THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Hi all! My book's being published this January by Fineprint! Please do buy and read it--it will be available in all major Kathmandu bookstores. I am headed out to Spain till February 7th but you can send me your thoughts, suggestions and feedback at this email: sansarmagazine@gmail.com, and I will try to get back to you when I get access to email. Peace, love, happiness (and for Nepal-based folks, some electricity) for 2009! Sushma

Sushma Joshi Kathmandu Post If you can't join them, beat them. This Maoist maxim was illustrated all too clearly to me when I went window-shopping to Bhatbhateni supermarket last week, and was bemused to see a whole shelf of Hindu gods and goddess replicas -- manufactured in China. The Ganesh was misshapen, the Shiva and Parvati duo looked white, and Krishna looked fat and charmless, but other than that they were definitely from a rather recognizable and familiar pantheon of deities. All were gilded in the classy gold of new China. On another shelf, there was a large ceramic Laxmi sitting cosily with Dutch milkmaids and Italian garden figurines. Perhaps an American entrepreneur, tired of being a Dharma Bum, had gone over to some factory in Guangzhou and tried to spin his fortune out of cheap labor and unbeatable prices. Whatever the story, it seems China, tired of beating followers of religion and religious leaders, had decided to beat religion in another way: by jumping in with t...

SUSHMA JOSHI Anjan Gajurel is thirty years old. Like many other thirty-year old Nepali men, he sports a fashionable haircut and a sweet smile. But don't let the modest demeanor fool you—for Anjan, who grew up in Janakpur, is now one of the hottest art directors in Bollywood, and owns his own top of the line studio in the most competitive industry of Mumbai. Anjan was like any other aspiring Nepali student only a few years ago, when he did his Intermediate in Fine Arts from Lalitkala Campus in 1998. From there, he went to the JJ School of Art in Mumbai (he decided against Australia since it would require him to work and pay his own tuition.) After a four year Bachelors in Fine Arts, Anjan found his teachers appreciative of his dramatic learning curve in painting—initially at the bottom of his class, he'd reached the top ten percent by graduation—but also learnt that paintings had a tiny market. Ironically, he said, he sold more of his mediocre paintings than the ones which rec...

SUSHMA JOSHI Can a victim say “no” to a camera which promises to expose injustice, while knowing full well that the photograph may only provide a vicarious reproduction of their lived experience out to a sympathetic but ineffectual audience? Can a photograph change the world? For many gazing at the photographs hanging at the latest exhibit at the Art Council at Babar Mahal, “Prison and the rights of detainees,” an awareness raising campaign on the conditions of Nepali prisons held a day before the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it appeared that it could. A picture is worth a thousand words, goes the old saying. The human rights world of Nepal, it seems, has embraced this theory with a great deal of enthusiasm, funding exhibits featuring everything from the effects of war to the families of the disappeared. The photographs, taken by Kiran Pandey, and featuring overcrowded jail rooms, unhappy inmates, and broken down facilities, make a good plea for reform...