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 So how are your preparations for Dashain? Have you experienced any chaotically organised festive events? I say chaotic as despite there being a plethora of event organisers springing up in recent years, there seems to be very little real manage­ment and planning. Take for exam­ple a film premier I was at recently. Advertised starting at 4pm, we went along an hour later only to be told the necessary invitations for entry would not arrive for another 20 minutes. Returning later after some refreshments (there was none in evidence at the event) we were told the ‘invitation by name list only’ was now ‘sold out’. Outside the venue the scene was of cars and bikes parked every­where and those arriving still trying to drive through a huge crowd of ticketless invitees.

Where were parking signs or guards or even pre-event info stating parking would be limited, non-guaranteed? Having fought our way into the venue I was now sweat­ing and dishevelled. This was not the red carpet event I have seen on TV! Finally seated in pre-assigned seats that no one was adhering to, there were the obligatory speeches. By now things were running very behind schedule, but that’s the norm right?

Hurrah! Speeches done, lights down, drum roll… adverts. Twenty minutes of adverts. The audience was getting restless; the press photographer in the next seat was bonding with me over his dismay of the ads. Finally, ads over… and… trailers of two ‘coming soon’ Nepali films. Really?

When the film we all came to see, at its premier no less, finally came on, the audience forgot about the long wait and started cheering the well-known faces on the screen. For me the film was the usual style which went out of Hollywood decades ago and is rarely seen even in Bollywood these days; a lot of blood and fighting and a bit of danc­ing. The only redeeming feature was the lead actress was excellent in her role and the scenery was stunning, albeit with a bit of techni­colour added.

I am not going to give the plot away except to say it was exceeding far-fetched, but that’s the nature of the business. Neither am I going to name it except to say it was set in a fictional village in Upper Mustang (shot in a real village in lower Mus­tang, I am reliably told).

Here I am not writing a review of the movie, rather a comment on the organization of events in Kathmandu. Before those in the business start their own criticism, I was an events’ organiser for around nine years, in five countries. So there is a little knowledge behind my thoughts!

Having said that, although I didn’t really expect to find the film up there in my top 10 of all time, the target audience appeared to love the movie and they will spread the word. So despite the mismanagement, the premier served its purpose.

Back on the night in question, naturally the chaos didn’t end when the film finished. On leav­ing the cinema we waited till the crowd had lessened before making our way down the outside stairs. Right at the bottom of the exit stairs stood the actors being pho­tographed and interviewed, while blocking the way out. Ah well… at least my companion got a selfie with the male lead and we didn’t get run over by the hoard of motorbikes all trying to leave at the same time. All good then.

I must say, that next time I’m invited to a ‘red carpet’ film premier, I will politely decline, and pay the Rs250 at the regular cinema to enjoy the film in more peace­ful and less stressful surroundings. Lesson learned!

So yes, how are your experi­ences so far at your Dashain red carpet events? 

 It’s not often Nepal sees interna­tional bands coming specifically for a small, one-day festival. It’s even less often we see a woman on bass who literally rocks the stage. This is what happened last Satur­day, Sept 29, during the Kathmandu Blues & Roots Festival.A psychedelic/rock/blues band from Austin, Texas, The Well were the only band of the day that got the crowd on its feet. Performing their own originals, they describe their influences as early metal, the likes of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and 90’s bands such as Nirvana, The Melvins and Sleep. Jason Sullivan, drums, and Ian Graham, guitar and vocals, shared “Our music genre is in the seed stage. When we started it was incredible small, with mainly older, and only a handful of younger, bands. And then it just took off and we are kind of popular within the genre now because we have been there forever.”

I asked them how a band from Austin ended up at a Blues festival in Kathmandu. “We were playing in Chicago with a band called Midnight Wolf from Dallas. Kiran Byanjankar, who has an entertainment company in Chicago, came to see Wolf, saw us and asked if we would like to come to Nepal. We spoke to him just that one time and a year later it went into motion,” says Sullivan.

