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In an interview, Isabel Allende said that she wrote ‘In the Midst of Winter’ in 2016 just when she was coming out of a divorce after 28 years of marriage and her agent, three close friends, and dog had all died. It was during these trying times that she came upon a quote by Albert Camus: “In the midst of winter, I finally found there was within me an invincible summer. For the summer that we all have inside to manifest we need to open the heart and take risks.” And that’s what the book is about: Three trau­matized people trapped in a snow­storm in Brooklyn, New York facing a life-and-death situation. By choos­ing to support one another and being kind, they ultimately discov­er the invincible summers that lie within them.The book opens with a minor car collision, between 60-year old schol­ar Richard Bowmaster and Evelyn Ortega, an undocumented Guate­malan refugee. This incident sets into motion a chain of events which forces the two and 62-year-old Lucia Maraz, a visiting professor at NYU, who is also Bowmaster’s coworker and tenant, to deal with a situa­tion that, to begin with, is not their problem, and which seems to be spiraling out of control by the min­ute. While ‘In the Midst of Winter’ mostly focuses on Richard, Lucia, and Evelyn’s seemingly ordinary lives, mystery and intrigue simul­taneously weave their way into the story, making what would otherwise have been a slow narrative into a gripping can’t-stop-till-I-know-what-happens-next read.

Lucia and Evelyn sometimes feel like extensions of Allende’s personal history as the author has said, time and again, that, for much of her life, she’s felt like a foreigner. And it seems here, through them, Allende is taking the liberty to make her readers understand what the immi­grant experience is like. Though there can be no better time to tell immigrants’ stories, you sometimes wish the writing were a little less flowery, allowing you to focus on the character’s lives instead of getting stuck in the imageries it manages to conjure.

Also, ‘In the Midst of Winter’ feels a little awkward because something doesn’t seem right and the ending too is a bit off. But, all in all, Allende deserves to be read because her sto­ries get you thinking about the many things you tend to take for granted in life.

On the first day of his Great Himalayan Trek, photographer Sudin K.C. was lost in the jungles of Chyang Thapu. It was dark and raining in the jungle, he had to suffer leech bites, and somehow make it through the deserted, spooky night. Starting from the Eastern region, K.C. trekked to the Far Western region, in 100 days, clicking pictures of people of different cultures. Of his hundreds of such photos, 12 are currently on display at the Himalayan Java Café, Mandala Street, Thamel. One photo in the exhibi­tion is of an old Kulung Rai man who is a high-altitude shepherd and lives near his livestock. The shepherds wear a traditional jacket called “phenge” made of stinging nettles. In the oral history of the Kulung village, Lord Shiva wore one of these jackets after the creation of the universe.

“I wanted to know how Nepalis live in various cir­cumstances. There are many cultures buried behind these mountains and hills. This trek’s main motive was to cap­ture these cultures in photos. I wonder if these culture will be in existence forever but my photos will surely be there,” says the photographer.

Another photograph is of woman carrying wood from the Birendra Lake in Manaslu glacier. “I thought I’d help her and offered to carry it till her house but the basket was so heavy that I could barely lug it for five minutes. After that she let me know that she got this and carried it home herself,” says K.C.

While he was on the trek, K.C. was unable to bathe for 17 days. Despite smelling ter­ribly everyone he met on the way was helpful. “The people welcomed me as if I was their own. They even allowed me to stay in their home. This shows true nature and hospitality of Nepali people. In such a short time I felt a strong bond of with those people.”

The photo exhibition will run till the end of the first week of February.

 Who’d have thought the residential area of Dhapashi would get its own multi-cuisine restaurant that also serves blended coffee and imported pre­mium liquor? Well, the owners of the Maze Family Garden and Restaurant just did, and opened up a lavish venue right in the center of Dhapashi. Located near Triyog School (on the way to Greenland Chowk from Dhapashi), Maze is probably one of the biggest properties that serves as a restaurant and bar in the area. Indoor and outdoor seating options and ample parking space give Maze the advantage no other prop­erty in the area has. A little off-key location wise, the restaurant looks to capitalize on the purchasing power and the needs of Dhapashi residents. They won’t have to drive down to Maharajgunj or Lazimpat anymore; they can experience fine dining right next door.

