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Anyone who has been driving a car or riding a bike around Kathmandu for some time will agree that the amount of time to reach from point A to B has significantly increased in the past few years. With the number of vehicles increasing and the road expansion slowing, the city has become accustomed to incessant traffic jams, especially during rush hours.

The Metropolitan Traffic Police Department (MTPD) cites lack of infrastructure as the main culprit for the unmanageable road congestions. The streets of Kathmandu are ill-equipped to serve around 1.2 million vehicles registered in the valley alone, forget the vehicles that are registered outside and are plying here. “Our roads are not built for such volumes,” says a traffic police spokesperson. “As we don’t even have rudimentary traffic management technology, our work is difficult.”

Still, greater awareness among motorists and pedestrians could help to greatly minimize traffic jams. But that is evidently not the case here. On a recent afternoon, the Baggikhana, the MTPD headquarters, was packed with traffic rule violators who were there to pay their fines and attend the mandatory traffic awareness classes. None of them showed any remorse. “It is my first time being penalized for cutting the lanes,” a young man in a group of offenders waiting for the next class said. “The traffic police was too harsh. Everyone cuts lane and here I am, penalized.” A middle-aged man joined the conversation claiming how the government cannot catch criminals and corrupt politicians and instead focuses on common people who have only had a drink or two and can safely ride their way home. Everyone nodded in agreement.

The streets of Kathmandu are indeed choking. It is true that the government should be doing its bit to ease the pressure on Kathmandu’s roads. Having better traffic technology would certainly help. But forget the traffic police and the government for a moment. Isn’t it also the responsibility of pedestrians and motorists to play their part to make their city clean and orderly? ...

We all complain about bad traffic. But what are we doing about it?

The problems

(Note: We writing this article, the author tried to get in touch with many traffic police personnel. They all declined to comment. Instead all of them asked him to consult the official traffic police spokesperson. That is what he did)

“Our biggest problem is infrastructure,” says Rabi Kumar Poudel, Superintendent of Police and Traffic Police Spokesperson. “It is easier to manage traffic in cities with wide roads, overhead bridges, flyovers, footpaths, zebra-crossing and other infrastructures.”

Poudel says more advanced and bigger cities also have traffic jams but they are still easier to manage because of better planned infrastructure. “There is bound to be a traffic jam wherever there is a crossroad. Properly planned streets make these jams more manageable,” Poudel says.

Kathmandu’s roads also lack even basic traffic technology. Most of the traffic management in Kathmandu is done manually by traffic personnel. Braving dust, smoke and other street hazards, on-duty traffic personnel have to spend hours on end on busy street, to try and control the ebb and flow of traffic. “But manual traffic management is not feasible during rush hours,” adds Poudel.

“These days we won’t even need traffic police personnel at major junctions if we have well-functioning traffic lights. But as we do not, sometimes even seven or eight traffic police personnel are not enough to manage a single junction.”

Apart from right technology, the streets are also short of proper signboards and signals—what the traffic police term “road furnishings.” Motorists and pedestrians have the right to be informed about speed limits, one-way entries, right turns, zebra crossings and other instructions before they are penalized for violating the rules. There have been cases, Poudel says, where motorists have been caught for violating rules they had no idea about. “We do not have proper lanes and road signage to help the motorists,” he says. “But we are still forced to penalize them if they make mistakes.”

Some traffic rules that the traffic police is forced to implement are dubious too. For instance, a traffic police can impose a speeding fine on a vehicle going over 50 kmph on a 50km speed limit road. But if the same person drives at the speed of 10 kmph on the same road and blocks traffic, there is no law to charge the driver.

What can we do?

“We are deployed at risk of great health hazards, just to serve the public,” Poudel says. “Even if we do not have enough infrastructure and technology, the public can at least support us by being aware on the streets, respecting each other’s space, and complying with traffic rules.”

Motorists should understand that the road is made for everyone and respect traffic rules. Overtaking on corners, overtaking from the left side, rushing through traffic lights, not maintaining lane discipline and blocking lanes by driving too slowly are some problems the traffic police identify as additional reasons for Kathmandu’s traffic jams.

With more than 1.2 million vehicles in the valley alone, it is impossible for the traffic police to monitor all the vehicles plying every nook and cranny in an “unscientifically-planned city.” From a traffic management perspective, the city has far too many interconnected roads and lanes, some of which cannot let more than one vehicle pass at a time.

