Cease extortion please !

< By Kapil Tamot <

The news of the cease-fire that most of the Kathmanduites came to know on a rainy Wednesday morning was welcomed by the most Nepalese living here in the UK. A good reason to call families back home in Nepal or to one’s Nepali friends here itself. Needless to say, the British Telecom, the mobile phone operators and the various private telecom companies definitely enjoyed some benefits of the cease-fire in Nepal that day. Forget the snowy blizzard that was making headlines, every Nepali here was more concerned asking one another, ‘Did you hear the news?’

All had either read the news on the net or had got to hear of it from families and friends, and almost everyone I know reacted in the same way. ‘Phew... at last! ’. After a series of bad and sad news for almost two years, it was no doubt a pleasant bit of news for the Nepalese living abroad, a welcome development indeed! But, at the same time, it raised another anxious question, ‘will this good news lead to better news?’ Is there some hope that this cease-fire will eventually cease other evils? Extortion, for example? Extortion that has now extended to the tourism industry, the backbone of Nepalese economy, and is only squeezing it dry? Nil Gurung is one among several who doesn’t veil his scepticism.

A Londoner, Nil had been frequently travelling to Nepal. His fond memories of his childhood spent in the mountains, the taste of daal bhat and the simplicity of the Nepali people were few of the reasons he gathered as excuses to keep going back. While at it, clever Nil used to combine to his pleasure a way to also earn some money by coordinating tourist groups from Europe to travel to the Himalayas several times a year. Unfortunately, his experience on his last visit forced him to change his views.

The last group he led in October 2002 encountered a bitter experience. One evening on the trail, a group of 35 armed and a few unarmed Maoists demanded for the guide to give them all the money he had. (Some Maoists, those that had previously worked in trekking groups knew that a guide, leading a group of 25 tourists, would have a minimum of 100,000 rupees with him). When the guide refused to give in to their demands, he was assaulted. To avoid further trouble, Nil tried his hand at negotiating. The Maoists then asked for 75,000, then 50,000 and after a fierce bargain, they finally settled for 1,000 per head making it 25,000 in total.

The entire episode happened in front of the group. "In the beginning, the tourists were scared but when they saw us negotiating they were less afraid. They agreed to pay 1,000 rupees each, as it was just 10 pounds for them. Once the deal was settled, some of them even asked the Maoists if they could pose for a picture to be taken with them", Nil remembers. Probably, the best souvenir of their visit to the once famed Shangri-la. A picture with a bunch of young armed camouflaged Maoists, at a time when Maoism has long ceased to exist, even in China!

Once back in London, Nil cancelled all his groups to Nepal. The sad thing is, the extortion didn’t end in the path of the Himalayas as the Maoists even confronted him in his Kathmandu residence for forced donations. Totally disillusioned, he was even planning to sell his property in Kathmandu and invest that money in some business in London.

Today, the declaration of the cease-fire has brought back some hope into his life. "If they can put an end to extortion, I want to open a proper trekking agency in London and start taking groups again to Nepal. There is so much demand here for Nepalese foothills," admits Nil, shaking his head from side to side.

Nil is only one among many in such a situation. Most of the retired Gurkhas living in the UK, work as security guards. Whenever these lahures go back to their villages, the Maoists come knocking on their doors asking for contributions. Jagat Bahadur Pun is in the same case.

He used to go to Nepal for Dashain holidays every year. Dashain 2001 was probably his last visit to Nepal. He almost got killed when he refused to pay the huge amount that the freedom fighters were asking. He had to flee his village immediately. When the Maoists found him gone, his old father and other members of his family were beaten. The former war veteran, who fought the Malaya war and survived for 3 weeks without food or water in the jungles of Indonesia, was living every day in fear for the lives of his family members. Recently having sold his house in Kathmandu, he has brought all his family to settle in Europe for good.

When I asked whether he would go back if the situation improved, he says, "My wife doesn’t really like it here. The cold weather is not good for her health and she wants to remain surrounded by her siblings as before. If the Maoists do stop their extorting, I will certainly think about buying a house in Kathmandu again". However, he pessimistically adds, "but will it really?"

Several others have followed Jagat’s footsteps. It is useless saying here what role remittance is playing in the Nepalese economy. Looking towards our economy, if there is an economy, Industries are now near negligible, the carpet industry has received a severe blow, pashmina has failed, garment factories are closing down and tourism in on the brink of collapse. Dependence of national budget on foreign aid is increasing and has now reached 65 percent. For how long? Can we afford to let this ‘remittance and other forms of economy’ supported by the Nepalese living abroad die?

