<img width="2388" height="1316" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230208140216/63e3a0f39c7e80680e0d705fjpeg.jpg" alt=""/>Project Syndicate: Your latest book, <a href="https://www.alephbookcompany.com/book/ambedkar-a-life/">Ambedkar: A Life</a>, is a biography of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a figure widely revered in India for his role in abolishing the caste system, empowering the Dalit community, and creating India’s constitution. How might a modern Ambedkar regard – and resist – rising bigotry and majoritarianism in today’s India?Shashi Tharoor: There is no doubt that Ambedkar would have opposed this trend in India today. He was the first – and remains the most important – figure to articulate a non-Hindu conception of Indian nationalism, making current attempts by the Hindutva movement to appropriate him astonishingly hypocritical. Ambedkar deplored what he called Hindu society’s undemocratic nature, as reflected in its internalisation of inequality and untouchability. “If Hindu Raj does become a fact,” he bitterly exclaimed, “it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.”On majoritarianism, Ambedkar famously reminded the Constituent Assembly of the vital importance of minority protection, arguing that “minorities are an explosive force which, if it erupts, can blow up the whole fabric of the State. The history of Europe bears ample and appalling testimony to this fact.” Given that India’s minorities have “agreed to place their existence in the hands of the majority” and “loyally accepted the rule of the majority, which is basically a communal majority and not a political majority,” the majority has a “duty not to discriminate” against them. Such a man would surely have spoken out strongly against the majoritarian bigotry that has been on the rise in India in recent years.Beyond being a Dalit icon, you point out, Ambedkar had strong feminist credentials. In fact, he placed “equal emphasis upon both caste and gender-based discrimination.” Where did Ambedkar succeed in improving women’s position in Indian society? Are there other parts of Ambedkar’s legacy that do not get the attention they deserve?Ambedkar was far ahead of his time. In a 1942 speech, he declared: “Let each girl who marries stand up to her husband, claim to be her husband’s friend and equal, and refuse to be his slave.” This was an audacious assertion of Indian women’s dignity within their own families – one that few Indian men would echo even today.Ambedkar’s approach to women’s rights was anchored in his profound commitment to equality. And his impact was considerable. It was because of his exhortations that Dalit women changed their style of draping their saris to match other Hindu women – a visual reflection of the principle of equality that undergirded his beliefs. He also fought successfully for maternity benefits for women laborers.Ambedkar even sought to pass a resolution in support of government-funded birth control in the Bombay Legislative Assembly in 1938. While his resolution was defeated by conservative opposition, he had sown seeds that would eventually flower: the law was passed in the 1970s. Likewise, the Hindu Code Bill that he advocated – which proposed to grant Hindu women the right to inherit property, to initiate divorce, and to manage their own finances – was initially resisted. But these are all the laws today.Ambedkar: A Life begins with a caveat: “This is the story of the rise of a man of ideas, illustrated with extensive quotations from his writings and speeches, and not of a man of physical adventure.” For readers outside India, who might not be familiar with Ambedkar’s ideas, which quote or concept would you be most keen to highlight?There are so many! If I had to pick one lesson, I would point to Ambedkar’s understanding – of which he convinced the Constituent Assembly – that it was not enough to abolish untouchability. To undo millennia of discrimination and exploitation, India had to institute the world’s first and furthest-reaching affirmative action program, which uplifted the oppressed by, for example, allocating places for them in schools, universities, government services, and even parliament. It is thanks to Ambedkar that affirmative action in India goes beyond guaranteeing equal access to opportunities; it guarantees equitable outcomes by reserving a share of opportunities for Dalits and Adivasis. You have <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-waning-dependence-on-china-friendly-russia-by-shashi-tharoor-2022-09">argued</a> that the Ukraine war has turned India’s “long-standing diplomatic and strategic dependence” on Russia into a <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-ukraine-war-boosts-india-strategic-vulnerability-by-shashi-tharoor-2022-03">serious liability</a>. But many – <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/indian-foreign-policy-promise-and-pitfalls-muslim-world-by-shashi-tharoor-2022-06">including</a> India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar – are convinced that the war can strengthen India’s global standing. Have discussions within Indian policy circles about relations with Russia changed since you first sounded the alarm? At the same time, has the war created opportunities that India should be seizing?So far, Indians consider their global status enhanced by the Ukraine War, as India is one of the few countries that is being wooed equally by both sides – and succeeding at maintaining good relations with each.India has dramatically increased its oil imports from Russia – which it secures at a discount – and is reselling some of that oil to the United States, after refining it locally. To many, Russia now looks not like a liability, but rather like a useful partner whose conduct in Ukraine it is in India’s interest to overlook. The US, for its part, has no interest in alienating India at a time when China’s increasing belligerence and “friendship without limits” with Russia remain matters of concern in Washington.So, India is still riding high, and international criticism of its foreign policy is muted. As a result, domestic criticism understandably remains almost non-existent.You have <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-waning-dependence-on-china-friendly-russia-by-shashi-tharoor-2022-09">urged</a> India to “recognize the need to cooperate with others to constrain China’s overweening ambitions.” How would you approach this objective? Are groupings like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – likely to do what is needed to <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-ukraine-war-boosts-india-strategic-vulnerability-by-shashi-tharoor-2022-03">protect</a> India’s “core security interests”?India seems to be the least willing of the Quad’s members to give the grouping a security dimension. The fact that China sits on its border – and occasionally breathes fire down its neck – may partly explain this reluctance. But, in fact, this is all the more reason to pursue greater security cooperation.Despite India’s historic policy of non-alignment and avowed refusal to join any alliances, China’s assertiveness warrants cooperative efforts to keep its ambition in check. I have even called for widening the Quad into a “Quad Plus,” which includes Southeast Asian countries with similar apprehensions about China’s muscle-flexing. But none of this seems to be in the cards. India’s wariness of security pacts still prevails.India faces no shortage of domestic challenges, including <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-demographic-divide-north-south-population-growth-by-shashi-tharoor-2022-12">uneven population growth</a> across regions. You cite “ignorance about family planning and the benefits of smaller families” as the “principal factor” behind rapid population growth in India’s northern states. What enabled the southern states to get it right, and how can their success be at least partly replicated in the north?India’s southern states have dramatically different human-development indicators from their northern counterparts – higher literacy rates, better health care, lower maternal and infant mortality, and more gender equality, to name a few. These factors go a long way toward explaining the growing population imbalance in India.But the north is gradually catching up, and it’s estimated that in a couple of decades, fertility in the northern states, too, will have fallen to replacement rates. By then, however, our population will have peaked at about 1.7 billion, compared to just 300 million when India gained independence 75 years ago. © <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/">Project Syndicate</a><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230208140216/63e3a0f79c7e80680e0d7060jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="177" height="252">

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“Ambedkar would have spoken out”

