Interview broadcast simultaneously on two Palpa community FM stations Radio Muktinath and Radio Madan Pokhara on 10 December.

Interview with Kunda Dixit from Nepali Times on Vimeo. (Audio only)

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PHOTO: KIRAN PANDAY

An earthquake hitting Kathmandu Valley is like all-out nuclear war. If you think about it too much you’ll go mad.

So most people try not to worry too much and get on with their lives. The experts say it is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ we will see a repeat of the 1934 jolt along the Nepal-Bihar fault that registered 8.3 on the Richter scale.

The next time the epicenter could be in Rasuwa or southern Lalitpur where there are other fault lines. It could be in western Nepal, where a 300-year old seismic gap (no big earthquake to release the tectonic strain building up in the crust) is waiting to rumble.

There is an escarpment ridge on the Siwalik range, East of Hetauda, that looks as if the entire mountain has tilted on its side. A geologist once told me the 1934 earthquake pushed this entire ridge up by 3 metres, lifting it up and northwards along a 4km long outcrop.

The hard igneous rock of the Indian subcontinent that broke loose from Gondwananland is still pushing into and under the softer Eurasian continent. There is a tremendous amount of energy stored in the elasticity of the folding rocks. The subterranean strata snap periodically under the strain and that is when the mountains are pushed up in sudden jerky movements.

What has changed since the last earthquake is that Nepal has become the most densely populated mountain region on earth. Rapid urbanisation has tripled Kathmandu Valley’s population over the past 20 years. Cities like Pokhara have dramatically expanded in size.

Looking at the devastation in Haiti this week–the absence of government and relief, the social anarchy–it is not difficult to imagine Kathmandu’s fate. Like Haiti, we have no disaster preparedness plan. Nepal and Haiti are both the poorest countries in their regions. Both have unplanned and haphazard urban growth. Port-au-Prince’s advantage is that even if the airport is destroyed, relief can come from the sea.

Our only advantage is the knowledge that the next ‘Big One’ can happen any day. The Kathmandu Valley lies on a seismic zone that has historically had 8 magnitude quakes every 75 years. We can’t say we weren’t warned. There is no excuse not to be prepared. Here are some worst-case scenarios I ferreted out of some disaster experts. It scared the living daylights out of me:

Magnitude 8.3 on a winter evening with brisk westerly wind: Eighty percent of Kathmandu’s buildings collapse at a time when most people are at home preparing dinner. Gas cyclinders explode and kitchen fires spread. Fanned by the wind, the city is engulfed in a firestorm. There is no escape because Kathmandu has almost no open spaces left. Almost as many people are burnt alive as are crushed by falling buildings.

Severe earthquake at 1AM: Most people are sleeping at home. Maximum casualties result from crushed buildings. Those rushing to the streets are buried by falling cantilever balconies. There is no light or excavating equipments. Streets are blocked by debris. Most hospitals are damaged. The city wakes up to the horrific sight of complete devastation. When people get no food, medical care or help to rescue trapped relatives, there is looting and riots.

Magnitude 8 at 11AM on a monsoon morning after days of heavy rain: Kathmandu’s topsoil liquefies (like Mexico City in 1985), buildings collapse and the ruins “float” on ground that has turned into paste. The heaviest casualties are in collapsed government buildings, offices and schools. Airport runway is swallowed up by liquefaction and is unusable. Landslides wipe out all highways. International relief is dropped by parachute, but arrives days later.

The bad news is that even the best-case scenario points towards casualties in the tens of thousands and major damage to infrastructure. The government has drafted a disaster preparedness and relief plan, but the legislation is sitting on some desk in Singha Darbar.

With help from NGOs like National Society for Earthquake Technology and municipalities, some wards of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur have started to stock up on digging equipments, and drawn up emergency plans for evacuation, shelter, medical treatment and relief. But most wards have no plans at all. The reality is we are not prepared for the Big One, and it is going to be individuals and communities who have to look after their own.

