THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Sushma Joshi The Kathmandu Post, 02/27/2009 I laughed out loud when I read this news story: China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage lodged a protest when the auction house Christie sold two bronze sculptures—the head of a rat and a rabbit—at US$36 million. According to an AP report: “"Christie's obstinately went on with the auction of the Summer Palace relics, going against the spirit of relevant international conventions and the international common understanding that cultural relics should be returned to their country of origin," the administration said in a statement.” China, which has flouted every law in the international lawbooks, from human rights to environment, from labor standards to media freedom, from ethical standards of treatment of prisoners to copyright, is now evoking international law to shame Western pirates! Isn’t that ironic? But now we know. Even China, it appears, is willing to quote international law when expedient. China get...

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER SUSHMA JOSHI Kathmandu Post, 21/02/09 When I first met Devi Sunwar, in October 2004, she was her eyes were red from crying. The event was a launch of a report by Human Rights Watch titled “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”. When Devi told the story of how her fifteen year old daughter, Maina, had been killed by soldiers, there was not a dry eye in the crowded conference hall. When I saw her again recently, five years later, I was struck to see how the expression in her face remained the same. It appeared to me that although her tears had dried, the sense of a woman who’d faced deep trauma remained. I wondered aloud to Geeta, her niece, how there had been so much funding poured to compensation for victims of conflict, but somehow the lessening of grief and trauma that should have taken place by now hadn’t happened. Where, I wondered, had all those millions gone? Shouldn’t some of it had gone into rehabilitating those who were directly impacted by the conflict? S...

and here's me with my chasma...

Sushma Joshi Sunday February 15, 2009 Source : THE KATHMANDU POST A group of young schoolchildren sat on the floor and listened to their teacher, who stood in front of a painting by Gaugain, explaining the difference between the West and other cultures. I was in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. I watched with amazement as the group of five year olds listened to their teacher with complete attention. The teacher, looking about, chose a child to ask a question, and the forest of eager hands said there was more than one child who wanted to answer. A day ago, I'd watched a similar group of children listen to their teacher tell them about a gigantic painting of a long-dead royal family at the Prado Museum. The reverence with which the children sat in front of the paintings was palpable. For a Nepali visitor in Spain, the question inevitably rises -- how can the citizens of these countries imagine a world in which the traffic always flows smoothly, electricity and water is available to...

Sushma Joshi Our inability and our reluctance to preserve and share the spaces of the great writers, poets and artists of Nepal gives the impression that we have less than we do I'll be honest with you. The only reason I heard about Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca is because a favorite song of mine is inspired by him. ¨Take this waltz, ¨ by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, I learnt, was based on Garcia Lorca´s poetry. Singer-songwriter Cohen spent twelve or thirteen tours writing out the lyrics after reading a Lorca poem. Not only did Cohen write songs inspired by Lorca, he even named his daughter after him. Who was this Lorca who had inspired a man whose songs draw reverent crowds in college campuses all over North America? Cohen is an iconoclast -- an intellectual who does several things at once, and all with perfect grace. He writes novels and poetry, he composes songs, he plays music, and he sings. After touring the house of Garcia Lorca, I understood why Cohen had be...