{"id":79,"date":"2017-08-30T16:58:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T16:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/?p=79"},"modified":"2017-08-30T16:58:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T16:58:14","slug":"arresting-god-in-kathmandu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/2017\/08\/30\/arresting-god-in-kathmandu\/","title":{"rendered":"Arresting God in Kathmandu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the Summer I read <\/span>Arresting God in Kathmandu<\/span><\/i> by Samrat Upadhyay, it is a collection of stories about various individuals and their families living life in Kathmandu. \u00a0The stories are incredibly varied, representing people of different genders, age and social class. \u00a0The stories all center around family life, many discuss the process of arranged marriage and issues of infidelity. \u00a0The author provides the reader with a complex view of life in the city by illustrating how people of such varied identities come together in the same geographical location. \u00a0I will discuss a few of the stories; \u201cThe Good Shopkeeper\u201d, \u201cThe Limping Bride\u201d and \u201cDuring the Festival\u201d to exemplify the breadth of life the author displays in the book.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Good Shopkeeper\u201d tells the story of a man, Pramod, who loses his accounting job. \u00a0The story reveals how a personal backset becomes incredibly public and a matter of concern for the man\u2019s entire family. \u00a0After months of failing to find a job because of lack of connections Pramod has an affair and is a disappointment to his wife. \u00a0Finally he has a colorful outburst at a family gathering during which he points out the failures or corruption of many of the family members, depicting how it was the family who helped them out in their time of need. \u00a0This story illustrates the communal nature of a family. \u00a0Moreover the story also deals with class issues as Pramod eventually acknowledges he would make a good shopkeeper, a task that he would have thought below his class or shameful in his previous life. \u00a0It is a multifaceted story that exemplifies how a man of his class deals with a fall from grace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Limping Bride\u201d is the story of a widower who arranges the marriage of his drunkard son with a beautiful, yet disabled woman. \u00a0Through this story the reader learns about the process by which an arranged marriage takes place in Kathmandu. \u00a0After the widower, Hiralal, hears that this girl\u2019s family is seeking a marriage he obtains a picture. \u00a0Once his son approves the picture Hiralal arranges for a viewing. \u00a0At the viewing both families are present and it is at the viewing that his son agrees to marry this girl. \u00a0A large theme of this story is disability. \u00a0The limping bride is a beautiful woman, the only child of her family. \u00a0Yet despite her virtues she is forced to marry a drunkard, Moti. \u00a0Moti only learns of her disability after the wedding and is incredibly ashamed of it. \u00a0He refuses to speak to his new wife for months and she is forced to endure isolation. \u00a0She is seen as nothing other than her disability. \u00a0It takes a very long time for Moti to warm to his bride and even then she is still facing horrible treatment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the Festival\u201d is a story of a man who is jealous of his wife and suspects her of having an affair. \u00a0After three years of marriage he cannot escape the thoughts of his own mind as he suspects she is not being faithful. \u00a0This is perhaps due to the disparity in his physical appearance compared to hers. \u00a0It is also because he is a rumored bastard, the son of his mother\u2019s lover. \u00a0This is a shameful piece of information that he carries throughout his life and haunts him during his interactions with his wife. \u00a0Infidelity is a large theme of this book and present in all of the stories, although it was not explicitly mentioned in the previous paragraphs. \u00a0It is perhaps due to the nature of arranged marriages that infidelity seems to play such a large role in the lives of the individuals featured in the stories. \u00a0It is also self doubt, thoughts of inadequacy, disappointing one’s family or loneliness that drive respective characters to be unfaithful.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arresting God in Kathmandu<\/span><\/i> provides a complex perspective of life in the city. \u00a0If anything is to be taken away it is how different people are. \u00a0For each individual, factors such as religion, wealth, status and insecurity etc. played different roles in each of their lives. \u00a0People are inherently complex beings that cannot be categorized or simply understood. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the Summer I read Arresting God in Kathmandu by Samrat Upadhyay, it is a collection of stories about various individuals and their families living life in Kathmandu. \u00a0The stories are incredibly varied, representing people of different genders, age and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3586,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3586"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/nepalmosaic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}