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I only heard about the movie “Ghampani” recently through a Twitter post. Someone had posted a scene from the movie, admiring its attention to detail and how cleverly the filmmakers had disguised a hidden message in the scene. Impressed, I decided to watch the movie, available officially on ‘HighlightsNepal’ YouTube channel, for this week’s review.

Turns out, the lighthearted social drama, the debut work of film critic turned writer/director Dipendra Lama, was a box office success when it released in theaters back in 2017. Right through his filmmaking career, Lama has given an impression of being someone rooted to society and its realities even in his works of fiction. Ghampani is one such representation that sums up Lama’s style of writing and directing stories, characters and settings that are the mirrors of our society. 

In Ghampani, the peaceful existence of a rural village is disrupted when two people of different castes fall in love. Furba Tamang (Dayahang Rai) and Tara Sharma (Keki Adhikari) are childhood friends who grew up together and found comfort in each other’s company. While Furba is a local school teacher, Tara goes to Kathmandu for higher education and in one of her visits home, the affection between Furba and Tara grows deeper as they confess their love to each other. 

Their families, especially Tara’s, are totally against this relationship. Tara’s father Pitambar (Prakash Ghimire) and Furba’s father Maila (Puskar Gurung) are the best of friends and neighbors. This duo of inseparable friends who fight for each other now fight against each other as they do not want their children to get married. Then enters Kamal Adhikari (Ankeet Khadka), a police assistant sub-inspector, into the scene. Pitambar arranges for his daughter to get married to Kamal, which creates further conflict.

Through the love story of Tara and Furba, Ghampani highlights the inherent casteism of Nepali society. People may seem to live in peace and harmony on the outside, but it only needs one little spark to trigger a communal conflagration and raise inherent caste-based differences. Tara and Furba are victims of this caste-based system as their own families and friends become their foes just because they decided to be with each other. 

Writer/director Lama sets the scene of a typical Nepali village. He keeps the film grounded in reality and organic in the sense that even the fictionalized account of Furba and Tara could well be a real story of an inter-caste couple in Nepal. There is little exaggeration in storytelling and the same artistry is applied in acting as well. 

The caste of Ghampani fit their nearly custom-made roles. Even the supporting characters have well-defined objectives and they proficiently fulfill them with the simplicity required in the setting. Unlike most Nepali movies that depend on putting their central characters in the spotlight, almost every supporting character stands out in Ghampani, which shows the amount of effort the writer has put in. 

Coming to the leads, established actors Dayahang Rai and Keki Adhikari are their natural self. Their performance in their respective lead roles is not otherworldly but there is nothing much to criticize either. Both fit into their roles comfortably and deliver what is expected. The actual show-stealer though is the relatively new actor Ankeet Khadka.

Khadka plays Kamal, a lecherous and corrupt policeman who has his eyes on Tara as well as other women in the village. The conniving Kamal, who tricks Tara’s father Pitambar into agreeing to his marriage proposal, is the villain in the love story. Actor Khadka manages to invoke every bit of hatred required by his character. At the same time, he does not let his character get too dark and keeps to the film’s lighthearted nature. Khadka puts in an excellent performance despite getting much less screen time.

Who should watch it?

The film was a hit so there's a high chance most of our audience might have already watched it. But considering how the film is not talked about much, we can assume there are still plenty of those who are yet to see it. If you like Nepali films that have an organic story instead of wirework stunts and brain shaking dialogues, Ghmapani will most definitely entertain you. Don’t miss it.  

Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Drama
Actors: Dayahang Rai, Keki Adhikari, Ankeet Khadka
Director: Dipendra Lama
Run time: 1hr 53mins

Back in 2017, when entrepreneur Subhakar Manandhar’s daughter asked him to get cheese popcorn for her, an idea struck him. At the time, popcorn (not the traditional Nepali kind) was only available at cinema halls. Already a trader who imported industrial-grade raw materials for the food industry, Manandhar then thought about launching his own brand of popcorn.

