Uzz Update

I have been quiet for a long time now and there have been quite a few things that happened during these days.

I AM A MASTER

I got the certificate of my masters’. It was great because after leaving the study of Masters in English Literature, I was down feeling that I would never complete masters’. Then I joined Mass Communication and Journalism and completed it in 2005 (I got certificate late because I submitted my thesis only two months ago).

Immediately, I started teaching journalism in Kathmandu Don Bosco College. Although I have been teacher for almost 14 years, teaching at a good college is a completely new experience and I must say my students look like wonderful bunch (well, they worked very hard for the project).

DASHAIN & EID

I wanted to wish a happy Eid to all my visitors but I could not figure out which day is right to do so. I could have asked a few of my Muslim friends but I somehow believed I could know that by newspapers. I failed.

Then there was Dashain and although I sent out Happay Dashain greetings to my Hindu friends, I didn’t put any thing on websites because I feel like not doing it after missing an Eid greeting. I don’t know where that feeling came from, but I feel like going secular.

TREKKING

It wasn’t an actual trekking but I did a kind if hiking during Dashain. I went to Bela – nearly 50km from Kathmandu on a bus for the Dashain tika from my wife’s aunt. Then, we found that there is a jeep ready to go to Kanpur – a small village of my wife’s maternal uncles (on Hindu culture, taking blessings from them is necessary during Dashain but I hadn’t gone there in last five years). So we went there.

It was a tough riding on the top open jeep and the road was bumpy – I nearly fell off the vehicle twice. After all that, we walked back 90 minutes (hurriedly to catch the last bus to Kathmandu) only to find that the last bus has left 15 minutes earlier.

We were stranded half-an-hour away from Bela and there was no vehicle. A microbus came and when he knew we were not going far, just sped away. Damm him! Is he no human?

But there was another driver who gave us lift and we reached Bela and spent a night there. (The touch ride on the jeep and 90 minutes walk caused pain for more than two days)! Ahaaaa!

And, JOURNALIST’S ABDUCTION

Birendra Shah, a journalist in Tarai, was abducted by the Maoists (the investigating committees say this while the Maoists deny). He was abducted before Dashain and his whereabouts is still unknown despite the issue being raised at the special session of the Parliament and government’s commitment to find out.

Very sad! Please release him if he is still alive (or if he has already been killed then the Maoists are going to go through after wave of hatred feelings – this time from media)!

I am writing these lines immediately after breaking my 22-hour fasting with two apples and a glass of sweetened hot water – in a particular fashion of how the Hindu women break their Teej fasting.

Teej [more info at NepalHomePage and Wikipedia] is a festival known for the fasting as the women fasts whole day without even drinking a drop of water in belief that it would bring fame, progress and money to their husbands. They dress in red, sing, dance in groups and worship Lord Shiva as the myth behind the festival talks about him and his beloved Goddess Parbati.

It is believed that Goddess Parbati kept a very difficult fasting, not even swallowing his saliva, to get Lord Shiva as her husband. Unmarried girls too keep the fasting hoping that their future husbands will be among the best.

I am not a female and the reason behind my fasting is not religious. I neither performed puja in the morning and evening as the women do nor visited any temple to worship god or goddess. Rather, I watched the Twenty20 World Cup cricket match between Sri Lanka and Kenya during the afternoon and went to office in the evening.

My reason behind fasting was two. The first to know how it feels like to stay without food or drink for a whole day and secondly, to satisfy my adventurous or, you can say lunatic, nature.

I am happy that I could do it though everyone who knew me won’t believe it. One of my friends at office had told me yesterday that if I could neither stay at a place for whole day nor fast. Some even wanted to have a bet. I didn’t know if I could do it because I can hardly resist hunger. But I did it and I learnt that well, if I have strong commitment, I can do things.

My experience of remaining hungry for 22 hours was that it is not that hard. I felt a little numb right now and a very, very little dizzy, but overall, I never felt like I should go and eat. At around 11 AM and 3 PM, something in me shouted food, but I resisted that and then I didn’t even feel like need to eat.

However, I must salute thousands of women who fast on the day because I know its not as easy for them as for me and their motive behind fasting is a kind of selflessness. You may like to call it ’male domination’ or something like that and I too personally DO NOT like women fasting for their men, but its a tradition and that’s won’t go away soon.

My 22 Hour Fasting was also my attempt to find out how much I can do for my beloved who was fasting for me!

Let’s hope Year 2064 will be fruitful to Nepal in terms of political stability, peace building and smooth transition from conflict-hit nation to once-again-country of peace.

For Nepali, there is three opportunities to wish happy New Year every 12 months; the Gregorian calendar, the Bikram Sambat, and then the Nepal Sambat. Yet, despite making the wish every time, we fail to work for the completion of the wishes and go on wishing that again each and every time.

We all know, wishing alone is not enough; we have to work for that. Yet, we remain ignorant. I am not an exception and I am afraid to make new resolutions. But with the hope of not running away and not ignoring, let’s make a few resolutions.

