चाेखाे माया डट कम: जन्मभूमि नेपाल र नेपालीहरूमा समर्पित

The days of 'radical politics' are long gone, at least for yours truly and his bunch of friends. We differ on many issues without coming to blows. May be this is because we are no indoctrinated cadres of one or other political party. We never were.  This is a far cry from the days when, in this country immediately after the advent of multiparty democracy with constitutional monarchy in the 90's, cadres of one party used to shun those from other parties not only during happy occasions like weddings and birthday parties, but also during death and other tragic events, when one forgets enmity and tries to provide solace to fellow humans. In those days of madness, encounters would often lead to fights. Families would often split on ideological grounds.   Our free-wheeling discussions often lead us into the national political goings-on, which never ceases to amaze yours truly.  In one of those discussion sessions when the protest against the government-...

Kathmandu: For a few days, #Nepal's very own #Hyde Park, the #Maitighar Mandala, has been the major hotspot of the protest against the #Guthi Bill, the nearly two-third KP Oli government's bid to make changes in Guthi (cultural-religious trusts) administration.  The Bill has not gone well with large sections of the public, including people of the Kathmandu Valley, who largely see it as part of the design to hand over to cadres of the present ruling party both public and private trusts like the Swargadwari  Guthi (Pyuthan) with huge landholdings, which ensure continuity of ages-old cultures and traditions, numerous jatras  and preservation of both tangible and intangible heritages, by making resources available.  Culture experts fear that changes in the traditional Guthi system will put Nepal's UNESCO-designated World Heritage Sites, including those in the Kathmandu Valley ,  in peril. Even leaders of the ruling party have opposed the Bill, tha...

Welcome to the countryside: A view of the Nargajun Hills, Kathmandu . 'Don't know about yours, but mine is definitely not a one-horse town , quite literally.  Yours truly realised this while talking a walk around the countryside on the lap of green hills that's rapidly urbanising. Those hills are part of government-managed conservation area, so they are off-limits for the public.  At one place, he met a horseman grazing not one, not two but three horses! Probably, he has some more at his stable. Keeping horses is no mean feat, especially in a rapidly urbanising town with hardly any grazing ground, to say the least.     The sighting of the horses and the horseman brought reminded yours truly of the childhood spent in remote areas, where horses were the only means of transport.   The urban jungle with rapidly decreasing space for livestock. Yours truly managed to strike a brief, casual conversation with the man, who inherited the st...

How does it feel to remain single, especially in this day and age? First of all, as a former inhabitant of the singledom , yours truly can say that it is not an easy question. Secondly, I fear that I may not be able to do justice to this serious question, given that years have passed me by since I left that station of life.     Nonetheless, lemme try to deal with this difficult question, drawing from personal experiences and thoughts .  Being single definitely means more breathing space and more freedom, but  GB Shaw 's mantra on freedom -- Your freedom ends where my nose begins -- applies in this phase of life too. For many, it means stress, sense of not belonging, identity crisis and a lot of uncertainties. Many of us enter this phase with a lot of potential but a very limited capacity (financial or otherwise) to tap it.  There was and still is a kind of social stigma attached with single individuals that are also known by terms such...

The Nagarjun Hills and the Jamacho Gumba (the white spot below the clouds) with the urban outcrop in the foreground, a day after the rainstorm.   A day after the World Environment Day (https://www.worldenvironmentday.global/) , rainstorm lashed several parts of Nepal, leaving at least two dead and around 100 injured, once again reminding how vulnerable this country is to natural disasters, especially climate change-induced ones, despite its negligible carbon footprint. The urban jungle of Nagarjun municipality shines, a day after the rainstorm. The vortex of this disaster to hit the ill-prepared country appeared to be Dhangadhi of Kailali district where the casualties have occurred and scores of people have become homeless with thatched and zinc roofs of their houses blown away, according to media reports.  As always, the disaster caused power outage not only in Dhangadhi, a township in Far-Western Nepal, but also in parts of Kathmandu, the ca...

Nature is beautiful and flowers are one of its most beautiful creations. They are one of the things that make our lives a little less unbearable and a lot more beautiful. And they are an indispensable part of our lives, regardless of our faith or lack of it.  Birth, marriage, child bearing and death are some of the most important events in every individual's life. In all these events, flowers play an important part. We cannot even imagine our life without this beautiful gift from Nature.  Yours truly feels flowers too should have the right to life. Like all of us, they have the right to bloom, wilt and fall. But we routinely ignore their right, snap them to use them as we like.  Environmental pollution is taking a toll on these flowers.    At this space, yours truly will post random shots of different flowers found around Kathmandu and beyond. For now, he leaves it upon readers to find common names, botanical names of the...