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Festival time is here again in Nepal. Scotland has basically Christmas and New Year, which kind of blend into one, and Easter. There are a few, what we call Bank Holidays—which just means public holidays when offices are closed and they are always on a Monday. And generally everyone has their annual leave. But overall there are around 10 public holidays through­out the year and 2-4 weeks annual leave depending on your employer’s policy. I’ve just done a quick count of Nepal public holidays for 2020 and have come up with 32. This includes some that not everyone will get (Christmas Day for example). But this figure does not take into account that time around Dashain and Tihar when employees simply disappear. So we can call that ‘annu­al leave’. Although in another coun­try we would call it ‘unofficial leave’ and they wouldn’t be paid for it.Ever tried to not pay someone here for the days they simply didn’t turn up?

So overall it probably works out about the same number of days off in a year. But there are definitely more days in Nepal when the whole country is shut down for some festi­val or other. And there is a definite culture of taking that unofficial time off.

Then there are the working hours. With official offices still working 10am till 4pm in the winter, an hour longer in the summer, it’s no won­der private companies also don’t keep their doors open longer. I have noticed over the past couple of years that the traffic at 9am is much heavi­er. I assume from this that perhaps offices are opening earlier as previ­ously at 9am the roads were pretty empty. Or is it just people trying to beat rush-hour traffic? Even if the working hours are say 9am till 5pm, how many staff are at their desk at 9am? Or at any given point during the working day?

I recall back in Edinburgh my bus time changed slightly meaning I was rushing into the office around 3 or 4 minutes before 9am. I was told by the boss that this was not on at all; take an earlier bus he said. Why? Because any office, or place of business opening at 9am expects to have their staff in place, calm from their journey, fresh from the bath­room, and probably with a cup of tea consumed in the break room by 9am. On the dot. Not still hanging up their coat and looking harassed from running from the bus stop.

What if that was implemented here?

Recently I had, what I can only describe as a meltdown, at my reg­ular hairdresser. He had changed premises. Again. Sixth time in sev­en years. Because it was small and extremely busy he could not do what I had made the appointment for. Yet I was the only one in the room who had actually made an appointment, one week in advance, with a reminder one day prior. My thoughts ran something like ‘I didn’t get what I expected even after seven years of loyalty to him’. His thoughts probably ran something along the lines of ‘after seven years of being my customer, she didn’t have the understanding to come back anoth­er day’. To me it’s simply lack of planning (no appointment system) and lack of commitment to a long standing customer. To him—well I have no idea. Business as usual perhaps.

What if we had, functioning, appointment systems here?

I do think the number of public holidays will decrease and the work ethic will grow. Why? Because those who live or work overseas have ingested these habits. But in the short term, I feel, like their shoes, the majority will continue to leave their work ethics at the metaphoric door in the Arrival Hall

“Early in the morning, my friend was riding a bike near the Swayambhu cemetery. Suddenly he felt someone was behind him. He got terrified… Then he felt as if someone was putting their arms around him. But when he looked behind, he saw no one. After this event, he was sick for a few weeks.”This is a statement in ‘Ghost Confessions in Nepal’, a Facebook page. The page anonymously posts stories of people who claim to have seen ‘ghosts in real life’. Unknown to many, it has 18,600 followers.

Anup KC, the page admin­istrator, used to run another Facebook page, ‘Confession of Nepali Teenagers’, to give ado­lescents a platform to express their feelings anonymously. But when some people started taking about paranormal activities they had had, he decided to start the ghost confession page as well. “I was inspired by the Indian ghost confes­sion pages and decided to start one for Nepal,” he says. The page has been inactive for a while as KC has been unable to give it much time. But you can still read confessions posted there.

Aayusha Shrestha, an ardent fol­lower of the Nepali ghost Facebook page, believes ghosts exist in real life. She recalls an unpleasant encounter: “I was in grade 9. It was midnight and I was sleeping peacefully. I turned to the other side and, to my surprise, I saw a lady with a long and dark frizzy hair staring at me.”

“I thought I was dreaming and slowly rolled back to the other side. But I couldn’t sleep. I looked back and saw the lady was still staring at me. I froze and couldn’t even scream,” she adds. She is not alone to confess to such paranormal expe­rience. “My mother believes in the supernatural as well. So when I told her, she took it seriously. But my father and brother made fun of it.”

Shrestha says she has spotted no ghost in the house after her mother performed some rituals.

Santosh Kumar Shrestha, who is now 57, has a con­fession of his own. “This incident hap­pened when I was 41. I was returning to my flat in Paknajol after com­pleting my night shift. I heard somebody say Eh Manusya, Eh Manusya (‘O human, O human’) from behind me. At the same time, dogs started barking loud. A cold shiver ran down my bones and without looking back, I ran to my flat,” he confesses.

“If there is god, then there is ghost,” he says. “Lord Shiva’s big­gest devotees are ghosts and spir­its. There are supernatural forces in every religion, not only Hindu­ism. In Christianity, there are Satan and devil. In Islam, there is Jinn. I believe in the existence of super­natural powers that human the mind can’t comprehend.”

Astrologer Basudev Adhikari says that although people say they want scientific proof of ghost’s existence, this supernatural power can actually be felt. “But not every human being can feel it,” he adds.

“It is mentioned in eastern phi­losophy that those who meet untimely death and whose desires are unfulfilled wan­der as ghosts,” Adhikari asserts. “They exhib­it negative energy. To avoid them, we have to fol­low the rules of nature.”

Sulav Raj Upreti, a psychologist and lecturer at St. Xavi­er’s College in Kathman­du, rubbishes such claims. “The ghosts people ‘see’ are no more than illu­sions. Such illusion may arise from psy­chological problems,” he says.

