Communicating Kathmandu: Empowerment in Relief
“Sleeping villages are rising for their rights.” – KATHMANDU, Thomas Bell
I watched Mountain Television for the first time q few weeks back. I made that inevitable leap of faith and followed the Channel on Twitter a few days back. As I read the tweets, I began to consider that just as information uproots and reintegrates, so does a communicated actuality. Kathmandu is in the throes of a much-needed rain shower today. Have we forgotten to watch the rain and listen to raindrops as they meet the stony, cemented and parched earth?
The dry salvages in the city and in our lives are blessed, each time, with moisture and life. World Water Day 2015 was celebrated with imminent insight and cautious optimism. Empowered as we are with an enlivened world and clear air, our built and experiential systems are emerging to fill a void and, indeed, necessity. The grain of all inventions makes us smile often and venerate a distant lesson and existential paradox. “There were fragments of statuary everywhere.”
I have made another leap of faith – to read Thomas Bell’s KATHMANDU. A denizen of this aligned, misaligned and maligned city, I can only remember the subtitles in the Contents pages and find true delight in it for now. “Is Kathmandu a process or a system? – The declining community of ghosts – The electricity, telephone, water, and god networks – Gayahbajye of Pimbaha – His daughter-in-law, their house – Consecrating a new building – The city as a mandala – Interview with the Gubaju – The ideology of the mandala – Dhana Lakshmi’s story of the Konti hangings.” Communicating Kathmandu IS empowerment in relief.
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