Pedestrians are adding to the traffic jams. Jaywalking halts the smooth flow of traffic, creating bottle-necks at major junctions. Despite the availability of zebra crosses and overhead bridges, people are found crossing the roads whenever and wherever they want. “We admit that there is a paucity of zebra crossings at some places. Some streets even do not have a footpath,” says Poudel. “But we request the pedestrians to find the safest zone to cross the road in these cases. And please cross in groups so that you do not break traffic flow.”

What are they doing?

The traffic police says it is wrong to assume that they are solely responsible for dealing with traffic congestions. “The traffic police is only a managing body. Their only responsibility is to monitor the users in the streets and check whether they are complying with the rules. We have to work within government rules and infrastructures. This is all we can do,” Poudel says.

The MTPD has been conducting public awareness classes for both pedestrians and motorists who violate traffic rules, but results have thus far been unsatisfactory. To instill awareness on road safety from an early age, the traffic police have suggested the Education Ministry to integrate road safety into school-level curriculum. The ministry has approved the idea and a course on traffic rules is on its final phase of preparation.

Don’t watch it alone! Or you’ll be holding hands with a total stranger sitting next to you in sheer fright. Arpan Thapa’s “Ghar” is that scary. Not exaggerating at all when we say that this has to be the scariest Nepali movie ever made, giving tough competition even to its Bollywood contemporaries.

Written and directed by Thapa, Shiva in the film, who is married to Saru (Surakshya Panta), Ghar is a story of the couple who move into a new house they get for cheap. Also moving in with them is Maya (Benisha Hamal), Saru’s cousin and Shiva’s extra-marital affair. Despite some foreboding, the family does not suspect the house they happily move into is haunted, not by one but two sinister ghosts!

What happens next is expected, yet the execution surpasses all expectations from a Nepali horror flick and upholds the reputation of Thapa, an actor and filmmaker who studied acting in Mumbai in early 2000s, brings along. For someone who watched Thapa lead on his debut Nepali movie, Murray Kerr’s “Sick City” (2011), and saw a promising talent emerge, his stint behind the camera this time does not come as a big surprise. His ability to hold together a script of a movie that has been shot almost 95 percent indoors, with a cast of under a dozen, is simply remarkable.

Under a dozen is all that Thapa needs to create this scare flick with the lead actress Panta marvelously excelling in her role as Saru, a lovable wife who adores her husband and is on her third trimester of pregnancy. If you’ve ever encountered a woman on her final stages of pregnancy, when hormonal changes and motherly instincts cause many mood swings, you will easily relate to Saru and will absolutely love Panta for her acting skills. When she is possessed and has to let out morbid screams, the intense changes in her demeanor are further testament to Panta’s talent as an actor. She definitely brings home the gold on this one.

Hamal, playing Maya, Saru’s jealous younger cousin, is almost unrecognizable at first in her role of a pot-smoking seductress. The actress who has previously played lead in Nepali movies looks comfortable enough in a supporting role this time. Thapa as Shiva doesn’t do nearly as much on-screen as he does behind the camera. Again, the film belongs to Panta.

But she still can’t take all the credit. Like a comedy, horror also calls for impeccable timing. Scare the audience too much and they stop being scared; scare them too little and they’ll find the film boring. Thapa, with his team of skillful cinematographers, editors, makeup artists and rest of the crew work out the perfect calibration. Besides them, Iman Bikram Shah, with his eerily haunting background score, needs a special mention as well.  

The filmmakers have resorted to using ‘orthodox’ ghosts on this one to give the audience the chills. Ghosts from grandma’s stories that appear only at night, creep into your bed and smother you, move furniture to scare to you and possess you are unmistakably more frightening than watching a Catholic nun being possessed by the devil in the 1950s’ Romania. Add top-notch acting and continuous long takes to the childhood horror stories and they make for a perfect recipe for fright!

The only drawback, if it can be called one, is that both the film’s lead actors are not much into publicity. And neither is the production team. The result, the film lacks sufficient promotion and for a movie of this caliber, audience turnout is comparably low. Only if word-of-mouth works on this one.

Who should watch it?

If you like horror movies minus the stereotypical skin-show, item numbers and song and dance sequences, you will definitely enjoy Ghar. If you are not scared enough at the end of it, the end credits announce a sequel too.

