The wedding procession advances towards the wedding venue.

While male relatives of the wedding couple dance and celebrate on the road, a young girl leads the way with large fluorescent lights about her head.

The wedding procession advances towards the wedding venue.

Villagers stand by the roadside outside their houses as the wedding procession approach. They don't want to miss any detail.

The bride and her friends wait eagerly for the groom's arrival.

Children sleep indoors while waiting for the groom to arrive.

Finally the groom arrives and at the ceremony the bride puts tika on his forehead to seal the agreement.

Congratulations to the newly-wed! Relatives and friends spray party foam over a the couple after they exchange rings and the party starts.

]]> http://nepalitimes.com/blogs/mycity/2013/04/29/my-hindu-wedding/feed/ 1 http://nepalitimes.com/blogs/mycity/2013/03/26/holi-festival-2013/ http://nepalitimes.com/blogs/mycity/2013/03/26/holi-festival-2013/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:35:27 +0000 Nepali Times http://nepalitimes.com/blogs/mycity/?p=738 Holi is finally here and you could feel the joy in the streets. Holi is a Hindu celebration known as the festival of colours that celebrates the incoming of spring. This is the photo report by Bikram Rai and Devyani Shiwakoti on Holi festival 2013.

Early in the morning determined youngsters walk the roads looking for easy targets to throw their ‘lolas’ –water balloons- when they’re least prepared in Kusunti.

Holi is a week festival but it’s actually the last day that the feast of colours is celebrated.

Elaborated make up at a very busy Basantapur Durbar Square.

Young and old enjoy the brightly coloured festival as they wash away the winter and celebrate the incoming spring.

Families and friends get together and celebrate the day with fun and colours.

Techno music to entertain the crowd at Basantapur Durbar square.

‘We want pani’, shouted the people gathered at Basantapur Durbar square and their pleas were heard.

There are now roads in almost all the VDCs of Dadeldhura and Doti and the two districts are linked to once-remote Achham, Bajura, Bajhang, and even Darchula. There is now 3G mobile connection in the district capitals and signals all along the smoothly paved highways.

Dadeldhura’s maternal mortality rate was worse than sub-Saharan Africa 20 years ago, with more than 1,500 out of 100,000 dying at childbirth. Today, that figure is 450. Under-five child mortality has come down by more than half.

This is the photo report by Kunda Dixit in Doti.

A girl child holds a rhododendron to welcome visitors to the village of Domada in Dadeldhura. Female literacy is up to 50 per cent in a district where till recently only 10 per cent of girls went to school.

Pylons are being put up to bring 30MW of electricity from the Chameliya plant in Darchula which will be finished next year. The project has been delayed due to local extortion and threats.

Healthy winter monsoons have watered rain-fed terraces of wheat on the border between Doti and Dadeldhura, promising a good harvest this year.

Sunrise in Dadeldhura reveals layers of hills shaded by morning mist and hazy outline of the Api-Saipal range in Humla to the north.

The West Seti river as it meanders past Dipayal. A planned 200m high dam impounding a 20 sq km reservoir to generate 750MW of power for export to India has been delayed by 15 years, and its construction would give a big boost to the economy of the region.

Gauri Devi Bhatt and her son in their kitchen with her Rs 200 smoke-free improved stove that has reduced her daily workload to gather firewood and educed lung and eye infections.

A wedding procession lifted the spirits of the crowd before the flash mob started.

It was 4.30 pm and Patan Durbar Square had its habitual visitors: neighbours, tourists, some foreigners wandering around. There wasn’t any activity planned that afternoon, one lady at the ticket office said firmly.

By 5 pm, many participants had gathered at Patan Durbar Square waiting for the flash mob to start.

Shortly before five the square was quickly filling up with people who seemed to know each other, exchanging greetings and chatting among themselves. Cameramen and professional photographers were standing at strategic points of the square. On one side, there were big speakers connected to a laptop from which music for the dance was to be played. All around the square, there were people dressed in pink, red and black. Some were holding banners. To the unknowing passers-by and tourists, they looked suspiciously ready for something to begin.

