लालटीनको उज्यालोमा, A Book Review

Saraswoti Gyawali’s "लालटीनको उज्यालोमा" is a book you would want to read if you want to know how the Maoist in Nepal were able to win the hearts of the public and won the war in 2006.


Saraswoti is the wife of the current Minister of Foreign Affairs for Nepal. However, both, her husband, Mr. Pradip Kumar Gyawali, and Saraswoti were the former Comrade of Nepal’s Maoist party. The couple has three grownup children.

लालटीनको उज्यालोमा depicts the prehistory era of the Maoist party in Nepal. Built based on the ideologies of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong, the Maoist terrorized the royals, the oppressors and the capitalists in Nepal. In one incidence, for example, Saraswoti and her team humiliated one such oppressor in the public for selling the village girls for money. The incidence occurred in Ardhakhachhi district of Nepal. For her crimes the oppressor's face was painted black and she was forced to wear a garland of shoes around her neck!.

The Maoist's victory was short lived, however. Their government lasted less than a year and the country fell into the hands of a coalition government, followed by a national election after a year.

Yes, the Maoist were able to drive the royals out of the power, but it came at the cost of 13,000 lives and more than that many youth left the country as migrant workers for oversees. Thus, Saraswoti's satisfactions for being able bring some positive changes in the country during the insurgencies outweighed by the loss Nepal incurred.


The Moist party in Nepal also violated the fundamental principles of communism: "Property rights and Redistribution of property by occupying more private properties than any other governing party in the county had ever done!


I left Nepal when the Maoist were working underground as rebels. Their activities were not known to general public like myself. But I did share some of their nationalist sentiments! To be honest, however, neither the rebels nor I knew the true meaning of Maoism, then. We had no real awareness of what Mao or Marx were really like. We only knew their unrealistic ideologies.


Whatever the Maoist understood at the time of revolution and however they managed to get rid of the monarchs, what is happening in the country is not what they had envisaged initially!


Writing that, however, I find Saraswoti's book heroic, and I respect the couple for who they are, more than what they have done for Nepal.

Intuitive or not, a wife/mother's job is never done!

I’m not feeling myself this evening and suggested my husband that we go out for dinner. He asked me why, and before I could reply to his question he said "I would like to eat at home as much as possible since I'm leaving home in two days". His "at home," meant he would like to eat the meal I cook. I couldn’t say anything, except felt like crying!

So, I cooked something simple, feed and washed the dishes. Then I was laying down in my sofa, trying to take a nap.

About half an hour later, one of our daughters came home. She went to the kitchen and told me that she’s going to have some of my food. I felt like crying the second time!

Then, suddenly my mother came to my mind. She was a small framed woman, who was full of energy, wit and courage. She worked 18 hours a day to keep her over 18 ropani lands (at different locations), biggest house in the neighbourhood, six school-children and a very demanding —rather conceited husband. That was not enough of for her, she suggested her husband that they should buy a “mauja” in Chitawan. It was a prestige to own a piece of rice-field in another province then, as some of her colleagues and relatives had done so.

A tiny woman with no formal education, no dowry and more than a handful husband, how did she managed to have them all? That question kept coming in my mind for years.

My mother was very creative and highly intuitive person. She made decisions instantly and took risks when needed. She went out of her way to help others, and never complained about her situations.

She worshipped Gods and Goddesses but believed that we can bring “luck” onto ourselves—not through prayers or pleasing gods and goddesses with sweets and fruits. She was that wise!

I didn’t write this story to show off how rich my parents were. I’m writing this to share how Intuitively Intelligent my mother was and regret that I couldn’t recognized her bornin talents. I thought how can she know what she was talking about; she never went to school!

I also hadn't realized that there must have been some days when my mother was tired and cried alone, when we, her children and husband, were not around. After all, she was a proud woman and never let anyone see her vulnerability!

My dear mother, I do hope you're in heaven living in peace with everything you ever wanted around you!

Our coffee world

Representing a small world of its own, this has been our first cup of coffee-place for at least half the year. Here we find a transvestite, sitting on one of the sofas in one of the corners of the room. Across from this person sits an elderly lady on another set of sofas. Without exchanging a word, these people sit there each day, for hours at a time.  

The transvestite person—or so we heard one day—completely covers her/his head with a oversized hat. S/he wears a loose leather jacket and a scarf wraps around the neck. S/he is there when we enter the room each day and stays there when we leave. Sometimes s/he moves one or two locations within the room and makes two or three trips to move her/his two or three hand bags.

“A man becoming a woman?" "Yeah, a man can become a woman, ney…”  a wired elderly man blurted one day that grabbed our attention to the transvestite. We watched the weird man pursuing the transvestite from the distance. The man thought he was pursuing a lady, we guessed.

The elderly man had his own characters. We never saw him purchasing anything from the restaurant. He was tall and queer-looking! He walked around with a cellphone on his hand. His large jacket unzipped, and his hands spread wide. He reminded us of a hawk going after his prey. Fortunately, he left after a short quarrel between him and the transvestite.

There is also a mentally-ill person. This poor guy doesn’t know how odd it is for someone to watch him rolling up his sleeves just to drink a cup of coffee/tea. He sometimes smiles and talks to himself. Other times looks outside through the glass-windows and walks around the room.  We don’t know who he is or what his past was, but to see a young person going through this ritual makes my husband and I very sad!

There are also other people in this room, whom we meet and greet some days. Some of them are young, and others are elderlies. Some come here with their coffee-craze and others for breakfast.  There are also a few ‘lovers’ who come to take their chances to sleep on each-other’s arms or laps!

