My earliest memory of getting a really bad fright was from the loudest possible blast emanating from the Philips tube radio that I had naughtily switched on; I did not realize that the volume was on full throttle. I remember running out of my mother's room on to the verandah, out of sight and out of hearing distance of that heinous sound. It was on that radio I remember listening to Radio Nepal songs. The songs in those days were nationalistic as defined by King Mahendra's ouster of an elected government and banning of political parties. The songs all had one theme: king, country and Nepali-pan in roughly that order. I did not understand the politics behind it but I liked the tune and lyrics of Dharma Raj Thapa, Nati Kaji and Manik Ratna. Radio Ceylon's "Binaca Geet Mala" hosted by the legendary Amin Sahni brought us a constant stream of the hit Hindi film music. There was the HMV phonograph handed down from an earlier period in which I listened to the nu...

Language defines culture and language in turn is defined by the proverbs it has. Those of us who speak English know how English proverbs give us an insight into how the English think. Do foreigners know how we Nepalese think? It is an interesting exercise to find choice Nepalese proverbs dealing with Nepalese culture, society and even mundane stuff of life we take for granted and reflect upon its usage. In English one might say, "A bad carpenter blames his tool." What does the Nepalese counterpart sound like? We say "Nachna jandaina aangan tedo", in other words "one who does not know how to dance blames the dance floor for being unleveled". In English revenge that lowly human emotion is personified by a dog, as in, "Every dog has his day!" Perhaps there were lots of stray dogs wandering the streets of London in medieval England and one of them would get its revenge by biting the taunting street urchins. In Nepal we address the eternal compet...

T here was this slim beauty standing her ground meeting a variety of guests at a foreign legation as if planted there by some grand design. At closer look, required due to Nepal's transformation to a republic thereby erasing from our collective memories familiar royal visages, I realized that my wife had just shaken hands with Princess Himani, the last crown princess of Nepal following an introduction by the French Ambassador. I could only wonder why such a scene did not take place more often when royalties were gracing the erstwhile Kingdom of Nepal. Ordinary Nepalese did not get the opportunity to be up close and personal with their sovereign king and his family zealously guarded and isolated by privileged courtiers. Too, the family members all but shied away during most occasions preferring isolation to high visibility, a bad and ultimately costly decision in image building. More than for reasons of security perhaps it was acts of lèse-majesté the inner circle feared most bu...

Decapitating a he-goat with one stroke of the Khukri is not for the faint-hearted. My rite of passage into manhood many a time during Dashera at my father's maula puja came with my offering visceral support to animal sacrifices but by keeping at arms length from both the animal and the weaponry. Striking from a distance I was an expert at: beginning with an air-gun, then graduating to .22 caliber rifle I terrorized the avian population at my father's large estate at Kiran Bhawan, Dashera or no Dashera. But close combat was not my forte. Failing to decapitate the hapless goat with one stroke of the khukri meant bad karma to the house (and nobody thought of the goat here) and this burden I was unwilling to shoulder. As Nepal is the last bastion of the oldest form of Hinduism yet unencumbered by the restraining influences of monotheistic Christianity and Islam as in India, we Nepalese sacrifice an assortment of animals to a plethora of Gods and Goddesses. We need to appease a...

P rime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana was the toast of London town. A prince from the Orient captured the popular imagination of Victorian England. A newspaper account of the period describes him as athletic, dark and handsome; bedecked in fine pearls and sparkling jewels like most Oriental despots. Jung had good reasons to be no less: he had taken state power in Nepal during the Kot Massacre of 1846, survived the Bhandarkhal plot aimed at destroying him a year later and was now, in 1850, the first prince from the South Asian Sub-continent to be invited at the court of Queen Victoria. Possibly the first portrait of a Nepalese Prime Minister by a European artist, this portrait of Jung Bahadur Rana was painted by the English artist based at Calcutta (Kolkata) Colesworthy Grant (1813-1880) when Jung Bahadur embarked on his mission to England.  Portraiture method: water colour over pencil, heightened by body colour and gum Arabic, signed lower left C. Grant. Calcutta. 1850 Both aristoc...