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Besides the senseless “tra­dition” of our prime minis­ters making India their first foreign port of call following the 1990 political change, there is another irritating ritual that is not much discussed. Nepal needs to assure, promise and pledge that it will not allow its land to be used against India at the end of every bilateral talk between the leaders of the two countries. While our leaders may feel it’s just a simple ritualistic statement to make their hosts or guests happy, it nonetheless implies that we either were or are insensitive to India’s security concerns. Now, if one looks at history, it’s always India that is insensitive to our security interests and allows its territory to be used against the government of the day. As the late social scientist Saubhagya Shah once wrote, no “revolution” in Nepal has succeeded without India’s active support, a state­ment which was later corroborat­ed by the writers close to Indian establishment in their books on the Maoist insurgency and polit­ical transition in Nepal. Likewise the Nepali Congress used Indian territory against the Nepali state throughout the 1960s and the most of the 1970s. But we are yet to be assured by the Indian side; nor do we seek assurances that it will not allow its territory to be used against us.

Plane hijacking an excuse

The “ritual” has been repeated so often that almost every Nepali “scholar” writing on Nepal-In­dia relations has to suggest that our government appears sensitive to India’s security concerns. We cannot even buy modern weapons for our forc­es because it is interpreted as being insensitive to Indian securi­ty interests. Forget weapons, we can’t even implement our nation­al security policy lest we offend Indian sensitivities.

True, a plane belonging to an Indian airliner was hijacked from the Kathmandu airport in 1999 and the Indian government had to release some notorious ter­rorists in exchange for the hos­tages. And there’s been reports of anti-India criminal and terror­ist outfits operating from Nepal. But terrorists have hijacked planes from secure airports around the world, including in India, and there’s been similar release of terrorists in exchange for hostages. And no country can claim that it’s free of terrorist net­works. Using the hijacking as an excuse, India installed its own security check before boarding Indian aircraft from Kathmandu, to prove that Nepal’s commit­ment to India’s security cannot be trusted. Sadly, while the hijacking is remembered, Nepal’s help in suppressing the 1948 Hyderabad revolt is forgotten.

Nepal is doing all it can to address India’s concerns with whatever limited capacity it has. It is no secret that Nepal Police, either working on tip-offs from Indian police/intelligence or acting on its own, routinely arrests and hands over wanted criminals and terrorists to India, and the Indian police does the same with Nepali criminals hiding in India.

What India wants

Then what is it that the Indian government really wants? In the short run, it wants us to limit our engagement with China and who­ever it deems a threat. It wants us to follow its lead on foreign policy. And we are already witnessing it. It has succeeded in making the most of the world view Nepal through the Indian lens. Rarely do heads of state/government from other countries visit us, nor are our heads of state/government invited to other countries, except India and China, for official or state visits.

In the long run, just like any aspiring regional power, India wants to bring us under its security umbrella by making us and others believe that we have the capacity neither to address India’s security concerns nor to handle our defense by our­selves. All aspiring powers need to exercise power in their neighbor­hood to prove they are not to be taken lightly.

PM Oli, how about putting it this way when you need to follow the ritual next? So far we have done everything in our capacity to address India’s security concerns and we will continue to do so, and we expect our good neighbor India to reciprocate.

The strain of very badly played instruments permeates through the closed widows. Ho hum… must be a wedding in the neighborhood. And not just one! Weddings, like buses, tend to come along all at the same time. There is what are called, ‘wedding seasons’. I get the fact that there are days which are more auspicious than others for weddings and I understand that some months in the year are just not great for cele­brations. Planting, harvesting, mon­soon—all would have made it diffi­cult in the past to hold a wedding which might involve your guests walking for hours from nearby vil­lages. But I would have thought that in Kathmandu and other cities, the social calendar no longer needs to revolve around the agricultural year. Or does the agriculture year now revolve around weddings?Whether for genuine belief in the gods appointing an auspicious day for a wedding, or whether bowing to convention, weddings all happen at one time. Or that is how it appears anyway! I have friends who have to rush from one party palace to anoth­er on the same day to attend sev­eral weddings. The roads become even more congested than usual as the many wedding cars make their way from one location to the next. Last Friday, I was delighted to see a carriage drawn by two white hors­es near my house. The usual red-clothed brass band was present as well as a crowd of invitees and curi­ous passers-by. Well, not actually ‘passing by’ as the road was blocked. I had to squeeze through the throng of excited aunties and children.

