THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

A R T M A T T E R S ECS Magazine, December 2007 By Sushma Joshi Giovanni Battista Ambrosini is 59 years old, but as he crouches on the ground and assiduously draws his signature image—a figure that could be a bird, a child, a spirit—with a white wax-stick on a canvas stretched out on the tiles of Babar Mahal Revisited’s courtyard, he appears centuries older. The white mane of hair looks familiar, so does the high forehead. Does Giovanni descend from a long line of artists in Italy? Did his ancestor exhibit alongside Leonardo da Vinci in some of Florence’s prestigious studios? This question goes unanswered. He seems as blithely unconcerned with the vagaries of history and parentage as he is with the sacredness of the canvas, which Nepali artists treat as a treasured space that would be sullied by the slightest disrespect. Meanwhile, on the canvas spread out on the courtyard, Giovanni directs four young women to dance with naked feet. Like the wind, the young women are his c...

This link leads to a story about a Norwegian funded program for hydropower engineering at Kathmandu University.

The Half-Moon Files By Sushma Joshi I happened, by accident, to hear about 'The Half-Moon Files.' The Berlinale, Berlin's international film festival, is the biggest in Europe after Cannes, and there were 250 films competing for attention. But the woman who told me about it was certain I would be interested. It was about the POW (Prisoner of War) camp in Berlin after WW 1 and had interesting anthropological elements, she said. 'It is about Indians in the POW camp,' she said. As soon as she said 'Indians', I knew I had to watch it. It was the last day of the festival, but I had no hesitation chucking my ticket to the Hongkong action movie and heading to the Arsenal, a theatre located in the basement of the Filmhause of Berlin. The documentary was in German, which I do not speak or understand. But it was probably the most interesting film I, as a Nepali, watched in the entire festival. The reason was this-- the film, an ostentious 'ghost story' in whi...

Sushma Joshi Kantipuronline.com, February 7, 2007 Vogue, one of the world’s premier fashion magazines, features actress Angelina Jolie on the cover of its January 2007 issue. Jolie wears a raspberry rayon matt jersey evening dress that drapes across her body in perfect, sensual symmetry—there’s a sari-like hint to the drape of fabric against her legs. The classic, elegant look comes from the design table of Bliss Blass, a New York couture house with clients as diverse as Oprah, Laura Bush, and Sigourney Weaver. What most Nepalese don’t know is that one of the designers of the label is Prabal Gurung, whose rise to meteoric New York success rivals those of the best stars. A St Xavier’s graduate, Prabal was the only one of his class to study this field in 1990. Like all boys, he struggled to belong, but was made to feel different. However, this very sense of being “different” helped to push him to define his sense of identity later on in life. Prabal went to Delhi, where he attended the N...

War-torn Shangri-La Danger at the roof of the world http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2006/shangrila.asp by Sushma Joshi As Ms. went to press, at least 13 people had been killed in demonstrations in Nepal and hundreds of thousands had flooded the streets of Kathmandu demanding the return of democracy. Consequently, parliament, dissolved by King Gyanendra in February 2005, was reinstated. The people also demanded a redrafting of the constitution to eliminate the monarchy’s far-reaching powers. The king’s curfews, arrests and seizure of absolute control were done ostensibly to secure the country from a 10-year insurgency by Maoist rebels—who have now agreed to peace talks with the reinstated parliament and new government. Ms. assigned Sushma Joshi to report on what has been happening to women. Eline Henry, a 33-year-old French schoolteacher, loved Nepal so much she planned to extend her vacation in Kathmandu and volunteer at a children’s organization. “The people are so friendly,” she wrot...

Buddhism Comes Home By Sushma Joshi ECS Magazine Tucked away in a corner of Bishalnagar is a building with newly erected concrete pillars enclosing a spacious hall with unfinished concrete ceiling and floor. About two hundred people arrive there on the last Saturday of each month for the Bodhipushpanjali. Pushpanjali means an offering of flowers, and bodhi means wisdom. On the podium is a man wearing sunglasses reading out the day’s offerings in Nepali through the mike. He is Narayan Risal, a part-time physics professor and full-time Buddhist practitioner who leads the gatherings. Today, the theme of discussion is death. “Many people from our sangha have died this month,” says Narayan. The audience includes people from Hindu backgrounds seeking to understand the experience of a recent death. Dissatisfied with a priestly reading the high Sanskrit of the Garuda Purana, a text used to mitigate and make legible the incomprehensible nature of death, people await to hear what Narayan-ji has...

TIED TO THE RED POLE: THE STATE OF JUSTICE IN NEPAL Sushma Joshi Eureka Street journal, Melbourne, Australia (2006); Hands in Outreach newsletter, 2006 On March 23, 2005, the Kathmandu Post, one of Nepal’s leading daily English newspapers, ran a front-page story titled ‘Red Pole’ reduces crime, misconduct, written by Shankar Kharel. According to the story, the Area Reformation Committee in Ward 2 of Itahari Municipality had devised a novel way to reduce “misconduct” and crimes. They tied up people who had committed a crime to a red pole in a public place, publicly humiliated them in front of the community, and got them to renounce their behavior. This story could be filed among the dozens of other quirky, odd, or downright laughable stories found in the Nepali media. While some readers might have caught echoes of the public humiliations practiced in medieval Europe, or more recently in Mao’s China, most of the middle class in Kathmandu probably gave the news item a quick gl...