All Nepali citizens let’s make a promise to be aware of the current situation in the country and then to express our views in anyway possible – at teashops, at letters to the editor and better in blogs.

All Nepali bloggers, let’s try to make our blogs a regular one and to help build the New Nepal in our own way! Let’s raise the voice and let’s discuss.

One of my blogger friends vowed to write for the establishment of republican democracy in his blog and I loved it. Our views can be different, but for the making of the New Nepal, if we could do something, we should do it.

New Nepal is a vague term and this doesn’t only apply for the political turnaround. This applies to socio-economic change too, and most importantly the change in our perceptions. We need to believe that we can build a happy nation.

We can wish for New Year three times a year, but for contributing to the making of New Nepal, we may not get the second chance. Let’s contribute from our side in whatever way we can. Together we can!

NepaliVoices.com has listed a large number of Nepali blogs on the sidebar. But since the number of such blogs has grown highly, I am changing the policy for the listing. Now on, I will do occasional (hopefully monthly) checking of all the blogs listed and will remove the blogs that haven’t been updated for a month.

Following that policy, I checked all the blogs today and removed those which haven’t been updated once in February (the list of those removed at the bottom of the post) and deleted private blogs. I have also changed the address of a few links to ensure every link is working. Continue reading…

Just after a month of my last visit, I am once again at Pokhara. This time to cover the final of the Aaha Gold Cup – a football tournament. I came with a few journalists friends and it was a nice journey.

The football final was very interesting as it saw more than 15,000 spectators in the stadium that has the capacity of 5,000. Nabil Three Star Club won the final in the tightly contested match against Manang Marsuandi Club but the only thing we were able to see from the pressbox was the heads of the players running around and the ball (only when it was on the air above their heads) as people had lined up in the touchline.

There was troubles a few times but none too dangerous and the Pokhareli people should be thanked for their patient during the match as it could have been a bad accident had their been any trouble.

It was the day of Fagu Purnima thus many of the spectators were probably drunk and the players who scored was treated with colors – rare scenery. At one time, a man ran entered the ground on the horseback and ran around. Overall it was a big sigh of relief for everybody as the match ended without major accident.

During my last two days here, I have boated at Fewa Lake for an aggregate of three hours – an hour on rowing boat and two on the paddle. I also went up the hill of Sarangkot for the beautiful visuals of mountains and then walked around lakeside.

Today is Feb 21 – the International Mother Languauge Day. I probably wouldn’t have remembered it, hadn’t I visited Bangladesh three years ago to see people celebrating the day. The day sparked for their independence from Pakistan and that’s why they are fond to celebrate the day.

I had written an entry on this day in 2005 – Nepali Lai Maya Garau (a farce – it’s in English).

And, I am happy that after almost six months, my personal blog, The Radiant Star, is back. Have to look.

Ask a blogger, without a blog for some reason, what he misses. The answer will surely be the power of expressing oneself on various experiences.

Thank God! My personal blog, The Radiant Star, is back online.

Ask a blogger what is his biggest problem running a blog. His answer, almost surely, will be that it’s hard to find the time and issue to blog on. Ask a blogger, without a blog for some reason, what he misses. The answer will surely be the power of expressing oneself on various experiences.

Ditto to me. On August 2006, I was in Malaysia for official work and I proudly put a picture of myself posing in front of the famous twin-tower in Kuala Lumpur despite very busy time there. After two weeks there, when I returned and looked into the blog, it was filled with 3,000 spam comments. Looking for an easier way to delete those, I tried various methods for about a month during which the number went up to nearly 9,000 (forgetful I am, I didn’t turn off the commenting).

And then I messed up with something that my site would be shut to myself. I tried changing the server but it didn’t work until a week ago. A week ago, I tested WordPress 2.1 and got my personal blog back (it was the happiest surprise for me). Akismet, the spam comment killer, found out 5,000 spam comments and others I deleted manually and now the blog is back.

What I missed most from August 2006 to January 2007? Surely, the ability to write on various issues. I had NepaliVoices for writing about blogs but its confined to blogs and blogging thus social issues or other experience were forgotten, sadly.

For a blogger, a blog becomes a diary and when it’s lost, the feeling is painful. During all these time, I cursed myself for not keeping the hardcopy of the diary of my Everest Basecamp Trek and also not keeping the local copy of many articles I thought I wrote nicely. But now everything is back and I am ready to go again.

At The Radiant Star now on, I will be making a few changes. I won’t blog anything about media, blogging or journalism because there is NepaliVoices for it. I will write on my personal feelings, commentary on social and political, yes sometimes political too, issues.

Welcome to new edition of The Radiant Star and I hope that all of my friends will enjoy reading my feelings.

Happy New Year 2007!

Let’s wish that 2007 will see Nepal’s all problem solved and we will all live in peace without any fear.

What new year resolution you have? I want to blog regularly.

NepaliVoices is now online.

As promised, today is Oct 1 – a historic date. It is a historic day because on the same day two years ago, United We Blog! – the pioneering blog was established by Dinesh Wagle and Ujjwal Acharya.

NepaliVoices will be a voice for all Nepali bloggers.