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 […]

The LatoKosero is a branch sitter and these are traces of thoughts. A democratic process is unsuccessful if one has to vote for the lesser of evils. The election process is the expression of an idea of Nepal that has been in circulation for a while. There is nothing new (other than the changing nature […]

How do you make a dying tradition relevant? By mimicking the past or by making the past relevant to the present? Kathmandu’s recently held Sa Paru or Gai Jatra festivities proved to be a trial ground for tradition. For the Newar communities that remain and still practice their traditions in the inner city of Kathmandu, the day is very personal. It […]

The astrologer was a pleasant young man, with worn down cloth shoes and a dust-coloured set of clothes. Mohan Shamsher was surprised. He had expected someone older, someone more commanding. More authoritative. This man, with his humble cotton outfit, could not have been more than thirty, at the most.

When Quixote’s Cove, the bookshop this magazine is affiliated with, was established, it always wanted to wear more than a retailer’s garb. It drew its inspiration from the romanticization of ideas that felt as though they were in demand and had retail space. Strangely similar but proportionately as big as the US is to Nepal, the Elliott […]

If the nature of a city and its people are reflected in the public/civic institutions they support, then Kathmandu appears distinctly barbaric. Our libraries are in shambles – they are run like museums, carrying bounded tomes of dust. Our museums are equally neglected for our present is too pressing to allow for anything but a […]

What is it that writers offer to society? One belief is that they offer a means for understanding our world –  the people and relations that mould much of it. For instance, reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice can help one understand how relationships tend to work. The broad picture it gives is of the way our […]

There I was, traveling to the pinnacle of civilization from a nation confounded by its own existentialism. Five legs over 36 hours – ordeals were to be expected. My journey was marred from the beginning – unloading and offloading my baggage became an enforced part of the ordeal. Beyond the winding maze of workers, I […]