Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote.
He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening.
'The spirit is a garden.', he said.
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Bamboo Haiku
Toad
Be so kind as to move to one side
And let me plant these bamboos
-- Chora
Bright droplets in the morning!
Sound of the dew
Dripping in the bamboo
-- Buson
A gust of winter wind
Rushing through the bamboo
And suddenly calm
-- Basho
Be so kind as to move to one side
And let me plant these bamboos
-- Chora
Bright droplets in the morning!
Sound of the dew
Dripping in the bamboo
-- Buson
A gust of winter wind
Rushing through the bamboo
And suddenly calm
-- Basho
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Middle Passage Middle Earth
dear ones,
life in the slow lane here in budhanilkantha, on the outskirts (literally...) of burgeoning kathmandu. we can see the bright lights big city below us, but our sanity is preserved (slightly...) by looking north in the back up at 8,000' shivapuri and the big dipper just above it.
there is a quiet in this neighborhood in the darkness befitting the looming mass of the ridge behind us. even the spreading conifer trees seem to take on a more evocative and illusive night-time personality. their whorled arms reach out, almost as if to embrace the stranger walking past, with shadow and form conmingling in the silouetted images under the sparkling blackness. they seem to live as our dominating human world turns to rest...
i've just come in from two hours watering the trees and sitting in silence back there. a fine meditation after a long & complex day in the human rights (wrongs...) commission, then almost longer evening coming home across town. living in the super-ego of political kulture is a bit torturous. not quite as painful as the reality of the crimes that our staff must investigage, but the blatant hypocrisy of institutions & individuals on issues related to human rights can be agonizing. so much rhetoric and high-sounding platitudes, but such little true empathy or human concern. it's easy to lose respect for the political leaders who mouth such noble sentiments, then put them back in the drawer when their speech is done. alas...
then, there is the reality of the streets of kathmandu. actually, i'm no longer sure what to think. since i'm taking taxis more often, esp. to come from my orifice over on pulchowk to meet shakun at the boutique on durbar marg, i have time to roll down the window and watch the world go by. what a world! our beloved k'du has grown from a modest town perched in a remote valley in the himalaya to a dense, urban congestion like a malthusian nightmare in the himalaya. the growth has been phenomenal over the past years and the numbers of cars & motorcycles locked into the same city streets as existed 20 years ago is outrageous.
last night it took over an hour to go from the commission to the boutique! about 40 minutes just to get from the stadium to the post office. god knows what was going on, but even when we got past ratna park and the traffic began, to put it generously, flow, i still couldn't find out what had been holding us up -- except for the mere congestion of it all.
but, not to put only a negative spin on the congestion, which is easy & fair enough to do, i'm still a bit awed by the transformation. kindof like seeing josh go from this shy, almost frightened child to this 6'3" young massive man towering over me with his innocent yet playful smile. although k'du may not be quite as playful, the teeming humanity of it all has an odd attraction for me. i actually enjoy looking out the taxi window watching people make their own ways home, on foot, by motorcycle, in their cars, large and small. seeing the nepalis sit in a momo shop eating or buying indian sweets in a well-lit arcade or the mix of middle-class professionals step around the villagers seeking their way around a city that overwhelms their senses and even desires. it's a monumental parade of earthy existence and, since i don't have to struggle at the wheel, like a rat inching my way forward across the city, i can sit back, like at the movies, and observe the beauty, trauma and reality of the world in which i live...
then, later, last night, when i opened nepalnews.com i saw that the young communist league (a new maoist offshoot) had taken out a torch-lite procession at 6:15 pm last night around asan tole, which must have caused the traffic jam. they were protesting the government's searching of their offices for weapons. such is the state of the state here in nepal in 2007. the maoists, a revolutionary movement, is shocked that the government may actually want to know if they are storing weapons in their offices. so they lit their torches and march around the dense urban environment to let the people know that they are a force to be reckoned with and no one, especially not the government, should treat them lightly...
'may you live in interesting times', the sages are said to have spoken. what exactly they meant is for us, the living, to try to understand. definitely the turmoil awakens the senses, but risks the common fabric of life. there is something to be said for mere peacefulness and harmony, when we can find it.
now, a new morning, as dylan sang, a new day dawning, and i've been out in the garden since 5:30 am looking for young, prepubescent bamboo shoots coming up among the P. nigra (black bamboo) and the P. henonis (a 50' variety). the tropical phyllostachus genus, originally from the river valleys of china, seem to love the early growing season, while other mountain varieties are comfortable waiting til late july or august to reach out from the darkened earth toward the heliotropic realms.
