Things I think about now and then

(inspired by the poem “Chura ko Geet” by Samip Dhungel)

As I was waiting for the lights to turn green at the traffic stop, the bikers around me began to turn their heads and giggle. Wondering what it was all about, I turned around to see and a skeptical smile crept up on my lips. A middle aged woman, astride a chunky sports bike, was struggling to maneuver it around the traffic jam. The guy next to my bike, chuckled and said, “One has to live in Nepal to see everything.”

Such is the mentality of our modern, educated men, including me. Sexism is like a deep-rooted syndrome in all of us. From the whistles and the catcalls that every woman has to endure, to the subtle sort of discrimination in our new constitution, it seems as if the fairer sex has had a hard time being fair with all that discrimination they have to fight against. But it’s not only men who discriminate.

Take for instance, my own mother. As a daughter of the hills, she was taught from an early age that her husband would be superior to her in every way. That teaching still shows to this day because whenever any kind of big decision concerning the household has to take place, she doesn’t do anything until dad arrives at the scene. Along with my mum, each and every one of my female relatives seem to share this value to some degree. And they pass it onto the next generation, this omniscient but subtle sort of discrimination.

The new generations are assigned gender-specific roles, behaviors and values from an early age. Boys are taught to be physically active, brash and speak-your-mind sort of persons while girls are taught to be mature decision-makers, soft-spoken and polite. This teaches the children to alienate themselves from the other gender from an early age. I remember that I, along with my friends, would tease any boy that talked to any of the girls. But it isn’t only children of the same age who discriminate against each other.

When I was going through lower secondary school, no boy would be caught dead holding his mother’s hand. Looking back, I realize that everything we did had to appear cool and macho. We had to be rough-looking, harsh and short-tempered. Although those things are behind me now, the pressure to be manly is still there. And I am sure that both men and women of all age groups deal with the pressure of acting according to society’s rules and values.

Last year’s Dashain, we had a huge bash at our home. All of my maternal uncles and aunts were there. The aunts gossiping and giggling in the kitchen filled with a million delicious smells and the men in the living room snapping up cards and gorging on the delicacies that arrived from the kitchen. And after all of us had eaten their full, uncles went to sleep in various states of repose and aunties went back to the kitchen to deal with the mountain of dishes that had piled up.

Although it seems that the women keep on losing, which is in accordance to popular belief, the men too don’t get a bed of roses. So, what exactly is the root of this dilemma? The problem seems to lie in our up-bringing process, where we teach a million things to our children, one of them being a very good lesson on how to be a prefect sexist. So, to tackle the problem, we don’t need macho men or bra-burning women. We need sane parents who understand what sexism is and how it has been holding back our society from really leaping onto the road of progress.

Rant or How I can never be grateful

With all the entitlement I can squeeze out of the hard work that has been put into me, I can announce that I come from a middle-class family, placed in the lower strata of a above-average family in Kathmandu, the eternal dust-bowl. Riding on this entitlement-high I can moan about my room being small and not getting a second bike. I can moan about standing in line at supermarkets, and the ever-rising cost of fuel. But, moaning itself won’t solve anything. In short, I aspire.

With that aspiration in my mind, I announce that I am going to “travel”. I announce that I am going to be a better person. I decide to wake up early, make meaningful conversations, keep up relations, think out a perfect career plan, decide what kind of mortgages I am going to ask from the bank. In short, I decide what kind of knot I am going to tie to my neck. I have heard the hangman’s knot is the best, with quick results.

With those decisions in my mind, I spend. I splurge. I roam. I meet new people. I see new places. I see a new me. I manage new feelings. I experience new experiences and I react to them in new ways. I fall in love, I fall out of love. My senses on overdrive and my heart racing. In short, I live.

With the life that is in me, I live it out. I see a path ahead of me. I see friends, family and loved ones on the side. The path is dark and winding with steep chasms on both sides. Illumination coming from within, I can discern only a few steps in front of me but that is enough. Its all ahead of me. The path is there and I have two feet. In short, I imagine.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Remember when you revisit a favorite childhood haunt after so and so amount of years, the magic of the place seems to have disappeared? The huge see-saw is just a plank with two handles, the slide of doom is just a meter tall and the unending expanse of desert is just a small sandbox. The same thing happened today when I got around to read the JK Rowling’s latest supplementary publication for the phenomenal Harry Potter series.

The play, with four acts divided into two parts, continues from the end of the last book, The Deathly Hallows; where Harry sees off his two sons boarding the Hogwarts express at the station. It then revolves around the adventures of two unlikely friends, Albus (Harry’s second son) and Scorpius (Draco Malfoy’s only son).

