Wet dreams of Kathmandu

They say there are different Nepals-- one the Nepal that's Kathmandu, the other one that's urban but not Kathmandu, and there is this Nepal that's backward and rural, where people are dying of diarrhea and malaria and malnutrition, where people walk for days to get to a hospital, where the girl child does not go to school because there are no toilets for girls.

There's no Nepal but one Nepal, and Kathmandu is that Nepal.

Allow me to explain. What represents a nation or a city? What do you think of when you think of the United States-- the crime ridden inner-city Chicago, the dying urban glory that was once Detroit, the 'planned cities' all over that created roads and buildings but destroyed society, or the rising towers of Manhattan, LA and the dream of, as they said, Californication, and the ultimate poster city of American Liberal values and the progress they have lead to-- San Francisco? Tell me about it.

Nepal does not strive to become America. Singapore and HongKong have been doing well  as quasi-Americas for the last five decades, Bulgaria has all but succeeded(to the absolute dismay of my Bulgarian friend), and the Gulf States have succeeded, at least for non-Muslims.  Nepal knows it does not want to be America. Nepal wants to be Kathmandu-- perhaps a slightly less congested, polluted, and crazy version of Kathmandu, but Kathmandu nonetheless. Our aspirations do not lie in making to meetings on the dot, consuming fast food in dangerous (even though KFC and Pizza Hut openings and the soon-to-open McDonald's may convince you otherwise) quantities, and giving the power of thousands of horses to mid-teenagers on open streets. We may dream of it, but we don't want it. Nepal wants progress, and Kathmandu wants progress, but not in any sense the progress the America has seen. Our model is Kathmandu, and Kathmandu is what one lives for in Nepal.

Heretic, you will say. I hear you. One does not live for Kathmandu in Nepal-- one lives for America, or the Gulf, you will say. And you will be correct. They are our national obsessions, and will remain so for a long time. But they are not the end in themselves-- for the Nepal that's in the Gulf, and the Nepal that's in the East Coast and the West Coast and the Mid-west does not dream of these places-- they all dream of Kathmandu themselves. They dream of a Kathmandu that's very different from what is now, but Kathmandu nonetheless. Kathmandu is the concentric focus of our collective wet dreams.

We are mired deeply in fantastically corrupt and inept leadership and bureaucracy, fairness to a lot of us means definite victory of our side--at any cost, our institutions are powerless, those that may show some semblance of competence are so badly demoralized that it'll take them a long time to recover, and we are going through a serious case of cultural turbulence. They make it seemingly impossible for the Kathmandu of collective dreams, to become the real Kathmandu. The Kathmandu of our dreams will always remain so. Kathmandu, and by implication Nepal, will always remain a collective dream.

More impossible dreams have become real though. Africa is rising rapidly despite the constraints, and India has shown reasonable progress. Bihar has risen by leaps and bound.

After a particularly raucous round of discussions in the parliament last year, a lawmaker complained to the speaker on the record that fellow lawmakers were making everything 'seem like Bihar'. The Indian Ambassador who happened to be in the visitors' stand was heard to have said 'Bihar bhi toh 14 percent growth dikh rahaa hai yaar'

Manjushree Thapa has a fantastic piece on Kathmandu in The Daily Beast. READ IT!