for those who don't know, we're the proud parents of some 35+ varieties of bamboo and nigalo (thinner, reed-like bamboos) in our garden. like the children before them, each day brings a new delight of change, transformation and evolution. the native H. hookeranius has exquisite blue and purple culms. there are the tiniest of leaves reappearing after it was moved to our land from my friend punya's garden over in jawalkahel. there's a a thin, arching, 20' variety of running phyllostachus that we brought from bali some ten years ago that is sending up scores of new shoots already. while the 15 new bamboo varieties we were given by the amazing 'bamboo garden' nursery outside portland, oregon last summer are almost all sending up the most petite of new shoots while resting in gunny sacks under a native peach tree in the back yard. as you may have gathered, i can literally spend hours meandering among the bamboo, watching, cleaning, watering, nipping and enjoying the beauty of mother nature's child...
after all, it's that time of year, once again, in the nepal when the short, fleeting springtime shifts up into summer gear and the heat of the day w/ the occasional showers sends himalayan growth spurts in among the trees, saplings, shrubs, bamboo and grasses.
for me, hours in the garden have become a deeply rooted expression of my middle passage through middle earth...
xxoxo, keith
life in the slow lane here in budhanilkantha, on the outskirts (literally...) of burgeoning kathmandu. we can see the bright lights big city below us, but our sanity is preserved (slightly...) by looking north in the back up at 8,000' shivapuri and the big dipper just above it.
there is a quiet in this neighborhood in the darkness befitting the looming mass of the ridge behind us. even the spreading conifer trees seem to take on a more evocative and illusive night-time personality. their whorled arms reach out, almost as if to embrace the stranger walking past, with shadow and form conmingling in the silouetted images under the sparkling blackness. they seem to live as our dominating human world turns to rest...
i've just come in from two hours watering the trees and sitting in silence back there. a fine meditation after a long & complex day in the human rights (wrongs...) commission, then almost longer evening coming home across town. living in the super-ego of political kulture is a bit torturous. not quite as painful as the reality of the crimes that our staff must investigage, but the blatant hypocrisy of institutions & individuals on issues related to human rights can be agonizing. so much rhetoric and high-sounding platitudes, but such little true empathy or human concern. it's easy to lose respect for the political leaders who mouth such noble sentiments, then put them back in the drawer when their speech is done. alas...
then, there is the reality of the streets of kathmandu. actually, i'm no longer sure what to think. since i'm taking taxis more often, esp. to come from my orifice over on pulchowk to meet shakun at the boutique on durbar marg, i have time to roll down the window and watch the world go by. what a world! our beloved k'du has grown from a modest town perched in a remote valley in the himalaya to a dense, urban congestion like a malthusian nightmare in the himalaya. the growth has been phenomenal over the past years and the numbers of cars & motorcycles locked into the same city streets as existed 20 years ago is outrageous.
last night it took over an hour to go from the commission to the boutique! about 40 minutes just to get from the stadium to the post office. god knows what was going on, but even when we got past ratna park and the traffic began, to put it generously, flow, i still couldn't find out what had been holding us up -- except for the mere congestion of it all.
but, not to put only a negative spin on the congestion, which is easy & fair enough to do, i'm still a bit awed by the transformation. kindof like seeing josh go from this shy, almost frightened child to this 6'3" young massive man towering over me with his innocent yet playful smile. although k'du may not be quite as playful, the teeming humanity of it all has an odd attraction for me. i actually enjoy looking out the taxi window watching people make their own ways home, on foot, by motorcycle, in their cars, large and small. seeing the nepalis sit in a momo shop eating or buying indian sweets in a well-lit arcade or the mix of middle-class professionals step around the villagers seeking their way around a city that overwhelms their senses and even desires. it's a monumental parade of earthy existence and, since i don't have to struggle at the wheel, like a rat inching my way forward across the city, i can sit back, like at the movies, and observe the beauty, trauma and reality of the world in which i live...
then, later, last night, when i opened nepalnews.com i saw that the young communist league (a new maoist offshoot) had taken out a torch-lite procession at 6:15 pm last night around asan tole, which must have caused the traffic jam. they were protesting the government's searching of their offices for weapons. such is the state of the state here in nepal in 2007. the maoists, a revolutionary movement, is shocked that the government may actually want to know if they are storing weapons in their offices. so they lit their torches and march around the dense urban environment to let the people know that they are a force to be reckoned with and no one, especially not the government, should treat them lightly...
