The Yard with a view
Sometimes you don’t want to eat within the confined walls. But then you also don’t want to drive to the outskirts of the busy city just for a meal close to nature. This is when you can go to The Yard by Oasis Garden Homes at Sanepa and enjoy delicious food while marveling a beautiful garden. Located in the quiet neighborhood of Sanepa (near Nick Simmons Institute) The Yard is a continental cafe serving delicious Mediterranean and Continental cuisines. A cozy patio and picnic benches make for a casual setting for The Yard, which grows its own herbs and organic vegetables. These in turn are turned into mouth-watering dishes by its female chef Senu Ranjeet Shrestha, one of the very few women heading a restaurant kitchen in Nepal.
THE MENU
Chef’s Special:
Grilled Salmon fillet with pesto sauce
Peri Peri Chicken Wings
Chicken Scallopini
Opening hours: 12 pm-10 pm
Location: Sanepa
Cards: Accepted
Meal for 2: Rs 2,500
Reservations: 5532965/9851095046
Prose that raises important questions
Fiction
SLEEPING ON JUPITER
Anuradha Roy
Publisher: Hachette India
Published: 2015
Pages: 250, hardback
Anuradha Roy’s third novel opens on a harrowing note, with seven-year-old Nomita witnessing the murder of her father by axe-wielding masked men after they invade their home. In the same incident she loses her beloved brother, who runs away, and is abandoned by her mother. “When the pigs were slaughtered for their meat they shrieked with a sound that made my teeth fall off and this was the sound I heard,” the daughter recalls of the violence that changes her life overnight. Such a brutal and jarring beginning is befitting a novel that is deeply disturbing, even though the rest of it is definitely less savage than the first chapter.People make religious trips to the coastal town of Jarmuli in India. But, now as a 25-year-old and a filmmaker’s assistant, Nomita is making the journey for a completely different reason: to confront her past traumas. She spent six years living in an ashram in Jarmuli under a revered guru who emotionally, physically, and sexually abused her and the other children in his care when the world wasn’t watching. This story, that takes place over five days, is told in flashbacks, and as the barbarity of the guru’s crimes are gradually revealed, you can’t help but shudder, but you are still unable to put the book down. Such is the power of Roy’s prose.
In a way, the book is a brave attempt to reveal the hypocrisies of the Indian society. Roy talks about dhoti-clad priests who fuss about what women wear to temples to a history that’s largely told through erotic cravings on temple walls, and yet how sex is still a taboo of sorts in India. While narrating an engaging story, she pinpoints what is so fundamentally wrong with the Indian society to make violence and misogyny norms of its culture.
There are also references to the epic Mahabharata, where good trumps evil. However, in ‘Sleeping with Jupiter’, the evil against women and children and homosexuality are made out to be things that can’t be challenged so long as hypocrisy and patriarchy rule our societies. Roy, through Nomita and other interwoven characters, brings to the forefront issues many would largely turn a blind eye to or cover up. And, while doing so, she also manages to raise some important questions on what it means to be a woman in contemporary India in a way that simply cannot be forgotten.
Street food aus Deutschland
ShaVi’s Berlin’s Street Food or ShaVi's Berliner Fritten more authentically, is a small joint with a big name in the heart of Thamel. The German restaurant has become a popular eatery for both tourists and locals in a short time since its establishment.
ShaVi’s serves authentic German cuisine that is unique in Kathmandu. The small menu lists the best of fast-food, something that Germans would eat on the streets of Berlin. No points for guessing why it’s named so. Currywurst, boulette and homemade fries are the go-to for ShaVi’s food patrons, and the sweet-tooth connoisseurs get to between churros and cookie dough balls with various options.
THE MENU
Chef’s Special:
- Berlin Currywurst with Fries and Mayo
- Pulled Wild Boar on Fries
- Jaeger-Boulette with Fries and Mayo
Opening hours:11 am – 11 pm
Location: Thamel, Kathmandu
Cards: Not accepted
Meal for 2: Rs 2,000
For reservation: Call 980-2096555
A critique of India’s ‘new national narrative’
Non-fiction
INDIA NOW AND IN TRANSITION ED. BY ATUL K THAKUR
Daulat Jha
Publisher: Niyogi Books
Language: English
Pages: 448,
Rs 595 (Hardback)
‘India Now and In Transition’ is a sharp and scholarly collection of essays edited by the journalist and prominent commentator on the South Asian affairs, Atul K Thakur.
The book packs in 37 insightful essays from prominent writers and opinion-makers like Ramachandra Guha, Shashi Tharoor, Tabish Khair, Manu Joseph, Chandrahas Choudhury, Atul K Thakur, Robin Jeffrey, Vinod Rai, TSR Subramanian and Wajahat Habibullah. The names will be familiar to those who follow Indian opinion writing.
Covered are politics and governance, economics and development, security and foreign policy, society and culture, and language and literature. Moreover, it has an incisive introduction by the editor, Thakur, and a special foreword by eminent Historian Sunil Khilnani.
‘India Now and in Transition’ is based on how India is being shaped by contemporary political events and other key determinants. At the outset, it is made clear that this book intends to be not a prognosis (which is often confused with prediction), but rather an inquiry into futures based on current happenings. This necessarily entails deconstruction of the past.
Essentially, the book signals, India’s present is not exactly linked with the democratic idealism of past, and its immediate future is unlikely to create a greater basis of harmony, either at home or abroad.
The remarkable piece by the editor deals with the alienation of “the ‘Real Other’ of the world’s largest democracy” and consistent failure of the state to come to terms with it. It discusses ‘radical dissent’ and the challenges surrounding it. Written with a broad canvas, this piece will be of keen interest to readers in Nepal as well.
On strategy side, Dhruva Jaishankar’s piece is certainly important for strategic thinkers and practitioners of Nepal, who have to everyday live with the fallout of India’s strategic choices. The long piece on foreign affairs by Rajeev Ranjan Chaturvedy covers Nepal amply. In fact, Nepal gets ample space in other parts of the book as well, which was perhaps expected from an editor who has frequently written on India-Nepal relations.
India Now And in Transition offers fresh insights into several crucial areas, elements that have shaped modern-day India, be it the complex set of state-center relations under the country’s federal system, the challenges of territorial/cultural diversity, or the contradictory outcomes of economic reforms.
This book looks diligently at the successes and failures of India’s tryst with democracy. There is consideration for truth-seeking rather on striving to secure a politically correct side. It should be of interest to anyone who has an interest in policy matters and the fast-changing politics, society, governance and economic processes in India and to a large extent, in South Asia.
By Daulat Jha
The author is a Kathmandu-based journalist
