At home, in K-city

…..Before I left America for Kathmandu, friends had warned me of a culture shock. Streets teeming with throngs of people were supposed to irritate me. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) there was no shock in store for me. That’s not to say there have been no changes in Kathmandu. The most visible of them is an increase in the number of vehicles – private vehicles, taxis, and public transport. That was already happening at a rapid pace when I left for the US five years ago. What I see now is mostly expected. The population of the city has increased and consequentl the pollution levels. But it is far from being overcrowded – unless of course, you are a rich prick who grew up riding around in taxis or your daddy’s car, believed that Thamel was the center of all things evil and shopping in Bhat Bhateni was the most hip thing to do.

…..Putting aside my penchant for bashing the rich, what has happened in Kathmandu is a simple migration of villagers to the city. It used to happen before as well, but in the past 4-5 years there has been a dramatic increase in migrant volume. With Maoists causing all kinds of havoc in villages, the exodus to Kathmandu is expected. After all, to protect their political integrity, the former government and the former King provided security to Kathmandu only and no other city or village. Kathmandu being perceived as a safe haven, it was only a matter of time before the entire nation congregated to the city.

…..Another trend that has contributed to the dramatic rise in Kathmandu’s population is the proliferation of decent paying jobs for the majority of village immigrants. This has in turn enabled them to invite families from villages and permanently settle down in Kathmandu. These jobs range from working in a hotel as a waiter to being an office boy running errands for the hakim. Quite surprisingly business operators have managed to increase the pay for such unskilled labor over time.

…..The emergence of this new lower-class segment has made the city unappealing to the former middle-class segment. I call them former because in the last five years this segment has amassed massive amounts of wealth. How? I am not sure and they are not revealing it. They have gradually moved to the outskirts of the city where new real estate development has taken place. Entire cookie-cutter suburbs have appeared complete with parks, playgrounds, swimming pools and gyms. These suburbs embody the Western influence and lofty, ego-fulfilling aspirations of the new business class. Who lives there and what they do for a living is anyone’s guess as the inhabitants of these swanky residences tend to interact only among themselves. However it is highly likely that these people hold top managerial positions in business establishments in the city. It is also very likely that their kids are studying abroad and are not likely to return to Nepal ever. Speculations aside, income inequality today is one big glaring problem that has gone unaddressed by the government, media, NGOs and everyone who should be addressing it. The aftershocks of this widening gap are yet to be felt and they could very well take a form of terrorism worse than the Maoist insurgency of the past 10 years.

…..As for the Maosits, they have found a new group of supporters in the newly formed lower-class K-city dwellers. They might have not approved of the Maosits’ violent ways earlier. But now with the Mao Premier at the helm of national politics, they are prepared to rally and organize bandhs to get their point across – their point being ‘a move towards a more socialist society to lessen the inequality gap’. In other words they are jealous of and angry at the filthy-rich of Kathmandu. After having seen the comfort and grandeur of their lifestyle, it is only a matter of time that the lower-class will resort to guns just as the Maoists did.

…..To prevent this from happening, it is imperative that the newly formed government of New Nepal takes calculated steps to shore up the lower-class and create a Nepali middle-class. As of now, the Nepali middle class is m.i.a. They have all (at least the majority have) fled the country and are settled abroad – legally or otherwise. This vacuum in the middle-class needs to be filled as soon as possible if any form of development is to happen in the future.

…..Finally I would like to add a humble & cautionary note that these are my opinions and views as a result of a 1-month stay in K-city after a prolonged absence of 5 years. There is every possibility that my views and opinions have been skewed by my personal beliefs and travel patterns within K-city. Anyways, please do not waste your time typing a scathing comment to the post. Thanks!

Dreams of changing the world

..........I walked the streets of Saratoga Springs for the last time yesterday. Tomorrow, I will be at terminal 7 of JFK International Airport to board a Cathay Pacific 777 which will fly me to Hong Kong. From there a Dragon-Air Airbus A320 will bring me home for the first time in nearly five years. The total flight time - including layover in Hong Kong- will be twenty hours and forty minutes. It should be enough time to prepare to meet my immediate and extended family, and breathe in the hot, dry and dusty July air of the world's youngest republic.

..........But 'tomorrow' is the last thing on mind right now. As much as I am looking forward to going home, I have to admit I am already starting to miss people and places among several other things. For the most part, I usually glide over past memories and tend to concentrate more on the future. But today I can't help but churn out memory after another memory from the last five years I have spent abroad.

..........While growing up in Nepal, I had a fire in my belly to 'get to know' the world. It is difficult to put that emotion into words. I did not want to simply be a tourist, take pictures and collect postcards or souvenirs. I wanted to take in the culture of various nations. I wanted to live with and learn from different people in all kinds of strange lands. To some extent I have fulfilled it in the five years since I left Kathmandu for the US.

..........I left home to get an education - in its most traditional sense. I got much more than just a college degree though. The 'education' I have received in the US has brought about a significant change in me. I have done a whole of maturing.

..........As a 19 year old freshman in college my resume boasted not just good academics but an internship with a leading investment bank and a real job experience with a major business house in Nepal. I have to admit that I was pretty full of myself. I also personally chose to tutor weak and failing school-going students who managed to pass major exams in Nepal under my tutorage. All this added to my ego. Though it was not apparent from the outside, since I barely showed-off, I never missed an opportunity to mildly boast of my ‘accomplishments’ among peers and elders. Fast forward four years later, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business/Economics, my pride is gone, my ego has dwindled and in a cruel twist of fate I feel less educated and barely competent.

..........Let’s not jump to conclusions. I did not drink so much in school as to lose half my brain cells. But somewhere between drinking and skipping select classes, I came across many people from different backgrounds. A student from an African nation where the inflation rate is an unimaginable 1000%+, a 75+ year old African-American woman who remembers being isolated by fellow Caucasian classmates, a WWII veteran who can relate to Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, a reclusive art collector who travels to remote locations in Tibet, India, Pakistan & Nepal to collect indigenous Thanka art that would have otherwise been sold for less than $20, a single male nurse with a big, charitable heart who has travelled to more countries than James Bond has in his entire Franchise-life, several young adults my age from war ravaged countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine and Sierra Leone who have suffered in ways most people only hear about in the news, and the list goes on………

……….Getting to know these people and listening to what they had to say was a humbling experience. It brought to life all the stories that I had witnessed through news and history books. They gave a human face to relate with issues ranging from hunger and terrorism in developing countries to dysfunctional immigration laws and changing environmental attitudes in developed ones. None of this could be put on my resume unlike my ‘work experiences’ before college. But it opened up my mind. This was my greatest learning.

……….During my rainy graduation ceremony an embarrassing memory haunted me. Way back in the 2nd or 3rd grade, when a teacher had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had said that I wanted to change the world. The entire class erupted to a laughing hysteria. I don’t recall how I had handled the situation. Somewhere along the growing-up process I relegated the ‘change the world’ aspiration to drug-infused hippies. On graduation day, however, I wanted to feel the same way again. I am not necessarily going to change the world but I want to do something that is more than just meeting my personal needs. Neither do I want to simply travel and experience places and things anymore. I want to interact with real people and help them with (if not solve) problems they face in their lives. It might sound lofty on first glance, but if one aims high, one might end up close to it, if not at it.