Rating: 4 stars

GHAR (A)

Genre: Horror

Run time: 1h30m

Director: Arpan Thapa

Cast: Arpan Thapa, Surakshya Panta, Benisha Hamal

Anyone who lived in Kathman­du in the late 80s or the early 2000s has most probably rid­den, or at least seen, the black Bajaj auto-rickshaws, famously known as kaalo tempo (‘black tempo’). Small but loud, the diesel-engine three-wheelers chugged out smoke like Fidel Castro smoking a fat Cuban cigar. These little things with a han­dle-bar for a steering rattled and shook as the drivers maneuvered them through Kathmandu's nooks and crannies, their mechanical meters cackling with a ring, showing the cost of the ride as they moved. And the sound they made, like a half-horsepower water pump over­driven to go deep boring—they didn’t even need horns to shoo the pedes­trians away.

These are from the memories I have. Otherwise, not much can be found on them. At least not in the written form. But there are people who have fond memories of the kaa­lo tempos of Kathmandu. I remem­ber riding them from my bus stop at Gyaneshwor to my hangout at Bhatbhateni during my school days (circa 2000). My friend Bardan and I—He refuses to use his last name because he's given up the “thug life”. And so have I—paid Rs 15 for the ride every day and without the risk of being seen loitering about in school uniforms; we didn’t mind paying the money. The kaalo tem­pos were cheaper than taxis and with the leather curtains attached to the soft-top leather bodies, they were completely opaque when put down, and gave us that obscurity we desired.

 Poster of Nepali Babu

“Rs 11 is what I paid for my ride from Saraswatithan, Lazimpat to the Radisson Hotel,” Jackie Tay­lor, APEX’s own expat columnist recalls. “I totally miss them. They were fastish, cheap and easy,” she adds. “Not great in the rain though. But then the roads were better back then.” When asked if she had any photos of these tempos, she replies, “I doubt as a normal person anyone would be taking pictures with a tempo. Do you take photos of taxies?”

If only I knew they’d soon be gone. If only we had phone cameras and Instagram back then. I might have a few photos with the iconic Tuk Tuks in Bangkok though. Now I realize that the kaalo tempos were for Kathman­du what the Tuks Tuks are for pres­ent-day Bangkok. A means of trans­port that Thailand has been able to commercialize and merchandize.

Another expat Glenice Tulip, who has lived in Kathmandu for 18 years over a period of 30 years starting in 1986, shares her own memories of the black tempos. “When I first came to live in Nepal, the black tempos were my preferred mode of travel,” she says. “The down-side of course was that they were uncomfortable, under-powered and smelt of the fuel they used. Many times I had to get out and help the driver push the tempo up a hill. Trav-elling in them at night was also haz-ardous, as they had very dim lights, and were open to the elements. Still, they were cheap and always available.”

 She narrates a few incidents with black tempos during her stay here. One of them is from between 1986- 1990. “One cold and windy day, I was huddled in a tempo while the driver went to pay for fuel. Sud-denly a dirty hand appeared at the front, not realizing I was there, and attempted to open the ‘glove box’ where the driver kept his money,” she recalls. “I wasn't having that so I slapped the hand hard; the owner screamed like a stuck pig just as the driver appeared.

The driver thanked me and tried to give me money which I wouldn't take, and he wouldn’t take any mon-ey from me. I left the fare on the seat when I got out.” Tulip also has a story of watching a speeding tempo disappear into a large hole in the middle of the road, and then found lying upside down like a dying bee-tle, stuck in mud. But the story is too long to narrate in one go.

Singer, actor and filmmaker Asif Shah remembers the kaalo tempos as the “Nepali Babu” tempo—made famous by a film of the same name released in 1999 with Nepal’s own superstar Bhuvan KC playing a tem-po driver. “It was Tootle for us back then in terms of the price,” he says. “I still ride them whenever I am in Mumbai. Reminds me of the old days in Kathmandu.”

There also was a clever hack that Shah says worked for him every time he took the tempo. “If you pressed the wire leading to the meter pretty hard, the numbers on it changed slower and thus the fare came cheap-er,” he says. (Wish I could turn back time). I tried getting in touch with super-star KC to talk to him about his expe-riences on kaalo tempos. “I’m in an important meeting, I’ll call you back raja,” he told me. Thrice. He never returned the call and then stopped answering me altogether. Well, the superstar life ain’t easy it seems.

