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An interesting meme about “Lifecycle of a tee-shirt” went viral a couple of years ago across the Indian subcontinent; it was extremely relatable. It showed how in this part of the world a t-shirt is worn on special occasions for some time after its purchase. Then it is worn inside the house, and then, while sleeping. The fourth phase is its use as a replacement for a kitchen towel and finally, it is an integral part of the moping team in the house before it takes the last breath and turns into pieces.

I accept that this is how we have learned to make the best use of the things we have bought; the optimum utility of any given product. I would also like to highlight that this way of lifestyle is not bad at all. Over the last weekend, while having a video call, I saw my SanoAama wearing a sweater that is almost 30-year-old. And I am not kidding because I can recall the year I first saw her wear it, provided that it was the first year she was wearing it.

When I asked her why, the answer was simple and blunt: “Because it is still warm and comfortable, and I keep it clean”. And why should she throw it away? According to research, in 2020, an estimated 18.6 million tons of clothing ended up in landfills. The changing fad has its contribution in filling these landfills. The need to keep up with fashion makes people constantly buy products they hardly use. 

In simple terms, fashion can be defined as a popular and latest style of clothing, hair, accessories, or mannerism. It is a vast spectrum of things but let us narrow it down to clothing and shoes, which are actually basic needs. The Western fashion industry has been hyping sustainable fashion of late. It means the products are designed, manufactured, distributed and used in environmentally friendly ways. But we South Asians have been taught to choke any product to its last breath. 

We proudly accept the lifecycle of the t-shirt, because it is true. Most of the time our purchase is on the basis of our needs (we don’t deny that we all have a good middle-class mentality which helps us decide between need and want). Our color choices don’t go beyond red, blue, gray, and black; these colors camouflage any dirt or stain. Honestly, I am not mocking anyone here. I genuinely think it is a practical approach.

Also read: Opinion | A toot for Tootle 

Where the West is only just starting a thrifting and minimalistic lifestyle, it has long been a part of our culture. Swapping clothes between sisters and friends is nothing new for our community. At least in my circle, the things we are tired of wearing or using, we give to our sisters or cousins. Especially sarees and ethnic wear that we do not wear for more than three-four times—it is rational to give them to someone. It will be new for that person and the life of the dress/shoes will be prolonged. 

Popular thrift stores in the US like Selinsgrove and Goodwill sell used products and use the income generated for philanthropy. I can buy a Ralph Lauren pullover for only $4 in Goodwill, which can be $145 in a store. So what it is second-hand, it is in mint condition and is a beloved women’s brand!

In Nepal, particularly in Kathmandu, most of the new thrift stores are for profit. The in-house culture of swapping and giving away used clothes is now a business model. It can be considered a good initiative for sustainable fashion. Yes, we still look down on the use of second-hand products. Of course, we do have a culture of sharing but it is only inside the family. One thing with thrifting is that you are buying stuff from an unknown user. It is important that the stores properly sterilize them before selling, which is a challenge in Kathmandu with the shortage of water supply. That said, we can still bring them home and wash them before their use.

Why I am saying all this is, sometimes I look at the amount of clothes people purchase and I wonder if they use it. Even I do impulsive buying. And with that, I started practicing one rule, “if it doesn’t fit me for two years, I give it away. If I don’t wear it for three years, I give it away”. I prefer to donate clothes than to give them to someone I know. I offer my friends if they want them. I make sure that if it is unwearable, I would rather make it a mop than donate it. 

This is the smallest thing we can do for the environment. It is okay to wear the same boots for five years until they wear out, it is okay to make the best use of your expensive jacket. This is the real sustainable lifestyle where we are still stylish in our own way and also contribute to saving the environment.

Given the menacing attitude of taxi drivers in Kathmandu, a friend introduced me to Tootle, a two-wheeler ride-sharing application in August 2017. I had had some experience with Uber in the US back in 2014 when a friend of mine told me about this new innovation of using a private car for transport and how it had made life easier in cities where public transport and taxis are scarce. Plus, how it had changed the lives of both the users and the car drivers.

