Off the Record 125: The winds of winter

Issue 125 • 19 January 2024

Jan 19, 2024

It’s January 19, 2024, and you’re reading Off the Record.

I’m Pranaya Rana and in this newsletter, we’ll stop, take a deep breath, and dive into one singular issue that defined the past week.

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Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening from a very grateful Kathmandu. Last week, I asked all of you constant readers to share the newsletter and I got a pretty great response. Many of you shared the newsletter and even reached out to me with personal notes and comments. I thank you for that and hope you will continue sharing this newsletter with your friends, family, colleagues, and anyone else interested in Nepal. Just this past week, this newsletter got 38 new free subscribers (two more just as I was writing this!) and 4 new paid subscribers. Those are great numbers and if we can keep a similar momentum going, I’m going to hit 3,000 subscribers very soon. I thank all of you again and I hope you will continue to read, share, and support this weekly epistle. Help me reach 3,000!

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Now, on to more important matters.

A shrinking Tundikhel

Monday was Maghe Sankranti, a festival that marks the end of the winter harvest. Maghe or Makar Sankranti or Maghi, as it is variously known, is widely celebrated by pahadi Hindus, Magars, and Tharus. For the latter community, the day also heralds the new year and is celebrated with much fanfare. In Kathmandu, all of these communities come together to celebrate publicly at Tundikhel, the largest public open space in Kathmandu. Only, over the years, Tundikhel has shrunk and it can no longer host large crowds of thousands of people. So on Monday, as thousands gathered for their yearly celebration, a stampede was triggered and sixteen people were injured.

Tundikhel, or Tinkhya as it is called in Nepal Bhasa, was once over 5 kilometers long and 300 meters wide, stretching from Jamal to Tripureshwor. It is believed to have been established in the 18th century as a catch-all space for locals to relax, children to play, and traders to set up stalls. It had no fences and no gates and was a truly public space. but over the years, that wide expanse has been slowly chipped away. The Rana rulers in the 19th and early 20th centuries used the space as their parade grounds but the space itself remained largely intact. It was only in the 60s, once democracy came, that Tundikhel began to be parcelled off. In the late 60s, King Mahendra separated Rani Pokhari from the rest of Tundikhel by building a road through it. A separate park, named after his wife Ratna, was also constructed from the Tundikhel’s grounds. To the south end, more land was used to construct the Dasrath Stadium and the Nepal Army headquarters.

Then, in the 90s, Tundikhel was further split up into a Khula Manch, literally ‘open stage’ and Tundikhel proper. At Khula Manch, an amphitheater of sorts was set up for political parties to give speeches and hold rallies. The stage was also used for performances and concerts. At the same time, the army encroached on Tundikhel from both sides. To the north, the army took nearly half of Tundikhel for its own, calling it Sainak Manch. The entire area was closed off with barbed wire and used solely for the army’s perfomances and parades. The public was prohibited from using this space. To the south, the area allocated for the Army Headquarters grew to swallow up even more public land, growing to twice its original size. Nepali Times has a great collage of photos showing Tundikhel’s gradual shrinkage and The Kathmandu Post shows photos from the 60s and 70s of what Tundikhel used to look like.

Today, the Tundikhel is less than a quarter of its original size. It is fenced on all sides with just one gate open to the public. There is little grass, more dirt, and the southern end is piled high with rubble from the 2015 earthquakes. Still, every day, you can see women doing yoga in the morning, locals relaxing in the winter sun eating oranges and peanuts, and kids playing cricket and football. One can only wonder what might have been if the entire space had been preserved as a lush green space that is open to all.

Still, every year, there are more attempts to reduce the space further. Khula Manch, the north end of Tundikhel that remains a public space, has been on the radar of rapacious authorities for a long time now. The previous Kathmandu administration attempted to turn it into a bus park while the current administration of Mayor Balen Shah had initially planned to build a parking lot there. Mass protests from locals and activists finally put an end to that plan. Now, Mayor Shah wants to build a football field in Khula Manch, again drawing ire from locals and activists. This cannot be allowed to happen. There are few enough public spaces and we cannot allow the authorities to build over any more of them, no matter if it is a parking lot or a football ground. Open spaces with nothing but grass and trees are precious in themselves. There’s no need to ‘add value’ to them.

Dahal in Uganda

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal flew to Uganda for the 19th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a coalition of states born at the height of the Cold War that vowed allegiance to neither of the two sides. It is really a grouping of countries that was more broadly called ‘the third world’, which came to mean underdeveloped and poor rather than unaffiliated to the first world of the United States and the second world of the Soviet Union. Now, instead of underdeveloped or least developed, the term in fashion is ‘Global South’.

At around the same time that the Global South was gathering in Uganda for the NAM Summit, the Global North was gathering in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. While Davos is attended by the wealthiest individuals, corporations, and nations in the western world, Kampala hosts the rest of the world, including rising up-and-comers like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) grouping of countries. The difference between the two summits is stark and showcases just how split the world still is. While NAM might have lost some of its relevancy since the end of the Cold War, perhaps it can reshape itself to become a champion for the Global South, especially at a time when the Israel-Palestine conflict has all but destroyed the myth of Western humanitarianism.

