The literary canon of a nation as multilingual as Nepal ought not to consist overwhelmingly of Nepali-language literature, but it does. It ought to include a vast body of literature in national languages other than Nepali, but it doesn’t.

Midnight pools catch the brilliant lanterns

carried by women in procession.

Deep into sleep

I follow them home.

With the untimely demise of Dr Dina Bangdel on July 25, 2017 the world lost an outstanding art historian specialising in traditional Himalayan and modern and contemporary South Asian art.

Before the election, as sexist and racist and consumptive as I know Americans are, I believed we knew what was right even if we didn’t always do what was right.

We can blame climate change for the scattering of our seasons, and the cultures they enable. This is no less than a remoulding of our imaginations. But how do we face up to our rebellion against Mother Nature, and her wrathful, deadly response?

Through her personal history, she exposes how our national, collective history discards women’s experiences by always focusing on paternal family history and lineage.

Twelve years ago it was Isaac who happened to be sitting outside when Ranya showed up at Chavurat Messiah one October night. Only she wasn’t Ranya then; she was Kathleen DiMarco, Kat, twenty-four years old and seven months pregnant.

This is an exercise in deciding whom to cast my vote for in the first local elections since the turn of the millennium. We have one last weekend to mull over whom we would like to represent our interests, after 15 years of mulling over what our interests are.

Amritananda smiled. What a strange, quaint person this Rejident was, impeccable manners, soft-spoken and so out of place in the cesspool of Kathmandu politics.