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“I learned how to drive a tempo, a three-wheeler, after I took my SLC (national level exams at the end of Grade 10). I was really scared. I was also confused about turning the vehicle at the corners or bringing it to a stop. But I had to learn it anyhow,” recalls 28-year-old Sushma Dhimal, whom I met in front of the Kathmandu Mall as she was waiting for passengers.“Learning to drive a tempo took me two weeks. At first, I practiced driving one without passengers. It was really hard in the beginning. I bumped into random things. Once, the tempo flipped over and I got injured. Only then did I become a professional driver,” says a confi­dent-looking Sushma.

She’s been driving a tempo in the chaotic streets of Kathmandu for a year now. As a driver, she’s never felt offended or discriminated against. She lives in Sitapaila with her hus­band and two sons. They all support her. In fact it was her husband who encouraged her and taught her driv­ing. Other female drivers and traffic police also helped her in some diffi­cult situations. As a result, Sushma confidently drives a tempo seven days a week.

There was a time when she wanted to go abroad. For that, she needed skills. “But if I have a skill, why not do something in Nepal?” she rea­soned. “When I saw other female drivers, I felt a desire to become one. I failed my first driver’s license test. But I didn’t lose hope,” she muses. Sushma made another attempt and passed the test.

NOT AN EASY LIFE

Also waiting for passengers at another corner of the tempo stand was 32-year old Kumari Sarki. She’s been driving a three-wheeler for eight years. She started by driving somebody else’s tempo, but she didn’t like the deal and decided to buy her own vehicle. “I didn’t have enough money so I took out a bank loan to buy a tempo, which is my source of livelihood now,” she says.

Although Kumari earns enough, it’s far from an easy life. There are times when she doesn’t get enough passengers. Sometimes, the tempo stops working in the middle of a trip. She also gets into an accident once in a while. She takes on a serious look and says, “I haven’t been able to pay off my loan yet.”

Her day starts at 5 am every morn­ing. At noon, she takes a lunch break. Her daughter brings her food, which she eats in a hurry. Unlike most other professionals, she doesn’t take a day off. “Why do I need a day off? It’s my own tempo; I’d rather make some more money,” she says proudly. As soon as her vehicle is filled with pas­sengers, she starts the engine, honks and picks up speed.

POPULAR MISCONCEPTION

There soon arrives another tem­po packed with passengers in front of Kathmandu Mall. The driver is 30-year-old Pramila Bishankhe. She is wearing a mask, but her hair is covered in a layer of dust.

Pramila has a bachelor’s degree. She looks and talks smart. “People generally think of female tempo driv­ers as simple rustics. They also think my line of work does not befit col­lege-educated folks. That’s wrong; there should be dignity of labor,” she says.

Pramila has been married for six years. She started driving a tempo two years before that. She didn’t stop working even when she had an infant to take care of.

TOUGH BUT FUN

Bimala Gautam, 35, is a single mom. She has two kids. “I have to raise them the best I can. I need to give them the love of both a mother and a father,” says an emotional Bimala. She’s in her tempo near the New Road gate waiting for her turn. She has been driving a three-wheeler in Kathmandu for eight years.

It’s scorching hot at two in the afternoon. Bimala’s face is badly burnt by the heat. She looks exhaust­ed and parched, and asks some­one to get her a bottle of water. But “work is fun, I never feel lazy,”she says.

She came to the capital from Sind­huli nine years ago in order to give her children a good education. She has experienced a positive change in her life ever since she became a driver. “Now I don’t need anyone’s help to feed my family. Ultimately, it’s only our skills that support us,” says Bimala as a smile spreads across her weary face.

NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED

Another female tempo driver I speak to is Juni Maya Nepali, who has already completed her 10th trip of the day and has made Rs 3,000, which is the amount she has to hand the vehicle-owner every day. What she makes in excess of Rs 3,000 is hers to keep.

She also gets a daily wage of Rs 350. Juni likes the deal, unlike many others who would rather drive their own vehicle. “If it’s my own vehicle, there will always be worry at the back of my mind that it will mal­function. I feel more at ease driv­ing someone else’s vehicle,” says Juni jovially.

She is 25, has completed Grade 12 and has been a tempo driver for a year. Earlier, she used to work in the garment industry. She also faced great difficulty learning to drive; so scared was she that for the first two months after she learned to drive, she didn’t ven­ture out the house. Finally she over­came her fear and started driving. “I’ve realized there is nothing you cannot do if you have courage,” Juni says.

BY SAPANA MAHARJAN

Pokhara : The number of Indian tourists visiting Pokhara to escape the brutal Indian summer and to go to the Muktinath Tem­ple in Mustang has drastically increased. Most of these tourists would have travelled to Nepal via road. Generally, few Western tourists visit Pokhara for trekking purposes in the ‘off-season’ between June and September. Before the 2015 earthquakes, Chinese tourists mostly compensated for the shortfall of the Western visitors.

