Mystery date

A twist with destiny
Kathmandu, Nepal

"TRYST WITH DESTINY,"

...screamed the headlines today.

Supposedly, we're having the Nepali Constituent Assembly election polls on November 22nd. (For those of you unfamiliar with Indian history, it's a reference to Nehru's address given on the occasion of Indian independence in 1947. "We had a tryst with destiny....")

Reaction 1 - I'll believe it when I see it.

Reaction 2 - I will bet money that this date was arrived at only after lengthy consultation with astrologers such as Mangal Raj Joshi and other

traditional soothsayers.

(You think I'm kidding? this is a nation where we still get public holidays for a solar eclipse. Not that I am complaining, or even criticizing...just observing.)

It's raining a bit more every day. I think my persistent headaches are caused by needing new glasses. Either that, or the humidity and that stupid cover band down the street that keeps playing "La Bamba" every night at 7.45.


Stop the press
Oh, did I tell you the one about the Maoists shutting down some newspapers? They organize (ie, semi-forcibly recruit) "labour unions" on the pretext of caring about workers' rights. Then they got (in this case) the paper carriers, vendors and so on to "strike for better working conditions." Of course, it just happened to be a group of papers they were pissed off at for saying unfavourable things about them. I am afraid this is a taste of more things to come.

The papers are back on the stands today, after a four-day hiatus.

Here are some more photos from the Magic Kingdom. It's too hot right now to wander around taking new ones, so most are from last year. Believe me, very little has changed.

Giant mask of Seto Bhairav (reputedly the original "Little yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu"), unveiled only once annually at Indra Jatra time. September, 2006

Mahankali Pyakhan or Great Kali Dancers of Bhaktapur; performing for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad convention in Kathmandu. September, 2006


Kids dressed up for traditional stick dances, Kathmandu, Sept. 2006

Winnowing rice during harvest season, Bhaktapur. October 2005

Crowds assembled in Kathmandu Durbar Square for Indra Jatra, Sept. 2006

Photobloggin

And backloggin

Kathmandu, Nepal

Sharing old photos you haven't seen yet was so much fun, I think I'll continue today. Here are just a few. You can see about 200 more on my Flickr.com page.

There is a guy at the next terminal, and his girlfriend is standing behind him massaging his bald head. Of course, they are European. I guess I really am Asian now - it's just too much for me to stomach this kind of PDA.

If it's Monday, this must be Shiva: This young man would dress as various gods on different days of the week, and go begging in the Koregaon Park area of Pune. Monday is a day traditionally associated with Shiva, so he would dress himself as the snake-toting god of destruction and change. December, 2004

To Mahalingam: Waiting on the railway platform for the train from Trivandrum (Kerala) to Kannur. This boy was so lost in thought, he didn't see my camera. May, 2003


Fields of mustard crop in bloom, near Panauti Village. Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, On a clearer day, you can see the snowcapped Himalayas from here. October 2005

This little girl was dressed up for Gai Jatra, an annual festival to honour the previous year's deceased, in Bhaktapur, Nepal. August 2006

Burmese (as they said on Seinfeld, "isn't it Myanmar now??") monks at Bodh Gaya. New Year's Day, 2007

Dry spell

Who'll start the rain?
Kathmandu, Nepal

The monsoon season has supposedly begun. No big deal. It rains for about an hour, every other day. That just isn't enough rain. Come ON man, this is Asia in the monsoon! It's spozed to be up to our ankles already!

Maybe it's because the chariot festival of Rato Macchendranath was halted for nearly two weeks. Rato ("Red") Macchendranath is one of the local deities propitiated to bring rain and keep the agricultural cycle on track. Every year they drag a skyscraper-like (really, it's about eight storeys high and looks like a giant rolling Christmas tree) contraption around Patan to honour him. This is supposed to mark the beginning of the rainy season. But this year, the makeshift wooden chariot (which is quite a - did I already use the word contraption?) broke down on May 23 and had to be repaired. It just got rolling again yesterday.

All I have to do is cross the border, and I start thinking like a Nepali ("maybe it's because the chariot broke"). I wish it were so simple. In fact, monsoons get shorter and later every year, it seems....throughout the region. Could it be because they're cutting down all the trees in the Tibetan plateau - which happens to be the weather-generator for the entire south Asia region?

No. Must be just a coincidence.....

