THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

The Half-Moon Files By Sushma Joshi I happened, by accident, to hear about 'The Half-Moon Files.' The Berlinale, Berlin's international film festival, is the biggest in Europe after Cannes, and there were 250 films competing for attention. But the woman who told me about it was certain I would be interested. It was about the POW (Prisoner of War) camp in Berlin after WW 1 and had interesting anthropological elements, she said. 'It is about Indians in the POW camp,' she said. As soon as she said 'Indians', I knew I had to watch it. It was the last day of the festival, but I had no hesitation chucking my ticket to the Hongkong action movie and heading to the Arsenal, a theatre located in the basement of the Filmhause of Berlin. The documentary was in German, which I do not speak or understand. But it was probably the most interesting film I, as a Nepali, watched in the entire festival. The reason was this-- the film, an ostentious 'ghost story' in whi...

Sushma Joshi Kantipuronline.com, February 7, 2007 Vogue, one of the world’s premier fashion magazines, features actress Angelina Jolie on the cover of its January 2007 issue. Jolie wears a raspberry rayon matt jersey evening dress that drapes across her body in perfect, sensual symmetry—there’s a sari-like hint to the drape of fabric against her legs. The classic, elegant look comes from the design table of Bliss Blass, a New York couture house with clients as diverse as Oprah, Laura Bush, and Sigourney Weaver. What most Nepalese don’t know is that one of the designers of the label is Prabal Gurung, whose rise to meteoric New York success rivals those of the best stars. A St Xavier’s graduate, Prabal was the only one of his class to study this field in 1990. Like all boys, he struggled to belong, but was made to feel different. However, this very sense of being “different” helped to push him to define his sense of identity later on in life. Prabal went to Delhi, where he attended the N...

War-torn Shangri-La Danger at the roof of the world http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2006/shangrila.asp by Sushma Joshi As Ms. went to press, at least 13 people had been killed in demonstrations in Nepal and hundreds of thousands had flooded the streets of Kathmandu demanding the return of democracy. Consequently, parliament, dissolved by King Gyanendra in February 2005, was reinstated. The people also demanded a redrafting of the constitution to eliminate the monarchy’s far-reaching powers. The king’s curfews, arrests and seizure of absolute control were done ostensibly to secure the country from a 10-year insurgency by Maoist rebels—who have now agreed to peace talks with the reinstated parliament and new government. Ms. assigned Sushma Joshi to report on what has been happening to women. Eline Henry, a 33-year-old French schoolteacher, loved Nepal so much she planned to extend her vacation in Kathmandu and volunteer at a children’s organization. “The people are so friendly,” she wrot...

Buddhism Comes Home By Sushma Joshi ECS Magazine Tucked away in a corner of Bishalnagar is a building with newly erected concrete pillars enclosing a spacious hall with unfinished concrete ceiling and floor. About two hundred people arrive there on the last Saturday of each month for the Bodhipushpanjali. Pushpanjali means an offering of flowers, and bodhi means wisdom. On the podium is a man wearing sunglasses reading out the day’s offerings in Nepali through the mike. He is Narayan Risal, a part-time physics professor and full-time Buddhist practitioner who leads the gatherings. Today, the theme of discussion is death. “Many people from our sangha have died this month,” says Narayan. The audience includes people from Hindu backgrounds seeking to understand the experience of a recent death. Dissatisfied with a priestly reading the high Sanskrit of the Garuda Purana, a text used to mitigate and make legible the incomprehensible nature of death, people await to hear what Narayan-ji has...

TIED TO THE RED POLE: THE STATE OF JUSTICE IN NEPAL Sushma Joshi Eureka Street journal, Melbourne, Australia (2006); Hands in Outreach newsletter, 2006 On March 23, 2005, the Kathmandu Post, one of Nepal’s leading daily English newspapers, ran a front-page story titled ‘Red Pole’ reduces crime, misconduct, written by Shankar Kharel. According to the story, the Area Reformation Committee in Ward 2 of Itahari Municipality had devised a novel way to reduce “misconduct” and crimes. They tied up people who had committed a crime to a red pole in a public place, publicly humiliated them in front of the community, and got them to renounce their behavior. This story could be filed among the dozens of other quirky, odd, or downright laughable stories found in the Nepali media. While some readers might have caught echoes of the public humiliations practiced in medieval Europe, or more recently in Mao’s China, most of the middle class in Kathmandu probably gave the news item a quick gl...

The recent crackdown on illegal workers has forced undocumented workers to dress conservatively in expensive suits. Many of them have moved further into the suburbs, where work is easier to find and documents not required. BY SUSHMA JOSHI This News was Posted on kantipuronline.com: 2005-11-15 22:40:14 “I haven’t seen my wife for ten years,” says R. P. Ghale (a pseudonym). “She used to be so vibrant and beautiful.” The 53-year-old migrant worker is currently living in Toyota city. Having traveled extensively in Asia and Europe earlier, he entered Japan in the pretext of putting in a tender for a cell-phone company. It has been the “longest meeting” he’s ever attended; he simply stayed on as an undocumented worker, working in Japan’s technological companies. His first job at the Sanyo Company fetched him 25,000 rupees. “I would have gone back to Nepal, but I would have to lie seven times for the same amount,” he says. “Over here, you get up in the morning, go to work and get paid.” The J...

It is urgent that water, which remains Nepal's strongest resource, not fall in the hands of decision-makers who will exclude the majority of users. Sushma Joshi explores the politics of water and development in rural Nepal. This piece originally appeared in Samar 21, published online October 30th, 2005, and Znet, the online portal of Z magazine, in November 2005. As a child growing up in Kathmandu, I became familiar with the splutter of a pipe trying to pull water and coming up with empty air. Kathmandu is a paradox—it is a Valley surrounded by the Himalayas, the mountain range which fulfills the water needs of an entire subcontinent, and yet it is unable to satisfy its own demands. Kathmandu used to be filled with rivers and ponds, until the eighties, when I was growing up. Today, tankers go through the city, selling people their quota of drinking water for the week. My childhood training in using minimal amounts of water led to spats with eco-concious but high consumption hippie...