While revisiting the US in 2017, while returning from a party in the wee hours, we booked an Uber and I was talking to the driver. A mother of three kids, she is a stay home mom in the day and does Uber at night, after her husband returns from work. It had not only given her financial independence as well a break from her domestic chores. “It is refreshing to do Uber, I feel fresh to come out of the house. I get paid....and I get to meet new people each time...Worth it!”

With a high impression of Uber, I returned to Nepal in early December 2017. Now, we don't have Uber in Nepal. What next? Then, at that point, “Tootle” tooted in my head. I installed the app and started using it. It surely made commuting easier and affordable for single users like myself. The whole bargaining, pleading, and negotiating with taxi drivers became a thing of the past. Now, I take out my phone, switch on Wi-Fi or 3G, start the app, mark my location, my final destination and the ride will be right outside my doorsteps. 

Also read: Opinion | Dangerous morning walks

In September 2018, another new ride service entered the Nepali market. This time it was Bangladesh-born and bred Pathao service. After “Moving Bangladesh” it was finally in Nepal. Pathao suddenly became very enticing due to its promotional schemes. As its Google Map happened to be friendlier than Tootle’s, booking was easier and more user-friendly. (I had taken two free rides with the schemes.) In those days, I was more frequent with Pathao.

Initially, I thought I would meet the same riders. But to my surprise, it was a new rider every single time (though after frequent use I met a couple of them more than once). I started interacting with the riders and asking how they had started and how much they earned a month by associating with this service. Some of the stories are interesting enough to share. 

Lakpa Lama, 20, just out of high school, was doing full-time Tootle rides to save to go abroad for further studies. His daily expenses were also covered by ride-earning.

Suraj Thakuri Malla, 27, has a three-year-old daughter, does part-time Pathao rides, and saves all his earnings for his daughter to go to a good college. I trickily asked him how much he has made so far and he said in the past four months he had saved about Rs 90,000 from Pathao rides. A full-time worker at a construction office, he is hopeful of sending his daughter to a good college in the US or Australia.

Suresh Tamang is a returned migrant worker who is making a pretty good living working full time on Pathao as well as Tootle. He says he takes rides from both the apps and earns around Rs 45,000-Rs 50,000 very easily. He also shares that getting to stay with his family made whatever he earned in his own country all the more rewarding.

Also read: Opinion | The world ain’t Squid Game 

Sanjay Tamang, a Tootle and Pathao rider, and I had a pretty rigorous discussion recently on our ride from Sanepa to Hattisar while stuck in rush-hour traffic. He told me how there is no insurance for the pillion rider and how bike maintenance needs to be his own if there is damage during the ride. He also lamented lack of extra benefits for the rides after hours (from 8 pm-11 pm). He asked me that if I write anything about this conversation then I should mention that, like the taxis getting one-and-a-half-time fares after 9 PM, these riders should have some extra perks as a motivation for riding in the dark in this freezing winter. (He too has a full-time job and works from 5:30 pm till 11 pm to make that extra income.)

These are a few of the stories of 100,000-plus riders all over Kathmandu valley who are associated with Tootle/Pathao. While lifting lives of all these riders and their families, these services have prevented women from all those incidents of sexual assaults and groping in public vehicles. They have helped youngsters be independent and pay their college fees. The government should either improve public transportation, which, of course, is a better option, or make taxis work in a systematic manner. The other option is to work things out “legally” for such life-easing innovations as Tootle/Pathao.

On the other side, such companies should definitely take customer care and service seriously. They are liable for the safety of the users as well as the riders. Proper training and safety majors should thus be their top priorities. My biggest dread is a rider with racing bikes like Ktm Duke or Pulsar 300 wearing socks on flip-flops.