“But after the earthquakes the number of Chinese tourists visiting Pokhara declined,” says Bikal Tulachan, the chairman of the West­ern Development Region Hotel Association (Pokhara). “But the number of Indian tourists visiting Pokhara for touristic and religious reasons has considerably increased,” he says. Most of them come via bus to visit Muktinath, the common pilgrimage of both Hindu and Buddhist devotees. The trend of Indian tourists visiting Pokhara in their own private vehicles has also increased.

Most hotel rooms in Pokhara are right now occupied by Indians. Of all the tourists who visit Nepal, 30 percent come to Pokhara; and nearly half those travelling to Pokhara are Indians, Tulachan informs. Gita Malankar of Gujarat in India, whom we caught by the Lakeside, says she was lured to Pokhara by its natural beauty. “I had heard that the temperature in Pokhara is mild and that it is filled with natural beauty,” she says. “I found that Pokhara is even more beautiful than I had expected.”

Likewise, Parth Malankar, also of Gujarat, informed he had come to Pokhara with another team of 90 Indians after visiting Pashupati­nath Temple and Manakamana Temple. He says he came to escape the Indian heat which is “brutal this time.” The number of Indian tourists staying at the hotels in Muktinath has also increased, says Suraj Gurung of the Muti­nath-based Grand Hotel. These days, various Indian religious leaders organize sermons at Muktinath’s Ranipauwa, which has added to the place’s popularity among Indian tourists.

Of the 700 beds in 22 hotels of Muktinath, which lies 3,710 meters above sea level, most are occupied by Indian tourists. Besides the Muktinath Temple, the majestic views of Dhau­lagri, Nilgiri and Thorung La mountains are the other main draws of Muktinath.

By Krishna Mani Baral

This year’s Secondary Education Examination (SEE) results, when they were first released on June 23, were bad enough. This first significant marker of academic credentials and cognitive abilities of students in Nepal once again showed a huge gulf in the quality of education being offered by private and public schools. Of the 451,532 regular examinees, the vast majority of the students who got the highest grades (A+ and A) were from private schools, while most of those who got the lowest grades (D and D+) were from public schools. This is a persistent trend and recent changes in exam patterns seem to have had little effect in the overall results.

Then, on June 24, the Office of the Controller of Examinations (OCE) that administers SEE, brought out another set of ‘correct’ results. Apparently, it had forgotten to include the weightage of practical examinations in the grades of some examinees. Also, due to a ‘technical error’ some students who were at the higher end of a particular range were mistakenly given a grade at the lower end of the range—for instance a student in the 3.65-4.0 (A+) range with a GPA of 4.0 was instead given a GPA of 3.65. Shockingly, when questioned, instead of owing up their mistake, the officials at the OCE could not stop congratulating themselves for daring to publish the ‘right results’ the very next day!

We understand that those at the office as well as students and common folks alike will take some time to get used to the SEE. It was only last year that it replaced the old mark-based School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations. Nonetheless, the OCE officials must surely have been aware that far too many students and their parents take the SEE exams very seriously. (One student has in fact already committed suicide due to her unexpectedly poor SEE results.) Still, the results of around 9,000 examinees (perhaps even more) were badly botched, subjecting them and their worried parents to great anxiety.

The cavalier attitude of the OCE officers leaves a lot to be desired. Those who refuse to own up their mistakes, nay, blunders, have no right to be employed in an office which by its nature calls for a high level of accountability. There are two broad lessons from the latest SEE saga. One, our public school education system is in need of a thorough overhaul. Two, unless those who were careless with SEE results this time are made liable for their action, with sackings if need be, we can expect similar botch-jobs in the future as well.

 To try to explain away the failings of Nepali Congress, the main opposition, by saying that it is a ‘divided house’, would be unfair on the previous generations of its lead­ers. Congress has always been a divided house, right from its founding in 1950, when the strong personalities of BP Koirala and Subarna Shumsher Rana repeatedly clashed over the party’s future course. Its other founding fathers like Tanka Prasad Acharya, Dilli Raman Regmi and Ganesh Man Singh were also frequently quarrelling. After the 1990 political change, feuding started between Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and Girija Prasad Koirala. Then, in 2002, the breakaway faction of Sher Bahadur Deuba would form a separate party. It is true that current senior leaders like Deuba, Ram Chandra Poudel and Krishna Prasad Sitaula are constantly at loggerheads. Relatively younger leaders like Gagan Thapa and Biswo Prakash Sharma are vying for greater space, even as the old guard looks to hang on. But again that is nothing new. Also, even when divided along personality lines Con­gress had been able to play the role of an effective opposition to previous post-1990 communist governments.

That the party is failing in its role as an opposition is evi­dent enough. For instance when the communist government presented its annual policies and programs, curiously, it was the MPs of the ruling parties who were criticizing it in the par­liament, and not opposition MPs. Moreover, Congress leaders have not grown tired of invoking the specter of ‘communist dictatorship’, which in any case has been a hard-sell, rather than do what they are supposed to: take up people’s liveli­hood issues and hold the government to account.