That’s how Wow Snacks Pvt Ltd, which manufactures the popular Wow Popcorn, began. In January 2018, the company started with two kiosks selling fresh popcorn at Ranjana Trade Center in New Road and Wimpy restaurant in Durbarmarg.

In just three years of its launch, the consumer packets of Wow Popcorn are now available in almost all districts of Nepal. For fresh popcorn, there are currently 70 plus kiosks operating in major cities including Kathmandu, Pokhara, and Dharan, while 30 more are in the pipeline.

The Wow product range has diversified from the various flavors of gourmet kiosks as well as consumer pack popcorn to cheese rings, potato chips, cookies, and other packageable fried snacks. “We manufacture everything at our plant in the Balaju Industrial Area in Kathmandu,” informs Manandhar, the managing director of the company. “For potato chips and cookies, we outsource to other manufacturers.”

The journey from running a printing press as a family business to importing industrial equipment and raw materials and then switching to FMCG has been a roller-coaster ride for Manandhar. “We are a homegrown Nepali company that produces snacks in Nepal, but our identity is still questioned,” Manandhar says. “This is because we import our raw materials from abroad.”

For the tons of popcorn Wow sells every year, the popcorn kernels are imported from Argentina, Brazil, and the US. “But it’s not only us, almost everything used in industrial food production comes from India and other countries,” Manadhar says. “The wheat for biscuits, oil, and even the packaging materials are imported.”

While Nepal is dependent on India and other countries for raw materials, manufacturers like Wow Snacks are also displacing FMCG imports with Nepali products. The shelves of huge departmental stores and smaller convenience stores are still filled with imported snacks and edibles. But Wow Snacks, only three years into operations, has been able to displace at least some of them, Manandhar says.

“We are struggling to create a homegrown product that does away with imports,” Manandhar says. “But our government has been the least helpful.” For a company like Wow Snacks that sells products starting at the Rs 20-30 range, competing against similarly priced Indian imports is tough. The Indian counterparts have bigger volumes and bigger marketing budgets, which creates the illusion of superiority in consumers’ minds. “The government should protect us by giving us more benefits and leeway compared to importers,” Manandhar says. “But our repeated requests have not been heeded.”

Instead, the government’s unsuccessful handling of the pandemic has made the businesses suffer, Manandhar says. The lockdowns have been haphazard and there has been no support for companies that were forced to shut down because of the lockdowns.

The lockdowns that began in March 2020 have affected Wow’s sales and distribution. Now, as the festival season approaches, sales are going up again. “But there is still fear and apprehension. The distributors are scared to stock up and we do not have the confidence of manufacturing on a large scale,” Manandhar says. “If there is another lockdown, we might not survive.”

When I first read the description for Netflix’s latest “Clickbait,” I was not very impressed. Don’t know why. I thought it was just another crime mini-series that used technology as a central theme and focused on technological jargons throughout to confuse the audience. But a couple of days later, I was clickbaited into watching the American-Australian miniseries.

Created by Tony Ayres and Christian White, and directed by Brad Anderson, Emma Freeman, Ben Young, and Laura Besley, the eight-episode series is about how the internet has become a means of inciting violence but it also does not focus entirely on technology as a problem and solution. Instead, Clickbait follows its humans—the characters in the story who give their unique POV in each episode.

Clickbait begins with a minor feud at a family dinner, where following an altercation between the siblings Nick (Adrian Grenier) and Pia Brewer (Zoe Kazan), the latter rushes out of the house and in a frenzied mood, ends up binge drinking and partying all night. Next morning at work, Pia comes across a video on the internet that has Nick—visibly beaten and bruised—carrying placards that read “I ABUSE WOMEN” and “AT 5 MILLION VIEWS I DIE.”

Shocked and rattled, Pia races against the time to find out the whereabouts of her brother. In her search, she is aided by the Oakland Police Department detective Roshan Amir (Phoenix Raei), Nick’s wife Sophie (Betty Gabriel) and news reporter Ben Park (Abraham Lim), among others. The search for Nick then opens a can of worms, one after another, in the lives of the people connected to him. Multiple characters in the series come across as suspects and are duly acquitted as the search for Nick also reveals their dark secrets. At one point, even Nick’s personality comes under scrutiny following some serious allegations that lead his family and friends to question his credibility.