<img width="1985" height="1107" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd5049c7e80680e0d30ccjpeg.jpg" alt=""/>We have all been taught in school that human beings communicate through only five senses: touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing. American science writer Ed Yong’s spellbinding new book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us proves to us just how woefully limiting that definition is. It not only disregards other human sensory faculties, but also those possessed by the many species we share the planet with. We refer to people who show a supernatural ability to communicate as having a ‘sixth sense’, but Yong weaves a fascinating tale of the scores of other ways that organisms perceive — charting their environment through echolocation, magnetic and electrostatic fields, vibration, air and water currents, and many other stimuli. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/microchipping-nepals-dogs/">Microchipping Nepal's dogs</a>, Aria Shree Parasai After reading An Immense World, we will not think of ourselves and fellow animals great and small in the same way again. ‘Senses that seem paranormal to us only appear that way because we are so limited and so painfully unaware of our limitations,’ Yong writes, describing the mantis shrimp’s eyes that brim with 20 types of photoreceptors, allowing it to ‘see’ polarised light. Other animals smell what they see, hear what they touch, and see the earth’s magnetic field. They use one or many senses to make sense of their world, their Umwelt. The dog we worship at Kukur Tihar sees its marigold garland and the vermilion as green and yellow because of its dichromatic eyes, compared to the human trichromatic vision. We know dogs can hear sounds in a frequency range inaudible to humans, but they are probably also able to detect seismic waves that precede earthquakes. The dog’s nose scoops up odour molecules, sniffing six times a second through nostrils with side-slits that allows it to smell even while exhaling. Dogs' moist noses may even have inherited some of the infrared detection ability of their wolf ancestors.  Read also: <a style="font-weight: 600; letter-spacing: 0.15px; background-color: #ffffff;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-nepals-last-wild-dogs/">Saving Nepal’s last dogs</a>, Yadav Ghimirey Ed Yong talked to hundreds of scientists around the world doing cutting-edge research on sensory perception. Besides our five senses, we humans also have the sense of balance (equilibrioception), awareness of our own bodies (proprioception), as well as sensations of pain and pleasure. Other animals either have enhanced senses that we already know of, or means to perceive their surroundings that defy belief. A rattlesnake uses its forked tongue to smell in stereo and turn its world ‘into a map and a menu’. We know bats use ultrasound echolocation to intercept insects mid-air, but scientists have found they use Doppler compensation of radar signals to chase moths. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-nepals-last-wild-dogs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Saving Nepal’s last wild dogs</a>, Yadav Ghimirey Whales use infrasound sonar to communicate with each other across vast oceans, greenback turtles return to the exact beaches where they were born navigating with the earth’s magnetic field for precise geolocation. Migratory birds like bar-headed geese make nonstop trans-Himalayan flights memorising genetically-encoded magnetic maps. Sea birds also have an ultra-sensitive olfactory sense with which they steer their oceanic migration routes. Elephants use infrasound rumbles to communicate with distant herds, but can also sense ground vibrations, listening with their feet to recognise individual fellow-elephants. The human sense of touch is so sensitive we can detect texture at a molecular level on surfaces. Like the peacock, the colours of the Impeyan pheasant (डाँफे) probably hide additional ultraviolet colours that we cannot see. The feather crest on its head is likely not just a mating ornament, but sensors that ‘feel’ the air, just like the filoplume of gliding birds act as anti-stall warning systems. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/police-track-india-nepal-elephant-trafficking/">Police track India-Nepal elephant trafficking</a>, Alisha Sijapati and Tufan Neupane The Aedes aegypti mosquito can detect carbon dioxide, heat, and the odour that the human body gives off, a trait the dengue virus uses to propagate itself. Odomos creams do not drive away mosquito vectors, they only repel mosquitos after the taste receptors in their feet find DEET disgusting. The insect’s eyes also send signals to its brain in time-lapse, so everything appears in slow motion -- which is what makes it so difficult to swat mosquitoes and flies. Animals use receptors to make sense of the stimuli in their surroundings. Chemoreceptors in the nose and fingertips detect molecules that trigger smell and taste. Mechanoreceptors sense texture and vibrations through touch. Photoreceptors make sense of light. Read more: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/kathmandus-street-smart-dogs/">Kathmandu’s street-smart dogs</a>, Sonia AwaleEyes send electric signals to the brain through the optic nerve, and it is the occipital lobe that assigns wavelengths of light a colour. So, there is nothing really ‘green’ about a leaf, Yong explains: ‘Colour, then, is fundamentally subjective.’There is so much more awe and wonder in An Immense World. Ed Yong devotes his last chapter to how human activity in this bright and noisy world is threatening the planet’s sensescape. His plea is to ‘save the quiet and preserve the dark’, advice that the government and tourism planners in Nepal may want to take to heart.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd5089c7e80680e0d30cdjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="352" height="449">

Kunda Dixit

In realms of the senses

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd4df9c7e80680e0d30c3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="3328" height="2496"/><figcaption>All photos: JOY STEPHENS</figcaption></figure>In October 2018, Gurja Himal in one of the most inaccessible parts of Nepal came to sudden world attention. A Korean expedition attempting to climb the sheer south face of this magnificent peak in the Dhaulagiri massif was <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/gurja-himal-tragedy/">hit by an avalanche</a>. The entire Base Camp at 3,500m was blown away by the air blast, killing five Korean and four Nepali climbers.Even so, very few know about Gurja Khani, a former copper mining village at the foot of 7,193m Gurja Himal. The nearest village of Lulang lies a full day’s walk to the south across steep ridges and deep gorges, and from there it is another few days walk to the road from Beni.The shortest and easiest trail to the village is across the 3,250m high Gurja Deorali pass, writes social researcher Joy Stephens in the first few pages of her new photo book Gurja Khani: Hidden village of the Himalaya. She adds, ‘Such isolation has slowed the pace of change and built a community of resilient mountain people.’<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd4e69c7e80680e0d30c4jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1611" height="2069"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>It was the search for mineral ore that first drew Chhantyal miners to the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-clouds-are-lifting-below-dhaulagiri/">Dhaulagiri area</a>, and Gurja Khani owes its existence to the discovery of copper lodes in the mountains. After the indigenous Chhantyals came the Biswakarma metal-workers, forging a unique copper extraction partnership between the two.Before long, mining ceased due to the high taxes and cheap Indian aluminium utensils. Villagers turned to subsistence farming and wage labour but increasingly, youth from this village of 260 households are migrating to the cities or abroad.Stephens divides Gurja Khani into the lives of women, men, children and the elderly, and is an intimate look at a forgotten people from a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/trails-less-travelled/">forgotten part of the country</a>.In one chapter, Belmoti Pariyar of Road of Life Homestay recites from her daughter’s poem: ‘Life is like a trek in Nepal, up and down, up and down.’ This is in essence life in Gurja Khani, beautiful but difficult.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd4ea9c7e80680e0d30c5jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="979"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>When Belsara Biswokarma, 22, went into labour she bled profusely, passing in and out of consciousness. A junior paramedic in attendance could only do so much. Villagers then put her in a cloth sling between two poles to carry her to a health post in Lulang.‘They ran down the treacherous zig-zag steps to the river, and I was swinging from side to side. I was terrified they were going to stumble and fling me into the gorge,’ Belsara tells Stephens. ‘But we crossed the river and halfway up the mountain, I felt these enormous contractions. I could feel the baby’s head between my legs.’Amrita Biswakarma was abducted by her husband when she was 16, as per the common practice of ‘kidnap marriage’ which Stephens is not so judgemental about. ‘Even though they are traumatised at the time, it appears that once married they are well-treated by their husbands, and love or happiness grows with time,’ she writes.After 13 years of marriage, Amrita is happy with three children, but is sad that her husband is once again leaving to work in Qatar. Many men even from these remotest regions of Nepal <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/migration-not-a-wish-but-necessity-for-nepalis/">migrate to India or the Gulf for work</a>.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd4ee9c7e80680e0d30c6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2736" height="2446"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Children attend the local public school but most drop out. From an early age, they have to help parents with household chores, herding and fieldwork. Baby-sitting is an after-school activity.Ward chair Jhak Bahadur Chhantyal is ever occupied, pleading and cajoling people in his effort to improve life in the village. He ran as the Maoist party candidate in recent elections and says he joined the Maoists because they represented change.‘But I don’t believe we can realise our vision by force. First, we must win the minds of the people. In hindsight, the People’s War was not right,’ he tells Stephens. Jhak Bahadur once tried to go abroad for work, but a recruiter absconded with his borrowed Rs800,000 down payment. Besides being an elected official, he is a teacher in Gurja Khani.The last few pages of the book are dedicated to the Chhantyal’s reverence for nature and ancestor spirits, and faith in Shamanism. They consider the 2018 Gurja Himal tragedy as the wrath of the mountain deity for humans defiling nature.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd4f39c7e80680e0d30c7jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="484" height="496">