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From Sanibar Nagarik :

देश जहीँको तहीँ
- कुन्द दीक्षित

नेपालको राजनीतिमा देखिएको गाँठो फुकाउन कताबाट कसरी सुरु गर्ने भन्नेमा हामी महिनौं अल्झेर बसेका छौं। यसमा त्यति ठूलो समस्या हुनु नपर्ने हो। एउटा मामुली प्रश्नको उत्तरबाट को ठिक र को बेठिक भन्ने बुझ्न सकिन्छ — कुन राजनीतिक शक्तिले हिंसाको प्रयोग गर्छ र कसले गर्दैन? कुन पार्टीले नीतिगत रूपमा हिंसालाई आफ्नो आधारभूत मान्यताभित्र राख्छ र कसले राख्दैन? कुन पार्टीले सार्वजनिक रूपमा हिंसा परित्याग गरेको छैन र कुन पार्टीले आफ्नो क्रियाकलाप, चुनावको तयारी र प्रभाव विस्तारका लागि हिंसाको प्रयोग गर्दैनन्?

कुन राजनीतिक शक्ति ठिक बाटोमा र कुन खराब बाटोमा हिँडेको छ भन्ने यति एउटा कुराबाट प्रस्ट हुनुपर्ने हो। हिंसालाई राजनीतिक अस्त्रका रूपमा प्रयोग गर्ने उग्रवाम र उग्रदक्षिणपन्थीहरूले हिंसाबाटै सत्ता प्राप्त गर्ने र त्यसको रक्षा गर्ने सिद्धान्त बोकेका हुन्छन्। अरू पार्टीहरूले देशको कानुन र अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय मानवअधिकारका मान्यताभित्र रहेर राज्यका सुरक्षा निकायद्वारा भौतिक दबाब दिन सक्छन्। राज्यका सुरक्षा अंगहरूबाट भएका हिंसात्मक क्रियाकलापलाई हिंसात्मक रणनीति र सिद्धान्तमा विश्वास गर्ने उग्र समूहहरूसँग तुलना गर्न मिल्दैन।

अहिले अफसोच र बुझ्न नसकिएको कुरा के हो भने माओवादी पार्टी जो जनताको बहुमत जितेर संविधानसभा र संसदमा सबभन्दा ठूलो पार्टी बनेर आउन सफल भयो, त्यसले किन हिंसा, धम्की र आतंक परित्याग गर्न सकेको छैन? जुन दलले अहिंसात्मक किसिमले …ब्यालट’ जित्न सफल भइसकेको छ, त्यसलाई …बुलेट’ को अब के खाँचो? त्यसलाई अझै वाइसिएलको जत्था पाल्न र सर्वसाधारणलाई तर्साएर पैसा असुल्न किन पर्‍यो? निजी सम्पत्ति कब्जा गर्दै बेच्दै गर्नु प्रत्युत्पादक होइन र?

गत दुई वर्षको अन्तरालमा म सात महिना देशका विभिन्न जिल्ला घुमेँ, पत्रकार साथीहरूसँग अन्तरक्रिया गरेँ। …लडाइँमा जनता’ र …युद्धपछि जनता’ मा आधारित फोटो प्रदर्शनीका दर्शक र सर्वसाधारणका भित्री मनको कुरा बुझ्ने प्रयास गरेँ।

देशभरि ९९ दशमलव ९ प्रतिशत मानिस हिंसारहित राजनीतिबाटै विकास हुन्छ भन्ने विश्वास गर्छन्। अब हिंसा सधैंको लागि परित्याग गर्छन् र देशमा सामाजिक, आर्थिक र राजनीतिक सुधार ल्याउँछन् कि भनेरै उनीहरूले माओवादी पार्टीलाई जिताएका हुन्। अरू दलबाट अब पार लाग्दैन भन्ने कुरा बुझेर कति माओवादी क्रियाकलाप मन नपराउनेहरूले पनि अब उनीहरू जंगल पस्दैनन्, हामीलाई दुःख दिँदैनन्, अब हामीसँग चन्दा माग्दैनन्, अब हाम्रा छोराछोरीलाई तानेर सैन्य सिविरतिर लाँदैनन् र अब देशमा शान्ति आउला र विकास होला भन्ने विश्वासले माओवादीलाई जिताएर संसद पठाएका हुन्।