Clickbait uses its characters to narrate the story. Every episode, besides the finale, is named after a character and their relation with Nick. So the audience gets to see multiple sides of the story and try to figure out what is happening. But figure out, most will not. There are some outrageous twists and turns to keep the audience thinking.

Using Nick and his family to tell the story, Clickbait also mirrors the lives of millions of people who have been wronged on the internet one way or the other. Many of us regular users have become victims of the world wide web that extends beyond our countries or continents. At the same time, we knowingly or unknowingly become perpetrators too.

By accident or some people with pure malice, internet users have breached someone’s privacy or directed hate towards them on social media or given solicitation to immoral and illegal activities. Clickbait exposes this vulnerability as well as the voyeuristic nature of people online.

Clickbait has amazing acting by all its characters and the cinematography is on the spot. But the storytelling is so captivating that it doesn’t let you point out individual performances. The whole series is a package of excellent craftsmanship and is thoroughly enjoyable. 

Who should watch it?

Intensity is at the core of all the 42-52 minute-long episodes. Every episode gets the same treatment and by the time one ends, you want to jump to the next. I initially thought I would watch one episode and continue the next day but I ended up pulling off an all-nighter. All crime/thriller/suspense movie lovers will relish Clickbait without doubt. Also, the fact that there is little physical violence might lure people who otherwise don’t have a stomach for blood and gore.  

On Netflix 
Rating: 4 stars
Actors: Adrian Grenier, Zoe Kazan
Directors: Brad Anderson, Emma Freeman, Ben Young, and Laura Besley
Run time: 5hrs 30mins (approx.)

Around 1935 then Prime Minister Juddha Sumsher Rana recalled the Nepali Ambassador to Great Britain Gunjaman Singh to Kathmandu. The goal was to use his experience and exposure there to help establish the first Industry Council of Nepal. Two years later, Biratnagar Jute Mills and Nepal Bank Limited were created. Both the organizations issued shares to the public, making them the first securities to be floated in the Nepali market.

In 1976, the government created the Securities Exchange Center to manage public issuance, create a market for government bonds and function as a stock brokerage firm. But as more public companies were starting to emerge, a dedicated stock exchange had become a necessity. And so, in 1993, the Securities Market Center was converted to the Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) and the exchange officially opened its trading floor on 13 January 1994.

These days, NEPSE functions under the Company Act 2006 and the Securities Act 2007 with the objective of imparting free marketability and liquidity to the government and corporate securities by facilitating transactions on its trading floor through members, market intermediaries such as brokers and market makers. 

After its 1994 opening, the securities market began functioning with the ‘open outcry’ system on February 11 the same year and the Base Index for NEPSE was set at 100 on February 12. By the end of 2050/51 (1994/1995), the index had reached 226.03. The NEPSE index reached its all-time high of 3111.09 on 3 August 2021 . The open outcry was a popular method around the world for communicating orders in trading pits in which traders used verbal and hand signals. Signals and shouts made in a particular manner and sequence conveyed trading information, intention, and acceptance in trading pits.

The 2011 bang

“NEPSE did not reach its current digital and automated state overnight,” says Shankar Man Singh, former CEO of NEPSE (2009-2013). Singh recalls how most trading procedures were manual and time-consuming. At the time Singh took over the reins of NEPSE, there was also an ongoing court case against the examination, selection, and licensing processes of brokers.

“It was during my tenure that we were able to settle the case and issue licenses for 27 more brokers, taking the total number to 50,” Singh explains. “We also established the CDS and Clearing Limited in 2011.” With the arrival of CDS and Clearing—a subsidiary company of NEPSE that served as a centralized depository, clearing, and settlement services—the safekeeping, deposit, and withdrawal of securities certificates and transfer of ownership/rights of instruments got easier.

