“I don’t think there is any Nepali interested in danc­ing who has not heard of The Cartoonz Crew. I have been following them since 2015,” says Pooja Khati, 24, who has tried to emulate the moves of the Cartoonz Crew on many songs. Countless Nepalis have danced to the beats of The Cartoonz Crew since their rise in 2016 when they published their dance video to “Funtastic”.

Their fan base is not limited to Nepal. They have fans in many countries like Syria, Sri Lanka, India and Myanmar. Their dance to “Funtastic” has 39.58 million views on YouTube. Writes Htet Aung Hlawn from Myanmar in its comment section: “I heard this song while I was traveling in Nepal 3 years ago and since then it’s my top favorite song!! Love from Myanmar!” Another Syrian fan writes, “Love you guys from Syr­ia. I wish I could understand the meaning but I am totally happy… Awesome dancing.”

In their popular YouTube chan­nel with 1.56 million subscribers, they have uploaded many dance videos. The crew charged around Rs 300,000 to produce a music video and upload it to their chan­nel. If the singer wants to upload from their channel, the charge is around Rs 400,000.

But this dance group is not without controversies. Accord­ing to Saroj Adhikari, he founded the dance group in 2009. Ram Gurung, Lakpa Lama, Aashma Biswokarma, Sajan Adhikari, Subin Chauhan and Sabin Karki joined later. The biggest con­troversy arose when Sabin who joined and led the group since 2012 left in 2017. Under his leadership, the group released many popular music videos and it was in this time that it started getting noticed.

Using “Sabin Karki-Beest” chan­nel, Sabin now uploads his own funny and dance videos. His first dance video since the split, “Viral Bhaidiyo”, published in Novem­ber 2017, has 31.71 million views on YouTube. Numerous dance crews such as “Dynamite Produc­tion Nepal”, “Shining Dance Gang­sters” and “Chow Dance Crew” have since released dance covers to the popular song.

The Cartoonz Crew, with the rest of the members, then went on to produce dance videos which they uploaded via their YouTube channel. But this month, four of them—Ram Gurung, Lak­pa Lama, Sajan Adhikari, and Subin Chauhan—released a vid­eo about why they left the Car­toonz Crew. In this video, they speak about how there was no transparency over money, how they felt like back-dancers, and how they were discouraged from certain projects while the two other members, Saroj and Aash­ma, did what they liked while controlling money and contacts. They alleged that even though they had pointed out these issues to the two, their complaints had fallen on deaf ears.

This sparked a social media debate over Saroj’s leadership as well as over the group’s future. Following this controversy, APEX spoke to the four crew members who left the group recently. Sub­in Chauhan says that they had invested so much of their time, money and energy in the Cartoonz Crew, but now have to start every­thing over again. The four crew members said they did not want to leave the group after years of working together but that they had no option when they were given no chance to grow.

They said they were tired of dancing behind Saroj and Aash­ma; all of them should have got­ten equal exposure and oppor­tunity to shine in the videos. The four are currently working on a new dance video, where they say they will explore their own cre­ativity. The video will be released within a month through their new venture ‘Team Cartoon Crew Dance Academy’.

Ram Gurung says, “Even though we have been in this industry for so long, we are kind of starting from the bottom. This is a new studio and a new beginning for the four of us. We are excited and a little nervous too about how the video will turn out.” He adds that the group will also help new talents shine.

APEX also reached out to Sabin Karki, who wishes the four ex-members best of luck. When asked about the future of the past and present members of The Cartoonz Crew, he says he has seen the best of the best fail and not-so-talented people succeed, and he can’t say who can flourish in the industry. But he believes that “if you can do it once, you can do it twice.”

“I just wish Crew members can move on from this and learn from their mistakes. In the long run, your work will speak for you,” says Sabin.

APEX also tried to reach Saroj and Aashma, the only two crew members left in the group, for their comments, but our repeated attempts at contact failed.

Making 2020 resolutions already? Some popular New Year resolutions are to read more books, eat health­ier, spend less money, and to exercise more. Accord­ing to a 2016 study pub­lished in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 55 percent New Year reso­lutions are health-related. But then, how many of us can stick to these resolutions for any amount of time? Around 80 percent of New Year resolutions are broken, according to another study. One of the most frequently broken ones? To quit smoking.

“I want to give up smoking com­pletely in 2020,” says Aakash Khatri, 24, who has been smoking regularly since 2013. He has tried quitting several times. But as almost all his close friends smoke, it is difficult to opt out. “I don’t want to refuse a cigarette when a friend passes me one,” Khatri says. And whenever he is under pressure, the first thing he thinks about is lighting up.

No wonder. A 2016 study in the UK found that quitting smoking is “the most difficult resolution to keep”. Of those who resolved to quit, only four percent were completely off cigarettes a year later.