With only a few days in Nepal, The Well was keen to see as much as possible of the country and cul­ture. Just as well, (no pun intended!) as prior to playing at the Blues & Roots Festival, The Well were thrown headfirst into the Nepali music scene when they took the stage in Butwal along with Kathmandu’s Shree 3 and local Butwal band, Rock Gene. “They had a really cool setup there, the sound was crazy awesome,” says Lisa Alley, bass and vocals. “Every­one was stoked and wanted to take photos with us, and the environment was really comfortable for the audi­ence and us.”

So, aside from Butwal, have they managed to see anything else of the country? “This is our first time to Asia and we have seen Butwal and every little place in between there and Kathmandu! We have also seen the Indra Jatra festival, the chariot, which was impressive, and masked dancers. This is what I came for,” says Sullivan. “Aesthetically Nepal is beautiful everywhere you look. They have an eye for shape and colour and architecture… even the way the trucks are decorated. It’s like a car­nival,” says Sullivan.

“We visited Lumbini. It is awesome that Buddha was born there. We also eat a lot of local food, learned how to eat with our hands, and saw buf­falo brains being served at Satish’s house,” says Alley. (Satish Sthapit, Newaz, is a founder of the Blues & Roots Festival.)

Why such a short time in Nepal? “We are going straight from Kath­mandu to Rome for the start of a month-long European tour from October 3 to 28. We are hitting it hard right now as we have our third album coming out with Riding Easy Records. We just finished record­ing and mixing right before we left (for Nepal),” says Alley. “It's always nice to get out there and remind people you exist before releasing another album. In February we will tour the US to coincide with the album launch.” Back at the Blues & Roots Festival, I caught up with Kiran Byanjankar whose company Tarang Entertainment both hosted The Well and sponsored the Blues & Roots festival this year. “We are based in Chicago and showcase events for the Nepali diaspora.

Our motto is “let’s have fun”. If our involvement in the Blues and Roots Festival goes well this year, we will continue to be involved and help the festival grow,” he says. The crowd at this year’s festival certainly had fun so here’s to seeing Kiran, Satish and the rest of the gang bringing us more cool music in the future !

 This morning I bought one of those breads: a bit like a donut, a bit like a sel, from my local shop. The girl behind the counter wrapped it up in a bit of old news­paper and I happily brought it home and ate it with tea. Rewind a couple of months when I was helping out in a friend’s café in the UK. Before I could do that I had to undergo an online health and hygiene course. This is a basic requirement for anyone handling food in the UK. Strict protocol had to be adhered to even though it was only coffee, tea, and cakes, no raw food and no hot food.

I can’t help thinking about the paradox here. One country obsessed with cleanliness and one with a much more laid back attitude to the whole thing! Let’s look at the West’s obsession with hygiene. Growing up, although I certainly had to wash my hands before eating, parents in those days were not worried if chil­dren played in earthworm-infested soil, or muddy puddles.

Today I notice parents in the West are much more conscious of poten­tial hazards—not allowing small chil­dren to dig in mud, wiping down baby high chairs with specially designed disinfecting wet wipes, and preventing kids from sitting on ‘dirty’ floors.

Some have even gone as far as to take on the health services by not vaccinating their children against things like chicken pox, measles and other childhood illnesses. All in the name of ‘health’. (And yes, there are arguments for both sides and sta­tistics can always be twisted to suit any argument.) Meantime in Nepal, particularly in the countryside, chil­dren look, and are, positively cov­ered in muck of many kinds. No one seems unnecessarily worried. We can argue that this is because there is little choice. But remember, I was brought up in the UK before everything went super clean. There was a choice: my parents could have ensured when I was playing it was done in a ‘hygienic’ environment. They did not. In those days it didn’t seem to matter so much, and any­way we children were having fun!

Going back to food, I wonder why I can easily accept a newspa­per-wrapped donut from my local store, handled by the shopkeeper after she had handled my earthy potatoes, and probably a lot of grub­by money earlier, but would proba­bly balk if the waiter in an upscale restaurant touches a similar food item while putting it on my plate. To get a tiny stone in one’s bhat in a highway eatery is acceptable but a hair in one’s soup in a mid-class restaurant would have us complain­ing to the manager. Or would it?

