique handed down from generation to generation of Gurung families, as are the felted carpets and capes of villagers in Ghandruk, and in Kathmandu the intricately carved bapa, used as a shrine in Newa homes. Another example, from Humla, was the colourful Nyinba woollen greatcoat, worn once a year during festivals (pictured overleaf).All these <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/art-of-everyday-living/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">items, lovingly preserved</a>, will be returned to their cubicles and exhibit cases once the Living Traditions Museum reopens. Chase’s book, Living Traditions of Nepal: The Beauty of Purposeful Living, is an encyclopaedic guide to the artefacts, and more.The voluminous 440-page, coffee table book is superbly illustrated and designed, and divided into sections representing the Himal, Midhills, Tarai and Kathmandu Valley. The text is arranged like extended captions, and interspersed with extracts from Chase’s journal of four decades ago.Chase decided to use her journal entries because the words recorded her feelings more accurately at the time, making the memories so much more real.One such extract, after seeing a sadhu at Pashupati on Shivaratri: ‘I feel invigorated, intoxicated, inspired, as if being in love. There is a whole way of being in the world that I had only sensed dimly… There is a feeling of a secret that everyone else knows that I am just beginning to glimpse, frustrating and enticing together.’She marvels at the ‘hanging life support system’ of Tharu homes, where food and storage items dangle from the ceiling, where protective smoke of the central fire preserved and cured stored food items. This was technology developed over centuries ‘out of a particular set of natural resource and household needs’.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108181148/636a969e9c7e80680e05dc77jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="308" height="400">‘The lives of the Nepali people and their art objects are elegant, inspired, vigorous, humorous, vibrant, romantic, sometimes even a bit wild,’ writes Chase. ‘They are woven, hammered, carved, turned, painted out of the hand of artists, both household and professional.’<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108181148/636a969f9c7e80680e05dc78jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="312" height="300">The Beauty of Purposeful Living: Living Traditions of Nepalby Judith Conant Chase<a href="https://serindia.com/products/the-beauty-of-purposeful-living-living-traditions-of-nepal-by-judith-conant-chase" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Serindia Publications (July, 2019)</a>Hardcover: 440 pages, $100ISBN: 978-1932476-90-3<h2>A life in the most precious place on earth</h2><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108181148/636a96a09c7e80680e05dc79jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1125">Judith Conant Chase still remembers flying into Kathmandu in October of 1974, looking out of the window at the wrinkled terraces of rice fields, forested hills and the snowy mountains beyond, and telling herself: “This is the place.”The American had come to Nepal to try to climb a mountain in the Langtang Valley, and 45 years later she is still here. Along the way, she has done pioneering work to document Nepal’s crafts, joined an ashram, started an organic agriculture movement, collaborated on a project to market ceramic products and started a museum.“Nepal was so casual, and of the earth. It connected to nature in so many ways in the puja and the way people worshipped,” recalls Chase, who resonated with  the Hindu mantra ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ — truth is God, and God is beauty.She travelled across Nepal, and while many foreigners at the time marvelled at the scenery outside, Chase was drawn to the interior of people’s homes and the everyday objects they used: wooden storage bins, straw mats, bamboo baskets, clay vessels, metal craft.Chase never rushed through the countryside. She lingered and learnt from families she stayed with, collecting beautiful objects and understanding their traditional use and significance. She kept a journal, knowing that one day she would want to write a book and perhaps set up a museum.Read Also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/art-of-everyday-living/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Art of everyday living</a>, Reeti K.C.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108181148/636a96a39c7e80680e05dc7ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="427">Both the museum and the book have happened. The Beauty of Purposeful Living and the Living Traditions Museum in Changu Narayan complement each other. The museum was badly damaged in the 2015 earthquake (left), has been rebuilt, and nearly five years later it is to reopen.“It was so impressive to me that there were no roads, and yet people were so capable, so self-sufficient,” Chase recalls of her travels through Nepal in the 1970s.Chase met and married <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Jim-Danisch-and-Barbara-Adams%20-passed-away-this-month,3007" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jim Danisch </a>in a Hindu ashram in Banepa in 1984. Danisch worked on a ceramics promotion project in Thimi for the German agency, GTZ, training locals to make glazed pottery and developing a new type of kiln. The two went back to California to set up a pottery business, but soon found they were getting too old to chop firewood and cut grass, so one day Judith told Jim: “Let’s go home.”They returned to Nepal, where they worked on a farm in Kavre, and put together the Living Traditions Museum (See review, opposite.) After Jim died in 2016 in Dhulikhel, Judith continued working on her book and rebuilding the museum. All the while, the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=18931#.Xck2mNIza70" target="_blank" rel="noopener">organic farm in Kavre </a>demanded a lot of her time — helping villagers with pesticide and chemical-fertiliser free agriculture, preserving traditional seeds and the biodiversity of the forests.“Nepal in the monsoon is just so intoxicating. There is all this variety of words in Nepali for different types of rain, and the vegetation is so lush because of the warmth and moisture — there is extraordinary growth, which you do not have in a temperate climate,” explains Chase.In an experiment, she set aside a 1 sq m test plot in Kavre to study and classify every kind of plant that grew in it. There were 27 types, but she could identify only 18 of them. Chase thinks Nepal’s soil and fertility is so rich that artificial fertilisers are not needed — all the nutrients are already in the soil.Does it not pain her to see Nepalis not valuing nature, and the farms of Kathmandu Valley being replaced by urban sprawl? “It is not just Nepal, it is happening all over the world,” she says. “It is not exceptional, but it is tragic. Much is gone, but the vibrant traditions continue. Kathmandu Valley is one of the most precious places on earth.”

