Sajha.com

Bungee jumping

(RECYCLED piece: This was originally published in The Kathmandu Post, 21 July, 2001. Special thanks to Neeraj, Bhaskar and Salil for sharing the adventures.)


By Ashutosh Tiwari

How would you like to close your eyes and fall headlong from a bridge, stationed at a height of 160 metres . . . into an ice-cold, boulder-filled and ragingly foaming Himalayan river?

If that sounds like a fun way to spend a part of your Saturday afternoon, then welcome to the sport of bungy jumping, available, since early 2000, at a price in this country of mountains long known for, well, heights.

It was late last year when three friends and I, looking for a way to escape Kathmandu to finish up the year on an adventurous note, decided to go bungy jumping. We knew very little about the sport, of course — except that, on and off, we had caught a few bungy visuals on a foreign TV show or two (most memorably in an Aerosmith music video).

The idea that seemingly sane people would climb up to insane heights only to come crashing down to the earth with nothing but elastic cords tied to their body parts was frightening and exciting. We had to explore this fright and the excitement for ourselves.

That we could explore all this not too far from Kathmandu in one afternoon and still be able to make it home by the evening to sleep off the ‘jump-lag’ only added to our thrill.

And so we left, at seven on one chilly December morning, for The Last Resort in Sindhu Palchowk district. From Thamel, our bus, carrying about 20 potential jumpers, wound its way towards the northern directions, through the bazaars of Koteswor, outer Bhakatpur, Dolal Ghat and others.

The final stretch of the Kodari Highway was uneven, thereby rattling the bus sideways and up and down, and giving us all a good workout on our seats. But around midday, the bus did reach — like a caterpillar completing, at last, that lurch towards the end of the leaf it’s chewing on — our destination, within 12 miles of the Nepal-Tibet border.

Getting off the bus to stretch our legs, we soon forgot our hunger upon seeing the wiry mesh of the 166-metre-long suspension bridge atop a yawning gorge. A fast, furious and cruel Bhote Koshi river swirled below. The whole scene came upon us as though it had sprung to life from the Marlon Brando movie Apocalypse Now.

As the sun shone warmly high above, turning the jagged grey peaks of rock yellow on one side of us, and as crisp air from Tibet blew in our faces, all we could do was shudder in silence with nervous anticipation.

The Last Resort folks — two New Zealanders, one Nepali and one Israeli — did their best to make us feel comfortable. After welcoming us with coffee and a light lunch of noodles and potatoes, they gathered us all together, and started rattling off the procedures, before weighing each of us.

It was obvious that these bungy-masters had done the explanations hundreds of times (a la the flight attendant who tells you about those emergency exits just as your plane is about to take off), were thorough in the mastery of their methods, and knew how to have fun helping people throw themselves off the bridge.

Meantime, their good-natured ribbing was enough for some of us to start reconsidering the sheer lunacy of what we had set out to do. After all, think about this: who in a right frame of mind in Nepal would pay a little more than 3000 rupees (that too, at a heavy discount for Nepalis) for the pleasure of diving headlong from the side of a bridge into the yawn of nature?

But happily, as I saw it with my own eyes that day, around 20 or so Nepali and non-Nepali men and women - each with a varying degree of interest in adventure tourism - would really put themselves in that ‘lunatic’ frame of mind to pursue the ultimate adrenaline kick, and, to the best of my knowledge, survive well enough to tell the tale to all who would listen.

Considering that the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island in New York is only 92 metres tall, and that a 25-storey building is about only 76 metres tall, it was no small achievement to have jumped off a height of 160 metres.

So how did the jumpers — forgetting careers, families and everything else - choose to make the plunge? Good psychology certainly helped. Knowing that that the Swiss-tested and New Zealand-managed safety standards would work just fine put all first-timers mentally at ease.

And the suspension bridge, we were reassured, was not going to snap under the weight of our collective excitement. That was because it was designed and constructed with a loading factor of 41,500 kg. Plus, the fact that the bridge functioned as a jump-platform for jumpers, a backstage for the bungy-masters to pull up the pulleys, and a balcony space for onlookers to cheer at his each jump while remaining a short-cut for Tamang villagers to get to the other side of the river in less than three minutes (earlier, they used to trek up and down for five hours) made all feel like they did not want to let it down by not, well, jumping down from it, especially after having come all the way from Kathmandu for bungy-jumping!

And so, with the issue of ‘hardware’ settled safely, it was easy to turn attention to the science behind each jump. Each jump takes about 15 minutes from start to finish, and once your turn comes, the bungy-masters beckon you to the middle of the bridge.

There, they strap you onto a chair that is locked tight against the bridge linings so you can sit but can’t move. And once you are seated, the bungy-masters wrap, with velcro, the y-shaped end of a thick manufactured-in-Malaysia but made-and-knotted-in-Nepal elastic rope onto those parts of your legs, where the ends of your socks hug your calves tight.

Since the rest of that mammoth rope, which looks and feels as if it were one long anaconda, is already down the bridge forming a U-shape under the bridge and over the river, all you do is quiver as you sit alone to feel the unmistakable pull of gravity on your legs and then on your whole body.

Meanwhile, to maintain balance, the bungy-masters drop down a vessel that’s slightly more than your weight, and take great care to keep a pulley-like system in place. Soon, the lock to your chair is open, and you are able to stand and walk about four paces forward onto the foldable iron mat, which juts out from the middle of the bridge. You grab on to the railings that are now behind you, and you take a deep breath as you look sideways, front and down.

Sideways, you see your friends and onlookers cheering you on; up ahead, you see calm, green hills, majestic in their remoteness; and, down below, you see the blue and naked waters of the Bhote Koshi River, and hear their roar amplified all the more by the big boulders.

And then, you open your palms to let go of the railings behind, and think of that Van Halen number as you move forward into the river from a height of 160 metres. Only then, you know that you have jumped . . . from one of the highest bungy-jumping heights on the planet.

As your whole body, respecting Newton’s laws, lurches headlong into the river, the U-shape of the rope quickly morphs into one giant elastic band so that you are soon turned into a yo-yo. As your heart beats like crazy, and blood seems to rush out of your system, and you feel as though you are going to smash yourself into pieces at that boulder below, you suddenly feel a gentle tug, which soon takes you back to the way of the bridge up above.

No uncomfortable jerks. No abrupt pulling and pushing. No spinning out of control, and no swinging wildly from side to side. But a bounce so soft and gentle that you feel as though you have been pulled up to float (yes, float!) all the more on air. Then the gravity pulls you down again, followed again by the upward bounce, and this up and down bounce goes on very gently for less than a minute until you become completely suspended, as it were, in a sort of an orgasmic bliss.

Only then the jump-masters up on the bridge start using the pulley-system to pull up the vessel so that you can be lowered to a sandy patch by the river.

Soon, you are able to wave at your friends below you, and grab hold of a long stick, pushed in your way by one of the Last Resort folks. Once you grab the stick, it’s only a matter of minutes before they help you land, and open up the velcro straps on your legs so that the rope can be pulled up to strap on to the calves of another jumper up on the bridge.

Finally, we Nepalis have long prided ourselves on being citizens of a country of tall mountains. Indeed, mountaineers among us have long appreciated the heights from which they can go around the world. But for those of us who have neither the time nor the inclinations to be a mountaineer, spending an afternoon bungy-jumping from a height may well be one adventure through which we can experience the world within ourselves.

***********

More on bungee jumping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungee_jumping

More on Last Resort bungee in Nepal
http://thelastresort.com.np/bungy.htm

   [ posted by ashu @ 07:00 AM ] | Viewed: 1876 times [ Feedback] (1 Comment)

Nothing fancy . . . just an attempt to provide the SAME platform for these Web links (assuming, of course, these might be of interest to visitors of this blog).

I am NOT a journalist either by training or by profession.

Just happen to be a curious person.

And I ENJOY -- really enjoy -- writing . . . from time to time, about ideas, people, places and events that I come across and find interesting enough to
be SHARED with others who might like similar stuff.

Tetti ho.

*************************************

Links:

1. A conversation with Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and a winner, along with his Bank, of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/360/Interview/13802


2. A conversation with the founder of BRAC, the world's largest NGO which is in Bangladesh.

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/358/Interview/13758


3. Bangladeshis of Nepali ancestries: In their own words

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/359/Nation/13777


4. Telecom lessons for Nepal from Bangladesh?

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/344/StrictlyBusiness/13424


5. A review of a book on Bangladesh's private sector

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/251/Review/399


6. Some good articles written by Nepalis writing in English for the now-defunct The Kathmandu Post Review of Books (1996-2002) can be found if you play with this link.

http://www.asianstudies.emory.edu/sinhas/kprb.html


7. Given my formal and informal association with it, people often ask me about Martin Chautari (MC) -- the ultimate place for no-holds-barred Socratic dialogue in Kathmandu on contemporary issues. I have learnt a lot by going to MC discussions and by interacting with speakers there.

Here's a link that provides a decent introduction to MC.

http://www.sarai.net/journal/pdf/010-015%20(martin).pdf

8. An informal reading list of Nepali sahitya books compiled by writer Khagendra Sangraula a few years ago.

http://www.sajha.com/uploads/Nepali%20Literature%20Reading%20List.pdf

Enjoy,

oohi
ashu

**************************************
"Be who you are . . . because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

   [ posted by ashu @ 02:24 AM ] | Viewed: 1907 times [ Feedback]

Pujan Roka attended St. Xavier’s School before heading to the US for higher studies. An award-winning editorial cartoonist, Roka responded to Ashutosh Tiwari’s questions about his book Bhagavad Gita on Effective Leadership.

An interview

Q. Why Bhagavad Gita for a book on leadership?
A. Management thinkers have long studied spiritual figures such as Jesus and ancient texts such as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in the context of leadership. I see the Gita as one additional contributor to the leadership literature.

Q.What motivated you to write this book?
A. No one had previously explored the Gita in the context of present-day leadership. This gap was my key motivator. During my research, I had an opportunity to exchange notes with Peter Senge and Marshall Goldsmith, two well-known management gurus. Their positive responses motivated me further.

Q. How did you do the research? How long did it take?
A. I did the research mostly by examining what the contemporary authorities say about leadership. It took a little over three years.

Q. What has been the reaction of businesses in general?
A. I have received positive reactions from businesses here in the US. I have given a few presentations based on what I wrote in the book.

Q. What is one essence about leadership that you distill from the Gita?
A. Leadership is about inspiring and guiding others by ideas, actions, and compassion. This is the essence of leadership as taught by the Gita.

Q. If cynics were to accuse you of using an ancient Hindu text to ride the “leadership studies boom” in the US, what would be your response?
A. Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books on leadership. But only a few writers have looked into ancient texts to extract leadership wisdom for contemporary times. In the Gita’s case, prominent management thinkers had not devoted an entire book to it, while scholars of Gita had not put it in the context of leadership, especially extracting lessons for business readers.

My book bridges this gap. A US-born Indian-American manager at a Fortune 100 company told me that he grew up noticing a copy of the Gita in his parents’ puja-kotha. It was not until he read my book that he got curious enough to read the Gita itself.

Q. I have long enjoyed your cartoons on the Net. I am surprised that you chose not to illustrate this book with sketches and drawings.
A. I have heard similar things from others. I’ll keep that in mind for my next project.

Q. Your book is a self-published one. What are your thoughts on self-publication?
A. As you well know, many new and well-established writers are publishing their own books these days in the US. Self-publication as an approach has created a brand new publishing model which gives the control to the writers instead of to the publishers.