I am a seasonal fitness freak. Most of my exercise regime starts after the grand celebrations of Dashain and Tihar. The endless marathon of eating and drinking is a nightmare for anyone who lives in this part of the world of dress size. I do make a conscious effort to control the intake but as this time is heaven for foodies like me, a little of this and a little of that is enough to put on some extra pounds after these festivals.

So this year my elder sister and I decided to start early on our fitness agenda. We still believe that the pandemic is not over yet and sharing a covered gym hall with strangers coming from different environments can be catastrophic to our family’s health. So, the option that we agreed on was to go for walks. Since we don’t have precise working hours, we opted to wake up an hour early.

I am a grumpy cat when I work out. I don’t prefer to talk much or interact. Well, you got to understand, speaking itself is an exercise and that also you do on top of walking—it is double exercise and I don't like to exhaust myself. So I observe people; I observe attitudes; I observe stories.

On and off, I have been walking for years. But the kind of people I see hasn’t changed much. For all apparent reasons, it is mostly those who are fluffy (I hate to call them fat or obese). I hardly see any “fit” people running or walking in the mornings. Fit in an athletic and Body Mass Index (BMI) sense. I guess that population is to be found in fitness centers and clubs. A lot of times I hear people say they want to lose some weight and only then move to a gym. The gym environment is extremely competitive and people who are starting or have weight issues feel inferior and out of place. It definitely takes a lot of dedication and endurance for fluffy people to last in the gyms.  

Anyway, when I talk about people I meet during the walks, one important group is those who are in dire need of weight-loss. Mostly, women in their mid-30s to 50s and clusters of two or three walk the same route because a big vegetable market happens to fall on their route back home; or maybe they made their route convenient according to the vegetable/milk market.

The second category is men in the age group of 40-60 in 5-7 member clusters. Mostly living in the same colony or from the same tole, these people walk longer hours and their walks end in a park or a tea stall where the politics of Nepal is dissected every day. 

Also read: Opinion | The world ain’t Squid Game 

The final group consists of what I wish to call “The uncle gang”: men who are my dad’s age (70-80), nicely dressed in branded tracks and sneakers, most likely retired jolly good fellas. As they are retired and spend the whole day at home, coming out in the morning is probably a treat for them. There is one such group we meet almost every day, composed of three-four uncles who are extremely energetic and full of laughter. We often saw them going to a bhatti. One day we decided to observe them and were startled by their early-morning smoking, shots of local aila, followed by milk tea with sugar. 

It might seem normal at first, but to think of it, this is pure naughty of these aged men. I am sure they all are barred from these activities and morning walk is a perfect excuse for them to earn some freedom. The whole time I was watching them, scared if they had a medical condition, that they are restricted from certain habits and lifestyle—how wrong I had been! I wonder if their families know. I understand 15-16-year-olds misbehaving for adrenaline but at 70 it seems pure negligence and stupidity. 

Living on the edge doesn’t mean abusing life. It will be a heart-break if something bad happens to one of them and their family blame it on exercise or a disciplined lifestyle.

That day, I got home and asked my dad if he had done something similar while he was a morning-walk enthusiast. The times! Now we need to maintain surveillance on our parents, what they are eating and doing. Now we need to take up their responsibility. 

“Mugunghwa Kkoci Picot Seuminda… Mugunghhwa Kkoci Picot Seuminda”! 

I was shocked to hear the ‘red light, green light’ Squid Game tune during a post-Dashain family gathering. Must be a caller ringtone on one of my cousins’ phones, I thought.  

I inquired who it was and, to my shock, found out the source—my four-year-old niece Samby! I could not believe she was singing it and asked her to do it again and she sang it with such ease that I got jitters. I asked my cousins if they had let their young kids watch Squid Game or if the little ones were present while the parents watched it. Apparently, these kids learned it from YouTube.

Probably the most talked-about series on Netflix after Breaking Bad, Squid Game was released in September 2021. Netflix calls it the company’s biggest series launch ever, topping 111 million views globally, beating Bridgerton at 89 million. Netflix, which claims 142 million households watched the Korean series, says it has added four million new subscribers post-Squid Game success.