Kunda Dixit

The art of living

This is the 81st episode of Diaspora Diaries, a Nepali Times series in collaboration with Migration Lab providing a platform to share experiences of living, working and studying abroad. I went to Australia in 2008 because everyone was headed there. It was my first time leaving the country and my first job. My college helped me find work as a kitchen helper at a Brisbane restaurant.&nbsp; I did not know that being a kitchen helper meant washing dishes. I was young and did not know how to wash dishes or how to handle the steam, the hot water, and the busy kitchen. The utensils were thrown at the dishwashing station continuously, and water splashed on my face. My shoes and clothes were always wet. It was an on-call job. A couple of days into the job, I was asked to come in when I was at the movies. I refused. They fired me. That was that. I then worked on a farm, picking lemons and oranges. The lemon work was particularly hard because I would get cuts all over my hands. This hustle was not for me.&nbsp; Within a year in Australia, I decided to return to Nepal because the foreign life did not suit me. After spending eight months in Nepal, reality sank in. Nepal was not all that great either. I went back to Australia. On the plane, I befriended a Nepali woman who was homesick and a first time traveler. At the immigration in Australia, the officer noticed my long absence and started interrogating me. He noticed the Nepali woman waiting for me and asked who she was. Without thinking I lied that she was my girlfriend. That seemed to do the trick because he did not want us to be separated. He stamped my passport. She went her way. I went mine.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260127130112_5e7bfa6acc5f94d5f1905537e387c2d4169469679ace2b71de368912f3bd514f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260127130112_5e7bfa6acc5f94d5f1905537e387c2d4169469679ace2b71de368912f3bd514f" data-rendition-name="original" width="987" height="1004" loading="lazy" alt="DD 81 NT"> </figure>  In Sydney, I again found a dishwashing job at a fine dining restaurant. A Sri Lankan colleague helped me learn the job. The pace at which I had to do the dishes was insane but I got the hang of it in two weeks. I always dreamt of one day wearing the chef’s white coat. It commanded respect, I could tell. In addition to becoming good at my job washing dishes, I also had good language and networking skills so I built good relationships with colleagues. There was a need for a pizza chef at the restaurant. It was expensive to hire someone new, and they asked me if I was up for the job. I said yes even though I knew nothing about making pizzas. My Italian colleagues coached me and before I knew it, I became better than others at the job. Soon, I realised that I did not just want to make pizzas. Whatever I wanted to learn, I just asked seniors to take me under their wings and I would help without pay. They would agree but still pay me. It wasn’t a strategy per se, I genuinely wanted to learn. At some point, a Japanese sous chef in my restaurant and I had coincidentally applied to the same restaurant, and there, under him, I got to learn even more. Working with a Japanese chef is really difficult, but you learn a lot. He would sometimes even hold my hand with tongs dipped in hot water when I screwed something up. I worked in a few restaurants after this and was earning well. When one of my colleagues, a dishwasher, was let go unfairly, I decided to leave because I did not want to be a quiet bystander to this act. I returned to Nepal immediately after this.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026012719010_f33ba38bb5f86f1d33262fd0d7ccd09ed01f6cc52148ca3d4cd66c434b695730.