Alisha Lamichane did not know much about cameras until a few years ago as she was worried over other things about her future. Now she is busy clicking pictures at various events, earning a decent living off it. Although the idea of women as photographers is still uncommon in Nepal, Lamichane is among a number of women who have of late taken up photography as their career. The credit for this goes to ‘Her Farm Films’ project of The Mountain Fund, a non-profit working for women empowerment.
“I was confused about my life, and felt like I had no purpose. With a camera in my hand, I now feel powerful. In the future, I want to train girls like me in the field of photography and videography,” says Lamichane.

With its programs based in rural Nepal, Her Farm Films encourages women to modernize their traditional farming skills and apply it to new commercial ventures. It also encourages them to learn modern and highly employable skills in the fields of digital and visual arts. It runs training workshops on film production and photography, and trains women to operate FM radio stations. These are saleable skills for women at the local level.

Eight women trained by the project are currently working as photo-and video-graphers. “There is huge demand for photographers for wed-ding and other events,” says Scott MacLennan, founder and executive director of Her Farm Films. “Pho-tographers from Kathmandu are not willing to go to villages, and hardly anyone there has the ability to use camera. Due to this, these women have to work more. Sometimes one photographer has to do three events in a day,” The organization boosts women’s financial empowerment by helping them take up careers beyond the stereotypes of tailoring and running beauty parlors often associated with them. “We aim to change the conversa-tion about woman’s empowerment from low-skill, low-paid work to high-skill, well-paid work,” MacLennan adds. MacLennan’s wife Sunita Sub-edi Sharma, director of the orga-nization’s Nepal Volunteering Pro-grams, recalls how she had to face many difficulties in life—from being an unwanted child in the family to enduring domestic abuse in an arranged marriage. “We established Her Farm Films to show that women can do anything and achieve success,” says Sharma. “I do not want any woman to suffer like I did. If I can pull myself up, why can’t they?”

“Media is a powerful tool to make people hear your story. We thus encourage women to get involved in mainstream media and to motivate others,” she adds. Her Farm Films is also serious about local self-sustenance. It has a guesthouse whose proceeds partially cover organizational costs. Women associated with the project work on the farm, do photography, and help run the guesthouse. They also have volunteers from different countries. 

 This is a cold-cold Nepali winter, with chilly days forecast well into the next few weeks. Sporadic deaths have been reported from the Tarai as those without concrete homes struggle to keep warm. In fact, this is a tragic yearly occurrence. This winter, eight people have lost their lives, en masse, for a different reason. To fight the cold, they had locked themselves into a room with a gas-heater on. The eight Indian nationals, including four minors, who were staying at a resort in Daman, Makawanpur, reportedly asphyxiated to their deaths.

Common sense would dictate that you never go to sleep with a heater on and all the doors and windows shut. In fact, the Indian tourists had no intent of doing so. But when the little children could not sleep because of the biting cold, they were forced to ask the hotel for a gas heater. Although they had booked four rooms, 15 people of the touring party had all huddled into two to keep themselves warm. But why weren’t there enough heating arrangements in a hotel at one of the coldest holiday destinations in Nepal?

This isn’t the first time foreign tourists have died from asphyxiation in Nepali hotel rooms. In December 2013, two Chinese tourists passed away in a hotel room in another popular tourist destination of Nagarkot on the outskirts of Kathmandu. A suspected cause was leakage of gas from a bathroom heater. Meanwhile, the Department of Tourism has set up a probe committee to find out whether there was any negligence on the part of the Daman resort owners where the eight Indians died.

