A brahman sits in Kumari Chowk prison, accused of embezzling funds from Jung Bahadur’s Nepal. He makes a unique appeal to plead his case, an appeal that is appropriate for the tastes and sensibilities of Jung Bahadur and his brother Krishna Bahadur. It works

Chakrawatendra Malla, giddy, nervous, too young to understand the powers he had just acquired, tried to walk confidently towards the elephant stable. He had mentally prepared himself for this day for years.

The house itself is rather squeezed-in, the way most Newar houses in the valley are, but the owner of the house is planning to expand the wings soon onto land recently wrested off of some pesky Jha Brahmans.

We lost a prominent Kathmandu icon during the earthquake of 2015: Kasthamandap, the storied building which was then thought to be about a thousand years old, but is now believed to have existed many centuries earlier in some form.

It starts yonder, over the slopes of Chandragiri. Yonder to the West where Chandragiri with its majestic elephant head guards over our valley like a sentinel. Pluffywite clouds, scattered about but only yesterday, collude over the elephant head of Chandragiri, doing kanekhusi in a language we do not understand.

Pandit Bijayaraj has enjoyed a position of power at the Durbar for many years, thanks to his alliance with Sri 3 Maharaj Jung Bahadur Rana. But a seemingly minor encounter between Bijayaraj and his pupil Crown Prince Trailokya is about to unravel everything

Laccho, relegated to history as a minor character in the high drama constantly being enacted at the Hanumandkoka Royal Palace, takes centre stage in this fictional reformulation of a real historic event which until now has languished as a single, small footnote in historic records.

What is being violated is the shared cultural heritage of Kathmandu. Every person that calls Kathmandu his or her home should be outraged

19 April, 1843 CE. Thapathali. Ganesh Kumari, the mother of Kaji Jung Bahadur Kunwar, prepares gaajal, an eye liner believed to soothe the eye and ward off evil. Clouds of political turmoil are heavy over Nepal. A major change of the guards is in the works. Which only presages a much more violent shift in Nepali politics three years later, due to events at an army arsenal near Hanuman Dhoka called the Kot. But that is another story.