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2026012719010_f33ba38bb5f86f1d33262fd0d7ccd09ed01f6cc52148ca3d4cd66c434b695730" data-rendition-name="original" width="1200" height="1600" loading="lazy" alt="DD 82"> </figure>  I started a restaurant called Ghumti, but it was struggling. The location of the restaurants was not good and it failed. I bought another restaurant in Darbar Marg. I was managing two restaurants when Covid hit. The rent kept piling up, and there was no revenue. I took a huge loss. I gave them up and returned to Chitwan and started making migration plans. I came across a job vacancy for Alba in Qatar by the famous Enrico Crippa. I still remember the heat when I got out of the airport in Doha, it was like entering an oven. Thankfully, I had a Nepali roommate who showed me around and helped me adjust.&nbsp; The hotel was still under construction, but training had started. We worked really hard for the opening and things went well. In 2023, we even won the Best MENA Restaurant award. But at some point in 2024, the international Crippa chain decided to leave.&nbsp; Some colleagues including the head chef left and I suddenly was put in charge. I had some head chef experience from Australia and had previous experience working in high pressure environments, so I stepped up. We had to start from scratch again, this time as Alba in Raffles, Doha.&nbsp; The name of our restaurant comes from the Alba white truffle, which is the best available and is expensive, selling at around 40,000 QAR per kg. We had heard the official announcement that the Michelin was coming to Qatar, and we worked even harder.&nbsp; Michelin inspections are strict, highly secretive and you have no idea you are being investigated. Even then, we were up for the game. We were ‘selected’ which meant we had potential.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026012719010_bab3a904af69603e9e79f333aeea89b035401c0c8d1750930107f3594ff1f565.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2026012719010_bab3a904af69603e9e79f333aeea89b035401c0c8d1750930107f3594ff1f565" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="697" loading="lazy" alt="DD 81"> </figure>  I went to the award ceremony with low expectations. But because they announce the name alphabetically, Alba came first. I was very happy and felt validated. Being recognised as a Michelin one star restaurant is a huge achievement for us. My MD reminded me of a promise I had made of getting a Michelin tattoo if we got the award. I guess I will get it done when I come to Nepal next. My plan is to get a tattoo that captures my journey right from the dishwashing days.&nbsp; I have cooked for Obama, Beckham, Kaka, Trump, 50 Cent, Lindsay Lohan, you name it, because our restaurant is visited by high profile guests. At first, I used to feel the pressure. Now I view all guests as the same. The food you make is the same no matter who is eating it. I love the work. In fact, it does not feel like work. The rush in the kitchen, the atmosphere, the heat, the scent, I live for it. When I am not working, I get bored. It is like an addiction without which I get withdrawals. I want to contribute in introducing Nepali cuisine and ingredients in the worldstage. Nepalis overseas have a lot of potential in the hospitality sector. But my advice to youth is to focus on building a strong base and invest in learning. It is increasingly common for Nepalis to job hop for a salary jump. While other skills like language are also important, it is the hard skills that we really need to focus on. In our field of work, it is the plate that needs to speak.

