Being told again and again that very little or no caste-based discrimination exists in Nepal, I started documenting, on Twitter, news reports about just that -- caste-based discrimination. The articles I shared in the tweets were mostly about discrimination and mistreatment of Dalits, the lowest caste. In this blog post, I have reproduced all the tweets in that thread.
One of the many issues I identified growing up in Nepal, which I believed would be the source of many unwarranted struggles to make something of myself, had been my severe lack of social capital. So, I worked really hard to escape from the country. Succeeding in doing so and spending most of my adult life abroad, I practically ensured I would have even less social capital when I finally returned home! #LifeEh!
Another #LifeEh observation. This one about how I did everything I could to leave behind, "escape" from, and rise above the yoke of the Bhote label...only to return to Nepal as a middle-aged man after spending pretty much all my adult life abroad studying, working, and traveling just to discover I have come full circle!
The story of two young Nepali adults in love but struggling with a dilemma that many like them do: they are from different castes and their parents don't approve of their desire to get married and start a family. But the comments under their story on Facebook, where I found it, fills me with hope!