In my case, I found no publisher who could represent the genre that is demanded by my book. There are publishers that specialize in either business or spirituality. But there are none that specialize in handling both business and spirituality in a cohesive way. There are some publishers who have started combining Christianity and business. But Eastern religious traditions are very foreign to them.

Given these constraints, self-publishing has worked very well for me. I have a world-wide distribution through major retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and major wholesalers like Ingram. I am not aware whether any Nepali retailer has tapped into this distribution, but the opportunity is there. What’s more, through this approach, I have been able to channel most of the proceeds to Save the Children programs.

Q. In any case, it looks like you are the first Nepali writer of a business/leadership book aimed at an American audience.
A. To the best of my knowledge, that is correct.


****************
A shorter version of this appears at
http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/348/Interview/13515

A review appears at:
http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/348/StrictlyBusiness/13516

Here is the book on Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Effective-Leadership-Timeless/dp/0595370403/ref=sr_1_1/102-7772675-2697722?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178983717&sr=8-1

More at http://www.pujanroka.com

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This Life on Lithium
A review by Ashutosh Tiwari

BOOK:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
by Kay Redfield Jamison
Vintage Books, New York 1996

Doctors enjoy talking about their specialties. What they don't enjoy is talking about their own battles with various afflictions, be they cancer, drug addiction or, God forbid, clinical depression.

Kay Redfield Jamison is a refreshing exception. A tenured professor of psychiatryat the prestigious Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Maryland, USA, she is one of the world's leading experts on manic-depressive illness.

It is the illness she knows all too well personally as well. "As long as I can remember," she writes, "I was
frighteningly beholden to moods . . .[I]ntensely emotional as a child, mercurial as a young girl, first severely depressed as an adolescent, and then unrelentingly caught up in the cycles of manic-depressive illness by
the time" she "started [her] professional life, by becoming, by necessity and intellectual inclination, a student of moods."

As such, this book is Jamison's brutally honest and
poetically charged memoir about how an intelligent, beautiful and cultured woman like herself has lived with two identities that stand in sharp contrast to one another. The first identity is that of a wailing, helpless manic-depressive who, from time to time, completely loses her emotional moorings, only to oscillate wildly
between feelings of giddy grandeur and crushing despair -- leaving relationships, credit ratings, academic performances and much else besides in utter ruins.

And her other identity is that of a stable psychiatrist who does path-breaking research, wins professional plaudits, savors romance with lovers, enjoys the arts and music,
and helps train the next generation of doctors. Against this backdrop, this memoir can best be read as riveting, frightening yet ultimately inspiring stories of Jamison's wars against herself as she continues to wrestle with bouts of manic-depression in an attempt to lead a happy, productive life.

But just what is manic-depressive illness anyway? Quite
simply, it is often described as a severe disorder of moods. It is a disease nonetheless, as Jamison eloquently writes in her quotable intro, that "kills tens of thousands of [women and men] every year: most [of whom] are young, die unnecessarily, and are among the most imaginative and gifted that we as a society have." Yet, "[t]he
major clinical problem in treating manic-depressive illness is not that there are not effective medications - there are -but that patients so often refuse to take them."

Besides, as Jamison puts it, "because of a lack of information, poor medical advice, stigma.
Or fear of personal and professional reprisals, they do not seek treatment at all." The illness "distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful beahaviours, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is biological in origins, yet one feels psychological in the experience of it; an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide."

Jamison's traces the roots of her manic episodes to watching her brilliant, idiosyncratic father periodically fly high and come crashing down on his emotional roller-coaster when she was a child. In college, which was an emotionally traumatic rite of passage to her, she spends more time on research at labs than get good grades. Her research skills get her into graduate school, where, she finds the "freedom from the highly structured existence of undergraduate studies", delves into experimental psychology, and, as a student-researcher, interacts with a variety of patients with mental health problems.

Offered a teaching position upon the completion of the PhD,
she starts a job at a time when her mania hits her with full force. Of that period, she writes, "my marriage was falling apart . . . I was increasingly restless, irritable and I craved excitement: all of a sudden, I found myself rebelling against the very things I most loved about my husband: his kindness, stability, warmth and love. I impulsively reached out for a new life . . . credit cards are disastrous [for manic-depressives], personal
checks worse . . . "

As pieces started to fall out of Jamison's life, it was her
elder brother who, out of love and without judgment, started to settle the dust for her. He paid her bills, bought her the medicine of manic-depressives, Lithium, and basically "spread his wing" over her. Jamison acknowledges that not many manic-depressives are lucky to have such a loving family member, and she credits the support
and care she received from her brother for putting her back on track of doing research. Meantime, she started going to therapies.

And so the memoir goes, in its very readable prose,
detailing intermittent periods of bliss and productivity in
Jamison's life with months of utter despair and madness. In
between, in lucid terms, she talks about the latest research being done in the identification of and in the treatment of manic-depressive patients. She addresses her concerns "about writing [this book] that so explicitly describes my own attacks of mania, depression, and psychosis, as well as my problems acknowledging the need for ongoing medication."

In appearing undeterred by the possible effects of her memoir upon her personal and professional life, she displays much courage, honesty and, interestingly, pure emotional strength. But then, as anyone who, like Jamison, has battled manic-depressive illness for any amount
of time may admit, once you learn to live with manic-depressive illness, there is very little that seems to be of "insurmountable difficulty".

All in all, this is a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading and
learning much from.

**************

Originally published in The Kathmandu Post Review of books (July 1999).

- http://www.asianstudies.emory.edu/sinhas/kprb.html

******************

A recent appearance by Kay Redfield Jamison

- http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518186

The book itself

- http://www.amazon.com/Unquiet-Mind-Memoir-Moods-Madness/dp/0679763309

   [ posted by ashu @ 04:33 AM ] | Viewed: 2460 times [ Feedback]

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Revised and updated, 2002
By Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
Published by Rider, London
Page: 303

A book review by Ashutosh Tiwari

(Originally published in Kathmandu's New Business Age magazine in 2004 or so)

If you want to see happiness personified, spend half an hour talking with Baikuntha Manandhar about the joys of running.

Watch Manandhar’s eyes light up, how his face radiates with a smile, and how infectiously enthusiastic he gets when describing his participation in the Montreal (1976) or the LA (1984) Summer Olympics.

You can imagine him—eyes closed, wiping the glistening sweat off his face and enjoying the roar of the crowd as he nears the finishing line. To Manandhar, the only thing better than talking about running is running itself: setting the goals, throwing himself into the activity, investing all his psychic energy into the process, and then enjoying running for its own sake are what that seem to make Manandhar genuinely happy.

Is there a psychology behind Manandhar’s happiness?

All right, before we get further, let’s accept that when one hears the word psychology, one assumes that whatever it is, it’s got to do with not happiness but unhappiness and misery.

But there is something called positive psychology, now gaining grounds in Western academia. It’s about how one can play up one’s strengths to lead a happier, more fulfilling life.

Indeed, in a conversation with edge.org, a site devoted to discussing cutting-edge scientific ideas, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman says that 50 years and 20-billion dollar worth of scientific research by academic psychologists has been able to make “14 major mental illnesses treatable” now—turning many “miserable people less miserable.” Given this remarkable decrease in the “tonnage of suffering in the world”, Seligman sees no reason why academic psychology cannot also help “increase the tonnage of happiness” at workplaces, among family members and in communities.

To be sure, the happiness that Seligman talks is not about “smiling a lot and giggling.” Nor is it about “raw feelings, thrills and orgasms.” Citing Aristotle, Seligman defines happiness as when “one has a good conversation, when one contemplates well...[when one feels] completely at home [with what one is doing]; [when one’s] self-consciousness is blocked...[and when one is in flow] with the music of [life].”

At first brush, such definitions of happiness sound schmaltzy, the kind of stuff associated not with scientists but with poets or hippies. But it also happens to accurately summarise the hard-nosed conclusions of peer-reviewed research conducted over a period of two decades by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (pronunciation: me.high chick.sent.me.high) at the University of Chicago (he’s now at the Claremont Graduate School in California).

In 1990, Csikzentmihalyi published his findings in a paperback called Flow, which so resonated with the public that it went on to be translated into 14 languages. The book’s ideas found applications in fields ranging “from the manufacture of Nissan and Volvo to the design of art museums...from the rehab of juvenile delinquents to the training of business executives.” This 303-page book under review, written in a language that is easy to follow, is a revised and updated 2002 edition.

Based on cross-country, multi-team and multi-year research on happiness, Csikzentmihalyi argues that life’s optimal experiences are based on the state of flow. It’s the state that’s between energy-depleting states of anxiety and boredom. That is to say, most of the time, we are either anxious that we might not meet the challenges of our work or bored because the work we do is not challenging enough. Either case makes us unhappy. The flow approach takes a different path.

It’s “the state in which people”—corporate strategists, dancers, writers, marathon runners, rock musicians, meditation teachers, surgeons, or even the disabled—”are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

A flow experience stretches us just to the point where we are focused to enjoyably meet a challenge and strengthen our skills.

It thus keeps us engaged to the task at hand by steering us clear of states of both anxiety and boredom. In other words, by consciously injecting a dose of purpose into what we do, flow helps us transform even routine activities into enjoyable, therefore happier, experiences—regardless of whether we are working as a teller at a bank, preparing for a meeting with shareholders or selling products to customers.

What’s the relevance of all this to busy Nepali managers? Plenty. Nepali managers worry about keeping workers motivated to finish the tasks at hand. Their understanding of how flow works to raise individual happiness (and correspondingly, productivity) may help them re-configure work in such a way that it induces numerous “flow states” at factories and offices. This way, the managers may start hearing their workers rave about work the way, say, Baikuntha Manandhar gushes about running marathons.

(Originally published in Kathmandu’s The New Business Age Magazine.)

Here's a relevant recent article from TIME magazine;

- http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1606395,00.html

Here's the book itself

- http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0060920432/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-4807608-8082354?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175756180&sr=1-2

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The Slogan Generation

(This is a RECYCLED piece. This was first published in The Kathmandu Post about 10 years ago.This was later re-published in The Nepal Digest electronic newsletter. I remembered this article, after reading today's The Nepali Times -- see the link below. Some of the stuff here might be a bit dated, but that's OK -- this blog is a good place to maintain a small little archive of one's interesting and not-so-interesting articles.)

The Slogan Generation

by oohi ashu

Cycling to Baneswor last Wednesday, I suddenly realized that as someone between the age of 20 and 29, I am one of 3.4 million Nepalis who belong to 'The Slogan Generation'.

Why the slogan generation?
Very simple.

Ever since our childhood in the '70s, the keepers of the Nepali state, regardless of their politics, have been feeding us nothing but slogans.

The first slogan we were taught in primary school was the famous
"bikas ko mool footau noo parcha" [translation: the source of development must be found]. Nobody ever explained what bikas really meant; but whatever it meant, we were assured that its 'source' would be 'reached' through the then 'national soil-appropriate' Panchayati system.

Imagine our shock when -- twenty years later, all grown up -- we saw not only that "soil-appropriate" system's biting the dust, but also that our predecessors had confused the seeds of binas with the fruits of bikas.

And the result?

Today as members of the slogan generation, we remain unsure as to how to reconcile our slogan-washed image of a "proud and independent nation" with that of our emerging global identity as the world's second poorest country -- shyly squatting, as we do, on the world's door-mat with a begging bowl.