Last year, when eating with a Nepali friend in Cambodia, he found a piece of glass in his rice. Yes, we complained, yes, the manager was called and he apologised, replacing the dish with a plate of pasta. But no, we didn’t create a huge fuss. In fact we sympathized with him that most likely the rice supplier was cheating on the weight of the sack of uncooked rice he sold to the restaurant.

I think the reason we did not complain more strongly was that this was nothing new or shocking for us. But I am sure in the West even I would have caused a bigger stir and for sure the kitchen would have been closed down while health inspectors checked every aspect of the kitchen’s daily hygiene routine.

So do those of us who got to play in the mud and the rain have a healthier lifestyle, a better immune system, and a more pragmat­ic take on cleanliness than those who did not?

The trouble with ethics is no one knows you have them until you come into conflict with people around you.

Earlier this year I was offered a job which breaches my, and the current trend of, ethics. It is not illegal and the person was truly astounded when I said what he was suggesting is now seen, around the world, as unethical. He stated that a niche market had opened up, which he thought he could fill, because of the very fact other countries and orga­nizations have stopped this practice due to ethics.

My friend has worked for decades to improve the lives of thousands of people in Nepal, and to a lesser extent, overseas. This of course takes an inordinate amount of fund­raising. He thought that by entering this niche market he could make enough money to help fund his humanitarian projects.

Double jeopardy. Do we do some­thing parts of the world now con­siders unethical, but as I said, not illegal, to the benefit of the under­privileged? In my opinion this could backfire on him, making his current donors and supporters doubt his ethics across the board. Or am I just being too sensitive to something that perhaps his supporters are totally unaware of?

I am sure this question is sim­ilar to those faced by non-profit and for-profit organizations every day. Perhaps for the organizations that exist to make a profit for their shareholders, the line is not so blurred. After all making money is their bottom line. As long as it is not illegal, who cares if it is ethical or not? Most larger organizations these days have a social conscience—some contributing out of real desire to help (the environment, the unem­ployed, the poor, etc) and others out of an obligation and perhaps for a tax rebate.

Non-profits face a bigger dilemma, as their very existence is often brought about in reply to unethi­cal behavior (armed conflict, gen­der bias, etc) by governments and groups in various countries around the world. One organization I respect for its ethics is UNICEF. They do not use pictures of suffering chil­dren in their fund-raising campaigns or literature. To them it is unethical to use the suffering of children to raise money. Yet many organizations do use pictures of the suffering to help raise awareness and funds. We can ask, is this ethical? Does the end justify the means?

We can also say ethics is a luxury many people cannot afford. But by saying this, I think we do the majority of the population a disser­vice. We all have our own level of understanding of ethics, depending on our background, upbringing and environment. Sometimes we are required to do things in our work or family which we do not particularly want to but by not doing them the result may be us being out of a job or coming into conflict with colleagues, friends or relatives.

It can be extremely hard to stand up and say ‘no’ when those around us are compliant. But every day people take the decision to do just that. Often those people are not widely noticed, but most likely are the people who do not get ahead in their career or are called ‘foolish’ for not breaking their own set of values for personal gain. There are a few brave souls (like a friend’s mother) who stand up for their beliefs by chaining themselves to trees or machinery scheduled to cut those trees or mine the land. Or who stand up against the social norms in their society (like Malala Yousafzai) because nowhere under God’s law does it say girl children should be denied education, or that certain people are less than human and should be exterminated. And some­times we do notice these people and applaud their ethics o

On a busy thoroughfare in the West End of Edin­burgh, Scotland, is an unassuming restaurant sur­rounded by other, more glam­orous cousins. But never judge a book by its cover. Inside is a place that is simple on the eye but anything but simple on the palette. The Khukuri at Haymarket in Edinburgh has been run­ning since 1997. Around nine months ago the original owner retired and it came under the new management of Mukesh and Sunil Sharma. While sim­plifying the décor—getting rid of those cliché moun­tain pictures that dominate Nepali restaurants around the world—and adding even more authentic Nepali khana to the menu, there is a continuity that works well, in that the current manager also worked under the previous owner.

The Sharma brothers arrived in the UK in the 1990s, studying hospitality and web design respectively, so they understand the local as well as Nepali preferences. For them it is all about customer service and satisfaction. The person who really interested me, however, was Ramesh Kumar Shrestha, the manager.