Sonia Awale

A mine of stories from Gurja

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100132/63bfd47e9c7e80680e0d30abjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="960" height="643"/><figcaption>WHAT'S SO FUNNY: Photograph by Ajaya Joshi of a rally at Khula Manch on page 1 of Nepali Times #295 (28 April-4 May 2006) showing the power of ridicule as resistance.</figcaption></figure>The Soviets had just invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the Prague Spring pro-democracy movement. A year later, the Czechs were in the finals of the World Ice Hockey Championships against the Soviet team in Stockholm. The Czechs won 4-3, and there was wild jubilation at home. In response, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sent a telegram to the Czech President: ‘CONGRATULATIONS STOP OIL STOP GAS STOP’.There have been political jokes for as long as there has been politics, but they really prove their true value when free speech is stifled by authoritarianism or in times of crisis. Which is why many Stalin-era jokes are being revived after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Like this one:A Russian is entering Latvia, and his conversation with the border police goes like this:“Nationality?”“Russian.”“Occupation?”“No. Just visiting.”                                          Today, humour and satire have become an even more powerful means of resistance against oppression because they are lubricated by memes, TikTok and YouTube spoofs. Authoritarian leaders lack a sense of humour, and have sent stand-up comedians, cartoonists, and satire columnists to jail, or even had them bumped off.Yet, humorists fearlessly pour scorn on the oppressive state. An exception is perhaps what used to be the world’s largest democracy next door, where virtually no jokes exist about Narendra Modi.Academics are also not known for their sense of humour, but two sociology professors from the South Asian University in New Delhi, Sasanka Perera and  Dev Nath Pathak recently published Humour and the Performance of Power in South Asia: Anxiety, Laughter and Politics in Unstable Times with curated chapters on the role of political humour in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/look-back-deal-with-our-past-and-learn/">“Look back, deal with our past and learn”</a>, Ashish DhakalNepal is not included, and a separate book may be needed to look at Nepal’s celebrity comedians during the Panchayat, Gai Jatra, Madan Krishna-Hari Bansha duo after 1992, Nepali cartoonists who defied military censorship after king Gyanendra’s coup in 2005, social media satire, and a controversial stand-up comedian.Perera and Pathak’s book looks into the role of humour in theatre, folklore, journalism and social media serving as a force for regime change or safety valve in crisis times. This is serious stuff. What’s so funny, anyway?Some of the chapters in the book are written by the two editors themselves, and others analyse the role of stand-up comedy in India, political cartoons, social media memes in Sri Lanka, and journalistic satire in Bangladesh.The role of humour is to allow citizens to let off steam, to poke fun at people who are no fun at all. And as a form of resistance, it makes citizens lose some of their fear of authority. Humour then can reach a critical mass, and draw more crowds into the streets.As the pro-democracy and anti-war demonstrations picked up in April 2006 on the streets of Kathmandu, the turning point came when a student at Khula Manch stood up from a crowd with a paper crown on his head, and did a parody of king Gyanendra’s speech (pictured). The roar of laughter from those around him proved that the fear was gone. The king restored parliament a few days later.Sasanka Perera is from Sri Lanka, and his chapter delves into the subversive internet memes challenging political power. Social media mobilisation drove people to the Galle Face Green in Colombo earlier this year in protests that finally brought about the downfall of the Rajapaksa brothers.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/its-sink-or-swim-for-the-himalaya/">It’s sink or swim for the Himalaya</a>, Kunda Dixit<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd4829c7e80680e0d30acjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="780"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd4879c7e80680e0d30adjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="821" height="594"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Perera and Pathak make a theoretical dissection of self-deprecating and subversive jokes, as well as those directed at belittling a people or their rulers on the other side of the border — like jokes in Bangladesh about Bengalis in India, or about Pakistanis by Indians.‘In the context of political upheavals and disruptions which mark much of South Asia, it is no accident that political humour emerges, when democratic rights and personal freedoms are most seriously curtailed,’ they say in their joint introduction to the book.The book also delves into why some satire is inherently funny, while others are considered ‘hitting below the belt’. Racist repartees may have been tolerated in the past, but have been unacceptable in the age of social media pushback.Satire on social media has the power to set the national agenda, and steer debate on the public sphere. But it can also be misused to fan populism, racism and hatred.The book does look tangentially at Nepal in a chapter by Sandhya A. S. and Chitra Adkar who analyse how Nepali workers are the butt of ‘jokes’ and stereotyped as being simple hillibillies, an image reinforced by Bollywood. They also examine the  Indian male gaze, and the perceived femininity of Gorkha security guards, drivers and domestic helpers from Nepal.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/government-for-the-future/">Government for the future</a>, Kunda Dixit‘Jokes about Nepali men circulated among Indian users of digital media draw a caricature of the Nepali men as naïve, simple and at times imbecilic or intellectually inferior,’ the authors write, adding that Indian men have inherited this sense of intellectual superiority from the way the British looked at Nepalis pre 1947.What the authors do not go into is how Nepali workers in India get back with their own jokes about Indian employers. What do you think the Nepali guards and gardeners are laughing about when the saheb and memsaheb are out?Humour and the Performance of Power in South Asia is not a joke book, it is a book about jokes. Perera and Pathak have put together serious research on humour and satire as a coping mechanism and resistance in times of trouble.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230112100136/63bfd48b9c7e80680e0d30aejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="310" height="462">Humour and the Performance of Power in South Asia: Anxiety, Laughter and Politics in Unstable TimesSasanka Perera and Dev Nath Pathak, eds. Routledge, Taylor &amp; Francis Group, London and New Delhi, 2022208 Pages, ISBN 9780367564018, Paperback: £27.99, Hardback: INR 995.00Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/year-enders-from-climate-to-global-finance/">Year-enders from climate to global finance</a>, Nepali Times

