Bibek plays on the scale
Bibek plays on the scale
Betrawati
Babu in a shop
Babu in a shop
Kathmandu, May 2011
Each day I pass this small shop, a storefront built much like a garage—complete with a metal shutter to draw down at closing. This day, the shopkeepers son [babu means young boy] stands on the counter and we exchange spirited hellos.
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Pundewoti
Pundewoti
Betrawati, November 2002
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Deepak
Deepak
Betrawati, 2002
On a wooden bench near the bridge, Deepak has a rest while he takes in a view of his village around him.
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To his left, here’s a view similar to what he’d see.
In the above photo from 2000, you can see the bridge that crosses the Falakhu river—tributary to the mighty Trishuli—in the background.
Below is a June 2011 photo taken looking up the Falakhu river from the middle of that bridge.
Sunil at his families fruit stand
Sunil at his families fruit stand
Naya Bazaar Marg, Kathmandu, 2011
I would walk past this shop—one of many set up along the busy thoroughfare Naya Bazaar Marg—every day on my way to Balaju.
This long road is a constant stream of traffic: enormous lumbering TATA trucks, motorcycles, buses with thunderous horns, vans with passengers packed like gum balls, tempos with little puttering engines, bicycles loaded down with long bending lengths of re-bar, men, women, and children in school uniforms dodging puddles.
Large colorful posters for the latest Bollywood and Kollywood films are displayed on free walls. I happened to see some posters being wheat-pasted up one day; a pair of boys, one with a ladder, the other with a large bucket and a brush so rigid from the glue that the bristles had curved over like a hook.
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(I believe you can see Sunil wearing a red top in this panorama of Naya Bazaar Marg—he's basically under the "A" in "MANIA" on the big red billboard)
P.S. — The first Nepali movie I saw was called Dharmaputra and starred Rajesh Hamal, colloquially known to children countrywide as "the hero of Nepal". The movie was about three hours long, with plenty of dancing, romance, and singing.
A month or so later, I picked up a videocassette of Star Wars in Kathmandu to show the children of my host family. About 30 minutes in, my bai [younger brother] turns to me, unimpressed, with his arms out and says, essentially, "What, no singing?"