Dedicated to Nepal and the Nepalis

  A thick envelope of dust. The layer is so thick that the man behind the wheel, in all likelihood, is finding it quite difficult to find which is the road—a sliver cut through landslide-prone terrains—and which is not. Each vehicle passing through the artery leaves behind a cloud, making it very very difficult for every motorist to navigate the stretch and adding to the agonies of hapless passengers.  K garne? Little inconveniences like these are welcome in our march for progress and prosperity, right? Still, there’s a pattern to road construction and expansion works in Nepal.  Monstrous earth-moving equipment start attacking our fragile terrains in the holy name of road expansion, exposing stretches destabilized during the earlier phases to greater risks. Yours truly is not an authority figure in road works, but his observation is that a fresh phase of expansion/upgradation work begins not long after the completion of an earlier phase, causing further destabilization of...

 Devendra Gautam Growing up amid apple orchards and grain fields on the lap of Api, by the side of Humla Karnali and Humane Khola was fun, at least for a 'Gorkhali' kid of a senior government official. For the local people, all outsiders not from Karnali zone were 'Gorkhalis' back then and it was not unusual for the locals to dislike these outsiders.  Most probably, this dislike wells up from the bosom of the snowland from the times of re-unification of modern Nepal. Launched during the reign of King Prithvi Narayan Shah about 280 years ago, the campaign met an abrupt end after the Anglo-Nepal war of 1814-1816 that dismembered Nepal as it forced her to cede swathes of her territories. But the old wounds continue to fester as the state apathy toward genuine concerns of the zone turned province even after a switch to federalism from the unitary state system.   For outsiders, the Himalayan region offers a romantic view of life but for local communities, life is full of ...

  Birds of a feather? Birds of a feather flock together. So, isn’t it natural for Nepal’s leftist forces—the CPN (Maoist Center) and the CPN (UML) — to cobble together a new coalition, with a little help from the Rastriya Swatantra Party, CPN (Unified Socialist) and Janata Samajwadi Party?  Yes and no.  This is because Nepal’s leftist forces, barring a few exceptions, do not have much ‘Left’ left in them. In the course of time, they have watered down their ideologies so much that it is difficult to draw a line between them and the capitalist-to-the-core Nepali Congress.  Also, the CPN (UML)’s high animosity with the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led Maoist party and the Madhav Kumar-led outfit barely before the last general elections and after is still vivid in public memory. Just days before opting for a marriage of convenience, UML Chair KP Sharma Oli and Maoist Center Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal were busy hauling each other over the coals at every forum.  Do a people with ...

Devendra Gautam WAYN?  What is the full form of the above acronym? Let’s hope many of our modern, social media-savvy youths have the answer. After all, they are not mere consumers of all things digital, or are they? Without beating about the bush, let’s crack the world.  Where are you now? That’s what it means. Plain and simple, isn’t it? You see, the Western world, the superpower in particular, doesn’t have time for long expressions. Perhaps it feels exasperated with them as it still has the responsibility to civilize the ‘brutes’, a number of wars to win and many other battlefronts to open, march toward another era of prosperity, planets to conquer, insurmountable challenges like famine, poverty and illiteracy to win over, a fast-heating Earth to cool down a few degrees, to name just a few.  So, Robert continues to become Bob, William has to make do with plain, simple and simply unimaginative Bill (Pay the climate bill, will you, Bill?), Jonathan becomes Joe (poor Joe!)...

Switch to problem-solving mode Devendra Gautam Middle age is not the best time to start learning about modern things such as programming languages (python, JavaScript, Kotlin, Ruby, PHP etc), artificial intelligence, the internet of things and machine learning. In the relay race of life, it is perhaps time to at least think about passing on the baton to the next generation after completing your stretch.  But what if you have not arrived, as yet? What if you want to continue to mine your mind and see if you can solve some of the problems that are cakewalk for prodigies . You see, your mind is programmed to solve problems, whether it’s young or old. The idea is to keep your mind young and healthy because this thing with infinite potential does not rust as long as you keep using it.     So, you keep going, against all odds, mustering every ounce of your energy. As they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.   For those caught in a pass, Mart...

Friends are very much in the rat race and catching up with them has become next to impossible for Jack 2.0. Jack 2.0 has learnt over the years that beings called friends are far more dangerous than foes. They have jaws and claws and horns and hoofs all hidden, and you never know when they will attack you , fatally or otherwise . If you consider wild beasts more dangerous, chances are that you are yet to know what your friends are capable of, my friend. Anyway, if posts in several social media platforms are any indication, these people are busy summiting one peak of their professional careers after the other even as Jack 2.0 continues to recover from the debilitating effects of the coronavirus pandemic at an albeit tardy pace. These posts make it vividly clear that the self-styled creme a la creme are leading the most productive and fulfilling years of their lives.  And when these guys are not going for the Sagarmathas of their profession...

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