Seriously funny political humour

<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022120710124/639057aa9c7e80680e0ce169jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"/>The Himalaya is a hotspot in more ways than one. <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-change-is-a-disaster-in-the-nepal-himalaya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-change-is-a-disaster-in-the-nepal-himalaya/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031027000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2qldtXvBBGlTizC2zYp2-6">Climate breakdown</a> is melting its ice at an unprecedented rate, countries that border the Himalaya are not in speaking terms, and the world’s youngest mountain range is in a seismically active zone.Geopolitics and geotectonics collide along the 2,400km Himalayan arc, even while its glaciers shrink and the snowline recedes. The Siachen Glacier at 6,000m elevation is the world’s highest battlefield where the militaries of India and Pakistan have been eyeball-to-eyeball since 1984. Thousands of troops have died either because of altitude or by avalanches, few in actual fighting.India and China have over 60,000 troops facing each other in a disputed part of Ladakh, and dozens on both sides were killed when <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/view-of-galwan-from-bhutan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/view-of-galwan-from-bhutan/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2GK9eh_kycFgXSxwoWlgF9">clashes erupted in 2020.</a>Accelerated melting of Himalayan glaciers have created hundreds of new lakes along the mountains. Because they are dammed by fragile moraines, these are in danger of bursting — a risk that has been compounded by earthquake risk.The climate crisis is a water crisis, and nowhere is this more acute than in the Himalaya. What happens at the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/global-crisis-local-solutions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/global-crisis-local-solutions/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1FjilnWV90pM-k7HDurzLV">UN Climate Summit (COP27)</a> in Egypt this week will determine whether greenhouse gas emissions that thaw the Himalaya will be reduced in the coming decade.Some 2 billion people living downstream depend on rivers that originate in the Himalaya and the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/it-is-getting-hotter-on-the-roof-of-the-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/it-is-getting-hotter-on-the-roof-of-the-world/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw10rcns9BCSYKWoDyA5UyzO">Tibetan Plateau</a>. In fact, as the permanent ice in the Himalaya melts, water is going to be a strategic commodity that could further inflame geopolitical tensions in an already volatile region.In their new monograph Governing the ‘Water Tower of Asia’: The Case for a System of Integrated Knowledge for the Hindu Kush Himalaya, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Sayanangsu Modak of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in New Delhi make a strong case for integrating water management of the ten river basins of the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain range.The circulation of water vapour in the atmosphere, along rivers and of underground water does not respect international boundaries, but policies governing the water cycle are national in scope. The authors propose the creation of ‘integrated knowledge’ that is essential for combined management of water in future as the climate crisis magnifies current problems. Such knowledge has to be trans-boundary as well as trans-disciplinary, they argue.In their study, Bandyopadhyay and Modak come up with the concept of SINK (System of Integrated Knowledge) that tries to transcend present fragmented planning to include inter-disciplinary knowledge.‘Nature organises itself in a systematic and integrated manner, (but) the reductionism that has predominated the contemporary governance paradigm interrupts nature’s systems,’ they write.The <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=1211#.Y2irfS8RqLc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D1211%23.Y2irfS8RqLc&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0dXIz-K6POTNMYbr7scCxi">Himalayan landscape</a> is a ‘climate-maker’ that precipitates water from sky rivers as snow and rainfall. The ice on mountains has accumulated over millennia, advancing and retreating with the Ice Ages, but the present glacial retreat is different because of its pace, and since it is caused by anthropogenic carbon build-up in the atmosphere.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022120710124/639057af9c7e80680e0ce16ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1872" height="1416">Although ice and snow are more visible and get most of the attention in the climate debate, it is groundwater stored in deep aquifers and released slowly through <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepals-silent-emergency-springs-going-dry/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepals-silent-emergency-springs-going-dry/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1SsKvIyK0otuCwZCc5E44W">perennial springs</a> into rivers on which most people depend. In fact, besides being the ‘Water Tower of Asia’, the Himalaya has also been described as a gigantic sponge.Both the ice and groundwater storage is now being impacted by global warming and the changes in landcover due to deforestation, haphazard infrastructure, or mining activities. The hydrology of Himalayan rivers from the Amu Darya to Brahmaputra, the Ganga and its Nepal tributaries, the Mekong, the Burmese rivers, and the Yangtse and the Yellow Rivers are all changing rapidly.Because of the transboundary nature of water, the author’s SINK model cannot be nationally defined. The way a country tampers with its <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-villages-learn-to-cope-with-climate-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-villages-learn-to-cope-with-climate-crisis/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2kUUyQCRaI__QLPtqxk7Nr">river-floodplain ecosystem</a> does not just affect its own population, but spills over the border to people living downstream in another country.The monograph examines each of the ten Himalayan-Hindu Kush river basins. It cites the silt load on the Yellow River, the disruption caused by the three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, dam-building by China on the Mekong and its impact on Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, the Chinese dams on the Salween and Irrawaddy that flow into Burma, the Brahmaputra-Yarlung Tsangpo that flows from China through India into Bangladesh, and the Ganga basin.Studies have shown that only 9% of the total flow of the Ganga is from glacial melt (it can be up to 50% for the Indus) More than 60% of the annual flow of the Ganga is from tributaries in Nepal, and up to 80% of that goes down during the four monsoon months.The Ganga plains in India is one of the most densely-populated parts of the world, and 70% of its area is intensely farmed — mostly along the fertile floodplains. Besides the seasonal fluctuation in its rivers, distribution of water in the basin is also unbalanced, with the western parts much drier than the east.All this has historically had a bearing on <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15163#.Y2iuEC8RqLc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D15163%23.Y2iuEC8RqLc&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1WIAHiXmzjrQ8_I0qGWzWI">flood control embankments </a>in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, large-scale irrigation projects, and over-extraction of groundwater in the dry season. As the authors note, big flood control projects in India have exacerbated the crisis because sedimentation raises the river bed, embankments are breached, the floodplains are deprived of nutrient-rich silt.Then there are geopolitical implications for the construction of storage reservoirs to <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-geopolitics-of-nepals-water-and-electricity/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-geopolitics-of-nepals-water-and-electricity/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0qajX_1xlL10R2N9ljrZEj">regulate flow and generate electricity</a> from the Ganga’s tributaries in Nepal. But the authors warn, ’Upstream water storage is an attractive proposition to control the spate of flooding but research indicates that it could, at best, reduce the intensity of flooding.’A key paragraph in the text underlines the importance of cross-border interdisciplinary planning on rivers: ‘Monsoons and the resultant high flows in the river system are a key ingredient for the ecological integrity of the whole basin. They allow for the geomorphic actions within river corridors – generation of sediments, their transportation and deposition, recharge of aquifers and water bodies, and help enhance the productivity of land in a landscape that is still closely integrated with the natural system.The integration between the economy, ecology and society needs to be rewired to create harmony and balance preferably at a river basin or large watershed scale to respect the natural process of integration.Alas, within countries and in trans-boundary rivers there is a disregard for crossborder planning, and a fragmented approach that exploits river flows unsustainably and harms the entire ecosystem. These man made disturbances are further upended by climate breakdown.The monograph devotes an entire chapter to expounding in detail about SINK by integrating three disciplines: natural sciences, social sciences and indigenous knowledge. It rejects the historical reductionist engineering paradigm that has governed river planning. Local knowledge and re-defining ‘development’ are also critical in the SINK approach.The authors list governance challenges for professionals while addressing the multiple crises in the Himalayan basin: surviving extreme weather aggravated by climate change, sustainable sediment management, conserving biodiversity, reducing river pollution, and one that is particularly relevant to Nepal: intra-basin hydropower development.Bandyopadhyay, who earlier served with ICIMOD in Kathmandu, hopes that the recommendations will help policymakers to shift from a business-as-usual model to governance that makes integrated water management ecologically and economically sustainable -- and socially just.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022120710124/639057b29c7e80680e0ce16bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="912">Governing the ‘Water Tower of Asia’The Case for a System of Integrated Knowledge for the Hindu Kush HimalayaObserver Research Foundation, New Delhi. 2022119 pages<a href="http://www.orfonline.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.orfonline.org&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Qd3qkodhO3IewHU3JI_WE">www.orfonline.org</a>Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/government-for-the-future/">Government for the future</a>, Kunda Dixit