In fact, this should be a wake-up call. A minimum requirement of warm blankets and (working) air-conditioners or some other heating alternatives should be mandatory for all hotels. Apparently, the electric blankets in the resort in Daman had failed to warm, whereupon the tourist party had to ask for a ‘big heater’. There can hardly be a frequent traveler inside Nepal who has not had to put up in cold and dank hotel rooms with filthy bedsheets and blankets. As more and more tourists are coming to Nepal, there is a risk of the hotels and resorts cutting corners to adjust more guests, often by compromising on safety and sanitation. Let this Visit Nepal Year also be the year that our hotels and guesthouses were made safe for all travelers, in all seasons.

First, an old query. Is the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS)?

The IPS report was unveiled last June when the Shangri-La Dialogue was underway in Singapore. Unveiled by the US Department of Defense, it included many military components. The document speaks for itself. The same November, the US unveiled its foreign policy which stipulated that the IPS would be a part of the US foreign policy.  

Now, there are debates on whether the MCC is a part of the IPS. When we initiated the process for the MCC, Baburam Bhattarai was the prime minister and Barsha Man Pun the finance minister. They formally requested the US government to make Nepal part of the MCC. On the basis of the request, the American government began to assess if the MCC could be implemented in Nepal. They accessed things like Nepal’s human rights situation, and freedom of speech and expression. In the end, Nepal qualified for the grant.

At the same time, Nepal is in a sensitive place. In terms of both economic and military power, the US and China are competing with each other. We have seen the disputes of South China Sea and Middle East where two countries are competing, and the IPS orientation also demonstrates that competition. China has invested massively in infrastructures of neighboring countries through the BRI.  Therefore, whether we want it or not, whether the Americans accept it or not, the MCC has tried to address the larger geopolitics of this region. That said, the BRI’s objective is to support infrastructure development, and the objective of the MCC is also to help Nepal’s infrastructure development. Therefore, whether it is a part of the IPS should not make huge difference.

Would you say it was an intellectual dishonesty on the part of the US to retrospectively lump the MCC under the IPS?

By denying it is a part of the IPS, the US is becoming too defensive on the MCC. There was no need for that. They are saying that the IPS is their approach in this region. Similarly, the American state minister during his Nepal visit has clearly said that the MCC is a part of the IPS. They have mentioned the IPS as a foreign policy goal of the US government. So there is lack of consistency. They are becoming defensive just to placate public opinion on the MCC in Nepal. They should have clearly said that it is our foreign policy component and the MCC is focused on infrastructure development. From the start, the BRI narrative has been that it is a support for infrastructure development, which has been established as well. The MCC narrative could have been developed in a similar way. 

How do you evaluate the divisions in the ruling party over the MCC grant? Are these divisions based on ideology or have they more to do with intra-party dynamics?

There are two sides to it. Let’s look at our recent political history. Nepali Congress formed majority government in 1990 under Girija Prasad Koirala. For some months, the government ran smoothly but after that a dissatisfied group within the party, under the leadership of Ganesh Man Singh, started protesting against it. The size of the power pie is small and there are limited opportunities for leaders and cadres. More than that, right now, there is a constitutional cap on the number of ministers. In the past, there was a trend of appointing government critics as ministers. PM Oli’s dispensation does not allow for that. Our politics is filled with opportunism over money, power and prestige. Some people outside are always clamoring for their day in the sun.

Next, there could be ideological reasons. NCP leader Bhim Rawal has come up with some points, for instance he has objected to the provision of parliamentary endorsement of the MCC. Like former speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara, a large group of former Maoists are against it. Among former UML leaders, Rawal has been very vocal. So the current divisions over the MCC are partly a clamor for opportunity, and are partly based on ideology.

Is it the case that PM Oli and Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali, as government representatives, feel a kind of pressure from the Americans to endorse the MCC compact?

