Kathmandu's Finest

Across from my hotel stood a small shop with a sign outside that made even the most disinterested traveler’s eyes widen ‘Buff Momo’s – Kathmandu’s Finest ‘. As I walked in and found a corner table there was a small book placed on the table, unsure of whether it was left by another customer I looked around to the tables around me.

Content that there was in fact one sitting proudly on every table and convinced it would be another 15 minutes before I could enjoy ‘Kathmandu’s Finest’, I picked up the book and got lost in the literature that lay in front of me for the book didn’t tell stories of undercover spies and superheroes but it was a brilliant representation of a women’s struggle in Nepal. It told of a woman who was forced to leave India at the age of 12 with her parents and settle in Kathmandu, unhappy to be growing up in a country she didn’t consider her own, she soon became a rebel. It was only as she began to grow older and her eyes opened to the atrocities the Nepalese people were burdened with as a result of India’s wielding power over the country did she begin to write for the freedom of her country. However merely a school level education and no experience whatsoever as a writer prevented any publishing house from taking her seriously. It wasn’t the love for her country but rather the hatred for the place she long considered as her own that propelled her to write to begin with.

Just as I reached the last page I happen to overhear a conversation from the table by the side of me they too were discussing the book and the sad tale that this woman had to encounter. However what struck me about the conversation was something that wasn’t mentioned anywhere the book, these two men spoke about large amounts of charity that the women from the novel had being doing over the last five years. From providing shelter and clothing to homeless people that had settled in front of her house to being the campaign manager behind her husband’s run for office she seemed to have left no stone unturned in her ultimate goal to ensure freedom for her people and country.

Convinced that till now these stories were a work of fiction I was eager to meet the woman in all the stories so I walked up and enquired from the men sitting at the side of me as to where I could arrange a meeting with this women, they’re reply came as a pleasant shock to me. For the lady I so earned to talk to was now walking up to me with a pen and paper in hand and an apologetic look for keeping me waiting.

The buff momo’s that evening were delightful but Kathmandu’s Finest didn’t come in a plate, it was instead standing behind a counter the entire time.

-- written by Sean D'Mello