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 Newly opened in the quaint area of Baluwatar (100 meters on the left towards Maharajgunj from Shivapuri School), the Delish Opera Restro & Banquet is one of the biggest properties in the area. With ample seating space in the restaurant area for more than 100 guests at a time, Opera also has separate family or meeting rooms and a banquet hall that can host 500 people. The dedicated park­ing lot right next to the restaurant is also relieving considering Kathmandu’s parking problems. Opera offers a multi-cuisine menu including Continental, Indian, Thai and Nepali dishes, as well as a wide collection of alcoholic and non-alco­holic beverages. The restaurant opens its doors for lunch, drinks and dinners as well as private parties ranging from small get-togethers to corporate meet­ings and even weddings. The place to organize Teej celebrations this season?

Photos by Pritam Chhetri

 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman’s debut novel, is a joy because, even though she’s an oddball, there’s something about 30-year-old Eleanor that makes you relate to her and instantly like her. Honey­man’s writing style is witty and it’s a delight to get to know Eleanor through her narration as she comes alive in the pages. No wonder while Honeyman was writing Eleanor Oli­phant is Completely Fine, it was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize as a work in progress. It later won the 2018 Costa Debut Novel Award.

In the book, you will meet Elea­nor, a clerk at a graphic design office, whose existence is orderly even though completely devoid of good relationships. She works all week long and on Friday nights buys herself two bottles of cheap vodka to last her the weekend and eats pizza for dinner and doesn’t speak to anybody till Monday comes around. All this is fine with her. Her job doesn’t remotely interest her but that doesn’t matter so long it pays the bills. Her existence is unre­markable. But Eleanor also feels there’s nothing remarkable about her either, especially not when you factor in the scars that make up more than half her face.

Then Eleanor develops an obsessive teenage-style crush on a handsome and arrogant singer of a band, and she finally buys herself a mobile phone and laptop, and even opens an account on Twitter to follow and keep track of his where­abouts. She also feels the need to kind of reinvent herself if she is to grab his attention.

Also, one day, she and her col­league, Raymond, witness an old man collapse in the street. They help him and in the process Elea­nor, unwittingly, ends up forging ties with him and his entire fam­ily. There’s also the matter of her disturbing relationship with her mother whose only contact with Eleanor seems to be through once-a-week phone calls. It is all these interconnected events, and seem­ingly harmless situations, that force Eleanor to reexamine her life.

Eleanor’s experiences as a woman not used to the world yet attempting to navigate it are poignant. They teach you a thing or two about the need to understand yourself bet­ter and come to terms with your faults and cracks, and to move on. Eleanor’s voice is sharp and it cuts through the hogwash that we, as human beings, are capable of tell­ing ourselves in order to overlook our weaknesses. She will, at times, feel like a much-needed inner voice reminding you that you can turn your life around by making the right choices, no matter how difficult those choices might be.

 Remember that one relative who, at every party and social gathering, thrusts the same dance moves even when the song has changed? ‘Happy Phirr Bhaag Jayegi’ is the movie version of that person. This ensemble broad com­edy is a dance of mindless slapstick foot chases, cross-dressings and run­ning jokes that one way or the other aim to mime comedy by poking fun at national stereotypes. The film is a sequel to the 2016’s ‘Happy Bhaag Jayegi’. The original film was about a run-away Indian bride Happy (Diana Penty) acciden­tally landing up in Pakistan. It was a breezy comedy of manners with small town aesthetics that also raked in a decent box office return. The follow up is set in China and writ­er-director Mudassar Aziz has been handed a bigger budget which he blows up in remolding the franchise into a template that makes it more like the ‘Hangover’ films.

Character-driven humor comes from characters being themselves, but Aziz’s script tries to milk humor by throwing these characters into situations that feel forced and out of context. What begins as a mistaken identity comedy treacherously nose­dives into a ridiculous cross-country road trip that also sees the char­acters trying to break through a high-security Chinese jail.

The plot runs on two Happys. The first Happy (Diana Penty) and her musician husband Guddu (Ali Fazal) are in Shanghai after Guddu is invited to perform at a musical concert. The second Happy (Sonakshi Sinha) is a horticulturist joining a Chinese university as a lecturer. They land in Shanghai from the same flight. Their identities get mixed up in the airport and soon the horti­culturist Happy finds herself in the den of Chinese gangsters. They mis­take her for the other Happy, who, meanwhile, is whisked to the university and asked about her thoughts on bonsai plants.

In the midst of all this, the Chinese gangsters are also quick to kidnap Bagga ( Jimmy Shergill), the groom who Happy left at the altar to marry Guddu, and Afridi (Piyush Mishra), the Pakistani cop who was Happy’s reluctant ally in the first film. The gangsters press Bagga and Afridi to connive Happy into carrying out their plan, which involves redeem­ing a China-Pakistan business deal that has gone wrong. But before Bagga and Afridi can meet Happy, she manages to run away from the den and meets another Indian named Khushwant ( Jassie Gill) at a karaoke bar.

Khushwant, we later learn, is an interpreter at the Indian Embassy, and has been recently dumped. One thing leads to another until the wrong Happy, Bagga, Afridi and Khushwant, all form a team to dodge the Chinese gangsters and to help the horticulturist Happy on a per­sonal quest that takes the four of them on a wild-goose chase from one Chinese city to another.

Of all the actors, Shergill and Mishra come across well with their tongue-in-cheek verbal duels. But the central character of Sonakshi Sinha leaves you unsatisfied. Her performance feels awkward and low in energy throughout, as if she did the movie only because she would get to do some sightseeing. Jassie Gill, who’s the lead opposite Sinha, is so uninspiring that he’s dwarfed by the supporting actors.

‘Happy Phirr Bhaag Jayegi’ feels excruciatingly exhaustive because it tries to march with juvenile and crass jokes. The villains of the movie are so weakly written and driven by so laughable a motive that they never pose a real threat to the pro­tagonists. Unfortunately, the film runs out of urgency, tension, humor and entertainment well before it hits the finish line O

 The Crust Pizza & Bread in Mid Baneswor (50 meters on the lane right next to Civil Bank) is one of the many restaurants that have recently popped up in the student-rich area and are doing well. The Crust serves the best of pizzas along with a wide variety of Continental, Nepali and Indian delicacies, as well as bakery items.

“Food experience that lasts forever and ever...,” reads the Crust’s highly interactive Facebook page and the enormous reviews and responses from its clientele only corroborates the fact. The homely ambience of the Crust caters to students, working professionals and foodies alike, serving breakfasts, lunches and dinners as well as quick takeaways.

 THE MENU

Chef’s Special:

- Newa Pizza

- Cheese Stick Mo:Mo

- Devil’s Horseback

Opening hours: 8:00 am-9:30 pm

Location: Mid Baneswor, Ktm

Cards: Accepted

Meal for 2: Rs 1,500

Reservations: 01-4483383