The securities exchange in Nepal has come a long way. Initially owned by the Industry Council (51 percent) and Nepal Rastra Bank (41 percent) with a paid-up capital of Rs 1 million as Securities Market Center, NEPSE now has a paid-up capital of Rs 500 million. Ownership has also shifted to a combination of government and private entities that include the Government of Nepal (58.66 percent), Nepal Rastra Bank (14.60), Employees Provident Fund (10), Rashtriya Banijya Bank (6.14), Laxmi Bank Ltd (5), Prabhu Bank Ltd (5) and other securities/brokers (0.60).

At present, there are 50 licensed brokers with 43 branches that operate on the trading floor as per the Securities Act 2007, rules and bylaws.

Financial expert and a seasoned stock market trader Mukti Aryal recalls waiting for up to two months to transfer the shares he bought to his name. Selling a scrip also took considerable time as there weren’t enough  buyers. As a management student who also did his thesis on stock market and as the research department head for Citizen Investment Trust, one of the biggest investors in NEPSE, Aryal had been following Nepali securities market since the early 1990s. But it was only in 1996 that he officially entered the market as a trader with around Rs 400,000 of his savings.

“Working with the CIT, I had to analyze what shares to sell, buy and hold and present it to the investment committee,” Aryal explains. “That’s how I got acquainted with the market.” Aryal recalls Nepal Lever (now Unilever) among the industries and banks such as Nepal Bank Limited, Grindlays (now Standard Chartered), Nepal Arab Bank (now Nabil), Nepal Indosuez Bank (now Nepal Investment Bank Limited), Himalayan Bank and SBI bank as the most sought-after scrips of the period. 

“Most people were unaware about the market and, unlike these days, there was little price fluctuation,” Aryal says. “Still, trading was not so easy when we had to completely depend on the brokers with no access to information.”

New age, same mindset

Ambika Prasad Poudel, one of the biggest names associated with the Nepali share market, agrees. “There were limited brokers and investors had no access to information on what was happening in the market. There was no information on market depth either,” Poudel recalls. “We placed buy or sell orders and sometimes were informed weeks later that the transaction never happened. The brokers controlled everything.”

Even at its primitive stage, NEPSE had become a victim of corruption and served the people in power more than it served common investors.

Poudel is also on the board of multiple companies listed under NEPSE. A management student, he started his share market journey in the early 1990s when NEPSE was still called the Securities Exchange Center. Recalling the manual processes of buying/selling and keeping of physical copies of shares, Poudel adds that there were thousands of unaccounted shares lying around at NEPSE and broker offices. “Now we have an excellent tracking system and can monitor every market and broker activity. We never imagined we would see so many improvements.”

Although the methods of trading have changed and even improved, the market’s mentality remains the same, Poudel adds. In his almost three decades in the securities market, Poudel has seen his share of bears and bulls.

“In the market cycle, every time we head towards a bearish trend from a bullish one, we lose around 70-80 percent of investors who had entered the market during the bull run,” Poudel explains. “Similarly, when we move towards bull from bear, we add new investors in almost the same ratio. This is the nature of the market.” This is also a reason why there are only a few long-surviving traders and investors.

When the market is on a bull run, investors get optimistic, assuming the market will forever grow. This mindset has not changed in all these years and is the reason behind the failure of most traders.

People think that as the number of investors as well as market capitalization keeps increasing, there will never be a prolonged market slump. “But whatever goes up must come down. So, although the market might not fall to the previous levels, it will go down,” Poudel adds. “Ultimately, in the capital market, there are more losers than winners.”

Poudel says he has risen and fallen plenty of times in the share market and keeping an open mind and adapting quickly to changes has helped him survive. 

The 2018 bigger bang

One of the biggest failure stories has to be that of trader and investor Nirmal Pradhan. Sometimes mockingly dubbed Nepal’s answer to Warren Buffett and considered a poster child for the share market, Pradhan was lured into the market when he first got allotted the IPO of the Nepal Industrial and Commercial Bank (now NIC Asia) in 1998. Pradhan had filled seven different forms out of which he was allotted 250 units each for two of the accounts. The stock opened in the market with a price range of Rs 380-400, almost quadrupling his investment.

