International media like The Independent and Daily Mail have circulated a video clip of a Nepali woman, armed with firewood stick in her hand, violently confronting a tourist and her minor stepson (not seen in the clip) on a precarious mountain track. The local woman seems to have taken umbrage over haggling of 150-rupee-a-cup black tea. From the wild and loud screams of the woman it is clear that like most Nepalese, she takes ‘English’ people for rich and expects them to throw money around happily. She feels 150 rupees for a cup of tea in the remote and difficult mountain terrain is a cheap bargain.

As a local I wouldn’t pay 150 rupees for a black cup of tea even on top of Everest unless I am funded by the Nepal government or an I/NGO. But will tourists feel safe to travel to the mountains after seeing such visuals of a local chasing a tourist who was desperately begging the former to stop screaming in front of her young child.

We all know it is not easy to haul tea and other food up the hill into the mountains, but is that the tourists’ problems?  Nepalese are not poor because of the tourists as the woman seems to think; they are poor because of their nincompoop government.

It is time that tourism honchos communicate the ground reality on high prices of foods, waters and hotel rooms in the country, especially in the trekking trails in the mountains. A foreign friend who was stuck in Lukla for a few days because of cancellation of flight trekked down to Jiri rather than pay 5 dollars or more for a boiled egg.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Evolution

Scientists now have reliable information that it is cosmological evolution which has guided matter from simplicity to complexity, from inorganic to organic.

Fossils document the increase in brain size of our ancestors. It has been noticed that life is hardly more than a combination of simple chemicals operating in complex ways and the origin of life is a natural result of the evolution of that matter.

Indeed, this new aspect of the research highlights Sri Aurobindo’s vision. In Sri Aurobindo, we find a pure optimism ~ a promise for our golden future. He said, “There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution; he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior than him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts.

Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mind and its slavery to ignorance.”

Sujit De, Kolkata