Well, if you think we're dry now, wait till China dams and diverts all the rivers that originate up there. That's where all the water in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan comes from. I predict the next world war will be a Water War.

In the meantime, between rainfalls, it's really, really hot - even here, in the temperate Kathmandu Valley. When I say "really hot," I mean, anything above 80F.

Right now, the planets are aligned in a near-perfect row. It's cool, even from the city, to be able to look up and see the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter all in a row. If we were in the countryside I could probably see Mercury too.

Flickring
Since the days are hot, I 've been spending a lot of time on Flickr.com organizing and uploading photos. I did so much in the past six months in India, I almost forget till I look at the photos. Here are just a few. (below)

My friends in the United Arab Emirates say they can't open Flickr.com there. Well, at least in Dubai you have really good air conditioning .

I've also spent a lot of time online in my role as Co-Administrator (wheee!) of the 50 Million Missing Project, a photo project to raise awareness of the gender genocide ongoing in India. Because of a traditional preference for sons, Indian couples are using ultrasound to detect the gender of a fetus, then aborting it if it's female. This has resulted in a "skewed sex ratio" of as much as 800-1000 (female to male) in some areas of India.

Here's the link to 50 Million Missing (above). Check it out - there are now nearly 3,000 photos of Indian women and girls, from all communities and walks of life, and some great ongoing discussions of the gender-ratio issue, as well as links to news stories about it.

Okay, here are a few shots from my past 6 months in Buddhist India, and a few you haven't seen before from the Kathmandu Valley.

Young Sri Lankan monks read the sutra of Buddha's first-ever sermon at Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, the place where the Buddha first delivered the first sermon. (there has got to be a better way to state that....)

Butter lamps and water offerings at the Kagyu Monlam prayer ceremony, Bodh Gaya, Bihar

Tibetan monks going home after preparing the stupa for the ceremony; Bodh Gaya

Ladakhis in their trademark black robes, walking round the Dhamekh Stupa in Sarnath.

Tso Pema, or Rewalsar, in Himachal: site of an ancient Buddhist legend linking the lake to Guru Rinpoche, and home to a number of Tibetan monasteries.


Tiny dancer - these minstrels from Rajasthan had set up shop in Bhaktapur's Taumudhi square, Nepal.

News From Nepal: (No) Business As Usual

The Waiting Land
Kathmandu, Nepal

Whew....after a nauseating taxi ride down the Himalayan foothills into sweltering Delhi, then a 2-hour delay at the airport, I'm back in Nepal, and it's business as usual.

Or perhaps, no business as usual. It's all an ordinary Nepali can do to get any work at all done, as various factions keep things churned up and out of working order.

And, did I mention the nation is broke, and out of petrol (gasoline)? They owe Indian Oil about 1 Billion (with a B) rupees. The joke is that all the strikes are an attempt to reduce gas consumption, since, in fact, we don't have any.

Popular support for the monarchy is at an all-time low (according to news polls). However, the current interim govt. isn't faring much better in the eye of the general public. The same polls showed abuot 59% of the public felt the new government was "same old, same old."

Improvements since I left in December: The Maobadis are no longer extorting donations from trekkers. They are having their own internal problems, what with the rebels rebelling against the rebel leaders. Now that the leaders are officially an enfranchised part of the Establishment, the field cadres don't feel so much solidarity with them - sweating in jungle tents while the Great Helmsmen ride in AC jeeps in the capital. As predicted here a year ago, they've begun to breakaway and form their own general hell-raising groups in the hinterlands.

Another plus: within the valley proper and from here to Pokhara, there are no more government roadblocks. That's because the conflict has shifted to the Terai.

....The Terai (southern Nepal plains bordering India) is becoming the Terror-ai. Literally every few days, there's some bundh (strike), curfew, demonstration, revenge killing or some damned thing holding up life and normal functionality there (and I don't just mean my ability, as a tourist, to travel freely- that's not so important). Ordinary people can't get to work and get stuff done. Stuff doesn't get delivered. Commercial transport from and to all-important commercial neighbor India doesn't go through. People,including the very large number of daily-wage labourers (who live for their next meals, get paid cash daily and get nothing for enforced strike days) go hungry.

The Northern border with China, ironically, is tranquil. Maybe all this agitation on the border is with the intent to rupture relations with India and force Nepal to be reliant on Communist China for damned near everything. What sort of person or party would want such a thing? A Communist party maybe? or even Maoist....?