'may you live in interesting times', the sages are said to have spoken. what exactly they meant is for us, the living, to try to understand. definitely the turmoil awakens the senses, but risks the common fabric of life. there is something to be said for mere peacefulness and harmony, when we can find it.
now, a new morning, as dylan sang, a new day dawning, and i've been out in the garden since 5:30 am looking for young, prepubescent bamboo shoots coming up among the P. nigra (black bamboo) and the P. henonis (a 50' variety). the tropical phyllostachus genus, originally from the river valleys of china, seem to love the early growing season, while other mountain varieties are comfortable waiting til late july or august to reach out from the darkened earth toward the heliotropic realms.
for those who don't know, we're the proud parents of some 35+ varieties of bamboo and nigalo (thinner, reed-like bamboos) in our garden. like the children before them, each day brings a new delight of change, transformation and evolution. the native H. hookeranius has exquisite blue and purple culms. there are the tiniest of leaves reappearing after it was moved to our land from my friend punya's garden over in jawalkahel. there's a a thin, arching, 20' variety of running phyllostachus that we brought from bali some ten years ago that is sending up scores of new shoots already. while the 15 new bamboo varieties we were given by the amazing 'bamboo garden' nursery outside portland, oregon last summer are almost all sending up the most petite of new shoots while resting in gunny sacks under a native peach tree in the back yard. as you may have gathered, i can literally spend hours meandering among the bamboo, watching, cleaning, watering, nipping and enjoying the beauty of mother nature's child...
after all, it's that time of year, once again, in the nepal when the short, fleeting springtime shifts up into summer gear and the heat of the day w/ the occasional showers sends himalayan growth spurts in among the trees, saplings, shrubs, bamboo and grasses.
for me, hours in the garden have become a deeply rooted expression of my middle passage through middle earth...
xxoxo, keith
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Remembrance of Kathmandu Past...
"...how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed. It sufficed the Mme. Swann did not appear, in the same attire and at the same moment, for the whole avenue to be altered. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our lives at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years."
A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
Remembrance of Things Past, Swann's Way
Marcel Proust
A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
Remembrance of Things Past, Swann's Way
Marcel Proust
Monday, April 2, 2007
NHRC report urges govt to implement rule of law
NHRC report urges govt to implement rule of law
By Sudha Regmi and Anshu Karki
KATHMANDU, April 2 - National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Monday stated that the Maoist camps contained quite a significant number of children below the age of 18.
In a report made public regarding the human rights situation in the country from Oct 31, 2006 to 25 February, 2007, it was stated that children were recruited through the enticement of large salaries and on many occasions, were coerced to join the Maoist against their will.
The report stated that despite the peace pact, the Maoists had come out of their cantonments in Siraha, Saptari, Udaypur, Ilam and Nepalgunj. Moreover, even the Maoist MPs have been found to enter the Parliament with arms. Because of this and many more irresponsible acts in a direct violation of the peace treaty, the general people still feel terrorized by the Maoists.
The report further said that the Maoist army camps lacked basic necessities like drinking water, electricity and medical facilities. Similarly, the health of pregnant women in the camps was weak and they were not provided proper medical facilities.
Although they had agreed to return the government, public and private property seized during the People’s War, the Maoist still retain hold of a majority of this property.
Meanwhile, the Maoists had seized a private house in Harnamadi, Makwanpur and converted it into a jail where 19 people were imprisoned.
Because of the Maoist atrocities, 350 people from 49 families have been forced to flee the country and go to India, the report said.
Likewise, according to the report, the government also holds its fair share of blame. There have been reports of atrocities against journalists by army men.
During the violent Terai agitation, both Maoists and the government had violated human rights time and again.
Where Maoists had thrashed and shot general people, the security personnel had also fired shots to disperse the crowd.
The MPRF agitators had also attacked 18 journalists, claiming that they had failed to publish news as per their demands.
The report also said that the agitators also had attacked injured people undergoing treatment at a hospital in Sarlahi. Although the movement was supposed to be unarmed, the protesters took to streets carrying baton, rods, knives and various other household weapons.
Even after the peace accord, the Maoists have not totally given up activities like abducting schoolchildren and forcing them to participate in party programmes.
Looking at the positive side, the report mentioned that there has been a significant decrease in activities like bombing educational institutions, armed attacks, killings and overall violence.
Similarly, the promulgation of the Interim Constitution gives hope that equality — whether it be gender related or caste related — might be brought into the country, the report stated.
The report states that although the tenure of commission officials had ended, the government has not appointed any new officials to replace them, creating problems in the decision making process.
The report concludes that the government needs to be more proactive rather than reactive and take initiative to implement the rule of law in the nation.
The report, however, did not include the Gaur incident.
The acting Secretary of NHRC Dhruba Nepal said that although the investigation of the Gaur incident had already been completed, a separate report on the incident would be provided later.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NHRC records 640 cases of human rights abuses in four months
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has recorded 640 cases of human rights violations including murder, abduction and disappearance within a period of four months - from October 31, 2006 to February 5 this year.
A NHRC report publicised today says that out of the total 640 recorded cases, 123 people were killed – 86 by the security forces, 30 by the Maoists and 7 people by others including the two factions of Janatantrik Terai Mukti Murcha (JTMM). Most of the murder cases occurred in Terai districts like Bara, Sarlahi, Morang, Sunsari and Dhanusha.