Sky is the limit

During the 2022 election, populist candidates campaigned with algorithms and were elected mayors. In 2026, they are campaigning with AI-generated memes and videos. Four years ago, the idea that the most potent weapon in the next election in Nepal would be artificially generated clips of politicians beating each other up would have been science fiction. Yet, here we are: at a fever pitch of AI-based political content. Some are generated by the IT cells of political parties, while most are just produced and posted by young tech-savvy supporters of the new candidates. Most of them ridicule older leaders, and the predominant target is former prime minister K P Oli who was forced to resign after the September protests. On 20 January the TikTok account ‘iamfunnyman88’ posted a slapstick video in which former Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah is seen accosting ex-prime minister K P Oli with a giant bell (pictured), swinging it in Kung Fu Hustle style in what looks like Patan Darbar Square. Oli is sent splattered on the ground. K P Oli has become a symbol of the legacy parties and their aged leaders, and everything that is wrong with them. Balendra Shah represents the new protest candidate. The two are contesting from Jhapa-5, and it is turning out to be a prime ministerial race for 5 March. In another video, the RSP vs UML clash played out as a high-stakes war from the Mahabharat. Oli is a young warrior with a chiselled jaw and wearing a heavy golden armour ready to lead his followers to battle (pictured). A stylised Nepal flag flutters above him to the accompaniment of filmy dialogue.&nbsp; The videos are everywhere on TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. Many of the posts are hitting over 200,000 likes and 5 million views. Such content seems to be engaging more voters than speeches and door-to-door campaigning at the hustings. The videos are fake, but the numbers, and the attention they command, are very real.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026013014010_ed52fe3248b54eb4f9f391ee718e874a86c1b98297dde203800ad7b114bdacda.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2026013014010_ed52fe3248b54eb4f9f391ee718e874a86c1b98297dde203800ad7b114bdacda" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal election memes"> </figure>  At first, it looked like the RSP’s digital media presence was a joke aimed at getting easy-to-access publicity via the far-reaching arms of the algorithm. But it is looking like a carefully designed strategy promoting Balen Shah as the RSP’s star player in this election.&nbsp; In 2022, it was just for the mayor of Kathmandu. This time, Balen Shah is already being promoted in these videos as a winner who has defeated the legacy politicians.&nbsp; In previous elections in Nepal, political parties used to spend lavishly on the ‘masu bhat’ strategy — feeding heavy plates of mutton curry and rice to constituents in return for votes. Ideology was swapped for immediate caloric gratification often accompanied by free-flowing alcohol.&nbsp; But surely, the new voter is too sophisticated for this. Politicians insist they have rebooted their operating systems to serve this enlightened demographic. We are talking, after all, about the generation that brought down a government over 36 hours in September.&nbsp; The assumption is that young voters today are too aware and far too proud to trade democratic agency for something as crude as a plate of steaming mutton curry and rice.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026013014014_983476ba334f895b64cd8ea34bd0ad79c1632c428feb119c84477d8e929eb057.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2026013014014_983476ba334f895b64cd8ea34bd0ad79c1632c428feb119c84477d8e929eb057" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal elections meme"> </figure>  But the question is: are voters today any different? Aren’t these social media memes digital versions of the masu bhat that delivers a dopamine rush to voters? Watching the videos is entertainment that delivers a state of bliss, a protest against what is old but no enlightenment about how to get to the new. &nbsp; The I-cannot-go-a-single-minute-without-checking-my-phone demographic has leaned firmly towards politicians whose main focus is to be a social media star first, and an accountable politician second. More than 70% of Nepalis have smartphones now and most are hooked on data plans. The public has acquired a taste for a different kind of masu bhat - the digital kind. Instead of being made to slurp up the free spicy, fatty goat curry with deep guttural satisfaction, voters are being made to swallow easy-to-digest online clips to make serious voting decisions.&nbsp; After all, it is more fun than paying attention to a candidate’s policy proposals and actually thinking critically about the candidates.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026013014014_eb3a9e0c50f4a47706a6695e78ae41556c3d9754c15d564d42fb0de3f4199999.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2026013014014_eb3a9e0c50f4a47706a6695e78ae41556c3d9754c15d564d42fb0de3f4199999" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal elections meme"> </figure>  TURNING POINT An important moment for the evolution of this digital masu bhat is the 2020 pandemic. It was just six years ago that the entire population was cut off from physical interaction. The phone screen became the sole mediator of social existence.&nbsp; Technology changes what we see as important, and this prolonged immersion fundamentally alters our perception of reality, training us to accept the flattened, binary logic of the algorithm as a substitute for the complex, multisensory texture of political reality. What is on the phone has started to dictate the questions we ask and the answers we accept. If it is not on the phone, it is starting to look irrelevant. The memes manufacture consent. Gerontocratic politicians habituated to legacy media have not fathomed the implications of this new virtual world. Everyone has been swayed by a good story since the beginning of time. Now, the phone has allowed millions of Nepalis to tell, retell, consume, and remix stories that would traditionally have huge barriers to entry. Consider the vegetable vendor killing time between customers, Gen-Z youth with no memory of the Maoist conflict, or the grandad who cannot distinguish an AI video from real footage.&nbsp; When they finally step into the voting booth, what is guiding their hand? Is it a careful calculus of policy proposals, demonstrated competence, and leadership integrity? Or is it the cumulative impact of those AI-generated dopamine hits they have been fed on a loop? This digital fog of war cuts both ways. In a twist of supreme irony, actual footage of candidates behaving badly is now routinely dismissed as ‘AI-generated’ by their PR teams. This was a convenient get-out-of-jail-free card that Balen’s camp used when a video of him shoving cadres went viral.&nbsp; Meanwhile, completely fabricated tear-jerkers of old leaders like Prachanda weeping are consumed by the public as gospel truth. We have arrived at a point where the inconvenient real is dismissed as a glitch, and the emotional fake is embraced as history.&nbsp; In Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord argued that images eventually replace real life. Today’s voters in Nepal and elsewhere are not even consuming the actual meat-and-bones of mutton curry; they are swallowing the 15 second digital imitations of it.&nbsp; Welcome to the age of digital मासु भात.