Will this cease-fire also help in solving the economic problems of the country? I can already guess the answer from the authority. During war, economy is always bad. Yes, I agree but I also saw that Sri Lanka, just to remind ourselves, a SAARC country, during its 20 years of civil war, managed to improve its tourism and make its economy only better. Is there any lesson to learn here? A little effort is needed. Look at the NEPSE, it recorded an upsurge of more than 3 percent for two consecutive weeks just because of the peace declaration.

If anyone involved in the peace process is listening, he or she must realise that as the economy goes bad, the problems only get worse. Today, people in villages have learnt how powerful a gun can be and they are very happy to have it handy.

Along with the political, military and human rights aspects, the economic arena must also be prioritised and some much-needed attention must be paid to the sick tourism industry to nurse it back to health. Minister Pun, former assistant Minister of Tourism, and Dr. Bhattarai, the much respected freedom fighter, both coordinators of the government and the Maoists dialogue committee know this very well.

Theology of Mahayana Buddhism

< By Damaru Lal Bhandari <

Here’s a book which dwells on Avalokitesvara in general and Mahayana Buddhism in particular. As the readers shall find out for themselves he of course is suggestive of mercy and compassion. That’s not all. Avalokitesvara, which is the most popular Bodhisattva figure in Mahayana Buddhism, is the culmination of mercy in its concretised form. In fact, as is believed in Buddhism, Avalokitesvara is the most well-known form of mercy. However, the book under review may be said to be just a primer on the issue.

It begins with an introduction of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, which, among others, is a tale of human beings looking for happiness but not achieving it as a permanent vehicle in life. This is because the world is largely imperfect and also impermanent. Or said philosophically, no one who has inner peace can find happiness around him in the physical world.

In fact, Bodhisattvas, as is Avalokitesvara in the current context, are some great souls who take birth from time to time to liberate people from the sea of sufferings and miseries. They are the one’s who put on hold their passage unto Nirvana just because there are just too many who have to be freed from karmic influences. And there are just too many Avalokitesvaras in the Buddhist pantheon.

Next is origin and development of Bodhisattva doctrine which among others is known for keeping the Mahayana Buddhism in its pure form. In fact, it is the only form of religion which is distinct from all others. The section also deals with a number of phases in its evolution and makes an engrossing reading.

In what may be a new revelation for most, Jataka tales for example dwell around previous lives of Gautam Buddha. It may be said that characters in the story are deer, hares, elephants and monkeys. There are also stories which depict Gautam Buddha in his previous human lives. The underlying mantra in acts of the Buddha’s life has been guided along by: May their sins ripen for me/ And all my virtues for them.

Section four of the book dwells on form and profiles of Avalokitesvara. Incidentally, Avalokitesvara is the earliest and prominent form of Boddhisattavas. The importance of the book in question also lies in the fact that it has exotic pictures of different forms of Buddhas.

Meanwhile, the author has also traced the popularity of Avalokitesvara and his Sadaksari Mahamantra in chapter five in which she claims that it goes back to the times of Lichhavis. She also cites inscription which substantiate her claims which, of course, is based on Nepalese history.

The popularity extended well into the Malla period which saw erstwhile god-fearing kings building monuments and temples dedicated to different gods under different pantheon of gods including Buddhism. Of course Om Mani Padme Hum rings throughout the book, which could have been written along better line and tenor of narration.

Moreover there is a separate chapter to explain the meaning of Om Mani Padme Hum which means "Buddha nature is within us" is known to free the souls who are caught up in the birth cycles and hence can be said to be freeing karmic influences. Then there is explanation about life cycles and what Mahayana Buddhism has to say on all the issues involved. Suggested for researchers and students of Mahayana Buddhism, although, of course, the book can at best be said to be a primer.

Getting ready to become a tree

O Kathmandu dark stranger wild sadhu of the mountain
I met you last night in a rowdy night club
now you stroll into my poem
you sit down at this poor altar  of the word
with your mountain dusk
that falls like a feather
with your alarm horns that send  my mind
racing in a rickshaw of imagination
with your boy in the Pumpernickel who lays that sun’s
syrupy pancake on my plate at breakfast
with your streets where Bhupi Sherchan walked
in desire for words
for desire
with the inky dark you gave me so I can write.
(Trans. Dermot Somers)