A teenage nephew suggested I watch the series, with a disclaimer that it is extremely violent and disturbing in places. I am not going to lie—I enjoyed it thoroughly. In my defense, I would like to say that I wanted to watch it for all the hype it was creating. After that, I watched Alice in Borderland (Japanese thriller series) and Chestnutman (Danish thriller series), both suggested to me on Twitter. If you have not watched Squid Game and are planning to watch it sometime soon, I would like to give you a spoiler alert. I have tried not to spill much detail though.

In a nutshell, it’s a story of financially broke individuals getting lured into a deadly game by an omnipresent surveillance system controlled by the elites. The villains—capitalists/elites—do character studies, and scope out the potential players whom they come to know inside out, often better than the poor souls themselves. The carrot of millions of dollars in cash is dangled. In this winner-takes-all game, there can be only one winner while hundreds of others die. 

Also read: Playing Squid Game in Nepal

The hard-to-swallow part for a lot of lovers of this series is the critical title it got during the reviews. It is constantly called a “Commentary on Capitalism” by a lot of viewers and critics. Yes, it is an imagined world that is divided into struggling classes willing to kill without remorse and to survive to entertain the faceless elites. It is a story of two economic strata, mainly the lowest rungs who are desperate for money and the richest who are bored with all the money in the world and need that adrenaline rush and thrill through violence. The series presents the richest as out-and-out hedonists—depraved, bored, and cruel, which is a problematic stereotype. 

In the world Squid Game presents, the poor must either stay poor, which is too deterministic because class mobility happens a lot, or they have to kill each other to survive and climb the economic ladder. That is the kind of capitalism Squid Game celebrates and mocks at the same time. It celebrates capitalism by offering the worst possible version of it, while the same is also mocked by the lead character, who stays kind despite his riches.

People might miss that the chap who wins forty billion won (around $33 million) does not use it for a while. Then he starts giving it to others, which again shows the humanity in him, something he never loses throughout the series. 

As someone mentioned on Twitter, it is a sophisticated version of the likes of Battle Royale, Hostel, Hunger Games, The Hunt, and others that initiated this kind of genre, which part of viewers call ‘sick’: The rich run out of ways to have fun and create games where the poor get killed. 

With an impact value of close to $900 million according to a CNBC news report, on an investment of $21.4 million, Netflix has already decided to invest more in Korean Drama after the splendid success of Squid Game. 

In my opinion, this shows the appetite for violence and blood splatter in global movies and series has increased even in us as viewers. Squid Game has methodically structured a new world philosophy, that to survive and be successful you need to betray and even kill. Movies and dramas have a huge impact on people’s thinking and lifestyle. Thus a series like this should come with a strong and visible disclaimer that it is work of fiction and should not be copied or imitated in real life, even if it’s just a children's game from the ‘80s. Let it also prompt some soul-searching among all its ardent views.

Let us face it, talking about menstruation and related issues is still a taboo in South Asia. You invariably get a shocked eye or a raised eyebrow if someone brings it up casually. It is a culture in this part of the world to wrap the sanitary napkin packet in a newspaper or put it inside a dark bag when you purchase it from the medical store. 

When I started my periods, sanitary napkins were hard to get even in Kathmandu. Luckily, my mum used to DIY pads for my sister and me at home with cotton, a sheet of plastic, and a gauge. I have hardly used recycled cloth for my periods and I have never felt so lucky. I have heard dozens of embarrassing stories of my friends and sisters who used cloth pieces during periods and got infections or leakage/staining.

I think it was 1998-99 when some companies started importing the pads from India and that is when I started buying them too. For many years, I bought the packets as if I was transporting something illegal inside a wrapped newspaper or a black plastic bag. With time, I asked them not to wrap the pads in anything as I felt it was as normal as people buying diapers.

More than 20 years have gone by and women and girls in Nepal are still struggling with access to menstrual products. It is not a new thing to read that thousands of Nepali girls still skip school due to periods or lack of sanitation in school. Every year many I/NGOs are working with communities in awareness-raising regarding hygiene and use of menstrual products.