Successive governments after 2012 have signed to pass the MCC proposal and they all have accepted its conditions.  So if you think responsibly, you cannot backtrack from it. It is also directly related to a superpower. Therefore, we should have had a long and intense discussion before signing it. Yet this discussion is taking place after it has already been signed.  I am saying that this should be seen as one-time exception and be endorsed by the parliament. In the future, if we renew the MCC, there should be renegotiations on some points.

Do you see Chinese pressure behind the opposition to the MCC in Nepal?

I do not think the Chinese have lobbied with the Nepal Communist Party. There is a lot of space to do politics on the MCC. Some are trying to project themselves as nationalists. There is competition inside the party to be seen as nationalists and create space for themselves in politics. But I do not believe that the Chinese have come in a systematic way on this issue.

Coming back to the parliamentary endorsement of the MCC, do you support it?

The most unjustifiable condition of MCC is the parliamentary endorsement. Our constitution clearly lays out two legislative functions of parliament: endorsing bills to make them laws and endorsing treaties and conventions. Either you have to present the MCC accord as bilateral treaty, like the Mahakali Treaty, but it is not a treaty. Now, it is in the form of a bill. There is vast difference between treaties/conventions and bills. In conventions, state party or the government is responsible, but in case of bills, they are applicable to all citizens of Nepal once endorsed.

A safe way for the government is to present it as a treaty and endorse it with two-third votes. There are technical problems and there are big political implications as well. That is why parliamentary endorsement is not right. If we had not signed up for the MCC accord, I would have objected to its parliamentary endorsement. As we have already signed it, we can perhaps renegotiate. But I am not sure the US would be ready to drop parliamentary endorsement.

Would it be right to say that accepting the MCC is tantamount to accepting the IPS? There is also a kind of conspiracy thinking in some quarters that if we endorse the MCC accord, it will allow the Americans to station its army in Nepal.

I am saying that the IPS is a military strategy but the MCC is not. The IPS is part of the US foreign policy, so is the MCC. However, we have already entered the broader US foreign policy umbrella. As far as US military presence is concerned, we need a separate agreement for that. There is no military or security component in the MCC.

What do you make of the rumor that part of the reason Krishna Bahadur Mahara was removed from the speaker’s post was his resistance to the MCC accord?

I am not convinced Mahara stopped the MCC proposal. As finance minister, Mahara was involved in the MCC process. What I say is that there was bargaining inside the ruling party on the MCC issue. There was bargaining on who gets what with the passage of the MCC. Some are using it as a tool to boost their nationalistic credentials and strengthen their political position. On the other hand, they could also jeopardize the country’s relations with the US. Agni Sapkota has publicly said he is against the MCC. If he becomes the new speaker, it will be interesting to see how he behaves. If he passes the MCC bill, we should understand that his opposition was part of his bargaining tactic.

Let’s move to transitional justice. How do you see the appointment of new office-bearers in the two transitional justice bodies?

In April last year, the tenure of previous office bearers ended. The government then formed a committee led by former chief justice Om Prakash Mishra to recommend new names.  In this period, conflict victims and national and international stakeholders continued to argue that previous laws were insufficient, and they should be amended. They said appointments should be made only after the amendment in order to make the process more trustworthy. They were also saying conflict victims should be consulted and have a say in the overall process. Taking conflict victims into confidence was the right idea. But the committee took 11 months to make its recommendations. By the time it made the recommendations, even the tenure of the committee had expired.  

What would you say has been the major failing of our transitional justice process?

A major problem of our transitional justice process is absence of trust. The government takes human rights defenders and civil society members as spoilers of the process. In the eyes of conflict victims, both the civil society and the government work for their own interests. Therefore, until these three forces come together and an environment of trust is built, this process cannot move ahead in a consensual way, which is mandatory to reach to a logical conclusion. So the government should have worked on confidence building measures with all stakeholders. After that the role of commissions should have been defined and the role of conflict victims in the overall process identified. Similarly, there should have been work to segregate judicial and non-judicial components of transitional justice.