माओवादीले जित्न त जित्यो तर हिंसा त्यागेन। लडाइँ सिद्धिएर पनि देशमा शान्ति आएन। अझ माओवादीले जातीय कुरालाई राजनीतीकरण गरेर आफ्नो १० वर्षे वर्गीय युद्धलाई जातीय, साम्प्रदायिक हिंसा र द्वन्द्वमा परिणत गर्न खोजेर डरलाग्दो खतरा उब्जाएको छ। अरू देशमा जातीय पृथकतावादी युद्धको रिपोर्टिङ गर्ने मौका पाएकाले मलाई थाहा छ, वर्गीय हिंसाभन्दा जातीय गृहयुद्ध धेरै गुणा भीषण हुन्छ। यसमा गाउँका गाउँ सखाप हुन्छन्। लडाकु र गैरलडाकु भन्ने कुरा छुट्याइन्न। र, मुलुक चकनाचुर हुन्छ।

यसलाई फेरि पुनर्निर्माण गर्न दसकौं लाग्छ। माओवादीले आफ्नो हिंसात्मक र आपराधिक गतिविधि नत्यागेर आफूलाई भोट दिने जनतालाई त धोका दियो दियो, तर त्यो हिंसालाई अब जातीय गन्ध दिएर देशलाई फेरि भीरतिर धकेल्दैछ। उसको यस्ता क्रियाकलाप गैरजिम्मेवारपूर्ण हो, यसले माओवादी आफैलाई नै फाइदा गर्दैन भन्नेहरूलाई उनीहरू तुरुन्तै …दक्षिणपन्थी’, …सामन्ती’, …विदेशी दलाल’ भनिहाल्छन्। जिल्लातिर त फरक मत राख्नेहरूलाई कुट्ने र पत्रकारहरूलाई तर्साएर …सेल्फ सेन्सरसिप’ गर्न बाध्य तुल्याएका छन्।

गत दुई वर्षको यात्राका क्रममा नेपालको मेचीदेखि महाकालीसम्म राजनीतिको अपराधीकरण र अपराधीहरूको राजनीतीकरण प्रत्यक्ष देखियो। भूमाफिया, तस्करी, घुसपैठ, अपहरण, हत्या, सामुदायिक वनविनास, सुकुमबासीको नाममा जंगल फँडानी र अरू गैरकानुनी गतिविधिमा पूर्व कमरेडहरू संलग्न देखिए। केही ठाउँमा त कसैले ठट्टा नै गरे — अब माओवादीहरू जंगल फर्कंदैनन् रे, किनभने जंगल नै बाँकी छैन।

तर दोलखामा भेटिएका एक पूर्व गाविस पदाधिकारीले जेठमा मलाई भनेको कुरा झल्झली याद आउँछ — …यत्रा १६ हजार नेपाली मर्नु परेको त ठेक्कापट्टाको लागि मात्रै पो रहेछ!’

यो देशमा राजाहरूले पनि शासन गरे, …आर्ज्याको मुलुक’ भनेर। माओवादीले बन्दुकबाट शासन खोस्न खोज्यो, नसकेपछि चुनावै जितेर शासन पनि गर्‍यो। २०४६ सालपछि कांग्रेसले आफ्नै लम्फु पाराले देश हाँक्यो। एमालेले न यता न उताको राजनीति खेल्यो। जनताले सबैले शासन गरेको हेरे, तर कसैले विकासलाई गति दिन सकेनन्। सबैले फूर्ति गरे तर कोही सत्तामा टिक्दा पनि टिकेनन्। अहिले आएर गत चार वर्षमा जातीय, क्षेत्रीय, साम्प्रदायिक राजनीति गर्नेहरू पनि निस्के। सबैको कुरा बाहिर आइसक्यो तर देश जहीँको तहीँ छ।

अब खाँचो छ एउटा …फ्रेस स्टार्ट’ को। शुक्रबार भएको तीन दलका शीर्ष नेताको राजनीतिक संयन्त्र ढिलो भए पनि सही दिशातर्फको एउटा कदम हो। यसमा अरू कुनै राजनीतिक नियत नघुसाउने हो भने, सत्ताको खेलमा फेरि यो पनि प्रयोग नहुने हो भने, कुनै पनि क्षेत्र, वर्ग र अरू उपेक्षित समुदायलाई फेरि पाखा नलगाउने हो भने यसले सहमतिका साथ अल्झेको राजनीतिको गाँठो फुकाइदिनेछ।

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It is rare that you start taking notes furiously while watching a movie.