But when Khatri developed ulcer­ative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease, in January this year, he slowly started cutting down on his daily cigarette consumption. He started new work and says it took his mind off smoking. Yet he still smokes with friends. “Per­haps 2020 will be the year I quit for good,” he hopes.

Another smoker, Salina Shakya, 30, has also thought of quitting “hun­dreds of times” since 2009 when she started. But she could not go even a day without it. Shakya even bought a vape to help her quit but it was of no help. “Perhaps because my vape didn’t have nicotine,” she muses. Shakya currently has at least six cigarettes a day. “Quitting is diffi­cult but not impossible. Maybe I am not trying hard enough,” she says.

Smoking Facts

• Leads to disease and disability and harms nearly every organ of the body.
• For every person who dies because of smoking, at least 30 people live with a serious smoking-related illness.
• Smoking causes cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseas­es, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary dis­ease (COPD), which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
• Smoking also increases risk for tuberculosis, certain eye diseases, and problems of the immune system, includ­ing rheumatoid arthritis.
• Smoking is a known cause of erectile dysfunction in males.
• Worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 7 million deaths per year.
• On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than non­smokers.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

What happens when you quit smoking?

• Just 12 hours without a cigarette, the carbon monoxide level returns to normal, increas­ing the body’s oxygen levels.
• One day after quitting smok­ing, a person’s blood pressure begins to drop, decreasing the risk of heart disease from smoking-induced high blood pressure.
• Two days after quit­ting, a person may notice a heightened sense of smell and more vivid tastes as nerves endings heal.
• Around three days after quitting, most peo­ple will experience moodiness and irritability, severe head­aches, and cravings as the body readjusts to depleted nicotine levels.
• After a month, athletic endur­ance increases and former smokers may notice a renewed ability for cardiovascular activities, such as running and jumping.
• One year after quitting smok­ing, a person’s risk for coronary heart disease decreases by half.
• After 10 years, a person’s chances of developing lung cancer and dying from it are roughly cut in half compared with someone who continues to smoke. The likelihood of developing mouth, throat, or pancreatic cancer will be signifi­cantly reduced.
• After 15 years of having quit smoking, the likelihood of develop­ing coronary heart disease and pancreatic cancer is the equivalent of a non-smoker.
• After 20 years, the risk of death from smoking-related causes, including both lung disease and cancer, drops to the level of a person who has never smoked in their life.

Source: Medical News Toda

Distant death

Smoking is among the top three preventable causes of death around the world—a fact most smokers are aware of. Yet most of them still feel helpless.

Archana Bibhor, a psychothera­pist, says there is a psychological reason why people cannot give up smoking. Some are unable to deal with their pain, problems or their emotions and try to find an easy way out, adds Bibhor. Cigarettes are readily available and their negative effects cannot be seen right away. “Slowly, they become dependent,” Bibhor says.

When people give up smoking, they often have to deal with the pain they had been avoiding, says Bibhor. “Unable to deal with the problem, they relapse. And the cycle contin­ues,” she adds.

Those who have emotional bag­gage, have been through trauma, have unstable relationships or careers are more likely to relapse than those who have healthy rela­tionships and feel like they have more control over their lives. “Dif­ferent folks perceive problems differently. Even a small problem can feel like a big deal to some, or vice-versa,” says Bibhor.

For Sabin Pradhan, 25, smoking is a “stress-buster”. He has tried to (unsuccessfully) quit smoking 10 times. In 2013, he used to smoke more than a pack of cigarettes a day. “If I don’t smoke, I get irritated and cranky,” he says. “As my close friends smoke it is hard for me to give up.” Both at the start of 2017 and 2018, his New Year resolution was to quit smoking. Asked if his 2020 resolution is again going to be the same, he says he will never again tell anyone out loud he wants to quit smoking. “I will do it without making a fuss.”

Pradhan wanted to give up smok­ing because he was losing stamina and felt like an “old man”. Some think smoking is cool but once you are hooked, it is hard to give up, he says. “To give up smoking, it is important to have something to distract yourself with or to keep you busy.”

Bibhor, the psychotherapist, stresses that factors such as finance, health, relationship and career also matter when a person tries to quit. Many of her clients promise to quit smoking from New Year, birthday or a particular occasion. Yet they are often unwilling to make the effort. “They just feel like the problem will solve itself,” she says. “Unfortunately, there is no easy way out.”

‘Just do it’

In her long experience Bibhor has found that people who want­ed to give up smoking and started making an effort to stop immediate­ly have been more successful. “You do not have to wait for New Year,” she says.

Take Nikhil Tuladhar, 42, a chron­ic smoker who has not had a ciga­rette in the past 11 years. Tuladhar started smoking when he was just 17 and used to smoke as many as 30 cigarettes a day. “In the 14 years that I smoked, I never thought of quitting even once, until one day,” says Tuladhar, a musician and music teacher. He was at a concert and found himself huffing and puffing from a mix of cold and dust—and all those cigarettes, he reckoned. That day, he decided he would quit. For a week, even when he was at work, the only thing on his mind was a cigarette. But when a week passed, he felt like he could do it.