Suddenly at 5 o’clock sharp, loud music began to play and the mob came together at Mangal Bazaar and started dancing and singing. It was the flash mob ‘Rise, Patan!’ organised by The One Billion Rising movement, a campaign calling for one billion people around the world to raise awareness for violence against women.

More than 600 people - young and old, male and female -participated in the flash mob.

Diana Hinova, the organiser of the event in Kathmandu, said before the event that she expected at most two hundred people to attend. The invitation was on Facebook and so far more than four hundred had confirmed, but she thought that the Internet commitment was less than solid. She was wrong. More than six hundred people showed up. From local NGOs, international organisations, school teachers, students, housewives to passers-by, they all came to Patan Durbar square to take a stand against gender-based violence in a way that attracts attention: dancing.

Women wearing the campaign T-shirt led the rest of the participants in the dance.

Even men turned up to express their support for women's rights.

Tourists and common visitors of the square alike watched in awe while the
women and men danced and sang ‘Break the Chain’, the movement’s official song.

Hinova added that Durbar square is a meaningful place for that event, as in Nepali culture there are accepted social and cultural practices against women that would be discussed and then removed from society. Violence takes place within families and at an institutional level and it needs to be exposed.

Caroline V. (withholding her last name by request) working at an international organisation but representing civil society, explained, “Dancing opens yourself up and it’s an expression of joy, the perfect way to show disagreement against violence in a peaceful way.”

The invitation was on Facebook about one month ago. Organisers uploaded a video on Youtube with the dance choreography and some people even rehearsed once a week at Core studio in Kathmandu to prepare for the event.

Tourists took photographs and videos of the flash mob from the Patan Museum.

The result of all that preparation was a scene of Patan Durbar Square filled with people dancing. Even those who didn’t know the steps tried their best. Other than women, a few young girls and men also joined the mob. One man was heard shouting, “I’m for women’s rights!” before jumping into the crowd and breaking into dance.

Participants celebrated and took photographs after the event.

In just four minutes, the dance was over and the mob dispersed. The mood was joyful and after the event, the topic of violence against women was at least more visible. The daily life of the square resumed and visitors had another topic to talk about that afternoon: lots of people dancing and speaking out against violence against women.

The initiative was started by American playwright and feminist Eve Ensler to mark the 15th anniversary of the V-day campaign to end violence against women forever.

A police officer and a volunteer stand guard in front of a wall pasted with photographs of Maoist rebels who had disappeared during the civil war.

A volunteer gets ready with his party popper before the start of the convention.

Leaders and foreign delegates on the stage observe one minute of silence in respect for martyrs of the insurgency. The media covered the convention from beginning to end.

Leaders and foreign delegates raise their hands as they recite the communist pledge.

Cadres dressed in fatigues march on stage during one of the performances.

Matrika Yadav, one of the CPN-M leaders, rouses the crowd with his animated speech.

People in the crowd laugh as the speaker cracks a joke.

Mohan Baidya, chairman of CPN-M, addresses the crowd.

A photographer climbs onto the roof of a building to get a better shot of the entire crowd. Thousands of people turned up for the event.

A typographical error on the banner is corrected using red tape.

Balloons on the stage commemorate the party's 7th convention.

The closed session of the convention, held nearly after 21 years, will go on until 13 January 2013. Leaders will deliberate on the CPN-M’s future policies, which can determine whether there will be conflict or peace in the nation.

This story begins early morning of full moon’s day. A group of women from the valley get together and work on 48 kg of rice flour, 8kg of molasses and 2kg of sesame to create a big Yomari.  Another group prepares ‘normal’ size Yomari for sale.

This sweet Newari desert is a rice flour dumpling, stuffed with molasses and sesame.

It’s steamed and served hot. Today, they offer 2 pieces of dumplings plus a portion of mixed potatoes and pickles, in a bowl, for Rs75.

Once the big Yomari is ready the rally starts in the city centre.

There is dancing and music and singing. There is even a parade.

Our photographer says in today’s rally participated around thousand people. They all wanted to follow the big Yomari.

Once the rally is finished they wait until the full moon appears in the horizon and share the big Yomari with the whole community.

