My father, an educated and sophisticated man who has dealt with all kinds of things in life, including suspicious FBI agents after 9/11 (Nazi graffiti on a bridge he inspected), came back fron Nepal saying that Kathmandu was a "city that was moving very fast - so good to live in - but everyone these days is like this [he pulled the corners of his eyes back to show slanted eyes]."
That's pretty fucked up. What's more fucked up is that I had experienced something similar at the Baltimore ANA convention I went to a while back and understood exactly what he meant. I'm going to try and figure some stuff out on paper here, so bear with me.
Embedded in the religions that dominate Nepali life, by dint of institutional inertia, are structures that separate large groups of people on principles that shouldn't matter all that much, but do. Those reading this will probably understand it best as the caste system briefly mentioned in the Hinduism/Ancient India unit of high school World History.
There are so many ethnic groups in Nepal, that have been shuffled and reshuffled through migration and conquest rather often, that it seems both logical and completely wrong that there are tensions between groups. From my admittedly amateur survey of Nepali history, it seems that every twenty years or so, several religious/ethnic/socio-political groups who have the low rungs on the ladder band together and break stuff until they're placated. Most of this stuff has been low-level, quickly placated demonstrations and brief armed battles, but the 20th century has changed the nature of race in Nepal in a big way.
The Maoist rebellion, partly incited by ethnic divisions (as well as the usual battle cry of "More Bread, More Land and More Money for Me") comes almost twenty years after the massive anti-Panchayat street demonstrations of 1979. Those street demonstrations came about twenty-eight years after a violent deposition of the absolute monarchy and re-establishment of the same monarch in a more limited form.
I am Chetri, which is similar to Kshatriya - theoretically the warrior/ruling class - but not actually the same. In reality, being Chetri means that I come from a long tradition of farmers with some local influence and big families. I have something like 30 first cousins. I also look white, due to my father's unusual Iranian-like looks and my mother being a white American, and am 5'11'' and 174 pounds (well over the average height and weight for a Nepali male).
The lion's share of Nepal's money, land and power resides with the Chetris, Brahmins, Magar and Newar who mostly live in and around the major cities of Nepal. The mountain/jungle/plains people have had less of a say in what goes on for centuries now and they erupt periodically.
What's interesting though is that most of the immigrants from Nepal are Chetri, Brahmin, Magar and Newar. Many of the young are leaving the country for school and work, heading in particular to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Heck, I've been bringing members of my family for the last ten years over here to New York for school (with varying degrees of success).
That departure of the upper and middle class creates a vacuum, which the people from the hills and plains are filling. Kathmandu is flooded with young people from ethnic groups usually not seen in large numbers there. These younglings are eager to learn, primed to build their new lives and so ready to start amassing cool stuff they've seen through whatever forms of mass media. Most of them are young men (because that's how Nepali society works: women get much less than men do and often become manipulative and jealous bitches).
At the ANA, these guys dominated the soccer teams. They were all 5'7'' or shorter, many wore faux-hawks, dressed in Euro-hip clothing, refused to interact with the older crowds (who they weren't related to - ethnically or professionally) and drank the hotel bar dry. They also worked pretty hard at whatever lower-level jobs they held, led interesting lives and wanted more than what the old system gave them back in Nepal. Almost all of them were not with their families.
The older crowd does not understand them and even fears them at times. They feel the same way about their own kids, but since they had no hand in raising the faux-hawk crowd there is no smokescreen of love and forgiveness to blunt the culture shock. There is no longer one ANA or one Kathmandu. There are places where one big division is made (age line) and several smaller groups inhabit each division with lots of random particles bouncing around as they see fit. Not many particles cross that big line.
I was in a weird place because I could go with almost any crowd within either sub-division, being young, liking sports, more than willing to drink and I was related to or familiar with a third of the older crowd due to my father - who got pretty tilted themselves. So I tried out both, while spending some time by myself in Baltimore, and I came away with some cool new friends and a bunch of thoughts.
1) Being white-looking and essentially alone, I felt out of place a lot. What helped me get over that was having the courage to walk up to people and start a conversation.
2) The disconnect between the older crowd and younger crowd at the ANA mirrors that of Nepal. No wonder why very few Nepalis abroad understood why the Maoists, despite being a violent gang of criminals, weren't immediately stamped out. They tapped into the seething reservoir of discontent among the general populace. Guerillas can't survive without some popular support. Many non-residents have been away for so long and live in entirely different worlds. They don't know what it's like there anymore.
3) In the next fifty years, the ethnic groups will slowly dissolve and give way to independent collectives akin to those of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Technology and consumerism WILL cause the ethnic ties to weaken more and more, allowing more freedom of movement and thought.
4) Nepal's education system is still fucked.
5) If I play soccer next year for the New York team, I could be pretty good.
6) Definitely BYOB to the hotel. Room parties are so much more fun than the crowd at the bar.
7) The people at the basketball tournament are, on average, much cooler than the general populace. There was a 6'7'' 270 pound center for Phoenix. I've lost my title of Biggest Nepali Alive.
8) Some people have no idea how to give a presentation. I'm not squinting to read the 200 words you just put on a Powerpoint slide, dude. It could be about Nepal's vast potential for hydropower or a cure for cancer, but I ain't reading it.
9) Getting things done matter more than talking. I've known this for a while, but gotdang, five minutes of actual work beats scheduling all kinds of conferences.
10) There are very, very few Nepalis who can talk honestly and insightfully about racism in Nepal. Some refuse to acknowledge it, some say they're not racist but show it in subtle actions and some are oblivious.
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