Let me dissect this shit further (and coincidenttally my ‘Anti-spam word’ required to verify my non-SPAMness was ‘filthy’. But let people be forewarned that rocking shit is only going to get you foul smell. However, I say - better to deal with such smell now than bury em, only to find it prop up again in future in worse conditions.

First, I think it is Tripathi and not Tripathia, unless the dude is going all-out Madhese where root words are annexed by sound vowels of ‘ia’ or ‘ua’. If ‘Babu’ becomes ‘Babua’ further down south then Tripathi can undoubtedly be called ‘Tripathia’ — I concur. There - a dose of Pahade chauvinism for you. Hit me back with something remotely interesting. Somebody, anybody?!

I really don’t have any particular opinion on this except that there is a ‘general’ consensus among people I have met about a sort of vague loyalties that subsume people from terai. I never understood why that is specifically, perhaps because of Nepal’s eternal mistrust with Indians that we have somehow found a convenient group within Nepal that we can take swings at every now and then.

But if the logic of ‘not-enough-loyalties’ is dissected any further, we could that say similar sentiments haunt other ethnic groups also. Such is more prevalent outside of Nepal. For instance, here in the cities and burbs, you see various different ethnicities identifying themselves distinctly from other ‘mainstream’ Nepalis. Should we then assume that loyalties of those lie elsewhere than being Nepalis? Then again, I don’t want to be another Mahendra - the one to be defining ‘mainstream Nepali’. It is already a blazing point of contention.

I thought a ‘letter’ from an anonymous source in Nepali Times summed up some of my sentiments. Here’s a part of it:

“…for example, large portions of present-day Himachal, Uttaranchal, UP, and the Indian tarai were once part of Nepal. What tests of loyalty and nationality should we pose Nepalis from these places? A large portion of the current Nepal (‘naya mulk’) was part of India before 1856. What about residents of these lands? Why were people from the tarai given the special title of ‘madhesi’ instead of just being Nepali? For almost 200 years now, Nepali soldiers have served in the British and Indian armies, where does their loyalty lie? Many rulers of modern Nepal have Indian maternal bloodlines. If tarai people have family and cultural relationships with India, surely Nepal can use this fact to strengthen bilateral relations. The people of the tarai feel there is a tacit double standard in what your editorial calls the state’s ‘hill-centred nationalism’ in dealing with them. Unless this is changed, resentment will grow. ”

I say follow the British with a multi-choice test (half of which i don’t know - so i guess i’ll have to hand in my passport).

Judging by the complete load of rubbish said of what a Nepali is, or should be, after whole minutes of deliberation i have come up with the following test to define whether you are in fact a Nepali..

Question 1. Are you Indian?
Question 2. Are you Nepali?

If you’ve answered 1,no and 2,yes, Congratulations! You’ve won the passport most of the world is fighting to get!

Is that a choice or lack of choice?

FYI, “fallacy” was the security word conveniently given to me.

Wow, Samudaya back in action, who would have thought?

i saw a short film in london about the jana andolan and kept on seeing the samudaya t-shirt jumping around.

i’m sad to say i lost mine in iran and now they don’t sell them anymore :(

actually I do have a box of them so maybe we can sell you some soon.

bring on the t-shirts!

changing blue to grey—
their midnight discount sexringing baby blue—
mirror mine, while laughter
surrounds us.

not the word to describe Australian television accurately. No, far worse - it’s total crap.