Roman Gautam

Reading Kathmandu’s English-language dailies is a thankless experience. For a while in the noughties, things seemed to be getting better: the launch of The Himalayan Times sparked welcome competition in the market, forcing The Kathmandu Post out of its complacent domination and deservedly slashing the readership of the stale, government-run The Rising Nepal, before Republica added still more competition.

During the emergency period some of these papers produced brave journalism that Nepalis could be justifiably proud of. Since then, however, the most enduring improvement has been in presentation — more pretty, colourful pictures — and not in the quality of journalism. Increasingly, our English language dailies are less newspapers than they are advertising circulars, a charge that applies equally to this paper.

Besides a tiny handful of perceptive columnists and the barest reporting, there is little journalism in our English papers that deserves the name. The Nepali papers, sadly, are not much better. The front pages are customarily full of stories mindlessly parroting the latest political rant uttered by our netas.

Everyday comes with fresh accusations and counter-accusations that reporters are happy to file and editors are happy to print with little attempt to dig beneath the surface, to corroborate assertions or to ask difficult questions. Repeatedly reporting various ministers’ vapid calls for ‘national unity’ is, sadly, thought to be news.

Investigative journalism is essentially non-existent, and stories on corruption or mismanagement usually only come out when the scoop is handed to the papers readymade (and anecdotal evidence suggests that even those stories are sometimes then botched). The opinion pages are again filled with limp, bloated prose extolling the virtues of an inclusive constitution and ‘national unity’, from writers who have precious little original insight to offer.

Our opinionators have run out of things to say, and are now mouthing the exact mindless rhetoric of our politicians. Yet these self-appointed experts keep repeating themselves, week in and week out, in an effort to stoke their egos. And, for the benefit of anyone for whom all of this should prove too intellectually taxing, the back pages offer welcome tips on how to care for you kitten, lifted verbatim from the internet.

It is tempting to blame it all on the people writing and editing the news, but the problem is more widespread. It stems from the lack of a culture of rigorous journalism at every level – reportorial editorial, managerial, and even societal. At the top, all papers are run by people whose driving motives are profit and power, not inquiry. Rising advertising revenue, for instance, have not translated to significant increases in salaries or staffing in the newsroom, meaning that by and large reporters, columnists and editors remain overworked and pathetically underpaid, with no time of incentive to pursue daring stories.

Newspaper owners and editors are too cosy with our politicians, meaning that each paper is happy to fling dirt at some political party, but tiptoes around criticism of certain other individuals and institutions. Even the façade of impartiality is falling apart, and there is certainly no daily that offers a broad, independent critique of an entire political system that has consistently failed.

This plays into the hands of the self-serving politicians and government bureaucrats, who are confident that the promise of favour can always win them sympathy in at least some papers. Reporters and editors asking tough questions are likely to be stifled – or worse – by supervisors who also fear for their jobs. This culture perpetuates itself as the lack of proper media education in Nepal means that our journalists rarely strive for ethical and professional standards that challenge the current complacency.

Some see hope in the Nepali language press which, though it has its own share of politicisation and problems, offers more critical perspectives from a wider political spectrum. But the Nepali language papers can only seem good in comparison to a dismal English language press, and the reality is that both are in dire need of improvement.

But why should we invest in improving English language journalism in Nepal? Because an increasing number of Kathmandu’s foreign-educated elites depend on it, and because the army of development bureaucrats posted here on two-year contracts know little about Nepali politics and society, and have nowhere but the English language press to turn to.

Many influential opinions continue to be formed on a base of shoddy journalism, and this will continue until we start demanding better from our newspapers and those who run them, regardless of what language they are published in.

Roman Gautam is desk editor at Himal Southasian magazine

Read also Telling truth to power by Anurag Acharya

BHRIKUTI RAI in ILAM

The climate conference in Doha last week was another missed opportunity to stop the catastrophic warming of the planet. Known by its wordy official name, the 18th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was also confined to just that: words.

The Doha Climate Summit failed to set significant emission goals and concrete financial commitments to arrest emissions. The future of those countries most vulnerable to climate variability is now hanging by the climate cliff.