This newfound success had Pradhan, aged 45 then, investing almost Rs 40 million in the secondary market. “I had no idea that it was near the end of the bull market when I invested,” Pradhan recalls. “My investment dwindled to almost zero in the next 45 days.” But Pradhan was resilient and continued to trade, recovered his losses and continued investing.

While Pradhan had initially entered the market without much knowledge, Durga Tiwari was a comparatively late entrant. She entered the market in 2005 as one of the rare female traders, who, by now, has stayed put for over a decade. A homemaker in the past, Tiwari decided to take formal lessons in share market investing after failing her Public Service Commission examinations three times in a row.

Tiwari entered the market with some of her savings, buying 50-100 units of commercial banks. She also applied for almost every IPO and continued trading with whatever little fund she could manage. Tiwari recalls her initial days in the market when the index had touched a high of 1,175 and was falling towards 700. “Despite my experience and training, I failed to foresee the bearish trend and suffered,” she says.  

Tiwari had at one point built a portfolio of almost Rs 10 million. During the bearish run, it fell to Rs 3.3 million, when the index tumbled below 300 in 2012. “But unlike most people I did not leave the market,” Tiwari says. “I stayed put and recovered all my losses.” Tiwari remembers how she used to sit at the broker’s office every day during trading hours before the online trading system started. “Now I sit in front of the computer and trade every single day. This is my full-time job.”

Even with its many technical glitches, most share market investors ApEx talked to accept that the NEPSE Online Trading System (NOTS) launched in November 2018 has vastly changed securities trading in Nepal. NOTS made transactions faster and more transparent, in what was undoubtedly a huge step towards the modernization of the Nepali share market.

From having to visit the exchange center and then the brokers to fill out buy and sell orders and wait for weeks for confirmation, the share market now processes all transactions within hours.

“We started at a time when everything had to be written on paper and blackboards, Ambika Prasad Poudel recalls. “In the 1990s, who would have thought that an investor could buy any number of shares they wanted with a button’s click?”

Watching movies on YouTube, for me, is pretty much watching Nepali movies in toto. They are not on popular OTTs and I know of official channels that legally release Nepali movies on YouTube. This way, I don’t have to be disappointed by misleading titles and pirated uploads as is the case with most Bollywood/Hollywood movies.

But the viewership of Nepali films on YouTube is declining, probably because there have been no new releases in some time and most films made in the past couple of years have been disappointing. Anyhow, I feel sad for the handful of Nepali movies I really enjoyed that haven’t gotten many views on YouTube.

Released in 2017 “Dhanapati” is one such movie I think is criminally underrated and deserves more attention. Directed by Dipendra K. Khanal, the film stars the very talented Khagendra Lamichhane in the lead. Lamichhane also takes credit as the writer of this political drama that spells only reality when it comes to narrating a common man’s life.

Dhanapati, our common man, lives life in poverty with his wife (Surakshya Panta) and a daughter. The family shares a tiny flat in an old house in Kathmandu, striving to lead a better life but unable due to Dhanapati’s meager salary as a waiter at a restaurant. Had Dhanapati been born poor, he would probably not have been as distraught. We learn that Dhanapati comes from a socially and economically strong family that was displaced by the Maoist revolution.

Now away from his village in the Tarai, Dhanapati wants to lead a respectable life and give quality education to his daughter. But the various challenges that come with poverty entangle him in a struggle he desperately seeks to win. Initially against the idea of joining politics, Dhanapati, driven by desperation, falls into the trap laid by Kamal (Aashant Sharma), a local politician who has been assigned to recruit Dhapanati into a political party to leverage his family name. Dhanapati’s entry into politics marks the peak of the film and how his life changes thereafter is the rest of the story.

The movie begins with a Nepal banda and ends with a Nepal banda. In between, Dhanapati and his family’s lives are completely changed. A simpleton, lured by greed for money and power, turns into a sinister politician, forgetting how politics had ruined his family in the past. But life still has a lesson or two for him and Dhanapati learns them the hard way.