It’s sink or swim for the Himalaya

<figure><img width="2500" height="1667" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111132/637219409c7e80680e0baa8cjpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>All Photos: SHIKHAR BHATTARAI</figcaption></figure>What does it mean to have a book you can hold in your hands? It can mean having something to read — as simple as that. But, holding a book can also mean having something tactile to love. As one friend said to me a long time ago, all books should be pampered-looking, even for debutantes. Now, Itisha Giri is no debutante, but her book, <a href="https://qcbookshop.com/book/an-archive" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">An Archive</a>, has definitely been through a lot of pampering before arriving in our hands. There is something about the cover that might make you pause. A collage of different items appear on the cover — a lone foot, hands, citrus, marigold, waves, fish and shells and snails. And the more mundane, like buses, tyres, crockery, et cetera. Each, however, is an idea. Each is carried over to the pages of the book. There is something about the book that makes it an object you want to own, hold, carry, keep. Clearly, credit goes to the good design by Dishebh Raj Shrestha, and the minimalist, but striking, illustrations by Sumana Shakya. From the first pages you stumble upon a series of puzzles, the first being a crossword. And whether or not you are able to work your mind across the little boxes, the series of half-finished, clueless sentences will put you on hold. But one is not meant to solve all the puzzles that exist, you see. Also, you already know this is not your regular poetry book. You might wonder if the book is meant to be a puzzle in itself, as you traverse its pages, ambling over the list of consonants. What are these consonants, one might ask. To every reader, it lends a different meaning. One finds that the way to read this book of poems is not just to hold it straight like an ordinary book, but also to turn it around vertically to read from the margins, inviting a meditative process. The list of consonants are on the margins, deliberately — each one of them a riddle, sometimes statements and sometimes heavy half-sentences, leaving the full story dangling: a good gadfly returns to its prey. With this process, the book earns a kind of intimacy with the reader. Even as an object to be held, it is like an embrace in installments. While there is that idea of permanence etched in some of the pages, it is actually impermanence that the reader deals with, as the theme of loss and death permeates the poems — many of them written as eulogies, and some as banter with the dead. There is a sense of replacement in loss- I saw him again, after my father died. He had greyed- the man-child. Because death does find a replacement, in memories, and among the living. How else would life be livable? And so the poet says: If he refuses, tell them to tell him this wake is over. I must go back to the living. <figure><img width="1875" height="2500" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111132/637219459c7e80680e0baa8djpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>Itisha Giri</figcaption></figure>There is hurt in Itisha’s poetry, but it is also rife with anger and love — or so it feels. We all turn to poetry with our own set of emotions. And, so, it is apt that poems trigger a set of different feelings for different readers, where the folds of skin of someone dying can be like layers of memory.Itisha moves in memory with a heaviness, capturing moments from the past and recreating them in images like that of a "giant cauldron that holds the polymerised mass of an eclipse". This is not poetry that rests in the softness and beauty of what has passed, but draws from its coarseness, because aren’t moments also made up of "hair, skin, nails and asphalt"? Even if they are linked to awkwardness, to humiliation, or different moments of being stripped of comfort, of grace and of innocence, they must all be recorded.There is the frontline — whereHuman shields are mascotsOf fragile peace.These lines on the children of war resonate with all of human history. It is pregnant with the darkness of yesterday and a reminder of how humans continue to use our own offspring because it is what it takes. When humans build, in that process of gestation is also the warning of the impending end. So, a city shares its fate with that of every person: we, who are programmed for destruction.And the thread seems to hold — death, loss and all of them speaking to a feminine memory, bound together by the narratives of the “consonants” the poet supplies. Itisha says pa is to purge and that "one purges herself of pollutants". On one page, "meaning sticks to you like burr", and on another, "an ear thaws under duress", which is a representation of every young woman, who forever thaws in the memory of events of violation.  And so the book continues to offer these consonants that make you shuffle it in your hands,  during which the book earns a sort of intimacy with the reader-- an embrace in installments.Some of the most powerful poems in the book are the simplest ones. The Migrant's Wife is about simple lives that stir deep tragedies. The Autopsy of Mr.X reads like flash fiction and somewhat like a spot news report. Only, it is about everyman, again. Probably, the average, middle-class man. Familiarity in the language makes it a seamless piece.The same language, however, does not work for some of the other poems where Itisha addresses a future daughter and other girls. While the topics are heavy and laden with the seriousness of violation and abuse, the style is a reminder of the genre that has come to be known as 'Instagram poetry' — quite different from some of the other poems that are striking for the language. Itisha’s book is not your regular book of poems. It demands the reader to pay attention because some of her poems are stories cloaked in verse. We are all seekers of stories and you might find that you read An Archive in one go, like you were reading a novella. And you might also find that you return to it some nights, to re-read the poems, because with every reading, there is a new light, and new crevices to be broken into.An ArchiveItisha GiriPublished by SafuPaperback | 107 pagesRs400<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111132/637219489c7e80680e0baa8epng.png" alt="" width="360" height="559">

An archive of one’s own

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d0c9c7e80680e0bd4c7jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1593" height="1000"/><figcaption>As the monsoon clouds dissipate, a view from Laurebina of (left to right) Himalchuli, Ngadi Peak and Manaslu in the morning sun. All photos: PETER HINZE</figcaption></figure>German journalist Peter Hinze always had a fascination for the Himalaya, and later for trail-running.  On one of his trips to Nepal, at Pilgrim’s Bookstore in Thamel, he came across Robin Boustead’s Nepal Trekking and the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/nepals-grand-trek-road/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Great Himalayan Trail</a>. On his flight back to Munich, he decided to one day do the trek himself.‘My goal was not to break records. No, speed was not my motivation,’ Hinze writes in the prologue to his own book titled The Great Himalaya Trail and self-published in English in 2021. The German original won the International Tourismus Böurse Book Award in Berlin in 2019.The reason he made the three-month journey in 2017 was that he felt the Himalaya was at a great risk from <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-change-is-a-disaster-in-the-nepal-himalaya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate change</a>, ‘civilisation’, road construction and out-migration. It was to draw attention to this ‘existential danger’ to Nepal’s mountains that he wrote a book that does not just record his adventure, but highlight haphazard road-building, the erosion of culture, impact of climate damage, and also the hardiness and adaptability of the high Himalayans.With its superb photography, the book is a guide to those who want to be among the less than 150 people who have completed the entire trail, or even just do a part of this epic traverse of the Nepal Himalaya.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-other-abc-trek/">The Other ABC Trek</a>, Bimal Kadel<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d0f9c7e80680e0bd4c8jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1194" height="1500"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d129c7e80680e0bd4c9jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">There are two Great Himalaya Trails (GHT): one is the High Route that traverses the upper passes and uninhabited valleys, and the other is the Cultural Route which moves through villages and settlements. One has only mountains, and the other has mountains and people. Hinze’s book is as much about people as it is about terrain.It is almost an <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/human-face-of-a-himalayan-climate-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">anthropological documentation</a> of the rapidly-changing landscape and culture of Nepal. As we flip through the pages, we know that many of these places will never be the same again.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d159c7e80680e0bd4cajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Hinze’s team of porters and guides starts in Lhonak below Kangchenjunga and already the first signs of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/forests-replace-glaciers-in-the-himalaya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">shrinking glaciers</a> and retreating snowline are visible. Trying to cross from Khumbu into Rolwaling, the team is forced to turn back from Tashi Laptsa Pass because of heavy snow and avalanche danger.He does make it to Mt Everest Base Camp to recount the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/on-everest-4-years-after-the-nepal-earthquake/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">series of disasters </a>that have hit it in 2014 and 2015. We can see with the pandemic how over-dependence on tourism can be <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/nepali-times-search/?q=everest+avalanche" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">disruptive to livelhihoods</a>.Being a journalist, Hinze’s book is like a magazine longread. Instead of chapter breaks, we have sidebar interviews with people he meets along the way: the climate scientist Fidel Devkota, tourism entrepreneur Yankila Sherpa, Raju Bista, the nephew of the King of Mustang, and Robin Boustead himself.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-andes-and-himalaya-join-hands/">The Andes and Himalaya join hands</a>, Lorena Gómez Ramírez and Bibek Raj Shrestha<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d189c7e80680e0bd4cbjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Hinze avoids polemics, trying to understand the need of Nepali villagers for better roads. He quotes Raju Bista: “Mustang is not a zoo for foreigners to come and ogle at us like we’re some sort of attraction. We are also entitled to progress, wealth and a better life, the road will bring us all of this.”But Hinze is deeply worried about scars that the roads are leaving on Nepal’s nature and culture. The country’s bio- and human diversity is being erased by this accelerated rush to connect. Along the way, Hinze develops a special bond with <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/bon-voyage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dolpo</a> and its people. It is Nepal’s largest district still largely untouched, but the world is encroaching from its north and south.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d1b9c7e80680e0bd4ccjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Ten years after the first GHT traverse, Hinze gives us a glimpse through text and images of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/saving-gokyo-from-itself/">change on a Himalayan scale</a>. We just hope that the book finds an international publisher so it is circulated widely. It has a useful appendix with the stages of the Trail and tips for those who want to do all 1,864 horizontal kilometres, 95,551 vertical metres, crossing 12 passes above 5,000m and 22 above 4,000m.The highest point on the trail is 5,758m, and the lowest 303m. This book is vivid proof that there are six directions in Nepal: north, south, east, west, up and down.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/australias-writing-diplomat/">Australia's writing diplomat</a>, Nepali Times<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d1e9c7e80680e0bd4cdjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="254" height="237">The Great Himalayan Trailby Peter Hinze, 2021English translation: Sylvia Goulding, Emily PlankISBN: 978-3-9801939-1-7286 pagesinfo@greathimalayantrailrun.com<h2>Chat with Peter Hinze</h2> Nepali Times caught up with the author of The Great Himalayan Trail during his recent visit to Kathmandu. Excerpts of the conversation: Nepali Times: This book explores not just the Great Himalayan Trail, but also the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/himalayans-on-the-frontlines/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">changes that are sweeping the land</a>. Is that what inspired yoiu to write this book? Peter Hinze: Although the book was only published a short time ago, some parts of are already in the past. That is how rapid the changes are. There is hardly any part of Nepal or the Himalayan region that are spared from these transformations. Valleys and mountains, which until recently were considered ‘inaccessible’, also for political reasons, are being ‘civilised’ and ‘developed’ at breakneck speed. The transformation is in full swing, and it will not be stopped.It is important for people to connect to a more dignified life. For Westerners, the term Himalaya still has a romantic image: prayer flags, yak butter lamps, candles, no electricity. But of course the Himalayan inhabitants also want to participate in the development towards modernity.Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/a-ray-of-hope-for-nepal/"> A ray of hope for Nepal</a>, Kunda Dixit<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d1f9c7e80680e0bd4cejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">But there has been a lot of hype about this modernisation of the mountains. The danger that traditions and social structures will be lost is real. The book attempts to visually document at least some of the traditions.One fact, however, has left me with mixed feelings: it's China's massive influence in the region. People are drawing hope from possible Chinese aid, which Nepal's government has denied for decades. But only short-term help is received, nobody wants to know anything about possible dependencies in the future, nobody wants to talk about it. But that dependency will come.The book seems to mix your role as a journalist with that of a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/trail-running-trail-blazer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">trail-running adventurer</a>. How did you combine those two roles?As a journalist, I encounter people and situations. I'm a guest for a short time. I meet people, some of whom haven't seen a stranger for years. So I have to adapt to this situation. I'm not allowed to disturb, but I still want to learn something about the people, about their lives and their problems. What could be more useful for a reporter than people opening up to them. I had the help of two Sherpa friends but for them too we were in a different place. For many people in the Himalaya, the unfamiliar begins in the next valley. “Here is my home, here is my family and my country. Why should I go to the next valley or even further?” This I've often heard this as an astonished question. In the west, the term ‘homeland’ has acquired a somewhat questionable (because it is too traditional) connotation. In the Himalaya, home is still an affair of the heart, even for young people.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/the-women-left-behind/">The women left behind</a>, Sonia Awale<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d239c7e80680e0bd4cfjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1593" height="1000">Your book is as much about the place as the people. What stuck you most about the inhabitants of the high Himalaya?Between Kanchenjunga and Api-Saipal the inhabitants of the Himalaya master a life of the most extreme challenges. Deprivation, extreme weather, isolation, lack of health care, difficult access to education and increasingly the consequences of climate change. Nevertheless, there is confidence and hope for better days. Religion is the leitmotif of their will to survive. Modesty, hope, faith and confidence: these are the cornerstones of existence in the mountains. I live in Bavaria, close to the Alps. The mountain dwellers there lived the same way decades ago. It is the mountains that shape the people. No matter where, no matter what elevation. It doesn't matter what language is spoken.Young Nepalis moved down into the valleys to Kathmandu or Pokhara. They went to good schools and found a job. But more and more of them are now returning to their home villages because they see opportunities there. This is a good trend, although not very strong yet.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d269c7e80680e0bd4d0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1593" height="1000"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721d299c7e80680e0bd4d1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">Of all the places you walked through, you seem to have been really taken by Dolpo. Why Dolpo?I often ask taxi drivers in Kathmandu if they have heard of Dolpo. Many have not.They are a people that have been ignored for decades by Kathmandu. It is a place where the most original form of Tibetan Buddhism is still practiced, as is the Bon faith – one of the oldest in the world.In the two years of the pandemic a lot has been said and written about in Europe about a return to the simple life, of basics. If we listen to the people, and especially the religious leaders in Dolpo region they can teach us a lot about frugality, happiness and living lightly.Karma Tsering, is a yak farmer I met in Bhijer, located at 3,900m on the border with Tibet. He told me: “We have enough to eat. We have enough to wear. Why shouldn't we be happy?" He need to have said more. And that is why the Dolpopa deserve hope and help, and that is why the place is so close to my heart.Read more: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-salt-of-the-earth/">The salt of the earth</a>, Jag Bahadur Budha