Last week, once again, the whole tax issue on sanitary pads surfaced. They already attract 15 percent customs duty and 13 percent Value Added Tax. Now the news was that an additional 10 percent is to be imposed on the old sum. According to the Inland Revenue Department, Rs 342.31 million was collected on 1.17 billion worth of sanitary napkins imported last year. Whereas the world is working to make these products accessible to each and every girl child and woman for free, our own government is shamelessly increasing the taxes.

Also read: What if… sanitary pads were made free?

Let us do some math. If a girl has her first period at the age of 11 and each year she uses 15 packets of sanitary napkins, considering today’s per packet price of Rs 215, she is spending Rs 3,225 a year. And keeping the price constant for another 35 years (which is not possible but I do it here just for the heck of a general calculation), she will be spending approximately Rs 112,875 only on the pads.

Apart from all these expenses, the inaccessibility of the product, and the stigma regarding periods, in the past couple of years the issue of sanitary pads piling up in landfills and the time they take to decay has also become a matter of concern. To address that, the west has come out with an amazing invention called the menstrual cup: a magical invention that has undoubtedly revolutionized the whole idea of having periods and handling them. The price of a silicon cup, just a touch bigger than the size of an espresso shot glass, ranges from $10 to $45-50 and it has a 10-year recycling life. 

Personally, I have been using the cup for over four years and have been recommending it to my friends. I started using one while I was struggling to recover not only from my endometriosis cyst surgery but also from the tampering that my body had to go through due to the surgeon’s negligence. (That is another story that can separately fill a whole page.) My periods were pretty heavy and I was not confident enough to go out using a napkin because I thought I would stain. 

The menstrual cup did give me confidence, and it is easy maintenance in the western world where you have access to clean drinking water even from your taps. Here in Nepal, we are still fighting for a separate washroom and clean sanitation, forget clean water to wash your cup every time you dump blood and reuse it. So, ultimately, the menstrual cup can be considered a luxury item that is only useful for women who can afford to buy mineral water every time when she is out and can thus wash her cup for reuse.

So, at the end of the day, the incompetent government should open its eyes to consider rebating the taxes, even if it cannot make the sanitary pads completely tax-free. Women and girls (who are going to be your future vote banks) are half the population and their basic needs should be taken seriously.

They are already cursed to be born with a vagina in this part of the world and the government is not making it any easier. 

In my last column, I had talked about how we impose on grieving families “the right way” to grieve or to do the final rituals at the ghat or a funeral place. Though I concluded by saying that sometimes silence and space are all we can give to people/family who have lost their loved ones, there are still a few things to consider post-cremation or entombment.

Every religion has its own books on how many days the family should grieve. Hindus have 13 days of mourning plus one year of different pujas that need to be done. Nowadays, families are becoming more and more progressive and rational and are trying to finish the pujas within the 13 days. It is an individual choice and decision of the family and relatives. The 13 days is the time people visit the mourning family and express their condolences. It has become a regular practice in Hindu culture.

A couple of years ago, I was shocked when someone asked me not to eat at the mourning family’s house. Since then I have noticed that a lot of people actually don’t eat at these places. Forget eating, they don’t even drink water. Maybe some religious theory, some enlightened being must have chanted and is followed from generation to generation. I asked a lot of people why they don’t eat or drink at these houses and the only close to convincing explanation was: Back in the days people died from epidemics or some communicable disease, the doubt was that the family house might be contaminated. So this might be the only practical way to stop the disease from spreading. As people would do anything if told from a religious point of view, this was induced in the rituals and religious practice.

A couple of years ago, my best friend’s grand-mom passed away. At that time her father was in a reputed government position, so a lot of people visited her place to give their condolences. As per the Nepali culture, you must take a lot of fruits while visiting the family because apparently for the mourning 13 days you must eat satvik khana and fill yourself with fruits. In this case too, the family distributed those fruits to orphanages and old homes and still, there were baskets full of rotten fruits every second day we were throwing away. Again these fruits had entered the family house and were “untouchable” and so could not be given away to extended family and friends. Two rooms were filled with fruits and for the next six months, the family did not even take one bite of any. 