Nepal’s AI-generated election

We walk past familiar neighbourhoods and wonder how much it has changed. An ongoing exhibition at The Kalā Salon titled Changing Times by The Pagoda Group aims to do just that -- capture ever-changing society within a captivating display of colourful canvases. Brick-lined houses, local tea shops, ancient temples, quiet devotion are themes in Pradhumna Shrestha’s series Shangri-La, much of which is an imagined past filled with nostalgia of the place he grew up in. By keeping people out of the frame, he allows space for what he calls a divine aura to surface.&nbsp; “I was born and brought up here and my canvases echo the nostalgia of cities like Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, and Lalitpur which are dense with myth, folklore, religion, and an ever-present divinity. All of this is truly what is ours, and we must treasure it,” says Shrestha. “Whatever I truly felt in my heart, I translated it into my work.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260128100132_32a8f9e9816595f12ec0da357528feffbb249fd19adbb658c18e72e2b721f9df.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260128100132_32a8f9e9816595f12ec0da357528feffbb249fd19adbb658c18e72e2b721f9df" data-rendition-name="original" width="1280" height="1036" loading="lazy" alt="The Kala Salon exhibition NT"> </figure>  The swirling clouds that drift across Shrestha’s canvases borrow from thangka and paubha traditions, lending the scenes a sense of mysticism and otherworldliness. Within this dreamscape are red circular forms which represent wheels of chariots. &nbsp;The presence of divinity dominates from above, its presence asserted in soft blue brushstrokes below, as if the deity’s gaze itself has seeped into the land. Gods linger as guardians and temples hum with enigma in his paintings. In his much earlier work, Cultural Bond, a lakhe masked dancer bursts forward in vibrant red, dancing against a backdrop of molten gold clouds. The lakhe’s trance signifies protection and where it steps, the evil cannot follow. Hence, the skulls that surround but never fall beneath its feet but, one leg hangs suspended in midair, suggesting uncertainty, raising questions.&nbsp; Is this a symbol of culture and tradition, secure, or is it endangered by modernity? The work captures a society at a crossroads, honouring tradition while grappling with the risk of drifting away from it.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260128100132_c78307920acc7b14fb9f469a011043661accec66c230b5e7587bcba0199bcbf1.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260128100132_c78307920acc7b14fb9f469a011043661accec66c230b5e7587bcba0199bcbf1" data-rendition-name="original" width="979" height="1280" loading="lazy" alt="The Kala Salon exhibition NT"> </figure>  In Panchatatva Mandala, Pasang Bikram Lama fuses two mandalas into a single visual meditation, suggesting unity where each colour carries symbolic weight: yellow evokes the soil of the earth, blue flows as water, red burns with fire, and black opens into the vastness of the spatial sky. Together, these elements form a quiet cosmology that speaks of creation and dissolution, of life folding endlessly into death and returning again. Says Lama, “Everyone has a mandala of their own being, and the elements represent their cycle of life.” Mala Shrestha’s works Water of the Divine Mother and The Spirit of Serenity unfold in a dreamy and delicate fusion of nature and religion, suggesting that divine forms are not separate from the natural world. Trees and branch-like motifs appear as origins of sacred sculptures and spiritual presences.