PRABINFO

She bid me farewell and waved. She did not say me a word, but it was what I realized her inner heart wanted to utter. She just kept smiling, standing at the edge of her front yard. I waved back, but said nothing, just as she did. Kanchi, as they called her, was a pretty little girl of 9. I met her in Bhumidada, a village situated in Karnali district. I was there, along with three other friends to collect different data of students from the village schools. All of us loved social works. With the motto of serving people, especially from remote villages, we had assembled together, back in 2005, to establish a social service organization. On my journey to Bhumidada, I was fed up with the hassles that had come into my way. But, as soon as I got there, I found it to be a picturesque place, so I helped myself take its photo saving it into my heart. The scenes had made an impression on me. Something more impressive was unnoticed in the villagers by me. Their hospitability was compelli...

The woods are even darker by night than they are by day. Shadows lurk among the trees, waiting for a foolish prey. No light, no peace can be found here, only fear and pain and everlasting darkness. Hellish screams fill the night, and the worst thing is, you are alone. In these woods there is a house. The house is old, built in the time of the now dead, and left by men to be haunted by the harsh wind, the shadows from the world beyond, and the cold breaths of times long past. You find yourself in front of this house, and the worst thing is, you are alone. As you enter the building, built of rotting wood and crumbling stone, the chill you feel is not from the cold. The once heavy curtains are now shreds of cloth, the glass windows no longer provide you with glimpses of the outside world, as dust and dirt have spoiled the view. What furniture there is left looks ready to fall apart, and you don’t dare touch it, afraid of what evil it will awaken. And the worst thing is, you are alone...

Age is not only measured in years. Personally, I’m three houses, approximately 6,000 songs, and 1,825 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches old. I can also measure my life in trips to the airport. Each time I fly, one more trip documents my life. When I was six airport trips old, my mother, sister, and I drove to Kennedy Airport to fly to England, where my father was waiting at our new home. As the grown-ups around me shed tears, I could barely contain my excitement about our “vacation,” unable to grasp what moving across the Atlantic Ocean really meant. Eight hours, three airplane meals, and zero hours of sleep later, I arrived at Heathrow Airport, now seven airport trips old. England holds my greatest memories. There I learned to read, which introduced me to the world of literature, a world I escape to whenever given the chance. I saw firsthand how people’s attitudes can make all the difference – my family was dropped headfirst into British society, but fell onto a pillow of hospitality...

ATUL POKHAREL “If I can do it, it’ll help us cure cancer,” he said as he stood in the lobby of a building at Harvard University. “So, you’re trying to understand how DNA repairs itself?” I attempted to sum up what I had understood so far. “Yes, more specifically, I’m trying to design a molecular probe to…” He continued to explain his research, taking me deeper into a newly explored world of DNA, proteins, and enzymes called Chemical Biology. As he spoke, his face lit up and his hands assumed one fluid posture after another. While his eyes looked at me, I doubt it was my face that he saw. By the time he was done, the garland of scientific terms that he had strung together into Nepali sentences had touched something deep. This is a young man, I told myself, who is creating the future of Nepali research. I must speak to him again. That was the first of many conversations with Dr. Uddhav Shigdel, a scientist at Harvard University. At 30, his accomplishments are already beyond ...

On the morning of August 15, 2003, I awoke to the alarming sound of gun shots. A moment of sinister silence followed; my skin tightened, and in the dark corners of my mind I could already envision what had just taken place. With tears impairing my sight and fright impeding my thoughts, I speedily stumbled and staggered my way down the stairs, out of the house and onto the road. The scene I saw there that morning changed my life. On the indifferent dirt road, in a pool of blood lay the body of my uncle, dead. Three young Maoist rebels had just taken the life of this army colonel outside his own house. Lying flat on the street, he had died in the same uniform that his father and grandfather before him had once worn for their country. Weak and still breathless, I stood there watching as the rest of the family, army-men, and pedestrians dragged his motionless corpse into the army jeep, hoping against hope that he would come back to life. The three bullets in his chest not only killed my...

DILIP POUDEL BAGLUNG, Aug 10: How do you feel if you have to buy a two-way bus ticket that costs around Rs 500 just to reach the district headquarters to pay monthly electricity tariff of Rs 80? Thousands of people, especially from villages such as Kushmishera, Binamare, Damek, Sarkuwa, Arjewa, Jaidi, Chhisti, Rangkhani, Raydanda, Amalachaur, Narayansthan and Painyupata VDCs in southern remote belt of the district, are compelled to live with this irony- as the Nepal Electricity Authority has no revenue collection centers in the region. The residents of Kushmishera VDC, the southernmost part of the district are affected the most as they are compelled to pay up to Rs 500 to reach the district headquarters just to pay the bill. And if they do not make it on time-that is before the NEA´s revenue counters close-they will have to bear the extra burden of lodging and food. The Secretary of Kushmishera VDC Durga Prasad Sharma complains that their repeated appeals to the state-run au...

How did the long-established-superstition barring a girl from several activities during menstruation emerge in Nepal? Nepal is not a developed country.There are superstitions everywhere. Even we, educated ones are deviated to superstitions at certain degree, let alone the illiterate ones. There is a social rule here that a girl during menstruation, should not go and touch the kitchenware and foods directly. They are not allowed to touch stuffs related to gods for they are considered to be “impure” during menstruation. Also, they are not allowed to touch a male person with “janai”, a sacred bunch of threads worn by every male person who has attended a special occasion called “bratabandha”. These are just superstitions, which, for our victory over evil are to be be neglected. No one has pondered how this came to practice in Nepalese societies, except following them. It actually began while taking into note the health and cleanliness of our body. There were no techniques to prevent flo...