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 To be honest, we were a little apprehensive about trying a restaurant in Ravibhawan, a place not at all known as an ‘eat out’ zone. But the Perfect Foodland at the Ravibhawan Height managed to prove us wrong with its terrific food, service and ambience. Perfect is a multi-cuisine restaurant housed in a two-storey modern building. The interiors are elegant, pleasing, and again perfect while you relish the food.

There are multiple seating arrangements, a separate family room to host small parties and surprisingly, also a small stage where local artists do acoustic sessions on weekends. Besides the chef’s specials, we wholeheart­edly recommend the whole fish. Oh my, the sauce on that dish is finger-licking good!

THE MENU

Chef’s Special:
- Chicken Ala Que
- Dragon Chicken
- Crispy Prawn
Opening hours: 7:30 am to 10 pm
Location: Ravibhawan
Cards: Accepted
Meal for 2: Rs 2,000
Reservations: 014672076

Ishan Pariyar’s painting exhibition “Reminiscences” at Siddhartha Art Gallery, Babarmahal, highlights the endurance of historical monuments in the fleeting materialistic world.

The exhibition brings together the paintings, each of which represents a certain deity and its everlasting property. Pariyar also decries our indifferent attitude towards the smuggled, damaged and stolen artifacts of great cultural and historical value.

The acrylic paintings have a boat as a common object to represent the voyage of life. Similarly, each artifact has been placed creatively to show its historical importance.

The exhibition will serve those with keen interest in history, culture, religion and a taste for authentic yet modern
artwork.

Each canvas consists of religious sculptures as its basis, supported by earthy materials like sand, pebbles, worn-out boats, waves and tides. Sketch representations of the paintings are also displayed. An added twist is that the entire oeuvre consists of subtle green and blue hues.

The exhibition ends on July 9

Nepali cable TV distributors are being disingenuous when they say end customers will be saddled with extra charges if the federal parliament passes a recently registered Advertisement Bill. The bill bars out-of-country paid TV channels from broadcasting foreign advertisements. As getting clean feed from paid international TV channels will cost them more, the cable operators argue, they will have no option but to pass on the added cost to their viewers. But then Nepali cable TV viewers are already paying high surcharges, which should more than make up for the puny increase in cable distributors’ costs.

With the passage of the bill, foreign ads on cable channels will be replaced by Nepali ones, to the benefit of many constituencies in the country. Nepali advertisers will be buoyant as all TV ads for foreign products will have to be made in Nepal. Nepali ads will also have more slots on international channels. The Nepali ad industry is projected to grow by at least 20 percent as a result. After all, why should foreign products get free advertisements on Nepali TV? Not only does it lead to a loss of market for Nepali advertisers, it also encourages Nepalis to pick foreign advertised products over domestic unadvertised ones, to the determent of the already struggling economy.

While the Nepali ad industry is still in its infancy, its revenues continue to shrink as more and more people move online for news and entertainment. The problem is that there isn’t much money in online advertising. At the same time, with the economy facing a severe liquidity crunch, Nepali producers and industries are cutting back on their advertisement budgets for newspapers and television. On the other hand, the multinationals operating in Nepal have not had to spend a single rupee as their ads are already transmitted through pay TV for free.

The clean feed policy is a boon for all Nepali content creators. The quality of our advertisements will improve as more money enters the industry. Local products will be more competitive. The stagnant Nepali media will see a fresh inflow of cash. Cable operators have no case.

After a series of career speedbumps, Shahid Kapoor is back on the highway riding his Royal Enfield Classic in and as ‘Kabir Singh’. And fueling Shahid’s Enfield is Telugu director Sandeep Reddy Vanga, who has secured this Bollywood remake for his first and only film ‘Arjun Reddy’. The ‘A’ rated movie revolves around its lead, Kabir Singh (Shahid Kapoor), a medical surgeon who follows a very strict diet plan: two loaves of toxic male ego for breakfast, three slices of anger issues for lunch, and two shots of drug abuse for dinner. And Kabir Singh is a 172-minute outcome of that diet.