But what can Dahal do at NAM? Not much. Nepali foreign policy actors and analysts love to proclaim that Nepal is a ‘founding member’ of NAM but most literature attributes Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamel Abdel Nassar of Egypt and Sukarno of Indonesia as the founding members. All of these personalities are titans in their own right. Nepal under Mahendra doesn’t quite figure into this equation. But even that aside, what has Nepal gained from NAM? Again, not much.

NAM certainly needs to change focus. The rivalry is no longer between the US and Russia but the US and China. Non-alignment might not work anymore, especially since it is not so much a battle of ideology. As usual, Nepal finds itself caught in the middle. The old Cold War was being fought far away but the new Cold War is playing out in Nepal, as China on one side and the US and India on the other jostle for influence. In the past, Nepal benefited from non-alignment, with both the USA and Soviet Russia attempting to woo Nepal through aid and scholarships. We can do the same again. Maintain strategic distance from all actors, play one off the other, and reap the benefits. A politician as wily as Dahal should have been able to do this already but somehow, he seems to be pretty circumspect when it comes to playing global actors as well as he does local ones.

More deaths in Ukraine

On Tuesday, news outlets reported the death of one more Nepali in the Russia-Ukraine war, bringing the total number of deaths to 12. Although the Foreign Ministry has yet to confirm the last two deaths, family members report that they were informed by colleagues and friends of the deaths. The most recent death is of Sajan Gurung, who was a member of the Maoist party’s Young Communist League. He reportedly told his family that he was going to work in Malta but ended up fighting on the Russian side. Most Nepalis who are currently fighting on the Russian side have been lured by promises of fast cash and a path to citizenship. Over 115 families have petitioned the Nepal government to rescue and bring back their children so I’m assuming the number of deaths will continue to grow in the days to come.

Kantipur ran a large story on these deahts under the headline ‘देश नलडेको युद्धमा नागरिकको मृत्यु कहिलेसम्म?’ (How long will citizens continue to die in a war that the nation is not engaged in?). I thought that was funny since Nepal hasn’t been involved directly in a war probably World War 2 and even then, Nepali soldiers fought under the British flag. Nepal has no real conflict with anyone, not with Argentina, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Kosovo. And yet, Nepali soldiers have been mobilized to fight against all of these countries as part of the British Army. Many have died too. But that is not a conversation that we are ready or willing to have.

And that’s about it for this week’s round-up. Something light for this week’s deep dive, a film review. Read on.

Winter in Dhorpatan, 3,900 meters above sea level in the Dhaulagiri range, is bleak. The Dhor valley is blanketed in snow and residents move south for the winter. All except for two elderly women — Ratima Bishwakarma and Kalima Bishwakarma — who remain behind as caretakers. Ratima and Kalima are widows of the same man.

This is the central conceit of the documentary film Dhorpatan: No Winter Holidays and it is an intriguing one. One might imagine high drama set against pristine snow-capped mountains as the two women grow increasingly antagonistic when isolated. This isn’t that movie. There’s no drama; there’s barely any plot or forward momentum; and the mountain shots are kept to a minimum. Instead, we get a relationship that is equal parts camaraderie and rivalry. The film dwells on these two women, irascible, foul-mouthed, and endlessly entertaining. They check up on homes that have been abandoned for the winter, complaining about one ‘fat wife’ who refuses to pay them for their maintenance work. They feed their cow and their goats. They collect firewood and meager greens hiding in the dirt from the winter snow. They cook meals over a fire and they bicker like the old friends they are. It is an empathetic portrayal, a human one that privileges connection over documentation.

The two women might be the stars of the show but the landscape is just as much of a character. The village that they live in, the surrounding hills and forests, the distant mountains, they all occupy as much screentime as the two women. And these are not cliche images of snow-capped mountains and fabulous vistas that characterize Nepal under a foreign gaze; these are more mundane images, trees breathing, forests swaying, clouds rolling past the hills. Often, the filmmakers will simply dwell on a single frame for seconds. Many of these frames are still, without even the passage of clouds. They’re quiet, meditative, allowing the audience to sit and breathe alongside the women in their space. Just as the landscape shapes the women, it gives the film contour.

Directors Rajan Khatet and Sunir Pandey have managed to create the kind of film that is most difficult to achieve, one that is not a cliche. All too often, documentaries about Nepal are painful, full of grief, woe, and hardship. These are seemingly the most pronounced markers of a poor, third-world country and thus, they are repeated ad nauseam in every film, documentary, novel, and media report. Then, there are tropes more specific to Nepal — ‘sandwiched between India and China’, ‘desperately poor’, and Mount Everest. This film traffics in none of them. The poverty of these women is never a factor. In fact, they might not even be very poor by Dhorpatan standards; we don’t know because it doesn’t matter. Their lives might be difficult but they are not receptacles for pity. They might be strong but they are not exemplars of resilience either. They’re old but they’re not invalids. They laugh, they curse, they sing, they dream. It is this humanity that permeates the documentary.

