Rabi Thapa’s collection of short stories in Nothing to Declare (2011) in fact has everything to declare. His stories tell of cultural practices and influences on Nepal from India, China and other neighbouring nations.
In “Initiation” a boy undergoes the rights of passage ceremony to become a man while dreaming of a passage to America to become “modern” and “upper class.”
In “Night out in Kathmandu” and “After Party” local youths smoke pot, get drunk, and visit a dance bar full of Western tourists and middle-class Nepalis who have worked or studied abroad. Thapa juxtaposes generational differences: the foreign TV programs and movies influencing their parents and grand-parents, and the influences of foreign jobs and locations. He tells of the new generation becoming “almost, though not quite” upper class. The youth seem to be caught between imitating their Western counterparts while being conflicted about their traditional values.
Thapa’s characters all reflect their confusion about traditionality and modernity, and their definition of class and success in a time of the Maoist insurgency: such as in "Home for Dahain" when a Maoist kidnaps a middle class youth, and in "Nepali Maid," a story of servitude. The main character in "Nepali Maid" is a woman from the lower class working in a middle class household in Kathmandu – differentiating the order and cleanliness of her master’s home with the chaos and “filth” of her own.
Thapa attempts to reveal everyday life while questioning and exploring the perspectives of class and structure. He does this using an experimental narrative style – sometimes fantasy as in “Valley of Tears” and sometimes in diary form as in “Arranged Marriage”. Thapa’s first novel is an interesting read.
A single visit to China cant hold all the culture of china. its true we can learn cultures of Nepal and also india but i dont think of China.
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