Government and opposition parties agreed to form the two commissions amid a climate of mistrust. They just concluded consultations in all provinces. For the same purpose, they had prepared a questionnaire. When victims entered the hall, they were given those questionnaires, which were to be filled within three hours, as if it was a university exam. There were loaded legal and constitutional terms in there. People from rural areas did not understand those terms.  The language of healing that the state was supposed to speak was missing. It is also a national healing process. We have a huge trust deficit and the current working style cannot bridge that gap. 

But haven’t the major parties vowed to amend the laws in line with the recommendation of the Supreme Court and international practices?

To amend the law, you need to build certain confidence. The problem is that the government is yet to recognize conflict victims as stakeholders in this process. For example, a family breadwinner is still declared as disappeared. All properties are under his name. He had taken out a loan on the basis of those properties. The bank has been publishing notices with the photo of the disappeared person, asking him to pay the money back. His wife wants to pay the loan by selling the property but the cabinet has not taken any decision to transfer the property in her name. So she is helpless.

As per existing laws, if a person goes missing for 12 years, family members can declare him or her dead and you can transfer property to the rightful heir.  But allowing this will be tantamount to allowing the issue of disappearance to be diverted. The government wants to reach that point. The government wants the duration of disappearance to cross 12 years so that the family would register the death certificate and claim the property. It will dilute the issue of disappearance. That is why there is still no law to criminalize enforced disappearance. There is still no law to criminalize torture because torture of conflict era cannot be proven as all evidences have gone. This is not a healing language. These are delaying tactics.

Don’t you think the two transitional justice commissions, now that they have office-bearers, will be able to resolve the remaining tasks of transitional justice?

The transitional justice process has three main components: judicial, political, and administrative. The judicial component can be addressed through commissions. The political and administrative components should be addressed by the government of the day. Truth seeking is a judicial component. For example, there are around 40,000 conflict-era cases in my calculation. Each and every one of them should be classified. You have to establish truth in every case. Some cases could be settled through reconciliation, which is a major part of the peace process. Serious human rights violations should be categorized as such and cases filed through the special court. There would be reparation in remaining cases.

Political component entails reconciliation. You can bring local government and provincial government on board in this process.  Additionally, we have a Supreme Court verdict that you can go for reconciliation only after the consent and informed participation of conflict victims. Next, the government has to take decision to transfer the property of disappeared people to their rightful owners, which helps keep the issue of disappearance alive. The government declared the security personnel killed in insurgency martyrs but not others who died back then. Reparation is another political and administrative part of the peace process. There are several issues which need to be addressed by the political leadership as the commissions on their own cannot resolve them.

So you don’t see much hope of timely justice for conflict victims.

Yes, I can say that. I wish for the success of those who got appointed to the two commissions. But do the people appointed to the commissions have any knowledge about transitional justice? Have they worked with conflict victims? Not even one of them, I am afraid. 

Agni Sapkota has been implicated in a war-time murder. Can he become the next speaker?

His murder case is pending at the Supreme Court. Kavre district court has issued an arrest warrant against him. If it is an ethical issue, he cannot be elected the speaker. The main qualification for speakership is having high moral ground.

What to boost your fitness while also having a load of fun? Why don’t you head out to the Ultimate Venue at Narayan Danda, Budhanilkantha? As the name suggests, the new adventure sports center is sure to offer you the ‘ultimate’ experience. The sprawling 90-ropani complex located 3.2 km north of the famous Budhanilkantha temple, is so close and yet feels a world apart from the pollution-filled and chaotic city it abuts.

Through Ultimate Venue, its two founders, Suresh Lama and Abhushan Karki, wanted to let people explore a new place, engage in challenging activities, and get over at least some of their fears. But where did they get the novel idea? “From nowhere in particular. We just decided that something like it could work here and plunged right into it,” says Lama.

