I was submitting to the drone of Lou Reed against Metallica’s guitars when a friend called, wondering if I wanted to see Rajesh Hamal, onstage, presiding over a court of young actors including Karma, Diya Maskey and Dayahang Rai. The old and the not-so-new – how would these mash-ups match up? It takes a brave […]

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 […]

Monday, November 18, 2013 Nepalikukur has been sniffing around since his whole-hearted endorsement of Ujwal Thapa and his comrades. Several disturbing reports have come to his attention, the most worrying of which centres around allegations that Kathmandu-4 Bibeksheel candidate Santosh Pradhan, as co-founder and chairman of NDEX, a commodity exchange index, has been directly or indirectly involved […]

To say I am concerned about the wellspring of inspiration nourishing Nepali (short) filmmakers is an understatement. Where is the lunk loping across mustard fields in a lather of testosterone, the object of his desire a vision of chiffon, heaving bosom and pouty lips? Where is the ruler line of morality that demarcates the good […]

It’s accepted that zombie flicks are less about lumbering, undead flesh-eaters than the emergent sociopathy of the humans trying to stay in one piece. The Central Zoo at Jawalakhel offers similar revelations, anticipated by a mural that exhorts visitors to consider the view from the other side of the bars. All things considered, most visitors […]

The Kingdom at the Centre of the World: Journeys in Bhutan, by Omair Ahmad, Aleph Book Company, 2013 We have come to expect production values from Aleph Book Company, and The Kingdom at the Centre of the World: Journeys in Bhutan does not disappoint with its delicately rendered cover of a dzong suspended, as it were, in time and […]

What do Narayan Wagle, Yug Pathak, Narayan Dhakal, Krishna Dharabasi and Buddhisagar Chapain have in common?

Perhaps because we were forced to memorize rather than learn, I recall nothing of the SLC English-language curriculum. As for literature there was none. But we schoolboys had our stocks of pulp fiction, gradually supplanted by the slower, profounder pleasures of the Victorian classics.

The first inkling I had that the SAARC Festival of Literature was not quite what a gathering of self-proclaimed