Banned because of the ‘pollution’ they caused, and displaced by EVs called ‘safa tempos,’ the lively lit-tle three-wheelers vanished from Kathmandu’s streets. But the mem-ory of them will probably remain in the minds of the Kathmanduites and expats who took them to go around the city. We still get to see the auto-rickshaws in Delhi, Mumbai and other cities of neighboring India, but the ride is never as joyful as it was riding them through the streets of Kathmandu.

If you’ve ever seen a six-foot-tall figure hovering above other musicians with untamed energy on the stage in concerts, you don’t need to guess who he is. It has been more than two decades of rocking out in the Nepali music industry for singer/songwriter and actor Robin Tamang who is all set to release his new album “Muglan” on July 24 with his band Robin and the New Revolution. Tamang, born in Singapore, has come a long way from his starting days in Nepali music with the band Looza. He now shapes the rock scene of Nepal with his instantaneous lyrics-writing, captivating stage performance and the ability to gather some of the best musicians around to back him up. He now holds a posi­tion of no less than a legend in the Nepali music scene and watching him perform live is the dream of every Nepali concert-goer, be it in Nepal or abroad.

All this he maintains with­out the loss of any humble­ness and getting to know Robin dai is getting a chance to discover new perspectives in music and life in general for every young musician. An eloquent conversational­ist, Tamang talks to Sunny Mahat of APEX about his upcoming album and shares his thoughts on Nepal’s con­temporary music industry.

Please tell us more about your upcoming album.

“Muglan” is an album Robin and the New Revolution is releasing after a hiatus of almost seven years. The rea­son I wrote “Muglan” is to bring the plight of our migrant workers to the forefront. Of the 28 million people in our country, 10 percent are migrant workers and they generate 30 percent of our annual revenue. Only last year, about 800 people died while working abroad. A year before that, it was 700. When you add that up with deaths from previous years, you’ll see that the number is huge.

It is not an easy life for migrant workers. We have seen and met them on our tours to various countries. There is no regulation, no protection. So this album, we dedicate to these workers. Through it we want to bring their problems to the main­stream.

We see that there has been another line-up change in the band. How does this affect your overall sound? How has the sound evolved?

Our band has changed in terms of the members and also how we sound. We are getting more technical and heavier. In the present line-up, we have Bijay Baral who is a very young and talented drummer. We have also included gui­tar maestro Hari Maharjan, who is a technically proficient player and adds much value to the band. We then have Pra­bin Das Shrestha, an original member of RNR from 2006, who returns on bass duties.

This is our fourth album and it is mostly about what has been happening around us in the past seven years when we didn’t make new music. The album has eight tracks—four English and four Nepali. We’re also redoing “Jawaf” and “Swatantra Jivan” from the Looza days because I think these songs did not get enough exposure back then.

An actor, a musician and a family man. How do you juggle between your demanding professions and your family which is living abroad?

You see, I am now in a posi­tion where I can call the shots (laughs). With me it is easy; whoever books me first gets first priority. People are con­siderate enough to adjust their timetable for me. They will shift the dates for concerts so I can play. They will shift the dates of shoots so I can act. I am booked till October and it started from January this year.

That’s a tough one (When reminded about the family). Every time I get off between my busy schedules, I go to France to my girls. In fact, I am leaving next month for 10 days to be with them. The younger one, Jade, is 10 and the older, Tara, is 19 and going to university.

Does the trending music and genres of today affect established bands like RNR?

We were the pioneers of rock music in Nepal. We were the inspiration and people still look up to us. Luckily, I am still here after 22 years in the music business. I think the audience pretty much know when they hear good music and when they see a good per­formance. They always look forward to that. We have a reputation as a live band. Our stage performance is so inter­active. I don’t think our crowd will ever let us go.

But still, with the influx of so many different genres in Nepal, would you call rock music a dying genre?

I don’t think so. I think we just need a boost. If we see lately, a lot of rock bands have come out with new stuff this year. I think 2019 is going to be a good year for rock music. Having said that, there are now so many genres of music compared to the time we started. The level of music is 100 times better now. Not only that, the musicianship has improved. I like to think artists like 1974 AD, Nepathya, Mukti dai and ourselves have a hand in it.

We have crossed gener­ations of listeners. I am on my third generation now. We are also getting new audi­ence. I don’t think the ele­ment of rock will ever die in Nepal. This year has been rare with so many rock musi­cians releasing their music. It was dormant for a while. Once in a while we need that interjection of rock music into the system to let people know we’re still alive, we’re still kicking.

