Category Archives: Wagle Street Journal

A Chance Encounter in London and Some Brave Bald Heads

Posted on by
2

I was walking aimlessly on Whitehall (road that separates blocks of important British government offices) heading towards Northumberland Avenue. I spotted a young man who was standing on the pavement underneath a huge building on my left and smoking. I felt like I recognized him. Turned out that I had met him recently in Kathmandu. Taken aback by this chance encounter, he concluded: “The world is small.” I agreed. (This jamkabhet reminded me of this article that enjoyed reading and translated into Nepali for readers of Kantipur.)

I had been warned of the London cold before I arrived here. Despite all the warnings and my mental preparation, I found the chill a bit more harsh and unexpected. At one point, I started shivering. I was wearing clothes that would have produced a Thames of sweats from my body in Kathmandu. Not in London. I needed to be warm. So I entered into an eatery that sold fruits and sandwiches. I bought what I wanted and as I approached the pay counter I realized that ‘eating inside’ was slightly costlier than taking food away. The charge for warmth. I chose to pay the premium.

Talking about the cold, what surprised me was the sight of some men walking with their bald heads exposed. Some women were wearing skirts. But a lot of other men and women were wearing a lot of clothes (thick jackets, overcoats, huge mufflers and gloves). But those baldheaded men and skirt-wearing women helped me understand why some of my British friends never find Kathmandu weather cold enough to wear warm clothes. They (and other Westerners in general) wear only shirts and shorts while I and other Nepalis bundle ourselves into endless layers of warm clothes and still complain how cold Kathmandu had become. Today’s walk around the city of Westminster also made me understand why a British friend of mine, while having lunch on a sunny January day in a restaurant in Kathmandu, said that he felt like calling his friends back in UK right at that moment to describe about the 20 degrees Celsius “warm and excellent” weather of the Nepali capital.

A few days back when a close friend of mine saw photos of British toddlers in Kathmandu, their heads uncovered in January cold, her the comment was: Hamro Nepali ko bachha lai ta luga ma gutumutu napare chisole marchhan vanthanchhan babuaama. Hera yi kuireka bachha lai, jado nai vako chhaina!

Nice observation! That explains why Goras feel less cold in Kathmandu then average Gorkhes like me. They are born and brought up in a much colder environment than many Nepalis are. Bachhai dekhi London (or other parts of the UK) ko chiso khana thalepachi k jado hos Kathmandu ko ghamailo winter ma.

By the way, another sight that almost got me a mild heart attack today was that of people drinking chilled Coca-Cola out in the cold. (On my part, I went for a bottle of ‘this water’, advertised as ‘a juice drink blended with pure squeezed juices and spring water’.)

I have experienced and written about unbearable heat of Delhi in summer. I feel London in winter is exactly the opposite. These are the places that consume a lot of energy- to keep houses and shops cool or warm. When you see this there is no way you can forget the 12-hour long power cuts of Kathmandu.

About these ads

a plane full of migrant workers and other travelers

Posted on by
Reply

The plane that just brought me here in Doha from Kathmandu was, as one would normally expect, full of Nepali migrant workers headed to various destinations in the Gulf.

One guy, who said it he was headed to Saudi Arabia to fulfill his dreams, tried to impress a woman by singing a song that he said he heard in one of the singing talent shows on Nepal Television. “Do you know this song?” he asked the girl (alikati legro halera gayepachhi). The girl, apparently headed towards a western destination, was clueless. Not that I could recognize the song but it was not that difficult to understand and feel the singing passion of this man who was forced to leave his homeland to feed his family.

Ani, post-Sita Rai, I didn’t notice any improvement in rough behavior of immigration officials at the TIA. In fact, I was disheartened to see a man intimidating and humiliating a Tokyo-bound semi-literate woman who was traveling via TIA for the first time to meet her husband in Japan.

Apart from migrant workers, there were many other Nepali passengers who were using Doha as a transit to go to other destinations like, for example, Boston. I saw boarding pass of an elderly couple who were headed to that American city via London. The man was decorated in daura, suruwal and dhaka topi while the woman, clad in sari, cholo and majetro, was wearing a body full of jewelleries including, if I am not terribly mistaken, a big bulaki as well. Beautiful.

Oh yeah, and one of the air-hostesses was so very curious as to why the man seated next to me was having coluored rice spread all over his head. It took a few minutes to explain to her that the thing, mixture of uncooked rice, curd and vermilion powder, was called tika. “Nothing dangerous,” the man tried to assure her. “It’s just rice, coloured.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But I had never seen such thing. I had seen red thing put on forehead but rice on head?”

Hmmm…

MLTR ‘Learn to Rock’ in Kathmandu

Posted on by
2

{more tweets inside]

mltr in kathmandu

mltr perform in kathmandu

Nepali band Kutumba, popular for their instrumental music, warm up the audience before the visiting Danish band MLTR show to the Himalayan audience how they have learned to rock in all these years. This is the second international gig (by western musicians) since last February when Canadian Bryan Adams kicked off his show with Bob Seger’s Katmandu.

Originally posted from WordPress for Android

Here are more photos from the concert: (all by Suraj Kunwar) Continue reading →

@ Rolpa [Libang] photos and journal from my October trip #Nepal

Posted on by
17

Libang

Unlike many other Nepali districts Rolpa has a distinct image of its own. Unfortunately that ‘distinctiveness’ is not necessarily positive and/or based on positive vibe. Think about Iraq and Afghanistan of the past decade. Rolpa once was Nepal’s ‘ground zero’. During the height of the Maoist insurgency that began in Rolpa’s Thawang village in 1996 (and ended in 2006 in Kathmandu) the district headquarter Libang had shrunken inside a 3-km radius ‘Green Zone’. The GZ was surrounded by barbed wire and protected/guarded 24-hours a day by the armed soldiers. It was dangerous to venture out of the Green Zone for government officials and anyone who wasn’t friendly to the rebels. The area outside the GZ belonged to them. That was way back in 2000-2001. Continue reading →

Rukum to Dang

Posted on by
1

Here are some photos from my bus ride on what people are forced to call a ‘highway’ that connects Rukum with Dang. In between these districts is Salyan. The road isn’t blacktopped which meant a bumpy ride that lasted for about 7 hours. The funniest thing is that I ended up, albeit reluctantly, sharing a hotel room with a man I met in the bus, at the end of the trip, and disagreed on the need of the road networks in Nepal. The bus halted at

Tulsipur, the final destination, where I got off along with the person. It was too late for me to go to Ghorahi (and stay there) to catch a bus from there to Rolpa the next morning. So the man took me to the hotel that he knew as he also stayed nearby and ate there when his wife didn’t stay with him.

…a passenger who noted down the boy’s phone number….there’s a small story behind their on-the-spot friendship and, according to the boy who confided with me later, plans to meet later :)