Khagendra Lamichhane, who has found success with almost every experiment he has tried in Nepali cinema, writes and plays a heavily layered character. Dhanapati is a common man and like all common men, he has his vices too. He might be a good father and husband but there’s also ego, anger and greed that prevent him from making the best decisions for his family. No wonder political power possesses him sooner than expected.

While Lamichhane writes and performs Dhanapati’s characters with utter conviction and also gives the supporting actors personalities of their own, there are a few flaws with the writing that prevent the film from reaching its potential greatness. For one, Dhanapati’s wife does not have an agency or even a name. Dhanapati’s struggles are not his alone. His wife plays an equal part in the hardships they face but she does not even get a name, let alone some power over how the story unfolds. With an actor like Surakshya Panta playing the character, this is a huge letdown. Also, the character of Kamal has an important contribution to the story throughout and actor Aashant Sharma plays him with the earnestness of a central character. His exclusion from the climax just drops the energy of the film and doesn’t do justice to the actor and the character.

A side note to Nepali filmmakers: Most of them do not bother to update their IMDB or Wikipedia pages with correct information on cast and crew. In Dhanapti, the filmmakers seem to have forgotten to credit their casts with the names of the characters they are playing. This makes it difficult for the audience to recognize which actors are playing what. You don’t expect the audience to know the entire cast, do you? 

Who should watch it?

Dhanapati is an entertainer that depicts a common man’s encounter with dirty Nepali politics. The Nepali audience, especially those who have lived through the ‘people’s revolution’, will understand. We most probably have seen or known a ‘Dhanapati’ in our lives. This movie is for anyone looking to watch a serious reality-based Nepali film. 

Rating: 3.5 stars
Actors: Khagendra Lamichhane, Surakshya Panta, Aashant Sharma
Director: Dipendra K Khanal
Genre: Drama
Run time: 1hr 53mis

For decades now, imported aerated drinks and offerings from multinational companies (MNCs) have ruled the Nepali market. As Nepal struggles to produce/manufacture even the most basics consumer goods, the market for soft drinks and bottled juices is inevitably captured by the MNCs.

Even so, a few homegrown players are coming up. Established in 2017, Singapore Beverages Nepal Pvt Ltd is one such company, which has released a host of Nepal-made bottled drinks and is gradually trying to penetrate the rigid market controlled by international companies.

Aashish Sharma, founder and managing director of Singapore Beverages, talks to Sunny Mahat of ApEx on the company’s plans and possibilities.

As “Jeeru” is your flagship product, let’s start by discussing the concept behind it.

After we started the soft drinks manufacturing company, we realized our other drinks like the Cola, Lemon, Lemon and Lime, Orange were just replacements for products that were already in the market. We wanted to offer something different and something indigenous and known to Nepali palates. We did some research and checked global trends. That’s when we came across the idea for Jeeru. Its main ingredients are jeera (cumin seeds) and black salt—something readily available in most Nepali kitchens and used for both cooking as well as medicinal purposes. We felt this drink would connect to a large segment of Nepali customers and it is already doing so. We have exported Jeeru to the US as well.

With the success of Jeeru and other products to follow, do you think home-grown products like these will ever displace international brands?

This is a big challenge for us. It’s like an ant fighting a mammoth. A four-year-old company is competing against companies that are over 150, have a heritage of their own and are synonymous with cola drinks. Yet we will try.  

We all know of the country’s trade deficit and its dependency on foreign brands. We need to start supporting Nepali brands that can displace MNCs. Take Indian brands like Mahindra, Bajaj and Tata for example. They were born in India and are now global companies. We need that belief in our homegrown products and the belief that our local products can compete against imported ones. We need ‘Born in Nepal’ companies to represent the country abroad. We have the ability but not the platform. 

What measures are you taking to protect the environment as a manufacturing company?