In social-studies classes, we learnt "hariyo ban, Nepal ko dhan"
[trans: green forests; Nepal's wealth]. Again, only later did denuded hills and devastated Tarai jungles show us that the green forests were really the then Panchayati Ministers' lottery to untold wealth, which they continue to enjoy even to this day.

And as impressionable students in high-school in the '80s, we chanted to the tune of blood-boiling nationalism. Only today are we waking up to understand why the brightest among us quietly emigrate to the West, while many brawny Nepalis increasingly risk their lives in sweat-shops from South Korea to Saudi Arabia.

And of course, ethnic diversity was always there for tourists to click their cameras at. But to us, it always came wrapped up in "euta desh, eutai vesh" [one country, one dress] -- whether we liked it or not. Still, state-sponsored slogans spun its own web of mass hypnosis. Remember the ones about fulfilling every one's basic needs by taking us all to the heights of "Asialy Maap-danda" [Asian standards] by the year 2000?

The year 2000 is only 35 months away. But even with a new political system with its attendant Constitution, what have we been hearing? Vapid speeches and empty slogans, one after another.

One group that has squandered all its goodwill shouts "BP ko sapana sakar parau" [Let us fulfil BP's dreams], while its opposition calls for "safeguarding democracy" and then goes on to engage in spectacular fist-fights inside the Parliament. Still others are vowing to breathe life into their Panchayati skeleton, whereas some with glinting khukuris sway to the slogans of Chairman Mao -- shattering the impoverished monotony of mid-hills like Rolpa.

Pedalling along, I was tempted to theorize why foreign companies doing business in Nepal too have started flashing one-liners to attract the slogan generation. Then again, raised on easy, empty slogans, what else could stir my generation's almost-Pavlovian reflexes? "Wear your attitude" was one hip slogan I found on a large billboard on my way to Baneswor.

(Originally published in The Kathmandu Post.)


Nepali Times ko slogan article link:

- http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/340/Editorial/13328

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The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
By Chris Anderson
Hyperion, 2006

A review by Ashutosh Tiwari

Early this year [2006], Kathmandu’s Bhatbhateni Supermarket broadened its premises. Despite this expansion, there is a limit to what it can stock and sell. Bhatbhateni will therefore continue to stock only those goods that it is most likely to sell. This means fewer choices for customers. What if Bhatbhateni went online?

Internet shelf space costs almost nothing. Bhatbhateni online could display hundreds of thousands of more goods, whose details could be had at the click of a mouse. And you could choose what you want from an array of selections and place an order.

When customers search and buy through an abundant of choices, the market, as we usually know it to reward scarcity, starts behaving differently. In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson explains these different behaviours as effects of the long tail (TLT), which he defines as unlimited online markets.

Anderson’s TLT model means that Bhatbhateni’s physical store might carry up to only 15 varieties of, let's say, imported beer. but its online store could well carry 1000 more varieties. Yes, even online, many customers would still buy only 15 to 20 most popular or “hit” brands (say, the Heinikens of the world).

Anderson’s insight is that the online store makes substantial money when it adds up the revenues from the sales of the remaining 985 to 980 “niche” beer (i.e. Kenyan, Brazilian, South African, etc). In other words, in a physical store, “hits”, as in what sells, matter. Online, with its unlimited shelf space, “niches”, as in what could also sell, become a surprisingly big revenue-generator.

One reason why that’s true is that online stores are free from the “tyranny of geography”. People sitting in Jhapa or Jerusalem can buy goods after checking out the vast selections of Bhatbhateni online. Collectively, they will buy not only the popular items, but also quirky, odd ones in large numbers -- thereby driving up the sales of the latter.

To illustrate this, Anderson gives an example of Bollywood movies in the US. Many American movie theaters do not show Bollywood movies. That’s because viewers of such movies are too scattered to be big enough to sustain profitable two-week runs.

The result is that Bollywood movies don’t get shown. Enter Netflix, an Internet-based DVD rental company. Anderson finds Netflix making serious money by supplying – along with the usual Hollywood hits – niche creations such as obscure documentaries, art films and Bollywood movies to customers living all over the US. So what if theaters don’t show Bollywood movies so long as there’s Netflix informing customers about Bollywood by supplying DVDs?

Anderson explains the rising importance of niche products as the result of the convergence of three technological factors.

First, invention of digital cameras, desktop music editing and blogging software have made it easier to create information and put it online.

Second, proliferation of information-aggregating sites such as Ebay, Amazon, iTunes have made it is easier for customers to find specifically relevant information quickly.

And third, Google, blogs, and online purchase recommendations have acted as filters to help customers find the goods they are likely to enjoy, but might not have found in physical stores.

That means, to cite an extreme niche example, if Sanskrit-chanting punk rock music is what you like to listen to on your iPod, chances are high that you will not find it in Tik’n’Tok, Bhatbhateni or even Walmart. But you are most likely to find it on iTunes, which carries, well, unlimited tracks. The Long Tail of massive online inventories helps you keep up with your relatively obscure interests while finding like-minded communities online.

What does TLT mean for Nepali businesses? Three lessons come to mind.

First, think global. Use the insight of TLT and the Internet as ways to access customers. Second, don’t rush to create web sites. Instead, find ways to be on Google, EBay, Epinions, and others in ways that add to your products’ visibility and credibility. Having customers endorse your products is more important than what you create. And third, don’t worry about creating “hit” products. Producing niche goods is fine, for it will give you a long advantage when you sell online to customers everywhere.

(Was this a good review? Or a jhoor and khattam review? Either way, read the magazine -- READ -- which carried this piece, and write to editors and/or contribute your own book reviews. Share your ideas about books, publishing, reading and readers' communities.)

Visit - http://www.fineprintbookclub.com/Articles/?Type=2

The book:

- http://www.amazon.com/Long-Tail-Future-Business-Selling/dp/1401302378

Something tangential, about the culture of reading in Nepal

- http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnepalinews.php?&nid=100209

   [ posted by ashu @ 11:43 PM ] | Viewed: 2496 times [ Feedback] (2 Comments)

STRICTLY HUMOR

The gori details
by oohi ashu

Nothing like a modelling contest to remind you that beauty is only skin deep . . .

So there I was in CatManDo, working hard on a PowerPoint presentation all through Saturday afternoon, wondering what to do at night to let off some steam.

Should I call up friends and go see Mani Ratnam's movie "Yuva' at Jai Nepal Cinema with dinner at Thamel's Jatra afterwards? Or chill out with them at an airport sekuwa-ghar with beer? Or I could make some thick soup at home, and curl up with Ha Jin's book "The Bridegroom". Then again, listening to some humid jazz at one of Lazimpat's smoke-filled bars sounded good too.

Then the phone rang. My buddy Surendra Man Sthapit (aka SMS) was inviting me to the finale of 2004 Saboon Sundari Star Contest.

"For free, yaar,' SMS went on. "I've got you a pass, through my wife's employer. There's dinner afterward. Be
at Hyatt Regency at seven. I'll meet you at the lobby. And, uh, wear something nice, ok?.'

OK, sir!

The Hyatt was packed to the rafters with Kathmandu's who's who. Not the literary, poetic types -- with soulful doggy eyes. Nor the rabble-rousing political brigade, with left (or is it right?) arms up in the air. These were corporate types with Khajurao-figured wives in various stages of undress.

The multinational crowd was there in force, and so were
the media tycoons with their pretty secretaries. Elderly women - matronly types - sporting salt-and-pepper hair, were resplendent in their saris. The men were all dressed like Naya Sadak bankers. All seemed to know one other,
and in the pre-event cocktail, they all chatted with one another with effortless rib-poking banter.

The show begins.

Eighteen girls make an appearance, each wearing outrageously skimpy costumes that no sane woman would wear on the streets of Kathmandu. The models are scrawny —some look positively underfed, fit to appear on a Department of Health warning-against-malnutrition poster.

"Don't they feed these girls?" I lean over to SMS.
"Only lettuce," he answers.

What are these, then?
Goats?

The ethnography of the contestants is fascinating, and some of the visibly non-bahuni lasses have bahun surnames. What is going on here?

"When bahuns sleep around, they contribute to the melting pot of this great nation,” whispers someone next to SMS. The guy seated in front gives us a dirty look: we are ruining his concentration, with our discourse on amateur anthropology.

Well, it looks like the fair ones have an advantage in this contest. And sure enough, the dusky ethnic types -- despite all their pouts, oomph and writhingly sultry allure -- don't stand a chance.

The winner is as gori as she can be: Fair & Lovely indeed!

Feeling a bit out of place, I survey the audience: The Kathmandu elite in attendance is composed of old-line aristocrats -- largely irrelevant these days and in need of money. There are the yunnies (young, upwardly-mobile nepalis) who have amassed new money but are in the process of acquiring class by attending beauty contests as invited guests. And what could be better for both types than to cross-pollinate one other . . . to see and be seen together at events such as these?

Over in the far corner are those 60-something men who can't seem to get enough of the 18-year-olds' sashaying down the ramp, with their hips going clicketi-clack. Next to us is a nattily dressed Alfa Male who displays an enthusiasm for chatting up other people's wives while neglecting his own. The corporate also-wannabes are clicking away with their Olympus digitals just so they can ogle at the pictures with co-workers on Monday morning.

Given the state of the country (and this is 2004, folks!), I guess it is a form of escapism to spend a Saturday evening watching other people watching beautiful young women.

Hell, I could still get back to Ha Jin.

[Originally posted in parts on Sajha Kurakani, and subsequently published under a pseudonym in The Nepali Times newspaper, 2004

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/199/NepaliPan/2562 ]

   [ posted by ashu @ 11:42 PM ] | Viewed: 2991 times [ Feedback] (5 Comments)

साहित्य पढ्न झ्याउ लाग्छ

by आशुतोष तिवारी

मैले धेरै त्यस्ता नेपालीहरू देखेको छु जो निजी अफिस या राष्ट्रिय, अन्तर्रर्ााट्रय गैरसरकारी संस्थाहरूमा काम गरेर राम्रै पैसा कमाउूछन् । विभिन्न पत्रिका र अंग्रेजीका महूगा किताबहरू किनेर फर्ुसदमा उनीहरू पढ्न रुचाउूछन् । ती किताबका बारेमा आफ्ना मित्रहरूसूग गफ गर्छन् ।

तर तिनै नेपालीहरू नेपाली साहित्यको कहलाइएका किताबहरू- जसको मोल प्रायः पच्चीस रूपैयाूदेखि जम्मा दर्ुइ सय पचाससम्म मात्र पर्छ- भने खोजीखोजी किनेर फुर्सदमा बसेर पढ्दैनन्, एकाध एक दर्ुइजनालाई छोडेर । पक्कै पनि हाम्रा कहलाइएका किताबहरूको नाम त उनीहरूले सुनेका छन् । सायद ती किताबहरू नपढिकनै सुनेका भरमा तिनको सजिलो तारिफ गर्न पनि उनीहरूले जानेका छन् ।

कत्तिले त स्कुले वा कलेज जीवनमा पाठ्यक्रमभित्रै राखिएका साहित्यका केही किताब पढेदेखि पछि अरू त्यस्ता किताब पढ्नु त के छोएका पनि छैनन् । र, छुनर्ुपर्ने कारण पनि देख्दैनन् । अनि साहित्य नपढे पनि उनीहरूको जीवन कुनै निरस या उराठलाग्दो या दुःखी पटक्कै छैन । कुरा के हो भने साहित्य पढ्न उनीहरूलाई मनै छैन ।