And it is even more surprising if it is a Clint Eastwood film.

A Nepali watching Invictus can’t but help draw striking parallels between post-Apartheid reconciliation in South Africa and our own shaky peace process. What helped South Africa was that it had a statesman of the stature and wisdom of Nelson Mandela.

Invictus is the story of Mandela’s determination to unite South Africa from the divisions wrought by its racist past. Even though he suffered two decades of incarceration at Robben Island, Mandela was willing to forgive and take Blacks and Whites together towards a prosperous new South Africa.

It was a formidable task in the early 1990s since Mandela had to convince a bitter White population, and Blacks bent on revenge.

Eastwood’s film takes the case study of the South African rugby team, and how Mandela used that White-dominated sport to forge unity and inspire the team to an improbable, but symbolic, victory in the 1995 rugby world cup in South Africa.

So, what’s all that got to do with Nepal? First off: you realise how lucky the South Africans were to have a leader like Mandela and how unlucky we are with our political liliputs. But it wasn’t just luck. Mandela stood for what he knew was right, even though most of his own people, including his closest advisers and family members, initially didn’t agree with him going against the public current.

Here in Nepal we have leaders who don’t lead. They follow. They concoct populist slogans, stoke pseudo-nationalism and hope that it will propel them to power ahead of their rivals. They always react, and are rarely proactive.

Watching Invictus, you wonder when we will get a neta who will say, “The past is the past, we look to the future now”, as Mandela does, and really mean it. Or, when his former ANC guerrilla body guard wants to accompany him to a function, Mandela tells him to stay away from view with the words: “I don’t want to talk to them hiding behind men with guns.”

Mandela is played convincingly by Morgan Freeman, who even cultivates a faint Afrikaans accent, as he forces his Black body guards to work with White body guards. “Reconciliation starts here,” Mandela reminds the former enemies, “forgiveness starts here…forgiveness removes fear.”

Mandela uses the medium of sport, in this case rugby, to stitch his country back together through a sense of national pride. Although Eastwood’s film depicts this as a success, we all know that the reconciliation process hasn’t been all that smooth in South Africa. Maybe this year’s football World Cup will help Mandela finish what he started out with rugby 15 years ago.

Mandela’s words in the movie has a haunting relevance to the state of our own country. “In order to build our nation, we all need to exceed our expectation,” he says, “we need inspiration.” What a contrast to our paranoid leaders and their angry speeches, and the evening tv news filled with bile and venom. Not one of our leaders seems to be able to rise above personal and partisan interest. None of them have learnt from the bloody history of our recent past.

The film is named after a poem (Invictus means unvanquished) by an obscure Victorian poet named William Ernest Henley, the words of which Mandela says helped get him through the long years of detention. The lesson for us in Nepal, perhaps, is that destiny is not fated, we have to carve it out of our present.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

View the film’s trailer here:

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Nearly half-way point on the East-West Highway

Population growth and migration are soon going to make the Tarai one long metropolitan strip stretching from Kakarbhitta to Banbasa.

Already, traversing the East-West Highway is like driving along an endless city. Tarai towns have spread their urban tentacles along the highway. It is difficult to tell where one town ends and another begins. The roads joining the Indian border with the East-West Highway (Biratnagar-Itahari, Birganj-Patlaiya, Bhairawa-Butwal, Nepalganj-Kohalpur, Dhangadi-Atariya) have become side-streets in the Tarai city state.

To call this a highway is misleading. Everything happens along the ribbons of asphalt: livestock being taken to graze, grain drying in the sun, poachers hauling logs in bicycles from balding forests, diesel tempos banished from Kathmandu Valley plying short-distance routes overloaded with passengers, and bullock carts taking produce to market. In the midst of all this activity are the long-distance buses either screaming through towns like locomotives or stopping by the roadside to allow passengers to drink tea or answer the call of nature, or both.

It is no wonder that there isn’t a day that goes by when there aren’t at least a dozen fatal accidents along this 1,014 km highway. When that happens, Nepal’s main road corridor is blocked for days while pidits bargain for compensation with the authorities. Trucks and buses line up for many kilometers on either side. Passengers have stopped asking why the road is closed. They just assume there has been an accident.

