THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Sushma Joshi, Kathmandu Post, 5/22/09 One longterm expatriate, who'd recently read an op-ed in the papers advocating the chopping down of trees along the roads, complained to me: butchery is in Nepal's genes Two friends of mine took me on a midnight jaunt through Valencia, Spain, last winter. What stunned me was not just the rows of beautiful houses in the old city, and the rush of water from the fountains, but the rows and rows of orange trees that bloomed white flowers in the moonlight. "Do people eat these fruits?" I asked. The trees, which lined the main thoroughfares, were studded with big orange fruit. "No, I think they're just for decoration," my friend answered with a laugh. Sevilla, known as the City of Oranges, was even more heavily covered with orange trees than Valencia. No doubt the city was inspired by Arab architecture and gardens, vestiges of which still remain in the form of the Alcazar, where the romantic and ancient gardens were filled...

Sushma Joshi Republica, May 19, 2009 “Oh, you’re going to see Jhamak?” says the older man as we sit drinking tea in a tea house in Dhankuta Bazzar in the early morning chill. “I’m her uncle.” Jhammakkumari Ghimire, the writer who’s triumphed despite her disability, is apparently known by this androgynous name, I soon figure out. Then he proceeds, in those causal but fortuitous coincidences that take place in Nepal all the time, to tell me about how Jhamak became the writer that she did. “Her parents bought her little sister a book. And Jhamak turned round and round in a rage for two days. She can’t talk, you see. So finally her father figured out, after a day or two, what was bothering her. And he said: would you like a book as well? And then she tapped her foot with joy. That’s how she talks, with her foot.” Jhamak, says her uncle, was always expressive. Once she drew him a rabbit that looked like it could run. He took her to Kathmandu once. Carried her down there. Once down, the poet...

Sushma Joshi, Kathmandu Post Perhaps the answer lies in the conversation my travel partner is having with a man he's just met in the airplane. "The man was run down right here. The truck backed into him and killed him even though he was only injured slightly," says the old man. "Yes, it's that law," says my friend. "It's cheaper to run down somebody in an accident than pay compensation for their medical expenses." Herein, I think, lies the clue to Nepal's poverty. In Nepal, it is cheaper to run down a human being dead than follow the course of universal humane behavior and treat somebody who's been injured through a manmade accident. And the accidents here are many. The most tragic accident, of course, is that done to the Dalit community. Fifty lakh live in Nepal, and eighty percent of them are landless. Rather than pick them up and heal the historical injury, Nepal prefers to run them down, putting the state machinery in reverse...