एकातिर पैसा र शिक्ष्ँाका आधारमा नेपाली साहित्यको उपभोक्ता हुनसक्ने हजारौं संख्याको जमातको कथा यस्तो छ भने उतातिर मञ्जुश्री थापाको शब्दमा भन्दा- 'धन्न लेखिइरहेका' नेपाली लेखक/साहित्यकारको व्यथा अर्कै छ ।

उनीहरू भन्छन्- 'जसरी जति लेखे पनि किताबै बिक्री हुूदैनन् । मोतीराम भट्टका पालामा पनि १ हजार १ सय प्रति कुनै किताब छापिन्थ्यो भने अहिले पनि त्यत्ति नै छापिन्छ । त्यसमा पनि ६।७ सय प्रति त फोकटमा नातागोता, इष्टमित्र आदिलाई बाूड्दैमा सकिन्छ । साहित्य बुझ्ने, त्यसको रस लिने, त्यसलाई उपयोगी ठान्ने अनि साहित्यिक किताब किनीकिनी पढ्ने पाठकहरूको हुल नै यो देशमा छैन कि क्या हो । होइन भने कसरी कहिले साहित्य लेख्ने वा लेखेकाहरू र साहित्यको उपभोग अनि उपयोग गर्न सक्नेका बीचको दूरी कम गर्ने -' यस्तै यस्तै क्रन्दन सुनिन्छ, यसो दर्ुइ चारजना चिन्तित लेखकहरूको सङ्गत गर्ने हो भने ।

अर्थशास्त्रको भाषामा भन्ने हो भने साहित्यलाई महान बनाइएर बजारमा टन्न 'सप्लाइ' गरिएको छ । तर 'डिमान्ड' खासै छैन ।हुन त माग बढाउने विभिन्न उपायहरू छन् । मंसिर १९ गतेको (Please see elsewhere on this Sajha blog for that article) स्तम्भमा मैले पुस्तक बिक्रीका लागि लेखक, एजेन्ट, प्रकाशक, सम्पादक अनि बजार व्यवस्थापकको जोहो गर्न थाल्नर्ुपर्ने कुरा उठाएको थिएू । टिप्पणीकार भाष्कर गौतमले मंसिर २६ को लेखमा नेपालमा त्यसबारे भइरहेका प्रयासहरू र अझ गर्न बाूकी कामहरू प्रस्ट पारेका छन् ।

निश्चय नै संसारको कुनै पनि देशमा साहित्यका किताब किनीकिनी पढ्ने पाठकहरूको संख्या अन्य पत्रिका, किताब किन्नेहरूको संख्याभन्दा त धेरै कम नै हुन्छ । तैपनि नेपालको पर्रि्रेक्ष्यमा पैसा, शिक्ष्ँा र अनुभवको हिसाबले साहित्य किनेर पढ्नसक्ने जमात किन साहित्यबाट टाढिएको होला, त्यसबारेमा यी दर्ुइवटा कुरा उठाउन चाहन्छु ।

पहिलो त, साहित्यप्रतिको बैरागको बीउ धेरै विद्यार्थीको दिमागमा हाम्रो स्कुल, कलेजमै रोपिन्छ । एकाध एक दर्ुइवटा स्कुलका शिक्ष्ँक छोडेर प्रायःले नेपाली साहित्य पढाउने कामको सफलता केवल शिक्ष्ँा मन्त्रालयका विभिन्न तहका जाूच पास गराउने कामसूग जोड्छन् ।

स्रँेतको अभावमा यसो गर्नु ती शिक्ष्ँकहरूको रहर होइन, बाध्यता हो । फेरि विद्यार्थीले पनि जाूच पास गर्न के गर्नर्ुपर्छ, चाूडै पत्ता लगाइन्छ । बरु उसले चक्रपाणि चालिसेको जन्ममिति कण्ठ पार्छ । भवानी भिक्ष्ँु कहाू जन्मे, मरे र उनका मातापिता को थिए, अनि देवकोटा कुन सालमा शिक्ष्ँामन्त्री भए- यस्तै यस्तै साहित्य सम्बन्धी 'युवा मञ्च'- स्टाइलक टिपनटापन जानकारी घोकेर जाूचमा पस्किन्छ । यसरी पढेर हर्ुकेका धेरै विद्यार्थीलाई साहित्यको पठनपाठन भनेको जाूच पास गर्ने अर्को एउटा बोझमात्र भएको छ ।

तिनै विद्यार्थीहरू जसको संख्या लाखौंमा छ- पछि गएर फर्ुसदको समय आफ्नै मनोरञ्जनका लागि साहित्य किनेर पढ्छन् पाठक बन्छन् भनी चिताउनु र्व्यर्थ छ ।त्यसैले साहित्यका नाममा लाखौं कराडौं रुपैयाूको धनराशि हातमा लिएर बसेका विभिन्न प्रतिष्ठानहरूले केवल केही बूढापाका साहित्यकारहरूलाई दोसल्लामाथि दोसल्ला ओढाएर थचक्क बसाउूदैमा आफ्नो काम सम्पन्न भएको नठानी आगामी दसदेखि बीस वर्षा नेपाली साहित्यका पाठकहरूको संख्या वृद्धि गर्न के गर्नर्ुपर्छ भनी सोच्ने बेला भइसकेको छ ।

यस क्रममा उनीहरूले स्रँेत नभएको तर उत्साह भएका विभिन्न स्कुल र कलेजहरूसूग मिलेर विद्यार्थीको साहित्यतर्फो झुकाव बलियो पार्न पाठ्यक्रम सुधार, अतिरिक्त क्रियाकलाप, पुरस्कार आदिको जोहो गर्न थाल्ने बेला आइसकेको छ । यो काम पक्कै पनि तुरुन्त नतिजा ल्याएर ताली पाइने काम होइन । तर यस्तै कामले यी प्रतिष्ठानहरूको साहित्यको बारेमा सोच कति बृहत् र गहन रहेछ भनेर अरूलाई प्रस्ट हुन्छ ।

दोस्रो, विभिन्न कारणले नेपाली साहित्यलाई हाम्रो समाजमा अनावश्यक तालले त्यस्तो उचाइमा राखिएको छ कि धेरै पाठकले त कहाू छ भनेर त्यो उचाइ देख्नै छोडिसके । अनि नदेखिएकै कारणले उनीहरूलाई साहित्य किन्न, पढ्न मतलब पनि छैन ।

अर्काे शब्दमा भन्ने हो भने हाम्रा लागि नेपाली साहित्य उचाइमा राखेर पूजा गर्ने मर्ूर्तिमात्र भएको छ- न कि आमनेसामने बसी संवाद गर्ने विषय । पूजा गर्न थालेपछि फरक विचारलाई ठाउू नै नदिने गरी कट्टर हुनुपर्‍यो कि त सामाजिक मिलोमतोको लागि फोस्रो आस्था देखाउनै पर्‍यो । त्यसैले देवकोटा महान छन् भन्यो । टाढैबाट नमस्कार गर्‍यो अनि किताब चाहिू नपढे पनि हुन्छ ।

यही फोस्रो आस्थाको कारण एउटा उदाहरणको लागि के हुन जान्छ भने धेरै नेपालीहरू कोही कविको सामु पर्दा उहाू त कवि भनेर काूधमा धाप दिन त दिन्छन् तर बोरलाग्दो कविता सुन्नुपर्ला भनेर भागाभाग गर्छन् । साहित्यसूग संवाद गर्ने अभ्यास नभएपछि हामीलाई यस्तै यस्तै कुरा झेल्नर्ुपर्ने हुन्छ ।

जस्तै, देवकोटाले मुनामदन त लेखे । तर मदनले भोटमा भोगेर भनेका कुरा आज नेपाली कामदारले अरब र मलेसियामा भोग्नुपरेका कुरासूग कसरी राखेर हर्ेने - साहित्यसूग संवाद गर्ने एउटा विषय हुन सक्छ । त्यस्तै परिवारबाट छुट्दै, टुक्रूदै गएको काठमाडौंको समाजमा रुद्रराज पाण्डेले रूपमति उपन्यासमा खोतलेका बृहत् पारिवारिक दाउपेच र मानवता कसरी बुझ्ने, संवादको अर्काे विषय हुनसक्छ ।यस्तै विभिन्न बहसको आड लिएर नेपाली साहित्यलाई अहिलेको उचाइबाट झारेर हजारौं लाखौं पाठकको हालकै जिन्दगीमा ती कृतिहरू कसरी उपयोगी छन् भनेर संवादको ढोका खोल्ने बेला आइसकेको छ । साहित्यकै उत्थानका लागि बसेका विभिन्न प्रतिष्ठानहरूले यस्ता कुरालाई अगाडि बढाउनर्ैपर्छ ताकि नेपाली साहित्यको माग हाम्रै बीचमा झन् बढोस् ।

नत्र यता जत्ति साहित्य जसरी उत्पादन गरे पनि र तिनलाई जसले जति महान् भनेर टाूचा लगाइदिए पनि उता पैसा र शिक्षाको आधारमा पाठक बन्नसक्ने हजारौं नेपालीहरू साहित्य पढ्न झ्याउ लाग्छ भन्दै बसिरहेकै हुन्छन् ।

(Originally published in Kantipur national daily; December 2004. Special thanks to friends at Martin Chautari and other places for many stimulating guff-gaff on this and other topics that helped refine my thoughts.)

   [ posted by ashu @ 10:34 AM ] | Viewed: 3469 times [ Feedback] (1 Comment)

mेर विश्वलाई केही चासो हुन्छ ।

(Originally published -- Dec 2004 -- in Kantipur national daily. Special thanks to many literary friends in Kathmandu for all the stimulating conversations/guff-suff on this and many other topics.)

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A book review

Book: Nepal Studies in the UK: Conversations with Practitioners
by Pratyoush Onta
Publisher: Martin Chautari, 2004, Rs 300

Researching kuire researchers
Studying Nepal is a labour of love for UK academics

A review by Ashutosh Tiwari

There are three ways to describe Pratyoush Onta. By training he is an historian. Ten years ago, for his PhD dissertation on Nepali nationalism (at the University of Pennsylvania), he examined how Bhanubhakta was anointed a Nepali language icon by Darjeeling-based activists in the 1930s, by using the then available printing presses, literary magazines and newspapers to disseminate nationalist ideologies.

That work set Onta off on the path to become a media specialist. In the last five years, together with Martin Chautari colleagues, he has produced 11 books on the state of Nepal’s media, including a history of Radio Nepal. When I asked why he studies media, Onta replied that he wants “to help lay social science foundations in what is still a little studied discipline”.

Onta’s other identity is that of a questioning public intellectual who is interested in how knowledge is created and shared, and what that process means to us as Nepalis. He has hosted programs on radio, written newspaper columns, moderated discussions at Chautari and given public lectures inside and outside of Nepal.

It is Onta’s third identity that is on display in this 210-page book, which he conceived as a visiting scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London in 2002. Explaining that Nepal has long been studied by British academics as a geographical curiosity, as a potential trading partner, as home of ‘martial bodies’, and, in modern times, as a recipient of development aid, Onta aims to understand the typology of recent and contemporary British social science scholarship on Nepal in a who-studies-what-where-why-and-how manner.