That time I promised myself I will take anything but fruits to a grieving family. After years of trial and error, I have come up with my own condolence visit pack. It consists of a small bottle of ghee (as everything is cooked in that for the 13 days and so it will be properly used), a packet of sugar which won’t spoil for couple of months, teabags, and incense sticks as they will be used every day for next one year. If I am close to the family, I take a bit of grocery too. 

One appreciable practice I have noticed in India is friends collecting cash and giving it to the deceased family. We all know hospital bills are unbelievably expensive, funerals are costly and if you are Hindu, the 13 days of rituals will only add to the burden. Probably this is a little we can do to ease the family’s financial burden.

I have noticed we have our own ways of grieving. Personally, I like to be alone while I am mourning. I am not a religious person so my prayers consist of wishing for peace and nirvana for the departed soul. But my family and extended families prefer to pray in mass with religious chanting and bringing in religious gurus. As we have different temperaments even with grieving, frankly I don’t like people coming and lamenting at my loss. I want them to behave normally. I wish to cherish the memories I have with the deceased person rather than feel sad over the loss. Maybe this is my way of handling my loss. And I do request my family and friends not to go to a mourning family and keep reminding them about the beloved person. I am not indicating that you should holler at the awkward situation but at least we can have a regular conversation instead of crying and making it worse for the family. 

Grieving is a process and we should let the family take their time. In the end there is no other choice than acceptance. 

In Buddhist philosophy, it is constantly reminded that “Life is uncertain, but death is”. To remind myself that I am mortal and will perish one day, I go to funerals. This might sound off-putting to some but every time I am at the ghat or any other funeral home, it just reminds me how fragile life is, that one day we are full of anger and ego and the next day we are gone.

Last week, I attended the funeral of a close friend’s dad. Since 2020 January, every time someone is admitted to hospital, we ask if it is covid. For some reason, we find solace when it is not. It is the trauma we all are suffering due to the pandemic. My friend had this weird satisfaction that his father died of a regular pneumonia and not of covid, as the family would now be able to do the final rituals personally.

A loss is a loss and no one but the family can feel it. We might feel similar emotions but the absence of that one particular person in their lives is forever irreplaceable. Sometimes the suffering during the last days are prolonged, giving the family time to cope. But a lot of times, it just comes as a shock. Such losses take more time to heal.

And each time I go to the ghat for a funeral, the demised person is different but I see few similar characters. I believe these items exist in every family, this set of few people who have to guide the family with the rituals. They keep pestering with the do’s and the don’ts. They somehow make the family believe that if they do not do the right thing—that is according to the “guru” or the way the rituals are traditionally done—the deceased will not find their way to nirvana.

It makes me question, what is the right way? I understand there are family rituals that need to be followed. I say family rituals as I have seen them done differently, from family to family, even if they come from the same religion. So again, what is the right way?

Here, I wish to give an example of my own family. I appreciate the presence of a particular uncle, who probably has not missed any of the family funerals until now. He is always there and I respect his dedication. That said, somehow he expects the funeral to run according to him. He keeps on breathing down the neck of the family, especially the son who is doing the rituals. Think of it, he has lost his father or mother, he is traumatized, he is grieving, he has so many things already going in his head due to the loss—and there is this immense pressure to do the rituals right.

That makes me think, maybe hundreds of years ago someone rebelled and did not listen, which changed some rituals in the family. That is why even when we are from the same religion, some of our rituals are different. Maybe it is time we should let the core family decide how they want to do the final rites. Perhaps we can just stand quietly in the corner and make them feel the support and not talk at all. Silence is a response and support at the same time.

