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Q. Three words to describe your personality

A. Happy Go Lucky

Q. The most charismatic person in your opinion?

A. There are many who ooze charisma but David Beckham beats them all

Q. Most attractive quality in a person?

A. Their mannerisms and the way they interact with people

Q. A common misconception about you

A. I am Muslim but the people who do not know this usually ask me, Hajur Thakuri Hoibaksinchha? (“Are you Thak­uri?”), to which I reply, Ma Thakuri Hoibaksinna (“I am not a Thakuri”).

Q. Three qualities you seek in your friends?

A. Honesty, ability to adapt and being up for anything

Q. If you could have three of your wishes granted what would they be?

 A. I haven’t really thought much about this but if I do get three wishes it will be about my daughter. I want her to have a bright future, be a good human being and I want her to be strong and able to speak against things that are wrong.

In what has been a record year for tourism, in the period between January to October, 882,531 tourists have come to Nepal, up from 757,448 tourists in the corresponding period a year ago. This represents a more-than-healthy 16.5 percent jump. According to the Department of Immigration, 109,733 tourists came to Nepal in October alone, the highest ever for the month.

The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation had expected one million tourists to visit Nepal last year; 940,218 had come.

 Most tourists this year are from China and India

Most tourists this year are from China and India. A total of 161,963 Indians toured Nepal in the first 10 months of 2018, many of them on their way to Kailash Manasaro­var. As hotel services in India have become expensive after the Indian government slapped them with luxury taxes, Nepal has become a good option for middle class Indians wanting to hold seminars, wed­dings and meetings.

Similarly, 121,418 Chinese tour­ists entered Nepal in this period. Nepal is taking additional initia­tives to attract even more Chi­nese tourists, according to Nepal Tourism Board’s Chief Executive Officer Deepak Raj Joshi.

In the same period, 73,677 came from the US while 50,161 came from Europe. Tourist arriv­als from other South Asian countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have also been increasing.

And poor old Ram Baran Yadav was being pilloried for acting hoity-toity on the job! But compared to the excesses of his suc­cessor as the country’s president, Bidya Devi Bhandari, the medical doctor is turning out to be rather saintly. It would be stretching it to say that Yadav was attuned to public sentiment. If so, Bhandari is tone-deaf.

From getting sitting Supreme Court judges to kneel down to receive Dashain tika from her blessed hands, to making motorists wait for hours as the police clear the way for her illustrious motorcade, to lavishly spending people’s hard-earned money on luxury cars, the communist president is perhaps the epitome of the kind of crony capitalism that her mother party likes to rail against.

Arguing that the aging fleet of cars belong­ing to the previous president is unreliable, Shital Niwas now wants to replace the whole fleet, a noble task for which the government has just approved Rs 140 million, on top of the Rs 40 million that had already been disbursed for the same pur­pose. It is unclear why a ceremonial president needs cars with top security features. Or why she needs dif­ferent vehicles for ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ use. But the new queen of republican Nepal has asked for it. And my word, she shall have it.

So what if people rain all kinds of curses on her for delaying their travel home, as the roads her maj­esty will travel on are cleared of all vehicles, nay, even pedestrians, an hour in advance? So what if the only well-oiled academy of national police has to be dismantled to expand her bungalow? So what if she is being heavily criticized even within her own par­ty for supposedly besmirching the name of her hus­band, Madan Bhandari, the preeminent Nepali com­munist hero? Her highness does not care. She does not have to care.

The request for new cars has been routed through the Nepal Army, supposedly as the president is their ceremonial head. By doing so she perhaps hopes most of the blame will be deflected off the glistening pillars of the ‘Cool Residence’. And it just might, you know. She will not be the first head of state in Nepal who thinks the country is hers for the taking. On current evidence, she will not be the last.

We simply loved ‘A Man Called Ove’ by Fredrik Backman and we were quite thrilled to run into his other works. But ‘Britt-Marie Was Here’, his latest book, fell short of our expectations, although that doesn’t mean we are not going to read Backman’s work ever again. It’s just that the bar was set high because of his debut novel and Britt-Marie, though charming in her own weird ways, fails to impress you as much as Ove. We meet Britt-Marie, a 63-year-old woman, who can and does, at times, come across as “a bloody nag-bag” especially when she insists people take off their dirty jerseys so she can wash them when they don’t have a change of clothes or not walk into a store with muddy shoes because she has just mopped the floor. But you soon find out that’s just her way of trying to manage her slowly spiraling out of control life. She’s stoically controlling the little things she can manage, like the way cut­lery is arranged in the drawers to using coasters, just to put back some semblance of order in her life.

For four decades, her husband has ruled their lives as she spent her time folding his clothes and raising his kids though they never accepted her as their mother. Then she receives news that her husband has had a heart attack, from his mistress, and she leaves him and her orderly home behind and lands up in a (fictional) town called Borg. At Borg, she meets a horde of char­acters, from ‘Somebody’, who runs the only pizzeria there and Sven, the only policeman in town who is smit­ten by Britt-Marie from Day One, to Vega, Omar and their elder brother Sami, who has a criminal past, and Ben (nicknamed Pirate) who makes Britt-Marie style his hair despite hers being straight-cut and basic.

