Archive for the ‘Conversations’ Category
Taxing Service
It was, you could say, a Valentine’s Day Massacre. Perhaps all the waiters in Kathmandu were distracted, lovelorn, unable to keep their minds on the job. If you were out there staring gloopily into some significant other’s eyes, you were unlikely to have been much bothered either. For those of us who were most certainly [...]
…And Justice for All
One good thing about the protests confronting Violence Against Women is that they are being organized by individuals determined to keep this fundamental blight in the limelight until the glare of collective disapproval bleaches it out of Nepali society. This takes time. Time enough, then, for one to attend a protest, stay away for whatever [...]
Open thoughts on a closed day
A farce unfolded at the Reporters’ Club at the end of the first day of the bandh, during which enforcers (or vigilantes, depending on who you believe) attacked several members of the public, including journalists. NEFIN general secretary Ang Kaji Sherpa began by apologising, but then launched into a rant against the media, threatening to [...]
Hungry eye – Cafe Cheeno
Café Cheeno announced itself to Patan Dhoka a couple of years back, and despite the attractive brick façade emergent on the corner with Krishnagalli, the first thought that passed through my mind in those Sisdolean days was, “Trust a Nepali restaurant to spring up next to a festering pile of garbage.” Garbage isn’t so much [...]
Hungry eye – Bu keba
Riding Kathmandu’s organic bump is Sanepa’s Bú Kebá, and if you imagine that means a convenient marriage of the rustic and the comfy for the expatriate crowd, you’re half there. Bú Kebá is all thatched roofs and wooden platforms for semi-alfresco seating shaded by translucent white curtains, but the clientele is surprisingly diverse.
Perhaps this has [...]
Jaipur Literature Festival: Day 5
A generalised mental exhaustion was apparent on the fifth day. Four days of browsing some of the best minds of our time; four nights of dousing our own minds with alcohol. Still we soldiered on.
One of the few Chinese writers at Jaipur, Hong Ying, partnered with the ever-articulate Isabel Hilton for an illuminating session on [...]
Jaipur Literature Festival: Day 4
Whether to write in one’s mother tongue or an ‘imperial’ one is a debate that has been going on for as long as postcolonial literatures have existed. Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe and Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o slugged it out decades ago, the latter ultimately forsaking English for his mother tongue, Gikuyu. Chimamanda Adichie, author of ‘Half [...]