The play was received with warm affection by millions of fans but there were cries of foul play as well. The play feels more of a fan fiction than a work of the actual author. The fast paced book, although a page turner, disappoints when it comes to plot and a basic reality check. The events are loosely held together by a bare see-through plot and the characters churn out dialogues and actions that toe the line of stereotypicality.

I honestly would have liked it more if the book had included details about the daily life of Harry and his doppelgangers, after their Hogwarts adventures. There is small mention about Harry not finishing his paperwork as an Auror and that’s it.  The play from the beginning hurries to its end with one climatic event after another. Details about Harry and Ginny’s marriage, Ron interacting with Muggles, would have been fondly appreciated by all of HP fans. There is sore lack of detail about all of the characters except the two that the play revolves around.

The book, as is all works by JK Rowling, is smoothly written. The dialogues flow in and out and the book will be a easy read to small children as well. Although revisiting Hogwarts and reliving some key events was a pleasant experience, a mature HP fan is left wanting more.

Tragic carelessness; Sacrifices for the “Nepali” attitude

On December 17, at 8:30 AM a busload of college students met with an accident in which a student of 20 died on the spot while several others were badly injured. The unfortunate event took place in Pharping in the southern outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley. The students were on their way to a picnic in Makwanpur. Needless to say, they did not reach their destination. The accident received a lot of press coverage, after all it happened near the Capital and the passengers comprised of teenagers from a posh college in Lalitpur. The accident itself is catastrophic, but it manages to hide the rampant ignorance of traffic rules and the sheer stupidity with which Kathmanduites have come to handle themselves on the Nepalese road.

I myself happen to own a two-wheeler and I have stopped marvelling at what our commuters consider normal traffic tactics. “Give no quarter” seems to be the rallying cry of the road gladiators of Kathmandu, with two-wheelers and four-wheelers alike vying for each and every inch of the pothole ridden roads of the Capital. Micro-buses with barely legal drivers at helm are considered to be the leopards of the road while the dreaded tipper-truck is akin to a rampaging rhino. All four-wheel drivers scowl at the sight of a two-wheeler squeezing in between the lanes and the motorcyclists themselves start cursing the four-wheeler that won’t give them the extra inch they need in order to overtake.

I remember my seniors teaching me “If THE traffic police officers aren’t looking then you can do anything you like, as long as you don’t get hit.” The officers, who stand on traffic islands (if there is one), brave the perennial dust along with the weather to manage the river of vehicles that ply the roads of the capital. Due to their vigilance, traffic violators have decreased to some extent but only because of the fear of spending two hours at the traffic headquarters going through a somewhat traumatic video depicting accidents collected from Youtube and the CCTVs of the capital.

Although, these days’ vehicles are seen at least inside their lanes instead of outside it, things are still a long way away from normal with hundreds of small scrapes and hit and runs happenings in the Capital every day and a serious accident every other week. And the problem seems to lie not so much in our lack of knowledge about traffic rules, but in the general Nepali attitude of solving problems for the immediate moment and not thinking about its implications for the future.

 

Doing your Bachelor’s? Don’t waste your four years just showing up to class.

I recently graduated from Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel with my head held high and a shiny new Bachelors in Media Studies degree in my hand. For the next four or so weeks, I applied for various jobs at different companies. And, what I found out, has left me close to tears.

I spent almost all of my four years attending classes, completing assignments and generally living my newfound freedom as an undergraduate. Travelling to Dhulikhel everyday for my classes, I reveled in the scenic university with new friends from all over Nepal. We were young then, so get-togethers, parties and hiking trips held more of our attention then the months slipping by.

Now, as I face yet another interviewer, and hand him my CV, he asks the same question that countless others had asked before him, “What did you do for four years?” And I can only reply, “Nothing.” The interviewer goes through my CV again, as if he could find something else in the double-spaced single paper that is in his hands, detailing my academic history and one or two workshops that I had managed to attend during the four years.

Inquiring about my experience is out of the question, so the interviewer, perhaps with pity asks, “Are you a quick learner?” I assiduously point out “of course.” And then the inevitable response, “We will call you”, a professional smile and a firm handshake. I walk out of the door, heave a long sigh and return home.

To all the undergrads out there, by all means have fun. From the cages that people call “good” +2 colleges, you have reached a university where you are free, and your individuality is respected. That might be intoxicating at first, as it was to me. Parties and friends and  “just another peg” might be the way you choose to spend your first semester or the whole year. Just remember, when attend the convocation ceremony and walk out of the gate with your phone full of selfies of you and your friends in those glamourous black robes, just remember that from that moment onwards, what you will be able to draw up in your CV will be the only thing that counts.

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