Though nothing stands out in the book, the charm of reading lies in getting to know Britt-Marie and the people of Borg. Britt-Marie forces us to look at ourselves as she deals with the cracks in her life (that could have easily been in ours too). You see the chinks in her armor and learn how to fix yours. The thing with Swed­ish blogger, columnist and author Backman’s work is that he knows his characters and crafts them really well. Also, his characters are always quirky and thus quite unforgetta­ble. First there was Ove in A Man Called Ove, then Elsa’s Gran in ‘My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologies’ and, now, we have Britt-Marie. And though Britt-Marie might not be the most memorable of them all, you are also not likely to forget her anytime soon.

BRITT-MARIE WAS HERE

Author: Fredrik Backman

Genre: Fiction

Published: 2017 (Reprint edition) Publisher: Washington Square Press

Language: English

Pages: 336, paperback

The newest addition to the Airbus family of com­mercial aircraft, the A220, has made its first visit to Nepal as part of a world demonstration tour.

Offering unsurpassed performance and superior passenger comfort in the small single-aisle market, the A220-300 in an airBaltic livery went on display at Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu, on November 11 and 12.

The aircraft, which can accommodate 145 pas­sengers, is on a demo tour of four countries includ­ing China, Nepal, Turkey and Thailand. It offers exceptional performance, comfort and profitability and is well-suited for high altitude airports such as Kathmandu.

As the only aircraft purpose-built for the 100-150 seat market, the A220 delivers unbeatable fuel efficiency and true wide-body comfort in a single aisle aircraft. The aircraft brings together state-of-the-art aerodynamics, advanced materials and Pratt & Whitney’s latest-generation PW1500G geared turbofan engines to offer at least a 20 percent lower fuel burn per seat compared to previous generation aircraft. With a range of up to 3,200 nautical miles (5,020 km), the A220 gives the performance of larger single aisle aircraft.

With an order book of over 400 aircraft to date, the A220 has all the credentials to win the lion’s share of the 100- to 150-seat aircraft market.

The government on Nov 11 appointed Raman Nepal as the executive director of Citizen Investment Trust (CIT).

The Ministry of Finance (MoF) had published a notice calling for appli­cations for the top post of CIT on September 24. Altogether five can­didates had filed applications for the post of the executive director.

The post of the exec­utive director had been lying vacant after for­mer executive director Ramkrishna Pokharel tendered his resigna­tion in August. After Pokharel’s resignation, the MoF had appointed Chandra Kala Poudel, joint secretary at MoF, as executive director of CIT on a temporary basis.

At present, CIT operates retire­ment fund, CIT unit scheme, pen­sion/gratuity fund, investors A/C scheme, civil employee’s insurance fund, teachers insurance, army employee’s insurance fund, police employee’s insurance fund, APF employee’s insurance fund, reserve fund and other institutional employ­ee’s insurance fund. CIT currently has 609,374 members with funds worth Rs 109.84 billion.

Dukkuchhap is a village in Lalitpur district of central Nepal located 15 km south of Kathmandu. You go via Bhaisepati, Chyasikot and Bungamati and it takes one hour on bus. Descend at Duk­kuchap bus stop and hike the trekking route up the Danuwar village, right up to the Devichour on top. This top allows hikers to enjoy the majestic view of Sisneri below. The final destination is an ancient Hindu temple called “TikaBhairab.” In other words, this is a hike for your body and soul.

ArTree Nepal is hosting its second edition of Open Studio titled “Oppo­site Dreams-The Politics of Local” inside its premises at Tripureshwor. The exhibit, which runs through till Nov 17 from 11:00 am-5:00 pm every day, features works of Mekh Limbu, Hit Man Gurung, Lavkant Chaud­hary, Sheelasha Rajbhandari, Bikash Shrestha and Subhas Tamang.

The exhibition highlights the dis­regarded historical narrative of the marginalized, underprivileged and indigenous communities and draws attention to the importance of equal representation of diverse ethnic­ities, identities, cultures and lan­guages. The pieces on display make use of different mediums like stone and wood carving, terracotta pots, videos and lights to accentuate the theme of the exhibition.

Curator of this open studio and creator of the piece “Mahendra Mala” Subhas Tamang, says that he used stone carving to portray Mahen­dra Mala from the perspective of a Tamang who was forced to accept the mainstream and discriminatory account of his culture through the educational system established by the Panchayat-era government.

Mekh Limbu, creator of the piece “How I Forgot my Mother Tongue Language”, says that adoption of a single language—Nepali—in the cur­riculum resulted in the loss of many stories, memories and rituals that are associated with native languages of the indigenous communities.