“I did not realize the negative impact smoking was having on my health,” says Tuladhar. He shares that once he quit smoking, “it was easier to breathe”. His stami­na increased and he had fewer stomach upsets. He says that if he had tried to slowly cut down on cigarettes, he might still be smoking today. “If you want to quit, just do it,” he advises.

Arju Lohani had not had a chance to celebrate a festival with her brother for eight years. But when in 2017 her broth­er, based in the US, finally visited her in Kathmandu, he ensured that he made up for lost time.“I was so surprised. In an apart­ment that had been booked, each room had been set up to celebrate a unique festival,” Lohani recalls. Her family celebrated Dashain in one room, putting tika, surround­ed by kites. In another, they cel­ebrated Tihar with the room lit with diyo. In yet another room, she tied rakhi on her brother’s arm. In the fourth room, she celebrated her birthday. “It felt like I had not missed any special occasion with him in all those years,” she says.

“Offering Happiness” had planned this surprise with her brother. They had even contacted her friends abroad so that she got video messages from those afar. Lohani was so happy with their service that she later threw sep­arate birthday surprises for her cousin and a friend via Offering Happiness. “Their good point is that they take feedback and stay in touch,” she says.

Giving clients these tailor-made experiences is the unique selling point of Offering Happiness. Estab­lished three years ago, they have already had 10,000 customers, and the number is growing by at least five a day. A group of college friends started working on the idea at the end of 2016. Initially opened as a surprise gift delivery company, they have now evolved into cura­tors of truly memorable moments. Their customers are mainly expats and working professionals who are too busy to plan and execute a surprise.

One such customers is Dibyesh Giri who first took their services on Mother’s Day in 2017. He had been traveling for work and had forgot­ten that Mother’s Day fell on one of those travel days. At around 4 pm, when he opened Facebook, he saw Mother’s Day posts from his friends and contacted Offering Happiness immediately. The company sug­gested what he could gift his moth­er. By 9 pm, he had received a call from his mother thanking him for the surprise. “If I had not come across them, I would have had to call my friends, who might have been busy themselves,” he says.

Giri also planned a surprise for politician Gagan Thapa by coordi­nating with his wife Dr Anjana KC Thapa. “Thankfully, I was planning the surprise with ‘Offering Happi­ness’. While researching Gagan’s birthday, they found that Anjana’s birthday falls on the same day,” he says. So, they came up with a gift for the couple. “The whole process was completely has­sle-free,” says Giri.

Another happy customer is Dee­pa Pradhan who surprised her hus­band Pranav Hora on Father’s Day this year. “Our baby had not even turned one so I was too busy to plan a surprise on Father’s Day. Pranav loves children and this was the first time he would be celebrat­ing Father’s Day, as a father,” says Pradhan. But she had no time to even step out of the house. It was then that she came across an ad of Offering Happiness on Facebook, and with just a simple bank trans­fer, the surprise for her husband was ready. Yet there was still some last-minute hassle.

“I had ordered a cake for the day but then the order somehow got cancelled. I came to know that only on the big day,” Pradhan recalls. She then called Offering Happiness and by 4 pm, a cake and a small gift had also arrived. “They are people who care and ensure that the surprise goes down well,” she says. A hanging gallery was read­ied, decorations completed and a cake arrived without her having to do anything. “My husband and family were so happy. Even though I had to spend some money for the experience, my family’s reaction and that day’s memories are really priceless,” she says.

One of the big challenges for Offering Happiness is coming up with new and creative ideas for surprises every day, says Niraj Kafle, one of the company’s two co-founders. Geography is another challenge, he says. For now, you can only get their services within Kathmandu valley.

They have an interesting story about how they first experimented with ideas. Santosh Pandey, anoth­er co-founder, explains that in Feb­ruary 2017, one of their friend’s girlfriend was coming to Nepal after three years, for a month. So they planned a surprise for her each day of her stay in Nepal. “We loved executing the surprises,” says Paudel. Soon, word spread about their surprise and they real­ized people liked these experiences more than gifts. Now, you can find a wide range of experiences to buy on their website. They also custom­ize these experiences by personally speaking with their clients.

For most experiences, they have built-in systems and all they do is the final quality check. Even in their busiest month of February, when they get around 100 orders a day on Valentine’s week, they still send someone to ensure every­thing goes smoothly on each order.

Offering Happiness has thus far partnered with 40 restaurants, 50 balloon vendors, and numer­ous gift-making companies. Paudel reveals that their enterprise creates business for 100 people a month.

With Christmas on the way, they are excited about a new plan. Last year, they sent “Happiness San­ta” to many homes and children loved it. This year, they will try “Secret Santa”.