Psychologically, many have this notion that the final rituals need to be done properly or else the soul will not find its way and those like this uncle gather a few more like-minded people just to make it worse for the grieving family. I think we should let the family do things the way they wish to do. There is no right or wrong way, as they already have lost a big chunk of their lives. Giving them a little peace and space is what we need to do.

Another thing that pinches me a lot is the language we use. When we are alive, we are called by names. But once we are dead we suddenly become las, a dead body. The term people insensitively use. “Who is bringing the las?”, “Can someone cover the las with abir?” Maybe I am too sensitive but it is high time we curated another way of speaking at these places. The deceased still has a name and the named soul lived in that body until today.

Funerals are already an awkward place, always under confused clouds. Even when we feel we are part of the family, it is important not to burden the family with our opinions. Our presence is enough for them to understand we are there, our priceless opinions can wait.

I can bet this is a typical family gathering scenario in Nepal: the men of the family on one side, drinking and debating why the current prime minister is a total failure. And then, there are women on the other side, discussing the children, their schools, the difficulty of budgeting and how the new helper is better than the previous one. I should definitely mention the kids—you will not be in the men’s or the women’s discussion group until you are married. Even if you are 30 and unmarried, you are still considered a kid in the family—who are either on their phones complaining to their friends why they did not want to be a part of this gathering because it is boring, or they will be busy making #cousinunite Tiktok.

Maybe I am stereotyping. But I have been part of these bewildering gatherings for years and one conversation never gets old. I know you all must be thinking, the ever loved and haunting “When are you getting married?” but no. Here I discuss the love for the discussion of health issues.

When I mention health issues, they do not, in closest proximity, include mental health. When it is family, we discuss only diabetes, blood pressure, thyroids, arthritis, gastritis (our national disease) and migraine, to name a few. There will be one uncle or aunty who is the yellow page for doctors. They will instantly recommend you to a doctor who will run a wand around you and fix everything. The same person will also be an expert at suggesting medicines and alternative hacks to deal with your health problems.

We take our health for granted until the issue is so severe that we might have to live with it for the rest of our lives or to go under the scissors. In both cases we are jeopardizing our future. Similarly, we do not have a culture of seeking help from an expert or having a mentor.

Mentor is a person who is specialized in a subject, and guides and motivates you in professional and personal life. A life coach or a wellness coach can also be a mentor for your personal growth. In recent days, the culture of seeking such expertized services is growing. While life coaches motivate you to keep your personal life running, professional mentors are also necessary for smooth and healthy career growth. In simple Nepali terminology, they are called Guru.

In my humble opinion, there is a slight difference between a teacher and a mentor, even though they are interconnected. A teacher is a person who will help you acquire knowledge whereas a mentor will guide you to use and incorporate that knowledge into practice. A mentor will not exactly teach you but s/he will keep you on your toes to use the knowledge.

When you have a stomach ache, you are advised to go to a gastroenterologist and not the expert uncle who might give you a random medicine and screw it up more. Similarly, it is a smart approach to find a mentor from the same field of work as yours and keep questioning and learning. Finding a mentor is not easy. A lot of times people might not even give you the attention and time that you need. It is extremely important to approach people with a clear intent and communication. You might work in the same firm, you might work for him/her, or it could be totally independent.

Another important criteria while choosing a mentor is that they have to be an expert in the field where you seek help. You cannot go to a clinker brick maker to learn how to stitch a pair of shoes. For that you need a cobbler. Having said that we need to find a mentor, there will be a time when you have to look for a replacement. There is always a limit on how much one person can share knowledge and mentor someone. In time, the gurus can change, with the changing needs of the disciples. And it is absolutely fine to keep moving.

If you ask me, my mother is my first teacher and mentor who still holds a major credit for the person I am today. I guess it is so for each one of us. Beside my mother, luckily, I found a life coach in my early 20s who has helped me with my outlook and approach to life. Even after two decades of pestering him, I still give him my social audits once in a while to get validation.

For my professional mentorship, each person who is from my field of work is my mentor. I learn as well as unlearn from their actions.