How do you make an inspirational movie about a not so well known mathematician/teacher for the mainstream audience and also manage to get them to the theaters? The team behind Hrithik Roshan starrer “Super 30” show you how.

With Bollywood heartthrob Roshan making a comeback in cinemas after a gap of two and a half years, his fans and followers see him asserting a character he has never, in his career spanning almost 20 years, impersonated. Roshan plays Anand Kumar (an educationist and a mathematician from Patna, Bihar) in this biopic based on Kumar’s life as a student turned instructor and the first ever batch of economically underprivileged students he began teaching for free at a school which would later be popularly known as “Super 30.”

The plot, which begins in narration, first takes us back to 1996 when Kumar is a student from an economically deprived family. Kumar manages to get an admission at the prestigious University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom but try as they might, his family is unable to raise enough funds for him to travel there. This is followed by a family tragedy and a sequence of events that force him to give up mathematics and sell papads for a living. Fate changes for him one day on a chance meeting with Lallan Singh (Aditya Shrivastava), CEO of Excellence Coaching. His journey then continuous from a desperate papad salesman, to a star tutor at a commercial coaching center and finally to a patron of a group of 30 bright students from the most impoverished families in the state.

“Super 30” is all about the sacrifice and perseverance of Anand Kumar and his family who give up what could have been a wealth and lavish life to teach and raise underprivileged children. The filmmakers have taken a gamble by making an inspirational film on people usually sidelined in mainstream Bollywood and a story that is usually the subject of low-budget independent films or art cinema. Having said that, they sure have taken the liberty of adding far-fetched sequences just to keep the multiplex audience entertained and despite all its subtlety, “Super 30” does have its larger-than-life moments.

Talking about sacrifices, the one that Roshan has made to give life to Anand Kumar’s character, cannot go unnoticed. Roshan, known for his chiseled Greek God-like physique, plays a Bollywood ‘anti-hero’ in the form of Kumar. He has evidently bulked up for the role, shunning his 8-pack abs and diamond-cut face, to look his part of a regular mathematics teacher. And believe it or not, he does not dance at all in the movie. Something surprising for all Roshan fans.

But where Roshan is found wanting is in dialogue delivery. For as much effort as he puts into his physical appearance, Roshan somewhat falls flat when it comes to emulating the iconic “Bihari” tone of speaking. Especially in scenes paired against the talented Pankaj Tripathi (Devraj Jagan Safdurjang, a local minister), Roshan’s Bihari accent sounds painfully assumed and not amusing at all. At a time when Bollywood has seen its fair share of Bihari characters portrayed by the likes of Irrfan Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Manoj Bajpayee, Roshan’s Anand Kumar, despite all the intensity he brings to the required scenes, is not as assertive.

Who should watch it?

“Super 30” is certainly an inspirational film that makes the audience feel thankful for the privileged lives they have been living. So students, teachers, parents and movie enthusiasts, everyone can enjoy it. Fans of a flexing and grooving Hrithik Roshan might want to give it a miss though, for Roshan does nothing of that sort in “Super 30.”

Genre: Biography/Drama

Director: Vikas Bahl

Run time: 155 minutes

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Shrivastava

Rating: 2.5 stars

 They’re fast and they’re furious. Ridiculously fast and tremendously furious. Oblivious to what is going on in the mainstream of music, these young guitarists, or shredders as we’d like to call them for their lightning speed and brutal strength, are the underdogs of Nepali music.

 Picking, tapping and sweeping across the fretboard of their guitars, this batch of young guitarists is extremely talented, technically perfect and musically astute. Some make music from their bedrooms and share it with the world on social media, while others for the time hide themselves behind cover bands, always wishing to break the shackles and go solo with their original music. Despite limited recognition and opportunities, these young guitarists have been thriving thanks to the access created by technology. This week, APEX brings you a selection of five young guitarists who’ve shredded their way to fame and who deserve to be even more recognized for their prowess.

Rupesh Pariyar (23)

 Rupesh is an aspiring musician who started playing guitar at 11, inspired by his uncles and their friends who he grew up listening to. Although he loves playing across different genres, Rupesh’s favorite is progressive metal. His life goal is to keep updating his skills, learning from others while sharing what he’s learnt, on his way to becoming a successful musician. “There is scope for a working musician in Nepal if you know how to balance things,” Rupesh says. “There is a lot of potential in music production, teaching and performance.”