Having come to Scotland in 2009, Shrestha spent the first month wondering what he could do in this new land. Fortunately, he came in con­tact with the original owner of the restaurant, who was known for helping Nepalis in Scotland. “I came here not knowing anyone but within a month I got a job at the Khukuri, where I worked for two years. I came back to the Khukuri in 2014,” explains Shrestha.

“Today, under the new management, there is defi­nitely more customers and we are thinking of opening a sec­ond branch where we staff will have shares,” says Shrestha. “We get many Nepalis coming here—for example Gurkha sol­diers who train nearby.”

Working in the Khukuri are nine other staff, seven of them Nepalis. Mukesh is studying under the restaurant’s chef to improve his knowledge of Nepali cuisine. “We are in the process of introducing sekwa and items such as channa chatpate, black dal, tare ko aloo, and lal mohan”, explains Sunil. The restaurant is sourc­ing saag but at the moment it is not finding exactly what it is looking for, “so are thinking of growing saag in our own small garden at the back”.

“Our customers are extremely important to us and whatever we are doing seems to be working. We are now 67th in Trip Advisor for Edinburgh, whereas before the restaurant stood at num­ber 326th,” Mukesh chimes in. “What’s more, today we are number one among Nepali restaurants and number seven among Asian restaurants in the city.”

And, the menu? What got me to the Khukuri was the fact they have bara (Rs 450), an all-time favorite of mine, and kheer, which is something I haven’t seen in other Nepali restaurants around the globe. Momos (Rs 700) are a feature, with a momo madness day held once a month, when customers can satisfy their craving for these little pack­ets of flavor. Other things that caught my eye were kwaanti soup (Rs 700) and chicken or lamb choyla (Rs 700).

I sampled the bara, adver­tised as made with ground black lentils. I was told that this did not prove popular with Nepali customers, thus the revised version comes over as a heavy bread-like pancake, which is now much loved by Nepali and non-Ne­pali customers alike.

I also tasted the chicken curry, with garlic nan, in their ‘Namche’ style (Rs 1,700; plenty for two people). The sauce contains jimbu and timur, again favorites of mine. I could do with more timur as I like my tongue to go numb! I was delighted to see Ever­est beer and Khukri rum on the drinks menu. Definitely something for the home-sick Nepali, and me!

 Over in Scotland we have these things called warehouses. You know, where they keep goods before they put them on the super­market shelves. In Nepal they are called ‘aisles’ or sometimes, ‘the top shelf’. A few weeks ago I serendipitously photographed four ladies cleaning up something spilt on the floor of a well-known supermarket in Kath­mandu. Three of them managed to pull over those little plastic stools to sit on while one moped the offend­ing gunk off the floor.

This is a common occurrence, even on a Saturday (the busiest shopping day of the week). Custom­ers have learnt to jump over boxes, avoid stepping on slippery, plastic covered goods, and negotiate round the staff. And god help us if we dare to ask a question about the location of a particular good.

Interrupting conversations will be met with blank stares and in any case, they never know where anything is. And how could they? How can anyone remember where anything is in the over-stocked aisles and avalanche threatening ‘top shelves’?

Meantime we the customers are desperately searching for that par­ticular item that is always in the same location. But not this week. We get lulled into a false sense of consumerism when for many months the items we love have been available. And at several supermar­kets. And then, suddenly, it is out of stock, seemingly overnight, in every single outlet!

We search all likely shops, some­times getting lucky and sometimes not. I am in a soya milk chain. We report back, often with concrete evidence such as photographs, when we see the particularly brand that we like. Sometimes this backfires. Once I had heard that precious soya milk was available in Lalitpur.

Rushing over there (okay so I was going anyway) I discovered they only had the little individual car­tons in stock. So I bought about 25 of those. Hand on heart, about 30 minutes later my phone pinged and there was a picture of the full-sized cartons back on the shelves, right near my house!