I’ve attended weddings in villages, in a range of party palaces, and in 4-star hotels, and they all have one thing in common. What’s with the sad-faced bride? Even love marriag­es or marriages where the bride and groom are extremely happy with the choice of spouse, where does it say that the bride needs to look like she is in a dentist waiting room? She sits there in her fine clothes and gold jewelry on a raised platform so that everyone can see what a lucky man the groom is.

Well, yes probably I wouldn’t be looking too happy either under these circumstances. And not being able to join in the dancing? My face is falling by the minute! For what is a wedding without dancing? On the whole the main reason for me attending a wedding is for the dancing! Wheth­er that is a Scottish wedding with traditional dances such as the Gay Gordons and Strip the Willow (don’t these names sound a little strange today?) or a Nepali wedding with Bollywood and Nepali tunes, I just love to dance. And why shouldn’t the bride be allowed to dance also?

I’ve been at weddings where the brides look petrified. At a friend’s village wedding I sat talking to his bride for quite some time as she looked completely lost and vulnera­ble. Years later, I was introduced to my friend’s now smiling and happy wife. She did not remember me, despite me being the only foreigner at her wedding. The whole day for her was just a blur of ritual, red vermilion, and no doubt the fear of what was to come. While the rest of us were dancing and eating to our hearts content and generally having a great time, she, like so many other brides, was not.

So when I hear that far-from-mu­sical wedding band, I usually feel quite unsettled. The young bride has no idea what is in store for her. But, hopefully her ‘new’ family will be good to her. However, I suspect a little bit of her dies that day. And if you have no idea what I am talking about… you must be a man.

Thriller

RAAZI

CAST: Alia Bhatt, Vicky Kaushal, Jaideep Ahlawat, Rajit Kapur

DIRECTION: Meghna Gulzar 

4 STARS ****

Even with the plethora of spy-thrillers Bollywood has been churning out of late, Meghna Gulzar’s ‘Raazi’ feels dif­ferent. The smartly woven film recounts the life journey of its female protagonist, from a meek homely girl to a fearless spy. A mas­terly performance by Alia Bhatt suc­cessfully glues together the film’s moral complexities and nationalist sentiments, making it an important film to have come out of India in recent times. During the volatile times in the build-up to the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War, 20-year-old Sehmat Khan (Alia Bhatt) is plucked from her sheltered life as a student in Delhi University and made to train as an Indian spy by her father (Rajit Kapur), a sea­soned Indian spy himself with ties to a high-ranking Pakistani army official. To plant his daughter inside Pakistan, he arranges Sehmat’s mar­riage to the Pakistani army official’s youngest son Iqbal (Vicky Kaushal).

With Sehmat installed in her in-laws’ place in Pakistan, she becomes the eyes and ears of India, which wants to know if Pakistan is trying to outflank it on a crucial war-front. The task isn’t easy as we see her walk on eggshells, conniving and cajoling to scavenge just about any information on Pakistani mili­tary tactics which she can secretly pass on to her Indian superiors. And she has to do all this without blowing her cover of a naïve young wife and daughter-in-law.

‘Raazi’ is based on the novel ‘Calling Sehmat’ (2008) by former Indian military man Harinder Sikka. Gulzar and her co-writer Bhavani Iyer’s adaptation retains the broad “nothing above national interest” theme. But they are also successful in telling the story without the kind of chest-thumping patriotism that’s become the standard staple of so many Indian spy genre flicks, be it Neeraj Pandey’s ‘Baby’ or Nikhil Advani’s ‘D-Day’. In this Raazi is more of a character study than a desperate flag-waving film.

Pakistan for a change isn’t por­trayed as filled with villains. Gulzar doesn’t resort to cheap tricks like pulling a sub-plot where Sehmat gets abused by her controlling in-laws, just to massage the anti-Pakistani pathos. Vicky Kaushal, who plays Sehmat’s unsuspecting husband Iqbal, is shown to be an understand­ing partner who on the night of their wedding insists on sleeping on a separate sofa and allows his wife to settle and grow familiar with him. Sehmat and Iqbal’s relation­ship grows to such an extent that it threatens to doom her real mission.