His methodology was to email 20-odd questions to a sample of 19 UK-educated non-Nepali academics, comprising of recent PhDs, active scholars and retired professors whose disciplines range from anthropology to sociology to literature to history and languages. The book is a compilation of their detailed answers.

And the picture those answers paint is depressing. Nepal studies—like Nepal itself on the global stage—is on the margin of even South Asian Studies. It is a discipline with no institutional money, no disciplinary recognition, no formal academic home, no flagship journals and with hardly any influence on other scholars and mainstream theories. The British press hardly cites these scholars’ work in its reports about Nepal, and the functionaries of Her Majesty’s Government and of development agencies rarely draw on their expertise when designing Nepal-specific interventions.

While those scholars who obtained jobs when British universities were expanding in the 1970s consider themselves lucky, others say that they do not see prospects for university-based jobs improving any time soon. As David Gellner puts it, “studying Nepal has always been a vocation, never a direct path to a job.” Indeed, what sustains the field appears to be the energy of its geographically scattered yet academically close-knit members, who cobble together occasional ‘high quality’ seminars or bulletins, with Michael Hutt at SOAS serving as an informal dean.

But if, as per the Marxist scholar David Seddon, ‘the investment is greater and the potential returns are smaller’ in Nepal studies, what pushed these scholars into it? Some were nudged in Nepal’s direction by advisers in graduate school. To others, Nepal offered a classic anthropology experience to study ‘non-literate and pre-industrial’ ethnic groups such as the Tharus, Tamangs or Gurungs. And for younger researchers, the year between high school and college spent working or travelling in the hills turned them into lifelong Nepalophiles.

However they entered the field, their level of engagement with Nepali scholars’ work appears split along generational lines. Recent PhDs tend to be fluent in one or more of Nepal’s languages and familiar with research papers coming out of Nepal.

As the standards of social science research rise here, it’s safe to say that we are seeing the last days of kuire academics parachuting in to shoehorn locally collected interview files into ready-made theoretical templates. Indeed, as Rhoderick Chalmers and Mark Turin imply, it’s become increasingly important to study what native scholars are publishing and to engage as equals in critical dialogues with them.

All interviewees agree that in peaceful times, a ‘high per capita cultural diversity’ made Nepal an attractive, safe and easy place to conduct field work. In post-conflict Nepal some day, some of them hope to obtain funds to do research on conflict management, forced migration, war trauma, coping with violence and healing and psychotherapy. Most are concerned that Nepal has become risky as a site, giving them no choice but to send students to other countries for fieldwork.

This book provides a window to understand some of the personalities and institutions that are shaping research on Nepal in British academia today. It also gives a sense of the relative diversity of Nepal-related work that those with interdisciplinary and even non-academic career paths are exploring today. Researchers will find the bibliographies that accompany the interviews handy references.

My only quibble is that since the book adopts a checklist approach to asking questions, it does not give us controversies and disagreements that surround various theories and interpretations. Even after reading all the interviews, the image of Nepal Studies as an academic field is that it is still in its cataloguing phase–not yet intellectually bubbling over with ideas and insights that would attract the most ambitious graduate students.

As such, the book is not likely to be of interest to laypersons. But to those interested in the minutiae of scholarly life, Onta has provided a usefully detailed scenario of how knowledge about Nepal continues to be mapped, produced and shared in the UK—almost 200 years after William Kirkpatrick first published his Nepal report in 1811.

(Originally published in The Nepali Times newsweekly)

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Getting the most out of your MBA

(NOTE: This piece, which I found in my hard-drive the other day, was first published in January 2006 in Kathmandu's The Boss monthly magazine. Readers with plans to join management schools in Nepal -- where it's hard to gather information about what to study where, why and how -- may find this useful. Tetti ho. Special thanks to MD for suggestions.)

By Ashutosh Tiwari

About four years ago, a young graduate in Kathmandu asked me what she should aim to get out of an MBA program. She explained that she was seeking advice from a variety of professionals before committing time and money to enroll in a management school in Kathmandu. I mumbled something vague, and suggested that she could use the degree to get a job as a management trainee at a bank or a company.

But I was dissatisfied with my own answer. And her earnest question stayed with me. Since then -- having advised friends to apply to MBA programs outside of Nepal, having taught economics to MBA students on a part-time basis, and having worked with MBAs in and out of Nepal -- I have had time to give the question some additional thought. Yes indeed, assuming that your goal is to lead a productive career, what should you get out of your MBA studies other than a pricey certificate at the end?

I would now suggest these four major outcomes.

Persuasive writing and speaking skills: Unless you want to work with machines on a factory floor (and there’s nothing wrong with that!), most of what people in well-paid white-collar professions do boils down to two activities: writing and speaking. Each working day, people write emails, reports and memos. They meet clients, chat with colleagues, ask questions, share ideas, voice their opinions and disagree with others’ ideas.

Given that work today is all about writing and speaking, in one form or another, those who do both persuasively are going to be at a significant advantage in a management career than those who don't. Fortunately, writing and speaking are skills that anyone with motivation to spend time practicing can be good at. To that end, spending two years at a business school can be an effective way to sharpen those skills through assignments and extracurricular activities.

Using data to make decisions: Most top Nepali MBA graduates are good at statistics and accounting, subjects that are useful to gather and tabulate data. But arranging data is not the same as interpreting it to help make strategic decisions. A firm hires managers, after all, not to collect information for the sake of collecting it, but to interpret it to make decisions that matter.

To be sure, most MBA colleges -- under pressure from their universities to appear 'academic' -- spend much time teaching students the mathematics behind data collection (which, in real life, can easily be outsourced to market research companies) and the like. That leaves them almost no time to teach students how to judge the collected data to make decisions. As a result, MBA graduates enter the work force, thinking that databases equal knowledge.

And that, to paraphrase the words of management guru Peter Drucker, is a classic case of mistaking raw materials for finished products. That is why, MBA students’eventual aim should be not to replace specialists such as statisticians or accountants, but to focus on how to interact with such professionals intelligently and effectively to help their firms grow. In times ahead, as information technologies become cheaper and widespread, torrents of data heading in any manager’s direction are likely to grow only bigger. When that happens, those MBAs who know how to apply relevant data to make decisions are likely to enjoy a
more successful management career than those who don't.

Analysis through established frameworks: Business is not rocket science. Today’s business problems, as complex as they are, are not fundamentally different from those of yesterday. Whether you produce potato chips or computer chips, the underlying issues are the same: How to come up with ideas, how to arrange capital, labor, technology and networks to turn those ideas into goods and services, how to market and sell what you produce, and how to plow back the profits to make your business grow all the more.

In an MBA program, it’s important to learn to view problems and opportunities in terms of frameworks. Some problems are related to marketing. Others, to strategy. Still others, to product development. Sure, a self-taught businessperson, running his own firm with zero exposure to MBA-level jargon, may intuitively know what needs to be done for his success, and will do just that. That’s fine.

But, in most cases, what a good MBA education should do is help you formalize much of your intuition through tested frameworks so that you can persuade colleagues and bosses of your ideas.

In other words, as an employee, your just saying, “Trust me; this will work” will not get you far in any company. But “I am applying the Porter model to tweak our pricing strategy because of these reasons” will get you the attention of your peers to take relevant actions. Yes, as you accumulate experiences, the limitations of many of these tested frameworks will become obvious to you. At that time, your maturity, creativity and judgment will surely come into play. But at the start of your career, the frameworks remain powerful analytical tools to help you solve business problems.

Aim for lifelong employability: In today’s Nepal, unless you are in civil service, nobody will offer you a secure lifelong job. That’s the reality. You will change jobs more than once for many reasons. As such, it has become urgent to learn to how to remain employable at any stage of your life by taking charge of your own career growth.

In this context, a good MBA program gives you contacts and networks, not to mention credibility, which you can dip into for information and benefits. At the least, such a program should make you appreciate that learning never ends, and that continuous skill improvement is the only way to market yourself to the top. True, most MBA programs are concerned only with getting you your first job. But you should let them know that they are shortchanging their reputation if they fail to give you basic tools to help you find your second, third or even sixth job.

Agreed, after paying exorbitant fees that most MBA colleges charge for tuition, one should expect much more from them. But for now, these four outcomes can be the starting points to help a prospective student to decide what to demand from an MBA education for success.

[First published in Kathmandu's The Boss monthly business magazine in January 2006]

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FIVE QUESTIONS
to book reader Ashutosh Tiwari

Published in Read magazine,
Kathmandu, (October 2006)
A venture of http://www.fineprintbookclub.com

INTRO: Growing up in Kathmandu, Ashutosh Tiwari read Enid Blyton's books and Hardy Boys stories. In high school, he fell into reading "deliciously trashy" novels of James Hadley Chase, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon and Robert Ludlum. As a restless university student, he studied economics and dabbled in philosophy and chemistry, and learnt that reading critically meant "taking a text apart --brutally yet honestly".

In 1996, together with friends at Martin Chautari in Kathmandu, he started The Kathmandu Post Review of Books, which ran regularly till 2003.

Once a grassroots anti-bonded labour activist in Far Western Nepal (in Dang, Banke, Kailali, Bardiya and Kanchanpur districts) who then went on to set up and lead a relatively autonomous Business Service Aadhar (funded by German Technical Co-operation (GTZ)) as a small-business advisory firm serving many for-profit businesses across Nepal, Tiwari has been writing regularly on business-related matters for The Nepali Times newsweekly since February 2003.

At present, he works out of Dhaka, Bangladesh in the
South Asia region where he is with a large-scale
investment-placing global private-sector development organization.

***************************************************


FinePrint: You are a busy professional. Yet you seem to find time to read a lot. How do you manage your reading habit?

AT: I see reading as an activity I enjoy doing everyday. From experience, I have learnt that I am not a 'binge reader' -- not someone who can read a lot in one sitting. I am someone who needs to read a little something everyday. For that, I set aside half hour to an hour a day to read about 20 to 30 pages or so. That's all – 20 to 30 pages a day. These pages could be of a book, or of a long magazine article. What I have learnt is that if you read only a few pages a day, and make doing that a daily habit, then you will find that, over time, you will finish reading anywhere from two to four books a month. That adds up to a lot of reading in a year, no matter how busy a professional you are.

FinePrint: What do you read?

AT: Mostly, I read non-fiction. General-interest books on history, travel, economics, science, biographies, law and the arts appeal to me. I read fiction only when it's recommended by reviewers or friends whose judgment I trust. For the last three years, I have also been reading well-known bloggers' postings on issues related to business, international relations, and so on. Besides, I download a lot of public-affairs type of radio-talk shows, and listen to them on an iPod when I am travelling. I guess reading blogs put up by experts and listening to podcasts also count as a form of reading in these Internet-driven times!

FinePrint: Why is reading important to you?

AT: It's important for several reasons.

First, it's enjoyable. Without enjoyment, forget doing any reading or, for that matter, anything in life! Reading is a way of getting quiet pleasure at seeing how imagination, thoughts and arguments come together to form a new way of looking at the world. I have spent many hot and humid non-office hours in Dhaka (where I have been since September 2004), enjoying iced tea while reading books and magazines.

Second, reading helps me keep up with what's changing in my fields of interest. New insights and methods keep coming up in international development, which is presently my line of work. I try to read to be aware of new practices, and to apply them at work. Besides, I write newspaper columns and policy briefs. So, I need to have access to ideas to generate thoughts. All this is only possible if I read regularly.

Plus, reading makes you so much more knowledgeable about so many things that, I suppose, being knowledgeable always puts you at some advantage in life.

