Obituary: Govind Bahadur Malla "Gothaale" (1921-2010)

Obituary: Govind Bahadur Malla "Gothaale" (1921-2010)
TKP, 17-Dec-10
By Ujjwal Prasai

Imagine a child born and brought up in a home from where a famous literary magazine was published and whose father was a writer, editor, and publisher of the same magazine. The home was regularly visited by other writers who interacted rigorously about the state of literature in Nepal and about the ways to develop it, and it was but obvious that he would grow up listening to them. The natural path the child would follow would be that of writing.

That child was none other than the acclaimed writer Govind Bahadur Malla, who many knew also as Gothaale. He grew up under the tutelage of his father Riddhi Bahadur Malla who edited and published the magazine Sarada—often heralded as a milestone in Nepali literature. Sarada first came out in 1934 and served as a space for many in the Nepali literary firmament of the time, becoming a platform for writers to hone their talent. No wonder that Gothaale once said in an interview, “Siddhi Charan Shrestha inspired me to write; Gopal Prasad Rimal infused modern consciousness in me; and Laxmi Prasad Devkota taught me the importance of hard work.”

Gothaale, who passed away on Monday after a long battle with asthma and anaemia, was regarded as one of the foremost writers of the human condition. He drew from the zeitgeist of his time, speaking out against the tyranny of the Rana regime when needed, and commenting on his native Newari culture later. He was 89.

The nom-de-plume of Gothaale has an interesting story behind it. Malla once submitted a short story Usko Bhaale—a contemptuous take on the Rana regime—for publication to Bhawani Bhikshu, who was then-editor of Sarada. Bhikshu was scared that the Ranas wouldn’t let Malla go unscathed, and decided to publish the story under the pseudonym Gothaale (cowherd).

Gothaale didn’t look back after that. In a long and illustrious career, he brought out masterpieces like Pallo Gharko Jhyal (1959) and Ma Jujuman (1959) and plays like Chyatieko Parda (staged in 1988). His death has been described by litterateurs and critics alike as the end of the Gothaale era. Critic Tulsi Bhattarai says, “Gothaale brought modern consciousness in his writings and added to what B.P. Koirala and Bhawani Bhikshu were trying to do with their writings at the time.”

Gothaale was always put on the same pedestal as B.P. for his presentation of the human psychology. But that would be undermining his understanding of Nepali society. Gothaale was among the first writers to infuse Freudian psychoanalysis in Nepali literature; his novel Pallo Gharko Jhyal being the perfect example. The novel tells the story of a man who starts loving a woman whom he usually sees in the window of his neighbour’s house; the woman has recently married the owner. Gothaale depicts the mental state of both the characters and describes how the relation between them intensifies as time passes, ultimately resulting in the woman rejecting her own husband. The novel, which caused uproar at the time of its publication, weaves the two characters’ psychologies in a simple and lucid way.

B.P. was a master at writing about sexuality within a conservative Nepali society, whereas Gothaale perfected his craft by taking up social issues, especially those of Kathmandu’s Newar community—the community he belonged to. “Most of his characters are from the Newar community of Kathmandu; he wrote about someone who owned a bhatti pasal (local wine-bar) to about those who had mouja (farmlands) in the Tarai,” says theatre director Sunil Pokharel. In Ma Jujuman, Gothaale presents the mental state of a village-shopkeeper Jujuman who is overly self-conscious of his reality and his social state, someone who is constantly troubled whether he fits in, and ultimately loses his self in this dichotomy.

Gothaale’s plays are equally successful in infusing modernity into Nepali writing while depicting social and psychological issues. “Gothaale was influenced by modern playwrights like Ibsen and Chekhov. He was able to give a totally unique and modern outlook in his works,” says cultural critic Satya Mohan Joshi. As Pokharel says, Gothaale was one who was aware about the “social realities” around him and peopled his plays and stories with “subaltern characters.” While the playwright Bal Krishna Sama wrote philosophical dramas, Gothaale focused on the subaltern and presented their psychological states.