Nishant Acharya (25)

 Working full time as a digital marketing manager in an IT company, Nishant is also popular among young musicians for his impressive guitar skills and for his stylish beard and moustache! “Playing guitar feels like an extension of my conscience. It is a form of expressing myself in a way I may not be comfortable doing in words,” says Nishant, who started playing guitar at the age of 13. Nishant has a unique finger-style guitar playing skill, a rarity among guitarists, and his strength lies in his immaculate transcription skills and the ability to dial a clean and pristine tone while playing live or recording. He plans to release his debut instrumental album in the near future and has already started writing songs for it.

Ridesh Tamang (22)

 Ridesh has an interesting story on how he got into guitars. Turns out, he was influenced by the 2008 Bollywood musical “Rock On” and learning the songs from the movie made him take up guitar. “I even thought actor Arjun Rampal who is a guitarist in the movie was actually playing the instrument,” he laughs sheepishly. But as time progressed, his taste changed. As he got into listening to heavier stuff, Ridesh developed a style for himself which he likes to call “modern progressive Djenty rock/metal.” How deep is that? Ridesh plays in a cover band in Thamel and teaches guitar to make a living. He is also planning to come out with a solo album which will be inspired by different styles of music, he informs.

Kshitiz Singh Pariyar (17)

 Last but not the least is Kshitiz, or Musichead Kshitiz as he’s popularly known in social media. Still in high school, Kshitiz started playing guitar at the age of 11 and within just six years has been able to create a following for himself. Currently a member of an ‘experimental core’ band, Kshitiz cannot name a particular style he’d like to be associated with but looks up to local heroes Sunny ST, Sunny Manadhar and Ridesh Tamang as well as international guitarists Guthrie Govan, Dimebag Darrel and Andy James for inspiration. PS: The boys have really worked hard to create backing tracks for their instrumentals and record it in a video for our audience. Make sure you follow the QR code in the article or search for “The Annapurna Express” on Youtube to witness them in action.

Apurva Chaudhary (23)

Attracted to music after attending numerous bhajan sessions in his childhood, Apurva not only plays guitar but is also a prolific singer. “I actually started as a singer in a band. I later got into guitar as it served as a guiding point for my vocal practice,” he says. “But now this instrument is a part of me. I look forward to getting the most out of this relationship between me and my music.” A listener of all genres of music, Apurva’s ultimate goal is to make a living doing something he is passionate about. “I was always an average student while I was in school/college,” he says. “I may not be the greatest guitar player but it still motivates me to get better each day. I never got this feeling while studying.”

The ‘underground’ music scene of Nepal is dominated by metal and punk bands playing extreme music to small audiences at obscure venues. Seldom do we associate ‘underground’ with electronic music—which is, at best, considered dance music confined to clubs and discos.

 Spektrum, a musical venture initiated by a small group of young music enthusiasts, is working to change that perception. “Electronic music is not necessarily dance music,” says Rishavh Shrestha, one of the founders of Spektrum. “People can just sit down and enjoy the variations electronic music brings to them and chill or lounge about.”

 “The idea came to us after attending electronic music festivals in India,” adds Saroj Joshi, another co-founder of Spektrum. “Back in 2012, we were really impressed by a music producer at an Indian music festival. We invited him to come perform in Nepal and he agreed. It took us a few years to get him here though. But the first ever show we did was a success and from 2018, we started Spektrum to organize more electronic music events.”

 Spektrum celebrated its first anniversary this April. Even in this short time, it has already hosted electronic acts from India such as Tarqeeb, Zokhuma, Su Real, SickFlip, Spryk, Smokey, Madstarbase, EZ riser, Kone Kone and Rafiki. Notably, Spektrum’s events give equal space for local acts to share the stage and create a niche for themselves in the Nepali electronic music scene.

 The music that Spektrum features, however, is noncommercial. It is not the music that is played at clubs and discotheques of Kathmandu and other Nepali cities. The music producers associated with Spektrum create new sounds in the sub-genres of trance, house, techno, drum and bass, and other forms of electronic music. The community they have formed in Nepal is small, but strong.

We’re not doing it for money. If we were, we would’ve shutdown by now

Rishavh Shrestha

 “We’re not doing it for money,” says Rishavh. “If we were, we would’ve shut down by now.” The events that Spektrum organizes are focused on bringing together performers and listeners of electronic music under a single roof. Creating a strong community of people who appreciate non-commercial electronic music and to provide a platform for Nepali creators to share their music is the goal. The funding for their events is arranged through the same, tight-knit community.