FinePrint: What books have you read recently that you'd recommend to others?

AT: I enjoyed Khalid Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner and Samrat Upadhyay's short stories in The Royal Ghosts. In non-fiction, I liked Suketu Mehta's Maximum City , a book about Mumbai. I also finished reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, who was responsible for creating many economic institutions that we take for granted today. I give away copies of John Whelpton's excellent A History of Nepal as gifts these days.

At present, I am reading Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks, which argues that we have entered a new mode of production, where strangers collaborate for free to produce services . . . as in, say, the production of open source software, and what such free and collaborative activities mean for markets and freedom.

FinePrint: What do you think of the future of reading in Nepal?

AT: I see it as being bright. As evidence, I would point to new book-stores, libraries and publishing houses that have come up in recent times. When I was in Nepal last May, I saw even Thamel's Himalayan Java Cafe selling books. Book exhibitions, public book-signing ceremonies by known authors, and books by new authors . . . all these appear to be happening with increasing frequencies in Nepal. It's easier today to get books we want to read than ever before.

Perhaps, in times ahead, organizations like Fineprint can do more in terms of organizing public events that get publishers, editors, marketers and readers together with established and beginning writers for discussions and idea sharing.

Published in Read magazine,
Kathmandu, (October 2006)
A venture of http://www.fineprintbookclub.com

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Business lessons from an old job

By Ashutosh Tiwari

From August 2002 to July 2004, together with two Nepali colleagues, I ran a small-business support facility called Business Service Aadhar in Kathmandu. Ours was a smartly furnished one-room business counseling office at an equally smart address: Heritage Plaza in Kamaladi. Our job was to help small private-sector service businesses.

Aadhar's parent institution -- the then Private Sector Promotion Project (PSPP) of the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ)- Nepal -- defined help in two ways. The first consisted of providing market-oriented advice to small businesses. The second meant supporting such businesses financially for concept testing, market research and marketing. In either case, the aim was to help small businesses sell services commercially on their own.

The rationale for Aadhar's existence was simple. Small businesses often have innovative service ideas. At times, they even have intriguing ideas such as selling yak cheese on the Internet. But they lack the resources to critically examine how feasible their ideas are. They need information, contacts, networks and access to supportive market players. They also hunger for disinterested experts who can help them brainstorm a way ahead by revising business plans. Often, they remain confused about how to translate -- in a step-by-step manner -- their ideas into profitable ventures.

Clearing up such confusion as an honest broker was Aadhar's role. It offered hard-nosed advice while satisfying the demands of its two constituencies. To its clients, it had to signal that it had the market credibility, the necessary expertise and the networks to help them succeed. To the PSPP, it had to deliver two results: that the money it gave out verifiably generated additional businesses in markets that had not been explored before; and, that other small businesses purchased Aadhar's clients' services.

A critical review of Aadhar in September 2003 by The Springfield Center, a British consulting firm, concluded that Aadhar's work was "non-distortionary support, sensitive to local market norms which encouraged service provider ownership and innovation; effective advice to partners; encouraging greater customer orientation amongst partners through use of market research techniques, such as focus group discussions; outreach outside the Kathmandu Valley; engagement with other influential players in the market place, such as large business houses, the media, academia and some business membership organizations." It added, "Aadhar has developed an effective and motivated team; it has acquired a reputation and credibility in the market place; and it has established appropriate management systems."

But things changed in early 2004. Faced with this country's then deteriorating security situation, GTZ-Nepal reshuffled its development agenda. That resulted in GTZ's placing more emphasis on conflict mitigation activities. Shortly thereafter, the kind of work that Aadhar did in urban areas was absorbed into a new project which found its home at the old Hotel Narayani complex in Pulchowk. That change was necessary to better reflect the new priority which called for reaching out to rural communities.

Still, two years after Aadhar's closure, and having since moved to a new job at a South Asia regional organization, I am struck that whenever I advise clients on business matters these days, I find myself drawing upon the knowledge that I had gained at Aadhar. Briefly, then, here are three lessons that have continued to serve me well.

Business unbundled: At Aadhar, I learnt to see a business in terms of what comes in, what gets transformed and what gets sold. I saw that every business, no matter how large or small, can be unbundled into three core parts. The first part is about coming up with ideas; the second is about putting the internal systems (accounts, logistics etc) in place for those ideas to flourish; and the third is marketing and the selling of those ideas as services and products. Sure, these parts can be divided further. But the main point is that once you have this three-bit frame in mind, business analysis as in what's working and what's not becomes easier to do.

Diversely smart team: I learnt that merely gathering individually smart people does not necessarily make a team smart. Often, our usual practice of getting good people is to hire the credentialed clones-- the ones who dutifully completed their MBAs and spent one summer photocopying documents at a noodle company as a part of their compulsory internship assignment. My approach to recruiting colleagues was to hire on the basis of how they could add value by injecting different skills, networks and backgrounds to what Aadhar's mandate.

The idea then was not to hire people with impressively look-alike CVs. It was to hire to make the existing team smarter by bringing in those who would enlarge everyone's perspectives. This approach must have worked well: the market considered the Aadhar team to be competent. Besides, I ended up learning much from my two colleagues in ways I would not have, had they been just two other US-returned Nepalis.

Client servicing as the PR tool: Ad agencies always told us that the way to build up the Aadhar brand was to spend tons of money placing ads in national media. Our experience suggested otherwise. It was client-focused public relations � the act of incurring shoe-leather expenses to find clients, selling the offer to anyone who'd listen, making mistakes and quickly learning from them, delivering results, and doing activities to bring clients together� that helped us establish the Aadhar brand much more quickly and credibly. Ads only make people aware about what you do. But client-focused PR exercises build up your brand. Once the brand is established, clients actually spend money to do business with you.

To be sure, Aadhar was not a private-sector firm. As a donor-funded entity, it was insulated from market competition. It did not have to worry where the money was coming from, though it had to justify every rupee it spent. Admittedly, these NGO-like attributes are reasons why I would not apply everything I learnt at Aadhar to achieve results in a competitive private-sector business. But in all fairness though, in those adequately lengthy two years, as a mediator between those buy services and those who sell them, Aadhar provided all who worked there a front-row seat to understand the process of managing a small business support unit in Nepal.

(Originally published in Kathmandu�s Boss, a business magazine�s June 2006 issue
under �Thinking Aloud� column)

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Creative collaboration
Could Samrat Upadhyay have achieved his success in Nepal?

By Ashutosh Tiwari

Samrat Upadhyay is a professor of English at the University of Indiana in the United States. Most readers of this magazine know him as a Nepali author of two collections of short-stories and one novel. Put out by a top-bracket American publishing company, Samrat?s books have been translated into several languages, and favorable reviews have appeared, among others, in the New York Times and Time magazine. Pundits of Nepali literature never tire of arguing the literary merits, or lack thereof, of Samrat?s fiction. But even they grudgingly concede that when it comes to revenue generation, there is no doubt that Samrat is the most successful Nepali author in history. Could Samrat have achieved a comparable success by being a writer in Nepal?

In a roundabout way, veteran Nepali writer Kali Prasad Rizal says yes. In an issue of Himal Khabar Patrika, Rizal once rued that if only his parents had sent him to a school like St. Xavier?s, he too would have grown up to be a successful writer in English -- rivaling, if not surpassing, Samrat?s fame. Rizal?s claim was certainly intriguing. But what is one to make of the fact even St. Xavier?s, in its 50-year history in Nepal, has produced only one Samrat despite having graduated hundreds of fluent-in-English students?

Surely fluency alone takes one only so far, and if you add ?hard work? to the equation, maybe a bit further. Since there is no shortage of hardworking and fluent-in-English Nepalis who have not had much success as writers, it?s time to accept that in addition to fluency and hard work, an aspiring writer needs something essential to catapult her to the front rank of the profession. That something essential is a market-friendly support network of fellow-writers, agents, publishers, editors, marketers and distributors, libraries and newspapers, and translators.

Take Samrat?s case, as an example.

By his own admission, he gets up at 4 am, and writes for several hours everyday. That?s hard work. He shares his drafts with colleagues, writers and editors. All of them volunteer time to provide detailed criticisms, suggestions and comments. Based on the advice he receives, he revises his work. In the process, he deletes some paragraphs, and adds new sub-plots or endings. In some cases, he discards everything he has written, and re-writes everything from scratch. The work is lonely, but the process of thinking through is collaborative, and it takes time and effort.

Next in Samrat?s support system stands a book agent, who knows publishers and their requirements. She is the writer?s advocate. Since she works for a commission, her goal is to sell Samrat?s manuscript to the highest bidder. Her success is never guaranteed. But in the competitive world of American publishing, where nine out of 10 manuscripts are summarily rejected, getting a good book agent is important, for she knows what manuscripts appeal to which publishers. Once the publisher accepts the manuscript, he hands it over to an in-house editor, who knows potential readers? tastes. She consults Samrat for additional revisions, and, with a team of experts, decides on illustrations, cover photos and the price before sending it to press.

Meantime, marketers devise press materials for promotion: They may want Samrat to go on book tours or appear in media. Copies of the book get shipped to book-stores and Amazon.com, and libraries. Readers? clubs start inviting Samrat for speaking sessions, while newspapers and magazines publish reviews. All these generate a buzz for the book, thereby increasing its chances for higher sales. If the book does well in the US, Indian publishers may purchase the rights to re-print it in South Asia. And this is how Samrat?s book gets into your hands in Nepal.

But it is precisely this sort of market-friendly support system that?s glaringly absent in Nepal. Much of it is due to the fact that the market here is so small that no agent can hope to survive by selling manuscripts to publishers. Besides, with low returns, publishers do not have any incentive to spend money on editing, designing and marketing. Compounding the problem further is our own writers who seem to think that they are so talented that even their rough drafts are eminently publishable, requiring no editorial support. The result is that it?s our writers who end up doing all the work -- from deciding what to write to selling badly designed books with unedited contents.

It?s only recently that we are beginning to see some unbundling of professional responsibilities. The Madan-Puraskar winning novel Palpasa Caf鬠for instance, was written by Narayan Wagle, but published and marketed by Nepalaya, a firm that previously marketed film and music. Yes, it?s tempting to think that because of competitive pressures, rising demands for high-quality books and falling technology costs, the Nepali book market will get sophisticated in years ahead. But until that happens, let?s be clear: No Nepal-based author can hope to have a comparable kind of success that Samrat has had no matter how talented or hardworking she is.

Meantime, the lesson to be drawn from Samrat?s American example is this. In today?s world, a creative work is never the product of only one person, even when that person starts it. It?s the time-consuming collaborative process ?- with different professionals coming together to add relevant bits of expertise along the way -- that shapes how the product is revised, edited, designed, packaged, differentiated, marketed and sold. Remove one or two players from the support structure, and creative outputs will suffer.

Indeed, collaboration is how creative goods ? from novels to rock music to movies to software programs ? make their mark in the marketplace. And collaboration is at the heart of the success of creative places like Silicon Valley or Hollywood (think how long the credit rolls are at the end of movies). This is why, for our creative industries to flourish in times ahead, it?s not enough to say ? as we always say -- that we have the talents who work very hard in Nepal. What we need to do is look for ways develop the rightly unbundled market-support structures so that our local Samrats in all creative fields can reach their full potential in Nepal.

(Special thanks to Ajit Baral at FinePrint Publication for helpfully critical comments on an earlier draft. This article was originally published in Kathmandu?s The Boss business monthly magazine, May 2006 issue).

