Original
Blog
Original
The most load-bearing word in Nepali is ‘hunchha’. It means yes, no, maybe, and I stopped listening.
Original
No Nepali mother has ever accepted ‘I already ate’ as a final answer.
Original
Every Nepali family has one drawer holding a torch, three screwdrivers, and the warranty card for a television sold in 2009.
Original
Kathmandu has two seasons, and both of them end up on your shoes.
Original
A Nepali wedding card gives you a date, a venue, and no information whatsoever about when anything will begin.
Original
Nine things that happen at every Nepali wedding
The card says eleven. Nothing whatsoever happens until two. Somebody you have never met photographs you, and it becomes a family heirloom. There is a queue for the stage. Nobody can establish where it begins. An uncle asks what you do, is delighted by the answer, and asks again twenty minutes later because he would […]
Original
The seven stages of asking a shopkeeper for change
You hand over a thousand-rupee note for a forty-rupee item. The shopkeeper looks at the note. Then at you. Then back at the note. “Sano chaina?” Nothing smaller? You conduct a full and public search of a wallet whose contents you already know. He opens a drawer whose contents he also already knows. Hope is […]
Original
Every excuse for being late in Kathmandu, ranked
Ranked by how much anyone believes it. Traffic. Believed completely. Requires no supporting detail and never has. The road was dug up. Believed instantly, and permanently — it usually still is. I got stuck at the bank. Believed, and generates sympathy, which is more than the others manage. My bike had a puncture. Believed roughly […]
Original
What ‘ho ni’ actually means
Two syllables, no fixed meaning, and you will hear it forty times before lunch. Ho ni is agreement with an edge. It is not simply “yes” — “yes” is ho. The ni turns a plain yes into obviously, or that is what I have been saying, or at last, somebody sees it. Which one you […]