THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

SKETCHES IN VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND AESTHETICS ECS Magazine, July 2008 I was walking by Thamel in one of those anti-social moods last Friday evening—I had braved my life on a motorbike ride through upstream traffic to get to the Sundhara Bakery Café, only to find out that the art opening I thought was being held wasn’t there. A magician was on stage instead, doing tricks for a birthday party. Thoroughly confused, I walked back through the crowded microbus stop, stopped to buy books off the footpath, including a 1941 find titled “Everest The Challenge” by Sir Francis Younghusband. Later I learnt the art opening was in the corresponding venue in Pulchowk, not in Sundhara. By the way, can people please stop naming their restaurants “Bakery Café” because it is starting to get very, very confusing for those of us trying to shift through the proliferations of Bakery Cafes… … when I saw Bidhur waving from the glass window of Vajra Books. Soon we were in an animated conversation, and before lo...

SUSHMA JOSHI ECS Magazine, June 2008 Kirateswor is located on an obscure hilltop in the Pashupati temple complex, but many people can navigate their way there with effortless ease. That is because for the last fifteen years, classical musicians have gathered to play instruments and share their art every full moon, drawing crowds of reverent listeners. The last full moon was no exception. The chaitra moon was almost crimson in its intensity, and the music of the ishraj, a little known instrument, dissolved the listeners to a perfect balance of melancholy and joyfulness. Santosh Bhakta Shrestha was accompanied on his ishraj by Navaraj Gurung on the tabla. The tabla is a special instrument at any occasion, but especially in Kirateswor where its rounded, full-bodied sound seemed to echo the dancing footsteps of Shiva, painted in full dancing posture on the stage. We climb up to the little pati and sit next to the baba-ji who’s a permanent resident at Kirateswor. He dips his finger in his f...

Breaking Trail ECS NEPAL | The Nepali Way, March 2008 Text by : Sushma Joshi The room in the Summit Hotel where Arlene Blum waited to talk was full of expatriates, not unusual for a Cultural Studies Group talk—but on the side, sitting on the edge with nervousness and excitement, was a group of very young Nepaliwomen. After her talk, I went up to them and discovered that they were an all female team about to attempt Mt Everest. The glow they had in their eyes reflected the boost of energy we had received from an inspirational woman. “Look at this slope. Isn’t this an easy one? Wouldn’t you just love to be up there?” she asks the audience, pointing to a slide with a gentle slope. And yes, after listening to Arlene, we can almost imagine ourselves halfway up a high altitude mountain slope. Tall and grey-haired, Arlene is distinguished and yet still full of childlike enthusiasm for her two passions—mountaineering and chemistry. A chemist who got her PhD during the Seventies, when the a...

ECS NEPAL | The Nepali Way March 2008 Text by : Sushma Joshi The room in the Summit Hotel where Arlene Blum waited to talk was full of expatriates, not unusual for a Cultural Studies Group talk—but on the side, sitting on the edge with nervousness and excitement, was a group of very young Nepaliwomen. After her talk, I went up to them and discovered that they were an all female team about to attempt Mt Everest. The glow they had in their eyes reflected the boost of energy we had received from an inspirational woman. “Look at this slope. Isn’t this an easy one? Wouldn’t you just love to be up there?” she asks the audience, pointing to a slide with a gentle slope. And yes, after listening to Arlene, we can almost imagine ourselves halfway up a high altitude mountain slope. Tall and grey-haired, Arlene is distinguished and yet still full of childlike enthusiasm for her two passions—mountaineering and chemistry. A chemist who got her PhD during the Seventies, when the academic establis...

By Sushma Joshi ECS Magazine, March 2008 Adoption brings joy. “Some people get families, others get love,” says Mukta Shrestha. “I’ve always wished the best for each family.” Mukta, who started to translate for Spanish families 15 years ago, should know. She’s helped to facilitate more than 100 adoptions in the last 15 years. During this time, she’s seen hundreds of children pass through to comfortable homes with loving parents. She’s dealt with malnourished children, medical emergencies, and psychological counseling. She’s gotten calls from families in the middle of the night, asking why their newly adopted child is behaving in a certain way, or what they want. For Mukta is more than a translator—she has been a facilitator, mentor, counselor, and a good friend to many Spanish families who have chosen to adopt Nepali children. Unlike the horror stories I hear from friends in Canada and the USA, who wait tensely for their adopted children to be released, and who pay up to $10,000 to law...

A R T M A T T E R S An Animated Life By Sushma Joshi Illustrations by Ajanav Mohan Ranjit ECS Magazine, March 2008 When Ajanav Mohan Ranjit told me that he’d created the animation filled with Nepali dancers and farmers that heralds the Kantipur news-hour, I said spontaneously: “I always wanted to meet the person who made that!” And it was true. There is a magical touch to that particular digital art that no other Nepali animation has been able to match. I ask Ajanav what the secret is—is it 2D? Or 3D? He laughs at my confusion. “It’s a mixture of 2D, 3D and life action footage. We took a Kantipur van and went to Thimi. We started to take footage of everything. An old man came, carrying a basket. We asked him if we could shoot him. He said yes. As we started to set up the shot, he wandered away. ‘Money, money,’ he said, so we had to offer him some.” Also in Thimi, they found out traditional potters no longer use wooden wheels, but tires to make their pots. So they mad...

A R T M A T T E R S By Sushma Joshi ECS Magazine, February 2008 Did the title get your attention? Did you think, as I did, that it would be fun to have a how-to book on building a Nepali temple—after all, our ancestors seem to have indulged in this pastime in generous measure, and there is no reason for us to give up on it just because bungee-jumping and barhopping are now the more popular pastimes. How come we don’t know how to do it? Perhaps it’s the missing how-to book? Enter Elements of Nepali Temple Architecture by Puruswottam Dongol. This large format book is generously illustrated with photographs of Kathmandu valley temples. While not a Western-style how-to book, it has elements that an ingenious architect may use to think about ways to create a new temple. Starting with a history of temple construction, briefly discussing the non-denomination aspects of Nepali temples, which incorporates both Buddhist and Hindu iconography, the book moves to a discussion of traditio...