This is Nepal

It is not easy being a Nepali and living in Nepal. A few cases to ponder about: How many times you have read news? About vandalized hospitals and doctors threatened by the family members of the deceased; just because, their loved one has just died in that hospital?

Hospital is where people die!

If you do a survey, you will be surprised by the number of people who die in hospitals. More people die in hospital than they do in their own home. That is because; hospital is a place where people go for treatment of their diseases. Some of those diseases are curable and others are incurables. There is no guarantee that everybody recovers from the illness. Then, why do these people blame the doctors all the time? It is because the deceased person was young and has not seen the life? Will vandalizing hospitals and thwarting doctors solve our problem?

Road Accidents 

When some road accidents happen, the people start a protest on the street. They torch the vehicle(s) that had already met with the accident as if, that wasn’t enough. As if, the accident was pre-planned and was a plot to cause trouble for the road users.

Since when has road accidents become an intentional act rather than an accident? Will torching of vehicles and thwarting the driver reduce the road accidents?

Political Natural Disaster

When there is a natural disaster like flood swiping a village, river bank encroaching a land on its way, land slide, the politicians are blame for the disaster. I don’t know about other countries, but here in Nepal, natural disasters happens due to the political inability. It is a political issue. Will the blame game eradicate the such disasters in future?

Meri Bassai… the Language

And then there are programs on NTV like Merri Bassai and Jhai Kuti Jhai. Loud and cheap comedy programs made to teach the public a lousy way to vent their frustration. Teaching such loud talks and disrespectful manners to our kids is nothing to laugh about.

But, it seems nobody cares about it. These programs have always enjoyed good TRP (Top rated Program) on viewership ratings.

Nepali Media

These are some of the day-to-day happenings in Nepali media don’t have time to talk about such problems. Nepali media is too busy feeding us political junk – news, views, and deadlocks – to distract our mind from the main problem of our country. Our journalists have been complaining about not getting a true respect from the society. When will they learn to earn the ‘respect’ they desire and stop asking like beggars ?

Note : This article has already been published in Xnepali.com on March 9, 2011 

Battle of sex: women’s side

“Do you hate men?” An innocent looking lady who works with me asked.

“No!”, I replied.

“Then, why don’t you marry ?”

She doesn’t stop asking the same question even after my repeated request not to ask it again. I don’t want any more questions in the topic.

This question makes me feel uncomfortable, and it also freezes me. I am not interested in this institution. My concern is, if I am free from this question in my family circle, why are the outsider even bother? But, they never stop bothering me.

So, I have to answer her question to make sure that she won’t keep asking the question again.

“I am not buying the concept that men are superior to women and that, I can’t live with a man who strongly believes that they are superior creatures on earth.” I added, “In our society, men are brought up with this belief and I look at them with a question in my eyes.”

She told that, she understands what I was talking about. Her own daughter, who is gender specialist and works in china (what a paradox a gender specialist is a gender biased), is also uninterested in marriage and thinks men are chauvinist.

Some years ago, when my boyfriend asked me “do you think men are pig ?”

My prompt answer was “No !”

But in my mind, I was thinking, “Why is he dragging the innocent creature, and what fault did the pig had to be compared with an arrogant man ?”

He was the same guy who had problem with me watching Oprah Winfrey show. I am a huge fan of Oprah as she is a single woman institute in the whole world who has done a lot to empower women all around the world.

The idea that male are superior sex compared to female is being injected in our mind for their own benefit. The truth is, physically there may be a vast difference between men and women, and one thing that is truly equal is brain. To illustrate the physical difference in a comical way, a Hindi movie explained the difference: men can bare their top in public and women can’t. Leaving alone the physical difference, we can’t difference between the two sexes by the intellectual strength they can possess. That might be one of the reasons Harvard University enrolls more women than men.

Yes, we think in a different way than men and as the saying goes, “Man thinks with his head and woman thinks with her heart”. Different ways of thinking don’t mean that one is smarter and the other is not, it is just that we think differently.