Change on a Himalayan scale

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721cec9c7e80680e0bd4bbjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="3503" height="2289"/><figcaption>EARLY REFLECTIONS: Takashi Miyahara (above) in 1970 with a Nepali co-worker during the construction of the Hotel Everest View.</figcaption></figure>Takashi Miyahara was a Japanese development worker who was first assigned to Nepal in the 1960s, when the powers he had ordained that the country’s future was possible through something called the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-himalayan-high/">‘cottage industry’</a>.Miyahara soon realised that progress along that path would keep Nepal backward. Mesmerised by Nepal’s scenery and its culture, he was convinced tourism-led development was the only way ahead, and went on to build <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-himalayan-high/">Nepal’s first world-class high-end hotel in Syangboche</a> at 3,880m.Together with <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075">Tiger Tops in Chitwan</a>, Miyahara’s Hotel Everest View brought Nepal to the attention of the outside world in all its variety – from the highest mountains to tropical jungles teeming with wildlife.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/miyahara-san-a-life-devoted-to-nepal/">Miyahara-san: a life devoted to Nepal</a>, Kunda DixitPage by page, we learn of the tenacity of a man who married in Nepal, and made this country his home. He renounced his Japanese citizenship to set up the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=13408#.YljYMtNBz0s">Nepal National Development Party</a>, and even contested (and lost) the 2008 Constituent Assembly elections.Many in Nepal did not help Miyahara, some put obstacles in his way (you know who you are), but he never gave up.Even in the most desperate moments when officials dilly-dallied on the hotel permit, or when Royal Nepal Airlines gave him the runaround, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-himalayan-high/">he persevered</a> — not only setting up a hotel that put Nepal on the international map, but gave Khumbu its own airfield.It is not Miyahara’s fault that governments did not exploit the visibility that Hotel Everest View gave Nepal globally to push for high value, low-volume tourism. The potential of Syangboche airfield was also never fully exploited because of vested interests.He went on to also get Japanese investors for the Himalaya Hotel in Patan, and was <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/miyahara-san-a-life-devoted-to-nepal/">already bringing in 1,000 up-market Japanese tourists</a> to Nepal in the 1970s. His other dream project was the Annapurna View Hotel in Sarangkot.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721cef9c7e80680e0bd4bcjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="3876" height="2700"><figcaption>Takashi Miyahara looks out of the window of the completed Hotel Everest View in Syangboche with Ama Dablam and surrounding mountains reflected on the pane.</figcaption></figure>But we get a sense from his memoir that <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-himalayan-high/">Miyahara had already realised</a> that even developing a high yield tourism model was not enough to get Nepal to leapfrog development.The only way to change things was <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=13408#.YljZHtNBz0s">to infiltrate politics</a>. He used to joke that he wanted to be a prime minister of Nepal to fast track the country’s growth.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-himalayan-high/">A Himalayan High</a>, Nepali TimesWhich is why he <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=13408#.YljZHtNBz0s">set up his own party.</a> Much of his thinking on infrastructure-led growth, sustainable tourism development, the premium on protecting nature, formed the basis of his party’s political platform, and are contained in the later chapters of his memoir.He told <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/miyahara-san-a-life-devoted-to-nepal/">this newspaper in an interview before the 2008 elections</a>: “Tourism will not only increase national income but also help Nepal become self-reliant. This means using Nepal’s natural resources like rivers and forests, and moulding them for tourism purposes, and also harnessing their potential through hydropower generation and transportation.”Miyahara died in 2019 at age 85, and was <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/miyahara-san-a-life-devoted-to-nepal/">cremated near the hotel he built with his bare hands in Syangboche</a>. His vision lives on at Hotel Everest View, and is spelt out in this memoir. For maximum impact, this book deserves to come out in translation in Nepali since it is Nepal’s policy-makers and the public for whom the book should hold most value.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111148/63721cf29c7e80680e0bd4bdjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="323" height="278">Takashi Miyahara told <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/miyahara-san-a-life-devoted-to-nepal/">Nepali Times in another interview in 2015</a>: “The public must be aware of the political failure that led to Nepal lagging behind. Bureaucrats don’t take decisions and just shift responsibility. There is greed, and society lacks a moral compass.”Go online to read excerpt of the book: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-himalayan-high/">https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-himalayan-high/</a>Read more: <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Takashi-Miyahara-2020-vision,2540">Takashi Miyahara 2020 vision</a>, Karma Gurung

