Romanticizing Kathmandu

I just read The most impressive blog post I have read for some time. It's pretty bad in terms of grammar and language actually(not that I'm any better), but the content's soo cool. MANYUDIXIT

The post romanticizes Kathmandu. Now, I think romanticizing Nepal(including Kathmandu, obvs) has its pitfalls. Anil Shah tells people wherever he goes, that Nepalis might have seemed happier and more content in the sixties and seventies and eighties, but  maternal mortality was at its highest, available of health services was THE lowest in the world, only one out of every five Nepali could read and write, there was little freedom of expression and opinion, and so on... The happiness was very primitive... The bliss was out of ignorance and not through knowledge, and therefore temporary(ooh, cool philosophy, amirite?)

The point is, I don't care how many hippie bands said Kathmandu was the best place on Earth in the sixties, it was not. Oh wait, it miight have been for those pot smoking, frolicking, backpacking hippies, but not for the REAL Nepalis, who, you know, actually lived in Nepal and stuff. For Nepalis and Kathmanduites, the best time is right now. I'm going slightly off-topic here, I'll write more on this in some other post, but more importantly, the Kathmandu of the nineties.

Kathmandu of the nineties was full of promises. The Panchayat system was over, media was being liberalized, foreign brands were slowly entering Nepal, the middle class was rising...and (something very, very wrong is happening to me... OMG! I cannot stop thinking about love stories) time was ripe for the beginning of a love story.

The love story that began in the mid-to-late nineties in Kathmandu will end in 2010, or possibly sometime in the future. In 1995-98, Kathmandu was full of promises, today we know they were lies, and have learned to live with that. The Kathmandu of the nineties believed that progress would come from within, today's Kathmandu knows progress needs to be imported, and is doing it very-very well.

Back to the love story. The love story I talked about in one of my previous posts(which involves Kumari hall) will begin in the nineties. The characters of the nineties will be naive, inexperienced, and unknowing. The characters of today will be depressed, cynical, and mostly pessimists. They do not trust in promises--irregardless of who makes them--political leaders, police, old lovers, new lovers, parents.

But the story cannot end now. If it does, it's gonna be a very sad story indeed. I must wait for a good ending. Kathmandu's rising, and good days will certainly come. It's just a matter of time--five years or fifty, I cannot say. I now have a beginning, a middle part, and now I need a happy ending. I will wait.