THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE? Sushma Joshi Inside the Khokana Oil Mill, a bit of the past still remains in the form of a wooden soli press. RamBahadur Lama, a young man who has migrated from Makwanpur and now works for this family enterprise, roasts crushed mustard seeds in a traditional wood-fired oven. These seeds are then put inside a fold of woven bamboo. SuryaBahadur climbs nimbly onto a large wooden wheel of the press, pulling it down with him as he enters a square cavity in the ground. The wheel spins from his body weight, and dark brown oil trickles out of the spout at the bottom. Khokana, the name of a small Newari town a few kilometers outside of Kathmandu, was synonymous with mustard oil. The oil, extracted from roasted seeds, was prized for its smoky taste and purity since the early seventeenth century, when it was exported to China and Tibet. It was used widely in cooking, and was valued as a therapeutic massage oil for new mothers and babies. The Insight Guide to ...