A ray of hope for Nepal

<figure><img width="1500" height="1073" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720ee89c7e80680e0b7944jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>In 2013, Hima and Maggie Doyne at the spot where the two first met in 2006. All Photos: BLINKNOW FOUNDATION</figcaption></figure>Six-year-old Hima Tamata used to look at her reflection in a pool on the banks of a river near Surkhet. The still water was clear as a mirror. Her mother, Ganga, toiled nearby, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/crushing-tale-of-Chure">crushing boulders</a> with a hammer for a pittance. Occasionally, she wiped the sweat from her brow in the sweltering heat. The stones she broke for a contractor were used to pave new highways, and Hima sometimes joined her mother to break smaller stones with her tiny hands.Hima used to watch her mother from the river bank. A single mother, she had to work all day to feed Hima and her three brothers after her husband left her to remarry. Hima sometimes rummaged in a nearby garbage pile to find things to sell. <figure><img width="640" height="512" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720eeb9c7e80680e0b7945jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img width="640" height="511" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720eef9c7e80680e0b7946jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>It was 2006, and the Maoist conflict had just ended. Maggie Doyne, a 19-year-old American visitor, was backpacking through western Nepal to understand how the decade-long war had affected children."I sensed someone watching us from a distance as I helped my mother break stones. And when our eyes met, she gave me a dazzling smile,” recalls Hima. "I smiled back because her smile made me happy." <figure><img width="2306" height="1146" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720ef29c7e80680e0b7947jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Maggie and Hima immediately bonded, and she asked Hima if she would like to go to school. The answer was a quiet “yes”, and that was all it took. That chance meeting prompted Maggie Doyne to pay for Hima’s enrollment in a primary school in Surkhet.But soon, Doyne found out that there were hundreds of other children like Hima. So, she went on to help set up a home for children in Surkhet orphaned by the conflict, using money her parents in the US wired her from saved up baby-sitting money.  By 2010, she added a school where 400 of Nepal’s neediest children now get free education. She co-founded the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BlinkNow.org/">BlinkNow Foundation</a> and established the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/starting-nepals-green-school-movement/">Kopila Valley Children's Home and School</a> in Surkhet. The two institutions also work in vocational training and to foster grassroots community development. <figure><img width="1196" height="862" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720ef59c7e80680e0b7948jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Her work has been championed by <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/from-nepali-press/Never-too-late,3105">Pulitzer Prize</a>-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and the Dalai Lama, among others. The story of BlinkNow's beginnings has been featured on the Huffington Post , VH1, MTV, and DoSomething.org. Maggie was named <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/philanthropist-maggie-doyne-on-career-and-success">Glamour magazine's</a> Woman of the Year and was used as an example for her groundbreaking work at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy. In 2015, she was named <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=maggie+doyne&amp;client=safari&amp;rls=en&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sxsrf=APq-WBvxNefJZa1xSKYRPGQYF1ZmOPJjzg:1648342861509&amp;source=lnms&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwi-uenVi-X2AhUyxYsBHUbbD3EQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&amp;biw=1502&amp;bih=859&amp;dpr=2#imgrc=oPBxr9QuabVtxM">CNN Hero.</a> Maggie's story carries a message of hope, love, and the possibility of how the smallest individual acts can spark big changes. She believes that poverty, hunger, and violence can be alleviated when children are provided with their most basic needs: a loving, happy childhood, nutrition, and a quality education. Maggie's resolve to educate one child has now metamorphosed into a Children's Home for 50 kids and <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/female-foeticide-to-football/">Kopila Valley School</a>, where over 400 students get tuition-free education every year. Among the students was Hima, who graduated two years ago, completed a chef internship and is enrolled in a hotel management diploma course. <figure><img width="1404" height="1620" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720ef89c7e80680e0b7949jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Hima was inspired to be a chef by her mother, who left her stone-breaking job and works in the kitchen of the Kopila Valley Women's Center, a vocational training program that <a href="https://blinknow.org/">BlinkNow Foundation</a> also set up to empower women in the community. Ganga herself was trained at the Center to be a cook.Ganga, a graduate of the same program, currently cooks for over 40 people daily. This has inspired Hima, who intends to follow in her mother's footsteps in practicing cooking professionally."I learned cooking as a little girl since my mother and brothers would be working outside all day,” Hima says. "While studying at Kopila, I also baked and sold cookies at football tournaments. It helped me with pocket money, which further motivated me and built my confidence." Sixteen years later, Hima recently went back to the river bank where she gazed at her reflection, the pool is muddy and polluted. There is now a busy market on the roadside where her mother used to break stones. Now 23, Hima wants to follow the example set by her mentor, Maggie, and help others like her. Maggie Doyne’s work to nurture under-served Nepali children is detailed in her new book Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother's Story of Hope and Love."I feel proud to be a part of Maggie's journey, but I have to carve my own story too,” says Hima. “Maggie would want that. So, I work hard towards my goal to be somebody of my own."  <img width="640" height="958" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720efc9c7e80680e0b794ajpeg.jpg" alt="">Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and Hopeby <a href="https://www.google.com.np/search?tbo=p&amp;tbm=bks&amp;q=inauthor:%22Maggie+Doyne%22&amp;source=gbs_metadata_r&amp;cad=4">Maggie Doyne</a>HarperCollins Focus, 2022<table><tbody><tr><td width="35">ISBN</td><td width="575">0785240284, 9780785240280</td></tr></tbody></table>272 pages,  <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maggie-Doyne/e/B098R58FFS/ref=zg_bsnr_11350_bl_20/000-0000000-0000000?pd_rd_i=0785240284">$14.99 on Amazon</a>Read more: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=17635">Nepal's Hero</a>, Nepali Times