As a person, Gothaale was very studious. Joshi remembers him as someone who spoke little but thought and wrote more. Gothaale loved solitude so he used to leave for his farm in Saptari reading books of Ibsen, Maupassant, Chekhov, and Shakespeare. He was quoted as telling journalist Devendra Bhattarai, “I used to carry a dictionary and read Shakespeare, though with great difficulty.” He also read a lot of Premchand’s and Sarad Chandra’s Hindi writings. This reading habit helped him break free from traditional trends of Nepali literature. During Gothaale’s time, people subscribed to the view that prose and plays weren’t literary writing. Most writers at the time focused on writing poetry—Mahakabya or Khandakabya. But the influence of the Western and Indian writers played a vital role in shaping Gothaale’s worldview that celebrated modernity.

The last book Gothaale wrote was Dui Praani whose manuscript was submitted to Nepal Academy in 2000. The book hasn’t been published yet.

Gothaale, who experimented and brought a new taste to Nepali literature, is no more with us. But he has left his writings behind which will remain a treasure trove for many generations of Nepali readers. A very important fact that Gothaale established, something every aspiring writer should realise, is that one should always strive for newness. In doing so, he continued what Devkota has once said as a suggestion to upcoming writers: “Repetition of a work along the same lines has no meaning.”

Pukar Malla: President of Harvard Graduate Counci (2010-11)

Nepali gets US varsity top post
6-Dec-10

Pukar Malla, a Nepali student in the United States, has been recently elected as the President of Harvard Graduate Council for the academic year 2010-11.

Malla is a Masters in Public Administration candidate at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

According to a press statement issued by the council, this is the first time that a Nepali national has been elected to such esteemed position at Harvard.

The graduate council is a representative student government of the 12 graduate and professional schools at Harvard and serves the interests of more than the 13,600 graduate students at Harvard.

National Geographic Documentary: Dr. Sandeep Rohit & Lisa Ling in "Inside North Korea"

A Brief History of the Hot Texas Wiener

Paterson NJ's Hot Texas Wiener Tradition
A Brief History of the Hot Texas Wiener
Library of Congress

According to Chris Betts, the Hot Texas Wiener was invented around 1924 by "an old Greek gentleman" who owned a hot dog "stand" (a loose restaurant-business term for a small restaurant; this one apparently sat ten or fifteen customers at a counter) on Paterson Street in downtown Paterson. This gentleman was experimenting with various chili-type sauces to serve on his hot dogs, and apparently drew upon his own culinary heritage for the first Hot Texas Wiener chili-sauce recipe.

As Betts and Nick Doris mentioned when I questioned them about the sauce's origins, it resembles Greek spaghetti sauce, which contains tomatoes, meat, and a similar combination of spices. As Betts's account also suggests, the chili sauce is considered the crucial ingredient in this new food, its invention defining and separating the Hot Texas Wiener from the hot dogs the "old Greek gentleman" was serving before.

Two important aspects of this early history remain undocumented: the name of the "old Greek gentleman" and his business, and his reasons for naming his new food the " Hot Texas Wiener ." Documentary research in newspapers, other local periodicals, and business directories of the period, as well as interviews with older workers, may well identify the Hot Texas Wiener's inventor and his place of business, although smaller businesses in working-class areas did not often receive much coverage in mainstream publications.

The specific reasons for his choice of "Texas," unfortunately, are more likely to remain unexplained. I suppose that, seeking to give a unique and, for Paterson, exotic name to his new and somewhat spicy food — itself characterized by a sauce whose name ("chili") carries Western, Latino, and cowboy associations — he might have chosen the "Texas" designation to give his creation what today we'd call an "image."

For several years the Paterson Street location was the major outlet for Hot Texas Wieners, but in 1936 a Paterson Street employee named William Pappas left and opened Libby's Hot Grill on McBride Avenue and Wayne Street, across the street from the Great Falls on the Passaic. Libby's —still in operation today in the same location — was extremely successful, in part because of the quality of its food and in part because of its location, near to its clientele of workers in Paterson's textile mills and other plants, and on one of the main highways to and from New York City.

In its heyday, Libby's employed over thirty people. Several of these employees took the knowledge and skills they gained at Libby's into their own Hot Texas Wiener businesses. For example, former Libby's employees opened Johnny and Hanges, on River Street, in the north end of Paterson, in 1940, and many long-time employees in other Hot Texas Wiener businesses received valuable experience at Libby's. (Johnny and Hanges is still in operation, though under different ownership.)