Our coffee world makes us feel lucky and at the same time very vulnerable to mental disorders!

Are most mothers negative force to their children?

Most mothers are negative force to their children. They hinder, rather than helping, their children’s survivability. I’m one such mother. 

As a mother,

I don’t notice my child enjoying 23.55 hours a day, but the 5 seconds my baby is sad, I notice. I don’t hear him/her laugh, but hear loud and clear when he/she cries. When things don’t go well the way I plan for my child, I panic. I forget my own heartaches and struggles when I was growing up that made me strong and better survivor. I hurriedly offer my help and promote my child’s vulnerability, instead!

Existence of Gods and Goddesses

As educated people, we should be able to express our views on Gods and Goddesses in the public the civilized way, without being intimidated or ridiculed. Often this is not the case. We're judged for our views the wrong way!

God's existence is hard to prove. Proving other way is equally hard, because normal people don't have the power to see God. 

When I say God, I'm referring to the female God also. I use God synonymously for both Gods and Goddesses.

Gods and Goddesses are huge issues. I can't begin to explain about Them. Trying to find out what is written about Them is my first quest.

What I found in my search is that a lot of people are mixed up God with religion. They start talking about Bible, Q'ran, Gita, et cetera, when  somebody asks them about God. Philosophers, such as Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle have explained about mind, soul, and spirit stuff, but not specifically about God. 

I also consulted the oldest and the youngest family members in my household. Both of them told me that God is created in our mind, out of fear and lack of knowledge.  

So, I came to the same conclusion as I always have: God is who we conceive He/She is.

There is a book called Connected:The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How they shape Our Lives by Nicholas Chistakis and James Fowler. Their article, "Behaviours and moods tend to spread through a population on the model of a contagion" clearly explains the phenomena that it is our association, not the God or religion, that shapes our thinking.

My family is fortunate to have lived in Campus towns in Canada and in the USA. We've also travelled to a few countries and have met people with all faiths. Consistently, we've met good and bad people across all religions!

Function of God is to lead His disciples (believers) to the "righteous" path. Function of religion should be  the same, since religions consist of "God's rule of laws". It is assumed that religious people are conscious of others' need, therefore, don't commit crime--out of the fair that their God would be upset with them.

So, even though the concept of God seems to have come from social and psychological factors, our societies are better off with God believers, than non-believers.

My personal belief on this matter is that, there is a God, or at least there is some Superpower beyond the reach of a normal human being. I've seen miracles happened. You can call these miracles co-incidental, but I would like to believe that God made those miracles possible!

The mentally poor people

Some people are born in a poor family and die poor, unfortunately! But others are fortunate enough to have been born in an affluent family. However, some of these fortunate people are born with a poor-mind.

Stories of how a person can be rich materially, but dirt-poor mentally are many. For instance, one of our family friends (who has more money than she can account for) buys her essentials only when these items are 'on sale’. She tells me that she just don't want to waste her money on items that are  not on discount. 

This person once took me to a store which sold ‘cheap’ grains. I bought a package of beans with her recommendation, which I had to throw away after finding as many live warms in the package as the seeds were!

Another colleague of mine told me once “I fill one of my sinks  with detergent-water and wash all my dishes of the day in that water” Wow!

I’ve been in the households who reuse their dish-pad for months and clean their dining table with a piece of cloth that never gets to see a washing machine or a dryer.  I’ve also witnessed some of our friends cooking all their foods in their presser cookers to save fuel!

My father used to tell us that some people are born “slaves”.  They are born to work for the money they own, not enjoy out of it.

He must be correct, or why would some people --with their own will-- go for the cheapest things they can find in a land of Best and Abundance? 

This post was for #metoo, written in October, 2017

I’m an woman and I guess the “#metoo” is for a male to speak out of their mistreatments to their female friends/co-workers/family members or whoever. But I’ve something to add here, as I read tomorrow, October 20th, is the Bhai-puja day in Nepal.


Much of Nepali cultures are male-chauvinistic, if you don’t know already? My topic is about that.


I was born to a chauvinist father, but he didn’t know this because he was surrounded by chauvinist-males, so what he did was normal to him—and everyone around him.


We were six children in the family, and my father assigned one sister to each of his three sons (my brothers), so his sons wouldn’t have to “look after” all three sisters.



Daughters are burdensome in the male-world, and I know the idea of assigning one sister to one son may have come from some other people—didn’t start from my father.



But I was a sensitive girl. I was hearing my father’s biased remarks, such as daughters build their husbands’ homes and daughters-in-law are our daughters (they build his home), etc.


However, my arguments are not about my father. These are directed to the mothers who kill their daughters willingly and legally (when they are still in wombs), and call “Laxmi” to their daughters and give a few coins on some occasions, but keep their valuables for their sons.



One such woman once told me that she used to take her pee to a "clinic" and see if it was a girl or boy embryo. Then she would go for abortion.


I've had my own story about abortion, but it was not for a boy my husband and I decided to go for the surgery. We simply couldn't afford to have another baby when he was a student and I had to work to support the household.


Being a sensitive girl, I’ve paid a heavy price emotionally when I was growing up. For example, my father would praise me occasionally and say “you’re so smart. I wish you were a son”. Or, "once I give you away in marriage, who is going to build my home?”


My father didn’t know how much I was hurt by his remarks. I never made him known my pain. But I did ask him once “Why are you so worried about “him” (one of my brothers) and not me?” To this he replied, “Because you would never suicide”. “You’re too smart to take your own life!”


So, when mothers call their daughters “Laxmi” and brothers ask their sisters' “blessings" on Bhai-Tika, my throat tightens in frustration.