The stone-breaker’s daughter

<figure><img width="640" height="427" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13c69c7e80680e0a993djpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Photos: AMITAV GHOSH</figcaption></figure>Born in Calcutta, and now a New York-based writer, Amitav Ghosh approaches the subject of the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/un-climate-report-declares-planetary-emergency/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">global environmental crisis</a> through two literary genres: fiction and non-fiction.  As a celebrated novelist, Ghosh is known for his meticulously researched works of fiction that take complex transnational historical events, and weave characters into them, so that readers get a close idea of what it was like to live through those times. The Calcutta Chromosome, for instance, is a tale woven around the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-mosquito-that-changed-nepals-history/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">malaria scourge</a> that has lessons for the current pandemic. In The Glass Palace, Ghosh takes us back to colonial Burma, Malaya and Bengal and the story of a family caught up in upheavals. His novel The Hungry Tide is about a young Indian scientist in the ecologically fragile mangroves of the Sundarban in the Ganges delta. Sea of Poppies is about fictional characters caught up in the very real Opium Wars. <img width="191" height="270" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13c89c7e80680e0a993ejpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="190" height="271" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13ca9c7e80680e0a993fjpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="191" height="269" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13cb9c7e80680e0a9940jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="191" height="272" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13cc9c7e80680e0a9941jpeg.jpg" alt="">While Ghosh specialises in historical novels that merge fact and fiction, he has also written powerful non-fiction books, including the ethnographic In an Antique Land. The slim Countdown is about regional radioactive fallout of a future India-Pakistan nuclear war, and The Great Derangement in 2016 looked at the reluctance of politicians, novelists, artists and movie-makers to grasp and respond to the climate emergency.        <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/book-reviews-new-year-2074,3654">Horror story for a climate calamity</a>, Kunda Dixit <img width="187" height="267" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13cd9c7e80680e0a9942jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="192" height="268" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13cf9c7e80680e0a9943jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="191" height="271" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016118/636d13d09c7e80680e0a9944jpeg.jpg" alt="">Ghosh’s pre-pandemic novel Gun Island could be seen as a response to the questions he himself raised in The Great Derangement about the paucity of novels dealing with climate change. In this fictional work, we are taken in typical Amitav fashion on the journey of a 50-something Bengali American, as he finds his view of reality shifting. Dinanath Datta, more commonly known by his American name Deen, is a dealer of rare books with a natural affinity for the ancient and poetic. While on an annual visit to his hometown of Kolkata, he is persuaded into taking a last minute boat escapade into the Sundarbans, the same mangrove archipelago that is the setting for the earlier novel The Hungry Tide. Deen heads to a riverbank with a shrine in honour of the protagonist of an old Bengali legend. Upon learning more about the details of this mysterious folk tale, Deen begins to recognise that this narrative may be based on a real life experience of an individual living during climatic changes of the ‘Little Ice Age’ 500 year ago, when a cold period swept the planet.Needless to say, there are many parallels to the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-change-is-a-disaster-in-the-nepal-himalaya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate crisis we are experiencing today</a>.  Deen, a secular realist, realises that the greatest barrier to humanity dealing with a global emergency is greed. He thinks (and obviously the author does, too, through his character) that the religious concept of demons is a metaphor for greed. ‘According to Hindu mythology, when demons take over is when the world ends,’ Ghosh writes on behalf of his character.Humans are inherently greedy and this nuanced take is the theological summary of the anthropocene. While demons have not actually taken over the earth, demonic ideation has. Later in the novel, Deen’s close confidant, Cinta, states that when she looks at this world ‘with the diagnostic tools of an Inquisitor, it becomes that the world of today presents all of the symptoms of demonic possession’. Cinta sums up our current climate crisis in a most particular, yet insightful fashion: ‘Everybody knows what must be done if the world is to continue to be a liveable place … and yet we are powerless, even the most powerful among us. We go about our daily business through habit, as though we were in the grip of forces that have overwhelmed our will; we see shocking and monstrous things happening all around us and we avert our eyes; we surrender ourselves willingly to whatever it is that has us in its power.’<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/panoramic-encyclopaedia-of-the-himalaya/">Panoramic encyclopaedia of the Himalaya</a>, Lisa Choegyal <figure><img width="267" height="400" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016118/636d13d19c7e80680e0a9945jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>This is a striking and eloquent explanation of a world held in the spell of a capitalist consumer culture that has numbed us to its consequences on nature and life. The phenomenon of greed has “possessed” us in that way. Gun Island is a bit of a slow burn, but once the action begins the pages turn easily. Ghosh weaves references to contemporary events and issues, while incorporating them into human history. He is able to illustrate the importance of maintaining a relationship with the unknown and mystical, as well as how that can actually strengthen one’s relationship with reality. The author leaves his reader wanting to show strength in stepping out of the demonic choke-hold of greed and extravagance that society is currently in, and stand up for Mother Earth. And to ram the point home, Amitav Ghosh then uses the pandemic lockdown to write a non-fiction corollary to his novel, The Nutmeg Curse, released last month.In it, Ghosh speaks as himself, and not through one of his characters, about the history of cruelty and plunder behind the ‘discovery’ of the New World and the European colonialism elsewhere in the world. By recalling gory details of extermination of nature and genocides of indigenous peoples, Ghosh reminds us that the planetary emergency we face today is just an extension of the holocaust that local peoples suffered in past centuries at the hands of the conquistadors. In fact, it presages the current crisis.The reader is shown how the ‘conjoined processes of violence, physical and intellectual, were all necessary for the emergence of a new economy based on extracting resources from a desacralized, inanimate Earth’. Ghosh is referring to the spiritual relationship that indigenous communities have always maintained with planet Earth. But modern industrialised societies look at the Mother Earth only through the lens of what she can offer us, paying no heed that we destroy nature at our own peril – as the Climate-Covid co-crises remind us.  <a style="font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/the-unsung-heroes-of-conservation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The unsung heroes of conservation</a>, Nepali TimesThe Nutmeg Curse first takes us to 1621, when the Dutch colonial military wipes out the entire population of the Banda Islands in present day Indonesia to control the trade in the invaluable native nutmeg tree. Nutmegs were one of the most desired items of luxury and wealth in Europe at the time, driving the spice trade. The value of this fruit drove the Dutch East India Company to compete with the British to control the islands, and to do so they had to exterminate the local inhabitants. As with the entire European colonial project in South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Americas, anything that stood in the way of resource extraction (nature, non-white humans and non-human animals) were expendable.  The curse of the nutmeg for Ghosh is an allegory for the more modern resource curse of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/decarbonisation-needs-to-begin-today/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fossil fuels behind the current climate crisis</a>.  Replace nutmeg with petroleum, and you can see how colonialism laid the foundations for the present planetary emergency. Ghosh shows how the colonial process treated indigenous peoples as subhuman, and their knowledge of and sustainable co-existence with nature as ‘primitive’. The book gives us a long litany of horrors of European colonisation perpetrated on peoples around the world, systematically muting them, replacing forests with plantations, native cultures with slavery, and obliterating the natural world.In a way, this is an alternative history of the world that is diametrically different from the history text books in school that are dominated by politics, conquests and the resources that were mined to fuel industrial ‘civilisation’. Ghosh has a different take on history, and persuasively explains how our colonial past is inherently intertwined with the global climate emergency. The Nutmeg Curse also underlines the connectivity between our colonial history right down to the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/we-all-yearn-to-breathe-free/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Black Lives Matter movement</a> and the global pandemic. Ghosh tells us how he sat down to write the book during the pandemic lockdown in Brooklyn in 2020, as sirens blared outside and bodies had to be kept in refrigerated trucks because hospital morgues had filled up.<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/alpine-style-in-the-himalaya/">Alpine style in the Himalaya</a>, Kunda DixitThe reader is able to understand that in order to even begin to fight against social and environmental <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/black-lives-matter-but-dalit-lives-dont/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">injustices</a>,  we must make changes in the way we live and govern ourselves. Ghosh writes, ‘much, if not most, of humanity today lives as colonialists once did -- viewing the Earth as though it were an inert entity that exists primarily to be exploited and profited from’. If we can somehow backtrack and learn to co-live with Gaia in the compassionate way that the native folks once did, then there will be hope. We must speak up and unlearn accepted practices, and the deeply-rooted greed and over-consumption that dominates our lives. The Nutmeg Curse is an eye-opener. Ghosh is not preaching to the converted here, he provides even skeptics and deniers with a holistic history of global capitalism and its model of perpetual growth that underpins the current climate crisis. Full of rich and meaningful history, these accounts of genocide and plunder illuminate the implications of Western colonialism in so many of our current sources of distress. Readers of the novel, Gun Island, and the non-fiction, The Nutmeg Curse, will have to decide for themselves which form of literature is more effective in communicating the urgency of the climate crisis.These two books should be read together, they reinforce one another, and the impact is greater than the sum of their parts.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/20-reviews-in-20-years/">20 Reviews in 20 Years</a>, Nepali TimesMarilyn Lubetkin is a first-year student at Pitzer College in California. As a Houston, Texas, native, Marilyn experienced first hand the impact of climate change when she lost her childhood home to the disastrous flooding induced by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. <img width="301" height="462" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016118/636d13d39c7e80680e0a9946jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="300" height="462" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016118/636d13d59c7e80680e0a9947jpeg.jpg" alt="">Gun IslandJohn Murray PublishersPaperback, 320 pagesAvailable at Patan Book ShopThe Nutmeg's Curse: Parables of a Planet in Crisis John Murray PublishersPaperback, 352 pagesAvailable at Patan Book Shop

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