Most parties are not interested to include marginalized community members in their central committee.

After the ten-year Maoist “People’s War,” the terminology “inclusion” has been strongly established in Nepali governance, politics and I/NGOs environs. Specially, the political parties and their leaders never forget to mention Dalits, women, Adibasis, Janajatis and Madhesis in their speeches, manifestos, party constitutions, policies and programs.

But if we see these very parties’ internal structures, the reality is quite the opposite. Most parties are not interested to include marginalized community members in their central committee. This practice is also common within regional fringe parties and the three big parties.

Considering the 700,000-plus live birth rate in the country, it is calculated that the prevalence of obstetric fistula is 0.3 to 0.6 every 1,000 deliveries

For many women in rural Nepal, motherhood comes at a cost. Maternal joys for them are merely momentary, and in most cases associated with stories of suffering.
Kalpana Rai’s harrowing experience of childbirth reflects the situation of a majority of women in remote parts of Nepal where access to roads and lack of healthcare facilities worsen the situation for women giving birth.

After the 32-year-old’s delivery turned complicated, the health post at her village in Bhojpur couldn’t do much. The nearest biggest hospital was miles away – she had to be carried on a stretcher by four men before being transported by road to BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences (BPKIHS) in Dharan. But lack of proper antenatal checkup and quick access to healthcare facilities during labor meant her newborn had already died in the womb by the time she was in the hospital’s delivery room.

Koteshwor of Kathmandu is as busy as ever, with its bustling traffic, blaring horns, crowds of people and clouds of smoke.

At a “police chowki” in the heart of the locality, Biba Nepali, Assistant Sub Inspector (ASI) of Nepal Police, flashes a warm smile.

“This is my first interview. In my two decades of service, nobody has ever interviewed me,” she beams.

With an ardor and eye for photography since his childhood, Stephen Freiheit grew up to become more passionate in his work and established himself as an ace photographer.

A British citizen, Freiheit was born in Germany and partly grew up in Denmark. But he considers Nepal his second home as after he first visited the country some nine years back, he has been coming back time and again.

Inside a small room, around ten to twelve women sit encircling three low tables and are busy writing on their notebooks in silence. A woman at the corner takes a chart of Nepali alphabets and sticks it on a white board. She then picks a long ruler from the table and points at another woman across the room and says in a strong voice, “Tara, your turn.”

Tara Tamang, a 42-year-old businesswoman, shifts towards the whiteboard before she starts chanting the alphabets, “Aa bata Anara.” The other women in the room follow her in loud voice. Sheela Basnet, the teacher, encourages the women to increase the volume of their pitch. “Let me know that you had your lunch,” she says. The room echoes with the chanting of Nepali alphabets as if these grown women are practicing nursery rhymes.

Live-in relationship does provide a remedy for a carefree life free from the hassles of responsibility and commitment which is the very prerequisite of the institution of marriage.

Amit Thapa, 28, and Ritu Shrestha*, 27, had been together for two years when their families decided to get them married off. But the two of them had other plans. They wanted to live together for some months before they tied the knot.

“Our families were aghast. They couldn’t understand why we couldn’t get married right away,” says Ritu, a Masters-level student who had to convince her parents to let her spend some time with Amit before she decided to take the plunge.

Read comics, cartoons and other “cheap and crazy stuffs” to become a great NW2iE (Nepali writer writing in English) – Just as I did!

Question: What was the first piece of fiction you read that had an impact on you?
Answer: I did not grow up with many books, especially children’s books. In second grade, a schoolmate lent me a copy of “The Arabian Nights”—we both thought it was a book for children—and told me I had three days to read it. Oh my, I had three wild days of reading, remembering so many vivid details without understanding any! It made me laugh so hard at the time; when I reread the book a few years ago, I laughed even harder.

The above is Yiyun Li’s answer, made on June 14, 2010, to The New Yorker’s short story collection “20 Under 40” and its Q. & A. session.

Born in 1972 in Beijing, Li’s answer indeed fits my own private juvenile literacy rate in India in the English language some 30 years before her birth, and her words largely portray my own primary-school access – none at all! – to reading materials in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Darjeeling.

The familiarity with Windows is something that none of can ever let go. We instinctively know our way through the Start Menu, we look for the computer icon and love the small little bar at the bottom of the screen that connects us with all the applications running.

For us, a computer is the easiest when it flaunts a familiar workspace. But what about people who want a little more? No matter how familiar the OS is, Windows can get a tad bit bland after sometime, and if you have a decent computer, there are various things you can hack to make your Windows look like something else completely, keeping desktop productivity in mind, nonetheless.

Wrongly accused in the murder and rape case of Yasuko Watanabe, a 39-year old Japanese woman, Govind Mainali was sentenced to life imprisonment by Tokyo High Court. Working in a restaurant at the time of his arrest, Mainali spent 15 years of his life in Japanese prison before he was acquitted of all charges in light of additional evidences that proved his innocence. After returning home from the ordeal in the foreign land, Mainali has written an autobiography detailing the series of events and his hardship in the Japanese prison. His book ‘Paribanda ma 15 Barsa’ (Trapped for 15 years) is due release next week.
Co-authored by Devendra Bhattarai, The Week presents an excerpt from his book:

Since November 1996, we had changed our jobs and had started living in room number 401 at Khasia Building. The building located at the Shibuya Ward of Tokyo was close to Shinsen Railway Station.

It had been years since I’d read a Paulo Coelho book and when I saw Eleven Minutes, I picked it up because of the remembered aftertaste of The Alchemist and By the River Piedra, I Sat Down And Wept.

Eleven Minutes started with an intriguing dedication to a stranger Coelho met in Lourdes, France. The stranger told him that Coelho’s books made him “dream.” Coelho states, “I felt really frightened, because I knew that my new novel, Eleven Minutes, dealt with a subject that was harsh, difficult, shocking.”