&nbsp; Her goddesses, adorned in alluring ornaments, emerge from trunks and streams, painted in aqua green, pink pastels, and rustic browns, as if grown rather than created, affirming that the divine is inseparable from nature and present everywhere.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260128100132_1f8cce84b4515a0d6d8b8fc169367bf5d39a7479c2c30038dafe90ec2bb3c4c9.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20260128100132_1f8cce84b4515a0d6d8b8fc169367bf5d39a7479c2c30038dafe90ec2bb3c4c9" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="3024" loading="lazy" alt="The Kala Salon exhibition NT"> </figure>  Kishor Nakarmi’s Essence of Nepal, where Gautam Buddha appears embedded within leaves, brick walls, birds, and wilderness, dissolving boundaries between the sacred and the earthly. These canvases radiate calm and their subtlety is enriched by finely observed details. Similarly, Rudra Bahadur Pun captures the vitality of mask dances and ritual movements found in the monasteries of Mustang, weaving together tradition, landscape, and daily life. The essence of the exhibition comes together in Roshan Pradhan’s works. His paintings reflect a contemporary tension where technology collides with ancestral myth and the power of tradition. A fierce Garud rises within a landscape saturated by technological apparatuses, while at its feet a human form representing AI clings tightly, attempting to assert control.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260128100132_dc2c1ad4a4cefea6c6c7d02e9ed500309b7c862535247fe6451038e1d053d6b2.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20260128100132_dc2c1ad4a4cefea6c6c7d02e9ed500309b7c862535247fe6451038e1d053d6b2" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="3024" loading="lazy" alt="The Kala Salon exhibition NT"> </figure>  In another work, Bhairab confronts a human embodiment of AI in a theatrical standoff, with the deity ultimately prevailing, reaffirming endurance over technological dominance. The human figures in Pradhan’s paintings are drawn from life with his friends volunteering as models, photographed and later translated onto canvas.&nbsp; “Technology has taken over our lives. Many can probably not even imagine life without it now. But, culture, too, is integral to human existence. Our life would be much different without our culture; it is a part of us,” notes the artist. Rather than framing technology as purely antagonistic, Pradhan explores coexistence, and while acknowledging its destructive potential, he affirms his belief in the power of our myths and traditions.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260128100132_bc831a663ca8977c39979a363a95bcae5e41cfe624d78152c546579caa3e680f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20260128100132_bc831a663ca8977c39979a363a95bcae5e41cfe624d78152c546579caa3e680f" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="3024" loading="lazy" alt="The Kala Salon exhibition NT"> </figure>  Pradhan adds, “These paintings are also an archive of its time. Viewers centuries from now may read these paintings as records of the age we inhabit. While technology is important, cultural continuity must walk alongside it. Festivals must still be celebrated, oral traditions must be sustained, and our roots must be remembered, especially by future generations.” Curator Sophia L Pande says the exhibition took more than a year to put together:&nbsp; “It responds to a shifting world, seeking to capture both transformation and the quiet fear of loss. Its themes move fluidly across environment, technology, artificial intelligence, and climate change, reflecting the diverse yet interconnected practices of the artists, providing a glimpse into the evolving landscape of contemporary Nepali art.” Changing Times The Kalā Salon Chhaya Centre, Thamel 11AM-8PM

