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 Yemen’s 31-year-old Gadam Yahuya Ali Mohammed’s Nepali visa had expired on January 24. When he went to get his visa renewed, six months after its expiry, he was arrested by the Immigration Office Pokhara and sent back to his home country. Similarly, Russia’s Yevg­eny Fedorov, Japan’s Isu Hashimoto and Sweden’s Martinson Torebhairat were also found to have overstayed their visa. From Pokhara, they were first sent to Kath­mandu from where they were deported. 

In the fiscal 2017-18, Pokha­ra’s Immigration Office has sent nine such foreigners to Kathmandu. Although many foreigners are stay­ing illegally in Nepal, sel­dom are they apprehended and punished.

According to tourism entre­preneurs in Pokhara, for­eigners who overstay, beg or sell trinkets on footpaths are mostly poor. Although many locals know about them, they are seldom reported.

“Only when they some­times fight or destroy hotel property do people bother to inform the police,” says Lal Bahadur Thapa, a police officer with the Tourist Police Unit of Pokhara. “And only then is the real status of their visa known.” He also informs that there has till date been no concerted effort to search for illegal immigrants

 The new criminal code and the proposed legislation on protection of rights to privacy pose a grave risk to press freedom and freedom of expression in Nepal. Article 17 of the new constitution guarantees every individual freedom of expression and opinion. Likewise, Article 19 says that no punitive action can be taken against a media house for “publishing, broadcasting or printing any news item, feature, editorial, article, information or other material”. Yet some provisions in the new code and legislation seem intended to take away these constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms and to reduce transparency and accountability of public office-holders. For instance the new code makes it a criminal offense to listen to or record a conversation between two people or to photograph people without their consent. The violator of this provision will be liable for a year of jail and/or Rs 10,000. Likewise, the proposed bill says the educational qualification, criminal background, character and political affiliation of public office-holders cannot be scrutinized without express consent. The violators of this law will get three years of jail and/or be fined Rs 30,000.

The government says that such a law had become vital to protect every person’s right to privacy under Article 27 of the constitution. But as the citations of the new constitution above suggest, the exaggerated concern on privacy, and neglect of other freedoms, is not in keeping with the spirit of the new constitution.

The new provisions will make it impossible for journalists to write critically about the functioning of public office-bear­ers and to do investigative stories. This in a country consis­tently ranked as one of the most corrupt and lawless.

But the drafters and enforcers of these laws stoutly defend them. “I think the curbs on press freedom and freedom of expression have been exaggerated,” says Radheshyam Adhikari, a member of the National Assembly, the federal upper house. “Reading the newspapers you feel that media personnel think they will be swiftly jailed for writing a critical report about the government. That is not the case.”

The offense has to be first established in a court of law, Adhikari points out. “So far as investigative journalism is concerned, you do it at personal risk. But if the journalist in question is honest and somehow manages to establish the truth in public, then he or she has nothing to fear. Look at what happened with Watergate!”

 A problem with most works of literary fiction is that they tend to revolve around sad­ness more than joy. Authors seem to think that narratives that are tinged with despair rather than hope are what will get them critical acclaim and so they stick to that route. It’s a rare author who is able to perfectly juggle despair and hope and make the story relatable for everyone. Clare Fisher’s debut novel All the Good Things manages to strike that balance. The result is a tale as hope­ful as it is harrowing. Bethany Mitchell, 21, is in prison because she has done a ‘bad’ thing (we don’t find out what it is till the very end of the book). Her coun­selor, Erika, asks her to make a list of all the good things in her life. Beth thinks that is a retarded idea because she won’t be able to think of anything but upon Erika’s insistence she begins to comb through her memories. As you read the story, which is mostly narrated in sec­ond person and addressed to Beth’s child, you get the sense Beth causes sufferings wherever she goes and is thus fundamentally bad. But what is bad? And what circumstances cause a person to be so? The novel explores these questions. 

Beth’s birth mother’s repeated fail­ure to show up for scheduled meet­ings when she is in foster care makes for some heartbreaking memories early in the story. You see how she has been failed by the very people who were supposed to care for her. You understand that the absence of her mother and the love she never got have been responsible for her guilt and lack of self worth. You come to understand and love her, and even find similarities between her thoughts and your own.

As the narrative jumps from Beth’s past to her present, the language draws you into the story. Beth’s stark observations and insights make it easy for you to imagine yourself in her shoes. So much so that by the time you know what Beth has done to land in prison you know so much about her that you are willing to forgive her for her crime, no matter how heinous it may be.

