monsoon bursting

By Dilip Kumar Dhakal

There were sheep grazing in an endless azure field. So many sheep. I tried to count them but their constant movement towards the orient made it almost impossible. And now there were horses, some as big as mountains and some as small as rats. The horses seemed to be stampeding as they ran towards the east. But to my surprise there was nothing chasing them. Why were they running, it might’ve been the wind chasing them.

Now there came a big chariot pulled by stallions as white as snow. Just like the ones ridden by the Sun God with seven horses. A big battalion of soldiers was following it. Those riding on the elephants and on horseback could’ve been commanders and army chiefs. As it drove nearer it became big and bigger and enormous. And gradually it shrunk becoming smaller as it moved and suddenly broke into pieces as if hit by a mortar bomb. And the pieces dispersed in all directions and disappeared just as the waves vanish as you throw a stone into the calm water of a pond.

For a moment the field was empty but I saw a huge thing coming towards me. As it came nearer I saw a ferocious, enormous Giant with dreadlocked hair and eyes like roaring fire. He moved like an amoeba. His legs and hands moved like pseudopodia. Now he turned into an elephant. Now a buffalo. Then into a whale, a blue whale. But how did the countless tentacles appear.

Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the field and gazed straight into my eyes. I was so afraid that I soiled my underwear. But he remained stationary and just kept on staring at me. And then came other small giants, may be his children and kinsmen. They all came around and embraced him.

Then came the herd of sheep, the horses and now all those in the stampede returned and assembled in the field as if someone was going to address them. But I noticed their sullen faces as if some misfortune had befallen them. Now their faces turned darker and it seemed that the whole field was in darkness. Then, all of a sudden, a flash of lightening struck with deafening noise and lit up the whole field. Now I felt drops of rain pouring on my face.

Then I turned my body to lie on my side but the rain was hitting me hard. My dog beside me jumped onto the railing of the roof and barked loudly looking at the sky. I heard some children singing on rooftops, maybe welcoming the first rains. For me, a rheumatic patient, it was no good sitting in the rain. So, I folded the mattress and went downstairs.

looking for lost childhood

By Seema A. Adhikari

Children in villages especially in far-flung areas, are not as privileged as rich urban kids. Jhupali silently washes the dishes outside her shack as the early morning sun extends a hesitant brightness to the grim, muddy, smelly, smoky surroundings. It is seven o’clock.

Most children of Jhupali’s age are already in school or late for it. But Jhupali is still in her donated sleeping dress, which must have been originally yellow or white but now looks rumpled, unwashed, brownish, with clumps of mud, grime and slime clinging to it. Her unkempt hair is in need of a wash. She still has to clean up the house and give her younger siblings baths. She goes through the other chores she has to do for the day in her mind, and wishes she could go to school and be like other children.

A girl born to a large poor farming family will realize at an early age that there is no room for idleness or childishness in her life. From early on she is a machine solely there to assist her parents.

The child must learn early how to fend for herself, as she will realize that parents are too busy eking out a living to ever be truly there for her.

If the child is a girl, like Jhupali, and is old enough to walk and take care not only of herself but also of other children, of say around five or six or seven years old, her parents will expect her to take care of them. The burden of daily surrogate parenting will fall on her. So, she will feed the children, bathe them, dress them up, watch them play, fix up the house, etc.

Somewhere down the line, when she gets older, she graduates to being the helper in the gardens or family business. If she gets lucky, her parents may send her to school, depending on their financial capacities. But for Jhupali this possibility is a dream.

Jhupali is twelve years old. But she looks eight, she looks small and thin for her age.

Asked if she goes to school, she shakes her head. Again asked why, she smiles uneasily and says, shyly, in her voice, "My mother tells me girls should not go to school".

Jhupali is not alone. Most girl children from poor families do not go to school because, parents prefer they just stay at home and take care of children or help out in the farm. Boys almost always are given the choice of staying in school longer.

By the time of adolescence, she is seen not only as a helper, but an object to be married off.

When the child turns into a young adult and is conveniently married off, and has children of her own, there is a great possibility that she will be unable to handle her children, for she herself cannot remember her childhood. She did not have one.

solo guitar sounds of spring

By Sarad Pradhan

Three years ago, on a rainy day, I slipped into the House of Music which was housed at Durbar Marg then to discuss something about music that I could hardly understand. I met, among others, Kishor Gurung, a Classical Guitarist by profession who was trained in the US and Ethnomusicologist by virtue of his studies in the famous East-West Center, in the United States. And, finally we all agreed that it was time for Kishor to make his debut as a solo classical guitarist in Nepal, in the very least to make the Nepalese audience aware of the fineness of the classical guitar.

Amazingly, many young and old alike turned up for the show that took place in the Russian Cultural Centre to experiment with the sound of classical guitar which was supported by computer programming. The legendary show that took place has become a part of history. Though most of the people who enjoyed that evening might have forgotten what they heard, Kishor Gurung has continued his clandestine journey. Solo Guitar Work recently brought out by him is a testimony to his journey that many of us have never seen or heard.