We do whatever is possible to protect the environment. We are using recyclable items wherever possible and promote recycling of our used bottles. Carbonated drinks need to be packed in pressurized containers and we have our limitations on packaging materials, but we are still trying to find greener alternatives to them.

How has the government supported your enterprise?

We have been enunciating this for a long time. It’s simple, you just can’t compare a newborn to a healthy grownup. In Nepal, ironically, a new homegrown company like us are put on the same category as a multinational company which has been operating worldwide for decades. How does that help us? 

We are made to follow the same regulations and pay the same taxes. Basically, we stand at the same podium as an MNC. For us to survive, we need a lot more support than what the government is giving to us right now.

How is the customer perception of local products in the market? Has it changed in recent times?

There’s this thinking among Nepali customers that any ‘local product’ has to be of inferior quality. This thinking is very rigid in areas dominated by the MNCs. Nepali people are just not ready to accept that a local product can be of international standard. In an import-dependent country like ours, this perception has been controlled by international brands. I think this is because of the hypnotic effects of massive marketing and brand activation that the MNCs do. They convince consumers that their product is good and then the consumers start thinking all other alternatives are inferior. 

We request all consumers to at least try our products. Drink the product, not the Brand! We also appreciate media support, in instance in the form of the ‘Made in Nepal’ campaign the Annapurna Media Network is currently running.

Born in Thame village of the mountainous Solukhumbu district of Nepal, Mingma Sherpa was only 18 when he first reached Camp IV of the Everest region as a porter in 1998. The next year, aged 19, he got to the peak of the highest mountain in the world. Then, in the following 17-odd years, Sherpa would become a mountain guide and a climber who has by now conquered Everest 10 times, apart from peaking a host of other famous Nepali peaks. 

Sherpa’s glorious mountaineering career came to a halt due to his father’s untimely demise in the 2014 Everest disaster. Sherpa’s father—a cook at Camp II—was among the 16 who died in an ice avalanche at the Khumbu Icefall. “My family was worried for me after that. So I quit climbing in 2016,” Sherpa says. He still makes a livelihood from the mountains though. His entrepreneurial venture Climbalaya that he started with a friend in 2015 takes tourists up to the mountains and helps them ascend Nepali peaks. 

But without a proper tourist season for the past two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Sherpa’s life has drastically changed and so have the lives of thousands of people from his region who relied on tourism activities for their livelihood. “Almost 70 percent of the Sherpa people depend on tourism,” he says. “We have suffered heavy losses starting from the 2015 earthquake. We were just recovering when the pandemic hit.” 

With no alternative means of survival, the Sherpa community has been suffering from lack of basic resources, Sherpa says. In times like these, he has stepped up to organize relief for his community in the mountains. “I was in the US right after the 2015 earthquake and was planning to settle there. Then I thought I still had a lot to do in the country while I was quite young and came back,” Sherpa says.

Sherpa’s career as a social worker began after that. He has been organizing relief packages as well as scholarship opportunities for the people of his community. Recently, after the climbing season took a hit following the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020, Sherpa provided six months’ essential ration to around 450 households in wards four and five of the Khumbu Pasanglhamu rural municipality. The relief worth Rs 17 million was supplied with the support of the Tenzin Norgay Sherpa Foundation. 

“I come from a very poor background and I know what monsoon or a low climbing season does to people in our region,” says Sherpa. “I have thus set out to help the people of the mountains in whatever way possible.” Sherpa’s support for the community does not end with relief packages. He believes education is most important for the community’s betterment. So he has also organized higher education scholarships in Kathmandu for post-SEE students from his community. There are currently six students under the scholarship and Sherpa plans on further increasing the number. 

“Due to my family’s status, I could not study beyond grade nine. Actually, I chose to start working very early in life and educate my three sisters instead,” Sherpa says. “Now I want to educate as many young people from the community as possible.” The scholarships Sherpa offers provide students full funding to complete their Bachelors in the subjects of their choice. While the scholarships are merit-based and completely sponsored, Sherpa also signs a contract with the students where they pledge to go back to their communities after their studies and share their knowledge among their people to inspire another generation of students. 