....Tomorrow, Jimmy Carter is coming. He's been here before, on vacation to climb up to Everest Base Camp with Roslyn. This time, he's coming as an ambassador of peace, due process and proper electoral procedures. Nepalis seem to have an almost mystical faith in outsiders' ability to cut through the haze and bring some clarity to the situation. Interestingly, Carter will meet with both the Prime Minister Koirala and the Maoist supremo Prachanda - but not with the monarch, King Gyanendra.

Major peacenik groupie that I am, I will be camping out at Baluwatar to hopefully catch a glimpse of the man who's unquestionably our finest living President. ....
--Here's a link to a news story about the 2-day All Nepal Strike (during which, a bicycle cannot even move about freely) that was thankfully called off at the last minute.

Kathmandu, June 10 (IANS) After they went on the warpath in south Nepal's Kapilavastu district, calling an indefinite closure and attacking nearly a dozen vehicles, a Maoist group Sunday withdrew its protest following talks between their top leaders and Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala.

The controversial youth wing of the Maoists had enforced the indefinite shutdown in Kapilavastu, revered by Buddhists as part of the ancient kingdom where the Buddha was born and spent 29 years before leaving home in search of enlightenment, to pressure the Nepal Army into pulling out of the area.

Early on Sunday, the Young Communist League torched five buses and attacked seven more vehicles for trying to move out of the paralysed district under the cover of darkness.
...full story at http://in.news.yahoo.com/070610/43/6gunr.html

Finally

...the password is....
Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh

FINALLY. After nearly 2 weeks of getting the Log-in runaround on my new, "improved" Blogger account, I can actually log in.

Had to try all kinds of weird combos of my old and new user name, as well as old and new passwords... and eventually came up with the right two at the right time.

Whew. Got a lot of catching up to do. Last week there was damn-near a race riot (between Tibetans and Indians) here in Dharamsala. And yesterday Belgium (nice, neutral, EU-founding Belgium) dissed the Dalai Lama, and kowtowed to Chinese pressure by asking him not to come and address the conference in Brussels he'd been planning to visit for months. Talk about a Belgian waffle.
Taxi driver
If you're coming to Dharamsala, don't plan on taking any taxis, at least not if you're Tibetan. There's a gang of Tibetan guys going round telling all Tibetans (or anyone who looks kind of Tibetan, like my Nepali friends) not to take taxis or autorickshaws. It's effectively an unofficial boycott. This, despite an official show of reconciliation between the Tibetan govt. and representatives of the local Indian community. It's all because of the crazy brawl between some Tibetan youths and an Indian auto driver last week.

It's been really hard to get any unbiased or reliable information about the incident. The English-language papers were largely completely silent, while the Hindi language dailies wrote one-sided stories accusing the Tibetans of "bullying" the Indians. Every single person, Tibetan, Indian or western, that I spoke to had a different version of the story. An opinion piece sympathetic to the Tibetans went live on Phayul.com last week, but was promptly pulled after protests and pressure from the Indian community.

Trouble in paradise
In the understandable rush to restore order in the small town, some crucial issues have been swept under the rug, and it's evidently not the first time. The Tibetans are here as refugees with very few rights; however, their presence and that of the Dalai Lama brings in the vast numbers of tourists, around which the local economy is completely based. The Tibetans draw a great deal of international attention (read: money, sympathy and sponsorship). Jealousy and resentment manifest from time to time between the communities, alongside a great deal of mutual tolerance and cooperation.

On good days, which is most of the time, everyone is united by a common interest: making money from the "spiritual tourists." Ironically, all this comes just a few weeks after the Indian community had arranged a beautiful Hindu "long-life puja" for His Holiness, which entailed lots of Gayatri Mantra and some beautiful speeches about the mutual ties (commercial and cultural) between the two groups.

Another factor: the vulnerable position of many Tibetan refugees (in terms of immigration legalities) leaves them prime targets for harassment and blackmail from certain unscrupulous members of Indian law enforcement. Young Tibetan men are routinely stopped after dark with police demands to show their RC (registration card).

However, no one wants to talk about this, it seems. So once again, like the dysfunctional family we are, India and people living in India pretend "no problem, everything is fine." Until the next blow-up, of course. This time, total disaster was averted because there were no fatalities ("only" hospitalizations). I wonder how long the soothing statements about "unity" can cover up the glaring need for honest dialogue.

Curiouser and curiouser....