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By Ashutosh Tiwari

In the spring of 2004, together with a long-time friend Surendra Sthapit, I taught microeconomics on Mondays and Wednesdays for a total of four hours a week to full-time MBA students at Kathmandu's Ace Institute of Management for a semester.

Ace's officials appeared quite confident about taking a risk on a relatively unknown, yet professionally busy, quantity like me.

At the time, I had a demanding full-time job -- running a business development facility called Business Service Aadhar at Heritage Plaza in Kamladi. And the last thing I needed was sleepless nights worrying about what and how I was going to teach the following day.

Still, after talking things over with friends, I accepted the early-morning teaching assignment for two reasons.

First, I wanted to develop the discipline of being a teacher: preparing lesson plans, devising problem sets, and answering difficult questions that the students might ask.

Second, I wanted to see whether Surendra and I could help make economics a fun and exciting subject that students saw as having immediate real-world applications.

Briefly, then, here are four lessons we took home from our teaching work.

VALUE STUDENT DIVERSITY: Nepali MBA students come from a variety of academic, ethnic and social backgrounds. Some have BBA. Others have previous degrees from engineering, hotel management or arts and humanities faculties. Some are scions of reputed business families. Others hardly know anyone influential in Kathmandu. Some went to fancy high schools, and can dream in English. Others find it difficult to carry conversations in English. Some understand differential equations. Others don't know what y = mx + c means.

Similarly, some have been overseas. For others, Kathmandu is the first major city they've been to since leaving villages. True, institutions such as Ace need to do more outreach activities to attract a diverse set of qualified students from traditionally underrepresented ethnic groups, and academic and social backgrounds.

But as things stood, we found the students united in their desire to earn the MBA degree to do well in life, either in or out of Nepal. That is why investing time to get to know the students can be quite helpful. That way a teacher understands where the students are coming from, what their dreams and aspirations are, and how they expect to use the education and the degree to lead productive, fulfilling lives.

EMPHASIZE LOGIC OVER MATH: Economics, as non-economists are amazed to find out, is best taught by using calculus. Indeed, mathematics has long been the shorthand of economics, just as it is of physics. But given time constraints and students' uneven academic backgrounds, it was neither possible nor practical to turn MBA micro classes into calculus boot-camps. As such, a judgment call was necessary to decide how to teach microeconomics effectively.

As a teacher, you want students who are going to be managers later on to get enough practice to be able to reason economically by using straightforward logic, and not get stuck on mathematical techniques.

With this goal in mind, apart from using basic algebra, our teaching was through deductive reasoning. For the students, learning economics then became a relatively background-neutral pursuit: If they made efforts to think through and argue logically, then, they could reason well by making use of the standard economic assumptions and principles.

ECONOMICS TO UNDERSTAND EVERYDAY LIFE: Almost all students appeared to have previous economics training that convinced them that the subject was dry and boring, and had zero relevance in their lives. And their teachers apparently taught the subject in ways to hammer home that belief. The result was that the students came to class -- all ready to be indifferent to indifference curves and theories of perfect competition. Yes, they "knew" economics in a memorized sense. But they had no understanding of how to use it to interpret and explain everyday issues.

We attempted to confront this problem by using Nepal-specific, drawn-from-the-headlines examples whenever possible.

The idea was to underscore that economics is very much around us, and that, with some effort, students should be able to apply, at a minimum, classroom learning to dissect news items that appeared in the business press.

To that end, we started each class by having a student or two present short economic analyses of newspaper reports. From explaining why oil prices were rising globally to why Nepali fashion models appeared to have short careers to why music-video producers do not pay much money to actors to what could be done to improve the traffic flow to ease the congestion at Putali Sadak, the students explored a variety of news-items through the lens of economics.

At the end, each wrote a five-page paper in English explaining some everyday issue that made them show their competence in economic reasoning. The downside of all these activities was that we were behind in covering the syllabus, and had to arrange for additional classes to catch up.

But the greater reward was that most students appeared to have become genuinely excited by economics. They repeatedly told us they had never thought that the subject could have such immediate and widespread applications in their lives.

FOCUS ON THE CORE: It's very tempting to cram everything about microeconomics in a semester. Since most MBA students are beginners, such an approach can be self-defeating for two reasons.

First, the students are not going to be economists per se. They are going to be managers who need to use the tools of economics to make managerial decisions in private or public sectors.

Second, teaching too many concepts often confuses the students, who end up having a scattered view of the discipline. As such, it is more important, as a mater of teaching strategy, to ensure that, at a minimum, the students thoroughly master the core concepts of incentives, opportunity costs, trade-offs, marginality, trade, competition and other such cornerstones of economics than about the relatively obscure points about, say, the cobweb model.

Looking back, I am not sure, despite our best efforts, how much economics the students really learnt from Surendra and me. Hindsight is always better, and surely, we could have done better in ways more than one.

But as it happens with any teaching activity, it was us who, at the end of the semester, learnt a lot more about the subject and about the art the teaching economics.

[Shortly after completing the semester of teaching, Surendra Sthapit left for London, England, where he's pursuing banking-related advanced studies; Ashutosh Tiwari took up a job in Dhaka, Bangladesh at the South Asia-focused office of the International Finance Corporation (www.ifc.org), the private-sector arm of the World Bank. This article first appeared in Kathmandu's BOSS business monthly, April 2006 issue.]

A related article in The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/business/yourmoney/12view.html

   [ posted by ashu @ 06:01 AM ] | Viewed: 3173 times [ Feedback]

By Ashutosh Tiwari

After finding out where I went to university in the United States, most Nepalis ask me the same question: "So, why did you return to Nepal?" Their question is quite legitimate.

They all know that most young urban Nepalis want to get out of Nepal to study, live and work, preferably in America, Europe or Australia. Given this, the fact that someone who could have lived a life filled with quiet suburban bliss in Anywhereville, USA chose to return home strikes them as both foolish and fascinating. Foolish, because, on the surface, the risks to one's career prospects in Nepal appear large; while the rewards, so small. And fascinating, because why would anyone really throw away a more stable blanket of security in America to embrace comparatively greater uncertainties and unknowns in Nepal?

Scanning the faces of my questioners, I usually sense one of these two reactions. The first is knee-jerk patriotism. These friends want me to re-validate their affection for the country. Taking their cue, I am supposed to launch into a variation of: "Janani janma bhoomi, swarga dapi gariyeshi . . . I returned to serve the motherland. There is no place on earth like our Nepal. I am back to put my education to use for the development of our country."

The second reaction belongs to friends who are habitual critics. Trying hard not to smile too broadly at my probable discomfiture, they make sure that the trap they have set up in the course of our conversation is in place. Their satisfaction emanates not so much from any legitimate answer that I might provide. It comes by way of their expectation to see me perhaps try to maneuver a way out of this conversational cul-de-sac with defensive explanations. Something, I almost hear their eyes say, must have gone terribly wrong in your life for you to have come back to Nepal from the US. Now tell us what it was and let us enjoy your discomfort. OK, this is deliberately dramatic; but you get the idea.

To be sure, with the passage of time, most people care less and less about the reasons of your return. They will be far more interested in your career achievements or lack thereof. But initially, as a fresh returnee, what did strike me was how people just assumed negative things on to interpret why a young upwardly mobile Nepali professional would come back to Nepal from the US. And over the years, that and other observations have made me think more about this related question: Uniquely individual differences aside, are there general reasons why such Nepalis come back?

Temperament: I would think that, on some psychological level, temperament plays a big role. There are many who are comfortable being system-pluggers (SPs), and there are those who enjoy being system-builders (SBs). The SPs tend to do well where there's comfort, security, predictability and control over how they spend their time and talents. Put them in a system that someone else has designed, and they are happy finding a niche as a productive worker.

The SBs, on the other hand, have a greater tolerance for ambiguities, and they relish the challenge of building something from scratch. Chaos, uncertainties and inevitable frustrations are raw materials which they use to set up their own system of doing things. Viewed this way, it's arguable that Nepal offers easier and plenty of opportunities � in business, academia, media, non-profits etc -- to those who see themselves as SBs, while the SPs do their best work in the US, where systems are well-established but need a regular supply of professionals to keep them working fine.

Financial situation: In our context, if one has a noticeably upper-class background (i.e. a house or two in Kathmandu, family members in top civil/civic service positions, etc), then one is more likely to return home from abroad. After all, why give up relatively higher privileges here only to toil away in obscurity abroad? Granted, the opposite could also be true. That is, one might well choose to work abroad and struggle there on one's own terms precisely because one wants to avoid the easy paths available here.

Still, given Nepal's situation, it's arguable that someone born and brought up in Syangja or Baitadi is less likely to return from the US than someone born and brought up in Kathmandu. That's to say, an existing secure financial situation in Nepal acts provides an incentive for some to come back.

Global career: This, I know, sounds paradoxical. But what I have increasingly noticed is this. Most Nepali professionals in the US appear to be so busy working as low-level to mid-level managers at US firms that most have hardly the time or the money for overseas travel or to chase opportunities to work as globally demanded professionals. Yes, most are first-generation immigrants, still figuring out the rules of the game in corporate America. In contrast, their peers back in Nepal might earn a fraction of the salary, but are increasingly well-traveled and globally very connected for opportunities for career advancement.

This is already a true scenario for ambitious Nepalis at internationally-oriented non-profit/development agencies. And in this age of multinationals, it's getting to be true in private corporate settings in Nepal too. What all this signals is that regardless of why one returned to Nepal -- with hard work, talents, networks and a little dose of luck � the pipeline to globally mobile careers in today�s Flat World (to borrow Thomas Friedman�s phrase) for some foreign-trained Nepali professionals could be more secure from Nepal than from the US.

Again, these are three general observations. Putting aside stories of uniquely personal life circumstances of the returnees, these serve as some reasons as to why those Nepalis who return, return.

That said, these days, I get asked another question a lot: "So, when are you going back for your PhD?" Truth be told, I myself didn't know that I wanted a PhD in these times when I see that the supply of PhDs is greater than the demand for them in Nepal, and that most PhDs (or at least the ones I know) are, despite the momentary prestige, underemployed. But then, a detailed answer would be the basis for another Thinking Aloud piece someday.

(Originally published in The BOSS, a business monthly in Nepal in March 2006)

   [ posted by Ashu @ 10:02 AM ] | Viewed: 2159 times [ Feedback]

My parents gave me a Remington typewriter when I was in high school in Kathmandu. The keyboard on that typewriter was lined up with English-letter keys. By playing with it to bang out editorials and essays for school magazine, I soon learned to type well. But my typing was not professional. There were no ten fingers dancing in concert to produce words and sentences. Mine was more of a two-finger pecking - slow and laborious. Still, that basic skill to type in English carried me well through university and into professional life, where computers with English keyboards, word processors and Internet connections made thinking, writing, revising and editing and, and then, emailing concepts, ideas and articles easy.

In the 1990s, with a grant from my university, I spent time working at Backward Society Education (BASE) in Tulsipur, Dang in Western Nepal. The work was eye-opening in many ways, and influenced my career decisions later. But there was nothing much to do in that small town after work hours. On Saturdays, after our morning dal-bhat, my colleagues and I used to go to one of the two film-halls in town to catch the afternoon shows. On our way back, we would pay dutiful visits to one magazine-stand by the dusty bus-park that carried fresh-off-the-night-bus Nepali-language magazines such as Kamana, Yuba Manch, Nava Yuba and a few Sajha Prakashan books. I spent my evenings reading and re-reading many of those Nepali-language magazines and books.

