More often than not I have heard vehement declarations for love for the eastern culture by Kathmanduites. Over glasses of whiskey, they go on for hours and hours about how the western family system is useless in terms of social integrity and how Eastern culture promotes the correct way of life.
These conversations are also infused with a love for components of the eastern lifestyle such as the joint family system or honoring the dead once a year etc etc. However once it’s tomorrow morning and the whiskey wears off, we once again revert back to a lifestyle of convenience and we become people who love tamatina and would give an arm and a leg to attend it but wouldn’t budge an inch if we were to walk around Kathmandu for a festival.
The possible explanation to this hypocrisy is perhaps because loving a culture and living it are totally different things and we as eastern people but socialised in a largely Americanized world are confused within ourselves about the lifestyle we want to live or the culture we want to assume.
What other reason would make us so crazy about the western takeaway system that KFC has taken away the businesses of most other restaurants in Durbarmarg . Also our idea of social status is directly linked with how westernized we are. It is not uncommon for families to be accessed on the basis of if or not the married women there get to wear a pair of jeans post marriage.
However we have managed to retain one significant idea that prevails in the east. The status is directly proportional to not working. If we get bed tea served by a child worker, we are up on the hierarchy. If we do not know how to make chapatis we are up on the hierarchy and if we have never had to queue up to pay the electricity bill, we are up in the hierarchy.
Is it only me who thinks these endless contradictions define us rather than the eastern culture?
Makuree writes for catharsis, because she loves learning new things and finds almost everything very interesting for a while . She somehow wants whatever she does to be mindful of the bigger picture. However this isn’t to say she doesn’t fly, spend too much money, occasionally drink too much and behave really badly.
