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The popular number by Samrat & Rachana, which premiered on 7 March 2021 on YouTube, had garnered over eight million views in the past five months. Following this success, singers Samrat Chaulagain, Rachana Rimal, Smita Dahal, and Mamta Gurung have once again lent their voices to the song, this time especially for the upcoming Teej festival.

Accompanying the remake is a music video with the star cast of Dipashree Niraula, Bhuwan K.C., Aakash Shrestha, Swastima Khadka, Gita Dhungana, Jvin & Jvis Shrestha, and Aasyshi Dhakal. Within three days of its YouTube release, the song has already gotten over 4 million views.  

Nepali YouTuber and comedian Pranesh Gautam became a household name in 2019 when he was arrested for a satirical video review of a movie, ‘Bir Bikram 2’, and detained for nine days.

Amid an outpouring of anger on social media against his arrest, and protests at Maitighar, the High Court cleared Gautam of the defamation charge pressed by director Milan Chams.

Gautam, a film buff since childhood, didn’t mean harm to the director or the movie actors. But the 2019 incident taught him far more about the trade than all the movies he’d watched.

“No comedian is ever out to hurt people,” he says. “Their only intent is to make the audience laugh.” And that was what he wanted to do with the video uploaded on Meme Nepal’s YouTube channel.

“I grew up watching Hollywood movies,” he shares. Genre icons like ‘The Terminator’ and ‘The Matrix’, which he watched in his sixth grade, made Gautam an avid film lover and he quickly sorted through the classics, expanding his knowledge. It saddened him that Nepali films rarely had that level of storytelling.

His review was only meant to highlight the reviewed movie’s absurdity, and plots of most movies that hit the box office. But it soon became more than that.

Yet Gautam has grown out of that incident now. Today, he runs his own YouTube channel ‘Pranesh Gautam ko Channel’ with over 27,000 subscribers. Aside from his regular comedy skits and travel vlogs, Gautam also has a segment called ‘The Worst Covers’ in which he sings cover songs.

He also has a band, Purple August, which he started with his friend Roshan Magar. The two used to do live shows in restaurants up until the first lockdown. The architecture student is also one of the core team members of the design firm Ramro Mato.

But his most adventurous career move so far has been participating in the first season of Comedy Champion TV show—something that was never in the plans.

“You know how it goes, a few of my friends heard the show was happening and talked me into it,” he confesses. The fact is, most great things that have happened to Gautam are the stuff he’d never planned. “I’m very easily influenced,” he laughs.

As a child, he was always into stage performances and music, and his caricatures were funny. He remembers a mimicry of former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala he watched in the early 2000s that left a deep imprint on him.

In the eighth grade, he took part in a school play and remembers the audience appreciating a satirical drama he was a part of. Even though he gravitated more to music in high school, he found his way back to comedy after a friend encouraged him to visit stand-up comedy shows organized by Comedy Tuk Tuk in 2017.

“My first performance on stage was really good,” Gautam says. “But the next five or six months were difficult as doing comedy felt like breaking new grounds.” For the next two years, he continued improving his skills, practicing on and off the stage.

When he was arrested, his perspective on doing comedy professionally kept changing, moving from fear to anger to hope to despair. On being acquitted, however, he decided not to do comedy that hurt others. “The biggest lesson for me was that you cannot get personal with jokes in this profession,” he says.

“I understand the cancel culture to some extent and people should be held accountable for their actions,” Gautam tells ApEx. “But ruining people’s careers over tweets and taking their statements out of context to paint them in a bad light isn’t cancel culture, it’s social media toxicity.”

It is one thing to bring to attention things that call for violence or incite hate, he adds, but completely other when you turn influencers and their lives into punching bags.

Despite these hurdles, Gautam is determined to stay in this field and give his best. He’s currently working on a few comedy skits for his channel and a ‘secret’ project. “I’m an artist,” he says. “So I’m not going to focus on influencing or activism—just on my art.”

When Bijaya Tripathi, 23, heard about a thrift shop her friend enjoyed visiting, she wasn’t expecting anything special. But when she did visit, she found trendy clothes for half the price of any retail store.

After just a single visit, she was sold on the idea. And since the second lockdown, she often finds herself going through thrift pages online. Even when she has no intent of buying, she still asks the price of products in messages, marveling at how inexpensive and accessible they are.

Tripathi isn’t the only one who is surprised by the sudden rise of thrift shops around Kathmandu. Since the lockdown, social media users have been bombarded with sponsored posts from countless online clothing outlets—many of them thrift stores.

