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Rita Pandey has been selling panipuri in Patan for the past three years. The recent ban on streetfood sale in response to the cholera outbreak has put her in a fix.  

She has no business right now and she doesn’t know how long the ban will stay. 

When I met her on a recent afternoon, she was sitting on a pavement talking to a group of people. Her cart was nowhere to be seen. Pandey is 24 but she looks old for her age, deep frown lines run across her head and just looking at her face, one can say she worries a lot. 

She has been living alone with her daughter after her husband left   to work in Kuwait in 2019. Pandey started selling panipuri two years ago in order to pay the rent and send her daughter to school.“I don’t know how long this ban will last. My livelihood depended on selling panipuri. Without business, it is getting difficult to survive,” she says.

Although her husband sends money, it hardly covers the cost of living in the city. Every month, Pandey pays Rs 7,000 for rent and another Rs 4,500 for her daughter’s school fees. “On good days, I make a profit of Rs 1,500 a day,” she says.Pandey was born and raised in Arghakhanchi 

district and came to Lalitpur for the first time after her marriage in 2017. She was just 19 at the time and didn’t know anything about city life, how unforgiving it could be if you have no source of income.

Panday’s husband was planning to go abroad at the time. While he frequented one manpower agency after another, she stayed at home. “My husband got a job in Kuwait and left in 2019. Our daughter hadn’t been born yet; I didn’t even know I was pregnant at the time,” Pandey says.

She got through the pregnancy alone and gave birth to a baby girl. This was during the initial days of Covid-19 pandemic. Life was getting increasingly hard for Pandey, a new mother. That was when she decided to start a panipuri business. 

“My daughter was just seven-month old when I started this business, but soon Covid-19 hit Nepal and I couldn’t put up my stall for several months,” she says. When the country went under a lockdown, Pandey didn’t know what to do. She had already made the investment and backing down was not an option. 

Once the lockdown was lifted, she set up her business on the roadside of Patan. In the initial days, Pandey says she didn’t earn much. “I spend around Rs 2,000 daily and some days I couldn’t even break even, but I pressed on,” she says.

Her business really took off last summer. More people started visiting her cart and she has made many regular customers. “I was making good progress until Lalitpur Metropolitan City imposed this ban,” Pandey says. “I didn’t even know about the ban until a random person told me about it.”

Asked if she has thought of an alternative should this ban were to last for months, she says selling panipuri is all she knows and is good at.  “I am comfortable doing this business. I don’t know if I’ll be able to shift to something else,” adds. If the ban is not lifted or continues for a long time, Pandey says she will have to think about getting a proper shop space. “I don’t even know how much that is going to cost me. But mostly, I’m worried about losing my customers.”

It was raining heavily on the morning of June 29, Wednesday. I had to be at Swayambhunath, the famed fifth-century stupa. The plan was to capture the view of Kathmandu valley from up there but the monsoon downpour was relentless. As I was already up, I decided to take my chances. I grabbed my camera bag and took off on my bike.  

Fortunately, the rainfall stopped as I reached the iconic Buddhist pilgrimage site. I was hoping to find the place relatively crowd-free as it had been pouring down all morning. But to my surprise, there were many visitors. 

Huffing and puffing, I reached the top, with my camera pointed at the wonders of Swayambhu. Undoubtedly, my first impulse was to capture Kathmandu, with Dharahara soaring higher than any other building. 

As I moved towards the temple, a group of monks chanting Buddhist hymns caught my attention. They were repeating the six-syllable Sanskrit mantra—‘Om Mani Padme Hum’—which was both peaceful and spiritual. Moving around, I came across several Buddhist devotees lighting butter lamps near the statue of Lord Buddha, one of the attractions of Swayambhu. 

The devotees and casual visitors were scattered all around the place: some of them circumambulating the dome-shaped shrine and spinning the prayer wheels, others counting their sacred beads.

I was fortunate that the rain stopped and I got to capture the picture I had planned to, but I got so much more. Apparently, morning life at Swayambhu cannot be hindered–come rain or shine.  

Kajol Jha believes in the power of youth. She believes young people can change the world if they are given the right platform. The 29-year-old has been leading Glocal Private Limited, a consulting company that educates, engages and inspires youths to give them the much-needed leg-up in their career.  

“Young people, especially teenagers, are so much more capable than what society believes them to be. My goal has always been to offer them a platform to enhance their talents and skills,” she says.