Similarly, 65 people were abducted by the Maoists during the four months period while the security forces were responsible for disappearance of 65 people. 20 people were abducted, or involuntarily disappeared, by other groups.
According to the NHRC report, 66 people underwent torture - 32 by security persons, 27 by Maoists and six by others. Likewise, 57 people were displaced due to Maoist threats. The Maoists seized properties of 41 people during this period.
Other cases of human rights violation include threats, mistreatment and exploitation of children and others.
Speaking at the programme organised to publicise the report, NHRC secretary Dhruba Nepal said human rights violations continued despite the signing of comprehensive peace accord.
Nepal said both the government and the Maoists must work seriously to end the culture of impunity. He also demanded that the government appoint senior officials at the NHRC as early as possible.
nepalnews.com mk Apr 02 07
By Sudha Regmi and Anshu Karki
KATHMANDU, April 2 - National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Monday stated that the Maoist camps contained quite a significant number of children below the age of 18.
In a report made public regarding the human rights situation in the country from Oct 31, 2006 to 25 February, 2007, it was stated that children were recruited through the enticement of large salaries and on many occasions, were coerced to join the Maoist against their will.
The report stated that despite the peace pact, the Maoists had come out of their cantonments in Siraha, Saptari, Udaypur, Ilam and Nepalgunj. Moreover, even the Maoist MPs have been found to enter the Parliament with arms. Because of this and many more irresponsible acts in a direct violation of the peace treaty, the general people still feel terrorized by the Maoists.
The report further said that the Maoist army camps lacked basic necessities like drinking water, electricity and medical facilities. Similarly, the health of pregnant women in the camps was weak and they were not provided proper medical facilities.
Although they had agreed to return the government, public and private property seized during the People’s War, the Maoist still retain hold of a majority of this property.
Meanwhile, the Maoists had seized a private house in Harnamadi, Makwanpur and converted it into a jail where 19 people were imprisoned.
Because of the Maoist atrocities, 350 people from 49 families have been forced to flee the country and go to India, the report said.
Likewise, according to the report, the government also holds its fair share of blame. There have been reports of atrocities against journalists by army men.
During the violent Terai agitation, both Maoists and the government had violated human rights time and again.
Where Maoists had thrashed and shot general people, the security personnel had also fired shots to disperse the crowd.
The MPRF agitators had also attacked 18 journalists, claiming that they had failed to publish news as per their demands.
The report also said that the agitators also had attacked injured people undergoing treatment at a hospital in Sarlahi. Although the movement was supposed to be unarmed, the protesters took to streets carrying baton, rods, knives and various other household weapons.
Even after the peace accord, the Maoists have not totally given up activities like abducting schoolchildren and forcing them to participate in party programmes.
Looking at the positive side, the report mentioned that there has been a significant decrease in activities like bombing educational institutions, armed attacks, killings and overall violence.
Similarly, the promulgation of the Interim Constitution gives hope that equality — whether it be gender related or caste related — might be brought into the country, the report stated.
The report states that although the tenure of commission officials had ended, the government has not appointed any new officials to replace them, creating problems in the decision making process.
The report concludes that the government needs to be more proactive rather than reactive and take initiative to implement the rule of law in the nation.
The report, however, did not include the Gaur incident.
The acting Secretary of NHRC Dhruba Nepal said that although the investigation of the Gaur incident had already been completed, a separate report on the incident would be provided later.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NHRC records 640 cases of human rights abuses in four months
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has recorded 640 cases of human rights violations including murder, abduction and disappearance within a period of four months - from October 31, 2006 to February 5 this year.
A NHRC report publicised today says that out of the total 640 recorded cases, 123 people were killed – 86 by the security forces, 30 by the Maoists and 7 people by others including the two factions of Janatantrik Terai Mukti Murcha (JTMM). Most of the murder cases occurred in Terai districts like Bara, Sarlahi, Morang, Sunsari and Dhanusha.
Similarly, 65 people were abducted by the Maoists during the four months period while the security forces were responsible for disappearance of 65 people. 20 people were abducted, or involuntarily disappeared, by other groups.
According to the NHRC report, 66 people underwent torture - 32 by security persons, 27 by Maoists and six by others. Likewise, 57 people were displaced due to Maoist threats. The Maoists seized properties of 41 people during this period.
Other cases of human rights violation include threats, mistreatment and exploitation of children and others.
Speaking at the programme organised to publicise the report, NHRC secretary Dhruba Nepal said human rights violations continued despite the signing of comprehensive peace accord.
Nepal said both the government and the Maoists must work seriously to end the culture of impunity. He also demanded that the government appoint senior officials at the NHRC as early as possible.
nepalnews.com mk Apr 02 07
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