The activities at Ultimate Venue are broken down into six components—camping, training, adventure training, agro farming, boot camp, and restaurant. The adventure sports include combat obstacle course, high ropes obstacle course, rock climbing and abseiling, hiking and trekking to amusing places like Baghdwar, Shivapuri Peak, Nagi Gumba, Sundarijal, Shivapuri Circuit, plus cycling.

The boot camp, likewise, is of three varieties, according to participants’ age, the number of days of engagement, and the fees. The 5-10 day fitness boot camp, usually for those above 14, ranges from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000; the 1-3 day Career Boot Camp for corporate clients ranges from Rs 2,500 to Rs 10,000; while the 1-7 day Teen Boot Camp for school and college students costs Rs 1,500 to Rs16,000. All these activities are supervised by experienced professional mountain-climbing trainer Sonam Tsering Sherpa, with a medical team as backup safety.

The main attraction of the place is an unobstructed 270-degree view of the Kathmandu valley and the beautiful views of sunrise and sunset it offers. People can visit any day and any time. The restaurant serves a mix of Indian, Chinese and authentic Nepali cuisines. Ultimate Venue also offers catering services, picnic spots, training in basic and advance rock climbing, lessons in route marking and rescue, as well as a crash course in farming practices.

“The present generation seldom gets a chance to be close to nature. All day they are playing with gadgets and modern technologies,” says Lama. “So, we thought, why not give them a chance to be close to nature while they also get to exercise a bit?” For instance, children are given rice and maze seedlings to plant in different named plots. They can later come and purchase the harvest. 

As the venue has proven to be a hit among locals and tourists alike, it is also expanding. The Ultimate Venue plans to build rooms for night stays, have live music, and run motivational classes on fitness and nature for all age groups.

One of the goals, say the founders, is to help with the promotion of Visit Nepal Year 2020, “by letting them know that there is such a unique place in Nepal as well.”

The prolonged impasse over the election of a new speaker of the federal lower house, and deputy speaker Shiva Maya Tumbahamphe’s refusal to step down, give one overarching message: the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) is still very much a divided house, nearly 20 months after the formal unity of the country’s two largest communist forces. Popular media has backed Tumbahamphe’s resolute stand against the ‘party patriarchy’ that wants her to go. But she might have resigned by now without the covert backing of both President Bidya Bhandari and PM KP Oli.

Party co-chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has been vehement about the need to remove Tumbahamphe and start a new process for the election of new speaker and deputy speaker. His co-chair, Oli, wants to ensure the speaker’s post does not go to the former Maoist faction. The expelled ex-speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara was from the faction, and Dahal insists Agni Sapkota, another old Maoist stalwart, should replace Mahara. As the speaker and deputy speaker cannot come from the same party, by asking Tumbahamphe to hang on, Oli is putting pressure on Dahal and ex-Maoists to give up speakership in favor of Subhas Nembang, Oli’s own pick as the speaker.

There is also a geopolitical twist to the speakership saga. By preventing another Maoist from becoming the speaker, PM Oli wants to guarantee a smooth passage of the American MCC compact in the parliament. Former speaker Mahara had famously declined the tabling and voting on the MCC bill. The ex-Maoists suspect the MCC is a part of the American ‘military’ Indo-Pacific Strategy brought with the sole intent of countering China’s rise in Nepal. But as much as he is beholden to China, PM Oli, as government head, also wants to safeguard old relations with the US.  

This disturbed dynamics of a single party have left Nepal without a speaker for three months. The House has been repeatedly obstructed. In the past 30 years of democratic exercise, the country has had to pay dearly for past feuds among ruling parties, contributing to the collapse of successive governments and creating perpetual instability. The political parties seem to have learnt little. The ruling party should be mindful. The short-sightedness of its leaders could open up new fissures in the NCP and push the country into another vortex of instability and corrosive big-power rivalry.