In essence, Kabir Singh is a fifth year medical school ‘Harami’ who doubles as a teacher for the Delhi Institute of Medical Sciences. The film tries to portray Kabir as a genius macho chick magnet. But he actually comes off as this shallow, deplorable ego maniac who’s got zero respect for others. After a rough altercation with the college dean, he decides to leave the college, until he meets Preeti (Kiara Advani), a first year student. Like a typical Bollywood Romeo, he falls in love at first glance and instantly decides, yes, decides, that Preeti is his, and his only.

He then threatens every boy in the college not to even lay an eye on her. I was taken back by the simplicity and cuteness of Preeti, maybe even remotely crushing, until she surrendered to the whims of Kabir Singh like an ‘obedient loyal wife’. She never speaks out—not even when he randomly kisses her in front of the school, not when he makes her skip classes or takes her out to dates or even when he forces her to live with him. But I guess at some point the Stockholm syndrome kicks in and they’re in love.

Yet soon, their romance takes a wrong turn when Preeti’s father rejects their romantic affair and stresses that Preeti must marry a Sikh. Kabir, obviously, cannot handle the rejection and pours his anger on Preeti, emphasizing how she’s nobody in front of him, and even slaps her—and yet she comes back to him. I do not know what is more disgusting: the character of Kabir Singh or the fact that Preeti gives in so easily to his plastic machismo? 

Kabir Singh then goes into a self-destructive spiral to cope with the heartbreak. From treating patients under the influence of chemical substances to pulling out a knife when a women changes her mind about having sex with him, Kabir brings out the demon in him. And that is pretty much the whole movie, the life of Kabir that follows his big heartbreak with Preeti.

I can’t help but appreciate Shahid Kapoor’s acting in this film. Kabir Singh is easily one of his best roles. Nobody else I can imagine could have carried it off better. Kiara didn’t really get to experiment much in terms of acting but she’s graceful when she needs to and persuasively emotional.

A Holi scene stood out for me. There’s a party at the college, and Preeti doesn’t show up, greatly worrying Kabir. “What are you saying? Who is that guy,”—someone has done something terrible to his girl—Kabir shouts on his phone as the camera pans to him on his Royal Enfield, furious, as people around watch in awe, riding towards the girls’ hostel as the movie’s best soundtrack is playing in the background. The cinematographer, actor and the sound director are in perfect symphony.

Kabir Singh, as a piece of cinema, is a solid entertainer. You will enjoy the ace acting of Kapoor, the melodious voice of Arijit Singh and the action sequences. The only problem with the movie is the blatant normalization and glorification of a ‘manly’ (actually sick) character like Kabir Singh. Movies like Kabir Singh should exist though; they stand a testament to the fact that our society is still full of people who idealize the Kabirs of this world. But ‘Kabir Singh’ does exactly one thing perfectly: it constantly reminds you of the original movie, frame to frame, dialogue to dialogue.

Who should watch it?

An ‘A’ rated film, it’s a no-no for children. For the rest, watch the movie, no problem. It is a solid entertainer. But pray, resist from glorifying the character of Kabir Singh as you get caught up in red-in-tooth-and-claw cinematic spectacle.

Kabir Singh

Run Time: 2h 52 m

Director: Sandeep Reddy Vanga

Genre: Action

Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Kiara Advani, Arjan Bajwa

3 stars

 In the autumn of 1612, in the courts of Lancaster (a county town of Lancashire) in England, 12 people were tried for witchcraft and hav­ing familiar spirits—a demon that appears to obey a witch, usually in the form of an animal. This was perhaps the most notorious witch trial of the 17th century where only one was found not guilty. One died in custody, and the rest were hung. What went on to become the legend of the Pendle witches is a dark tale of execution that only makes up just two percent of all the people, mostly women, executed over three centu­ries in England.

Set against the backdrop of this Pendle witch trials, ‘The Famil­iars’ is Stacey Hall’s debut novel in which many characters are based on real people. Fleetwood Shut­tleworth, mistress of Gawthorpe Hall, has had three miscarriages and she’s pregnant for the fourth time. She has inadvertently read a letter from her doctor, addressed to her husband, Richard, which says she might not survive childbirth. And so she hires a midwife, Alice Gray, to ensure she and her baby both live.