In May 1949, Paul Agrusti, another Libby's employee, left to open the Falls View Grill — two blocks east of Libby's, at the bottom of the hill where Market and Spruce Streets intersect, even more centrally located in the Paterson Falls mill area — with three Greek brothers, Chris, George, and William Betts. After they returned from military service in World War II, the Bettses had gained experience in the Hot Texas Wiener business by leasing the Olympic Grill — which sat directly across McBride Avenue from Libby's — from John Patrelis, who had founded it in 1940. Also with an excellent location, convenient to working people from the mills and to major highways of the time, the Falls View was also quite successful for many years.

For two years, 1964 to 1965, the partners also operated a second location — the Falls View Grill East — in Elmwood Park, east of Paterson. Though the Bettses sold the business after a few years, it is still in operation as the Riverview Grill. Thus the three most-remembered Hot Texas Wiener restaurants of the post- World War II period — Libby's, the Olympic, and the Falls View — were located within a stone's throw of one another, of the mill buildings which were once the most important working-class workplaces in town, and one of the major east-west highways through Paterson.

Paul Agrusti left the Falls View in 1978 to open the Colonial Grill on Chamberlain Avenue; his son Leonard now runs it. The Betts brothers sold the Falls View business in 1984, but its buyers were not successful in operating the business and sold it in 1988. The building, in the midst of Paterson's historic manufacturing district, now houses a Burger King. Chris Betts's son now is part owner of the Haledon Grill on Haledon Avenue.

Nick Doris emigrated to the U.S. from Greece in 1954, and began working as a French-fry cook at the Falls View just after his arrival. Over the next several years he worked his way into knowledge of the whole occupation. In 1961, he and three partners — another Greek, Peter Leonidas, who has since passed away, and two Italians, Carlo Mendola and Dominic Sportelli — opened the Hot Grill on the site of Gabe's, a car lot and Hot Texas Wiener operation on Lexington Avenue, just over the city line into Clifton.

Since that opening day the Hot Grill has become quite successful, and is recognized throughout the area as perhaps the most authentic of Paterson's many Hot Texas Wiener restaurants. As Chris Betts said of the Hot Grill, "We were the old champs, and they're the new champs." The Hot Grill now employs thirty-five people, and the partners own two other restaurants, one serving Hot Texas Wieners, and the other more of a full-service restaurant.

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Mr. Guman Singh Khatri of Galkot Hatiya (Baglung)

Sustainable Soil Management Programme
Farmer Profiles from the Mid-hills of Nepal
April 2009

Portrait of Guman Singh Khatri of Baglung District

Introduction
Guman Singh Khatri, aged 33, a father of 2 young children and originally from Dudilabhati VDC, started his career as a Primary Level School Teacher. After 6 years of teaching, he left the job in 2001 and migrated to Hatiya VDC where he purchased 1 ropani of land and began a small poultry farm. He used to grow just maize on his 1 ropani. In Hatiya VDC, vegetables are mostly imported from Palpa, and Pokhara, thus they are expensive and not very fresh. Observing the situation, Mr.Khatri thought growing vegetables would provide a good living so in 2006 he joined the Shiva Krishak group through whom he received training on vegetable production from the Chartare Youth Club (CYC), a local NGO working with SSMP.

Impact
Mr Khatri owns only 1 ropani of land in Hatiya Bazaar village. Motivated by CYC, Mr.Khatri rented a further 1.5 ropani of land at a cost of NRs 5,000 per year, and in 2006 started to grow cauliflower, cabbage, potato, and off-season tomato in a 120 m2 polytunnel. He had actually tried to use a polytunnel before collaboration with CYC, but it failed due to lack of technical know how. This time he had better success.

From his first season producing off-season tomato in the new polytunnel, he produced 15 quintel (1,500 kg) in four months, from which he earned NRs 52,500 with a net profit of NRs 22,000. He utilized this first profit for investment in a savings scheme and for admitting his son and daughter in a boarding school.