There are small moments that breathe life into the film, like when Kalima loses her cow in a storm. She had only just been putting her clothes up to dry when the storm hit and she went in search of her cow. She returns to find her clothes covered in snow and in a fit of anger, throws rocks at the house where Ratima is resting cozily beside the fire. She couldn’t even be bothered to take the clothes in, Kalima curses. Ratima too complains, saying that one day, she’s going to beat Kalima. This back-and-forth between the two is a moment of levity for the audience but it also characterizes their push-and-pull relationship. I wish we had gotten more moments like these because as empathetic as the film is, it doesn’t really tell us much about the two women. Ratima is childless while Kalima has a daughter. Ratima dreams often of her husband and seeks to preserve his memory but Kalima dreams of other things. Ratima is often ill while Kalima is spry even in her old age. We learn all of this but it isn’t nearly enough.

And so we come to the film’s flaws. The slow pacing is something I don’t mind, especially in documentaries. But the stillness should serve a larger purpose and I don’t know if it does that. Beyond stressing the remote, isolated nature of the village, do the pacing and the still frames serve the emotional heart of the film? Is there even an emotional center? The relationship between the two women should be it but at the end of the film, the audience doesn’t come away with an emotional arc. The film ends as it begins — in the middle. We are observers only of a vignette.

Towards the end of the film, the winter fades and spring comes, bringing with it all the other inhabitants of the village. We finally see Ratima and Kalima in a broader context but I question if this ending adds anything much to the film. We don’t learn much here that we didn’t earlier. It feels tacked on, a comforting way to provide closure to the film, as if to say winter always gives way to spring. For a film that’s been so empathetic in its observation of the women so far, the ending doesn’t quite land.

Despite these flaws, Dhorpatan: No Winter Holidays is a rare portrayal of female friendship, warts and all. It doesn’t condescend or pity anyone; in fact, it is joyful and filled with life. This is the kind of documentary that I’d love to see more of from Nepali filmmakers. Humanizing portraits that go beyond cliched representation of a ‘poor but happy’ people. And directors Kathet and Pandey have been rewarded for it. Dhorpatan premiered at the Sheffield Doc Fest in the UK and went on to show at the Alternativa Film Project in Almaty, Kazakhstan where it won the ‘Nativa’ award which goes to films that showcase national or cultural identity. It also jointly won the Best Feature Documentary award at the DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival in Baku, Azerbaijan, Best Documentary at the Nepal Human Rights International Film Festival, and Honorable Mention for Best Film at the Lima Alterna Film Festival in Lima, Peru.

Documentaries have always thrived in Nepal. Not commercially, of course, but artistically. Kesang Tseten’s films are still the gold standard for any Nepali filmmaker but in recent times, we’ve had numerous documentaries and even feature films showing at prestigious international film festivals. The most well-known among them is probably Min Bham’s Kalo Pothi: The Black Hen, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and even won Best Film at its Critics Week. Then, Deepak Rauniyar’s Seto Surya (White Sun) too premiered at Venice and won the Interfilm Award. When it comes to documentaries, Fidel Devkota’s The Red Suitacse premiered at Venice and Nabin Subba’s A Road to a Village showed at the Toronto International Film Festival. Nepali films are thus slowly but surely making their artistic intentions known globally.

Sadly, the domestic film industry continues to churn out hopelessly insipid fare. Films with even an iota of creativity, like Aina Jhyal ko Putali or Paani Photo, have very short runs and barely make their money back. Filmmakers with an artistic bent are forced to look elsewhere for funding. Certainly, art films are not going to have the same kind of commercial appeal as the latest iteration of Nai Na Bhannu La but they don’t have to be complete bombs at the box office. Films like Dhorpatan give me hope, though. It is currently showing at Cine de Chef in the CTC Mall and doing very well for a documentary. It was apparently the filmmakers’ intention to show the documentary in a theater to a Nepali audience. “We want to show that these types of films have an audience, ” Pandey told OnlineKhabar. “We aim to establish a culture of watching such movies in a movie theatre.”

I certainly hope that the Nepali movie-going audience will grow to appreciate more films like Dhorpatan. We have a great many stories to tell. I just hope there are enough people trying to tell them and an audience that is ready to listen.

Dhorpatan: No Winter Holidays (2023, 1 h 19 m)
Directed by Rajan Kathet & Sunir Pandey
Cinematography by Babin Dulal
Featuring Ratima Bishwakarma & Kalima Bishwakarma

Dhorpatan is playing at Cine de Chef, CTC Mall Sundhara, until 21 January, but is likely to be extended by a week.

That’s all for this week. I will be back next Friday, in your emails, for the next edition of Off the Record.

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