Far away from the energy-intensive desert capital of Qatar, the world’s largest producer of natural gas, here we are in the lush mountains of the eastern Nepal district of Ilam. Farmers are already feeling the effects of climate change, with erratic monsoons, unseasonal rains and freak storms. But farmers cooperatives are working to build resilience so that they can cope with the extremes of weather.

The Namsaling Community Development Centre has formed farmers’ groups in the villages of Ilam to build locally managed weather stations that helps them keep daily records. The farmers were given short training on the use of the instruments and are now keeping a ‘Climate Diary’.

“The farmers are now able to understand the weather patterns and the consequences to some extent without being introduced to the term and concept of climate change,” explains Yogendra Lal Shrestha of NCDC who have installed mini weather stations to record temperature, humidity and rainfall.

Schools in Ilam also have climate diary projects in which they record weather conditions and link it to the health of the students. “We are trying to analyse weather conditions of the months when the students record highest absence from school due to illness,” says Chitrakala Baraili of Saraswoti Niwas Lower Secondary School in Kanyam village. They hope that interpretation of data will help students take precautions during certain months to avoid missing school.

The rain gauge, thermometer and the hygrometer are monitored twice a day by representative of each farmers’ group. At the end of each month they also plot the number of cloudy days, thunderstorms, and rain to discuss at fortnightly meetings.

For Saraswati Khulal, 21, of Bhanjyang taking weather records has become a daily ritual. With technical assistance from NCDC she has learnt how to read the instruments. “Not just me but everyone in my family have now learnt to make measurements,” says Saraswati who says 17 households of Bhanjyang Farmers’ group have shown more interest, to analyse and draw a correlation to their harvests.

Saraswati Khulal at the mini weather station in Bhanjyang, Ilam

Officials hope that in 2-3 years farmers will be able to correlate weather conditions with plant diseases as well as to human health. They hope to be able to predict and adapt to erratic weather and climate variability.

Saraswati’s father-in-law, Narayan Khulal, 70, who takes up her responsibilities when she is away from home, says the climate diary has made him all the more sure about changing weather conditions. Says Khulal: “The fog period has extended significantly compared to the past and so has the humidity and cases of fungal infection on plants and we now have it on record.”

He also says that the growing use of artificial fertilisers have affected harvests. “Earlier the diseases that could be cured using ash and animal dung are now resistant to even strong pesticides,” he says.

Khulal like many other families in Ilam has gone back to the traditional organic farming methods, and he hopes that with the climate diary they will be able to spot at least some trends in weather patterns and be prepared so they don’t lose the market values of their produce.

While the implementation of local adaptation plans for climate vulnerable communities in the impoverished far-and mid-western region under the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) is finally taking off, farmers in Ilam are well on their way to building capacity to adapt to the wrath of the nature through their own efforts.

Saraswati shows daily weather records documented in the climate diary

]]> http://nepalitimes.com/blogs/mycity/2012/12/13/back-from-the-climate-cliff/feed/ 0 http://nepalitimes.com/blogs/mycity/2012/12/12/scandinavian-movies-warm-nepal/ http://nepalitimes.com/blogs/mycity/2012/12/12/scandinavian-movies-warm-nepal/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 05:42:39 +0000 Nepali Times http://nepalitimes.com.np/blogs/mycity/?p=580 ANNA-KARIN E. LAMPOU

Who would have thought I would encounter a bunch of Nordic films during my stay in Nepal?

The Nepal-Nordic partnership started two years ago when Juhani Alanen, executive director of Finland’s Tampere Film Festival, came across the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF). Last year, Alanen was here with two programs of Finnish short films and earlier this year, some Nepali films were screened in Tampere –among them, ‘The Sari Soldiers’.

Now, at the 10^th edition of KIMFF, Alanen brought along seven Nordic short films, which were screened at the City Hall. Despite the geographic and cultural differences between the audience and movie, the films’ permissive and tolerant genre seems to reach out well to the cinema-goers in Kathmandu –particularly the humour.

The Finnish opening, Perkele, illustrates the commonly used swear word –suitable for most occasions it seems– in a number of ways. All with that dry Finnish mentality that also can be seen in Kaurismäki’s movies.

