Submit your Article

Café Soma’s Baluwatar branch is probably the best breakfast destination this side of the Bag­mati, the other being at its Lalitpur branch. Come Saturday and the café opposite the Russian Embassy in Baluwatar is filled with early morning birds in search of the best bites to break their fasts. The smell of coffee blended with fresh eggs, sau­sages, bacons, hash browns and all give the place an enigmatic aroma in the mornings, enough to create hunger pangs in anyone.With options for both indoor and outdoor seating, Café Soma serves breakfast, lunch and early dinner to its guests who comprise of expats and locals alike. A little bit on the higher side in terms of prices, the eatery reimburses every penny to its guests through its scrumptious food. Worth a try if you’re looking for a non-conventional cuisine in a calm and peace­ful setting, and on being served with gratitude.

THE MENU

Chef’s Special:-

Crispy Chicken Burger

Soma Burger

Full Soma Breakfast

Opening hours : 8 am-8 pm

Location: Baluwatar

Cards : Accepted

Meal for two:  Rs 3,000

Reservation: 4415792

Fiction

HOT MILK

Deborah Levy

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton

Published: 2016

Pages: 218, paperback

We meet the heroine of Deb­orah Levy’s new novel ‘Hot Milk’ right after she drops her laptop on the floor, shattering its screen and thus her life, or so she feels. And you quickly realize she isn’t exaggerating when she says so because as you get to know the 25-year-old Sofia Papastergiadis better, you find there really isn’t much to her life that largely revolves around taking care of her mother’s petulant demands. In the novel, Sofia and her mother, Rose, have come to Spain in what is a final effort to find a cure for a universe of bizarre ailments (mostly imagined) that plague Rose. Sofia has her own set of ailments, most of which are psychological, and are probably a result of her terrible relationship with her mother. Back home in Britain, she is a barista, with a degree in anthropology and an abandoned PhD. Forever shad­owed by her ungrateful mother, she has sort of stopped seeing her life as hers alone. But Hot Milk isn’t a story about sadness and lament, though there is plenty of that too.

At its heart, the book is basically about how Sofia fights the odds and, through her anthropological training, begins to examine her life and those around her, to undo the shackles that are holding her back and rebuild her life. As she learns to take risks, and behave however she wants to, she morphs into someone very unlike the Sofia you meet at the start who was just floating through life without much control over it. And it is this transformation that is so organic and, hence, believable, and which makes Hot Milk such a delightful read.

If you think it sounds like another coming-of-age story, you couldn’t be more wrong. Sofia is unlike any other character you have met and it feels wonderful to see the world through her eyes. She, in her weird ways, teaches you to look at life’s little wonders and take pleasure in them. Also, it helps that the lan­guage is beautifully crafted, making you want to reread certain passages over and over again.

Though Hot Milk isn’t a long novel, you will want to take your time with it because it’s almost like poetry, where each line can have many meanings and insinuations. And there’s a little bit of Greek myth thrown in, as an interesting side plot to an already wonderful narrative.

Sometimes you don’t want to eat within the confined walls. But then you also don’t want to drive to the outskirts of the busy city just for a meal close to nature. This is when you can go to The Yard by Oasis Garden Homes at Sanepa and enjoy delicious food while marveling a beautiful garden. Located in the quiet neighborhood of Sanepa (near Nick Simmons Institute) The Yard is a continental cafe serving delicious Mediterranean and Continental cuisines. A cozy patio and picnic benches make for a casual setting for The Yard, which grows its own herbs and organic vegetables. These in turn are turned into mouth-watering dishes by its female chef Senu Ranjeet Shrestha, one of the very few women heading a restaurant kitchen in Nepal.

THE MENU

Chef’s Special:

Grilled Salmon fillet with pesto sauce

Peri Peri Chicken Wings

Chicken Scallopini

Opening hours: 12 pm-10 pm

Location: Sanepa

Cards: Accepted

Meal for 2: Rs 2,500

Reservations: 5532965/9851095046

Fiction

SLEEPING ON JUPITER

Anuradha Roy

Publisher: Hachette India

Published: 2015

Pages: 250, hardback

Anuradha Roy’s third novel opens on a harrowing note, with seven-year-old Nomita witnessing the murder of her father by axe-wielding masked men after they invade their home. In the same incident she loses her beloved brother, who runs away, and is aban­doned by her mother. “When the pigs were slaughtered for their meat they shrieked with a sound that made my teeth fall off and this was the sound I heard,” the daughter recalls of the violence that changes her life overnight. Such a brutal and jarring beginning is befitting a novel that is deeply disturbing, even though the rest of it is definitely less savage than the first chapter.People make religious trips to the coastal town of Jarmuli in India. But, now as a 25-year-old and a filmmak­er’s assistant, Nomita is making the journey for a completely different reason: to confront her past trau­mas. She spent six years living in an ashram in Jarmuli under a revered guru who emotionally, physically, and sexually abused her and the other children in his care when the world wasn’t watching. This story, that takes place over five days, is told in flashbacks, and as the barbarity of the guru’s crimes are gradually revealed, you can’t help but shud­der, but you are still unable to put the book down. Such is the power of Roy’s prose.

In a way, the book is a brave attempt to reveal the hypocrisies of the Indian society. Roy talks about dhoti-clad priests who fuss about what women wear to temples to a history that’s largely told through erotic cravings on temple walls, and yet how sex is still a taboo of sorts in India. While narrating an engaging story, she pinpoints what is so fundamentally wrong with the Indian society to make violence and misogyny norms of its culture.

There are also references to the epic Mahabharata, where good trumps evil. However, in ‘Sleeping with Jupiter’, the evil against women and children and homosexuality are made out to be things that can’t be challenged so long as hypocrisy and patriarchy rule our societies. Roy, through Nomita and other interwo­ven characters, brings to the fore­front issues many would largely turn a blind eye to or cover up. And, while doing so, she also manages to raise some important questions on what it means to be a woman in contemporary India in a way that simply cannot be forgotten.