Fancy a surprise-bearing-San­ta for your loved ones this Christmas?

Different kinds of advertisements are used to convey different kinds of messages. We are all familiar with social media ads, print advertisements, verbal promotions through radio or podcast, event marketing, even email marketing. But have you come across projection mapping as a means of advertisement in Nepal?

Even though Emazing, an event management company, has been doing it since 2012, it is still a new concept in Nepal. Kumud Singh, its director, says though they started out as a projection mapping and graphics content designing company, they have moved on to event management. “Sustaining the business solely on mapping was hard,” he says.

But what is projection mapping? It is a projection technique used to turn different objects into display surfaces for video projection. Among Emazing’s notable projects are those for Nepal Telecom (NTC), when they digitally mapped the NTC building at Sundhara during Tihar and NTC’s anniversary in 2017 and 2018. Emazing has also done digital mapping in Ghantaghar for the World Refugee Day and for World Health Organization. For the last Refugee Day, they digitally mapped the Gaddi Baithak in the Kathmandu Durbar Square.

They currently do projection mapping at corporate events and conferences on both flat and curved screens, twice or thrice a month on average.

As mapping is expensive and time consuming, adds Singh, Emazing does not have many competitors. “Few do it out of interest. And as there is painstaking technical work involved, it is not easy to pull off professionally as well,” he says.

The process of drawing up a projection map takes two months. Usually Emazing does not get projects they have to complete in under two weeks. Even pre-production takes a long time but most people do not understand that, says Singh. “Besides the herculean technical work there is also a lot of paperwork, authorization and logistical work involved,” he adds.

Projection mapping is also costly. Good projectors capable of pulling it off cost around Rs 30 million apiece. And more than one projector is often needed. Currently, Emazing makes do with 10,000-lumens projectors that cost around a million rupees each; and they have used up to five of these on a project. Each projector also has an individual lens, each of which costs another million rupees.

Singh says the company is unable to import the latest (and more expensive) technology as it would be currently unviable in Nepal.

Till date, Emazing has done projection mapping in Kathmandu, Butwal, Pokhara, Dhangadhi, Biratnagar and Birgunj. Normally, the content is three-minute-long and shown from 6 pm to 10 pm at a particular location, for up to three days. 

The average per day charge of the ‘show’ is Rs 400,000. But costs can vary based on logistics, projection content, size of the projection, time required, and set-up cost. “The projects will be more viable if we can do shows that are up to a week long and can reach a wider audience,” Singh reckons.

Singh and Rajan Maskey lead a team of 10 including coordinators, architects, engineers, animators, and designers at Emazing. If a big project comes along, new members are added to the team.

Emazing experiments a lot with new techniques in marketing. They also work on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Singh says that in 2017 the team designed a VR experience for Civil Homes. Instead of visiting actual homes, this allowed prospective clients to take a 3-D tour of the building. “We have been slow to invest in these technologies, perhaps because it is still a new concept in Nepal” Singh suggests.

The next thing Emazing wants to try is projection mapping in water. They are considering collaborating with the government and doing it near Fewa Lake in Pokhara. “If we can pull this off, businesses around the lake are sure to grow,” Singh confidently concludes.

When she started painting on a computer back in 2002, Jaya Sharma did not even know what she was doing was called. She had taken up ‘digital painting’ only because she was depressed. In 2009 Sharma would go on to be the first Nepali artist to put up a solo exhibit of digital paintings. 

Always interested in painting, Sharma had been enrolled for Bachelor’s in Fine Arts degree at Lalitkala Campus. Right before her final exam in 1999, the famous journalist and director Subrat Acharya asked her hand in marriage. “I still remember we had our engagement on the day of my final exam,” she says. 

Her final exam was from 1 pm to 4 pm. But her engagement was then scheduled for 2 pm. She decided to give her exam next year. But when she approached her professor Seema Shah with the problem, the teacher said that she could take the exam at 10 am and then get engaged on the same day. “As a woman, you have to find a balance between your family and career,” said Shah, something that has stuck with Sharma all these years. 

Sharma’s life changed after she got married. “People say artists think freely. But I don’t think that is necessarily true. Whenever I tried spreading my wings, I felt like there was no space,” says Sharma. 

When she moved into her in-laws’ place, she found no proper place where she could mix her colors and paint. “Even though I could not paint anymore, I treasured my color boxes. But when I looked through them, I found that all the colors had been thrown away and replaced with stitching materials,” she recalls. Sharma started slipping into depression. 

Her husband who worked in the entertainment industry would be home only from 1 am to 6 am. She did not want to bother his busy hubby with what she was going through. But when she went into a depression, he realized that he needed to give her more time. 

They had a son in 2001, and by 2002 Sharma had decided to turn her life around. 