The Lodge, awarded Best Short Film in Sweden 2005, is best described as a parody of reality shows somewhere between Survivor and American Idol with a pinch of 70’s romanticism. The setting is one of Sweden’s national treasures: the country cottage, where a group of friends are invited to stay by the narrator. Friends of Moodyson’s Together will recognise the satire between the lines.

The one-minute long Norwegian ‘Out of Place’ mocks the Swedish fashion retailer H&M. The 23 minutes long ‘45 CM’, an experimental film about personal space, seems a bit hard to digest for the audience, while the last film, United We Stand, and its hiking old men invites laughter.

Last year’s films were a bit lighter, says Alanen when I talk to him after the screenings. Some of today’s films were indeed slightly abstract. When I ask about the naked scenes that appear in several of the movies, and how these were received by the audience, Alanen refers to the Islandic movie ‘Smafulglar’ which sensibly, yet painfully, touches upon teenage love, drugs, and rape.

“’The Smafuglar’ (small birds), is actually my favourite. People don’t talk about these things, and maybe they do now, but they don’t [talk about it]. I think it’s good to see the experiences of children today, how their lives are, especially in the Western [society] but also here, for all the worse,” he says.

Next year, Alanen hopes to get a feature length documentary to the festival in Kathmandu. But first, a holiday in India awaits, before he gets busy selecting films for the 2013 festival in Tampere.

Alanen, who sits in the jury of the KIMFF, has seen most of the films at the festival but wants to keep his all-time favourite a secret a bit longer. “Come on, closing ceremony is tomorrow, I cannot tell you,” says Alanen with a big smile.

Watch The Smafuglar (Two Birds) trailer here

Update

List of winners of the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival

Busy avenues can be seen any day at any time along Kathmandu. Photo: Min Ratna Bajracharya

The roads in Kathmandu are in turmoil, I hold my breath with every close call of hitting another vehicle, as people frantically make their way to their destinations. Drivers comfortably speed past big trucks, narrowly making the pass, as they drive on the other side of the road without a flinch.

This is the norm for many drivers in Kathmandu and to their credit, the system actually works. Drivers keep a heavy hand on the horn to warn the other vehicles, stopping when needed and speeding up on the rare opportunity they can. They execute minimal, if any, road rage towards other drivers who are weaving in and out of traffic and aren’t phased by the ‘anything goes’ attitude towards road rules.

Motorbikes, cars, public transport, pedestrians come and go on the roads. Photo: Bikram Rai

With the spontaneous nature of the drivers here, the need to adopt an element of caution becomes very relevant when behind the wheel. The drivers have excellent awareness and judgment of the narrowest gaps they are able to ‘take-on’. In almost every experience I’ve had as a passenger, I thought I was going to be involved in a collision, and I sigh with relief when the driver manages to tightly fit between a path and a truck.

When there is an accident, all direction of traffic is affected and that’s when the gentle patience of the drivers is tested. I was in an accident between my taxi driver and a bus on my second day of being here, and all vehicles were forced to a halt until the issue was resolved. Thankfully, it was only a few minutes, but those few minutes meant a large backlog of piled up cars and a choir of beeping vehicles.

As the roads on the streets in Kathmandu are being widened, traffic congestion is increasing and stopping a smooth flow of vehicles. And while the roads are already a place of havoc, the dust and pollution generated from these roadworks only adds to the mayhem.

There's space for everybody and anybody on the roads. Photo: Bikram Rai

The constant necessity to break quickly doesn’t seem to bother most drivers either, but this seems very foreign to me. At times it makes the trip very stressful as I constantly hold onto anything firm to make sure I don’t plunge forward. The countless amounts of pot holes in the roads don’t exactly help the situation, making me feel like I’m riding on a donkey’s back instead of being in a car.

The chaotic road travel in Kathmandu has toyed with many of my emotions, from being scared out of my wits, to laughing at the sheer craziness of it all. And while I come from a completely different world in relation to road rules, I have to admit being in the centre of the commotion here has been a very entertaining experience.

People jaywalk across the street instead of using the bridge. Photo: Min Ratna Bajracharya