Stee-rike

New Nepal? not yet
Kathmandu

Well, no Charya Nritya lessons for me last Saturday after all.

There was a transport strike (surprise! -- I have long since learned to ignore the ostensible "causes" behind such disruptions). They seem pretty interchangeable, and produce no appreciable results.

My teacher, Raju Sakya, couldn't make it into the city from his home in the traditional Buddhist neighborhood of OkuBahal, Patan.

So common are the strikes (transport or otherwise...a transport strike pretty much makes it a general strike, since many people can't get to work) that there's now a website devoted to monitoring them. Check out Nepalbandh.com
You can't make this stuff up.

Rather like holidays and festivals in Nepal, bandhs/strikes are so run of the mill as to almost have become the norm rather than the exception.

None of the participants ever seem to have stopped to ask the question: are these strikes producing a result? any result at all? Are we any closer to achieving our goals or getting our demands met? Striking has become a Nepali reflex. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

For now I'm just watching Charya videos on Youtube and reading some of the (very scant) material available. Other than one tiny home made paperback here, there is no book (yet) about Newari Charya Nritya.


Oh, and for your viewing pleasure you can also check out the latest Load-shedding schedule on the NepalBandh site.