THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

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...