My experience says that men can do only one task at a time but, women can multitask. Shouldn’t it make us a superior sex?

I have read of a English teachers who once wrote, “Woman without her man is nothing”, on the black board and called a boy and a girl in the class to put the punctuation mark on the sentence. The outcome was:

Woman, without her; man is nothing.

Woman, without her man; is nothing.

Interesting lines, aren’t they ?

Now you tell me which of the two lines was the the touch-up of the boy and which one that of the girl?

Ed's Note : This post has already been published on December 16, 2010 on Xnepali.com

Indian spices & English Cities

The other day, I accompanied one of my good friends to a financial institute to sell a concept for a television commercial (TVC). The client suggested showing money or gems as a part of the concept. My friend’s logic was not to show money in the advertisements of banks or financial companies. He said, that will have negative impact on the mass and will not generate result, as expected. This got me thinking. Why not? After all, it is all about money.

In the eastern side of the world, people are shy to talk about sex but, at the same time, they are busy generating more babies compared to the western world. Asia has more than 60% contribution to the world’s 6 billion plus population out of which, China and India combined contribute 2.5 billion. People in the western world are open and freely talk on sex and ideas associated with it. How come their population is a lot less compared to those who believe that sex is a taboo?

One common example – lets think about the name of cites in England – Essex, Sussex, and Middlesex. They are the names of the towns over there. In a different note, Clove, Cardamom and Cinnamon are also the name of places, in some part of India. It should be mentioned that, those cities have nothing to do with the production of the spice they represent. Do you have any idea on what the heck they were thinking, when naming the cities?

People in western world wear such revealing dresses that sometimes cause road accidents. Cities are plastered with the billboards and posters of enticing, sultry, suggestive and seductively posing models. TVs carry sexy commercials to arouse the sexual desire on the viewers. But in South Asia, similar suggestive billboards, posters, TV commercials are detested and banned in most of the cases. Wearing reveling dresses in the public is a definitive no-no and is known to create huge bruhaha.

I believe naming a city with a “sex” word in it and naming cities with suggestive meanings are same, and the only difference is the ‘mode of presentation’. Cardamom is considered to enhance sexuality in a female while cinnamon does the same to men (although not to the level of commercial products, like Viagra). Clove is good enough for both genders. Hence, the three main ingredients of the traditional five-spices to tantalize the gourmets tongue mean more that what they sound. So, motive behind the UK cities and Indian cities are same but Indians acted smart in choosing the words; making it more effective. Many still wrongly believe that the UK cities ‘sex’ names represent the places of Saxons tribe (Middle, South, and East Saxons).

It is to be noted, a young widow is suggested to stay away from spicy foods, to control her natural desire of sex. People in the eastern part of the world believe staying away from the spicy foods helps in controlling excessive sexual desire.

Going back to the TVC, we were talking about : now, I could see my friend’s point of view; the docile suggestion has more impact on the bigger mass compared to the direct suggestion.

Ed's Note : This article has already been Posted on December 12, 2010 in Xnepali.com

Is it all in the blood !

It’s a common phrase and everybody must have heard it – “it’s all in the blood”. You are born with it, wealth, name, fame acting etc. My question is, is it ?

Whoever said this line must be the one who was not paying much attention to the surrounding or, may be living in a very narrow circle and does not know what the real truth is.

Let’s talk about acting here. Let’s talk about Bollywood and pick one top actor of the 70s – Hema Malini and Dharmendra. Both were the superstars of their time. Their daughter Easha is not doing that well in the movie industry as her mother did in her time. Hema Malani was raw in the industry and was not trained and polished to enter this line and she was not from the movie family background either. Easha should be doing a lot better than her parents because she has blood with good gene running on her body not only from one superstar but superstar parents. They were well known for their good work on the screen. Lookwise, Esha is also identical to her mother.

If you take a deeper look on this family, you will find out that Dharmendra alone got higher share of name and fame in the industry compared to the combined efforts of his children. Hema Malini also enjoys the similar share of fame.