This doesn’t even take into account the bandas, like the ten-day closure of Kailali and Kanchanpur this month by those in favour of federalism. And the closure of Dhaulagiri and Gandaki this week, and Bheri and Karnali on Tuesday by those against federalism.

Although they are disruptive to passengers, the highway closures actually give people a respite from the chaos and noise. The passenger volume has now reached a point where Nepal now needs an East-West passenger and freight electric-train artery, with a line going up Bagmati zone joining Hetauda toKathmandu. Our narrow highways just can’t take the traffic volume of a nation of nearly 30 million people.

All the along the highway these days you see workers digging on the side of the road laying bright orange plastic pipes: at first we thought the towns were getting wall-to-wall cable tv. But it is Nepal Telecom’s Indian-built East West Optical Fibre Project, a part of the Asian Information Super Highway Concept that is supposed to bring cheaper phone and internet bandwidth to Nepal. If only they started to work on the railway too.

We can only hope. And pray. On the Charali-Ilam Highway near Budhabare last month, we came across a sign that warned that the bend ahead was “accident prone”. Sure enough, the barrier had been razed by speeding trucks that had recently flown off the road and tried to glide down to the valley below.

What we weren’t prepared for was a line of trucks just after the hairpin. The drivers were handing out Rs 10 bills to a sadhu who had camped there to set up an ingenious drive-by shrine to the ‘God of Road Safety’.

Four legs good, four wheels bad

A LPG "bullet" tanker came to grief near Daunne and set half the mountain on fire.

East West Highway goes through Hetauda bajar.

A bridge too far: A state of the art suspension bridge over the Karnali river at Chisapani for a stone age highway

Dadeldhura: just about the farthest you can go by road from Kathmandu

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100 YEAR PLAN: Homnath Adhikari of Namsaling in Ilam at a pilot waste-water treatment plant that he helped set up.

While the rest of the country is a political cesspool, Ilam shows visitors that the Nepali word ‘eelum’ must stem from the inherent industriousness of its inhabitants. Bhupi Sherchan noted this long ago when he visited the district, hence the famous verse: Nepal bhari ali ali Ilam chharna man lagyo…I want to sprinkle a little Ilam across Nepal.

Indeed, if Kathmandu had the same commitment to waste disposal and water treatment as Ilam’s municipalities, the Bagmati would not be the sewer it is. If the national power utility was as efficient as Ilam’s community micro-hydro network, there would be no load-shedding. If the rest of the country showed the same management skills as Ilam’s farmers, who have made Nepal the world’s biggest exporter of cardamom, there would no national food deficit.

Ilam is blessed with fertile soil, copious rainfall, and a temperate climate but that is not why it is the most developed district in Nepal. Proximity to Darjeeling and a traditional emphasis on education have given Ilam one of the highest literacy rates in Nepal, and there is a work ethic that takes the visitor by surprise.

“If you think about it, I would say quality education has been the single most important factor in Ilam’s development,” explains Homnath Adhikari, director of the Namsaling Community Development Centre (NCDC). Adhikari says inspiration to do something for rural upliftment came when he was a primary school teacher in Namsaling 30 years ago. “There was a Peace Corps volunteer who got us together and told us to plan for where we wanted Ilam to be in a hundred years time,” Adhikari recalls, “and that got us thinking about what kind of Nepal we wanted for our great-grandchildren.”

That Peace Corps volunteer was Barry Bialek, who is now a physician in Boulder, Colorado. He heads Engineers Without Borders, which collaborates with NCDC in Ilam on a waste treatment plant, safe drinking water, telemedicine, latrine building, and projects to improve farm productivity.

NCDC is also involved in biodiversity conservation and the revival of community forestry along the border with India, where there has been serious denudation because of poaching from across the border. It has even installed a giant fog collector in Danda Bajar to augment drinking water supply.

Says Adhikari: “You could say Ilam is a model for other districts in Nepal, and although we are an NGO we work very closely with the district development committee. Our job is to complement the government’s own efforts, fill the gaps, and build the government’s capacity.” Indeed, district development committee officials and NGOs from Dolakha and Myagdi are trying to replicate Ilam’s experience.