She remembered being captivated by the “Paint” icon on computer painting tools. If she could not paint on real canvas, couldn’t she do so on a digital one? But for that Sharma first needed her own computer, and she did not want to ask anyone for money. She sold her jewelry. A tola of gold at the time cost Rs 15,000, and she sold some Rs 100,000 worth of it. “Till now, whenever the price of gold goes up, my family members scold me for selling that gold,” says Sharma. But she has no regrets. 

With the help of her new computer, she first started making greeting cards and turning photos into artwork. Six years after that, one day, her friend Kapil Mani Dixit saw her works and informed her that what she had been doing all these years was called digital painting. He liked her works so much he wanted to showcase them during the 2009 opening of his art studio ‘Apt #8’. There has since been no turning back for Sharma. 

Her husband then encouraged her to try making album covers. Her first commissioned work was an album cover for Narad Khatiwada’s ‘Bidhyanaas’. Then she started getting work from others. She designed a cover for MaHa jodi’s “Dashain” and also a comic book for WWF. “But I soon realized I did not want to work on other’s ideas. I wanted to create a fantasy world of my own,” Sharma says. 

She is now a surrealist painter, “who follows dreams and gets inspired by real objects to create a fantasy world.” Till date she has had two solo and nine group exhibitions of her digital artwork and a total of 53 exhibitions altogether. 

Sharma went back to Lalitkala Campus in 2017 to finish her Master’s degree. She was excited to study with younger people as she could learn from the new generation. But things didn’t go as planned, and she was disappointed to realize that “most people now do not search for inspiration within themselves but more on Google.” She got into fights over copyright with her classmates who copied other artists. 

She says it is easy to cheat and copy other’s works in this digital age: “But if you are dishonest with your work, you will have to pay for it sooner or later.”  

Currently busy preparing for exhibitions in India, Sharma accepts that she has come a long way. “But that doesn’t mean you stop learning.” 
 

You see many souvenir shops in Thamel and Basantapur. An interesting item they sell is masks. In Thamel, you can find Bhimeswor Mask Shop. Paul Wilkinson, a man in his 50s, is a regular customer here. He inspects the various masks on display and buys the ones he likes.

Wilkinson, who is from the UK, has been dealing with masks for the past 20 years. He is a collector as well as a trader of masks, which he says has two main markets—tribal art and practitioner. He sells masks that he buys, mostly from Nepal and Indonesia, to Western shamans. Wilkinson says the masks, which are usually passed down generations, have a certain kind of energy. 

“If you can read the energy, you get information from it, just like reading a book,” he says. Wilkinson has been practicing meditation for the past 30 years and says he has learnt to be sensitive to energy. He says 99 percent of the masks on the market are not as old as the shop owners claim them to be. “You also need to see if they ‘feel’ right,” he says. 

Most shop owners that APEX talked to said customers generally want masks that look old. They further said there are certain techniques to give new masks an antique look.  

Most masks in Prakash Ratna Shakya’s Tibetan Mask Store in Basantapur look antique. “Customers mostly like buying antique-looking masks so even when new masks arrive, I apply a liquid which, when it dries, makes the masks look old in two or three days,” says Shakya. He says he makes the liquid himself using some chemicals. Maybe people think the masks that do not look antique are ‘artificial’, says Shakya, who has experienced a lower sale of masks that do not have an antique look.

Hari Bista, the owner of Bhimeswor Mask Shop, agrees. “People generally like buying antique masks, so the makers give them an old look by applying some black powder or by exposing them to smoke,” says Bista.  

Binod Khanal, the owner of Antique Gallery in Thamel, says the government rule prohibiting the sale of masks older than 100 years has adversely affected the industry. The shop, which opened 45 years ago, sells antique jewelry, masks and utensils. Khanal says masks were the highest selling item 20 years ago, but tourists no longer buy many of them from his shop.

Currently, Antique Gallery has masks that are around 40 years old and these cost between Rs 7,000 to Rs 10,000. Earlier, it had antique masks that cost as much as Rs 200,000. Bista says his store has witnessed a 75 percent decline in the mask business over the last 15 years.  

Wilkinson says his customers generally use masks as a decorative or contemplative object or to ‘embody a particular spirit’. There are masks of certain Hindu gods and demons that dancers wear during the celebration of some festivals. “Sometimes, the wearers get possessed by the character and go into a trance,” says Wilkinson. 

Bimala Deuja, who has been running Prativa Wooden Handicrafts in Thamel for the past 12 years, says customers mostly buy masks because they consider them ‘good luck’. But some people also buy them for decorative purposes. Masks at Prativa Wooden Handicrafts cost anywhere from Rs 800 to Rs 50,000. 

Shakya of Tibetan Mask Store says mostly it is the restaurateurs who want to showcase masks in their restaurants or people looking for gifts who visit his shop in Basantapur. His store sells masks of Kali, Ganesh, Bhairab, Shiva, Garud, Tara and Lakhe, among others. “As far as I understand, my customers see masks just as decorative pieces,” says Shakya.