“Congress is yet to emerge from the state of shock resulting from its humiliating electoral defeat,” says Bishnu Sapkota, a political analyst. “This shock seems to have bred an inferior­ity complex among the Congress rank and file, which makes them reactive rather than proactive.”

Perhaps this defeated mindset explains why Nepali Con­gress, instead of setting the agenda as the main opposition, finds itself in an uncomfortable position whereby its leaders are having to take up the course recommended by the hand­ful of anti-establishment voices expressed in popular media.

Right now the country has no option but to rely on Con­gress to play the role of a responsible and responsive opposi­tion in other to keep the government honest. This is the time for Congress leaders and MPs to set aside differences and collectively work to enhance the party’s opposition role. If not, both the country and their political careers will suffer o

Weekly Editorial Cartoon

If you don’t mind the dusty and muddy roads and tight-screwed traffic jams to get there, Boudha is the place to chill out. The calm, meditative aura of the Boudhanath Stupa lifts up your spirits and so does the food from the various cafes and restaurants all around.Patio 747, located 70 meters east of the Boudhan­ath gate, is one such eatery that is getting all the attention. This multi-cuisine restaurant serves a vari­ety of tasty dishes, from Indian to Continental cui­sines, combined with a multi-option menu of local and domestic spirits, cocktails, mocktails, shooters and other non-alcoholic beverages. The restaurant also has its own offerings of pastries, cakes and des­serts at moderate prices. It has a spacious parking too, which is a luxury in Boudha. Patio 747 does not exactly have a proper patio, as the name suggests, but it’s one comfy outlet with delicious food for sure.

THE MENU

Chef’s Special:

- Grilled Chicken with Mushroom Sauce

- Chicken Pasta Salad

- Chicken Sizzler

Opening hours: 10 am - 9 pm

Location: Boudha

Cards: Not Accepted

Reservations:Call 01-4482747

In association with Metropole—a French organization that pro­motes international artistic exchanges and collective creation—Alliance Française Kathmandu had on May 11 launched a (still ongoing) photo exhibit, ‘Nepali Por­traits & Landscapes’. Held after a photography workshop by Eric Huynh in April, the exhibit dis­played the best shot of each participant. At the launch, visitors had the opportunity to get their own portraits cap­tured by Huynh.

Eric Huynh is a French photographer who takes the images of human beings who are going about their daily lives. His portraits have been exhibited all over the world: France, the US, Vietnam, and Brazil, among other places.

The beauty of the exhibi­tion: each display photo has a different story, depending on the perspective of the person looking at it.

The exhibition, being held inside the premises of Alliance Francaise Kath­mandu, Pulchowk, runs through June 29.

Non-Fiction

HOW TO BE HUMAN: LIFE LESSONS FROM BUDDY HIRANI

Manjeet Hirani

Publisher: Ebury Press

Published: January 2018

Pages: 156, Hardcover

They say, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. That idiom holds true quite literally in the case of ‘How To Be Human’ because the cover is nice and thus misleading. The only good thing about the book is that the chapters are short so you don’t have to suffer for too long. Also, the illustrations that accom­pany the chapters are fun to look at, making reading the badly writ­ten (and edited) somewhat preachy chapters just about bearable.‘How To Be Human’ is basically about what Bollywood director Raj­kumar Hirani’s wife Manjeet Hirani, who is a pilot and motivational speaker, has learnt in and of life so far through her dog, Buddy, who was, if anyone remembers, Anuskha Sharma’s depressed dog in the 2014 movie PK, featuring Aamir Khan.

Though Manjeet was scared of dogs and would have never allowed one into her house, she couldn’t say no when her husband sent a six-week-old pup to their son, Vir. Earlier named Nikku, the pup then became Buddy because the Hiranis felt Nikku didn’t suit his vibrant, always-up-to-something personality.

As Manjeet got close to Buddy, she claims to have learnt invaluable les­sons from him. She started writing blog posts on Buddy and his shenan­igans and, as someone who with a keen interest in philosophy, she then found herself comparing his ways to people’s habits and wondering what Buddy would do in certain situa­tions. ‘How To Be Human’ was the result of that contemplation.

As delightful as that idea sounds, and despite great reviews from Ranbir Kapoor and John Abra­ham, and a gushy foreword by Dia Mirza, ‘How To Be Human’ is not a book you will enjoy because the writing is sloppy and erratic. Although the author starts each chapter by singing praises about Buddy, it eventually leads to a rant and then ends with her telling you what you should and shouldn’t do or how you can make the world a better place.

Sometimes Manjeet manages to bring Buddy back in at the end of the chapter as an afterthought, having forgotten all about him while she went on and on about politics, health, society, and what not. It’s almost like she suddenly remembers that the theme of the book is ‘Life Lessons from Buddy Hirani’ and she can’t afford to digress anymore and has to quickly wrap up the chapter too.

It’s this erratic nature of the book, apart from the shoddy writing, that leaves you with a bad aftertaste, making you wonder why you picked up the book in the first place. Or maybe you can blame Ranbir Kapoor for that, whose two sentences on the cover are the only nicely written ones in the entire book.