A good book will have that effect on you. It will evoke consideration and empathy. This book tugs at your heartstrings because Fisher has crafted a flawed character that makes you realize that as humans we are capable of making mistakes but it is forgiveness, for yourself and those who have wronged you, that decides the course of your life.

The Polish art exhibi­tion at the Nepal Art Council, Babarmahal offers a novel experience for art lovers. The exhibit fea­tures polish art and includes posters made by the polish painter Lech Majewski. This art exhibition continues till August 30, and the posters can be viewed between 10:30 am and 5:30 pm in the first floor of the building.

“The contrast between the colors, and the abundance of words, are what makes the posters in this exhibi­tion unique,” says Kastuv Tuladhar, a visitor. “There is modern art vibe to these posters but unlike other pieces of modern art, they seem imbued with definite meaning,” says Man Raj Pandey, another visitor. There were similar positive responses from other visitors to the exhibition as well.

The posters span various fields, from a simple one showing a person slipping on a banana peel, to the more complex poster featuring eyes staring in different directions. This is an art exhibition you should not miss.

SHORT STORIES

Men without Women

Haruki Murakami

Published: August 2017

Publisher: Random House UK

Pages : 240 pages (hardcover)

Haruki Murakami, as the master of strangeness and surrealism, might more than occasionally leave us confused by blurring the lines between reality and dreams in his stories. But the seemingly connected tales in this recent collection of short stories, ‘Men Without Women’, Murakami’s first in more than a decade, feel a lot more developed and realistic compared to the surreal stories in Murakami’s 2006 collection ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’. In ‘Men Without Women’, as his characters try to grapple with the fact that they are alone, Murakami, for the first time, doesn’t roman­ticize the concept of being lonely. Instead, the stories are about love, loss, and pain—the very elements that are the driving forces of life. And though it feels un-Murakami like, it’s a refreshing change for those who have had a little too much of the writer’s obsessions with jazz, whiskey drinkers at bars, and van­ishing cats—though there are hints of these in ‘Men Without Women’ too.

Most of the middle-aged men in these seven tales, four of which have been previously published, have lost the women in their lives—to other men or death, and they are thus lonely.

This puts them in a situation Murakami terms ‘Men Without Women’. Though the stories are essentially about men and nar­rated by men, women hold an important place in each of the tales, even though they remain somewhat mysterious.

In the first story, an actor, whose wife has died, hires a young woman driver to take him to the theater and bring him back home. During the commute, he talks about how he was always faithful to his wife, even though she had many lovers. He even confesses that he took to meet­ing one of them at bars to talk about her and somehow get his revenge but, in the end, manages to rise above it.

There is another story where a housewife visits a man at his retire­ment home to bring his groceries and then they have sex, following which she tells him bizarre sto­ries. Then there is an unmarried 50-something plastic surgeon with a long list of girlfriends with whom he enjoys wine, conversation, and sex, ‘a discreet pleasure but never the goal’, until he falls hopelessly in love with one of them.

In yet another story, a man gets a call at one in the morning from the husband of a former girlfriend, whom he has not been in touch with for years, to tell him she has commit­ted suicide.

Studies say loneliness can be lethal. In ‘Men without Women’ it is said to be deep-seated like ‘a red wine stain on a pastel carpet’. And while that might be true, the varied ways in which the characters in the stories deal with it make you realize that, while loneliness is at the crux of our existence and there is no escaping it, we will all eventually find a way to embrace it.

APEX BUREAU : A fitting finale for the online Blackstar Guitar Com­petition was hosted on March 17 at the Shisha Terrace Café and Bar. The event saw both the con­testants and the panel of judges wowing the live audience with their skillful performances.

Organized by Guitar Shop in collaboration with Blackstar Amplifications, the online gui­tar competition had over 100 Nepali guitarists participating with their entry videos posted on Facebook every week. The four-week-long competition then selected a winner each week with the help of the panel of judges: renowned guitarists and instruc­tors Dev Lama, Manoj Kumar KC and Deepak Moktan.

The four winners—Ritesh Tamang, Gaurav Lama, Arun Philharmonic and Manoj Ruchel— received certificates of recogni­tion, as well as guitar accessories and Blackstar ID Core 10 ampli­fier, each, in prizes.

Melamchi project ‘Drinking Water Bina Magar has promised that the water from Melamchi Drinking Water Project will arrive in Kathmandu valley within the next four months.

She said this after visiting Melamchi municipality of the central Nepal district of Sindhupalchowk, the water-source. Since the final leg of the project, tunnel construc­tion, is also nearly complete, she said, there will be no more delays.

The project was started in 2009 and aims to bring 170 million liters of water a day into the parched valley. APEX BUREAU