When APEX ran a story on menstrual cups last year, we found most of our readers hadn’t even heard about the little silicone bulbous objects that are inserted into the vagina to collect menstrual blood. There were only a handful of users. And it was pretty difficult to find stores selling them. But these ‘life-savers’ for working women have found many takers of late. Shristi Shakya, executive assistant at Putali Nepal that sells these cups, says in the past one year “both sales and awareness have increased.”

Most women who have started using menstrual cups seem pleased with the result. Compared with sanitary pads, menstrual cups are more comfortable, portable, odor-free and environmentally-friendly, they said. Devashree Niraula, 24, who started using menstrual cups this April, can now sleep better during her periods. Earlier, she used to wake up with uncomfortable leakages every few hours. Niraula “highly recommends” menstrual cups.

These cups are available at various prices. PeeSafe has been selling them at Rs 799 apiece, which makes it among the cheapest in Nepal. According to PeeSafe importer Rajat Sarawgi, these India-made products are cheap “despite being made of 100 percent medical grade silicone and manufactured in a germ-free facility”. There are more expensive versions available too. The UK-made PeeSafe sells for Rs 2,500 apiece. At first blush the prices might seem a touch high. Yet in the long run these reusable cups that last up to five years are cheaper than pads.

Not everyone is sold on them though. Dr Aruna Upreti, a reproductive health expert, is uncomfortable with the idea of women inserting foreign objects into their body. “Using menstrual cups incorrectly may even lead to infertility,” she cautions. And she doubts rural women who are ill-informed about reproductive health will be able to use them effectively and hygienically.

But can’t sanitary pads also cause problems if used incorrectly, menstrual cup backers retort?
It bears keeping in mind that although menstrual cups are still relatively new in Nepal, Leona Chalmers, an American actress, invented them way back in the 1930s. They have as such been “extensively researched” and if you follow proper guidelines there is nothing to fear, says Shakya of Putali Nepal.

Both Shakya and Niraula suggest that before using the cups, it is better to visit a store, inspect the cups, and find one that is right for you. This is a long-term investment. Take your time, they add, but make the best pick.
 

Why urban women are taking to menstrual cups

Shristi Shakya, who has been using menstrual cups since 2015, says Dr Aruna Upreti’s concern about the risks
 of improper usage is valid. But she argues any sanitary product can cause problems if used incorrectly

For two years, Devashree Niraula had been thinking about using menstrual cups but she did not have anyone to talk to about it, and was a little scared of the idea of inserting a cup into her body. This April, after much online research on menstrual cups, she finally bought one. “It’s been a life saver. Finally I can sleep peacefully for eight hours during periods,” she says.

Earlier Niraula used pads, which she found uncomfortable while sleeping. “I always had the problems of leakage and odor. These problems persist even with the cup, but to a lesser degree. And sometimes the cup does not fit well,” she says. But as it had taken her two to three years to get somewhat used to pads, “I’m being patient with the cups as well.”

When Niraula shared her experience of adopting this ‘environmentally-friendly’ option on Facebook, she started getting lots of questions. “People seem curious. I’m sure many will switch to menstrual cups. I hope they do,” she says.

Cost and comfort

I had done a story on menstrual cups for APEX in September last year. Back then, it was difficult to get information as there were few sellers and users of menstrual cups, even in Kathmandu. For this story, I again spoke to Shristi Shakya, executive assistant at Putali Nepal. (I had talked to her for the previous story as well.) Shakya confirms that the number of users and sellers of menstrual cups has increased over the past year. Putali Nepal itself sells between 15 to 20 cups a month, at Rs 2,500 apiece.

“Many traders have started selling menstrual cups,” says Shakya. “Not all are high-quality though.” So how do we identify the good ones? “They come from a reputable manufacturer, are made of 100 percent medical grade silicone and have a usage brochure,” she replies.

PeeSafe, a seller on Daraz, an online shopping site, has been selling menstrual cups for Rs 799 apiece, one of the most affordable rates in Nepal. Rajat Sarawgi, CEO of Brand Bucket, the importer of PeeSafe products in Nepal, assures that “it is made of 100 percent medical grade silicone and manufactured in a germ-free facility.”

PeeSafe sold over 50 menstrual cups last month, most of them online. Sarawgi says retail sales have not been good; he reckons people do not want to buy the cups in stores. “Some of the pharmacies we approached were not even aware about the product,” he adds.

Menstrual cups are PeeSafe’s best-selling product on Daraz. It also sells tampons and bio-degradable pads, but Sarawgi says menstrual cups are the real deal. “They last five years, and are both comfortable and economical,” he says.

As there are many sellers of menstrual products now, Sarawgi stresses the importance of looking at reviews before making purchases. “One should also research the appropriate size, and be cautious about knock-offs,” he advises.