Jha was a driven individual with a strong sense of self from a young age. She joined the company in her early twenties as a blogger for Glocal Khabar. As a writer, she wanted to promote start-ups and young achievers, while encouraging the readers to pursue their own ideas.

“There was a dearth of platforms and information for talented enterprising youths at the time,” she says of her days working as a blogger for the company. “Most stories and articles on youths were negative ones. They rarely featured their achievements, small or big.”

So Jha set out to change that with her write-ups on young and skilled entrepreneurs and their success stories.

Her own personal success came when her company asked her to lead its flagship project ‘Glocal Teen Hero’ in 2015. The project was all about recognizing the ideas and creativity of teenagers from various sectors.

Jha was required to oversee the project’s business and management side, in which she excelled. Her undergraduate study in business administration also came in handy. 

But as great as the idea was, it was equally difficult for Jha and her team to find collaborators to start the project.

She says Nepali society is by and large reluctant to place their trust on young people, let alone teenagers with innovative ideas out of which they could build a career. Many prospective collaborators dismissed the project upon learning that it was about teenagers. Parents were also reluctant to allow their children to participate.

But Jha was determined to make the project happen at any cost—if anything, the pushbacks galvanized her. After much convincing, she and her team were able to rope in five collaborators for the project.

“We had 98 participants in the first iteration of Teen Hero project. The number has gradually increased over the years, reaching 611 in 2021” Jha says proudly.

Glocal Teen Hero is held annually where young talented minds are awarded for their works. While the cash prize helps winners improve and expand their enterprises, it is the business network and opportunities that open up that is more important.    

“More than the cash award, Glocal Teen Hero is about giving winners the recognition among business leaders and entrepreneurs,” Jha says. “Being recognized among these individuals opens several doors of opportunity that helps them pave their career path.”

Over the years, the Teen Hero project has also gone international, with its own version in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

“We want to turn this into a global community of change-making teenagers. This would provide a space for creatives from all over the world to share and work on their ideas,” say Jha, who is currently fulfilling the role of associate director at Glocal Private Limited.

Besides promoting the works and ideas of young people, Jha is also involved in the company’s e-learning platform, Glocal After School, where young individuals are given opportunities to upskill and taught to sharpen their skillsets.

It is important for Jha to make learning methods more effective and practical, particularly in the context of Nepal where many youths are traveling abroad for jobs and training.

“The vision is to promote an ecosystem of skilled youths through these trainings, ensuring the availability of jobs as well as skilled human resources within Nepal,” she says.

Jha works with equally talented and driven team members who share the passion for fostering youth entrepreneurship. They have helped many individuals on their career path at a very young age.

“If anyone can change the world, it’s the young generation. All they need is a proper platform where they can learn to hone their skills,” says Jha.

Thangka painting is a niche field of art that requires years of training and oodles of patience. The painting itself is exquisite, vivid and full of intricate details, often depicting the life of Buddha and aspects of Buddhism. Considered sacred by the Buddhist faithful, they are more than art-pieces. This week, I visited a thangka gallery at Kathmandu’s Boudha to see what goes into making these artworks. The gallery owner was kind enough to oblige me.

He works with a small cohort of master artists, who make thangkas of all shapes and sizes for him. The gallery walls are adorned by the works of these masters. One of the thangkas by artist Man Bahadur Lama was priced at Rs 10m. 

“The price of a painting is determined based on the details, the time it takes to complete the piece, and the artist behind it,” says the gallery owner. The process of painting itself is a demanding task. Master artists are required to go through many ancient books and follow several specific steps to create the intricate thangka patterns. 

The gallery also runs a store where thangkas paintings are sold. Here, the cheapest painting is priced at Rs 25,000. The person managing the store says most customers are foreigners, the majority of them Chinese Buddhists. 

“Thangkas are generally expensive also because they require special canvas and highly durable colors,” the store manager says. 

To make his point, he guides me to a corner of the store where hundreds of thangkas are kept, each one rolled up like a parchment. 

I learned that a well-made surface (canvas) is all it takes for a thangka to last for centuries. The canvas is woven out of cotton thread on a wooden frame. Once the canvas is ready, a special concoction (jesso) is applied on the surface to retain the colors applied by the artist. The colors used in the thangka paintings are specially brought from the Himalayas, as they are believed to be indelible. Twenty-four karat gold dust is also used in thangka painting. 

“The fact that thangkas can be rolled up make them convenient for transport and storage. The painting won’t be damaged unless you expose it to the elements for long or treat it roughly,” says the store manager.