Nature has strange ways of speaking to us: the storming river always calms the mind, while the serene hills make it run amok.

“I had no dreams,” was my mother’s response when I asked her what her dream was while growing up. “Why?” I asked, puzzled by the answer. “Because I didn’t have the privilege to dream as you do now.”

When a school child is asked to draw a village house in art classes in Kathmandu, one could bank on them producing a two-storied mud mortar house with a slant roof made of either slate or straw. This archetypal pastoral home has been impressed onto young minds not just by art teachers but also the traditional homes that dot the landscape in Nepal’s mid-hills. But now, traveling into districts that hug Kathmandu from the north, you sense that this landscape is quickly changing.

Cities are fascinating. Kathmandu has been a home and much more to me all these years, and all my life, I have been exploring its streets, trying to understand what exactly makes this space a city? Recently, I found myself asking the same question in a city half way around the world.

Kathmandu doesn’t flinchwhen I openly flirt with Patan and Pokhara.He doesn’t show any sign of envy or anger,he pretends not to notice.

I have always been a galli person. These dark, narrow, capillary-like alleys—flanked by walls made of old bricks and with doors made of aged wood—have always enchanted me.

How a team of artists helped convert a rathole into a vibrant community art space