The above quoted lines on Kathmandu and Nepali poet Bhupi Sherchan are from the pen of distinguished modern-day Irish poet Cathal O Searcaigh. Years ago, before he wrote these words for Bhupi Sherchan walking in desire for words, Cathal watched another man reciting Scottish poet Robert Burns. Cathal was just a three-year-old boy then. The man who fervently recited Burns was no other than his own father who had just come from Scotland with a fat thick hardcover book of Burns poetry. Cathel lived with his mother. In the fifties Irish economy was at its lowest ebb. Cathal’s father had to temporarily move to Scotland to work for a living on a farm. Recitals of Burns’ love poetry in a language he didn’t understand left him mesmerized. It was a sacred book, placed atop a mantelpiece, in case the child Cathal tore it. It was an oracular experience and the mantric effect of these recitals enthralled Cathal. His father recited poetry at suppertime or when he milked the cows. ‘Maybe, "recalls Cathal, "it increased the milk yield of the cows. Irish dairies occasionally play music, folk and classical, Mozart and all, to please the cows while milking them. Robert Burns, Cathal explains, was love poet, even a womanizer. He had about two dozen children from many wives in addition to the illegal offspring. It’s said even on the day of his death, his youngest son was being born.

Later as Cathal grew up, unlike his mentor, he resolved to populate the earth, not with so many children as with limitless magnificence of his numberless poems. Almost stifled in rigid educational system, stringy Roman Catholicism and sustained attempts by the British colonial rule to eradicate his Gaelic language and culture, he aspired to become a champion of his people, the conscience of the Irish race. Despite British attempts in the 19th century to install an education system that systematically stamped out the use of Gaelic and replace it with English, the language somehow survived in small pockets like that of Gortahork, Co Donegal where Cathal was born and brought up.

He’s back tonight to a deserted house.
On the doorstep, under a brilliant moon, a stark
Shadow: the tree he planted years ago is an old tree.

(Trans. Seamus Heaney)

In his poem ‘Lament’ Cathal refers to a childhood incident when as a child he cried on his mother’s breast, the day his old pet ewe, Mollie, died, trapped on a rock face. "Crows and more crows were eating at her /we heard the cries but couldn’t get near". She was ripped to death. The child Cathal cried on and on until his mother hushed with a piggyback and the promise of treats of potato cake.

To day it’s my language that’s in its throes.
The poets’ passion, my mothers’ fathers’
Mother’s language, abandoned and trapped
On a fatal ledge that we won’t attempt.
She’s in agony, I can hear her heave
And gasp and struggle as they arrive,
The beaked and ravenous scavengers
Who are never far…. She’s giving in,
She’s quivering badly, my mother’s gone
and promises now won’t ease the pain

(Trans. Seamus Heaney)

The Irish language in another poem becomes emblem of a pristine "well kept sweet and neat by people’s people, the precious legacy of the household". "But for long time now there is a snake/of pipe that sneaks in from the distant hills./Water spits from the tap, bitter water without spark/that leaves a bad taste in the mouth":

And among my people
the real well is being forgotten
Look for your own well, pet,
for there’s a hard time coming,
There will have to be a going back to sources.

"Of course, as Derrida has taught us," says Irish critic Kieran Francis Kennedy Jr. "The source always differs from itself. O’ Searcaigh refuses to become anti-modern who rejects modernity in favour of the local." Calhal seeks a relationship between Gaelic and English, local and global, rural and metropolitan, traditional and modern, sexual and spiritual, and male and female. There is a magnificent extension of content in his narrative that challenges the traditional polarities. Cathal’s Muse is a male Muse. His persona is Tiresias, a combination of male/female, Shiva/Parvati There is this marvelous interplay of private and public that enthrals the reader. Cathal is first Irish poet to openly employ the same love eroticism that metamorphoses his context into a dynamic ambivalence. It’s like Yeats of Crazy Jane poems has peeled off the Mask to face the dragons of censorship. Influenced by Greek poet Constantin Cavefy, Cathal explores possibilities of Irish traditions by addressing a male Muse. It’s to the plump limb of the male Muse of Irish lyre that Cathal addresses:

I would drink milk that spills
from the bright jugs of your laughter
I would feast in your bones, my love.
I would sate my hunger on the honeycomb
of your thighs, your chest’s sugared flesh,
your throat’s luscious apple
each bite of your calf, each slice of sinew,
each mouthful of cheek, each tasty nibble
of loin, of shoulder, of plump limb.

(Trans. Cathal O Searcaigh and Denise Blake)

Cathel assimilates Irish fairy tales and songs and employs them to talk of a novel plains of fresh emotional upheavals. Notice in the following poem how he transforms the traditional eighteenth century love lyric to depict the challenges of homoerotic aesthetics:

My dark dear, dear dark-haired love,
our kisses open Christ’s wounds up:
don’t open your mouth, don’t tell a soul
our love’s on the wrong side of the gospel.