It could also be a case of kind of placebo effect. “There are people who worship various gods to protect themselves from ghosts. This develops self-confidence and they feel protected from ghosts,” Upreti says.

There is a type of mental disor­der—schizophrenia—where one has symptoms like hallucination, delu­sion, and catatonic behavior. “When people say they see something that others cannot, it could be some a psychological problem like schizo­phrenia,” he says.

One may seek psychosocial ther­apy and counseling, and even psy­chiatric help in such cases, Upreti advises.

Likewise, psychologist Gopal Dhakal blames person’s upbringing. He says parents have a big role in implanting fear in the child’s mind. “Since our childhood, we are fed with ideas of ghosts and spirits. These go deep in our minds and we start feeling the ghosts exist for real,” he says.

In psychology, the intense fear of ghosts is called phasmophobia. One of Dhakal’s patients had such a prob­lem. A village girl felt someone was strangling her from behind when she was in jungle or alone in secluded places. Later, she started having nightmares. Her family took her to local witch doctors—dhamis and jhakris—who made matters worse. “They told her that a ghost was tak­ing over her body. Little did they know that she was suffering from panic disorder, a type of anxiety,” Dhakal says. “She got well only after multiple sessions of counselling and psychotherapy.”

Most famously, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) in the US offered a million dol­lars to anyone who could demon­strate a supernatural or para­normal phenomenon. Since 1964, over a thousand people took up the challenge. Not one of them suc­ceeded, before the challenge was terminated in 2015.

Never mind. Those who have ‘spotted’ ghosts will continue to swear on their life to having a paranormal experience. Those who haven’t will continue to mock them

Started with the vision of promot­ing Nepali artists and give them a platform to “be understood, to cre­ate, and to be original,” the ICMC is an annual event where young musi­cians from schools, college and music institutions await eagerly to showcase their talent.

From the two preliminary rounds held inside the college premises at Gwarko on February 14 and 15, a list of 10 bands—Alankar, Spiral, Lapxa, Prasna, Thibon Hawks, Black Mamba, Paradigm Shift, The Adapters, Sunya, and Obscure—will be battling for the coveted title in the finals. The winning band will get cash prizes, recording deals and the opportunity to perform as guest artists in the next ICMC.

The guest band this year are Psycho­path (last edition’s winner), Chakachak, Jindabaad, and Albatross.

“I find the word ‘old’ a cliché. There’s a stereo­typical thinking of how someone my age should be. But that’s not who I am,” says Aman Pratap Adhikary, 46, a man of many talents, one of them his ability to start a good conversation at any given place and time. “I say this because when I posted my age on my birthday recently, some people said I was get­ting old. I’m friends with my young daughter and son, and I think I’m their age.” Adhikary, currently popular as the “Don Director” of the youth-favorite reality show “Roadies,” is a busy man in Nepali television. Starting his TV career as a sports program presenter/producer in the late 90s, Adhikary has experi­enced Nepali television like no other person: making sports programs, commentating, to directing music videos to mak­ing documentaries, he has done it all. And he has now found his calling in reality TV, a new challenge.

But how did he get into making something whose audience is mostly teens and young people in their mid- 20s? “Well, it’s because I think young and act young,” he says. “I even try out all the tasks for Roadies, as long as my crew permits me.” Adhikary says he maintains certain discipline in his life to keep him both physically and mentally strong. That he was an A-division footballer before joining television helps.

After having spent years in Nepali TV channels, Adhikary’s actual growth, as he puts it, started when he left for Scotland in mid-2000s. There, he got a degree in Tele­vision and Film Production from the Edinburgh Univer­sity and also interned in inter­national production houses. He believes his six years in Scotland shaped his career for the better.

But why did he come back to Nepal despite being eligible to apply for PR in the UK and having already gotten a decent job? “A mentor once asked me if I wanted to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond,” he says. “That struck me. I chose the former and here I am, using all my education and experience in Nepal.”

When Adhikary came back in 2010, he started “Venturing Nepal”, an adventure show that used multi-camera pro­ductions, then directed “Kripa Unplugged,” a music program that combined multi-camera production with studio-grade recording. “People were kind of surprised initially when I directed Kripa as they had seen me do just sports and adventures. Only a few knew I was the son of poet/lyricist Kshetra Pratap Adhikary and I grew up having musical leg­ends like Narayan Gopal and Gopal Yonzon hanging out in my house.”

Adhikary was looking for the next big challenge when he was approached for Road­ies. It was a big challenge for Adhikary as Roadies was a franchise that had been run­ning in India since 2003, and the standards set by the pro­duction company were high. But with his experience, and support from the crew, the first season of Roadies was aired in 2017 and there has since been no looking back. “It was difficult initially when we had to start from scratch and gather a crew which could shoot Roadies,” he says. “We also had to get verifications and approvals for literally everything from India. But at one point, they let us work independently and even praised our work. That was a big achievement for us.”

With the popularity of Roadies at its peak, Adhikary also directed the very first sea­son of “Ko Bancha Crorepati”, another franchise reality TV show. “That was textbook for me though,” he says. “While I was very passionate about Roadies, Crorepati was me using what I’d learnt in col­lege.” He again credits his Roadies team for helping him out with Crorepati and says they are ready to take on any new challenge. That confidence has also promoted him to explore the launch of the Indian franchise “Splits­villa” in Nepal. The project, an ambitious one, is still in its pre-production phase.

But Adhikary is more excited about his own reality production called “Shailee”, a poetry show where partic­ipants will have to woo the audience and the judges not only with their writing skills, but also their presentation. “This is our own offering, dedicated to my father,” he says. “We’re looking for the X-factor in Nepali poets and giving them an outlet for an outburst.” Shailee, Adhikary informs, is all set for production and will soon be launched