So having climbed over the ‘ware­house’ goods, avoided annoying the staff, discovered your favorites are not there… now what? After filling the basket… ah yes… the basket. Do not get me started on those extreme­ly stupid baskets on wheels! Who the heck invented those? And are they supposed to be pushed or pulled? I have never seen anyone push them— whereby they could see approaching fellow shoppers. No, I have only seen people pulling them behind them, and others have to do a quick step to either pass or because the owner of the pull-along basket has stopped suddenly.

So, having climbed over the ‘ware­house’ goods, avoided annoying the staff, discovered your favorites are not there, stumbled over pulled bas­kets, is there anything else we can do in the supermarket? Of course there is! Aside from food shopping, one can go up the escalator—and sometimes it even works—to the Aladdin’s cave of crockery, clothes, electrical goods and, my favorite, those table top lamps cum water features.

Venture into the far aisles at your own risk! You may never be seen again among the plethora of stainless steel utensils or children’s toys. And if you take a child with you, remember buying a doll or teddy bear at twice the normal price might not have been on your shopping list.

So, you know it… having climbed over the ‘warehouse’ goods, avoid­ed annoying the staff, discovered your favorites are not there, stum­bled over pulled baskets, bought the much sought after water feature for your lounge, found your child chew­ing on a toxic toy, and having actu­ally managed to pay for everything, what next? Why not enjoy a plate of momos or kathi rolls al fresco? Don’t forget to eat while blocking the entrance to the supermarket because that is all part of the fun of shopping in Kathmand  

‘There is no such thing as a free lunch’. It’s a saying that means you do not get any­thing for free in this world. But recently I, my mother, and some of her friends, got a free dinner.After watching a wonderful perfor­mance by Andre Rieu in Maastricht, The Netherlands, broadcast live into a local cinema in Scotland, we had booked a table at a nearby, middle of the road but well respected, restau­rant called The Bothy (Scottish name for a small hut used for refuge in a storm on a mountain). At the end we wanted to pay our bills separately. Normally in Kathmandu the waiter would then get a calculator out and start asking what we each had, tick­ing it off the bill as he went.

But not so in this paperless restau­rant! Aside from the very off-hand manager who said he was ‘too busy’ to do this (and who really got our heckles up), it seemed impos­sible to simply tick items off the bill without involving the com­puterised till. A special code from employee X was required. Then it seemed the card reader required another authorization code from employee Y. By this time 15 min­utes had passed and we were no closer to paying the bill. Finally, the card reader simply refused to work. We could almost see the smoke coming out of the machine as it scratched its electronic head!

At this point the owner, who had somehow become involved, said the computerized system was not built to cope with changes once the orig­inal information was fed in. In exas­peration she gave herself authority to write off our meal. A free dinner! We were quite relieved the matter was now resolved as we had things to do that evening. But we were also concerned that the restaurant lost out on quite a bit of money because the paperless system was inflexible.

This incident brought to mind a picture of Nepali politicians sitting in a meeting with their brand new Macbook Pro laptops. Presumably because the Nepal Government is set to go paperless. There are a lot of things that can be said here such as: are all politicians computer lit­erate (after using a laptop for about 15 years my skills are still pretty near zero), can they type in Nepali (which I believe is a skill in itself), or are they working in English (a second language in which few will be fluent)? But mainly my thoughts go out to those who are trying to move their case (landpapers/mar­riages/ passports/ citizenships/birth registration, etc) around the many government departments.

Do we all need to have access to computers now? What about those who either cannot afford a com­puter, lack the skills, or live in an area which does not have access to such things or even access to inter­net or electricity? What happens when remote area (ex VDC office—and what is a local government office called these days anyway?) meets central government?

Currently if you want to find a file in a government office that you filed some time back, there is a helpful peon who knows exactly what room and what pile of folders your file is in. What happens when this is on some equivalent of the Cloud? Taxes have been submitted on-line for quite some time now. But of course, in the end, taxpayers end up in the tax office in person any way. How are they going to avoid similar sce­narios in every department?

Remember the breathalysers that were handed out to the police some time back? What happened to them? (And don’t even think about the health risks involved in breathing into the officer’s face.) Will those lovely Macbook Pros go the same way as the breathalysers?

Yes, going paperless could well result in a lot of free dinners!