Time, transience, transition

The slow, arduous labour of democracy rarely announces itself with the fanfare of constitutional moments. &nbsp;It proceeds instead through committee rooms, ward meetings, half-attended assemblies, the awkward choreography of speech and silence, and the everyday compromises between aspiration and constraint.&nbsp; The book Nepal’s Federalism and the Pursuit of Deliberative Democracy attends precisely to this unglamorous terrain. In it, Vishnu Kumari Tandon does not ask whether democracy is desirable — an already settled question — but whether it can be made to think, to listen, and to endure under conditions of inequality, historical fracture, and institutional novelty.&nbsp; Her wager is modest yet demanding: that federalism, when tethered to participatory planning and deliberative fors, might recalibrate the relationship between state and citizen without promising redemption. Tandon’s Nepal is neither a site of democratic salvation nor a study in failure. It is a space of trial, where ideas migrate from constitutional text to municipal practice, altered by context, power, and expectation. Democracy here appears not as an ideal form but as a situated practice -- procedural, contested, and unfinished.&nbsp; The book’s quiet achievement lies in redirecting debates on deliberative democracy away from abstract normativity and toward the ethical friction of lived institutions. Federalism arrives in Nepal not as a technocratic reform but as a historical concession, wrested from conflict, exclusion, and prolonged political unrest. Tandon, who is a governance consultant at the World Bank, situates the 2015 Constitution within this unsettled genealogy, treating federalism less as an administrative innovation than as a moral response to longstanding claims of marginalisation.&nbsp; The constitutional recognition of local autonomy is thus freighted with ethical expectation. Yet the book refuses to equate decentralisation with empowerment. Federalism, Tandon insists, redistributes power without dissolving hierarchy. Domination may simply reappear closer to home. The central question, therefore, is not whether local governments exist, but how they govern: whether institutionalised participation genuinely alters the terms on which citizens speak, decide, and contest public priorities. Federalism emerges not as a stable structure but as a field of tension—between autonomy and dependence, inclusion and capture, aspiration and capacity. It is within this unstable terrain that the democratic experiment unfolds.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260127090120_62bd86d5cbb0dc9d199b797b2c90a5be37213b6c9236f79220706469cd3689a0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260127090120_62bd86d5cbb0dc9d199b797b2c90a5be37213b6c9236f79220706469cd3689a0" data-rendition-name="original" width="800" height="800" loading="lazy" alt="Vishnu Kumari Tandon"> <figcaption>Vishnu Kumari Tandon</figcaption> </figure>  UNEQUAL SKIES&nbsp; Participation, one of democracy’s most invoked terms, often risks conceptual exhaustion. Tandon restores its weight by treating participation as labour rather than ritual. Drawing on fieldwork in Buddhabhumi and Dhanushadham municipalities, she reconstructs the choreography of local planning: assemblies, committees, and councils through which proposals circulate, stall, or vanish. Participation here is unevenly distributed. It is shaped by gendered expectations, caste hierarchies, economic precarity, and anticipations of return. Attendance becomes a calculation rather than a civic reflex. This analytical attention to motivation marks one of the book’s strengths.&nbsp; Citizens participate not out of abstract virtue but through pragmatic reasoning, moral obligation, and strategic interest. Participation thus appears neither ennobling nor cynical, but politically intelligible. If participation concerns presence, deliberation concerns voice — and, crucially, whose voice matters. Tandon’s engagement with deliberative democratic theory is respectful yet revisionist. Habermasian ideals of reasoned consensus are treated as aspirational rather than portable, strained by structural inequality. In municipal assemblies, deliberation is patterned by authority: who speaks first, who commands attention, whose claims are legitimised. Marginalised citizens may be present without