We worship you, the Golden Calf. Not in a temple with incense and offerings, not in a mosque with hands held aloft, legs folded and eyes closed, not in a synagogue where the flames burns bright on the nine-handed candelabrum.

It didn’t take long for the rain to start. The wispy cotton balls sailing in the sky started gathering along the slopes of Shivapuri.

Those who live in their castles in the air need not think about what goes on below. They are the rulers of the world, owners of the future. They don’t care what the hoi polloi think.

The sky is beclouded as I write this piece. In a moment a loud noise will ripple through the surrounding and webs of light will spread out into the sky.

Despite having close cultural, social and economic ties spanning millennia, countries in South Asia seem to be embroiled in a never-ending display of confusion, suspicion, misconception and a lack of understanding about each other and specially about India.

We are yet to see if the recent local elections bring about the much-desired change. But even as the first round has ended, it has allowed us to gauge the mood of the country. And it has left us with a few valuable lessons, too.

Democracy gives people the right to choose their leaders. But no system, not even a democratic one, is better than those leading it

We are raising a new Nepal from the ashes and bones of our dead, young people. If you don’t believe in what I am saying, go and see the layers of the country’s newly-built foundation.

The debate on ethnic federalism makes for an interesting topic for several reasons. It talks about divesting some state power and granting them to smaller entities;

Quietly flow the rivers, soundly sleeps Kathmandu. Summer drums its chest with raindrops.

Nobody wants to wake up in a cold winter morning and travel halfway through the city unless they have a class to attend, a job to do or, for those like myself, a hope of landing one after some effort.

Nepal has come a long way since the days of the Ranas, when the Hindu Varna system was an integral part of the country’s governing principle, and the Shahs, who, regarded as the corporeal avatars of Lord Vishnu, ruled over what was then a Hindu Kingdom and carried forward the legacy of exploitation, injustice and monopoly in the name of religion and birthright.

For decades readers and scholars around the world have interpreted Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as a heroic story of struggle against colonisers by native population that ultimately capitulated to outsiders’ demands and became victims of its rapacious appetite.

The story of Marie Antoinette adding fuel to the fire of the French Revolution by telling hungry peasants to eat cake if they have no bread left might be an apocryphal one.

If the US and Europe were to close their doors to refugees now, they would have turned their back on the great achievements they have made in the field of human rights and justice