चाेखाे माया डट कम: जन्मभूमि नेपाल र नेपालीहरूमा समर्पित

The lockdown had just started. That afternoon, a raggedly old man with a heavy load of corn stacks approached me on a desolate road in our neighbourhood, with his face – and perhaps his whole body – running a sweat. The poor guy had lost his way. He was to deliver the load to a cowshed at Vanasthali, but had landed at Triveni Chowk instead. I tried to put myself in his shoes, only to find that he was barefoot. The responsibility of running a family rested heavily on his head and shoulders growing frail day by day. We offered him water and inquired whether he was hungry. He wanted neither water nor snacks. All he wanted was to find his way to the cowshed and be with his family after getting the heavy load off his back and getting his wage. What surprised me was that this guy did not even have a mobile phone. If he had, he would have called up the cowshed owner and found his way relatively easily, even if he were not that savvy to read the Google map and find the destination. ...

As the festive season starts in our country, a very serious humanitarian crisis stares us all in our faces. And as always, we the people and the state are ill-prepared to deal with it.  The situation is more serious this year than in the past. Floods and landslides used to destroy our lives around this time of the year in the past as well. Hundreds would die and thousands would become homeless -- landless even -- in natural disasters aggravated all the more by mindless development activities conducted with utter disregard for environmental fragility.  For the survivors of this year's natural disasters turned all the more disastrous due to the human 'endeavour' to tame Mother Nature and the near-absence of the state in the lives of some of the most vulnerable communities in one of the most climatically fragile countries, the ordeals are far from over. For thousands pushed into camps with their farmlands turned into beds of sand and landslide debris, problems are all too ...

It’s not a watering hole in its true sense. ‘Watering hole’, yours truly is sure, is music to the ears for the party animals out there. You people may be wondering as to which new hip and happening ‘watering hole’ is yours truly talking 'bout?     Lemme clarify. Yours truly is talking about the watering hole for wild animals and not party animals.  This shallow pit is not the result of a geographic depression and animals of different species do not come here to quench their thirst, not even in the wildest of imaginations, nor does any life-and-death battle take place between the predator and the prey here.  Rather, it appears to be a hastily-built shallow pit meant to provide precious droplets of water to the monkeys. It's a case of too little too late arrangements for the inhabitants. For the dominant inhabitants of these part-artificial-part-natural woods where the wild animals seem sober, perhaps in anticipation of human tendency to go wild in ...

Diplomatic relations between Nepal and India have passed through quite a bumpy stretch in course of a year. Worryingly, the worst does not seem to be over, as yet.      First there was the Lipulek-Kalapani-Limpiadhura dispute. Nepal's act of formally including the Lipulek-Kalapani-Limpiadhura region into her political map angered the dear neighbour. This, despite the fact that Nepal has been claiming for decades that the region belongs to her. Her argument is that she let Indian troops, vanquished in the war with China over the Aksai Chin in 1962, take refuge in her territory. In course of time, the Indian state fortified her presence there by building infrastructure like roads and camps. Nepal maintains that the dear neighbour, the aggressor party, has refused to budge despite repeated requests to vacate the area.  Even the dear neighbour considers this region to be a disputed territory. Despite this status, it constructed and formally inaugurated a road through the...

१. हरेक समाजमा केही अतिप्रतिभाशाली प्रतिभाहरू हुन्छन् । जनघनत्वका दृष्टिले त्यस्ता प्रतिभाहरू हाम्रै समाजमा, हाम्रै देश नेपालमा पो बढी छन् कि ? पंक्तिकारले यस्तो अनुमान किन गरेको हो भने यो देश बडो गजबको छ, अजबको छ । हामीजस्ता प्रतिभाशाली जन्तुहरूका कारण नै यो देश विश्वमै अजबको, गजबको, विशिष्ट मानिएको हो । हामी प्रतिभाशाली पनि कस्ता भने देवकोटालाई घाँस ख्वाउने प्रवृत्तिका, राँची लाने प्रवृत्तिका । उखानै छ निः काशी कश्मीर अजब नेपाल । हामी कस्ता भने आफ्नै देशको सिमा रक्षा गर्न नसक्ने तर बाँकी विश्वमा भने शान्ति कायम गर्ने ठेक्का नै लिने किसिमका । बौद्धिक भनिएकाहरू पनि लाहुरे प्रकृतिकाः कोही उत्तर फर्केका, कोही दक्षिण ढल्केका, कोही पश्चिम फर्केका, टेक्ने जमीन नभएका, समाउने हाँगा नभएका जस्ता । कस्ता भने उनीहरूको नजिक पर्दा नानाथरी विदेशी नोटहरूको गन्ध आउने । अनुहार नेपाली तर पालनपोषण, रसदपानीको व्यवस्था अन्तैबाट हुने गरेको । यस्तो भएपछि विचारमा माटोको सुवास कहाँबाट आओस्? साँच्चै, मनमा देश बसेको छैन भने त बौद्धिकता दलालीबाहेक के नै हुन्छ र ?  यस देशको परिचय कायम राखी अघि बढ्नलाई पनि अझ ब...

Just a few days ago, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Damodardas Modi, made a very important announcement. Delivering a speech in Laddakh, he 'announced' that the age of expansionism is over.  Wow! Such a declaration, echoing across the South Asian subcontinent and beyond, is no less than music for countries like Nepal, who have been bearing with a virulent strain of expansionism that even sneaks into the corridors of power and even creeps into the bedrooms of very senior political leaders presiding over apex leadership positions of the country. So, right after this announcement, yours truly just did a cursory check to know whether this announcement had knocked down some of the powerful symbols of expansionism. Despite the powerful declaration, yours truly found that the symbols of expansionism were still there, standing 'proudly' as ever in our very bosoms.  Despite the powerful declaration, yours truly found that those symbols were still there, standing 'proudl...