influence, audible without consequence. Deliberation risks becoming procedural affirmation rather than substantive redistribution of voice. Yet Tandon does not abandon deliberation as a democratic practice. Instead, she broadens its normative horizon. Drawing on second-generation deliberative theory, she legitimises emotion, self-interest, and strategic speech as components of democratic reasoning. Deliberation becomes a contested exchange rather than a purified rationality. The common good, if it appears, emerges provisionally: negotiated rather than presumed. One of the book’s most original contributions lies in its treatment of fiscal decentralisation. Money is not merely a resource but a language through which priorities are articulated and participation structured. The devolution of budgetary authority transforms deliberation into distributive politics. Citizens attend assemblies not simply to speak but to secure roads, water systems, clinics, schools. Voice is tethered to material expectation. This proximity intensifies engagement while sharpening conflict. Fiscal autonomy thus amplifies the stakes of deliberation without guaranteeing its equity. Local representatives emerge as paradoxical figures: empowered yet constrained, accountable yet insulated. Tandon resists binary judgments, showing instead how fiscal decentralisation deepens democratic possibility while exposing institutional fragility. Threaded through the book is a sustained interrogation of the ‘common good’. Revered in theory and suspect in practice, the concept is neither discarded nor sanctified. In unequal societies, appeals to the common good can obscure asymmetries of sacrifice. Empirically, deliberation proceeds through articulated self-interests: neighbourhood demands, caste claims, gendered priorities. Far from undermining democracy, these claims animate it. Self-interest becomes deliberation’s motor rather than its negation. The book thus advances a quiet ethical argument: democracy does not require the transcendence of interest, but its articulation under conditions of mutual visibility. The common good, if it exists, is emergent, fragile, and revisable. Institutions, for Tandon, are moral technologies. Laws mandate participation, but they cannot generate trust, courage, or equality. Procedural compliance may coexist with substantive exclusion. Yet repetition matters. Even imperfect fora can cultivate habits of speaking and being heard. Deliberative democracy, the book suggests, is not an event but a discipline, learned slowly, unevenly, and reversibly. Federalism is less a solution than a condition: one that opens space for democratic learning without securing its outcome. Firmly grounded in Nepal’s political history, the book resists parochialism. Nepal functions as a mirror, reflecting broader dilemmas of democratic deepening across unequal societies. Comparative resonances with Brazil, India, and donor-driven governance reforms are handled without formula or prescription. Nepal is neither an exemplar nor an exception. It is a site where democracy reveals its ordinary difficulties. The prose mirrors the argument: careful, analytic, resistant to grand claims. What lingers is not a verdict but a sensibility: an attentiveness to democracy’s tempo. Deliberative democracy appears less as consensus achieved than as disagreement sustained without rupture. In an age of democratic impatience, Tandon offers a quieter ethic. Democracy must be allowed to think slowly, to falter, and to learn. This book stands as a thoughtful companion to that discipline, reminding us that democratic transformation often occurs far from the centre, in places where speaking itself remains an achievement.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260127090112_4bd0fdb8c4ef4e44c21e9cba4ae63a8481ca1d61bb20f716b29f649bcdf1a4bc.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260127090112_4bd0fdb8c4ef4e44c21e9cba4ae63a8481ca1d61bb20f716b29f649bcdf1a4bc" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Federalism book details NT"> </figure>  Aftab Husain is a Pakistan-born poet and literary and cultural critic. He teaches South Asian literature and culture at the University of Vienna.

traditions

Long live tradition

Long live tradition

The art of living

Sky is the limit

Nepal’s AI-generated election

Time, transience, transition

Nepal’s slow grammar of democracy