After my last post, I’m happy to say that I recently found a way to scratch that creative itch–or at least, start writing about the kinds of things I love again: Nepal, culture, daily life, food, and so on.
Yep, I started a Substack newsletter. It’s called Kathmandu Alley Cat and you can find and subscribe to it here:
https://evangelineneve.substack.com/
Yesterday marked 24 years since I first landed in this beautiful, fascinating, frustrating, challenging, never-boring country. While I could never have imagined the turns my life has taken, there are no regrets.
No words
There’s this lovely woman who sits outside the Shangri-La Hotel in Lazimpat most every afternoon, selling a fresh, random assortment of vegetables from her garden (I presume) and around this time of year she sells courgette flowers (aka squash blossoms). It’s the only place I’ve ever, ever found them available in Nepal. Ever. This year I was too lazy to fry them up in the Italian way, so into my soup they went. Lovely.
May it be a good one, whatever your circumstances.
Last week I opened a copy of My Republica, a Nepali newspaper that I rarely read, to see a face I knew staring back at me.
In the days when I freelanced for ECS Media, before I started as editor at ECS Nepal, I wrote a lot of food reviews for their entertainment weekly (now bi-monthly) paper, Friday! and usually I was a team with one of two different but both very competent photographers.
Now I discovered that, unbeknownst to me, one of them–Sajana Shrestha–has also ventured into filmmaking. Her short film I Can premiered at this year’s Kathmandu Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF) and I was just so excited for her!
I went to see it on the 15th (last Friday) and I was really impressed – promise I’m not just saying that because I know her. It’s a seven-minute short film that tells the story of a young man who was affected by the 2015 earthquake here in Nepal and the lasting changes it has brought about his life. I really don’t want to say more than that and give it away. Despite its short length, I was surprised by how much was packed into it and its unexpectedly optimistic message.
The full article can be found here, because I know it’s hard to read from the picture above. The film itself has only just premiered but I think eventually it will go up online and when it does, I will add a link to this post.
Sajana is now working on a new film about burn victims and is passionate about telling people’s stories. I believe she’ll go far and I’m so proud to know her.
It’s two months today since everything changed and I had planned to get out of the house, distract myself–as if I could!–but instead I have been home, sitting with it.
Yesterday I began What Comes Next and How to Like It, Abigail Thomas’ 2015 memoir. I hadn’t yet read it, partially because A Three Dog Life is one of my favourite books, ever, and I was afraid I wouldn’t like this one as much, that it would maybe disappoint in some way. It was, however, perfect, or at least perfect for me right now. I finished it today.
This poem has been in my mind often over these two months:
Funeral Blues
by W. H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
The last line has felt the most true to me, though in the spirit of hope and the book I have just read, I am giving allowance for the fact that it may not always be this way. Just now, I stepped outside and saw a kite flying, just a light square against the blue, blue sky. It felt like hope, it looked like joy. Maybe not quite, not really; but enough for me: enough for today.
Last night I baked the last four Christmas cakes, the same ones I’ve been baking for years now, from a free recipe handout card I got at an Oxfam years ago in London, somewhere. Funny where your most-used recipes end up coming from, isn’t it?
When I was done, I realized that, including the ones made for the Christmas fairs earlier this month, I had baked well over twenty Christmas cakes this year. These final ones are for friends, and by now I know the recipe by heart.
Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you are enjoying eating yummy things this season!
Hard to believe, sometimes – but true. I first landed in Nepal on the 9th of March, 1996!
You might recognize these flowers from last year…
My mother, if she were alive, would be sixty-five today. While I wish she had lived to see this age, I admit I cannot honestly imagine her in it. In my mind, she is ageless.
The day before yesterday, I bought this teapot as part of a attempt to complete some of my non-earthshattering new year’s resolutions, one of which is to drink more of the beautiful varieties of Nepali loose-leaf tea that I keep buying. Washing it out for the first time, I remembered a nickname of mom’s was Sunshine.
So here I go, raising a cup to her, poured from this sunshine-y teapot.
