My World

The government has declared sanitary pads as a luxury item. Oh, you haven’t heard? They’ve decided to increase the prices of sanitary pads. No, of course not: sanitary pads are no basic necessary items that every girl needs, they’re a luxury. You must have heard wrong, no, every girl does not bleed every month. This is no obligation that we all must go through. This is a luxury. And if you still cannot hear the sarcasm in all this, you must belong to the other group of people, the one that sees no wrong in this. While the world is taking a step forward and making sanitary pads free of cost in many places, creating sanitary pad vending machines, Nepal is taking a step back. When young girls all across Nepal should be unhesitant to use sanitary pads, they might just be more hesitant than ever, now. The average girl spends an average of Rs 80 on a pack of sanitary pads which might not seem like much. But here’s the deal: one pack is never enough for one girl. We might just need 2 pack...

I’d heard about this book years ago. You can’t really ignore how creative and funny the title of the book is. But I never got around to reading it. Last week, when I saw it at the library, I couldn’t help but check it out. He and I decided to read it together. I was curious to see how the book would help us communicate better and understand each other’s differences. To start with, the title isn’t just a title, the author literally uses the example of how men and women are from two different planets, which is a different perspective as to show why it is so hard sometimes for one gender to understand the other. The author John Gray, goes on to point out that men and women need to be more aware of their differences and stop trying to turn things around their way because that is the way things are in the respective planets of origin. To be honest, we were surprised at how the book caught on so well as to the times we could misunderstand each other and we interpreted what the other wa...

Coffee had always seemed like the exotic, fancy foreign drink back then, at least to me. And it’s funny I’m writing about coffee this time since I wrote about tea only a few weeks earlier. Believe me, this is no sheer intention of mine, just coincidence and a random thought of mine that I couldn’t help but type away. Back then, the only types of coffee you could get was black coffee and milk coffee and the difference was astonishingly clear. But then, modernization and western lifestyle hit the Nepali market, and coffee was not the simple coffee anymore. You had to practice the foreign names a few times correctly like Latte, Cappuccino or Mocha so that you don’t seem like a fool. And initially I though all these different types of coffee were different styles of coffee; with the beans used or the way they are made. My friend Shristi and I have a rather dreaded memory of that. We had ordered Espresso Lavazza Barista, Jawalakhel, some years ago. We thought espresso is a new drink we ha...

Are you ready for this? Another one of my random thoughts? And I swear this is just a coincidence that this random thought also happens to be because of the window. I happened to have this dream the other night. We were passing this road, this rather shopping lane. It was sort of like Durbarmarg, but more flourished. It was wide with tall buildings on either side that had these huge windows for brands and shops. And almost all these places had mannequins. Mannequins were placed on stairs; mannequins dressed extravagantly. Only, I realized a while later, that these were not mannequins at all. These were actual people that were paid to dress up and stand by the windows all day. I was astounded, even in the dream. These real-life mannequins were doing random things at different shops. Some of them were just talking with one another; some had a routine and danced to grab attention. I can clearly see that image in my head, even now, hours after I’ve woken up. This was one of the dreams ...