Hema Malini, still is a dream-girl to many people, not only in India but all around the world. Dharmenda is also considered the living legend of Bollywood. Some years down the line, people might ask, “Esha? who is Esha ?”

Do you know the name of the parents of Abraham Lincoln? His parents had the same kind of blood, red blood, that ran in his vein, the same kind which runs in your body and my body and our parents’ body.

So tell me do you still believe, it’s all in the blood?

If you do, then think, think again !

Ed's Note : this article has already been Posted on December 12, 2010 in Xnepali.com

Freedom of Expression

Picture from Internet

Of all the people on earth, journalist are among those who would like to practice freedom of expression more than anyone. No doubt, they advocate, practice, fight the concept of freedom of expression. But lets see how much they have got what they fight and stand for for fiercely.

May the corrupt rot :  Couple of years ago this is the slogan popularized by BBC journalist Rabindra Mishra. Mishra is famous for his scoop that gives him 15 minutes popularity was sporting T-shirt that read the slogan “may the corrupt rot.” He is that kind of journalist who always picks the topic that angers the public. It's not this easiest way to win the likeness for his choice ? But I would like to ask Mr Mishra  is practicing cursing to those who are in power position is freedom of expression ? There has to be someone in our society with clear conscience to tell  him, you got the concept totally wrong.

Let me be honest I started liking the eloquent Mr. Laxmi Guragai, Ex-editor of Gorkhapatra and his series of articles in Samhita that was published in 2072 - 2073. I enjoyed reading all of it and still even after reading Mr. Krisha Shrestha, another ex-editor of Gorkhapatra who exposed the lies of Mr Guragai with sufficient evidence. In the issue of 2073 Ashoj senior journalist lies, Mr Shrestha colleague of Mr Guragai helped us to see the real side of veteran journalist and the truth in his posted materials in Samhita. Mr. Guragain scuffed too much and tried to bend the news in his favor when the reality was different. Thank God, Samhita gave space for other veteran to cut the lies of veteran who misused the space provided by Samhita. This reminded me of a  movie the glass shattered. Here in this movie they talk about a guy who fabricated the news to be popular and enjoyed the name and fame until somebody busted his lies. I think Guragain had not seen than movie. How long you can soak in the pride of lies ?

We all know about how the journalist of charlie Hebdo was killed in 2015 April by some irate and irrational Muslim brothers. What the young Muslim did was very barbaric and irrational. There is no doubt. However, no one should provoke anyone to that extent that they would like to end the matter with gun. There are some opinions that better be kept unexpressed in the head, if it do not do greater good for the society. Freedom of Expression should not be [practiced if it may cause tragic accident. We should be sensitive to others views and believe also. And if such views and beliefs matter to a greater mass than practicing such expression may be avoided.  What Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists did can not be viewed as freedom of expression but it's the malpractice in the name of freedom of expression.

In the name of freedom of expression there should not be war or crime in our society. Instead we must use our pen and brain to end the war and crime from our society. If such barbarism can be stopped then that would be wise decision than the freedom of expression.

Many of our journalists have habit of filling whole pages without naming a single person or organization. As if what he knows whole nation knows about it.  Such journalist lives in small society. One such example is Darshan Sharma on Samhita 2073 Ashoj issue. He is talking about a mal practice in our media but he did not mention the name of media house he is talking about. Spilling beans is also not the work of journalist, they should go and write suspense novel. Because we don't like fiction or suspense but like to read bold media men who would tell us story that happened in our society.  Freedom of expression is more than art of oratory more than captivating way of taking and filling pages, it is not the loud opinion. All the expression in media men must have conscience, authenticity and sense of responsibility backed by audacity. The written thing must have direct and positive impact in our society also. If the practice of freedom of expression is chaos, crime or barbarism then I would keep a loud mum if some come forward with a gun and then crush such strong pen managed by journalists like Sarb and Riss.