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Showing posts from May, 2020

Nepal's Lockdown Reality Check

Annapurna Express, 11/5/2020 A few nights ago, I heard a young child talking with a man outside my lane. The voice of the child was rough, like she was from the villages and hadn’t been educated. The man was laughing occasionally in the casual manner of the laborers who still lived in the giant big building that has been constructed in front of our house as an investment property. Built for $600,000, it is now empty, with no renters coming forward to pay the rumored 10 lakh per room. But a group of young male workers are still living there, no doubt guarding the property. Every evening, I hear beautiful flute music from the same building. But this evening, I heard the voice of an angry young woman who was coercing the child to do something she didn’t want to do. The child start to cry hysterically. The man laughed. Then they left. I have done research in Mumbai and I know child prostitution runs beneath the layers of Nepali society, where family members and guardians often become t