Cup concerns

I asked Shakya why there is such a big difference between the price of their product and PeeSafe’s. She says there can be many reasons, such as the country from which the products are imported. While PeeSafe imports its menstrual cups from India, Putali Nepal does so from the UK. Just that? Shakya replies that higher production cost and better material could be other factors behind the higher retail price of the menstrual cups Putali Nepal sells.

With the increase in interest in menstrual cups, Shakya fears misinformation about them might circulate, potentially harming the industry. “Many brands of menstrual cups are sold online. One of them, which is sold on Daraz, has incorrect information on how to clean a menstrual cup once a period cycle is complete. It says the user has to soak the cup in hot water and dry it off in the sun. Actually, the cups have to be boiled in water and dried,” she says.

Putali Nepal, therefore, does not sell menstrual cups in bulk. It also gives training and brochures to  its users (and other potential users). “Although menstrual cups are safe, effective and tested, users can still get infected if they do not follow certain guidelines,” says Shakya.

Dr Aruna Upreti, who has studied reproductive health, is against the use of such cups. Her main concern has to do with inserting foreign objects into the body. She questions if women who cannot tell between the urethra opening and the vaginal opening can properly insert a menstrual cup in their body. She thinks menstrual cups have been introduced for commercial gain without due concern to the health risks. “Using menstrual cups incorrectly may even lead to infertility. And if the cups are given to rural women, they may not use it in a hygienic way, which can easily lead to infection,” says Upreti.

“New does not necessarily mean better,” she cautions. “Just because this idea worked in Europe and the US does not mean it will work in a developing country like ours.” Upreti instead recommends bio-degradable sanitary pads, which are also an environmentally-friendly option.

Shakya, who has been using menstrual cups since 2015, says Dr Upreti’s concerns are valid. But she argues any sanitary product can cause problems if used incorrectly.

Insert with care

Niraula says inserting menstrual cups for the first time can hurt and may even require lubricant. When she has period cramps, she does not feel like going through the hassle of inserting a cup as she is not completely used to it yet. She would also not recommend teenagers to use it as “they may not have explored their body yet.”

Bidhya Maharjan, 22, shares a similar experience. Before she used a cup for the first time three years ago, she had no experience inserting anything into her vagina. It was painful and she thought she could not do it every month. Many of her friends now use menstrual cups and share their good experience with her.

“But I had a friend whose menstrual cup was stuck in her vagina and she could not pull it out,” says Maharjan. Initially, she also had some difficulty adjusting to the cup. There was the problem of leakage, for example. “But now I am very comfortable using the cups and would recommend them to others as well,” she says.

There is no credible literature that shows controlling the dissemination of porn reduces violence against women. Yet last October Nepal banned access to all porn sites following the horrendous rape-and-murder of Nirmala Panta, a 13-year-old Kanchanpur native. 

Many believe the government resorted to this populist tactic after failing to properly investigate the case and bring the culprits to justice. The ban is still in place and, every day, the number of banned sites is increasing. But, then, is the traffic to porn sites from Nepal decreasing? Or are the acts of violence against women, for that matter? 

When we contacted xHamster, a popular porn site, it sent us a graph that clearly shows that the number of Nepali visitors to the site has been steadily increasing (see graph in page 6). According to similarweb.com, a global website ranking platform, Nepalis visit popular porn websites more often than they visit the news portals of any of the country’s major media groups. 

Says Avash Mulmi, a network and system specialist at Jyaasa Technologies Pvt Ltd, it is nigh impossible to impose a blanket ban on porn. People invariably find a way to circumvent the filters. “There are freely available VPN services and people can easily bypass the filters by tunneling the network traffic through other servers hosted internationally,” he says. Awantika Thapa, 28, says the ban did affect her porn-viewing a bit at the start. But then her friend introduced her to VPN services and all the blocked sites again became instantly available.

Nor does the ban seem to be serving the government aim of reducing violence against women, at least not in Kathmandu. According to the Metropolitan Police Office in Teku, 27 cases of attempted rape and 111 cases of rape were reported with it in 2016-2017. A year later, in 2017-2018, there were 44 reported cases of attempted rape and 145 cases of rape. In a year since the ban, while 40 cases of attempted rape were reported, the number of rape cases had jumped to 225. 

Perhaps the government intent is spot on. Yet data from past one year clearly show that its porn ban is not working. The big danger of this populist policyis that more and more children and youngsters could be pushed into the dark web, which has horrendous contents like child pornography and live human skinning. The ban was a risky and self-serving bet. Instead of working to improve law and order and giving better sex education, the government chose the easiest and the most impractical way out of the social problems it encountered.

Traffic to porn sites increasing and so is sexual violence

While it is now generally harder to access sexually explicit content online, dodging the ban is not particularly difficult. Nor does the ban seem to have had the intended effect of reducing sexual offenses in a year since its implementation. 

Data show that the number of reported cases of sexual violence in Kathmandu has not decreased following the ban.