Along with education, Sherpa is also focusing on promoting the Thame village and the surrounding region. “The Thame village has given the world some of the most renowned climbers in history. The likes of Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, Ang Rita Sherpa, Kami Rita Sherpa, Apa Sherpa and Pasanga Lhamu Sherpa, all come from our village,” Sherpa explains. “Still I feel the country as well as the world overlooks our legacy. My goal is to let the world know of our village.” 

If the Covid-19 does not play spoilsport, Sherpa plans to organize the “Ice and Rock” festival at Thame in January-February 2022. The almost three-week-long festival will have both local and international participation and feature a 14-day climbing training as well as various competitions. The project is currently under discussion with related ministries and Sherpa expects the approval to come soon. “We already have the approval to build the Tenzing Norgay memorial park in Thame. Now if we can go ahead with this festival, I am sure we can bring many more tourists to the region.”

There is something about “Beckett”, the recently released American film on Netflix, that sets it apart from most of the ‘man-on-the-run’ thrillers we have watched in recent times. I think it is the film’s trajectory, which suddenly turns from personal into political. Or the film’s style that mixes Hollywood’s storytelling with European naturalism and creates a fusion-like effect throughout.

An American couple—Beckett (John David Washington) and April (Alicia Vikander)—are vacationing in Greece. In one of their drives through a hilly countryside at night, the couple’s car crashes and lands on a supposedly deserted house. Still under shock, Beckett sees a woman and a child inside the house and calls them for help, but they run away. Then he finds April lying dead in a pool of blood and loses consciousness, only waking up at a hospital later.

When Beckett is taken into the local police station, the cops are pretty helpful and tell him how they would help him take his partner’s dead body to Athens. Before leaving for Athens, Beckett decides to pay a visit to the spot where April was killed. That’s when the film’s story takes a twisted turn. At the site, Beckett is shot at by a complete stranger, who then follows him to kill him. A shocked Beckett cannot find refuge in the local police station as well because he is also being shot at and chased by the previously friendly officer Xenakis Beckett (Panos Koronis) for no apparent reason.

The chase continues as Beckett runs from the countryside to Athens, discovering some secrets that land him in the middle of a political conspiracy. Beckett’s plight turns from dealing with bereavement to surviving at any cost. And as he runs to save his life, he also fights to save another person linked to his situation.

Director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino keeps the film more grounded than most Hollywood action thrillers. The eponymous lead character, Beckett, is no action hero. He’s not John Rambo from “First Blood” who sets on his attackers with masochistic flair and turns from prey to predator in a jiffy. Beckett is a common man who finds himself in an unexpected situation and takes the most desperate measures to get out of it. He is scared, has panic attacks and cannot plan on what to do next. Still, Beckett’s resilience makes him surprisingly strong and helps him win the various conflicts he is pushed into.

Beckett starts slow but picks up in the first quarter itself and maintains a steady rhythm till the end. The 1h 48mins screen time is mostly centered on Beckett, and actor John David Washington playing the role is convincing. Washington does not falter throughout the film even as his character metamorphoses from a bereaved lover to a vengeful victim. The background music comes to the actor’s aid as well. There’s a particular chase scene with jazz drums in the background whose dissonance is almost panic inducing. 

Even with so many positives, there are also a few notable shortcomings. For one, the whole conspiracy that has caused so much chaos in Beckett’s life is not given enough space. It leaves many aspects unexplained, which really bothers an attentive audience. Also, the film fails to establish a strong antagonist as it focuses too much on developing and strengthening Becketts’s character. This leaves a huge vacuum in the space where a strong negative character could have brought more intensity to the film. 

Who should watch it?
Beckett is a thriller about a man running for his life. We have seen plenty of those in our times but, still, this movie is worth watching for its variations. We are sure an action/thriller/mystery fan will definitely enjoy the film despite its inadequacies.

Rating: 3 stars
Genre: Thriller
Actors: John David Washington, Alicia Vikander
Director: Ferdinando Cito Filomarino
Run time: 1hr 48mins