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I’m typing this by candlelight in the midst of daily load shedding as my inverter (battery backup when the main power goes out) squeals in disgust when I even look at my desk lamp. It’s headlights and candles all the way, which was romantic at first, but the novelty’s well and truly worn off after only a few days. Ysee, when I moved into my new place in Kathmandu, I thought I had it made: large lounge/work area, big separate bedroom, hot water HOT WATER I tell you…of course it’s the little things you don’t notice on the first walkaround that get you. Like the fact that the flat is flanked by a ironmongers, who fire up their welders late into the night, ironically providing the only bursts of actual light in the entire neighbourhood , albeit like a pissed up firefly. There was I thinking I’d stumbled across enlightenment while meditating in the dark…With all this power outage jiggerypokery (up to 14 hours a day, though apparently the PM’s pulled strings to bring it down to a miniscule 12 hrs now, which will mean 18 hours of darkness once he finally sashays out of power) I find myself rationing the minutes on the computer’s battery life, juggling the russian roulette of wifi connection, which is not ideal when skyping into a conference call with a potential funder, let me tell you, and slowly realizing that perhaps this is the universe’s way of telling me to stop drawing pages after 10. Or at least, stop starting to draw my daily page after 10pm. Speaking of which, new coloured artwork is now up over at Freedom Matters, an anti-trafficking NGO I’m partnering with who are the pioneers behind Circus Kathmandu, which takes kids who were trafficked into the circus in India and gives them training from an international cast of big top performers from Columbia and the UK among others. UK folks they’re coming to London in March – details on the FM blog via the link above.
I’ve also spent the last week pasting several different translations into my new comic due out for the BBC very soon – so any Urdu, Arabic, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Ukranian, Persian or, of course, Nepali readers will be able to check it out in their native tongue. Funny how some languages take 5 lines to say what another says in say, 3. In case you were wondering, Ukranian is the most space-friendly of the contenders, and Persian proved most greedy in the caption-box-filling stakes.
I was going to close by saying at least the beauty of the blackout is the quiet stillness that comes from everyone being off the streets, but right on cue some entrepreneurial spirit has just started his midnight shift next door. Cue the accompanying chorus of stray dogs.
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