Who else could there be better than Peter Karthak to tell us about Kishor and his reposeful music. Peter dai says, "I basked and swam and swung in your guitar notes and chords the entire day. .......Your most notes and chords with feeling pervaded my study room while I worked on my computer. You make your guitar sound like a piano. Your playing is such a blessed bliss in one’s life. It’s worthwhile to live if one comes across such music as you have assembled in your CD." The observation made by Peter dai, a noted novelist, story writer and erstwhile journalist, who has been playing the guitar for almost four decades, has deep meaning and thrust hidden inside that could be hardly expressed in words.

In fact, Kishor’s fingers run like a magic stick over the strings of his guitar making blissful sounds giving a heavenly experience. A few pieces included in this CD were originally composed on the piano but later rendered into the guitar. The sounds that his guitar produced makes one feel that he is not listening to a guitar but to a heavenly instrument that we have seen in pictures portrayed in celestial stories. Whether it’s Mozart’s Variations on a theme or Cantina, the theme music from the film Deer Hunter, the sound gives credence to the ethos that people hunt people’s minds time and again. That’s why his kind of playing seems to be rare in Asia. Permit me again to quote Peter dai here too: "To me, you’re the only guitarist in your genre from the east of Suez to the fringe of Okinawa in Japan, considering the likelihood that there might be some guitarists equaling you in Japan, perhaps South Korea and Taiwan too. This fact makes you an unparalleled Asian of Nepal in the vast South Asia, South-East Asia and the Pacific Rim. You’re virtually alone in these vast regions of the earth with more than half the population and land density of the world. This is amazing! You have no contest in India, China and the whole of the ASEAN countries."

With the rising trend in playing funky music, classical guitarists like Kishor Gurung have become a rare species in the world albeit he was among the trend setters of Pop music in Nepal in the early eighties. Transformation of the world’s greatest guitarists’ and pianists’ performances into guitar in a country like Nepal, where almost all its native instruments are played without chords, itself is a big achievement. The challenge that Kishor might have faced while recording these soothing pieces is to bring out the originality of the performers and to display his own newness on the guitar that he showed in this CD. To many the guitar is a symbol of modernity but for Kishor, it represents an age-old music that has gone along with the creation of string. La Catedral by Augustine M Barrios and Piezas Carateristicas by Frederick M Torroba have been vividly rendered by Kishor with his playful fingers, that only an accomplished guitarist like Kishor could create such perfect sound.

Finally, let me quote Peter dai to give poetic justice to Kishor’s work: "...You play so intellectually and sensitively, and make the listener roam from the pampas to the Iberian peninsula to the European neo-Renaissance awakening. I heard the chaos-in-the-making disquiet of Vietnam in the solemnity of the sylvan America where the Deer Hunter finds his solace, perhaps at last, perhaps too late, too. Will La Catedral be playable in the morning quiet of the Bhaktapur Durbar Square and its bell spire? What transport you have made from the corners of the world to your studio in Kathmandu beneath the Himalaya!".

Kudos to Kishorji for his wonderful creation and putting Nepal onto the map of world music. The classical guitar that people hardly listen to in Nepal will be enjoyed by all guitar lovers.

beads of a Spost

We reached Alliance Française for the exhibition "Les acidulés" half an hour early (around 6p.m). Necklaces and earrings of bright red, blue, green and light colours like white beads done on strings and silver were on display in a hall. The jewellery designers were mingling with the onlookers. We were introduced to them and were immediately rushed into the lawn as more guests started arriving.

Anjela Soulier, a theatre costume designer by trade and now a jewellery designer and Florence Dupoizat, a teacher working with VEDFON project met at a supermarket last August and instantly hit it off and started working on a jewellery creation project with 5 local women.

In Soulier’s words, "The idea of this jewellery is typically Nepalese and all the products were picked from areas like Indra Chowk, Durbar Square. We have both cheap and expensive jewellery. They are simple and not over-complicated. We’ve been working with ladies who didn’t know much about jewellery. The idea is to develop the project so that they can carry on after we leave. The concept is to sell more so that they can get paid".

Dupoizat says, "We’re going to stay here for three years and we want to make these women independent. They were learning to sew and stitch in VEDFON, a Spanish project and now they are learning to make necklaces and also learning English". She recalls that they were selling the jewellery to the expat community, beauty parlours like Dads and Tsubaki but now they have branched into this new area with the help of Meera Bhattarai, executive director of the Association for Craft Producers that also has a retail shop, "Dhukuti".

Soulier says that somebody actually mentioned that their creation looked like Ali Baba’s cave, full of colours. She explains "Les acidulés" means lemon drops and the colours of the beads are like that. "The women will be working with beads at a corner of the hall. They all came even though it’s mother’s day", she jokes.

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