Alice, though having a “low social status”, is a gifted midwife who has learnt from her mother all about delivering a baby. She believes she can safely deliver the child and keep the mother out of harm’s way as well. But her use of different herbs and potions to do so is seen as malev­olent magic and Alice is accused of practicing witchcraft and taken into custody. By then, Fleetwood and Alice have formed a bond and are like sisters and Fleetwood vows to save Alice from the fate that awaits her.

Though many of the characters in The Familiars are historical figures, Halls goes beyond a fictional retelling of the legend of the Pendle witches. Through Fleetwood and Alice, she explores what it means to be women and how they are capable of the impossible when their love and limits are tested. Historical fiction can be tricky to get right especially as you have to make sure the facts aren’t distorted while keeping things exciting, and this is where Halls shines. She manages to provide an engaging viewpoint through her protagonist Fleetwood and keeps you intrigued and at the edge of your seat till the very end.

Book: The Familiars

Genre: Historical Fiction

Author: Stacey Hall

Publisher: Zaffre

Published: February 2019

Language: English

Pages: 420, Paperback

 It is incredible to see the all-pow­erful federal government of KP Oli stumble so badly—and on so many fronts. The government’s reluctance to devolve powers to the provincial and local levels has resulted in a lot of bad blood between the three tiers of government, not a healthy sign for an infant federal state. Even the chief ministers from the PM’s own party are rebelling against what they see as Singhadurbar’s attempts to increase its powers at their expense.

The Oli government had to beat a shameful retreat from the Guthi bill, prepared without consulting key stakeholders. The prime minister’s recent Europe trip also proved to be a disastrous folly, a perfect example of how not to ‘diversify’ away from India and China: unlike what the prime minister seems to believe, the number of countries he visits cannot be the yardstick of a successful diver­sification policy.

Economically, too, the country is in a shambles. There is a lopsided concentration of resourc­es, including the annual budget, at the center. The expected economic growth has failed to materialize. The partial health of the economy is owing to the good monsoon of the past few years, and to the continuous inflow of remittances. Otherwise, the banks are over-leveraged and short of cash; a real estate bubble is building; the foreign account deficit is reaching a troubling level; and the Nepali rupee is vulnerable to the unpredictable global economy.

There are many other shortcom­ings of the Oli government. But he has also done some good. The land­mark trade and transit protocol has been signed with China; relations with India have been normalized; countless regulations to implement federalism have been passed; and the separatist group of CK Raut has been brought into the national main­stream.

Yet the strong federal government could have done so much more. It is hobbled by corruption, intra-par­ty feuds, and the prime minister’s self-serving working style. What’s more, this government with an over­whelming public mandate is a threat to liberal values. The eroding legit­imacy of the two-third Oli govern­ment bodes ill for the health of the Nepali democracy.

 ‘Aladdin’ is a live-action musi­cal fantasy adaptation of the popular 1992 Disney produc­tion of the same name. The film follows Aladdin (Mena Massoud), a street urchin, as he falls in love with Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott), befriends a wish-granting Genie (Will Smith), and must save the kingdom from the conspiring Jafar (Marwan Kenzari).

When the first pictures of the movie were released back in December, it received a mountain of criticism for the film’s portrayal of Genie, as the character was labelled “too humanoid”, resulting in upset fans. Then they released the trailer in March. The trailer got the fans a little less upset than they were back in December. And now, in May, with the movie out, many fans, including this reviewer, have found themselves wronged for judging the movie so quick.

Aladdin, as much as it was a fantastic cinematic experience, was also a major reminiscence of my childhood. From jumping through roofs on Agrabah in the 1993 video game ‘Aladdin’ in its compact 2D gameplay to rubbing puja lamps hoping to find a genie as a child, the movie brought back many elements of my childhood.