“I’d never planned on opening a store,” says Suman Koirala, owner of Thriftilicious. “But I had a lot of unused stuff in my closet and I’d heard people were willing to buy second-hand clothes. So I thought, why not?” In December 2020, Koirala started an Instagram page for her store and it soon started gaining traction.

Since then, she’s been uploading pictures of second-hand clothes on the page almost every day. Like Koirala, Sobiya Shrestha from Reuse 101 and Pooja Tamang from Thrift Luga both discovered second-hand clothing businesses on Instagram.

Roneeshma Shrestha from FeriFeri store had always been interested in fashion. But it was only when she spotted a few secondhand shops around the city that she thought of starting something similar.

“I knew about thrifting from YouTube videos on clothing hauls,” she tells ApEx. “I understood thrifting as an eco-friendly way of shopping and when I started FeriFeri, I had that sustainability in mind.”

The thrift shopping culture began long ago. But within the country, it grew during the global pandemic, as one could see a surge of new thrift shops on Instagram and Facebook. Online businesses of all kinds were booming during the latter half of last year’s lockdown.

These stores usually sell clothes that previously belonged to store owners. “I’ve always been a bit of a shopaholic,” Tamang confesses. But the clothes bought to catch up with the latest trend seldom see the light of day again after the style reaches its expiration date. Most owners ApEx spoke to had opened their thrift stores to get rid of that pile of unused clothes at the back of their closets, and in return for a decent price.

Occasionally, however, thrift store owners also receive goods from friends and family, asking them to sell their unwanted clothes. “I check the condition and type of attire they ask me to sell,” says Roneeshma Shrestha. Some even sell clothes that have been passed down from their mothers—80’s clothes that aren’t their taste but could be of interest to others. “For many who come to our shops, discovering old-school clothes is equivalent to finding hidden treasures,” says Koirala.

Sometimes, attires brought in by other people aren’t in a wearable condition and can’t be sold. But when they are, the stores take a cut from the sales. The price usually depends on the clothes’ condition, material, and newness. The owners are known to cut the price by 35-40 percent and some clothes, if used a lot, can go for 50 percent discount.

But there are exceptions for designer items. “If you deduct the price of designer goods a lot, people will think you’re selling a knock-off,” Roneeshma says.

Overall, the prices are feasible for both the sellers and buyers. Customers get fairly new clothes and accessories at an affordable price and the owners can earn money out of things they no longer use.

“You’re always told that you need to have a model and a lot of investment to run a business,” says Koirala. “But running thrift shops barely requires any investment other than your time.” Since opening Thriftilicious in December, Koirala has already made around Rs 30,000 from the online business.

But the work isn’t hassle-free. Despite the easy spread of thrift culture in the city, there is still an underlying stigma around buying and selling second-hand clothes. After talking to a few consumers, ApEx found that while some enjoyed thrifting and often browsed through these online shops, others were reluctant to even look in.

Says 21-year-old Argav Shrestha, “I’m never buying second-hand clothes. You don’t know where they’ve been or how they’ve been used. I wouldn’t risk it.”

Another issue is lack of menswear. The thrift stores that ApEx spoke to said that they did get queries from male customers, but only rarely. According to them, comparatively, fewer men are interested in trendy, fashionable clothes so there is a smaller market for menswear. They’ve also had a hard time coming up with second-hand products for men.

ApEx spoke to ten men and as many women. Among the men in the 15-30 age group, only four knew of thrifting and among those four, only one had gone thrift shopping. However, among women, nine knew of thrifting and seven had participated in it before.

Tripathi, who’s bought products from two different shops in the past few months and browsed through countless thrift stores online, says that she loves the concept. “Not only am I getting quality products, I also feel good that I am doing something that is eco-friendly,” she says. “I’m not the kind to shop a lot but thrifting makes it fun and affordable.”

Former winners of the Miss Nepal pageant, in association with DM Foundation, a non-profit, are introducing a scholarship program under which students who have lost their parents or guardians to Covid-19 will get grants to continue their studies. Those who wish to apply for the scholarship can do so online (ims-np.com/fmnw-scholarship-form).

A promotional video for this initiative has also been made in collaboration with YouTuber Sisan Baniya, photojournalist Sulav Shrestha, and photo company Creative D Studio.

Former pageant winners Shrinkhala Khatiwada, Malina Joshi, Evana Manandhar, Nikita Chandak, Usha Khadgi, Sadichha Shrestha, Sugarika KC and Anuskha Shrestha are among those promoting the cause.