The local girls are going crazy,
trying to win you away from me,
but you prefer us on our own,
kissing, cuddling till the healing comes.

Lay your dark dear, dear dark head,
lay your dark head on my breast, dear friend;
I won’t say a word to a living soul —
for you I’d thrice deny a gospel.

By YUYUTSU R D SHARMA

Food crisis : Alarming problem

< By Khagendra Pandav Adhikari <

Access to food is a basic human right. However, it is estimated that one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five. Likewise, about 30 million children die without food. It is a most astonishing fact that about 80 million people cannot make both ends meet despite their hard work. The majority of hunger deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition.

About 15-35 million people, or less than 1 percent of the global population, are at risk of famine in any recent year. The decline was quite dramatic as the focus of famine shifted from large, heavily populated countries, such as China and India, to smaller and more sparsely populated nations, such as Ethiopia and still smaller countries, such as Somalia and Rwanda. One estimate concluded that throughout the 1990s deaths due to starvation averaged from 150,000 to 200,000 per year, with a likely value for 1995 of 250,000. Yet, in the United States, in 1999, a year marked by good economic news, 31 million Americans were food-insecure, meaning they were either hungry or unsure of where their next meal would come from. Of these Americans, 12 million were children.

For most of the world’s hungry people, the major determinant of their hunger is poverty or inadequate household income. Families facing extreme poverty are simply unable to get enough food to eat. The major hunger problem is that of undernutrition, in which needed food proteins and caloric energy are chronically or seasonally absent. In all 184 million third world’s children including both girls and boys under 5 years were estimated to be underweight in 1990. Over half of these underweight children live in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.

There is little difference between hunger and starvation. Starvation is an absolute shortage of food within a bounded area, caused by crop failure or destruction. Widespread hunger and starvation can occur even when food is available, if large numbers of people lose their ability to purchase, exchange, or receive food—as was the case in the great famines in Bengal, India (1943), China (1958-60), Ethiopia (1972-73), and the Soviet Union (1932-34).

The gulf between the haves and the have-nots has been widening in Nepal. Hunger and malnutrition affect individual health, particularly that of young children. Infant mortality is closely linked with malnutrition due to lack of nutritious food. Children who go to school with empty stomachs do not have the ability to learn in school because they cannot concentrate or excel on the tasks they need to perform to learn the basics. This, in turn, leads to lost knowledge, brainpower, and productivity for our nation today and in the future.

How has the government responded to growing poverty and hunger in Nepal? It is time to address the core problems of hunger and poverty. Ending hunger is both a deeply desired outcome and an extraordinary challenge. Hunger is a measuring stick to judge the extent to which societies meet the needs of their people.

The Malthusian theory states that food production increases at the arithmetical ratio whereas population increases in the geometrical ratio. In Nepal, population is increasing at the rate of about 2.6 percent per year and food production is increasing at a slower rate, about 1.2 percent annually.

Only a small fraction of people has knowledge about balanced diet and calories needs in Nepal (Human Development Report, 2001). Due to lack of awareness, unskilled in cooking, improperly utilization of food, lack of storing knowledge and harvesting techniques, a large amount of prepared food is being wasted up and various direct and indirect effects have been imposed in the society. It is most necessary to make people aware on the need to urgently conserve and protect it from being wasted.

Besides these, farmers have to gain knowledge on how to grow more and more food. It is argued that even modest increases in seed quality, fertilizer, pesticide and water use, encouraged by appropriate policies, prices and markets, could lead to a rapid increase in yields. Crop yields in developed countries are likely to increase with global warming, while in developing countries the yield may diminish by 10 to 20 percent. The poor will grow poorer in a warmer world, while the rich may become richer, or at least find themselves no worse off.

A world without hunger has food enough for all. It is generally accepted that today there is more than enough food in the world. Hunger, it is also argued, is a problem of distribution: a matter of access to the available global food supply. Today’s production is sufficient to feed 120 percent of the world’s population.

   Conclusion: About one-sixth of the world’s people are hungry today. But to put a lasting end to hunger requires more than donations of bags of grain and tins of milk. There must not only be plenty of food, but also food produced in ways that are environmentally sustainable, and assistance in providing increased income for those who are poor. To end famine requires not only a surplus of food and a willingness to distribute it in times of emergency, but also a widespread recognition of the human right to food, and effective mechanisms to prevent armed conflict. To reduce undernutrition to a minimum, the world must not only be more wealthy, but also more willing and able to provide food entitlements as needed to poor and vulnerable groups.