There are peculiarities to every journey. In most cases, travel is defined by its purpose. Few have the luxury or peace of mind to travel aimlessly. Even as a tourist, such abandonment is a rare experience. When one travels in a big red bus filled with books, the books form the pixellated vision of the […]

A recent article by Suman Khadka in the Kathmandu Post, “Of misogynists and bed-warmers” made the challenges women face pretty self-evident. Her article is built around a couple of pieces that have appeared in the Nepali press. Both insinuated that most women members of the new Constituent Assembly were there as a result of their […]

One year dissolves into the next, but I won’t forget 2013 in a hurry, for this was the year La.Lit came into being. The January launch of our first print volume and website helped us round the corner of our winter of discontent, which ended with the farcical cancellation of the Kathmandu Literary Jatra. But if we […]

There was a tea shop on one side of the dirt road that led to my home from the tarred main street in Janakpur. It was owned by a man everyone called Kachuwa. He was a small man, always wearing a dirty T-shirt or a ganji and lungi, and always smiling. Across the road was a small furniture […]

Too long have Nepalis felt compelled to follow the fortunes of overpaid Indian cricketers as they bully visitors on flat, dusty tracks only to be caught like rabbits in headlights on the lush pacy wickets of more temperate climes. Like our interest in Salman’s puffball pecs and Kareena’s pencil pelvis, this feckless fandom does not […]

I took a walk to get out of the house and kill time before futsal in the evening. I walked through Bishalnagar to Dhumbarahi, where I stopped at a chiyā pasal for tea. The sāhuni and a girl were sitting on stools in the front of the shop, chatting. I sat down and ordered tea […]

I voted for the first time this year at the age of thirty-one. I stood in line with all the adult members of my extended family. We talked about politics as we inched towards the voting booth and remarked from time to time about how, despite the slow pace of our progress, we had moved […]

As I walked to my voting station, two things became very apparent. The first was that I had not walked down this road for a very long time. What once used to be a cow trail was unrecognizable. Two cars could pass through now. Water-filled paddy fields had given way to parched but orderly vegetable […]

I am 30 and I have never voted. I am an independent, educated, politically conscious being and yet I have never voted. I want to. I want to discuss who to vote for. I want to debate the pros and cons of one candidate versus another. I want to have these debates knowing that I […]