Lifestyle blues

We, the Nepalese, have a unique a lifestyle, and attitude towards life. For example, so-called upper middle and high-class people build houses, which cost millions of rupees. These houses are so well-furnished and decorated that some of them are better than most houses in the western world. Yet, such highly furnished houses lack very basic needs such as proper heating or cooling system for winter or summer seasons. When I am fortunate enough to be invited by some of my rich friends and relatives, I have to be ready to tolerate either the intolerable chill or heat inside their drawing rooms. Making me sit in a intolerably cold drawing room of their palace like house, a host once said, “The winter is not so chilly this time, isn’t it? I could not be so rude to my host, could I? And as harmless liars we all are, it did not take enormous courage for me to say oh, yes, it is not cold at all. It is different that I was shivering out of cold when I said that.

Nowadays, it is fashionable even for the middle class to invite as many people as they know (sometimes even the people they do not know) to wedding receptions at posh hotels. They justify the high cost by saying that people wed only once in the lifetime, and find the money somehow through loans and selling their assets. And this same family, sometime later cry out loud about not having enough money to sustain their lives even for the treatment of the same very bride. To me, spending money for the wedding party is not as important as spending it to treat the bride, and to give her a better life. The same cheques spent for the party could have been used as seed money for the couple to establish some good business.

Nepalese use several dialects within a Nepalese language to communicate to people belonging to various inherent socio-economic classes of which our society made of. The status, cast and social standing of the people can be easily guessed by the way they present themselves. The dialect used in communicating with a supposedly high /feudal class would be completely different than with ordinary, common people. Every time a conversation starts, status of each of the people can be easily guessed. For example, “You” a pronoun used in English, to address the next person, is addressed in several different words: hajur, (English equivalent of your majesty) used for addressing those who supposedly come from royal or feudal class, which is nowadays imitated by middle class families, “tapai” used for addressing commoners and strangers, “timi” (English equivalent of You), is used for addressing the juniors, lower class people, children, and close ones), and “ta” English equivalent of “Thou” for addressing inferior class of people such as domestic assistants et al.

So if there are four people of all of different classes sitting together, they will be spoken differently according to their cast and social status. Naturally, while some will feel high, others in the meeting will feel humiliated. You can expect the result coming out of such meetings. It shows that we are not capable of standing and talking with any other person on the same level. We either dominate or are dominated. This has serious implications when it comes to working in a team. The worse part is that even the middle class, which leads the society, is now slowly accommodating this feudal culture. They are gearing towards becoming feudal class, which is most unfortunate, as it leads the country towards more primitive age.

Published in The Kathmandu Post Sunday July 27, 2003  Shrawan 11,  2060.