In what was arguably a misguided attempt at curbing sexual violence against women, the government banned pornography in September last year following the rape and murder of Nirmala Panta, a 13-year old girl from Kanchanpur district. Following the ban, Prajesh SJB Rana, writing for APEX, had predicted how such a move would only lead more people into the dark web, a dangerous part of the internet where you can, among other things, view child pornography and hire hitmen. When queried, government censors and Nepal Police had little or no idea about the dark web. The APEX article also questioned the ban’s efficacy.

Around 25,000 pornographic sites had been blocked immediately after the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology instructed the Internet Service Providers of Nepal to do so last September-end. According to Rishi Ram Tiwari, joint secretary and spokesperson of the ministry, if a website is categorized as pornographic, it automatically gets blocked in Nepal. This means the number of pornographic sites banned in Nepal is constantly increasing. Tiwari adds that the government’s move has been effective as Nepalis can no longer access pornographic content easily.

One of those still trying to access porn is Arpita Shakya, 26, who says the ban has reduced the diversity of porn that she used to sample. “Now I only watch a few sites that are not banned on incognito mode. I do not know how to access the blocked sites,” she adds. Her testimony suggests the government has not been able to ban all porn sites, which is not surprising.

Says Avash Mulmi, a network and system specialist at Jyaasa Technologies Pvt Ltd, the plethora of porn sites, with new ones sprouting up every day, makes it nigh impossible to impose a blanket ban. People invariably find a way to circumvent the filters. “There are freely available VPN services and people can easily bypass the filters by tunneling the network traffic through other servers hosted internationally,” he says. Besides, adds Mulmi, various browsers come with inbuilt VPN services for anonymizing the network traffics, which can also be used to outsmart the filters.

Bishal Shrestha, director of the Central Cyber Bureau of Nepal Police in Bhotahiti, acknowledges that although pornographic sites are not as easily accessible in Nepal as before, it is still difficult to control access as people can still view such sites using VPN and proxy servers. “Even if a website has pornographic content and we block it, it may change its name or category, making it again accessible to Nepalis”, says Shrestha.

Up, down, up

Indeed. Traffic from Nepal to porn websites also show that Nepalis are finding a way to circumvent the filters. APEX contacted two popular porn websites, pornhub and xHamster, inquiring about traffic data from Nepal to their websites, before and after the ban. There was no response from pornhub. But xHamster, ranked by similarweb.com as the 42nd most visited website from Nepal, did send us a data-chart (see above).

Data from xHamster shows that when the ban was first imposed traffic from Nepal dropped. By the next month, however, the traffic had risen above average and has since been steadily increasing. Also, according to similarweb.com, which monitors global website traffic, pornhub and pornhdvideos are among the 10 most visited websites from Nepal this year. Each of these porn websites has more traffic from Nepal than do either Twitter or Wikipedia.

Biddhut Shrestha, 23, says that the porn ban did not affect him much. “Most social media and porn sites were also blocked in my college’s network, but we managed to see them nonetheless. They also blocked VPN, but I then used Psiphon [a free internet censorship circumnavigation tool] to access all the blocked sites,” he reveals.
Awantika Thapa, 28, also says that when the ban was imposed, it did affect her a bit initially. But then her friend introduced her to VPN services and all the blocked sites again became instantly available.

The missing link

The main reason the government banned these sites was to control sexual violence. But even here, data show that the number of reported cases of sexual violence in Kathmandu has not decreased following the ban. For instance, according to the Metropolitan Police Office in Teku, 27 cases of attempted rape and 111 cases of rape were reported with it in 2016-2017. A year later, in 2017-2018, 44 cases of attempted rape and 145 cases of rape were reported. Data from 2018-2019—after the ban was imposed—show a further increase in the number of reported rape cases. In that year, while 40 cases of attempted rape were reported, the number of reported rape cases had jumped to 225.

It is telling that there has also been no definitive study, anywhere in the world, that watching porn leads to sexual violence. But the undeterred Deputy Superintendent of Police Krishna Kumar Chand of the Metropolitan Police Range in Teku has another theory. He says although data show an increase in sexual harassment cases, it might be because people are now more willing to report them (and not necessarily because the actual number of such cases has gone up). In defense of the ban, Chand says almost everyone has a mobile phone these days, even children. “If not for the ban, they would access pornographic content easily. The ban does control their access to porn,” he argues.

Seconding him, Shahakul Bahadur Thapa, Senior Superintendent of the Metropolitan Crime Division, also in Teku, says that in a developing country like Nepal, watching pornography has more negative than positive effects. He avers that watching porn is not bad per se, but one should be able to tell if certain things in the pornography is wrong so that they do not commit such acts in real life. “Not everyone is self-aware and able to differentiate right from wrong,” says SSP Thapa. But even he acknowledges that banning porn sites alone won’t stop sexual violence.

(The names of some respondents have been changed to protect their privacy)