Bhatt, who debuted in 2012 with the high school movie ‘Student of the Year’ has in recent times taken up more challenging and serious roles (most notably in ‘Udta Punjab’ and ‘Highway’), where she peels off her good looks for good acting. The character of Sehmat feels realistic in Bhatt’s subtle hands. She fascinates and has the audience rooting for her right through the nearly two-and-a-half-hour film. I can only hope her star power will help the film reach more moviegoers.

In addition to its riveting plot and characters, ‘Raazi’ also boasts of terrific period production design. Much care has gone into giving the film a vintage look and style through, often the gentle interplay of Urdu language and Kashmiri cul­ture. Similarly, the songs penned by Gulzar (Meghna Gulzar’s father) and music by Shankar-Ehsan-Loy are well-crafted and evocative.

Raazi is a film where the women have the upper hand. Steered by a capable director, with a splendid performance of its female lead, it’s a wholehearted emotional ride and a pulsating thriller. Do not miss .

Sports

DAMARU KO DANDIBIYO

CAST: Khagendra Lamichhane, Menuka Pradhan, Anup Baral, Buddhi Tamang

DIRECTION: Chhetan Gurung

Review: Two Stars **

‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’, as the name suggests, is a story about the nearly-forgotten sport of ‘dandi-biyo’—an indigenous amateur game of sticks played in the hills and plains of Nepal, and in some other parts of the Indian sub-continent. And it has the right mix of good intent and heart. But sometimes it takes more than good intent to make a good movie. This film tries too hard to make us care about the sport, so much so it ends up becoming an educational sports film rather than an entertaining sports drama. After finishing his Masters, Dambar (Khagendra Lamicchane) returns to his village with a mission. He wants to breathe new life into dandi-biyo and expand the pop­ularity of the game within his vil­lage first. For that he calls for help from his old village pals Mukhiya (Buddhi Tamang) and Mala (Menuka Pradhan). His friends are reluctant because they are busy in their own lives—Mukhiya’s a poor shepherd and Mala’s a school teacher. The village kids are not convinced either. Why should they give up football and cricket and pick up a game that they know nothing about?

But the real obstacle in Dambar’s way is his father (Anup Baral), the headmaster of the village school. Before settling in as the headmas­ter, Dambar’s father used to be an exceptional dandi-biyo player and decades ago, he too had harbored similar hopes of making dandi-biyo popular. Things didn’t pan out as planned and since then he’s devel­oped a bitterness towards the game; he’s disgusted by the idea of his son giving up everything to become a torchbearer of dandi-biyo.

The first half of the film is ded­icated to this father-son conflict. There’s nothing new in this graph and the sports genre is overwrought with arcs involving aspirant sons and displeased fathers. ‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’ draws our attention to the squabble between Lamicchane and Baral, somewhat, even though they don’t remotely look like father and son. But it’s the progression of events in the second half that least convinces.

The screenplay by Lamichhane switches from modest to downright silly, as it catapults the story from Dambar’s village to Kathmandu in a ridiculously staged manner. The later portion lacks the social realism it had when the story was grounded in the village.

For a film that wants us to appre­ciate dandi-biyo, it rarely gives us moments that encapsulate the game’s beauty or burst of energy and make us guilty for ignoring something great. Instead, Lamic­chane peppers the screenplay with jingoist sentiments and makes his characters mouth big words. There’s also a nearly 10-minute-long expo­sition scene where Dambar chalks up the complex rules of the game to explain to his teammates.

Director Chhetan Gurung fails to weave together these informa­tion-heavy scenes with any kind of visual command. Instead he tries to compensate by cranking up tension in every other scene by injecting inspirational background music and 360-degree shots.

All the actors in the movie do a fine job. If only the script had given them a little more life, they would’ve been more lifelike, more relatable. Lamichhane’s Dambar is balled up as a walking-talking activist of dan­di-biyo; not a flesh-and-blood char­acter but more like an ambassador to explicitly champion the philoso­phy of the filmmakers.

‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’ poses big questions about sustainability and ownership of homegrown sports like dandi-biyo and manifests itself as a love letter to the game from the makers. But it’s written with such broad strokes, flowery imagination and in such a pedantic way, it forgets its first responsibility as a film is to engage and entertain.

Activism apart, ‘Damaru ko Dan­dibiyo’ excites only few times.