The opening ‘Arabian Nights’ sequence gave me massive goosebumps for two straight minutes. It was dealt beautifully, conserving the mystery, horror and scale from the original.

You know what was better than the opening sequence? The acting. Don’t get me started on that. Will Smith is funny, and will keep the tone light-hearted right through with his wit and humor. While his portrayal doesn’t compare to Robin Williams’ in the original, it is unfair to criticize Smith for trying things a little differently.

Fans were skeptical about Mena Massoud as Aladdin but he’s proved everyone wrong with his phenomenal performance. Starting with his perfect chemistry with the beautiful Naomi Scott, everything feels smooth. Scott looks gorgeous as a middle-eastern princess and delivers a strong performance as the strong-minded patriarchy-breaking Princess Jasmine. They couldn’t have put together a better Aladdin-Jasmine duo. Marwan Kenzari as the antagonist Jafar is also fantastic, radiating a cunning dark persona with every dialogue.

The problems with the movie are few but important. First, the set feels superbly small. The characters revolve around the same places and the audience is treated with the monotony of the same building over and over again. Disney should have had no problem shelling out enough budget to accommodate more exploration within the city of Agrabah. Second, the CGI does not do justice for a Disney movie. At times, visual effects feel bland—a major flaw for a fantasy movie like Aladdin.

Third, the ‘musical’ part of the movie fails where the original delivered big-time. Most of the musicals feel ill-timed and forgettable. ‘Speechless’ will probably be the only song from the movie I’ll remember.

Even with its downsides, Aladdin is still an amazing movie you will enjoy watching. The only way it will disappoint you is if you’re a purist and want everything recreated exactly like the original. Take your kids, or/and your kid-self and sit back for 2h 8m of pure Arabian magic.

Who should watch it?

The kids will absolutely love it. So will the fans of Will Smith. Visual effects and some songs are disappointing. But, overall, a fun film for the whole family.

Movie: Aladdin

Genre: Fantasy

Csst: Will Smith, Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott, Marwan Kenzari, Navid Negahban

Direction: Guy Ritchie

As part of the Rs 4.87-bil­lion Mid-hill optical fiber project that was signed on 29 June 2016, Nepal Tele­com, the government-owned telecom operator, has started laying optical fiber cables along the proposed routes. On May 20, work started simulta­neously at three places. The project will be imple­mented across 32 districts in Provinces 1, 2 and 3. Prime Minister KP Oli inaugurated the optical fiber information highway in Galchi rural munic­ipality in Dhading district (Province 3). Similarly, events were organized to mark the start of the optical fiber works in Sindhuli’s Khurkot (Prov­ince 3) and Dhankuta’s Hile (Province 1).

Prime Minister Oli labelled the project a big step in Nepal’s development, and an expression of his govern­ment’s commitment to tech­nological advancement. Min­ister for Information and Com­munications Gokul Baskota said that more than half of the population of Nepal do not have internet access and that this project aims to change that dismal fact. Better infor­mation technology leads to better living standards, he added.

NT Managing Director Dilli Adhikari said the goal was to complete the project in two years, so that high-speed broadband internet can be within the reach of all Nepalis.

 After the project, internet speed in the districts along the Mid-hill highway will be 100 Gbps

The total length of the opti­cal fiber network is 2,376 kilo­meters, which includes the main and spur links. The fiber cable along the Mid-hill high­way from Chiyo Bhanjyang to Arughat will be 804 km-long and the length of the north-south spur link will be 1,572 km. The spur link will con­nect district headquarters, village bodies and municipal­ities to the main information highway.

NT has signed agreements with five different companies for this project.

These companies tasked with laying the optical fiber cables and equipment instal­lation are: Korea’s LS Cables (responsible for 596 km of optical fiber in Province 1), the joint venture of Nepal’s Aro­gya Construction and China Railway and China Fuel (1,028 km in Province 2), and Hong Kong’s CCSI (555 km in Prov­ince 3).

Arogya Construction Director Roshendra Khadka informed that after the proj­ect is completed, internet speed in the 32 districts along the Mid-hill highway will be 100 Gbps.