It was around that time that I tried to write an essay or two in Nepali. But I gave it up quickly. Writing Nepali by long-hand was a torture, and I did not have the self-discipline to learn to type in Nepali on a Nepali typewriter. I found out that words did not flow on blank sheets of paper. With great effort, I would write a few sentences and read them aloud only to decide that they were no good. I would then crumple up the paper and throw it away.

This habit went on until the rubbish-bin started overflowing with the confetti of my amateur efforts. Looking back, I think I was not sure of my diction, grammar and even of what I wanted to say in Nepali. Besides, I had this unsettling feeling that the face of my high school Nepali language teacher was peering over my shoulders, sternly telling me that what I was writing in Nepali was not good. Insecure about my own ability and afraid that people would laugh at me once they saw how bad I wrote, I concluded that writing in Nepali was a task best left to the certified giants of Nepali literature and journalism. At least, they knew what they were doing.

Meanwhile, for some years, thanks to the ease provided by computers with English keyboards, I continued to email, as a hobby on the side, occasional op-ed pieces in English to a few Nepal-based English newspapers. The audience was small, and it was, I came to realize, composed mostly of my own friends and acquaintances. We all praised
one another's writings, and were happy to exist in our little 'Mutual Admiration Society?, as is often the case with Nepalis writing in English.

But I kept up with my readings of Nepali language newspapers, magazines and books. Important debates were going on in the vibrant Nepali-language press about our politics, economies, societies and the arts. Divergent, conflicting and contradictory ideas were being tossed about, discussed and dissected in the public domain. All this was heady exciting stuff, and I longed to add thoughts to these public debates or disagree with some pundits with reasons. Occasionally, I wrote short letters to editor on issues on which I felt particularly strong. But the act of writing longer opinion pieces and commentaries that made sustained arguments in Nepali stymied me. I had flashbacks of my painfully short-lived experience to write in Nepali in Dang, complete with those overflowing and, cockroach-infested, rubbish-bins.

But all that started to change late last year when I discovered Unicode Nepali Font, promoted by Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya. After installing it for free on my laptop, I saw that Nepali typing could be so intuitively easy to grasp that even someone who still types with two fingers (yup, that?s me!) could completely master a new way of typing in less than an hour. Truth be told, at first, I was skeptical, and thought that maybe there was some fine-print trick to this whole Unicode business. Maybe a virus would destroy all my files, maybe the laptop would catch fire... but nothing of such sort ever happened. And the best part about using Unicode Nepali Font is that I can now write, save, revise and edit my Nepali-language pieces with no difficulty whatsoever. What?s more, I can even write and send mails in Nepali too. That is, in pukka Nepali - not a Romanised form. If I didn?t like what came out, I could simply delete it, and start all over again, revising and editing right on the screen - thereby saving a small forest of trees! Life, I thought, couldn?t have been sweeter than this.

And so, encouraged by this new tool, I finally did manage to put those Dang nightmares to rest, mustering enough courage to publish a few opinion-pieces in a leading national daily newspaper. I also discovered that editors love getting Nepali articles via email because they can do just the appropriate editing on the screen, without having to spend time for the entire hand-written text to be typed up all over again. Not many people know that this simple issue of convenience dramatically increased the chances of getting one?s articles published sooner than never.

That old Remington typewriter is no longer in my life. But thanks to Unicode Nepali Font, those countless hours of school boyish joy that the typewriter gave me when I first started to type, could still be re-created -- this time in Nepali language. I urge you all to give Unicode a try and see for yourself how easy and fun it is to type in Nepali, share what you have written with others and, in essence, communicate your ideas and thoughts to millions of Nepali-language readers for whom English remains a forbidding language.

(Originally published in The Himalayan Times daily, in February 2005. Unicode can be downloaded from www.mpp.org.np)

   [ posted by ashu @ 09:39 AM ] | Viewed: 3364 times [ Feedback]

Dating Comrade Natasha

a humour piece

oohi ashu

I remember the evening I first saw her at Butwal Lodge in Kalanki. I was there to meet a friend. But his bus had not yet arrived from Jajarkot. I decided to wait. In that dimly-lit lobby where shadowy figures flitted about, she was sitting in a corner - all alone and looking like a cross between Martina Navratilova and Shivani Singh Tharu. I flashed my Everest toothpaste smile. She scowled back. I asked whether she had a cigarette. Assuming a quick kung-fu pose, she showed me a stick of explosives. When she later shook my hand to say goodnight, it hurt for hours. Little did I know that inflicting pain was her damningly seductive way of breaking ice: "You are cool, and I am hot. Dinner tomorrow?"

We met for dal-bhat the following evening at Madan Bhojanalaya- a hideaway that was miles away from any police station. She showed up, dressed-to-kill: khaki fatigues, combat boots and a rifle slung from her left shoulder. Before sitting down, she frisked me from head to toe, pausing briefly to massage my pant-pockets for any concealed weapon.

In no time though, with the glow from Tiger Lalteen bouncing off her face, we were whispering sweet nothings. She was Comrade Natasha, a rising star at Destruction & Mayhem Bureau. She said she had instructions to finish "certain work" at Sanchaya Kosh buildings. I patted her cheeks, teasing that a bombshell like her should not work too hard.

Over time I learnt that having an underground girlfriend meant that you could never call her. You sat by the phone, and waited for it to ring. When I didn�t hear from her for days, I worried that the worst had happened. But when we did meet, we never visited Himalayan Java to snuggle on the couch. Nor did we go to Nanglo�s Rooftop for chicken sizzlers. Too risky, she chided. Instead, we met for pani-puri at back-alley eateries, far from army check-posts, where rats fought with roaches for leftovers on the floor.

Often, exhausted by the demands of her revolutionary war, she would visit me, only to leave at dusk with a pressure-cooker. Once I asked why she ran off with my kitchen utensils. She gave me that come-hither look, and soon had me tied up in a perform-or-perish Khajurao position, which was enjoyable. To replenish supply, I continued buying pressure-cookers from a sahu down the road. After seeing on Nepal TV what became of the cookers he had sold earlier, he grew afraid to charge me money. Even the neighborhood dadas, who used to beat me up before, bowed low with respect once they saw who I was with. Having a rebel babe by my side meant access to power, influence, fun and wads of cash looted from banks.

But good times don't last. And neither do good people. Eventually, politics destroyed our relationship. She asked me to prove my love by going underground. I told her I couldn�t sink that low. Besides, I lived in a basement already. She wanted help with blowing up telecom towers. When she saw that all that I could blow up were balloons, her disappointment knew no bounds.

She ordered that I criticise myself for disobedience. I smiled, and moved closer to nibble her ear-lobes. But she shoved me aside. Putting the gun to my forehead, she shouted that she had stripped me of all romantic rights, and demoted me to an "ordinary lover" status. She also said that she might have to kill me to show how much she cared about me. I was touched that her love was so deadly. When we broke up for good, I landed at Bir Hospital with 12 broken bones.

These days, I look back upon the whole affair and console myself that it was better to have loved and undergone a hip-replacement surgery than to have never loved at all.

(Adapted from a stand-up comedy act, written and performed by the author on the 1st of April 2004 at Dhokai Ma Caf� in Patan, Kathmandu.)

   [ posted by Ashu @ 06:38 PM ] | Viewed: 2221 times [ Feedback]

What follow are REMEMBERED extracts of a dinner conversation between a
socially insecure and intellectually naive 18-year-old
first-semester Nepali student and three of his American friends at a
dining-hall at some university somewhere in Massachusetts.)

by oohi ashu

Hi! Where are you from?
Nepal. That's a country between India and China, you know.


But you could pass as an Indian from India.
Well, I'm not as dark as the Indians, you see. I'm a Nepali. And Nepal
is an independent, peace-loving country. We have Mt. Everest there, you
know.


Mt. Everest? That's so cool, man! Are you a Sherpa?
Not really. The Sherpas are a different group altogether. They live up
in the mountains, you see, where it's very cold.


Mountains, wow!? Do you guys, like, go skiing a lot? It must be fun,
right?
Well, not really. You see, the Himalayas are really tall mountains.
They're difficult to ski on. We just kind of worship them from a
distance.


Worship them? Are you religious?
Yeah, I guess. I'm a Hindu.


You're a Hindu? That's so cool, man! So you guys have, like, the
caste-system, right?
Yeah. But I don't really believe in it. Besides, these days, that's only
practiced in rural areas.


So, like, what's your caste?
Um, Brahmins. You know, that's like what you have here in Boston, I
guess. It's kind of, like, being at the top of the caste-system . . .


Does your Brahmin caste, like, dominate over all others?
Well, it's not really that. I mean, it doesn't work out like that. There are good Brahmins and thereare bad Brahmins. Historically, a lot of domination used to happen in
the past. But that's kind of dying out now. These days, we all get along
fine in Nepal. Like I said, mine is a peace-loving country.


But you guys are also famous for wars, right? I mean, for my
social-studies project at Andover, I remember writing a paper on the
Gorkhas.

Oh, the Gorkhas!! Yeah, they are us. They're really brave and bold. You
know, they wield this special knife called khukuri that can hack a
person to pieces. Because of them, my country Nepal is known throughout
the world as the land of brave soldiers.


Are you a Gorkha yourself?
Well, not really. I'm only a Gorkhali, which is just another name for a
Nepali. But I can wield my khukuri knife, like, you know, kick-ass style!


Hey, now I remember. My sister's college-classmate's boyfriend's stepfather was on
the Peace Corps in Nepal. I think he found Nepal an awesome place. He
had, like, some amazing slides of a village where he spent two
years digging a canal . . .
Yeah, my country is really beautiful. It is an awesome place. And the
people there -- though they may be poor -- are always friendly, happy ,
helpful and smiling, you know. You guys should visit it someday. You can
even go trekking from Kathmandu.


Katmandu? That's such a cool name for a place. How much snow do you get
there every year?
Snow in Kathmandu? Never. Much of the snow falls on the high mountains
-- the ones that are much taller than the green ones you have up in New
Hampshire.


The air you breathe in Kathmandu must be very crisp, right? And the
water, very fresh?
Yeah, something like that. It's also very spiritual. Kathmandu's also
known as the City of Temples, you see.


How's the economy in your country?
Well, Nepal's a poor, underdeveloped country. Still, we have our pride
intact. While India next door existed as a colony, Nepal has always held
its head high as a brave, independent nation. But we need development
there. Fast. In fact, there's much we have to learn from the First
World. And, I guess, that's partly why I decided to come here, you know,
to learn from and to share ideas with you guys so that I can go back and
help develop my motherland someday.


Wow! That's so neat. I guess this is what the admissions office means when it keeps on sending out brochures saying thatdiversity is the hallmark of this place. Imagine having dinner withsomebody from Nepal! I'm now going to call my Mom and tell her that I
just met a really nice Brahmin from Kathmandu. I bet she'll get a good
kick out of it.
Yeah, do that. I have to go to the Science Center, and finish that Expos
paper on Orwell that's due tomorrow.

[You were reading remembered extracts of a dining-hall conversation
between a socially insecure and intellectually naive, 18-year-old,
first-semester Nepali student and three of his American friends.]

Originally published in The Kathmandu Post

   [ posted by Ashu @ 12:11 PM ] | Viewed: 2300 times [ Feedback] (1 Comment)