Another Ilam NGO is the Mahila Jagaran Sangh that works with 9,000 women in a microcredit scheme that generates income for families. The group’s ‘Khutruke’ program now has Rs 30 million in savings and lends to women for small enterprises and dairy and tourism projects while also investing in community micro-hydro.

NCDC’s partners include Norway’s Development Fund, ICIMOD, WWF, UNDP and SNV. NCDC with the Alternative Energy Promotion Program (AEPC) has installed more than 220 kilowatts of subsidised small hydro-projects. This has earned Ilam the moniker of ‘Peltric district’. The power supplied to 203 households saves Ilam Rs 700,000 worth of diesel and kerosene per year and has brought down the cost of milling rice, reduced indoor pollution and increased income, by allowing villagers to work at night. And, unlike Kathmandu where the current four hours of power cuts are only a taste of what is to come, Ilam’s villages have power all the time.

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At 73, Ambar Gurung is frail. He needs help to walk. But there is a twinkle in his eyes, his heart still beats with the same deep love for the Nepali nation that stirred us all once with the song, ‘Naulakha tara’ and most recently with the country’s new national anthem.

Here in Nepalganj this week, Ambar Dai ends his Paleti concert with ‘Naulakha tara’. His voice frays when he gets to the part ‘…niyali hera hamilai bhijeko chhaina parela’, but you can still detect the soothing texture of a famous voice that is unmistakably Ambar Gurung’s. The haunting words take us all back to an era of innocent national pride, of diasporic longing for the motherland, and a time when life was simpler and violence hadn’t torn the country apart.

Two emotions bring tears to Ambar Gurung’s eyes. One is the memory of youth and of friends who have passed on when young musicians break into Aruna Lama’s ‘Samalera rakha’ and ‘Pheri kali phulera’ whose lyrics he wrote 50 years ago. The other is the sorrow of war, and the fear of fragmentation of a nation – a nation he has devoted his life to uniting through music.

An emotional Ambar Gurung stops at the photograph of a peace vigil for the total number of Nepalis killed by Nepalis during the war during the exhibition of People After War in Nepalganj on Tuesday. PHOTO: ARPAN SHARMA

When he visited our People After War photo exhibition in Nepalganj earlier that day,  Ambar Dai lingered over a photograph of a father being embraced by his daughter and son who were fighting on opposite sides during the war. The cover picture of People After War, taken by Charles Haviland shows Maoist guerrilla Juna Rai and the Army soldier Bhuban Rai reunited with their father at their home in Khotang after the war.

Singer Amrit Gurung fixes a tie on his guru, Ambar Dai, before the Nepalganj concert. PHOTO: KUNDA DIXIT

“Yo Nepali daju baini bich ko ladain rahechha. It was a war between Nepali brothers and sisters,” says Ambar Dai. He says he has been inspired to compose a piece dedicated to reconciliation between Nepalis. The man who put to music ‘Sayaun thunga phul ka hami’, the lyricist who has brought a strong sense of Nepali-ness through his songs, is aghast that politicians are only talking about dividing rather than uniting.

In the news broadcast from Kathmandu this morning, I listen to Pushpa Kamal Dahal giving a speech at a gathering of his supporters in which he says: “Only 10,000 died in the war, the next war will see one million dead, we will swim in blood.” They never learn.

Gurung with Angela Singh and Avas on the Paleti stage on Tuesday. PHOTO: KUNDA DIXIT

That evening, Ambar Gurung begins the concert with his ‘Ma Ambar hun’, and then the soothing words and melody of ‘Ukali lagda pasina puchhne…’. His voice breaks, and he has to stop. His student, Avas, steps right in singing the missing stanzas.

Nepa-laya also timed the concert tour for Narayan Gopal’s 70th birth anniversary this week, and Ambar Gurung pays a tribute to the great singer with a rendition of his ‘Gham ko jhulka’ sung by Angela Singh. The female vocalist adds a delicate new dimension to Narayan Gopal’s trademark voice in that famous number, and sings Aruna Lama oldies with great sensitivity.

Ambar Dai lets Avas sing ‘Jasai kesh timile phukayau’ and smiles at the words written long ago about the simple sight of a woman’s hair flying in the breeze that makes him marvel at the joy of life: ’Jindagi hera muskurayo…’

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