 About criticism of their inability to bring in “international” acts instead of just Indian music producers, Saroj replies, “The Indian music scene has developed and is so advanced right now. Why should we look farther when we have a market next door?” It is also about the cost of getting an artist from abroad, Rishavh adds. The Indian electronic music community is supportive of the scene in Nepal. Indian music producers are willing to come to Nepal even for small events and the organizers in India are already creating a space for Nepali artists to perform at their events.

 “Now that we have crossed the one-year mark, we are looking to expand to bigger events and venues,” says Rishavh. “We will include a whole new spectrum of sounds and music, all non-commercial of course.” Spektrum has signed Ranzen and YNZN.P, both prolific music producers of Nepal, for official representation both at home and abroad.  

 “We’re so aggressive even at rehearsals that we come out with bruises and bumps from our practice sessions,” says a 25-year-old metalhead about his band as we walk around a narrow lane in Putalisadak to find a quiet place to talk. “People think we’re on drugs all the time but the fact is, we’re all clean, or recovered at least.” His band members don’t make it to our rendezvous because of the confusion cre­ated by Biplab’s Nepal bandh on the day. But an hour-long conversation with Core Tam­rakar, a guitarist of the band Anhur, makes this reviewer confident enough to write about them, especially after listening to their debut album “Manmade Disaster”. In an obscure ‘restaurant’ in the Kumari Hall lane, we discuss the evolution of the Nepali underground scene, the hate between fans and musi­cians of different sub-genres, increasing audience violence, and negative perception of underground musicians.

“Anhur is a death-core band and our music is mostly about war and its effects on mankind,” Tamrakar says. Anhur, the name of a god of war in Egyptian mythology, represents a new wave of the Nepali underground scene which has existed for the past two decades, but mostly under the shadow of main­stream music and popular songs. The band was officially formed in February 2019 by a group of friends and fellow metalheads. In a short time since its inception, it has had many heads banging to its aggressive music, while in the process also earning it many ‘haters’, Tamrakar says.

“The underground scene is not what it used to be. There is no respect for the artists and fellow musicians anymore,” says the young musician who himself grew up attending underground gigs in Kath­mandu. “Some people have started doing drugs at con­certs and bloody clashes in gigs have become so common I think I should wear a helmet in my next show.”

"The underground scene is not what it used to be. There is no respect for the artists and fellow musicians anymore"

Core Tamrakar

Tamrakar on guitars, another guitarist duo Rojin Gurung and Puzan Syangtang, drummer Shakti Maharjan, bassist Dinesh Shrestha and vocalist Sadan Thapa—all aged between 18 and 34—make up Anhur. Their music is fast, raw, brutal and comes with parental advisory. For those not used to listening to metal music, the band’s songs are a noisy collocation of awfully heavy guitars, blasting drums and incomprehensible vocals but for their fans, the extrem­ity of their music and lyrics are rhythm and poetry com­bined.

Their debut album “Man­made Disaster” released in April this year is a typical underground production. The band home-recorded for lack of funds and Tamrakar mixed and mastered the whole album, typically in the vein of most ‘Do It Yourself’ bands here. “We do not make money from our music so we have no money to invest,” he says. “So we cut our own album from whatever resources we have and organize our own shows.”

He also narrates how he got the cover art for their debut album from a Brazilian musi­cian in exchange for mixing and mastering 10 songs for him. Releasing the album did incur them some major expenses, Tamrakar informs, but the band managed to sell a decent number of the album as well as merchandise to recover the expenses.

“I think we are a very lucky band. We have been getting a gig every month, and our album and merch have sold out,” he says. A concert every month is a big deal in the scene where a band either organizes its own shows or waits for months to be invited to per­form. For both the bands and the organizers, there is almost no returns. There is also that added risk of being branded outcasts by their families and society for the lives they chose to lead.

But Anhur keeps the glo­rious tradition of the Nepali underground music alive. The metal scene has seen its share of rise and fall in the past years but some bands have emerged out of the chaos to leave behind a distinctive trail for others to follow. Bands like “Underside”—which has gone international with their music—and the legendary “Ugra Karma”—which is cel­ebrating its 20th anniversary soon and embarking on a Europe Tour—are artists these youngsters and their contem­poraries look up to.

Worshipping their music like artists of any other genre, the underground bands are not after fame. Right now they are struggling to at least avoid being chastised, if not fully accepted, for their music and their lifestyle.