Guman Singh feels happy when he takes fresh vegetables to sell in the market, where he receives a "reasonable price", and proud when farmers from nearby villages come to visit his farm to see his model polytunnel and learn about polytunnel cultivation of tomatoes. 15 other farmers have invested in polytunnels through the knowledge and advice obtained from Guman Singh. His success with the polytunnel have been aired on Nepal Television and published through the Kantipur newspaper to encourage others. He says: "one does not have to go aboard to earn money, if you search you will find dollars in your own land!".

One interesting aspect of Guman Singh’s farming system, is that he does not have any livestock except the small poultry unit. He therefore buys in both un-decomposed fym at NRs 30 per doko, which he prepares properly before adding to the land, and urine at NRs. 1 per litre. He often buys in 200 doko of fym in one batch. In previous times, he used to dump the poultry manure in the nearby river - now he incorporates the poultry droppings in with the fym prior to proper preparation. After employing SSM practices in his land for just three years, he already recognizes that it is easier to plough and he is happy with the yields.

In 2008 on his 2½ ropani of land, he grew tomato all the year round, off-season cucumber, potato, bittergourd, onion, bean, squash, sponge-gourd, cowpea and smaller areas of other vegetables and legumes – but he mainly focuses on offseason vegetables, in order to obtain a better price. He likes doing experiments and trials, and recently he has been trying off-season onion, with the Agri Found Dark Red variety, to obtain higher yields and better prices. He has also recently improved his polyhouse to improve ventilation, and now uses string, not bamboo, to train his tomatoes in order to save costs and
labour.

Mr Guman Singh keeps good records of his activities, costs and profits; for example, for his polyhouse tomatoes:

Total income Total cost
Year 1 (06/07) NRs.70,000 NRs.30,000
Year 2 (07/08) NRs.65,000 NRs.20,000
Year 3 (08/09) NRs.76,000 no data yet

Currently, there are still 10 quintal (1000 kg) of tomato to harvest, and his expected return from this will boost his income for 2008-09 by NRs. 40,000.

His total income from all the vegetables he has sold in 2008 is NRs. 120,000. Usually, the total inputs for his vegetable farming activities is around NRs.14,000 annually. Guman Singh reckons that the income from vegetable sales usually contributes about 50% of his total cash income. Besides the income from vegetables, he also makes money from his poultry and a small village shop which raise about Rs.150,000 annually. This additional income is used to pay off a loan of NRs.175,000, taken on when he purchased the 1 ropani of land on settling in Hatiya VDC. His plan for the future is to buy more land and build a house as he still lives in rented accommodation.

Guman Singh is pleased that he joined his farmer group and worked with CYC – his income has improved beyond recognition, and he feels a great change in his social status. Now he feels people trust him more, and he does not have difficulties in managing his household financial matters. The vegetable farming has given him confidence, and he now feels he can care for the family properly, because even if his poultry business failed, he now has an alternative.

Galkot Hatiya Bazaar (Baglung District) - Now & 20 Years Ago

Early 1990s (2048 BS - 2051 BS)

Today

US$ 100K per year for high school

Swiss School at $71,760 is Bargain for Some When Skiing is Free
Bloomberg, 27-Oct-10
By Jennifer M. Freedman

Nitasha Silesh’s Swiss education is costing her father almost twice what the parents of presidents, prime ministers and heirs to the British throne have paid.

Silesh started last month at Leysin American School in the Swiss Alps northeast of Geneva. Her tuition is 69,500 francs ($71,760). Students are charged 29,862 pounds ($46,969) a year at Eton College, where Prince William, England’s future king, and Prime Minister David Cameron were educated. At Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where both Bush presidents got their high school diplomas, annual tuition is about $41,300.

Swiss boarding schools are the most expensive in the world, with annual costs of as much as 120,000 francs per pupil, said Christophe Clivaz, founder of Geneva-based Swiss Learning. At Leysin, teenagers from more than 60 countries study, schmooze, ski and snowboard. The local resort is open to students every Tuesday and Thursday during the winter term.

“My dad said this is a lot of money, but don’t focus only on your studies,” said Nitasha, 15. “He wanted me to travel and to do all the activities possible.”

Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and children from royal families in countries such as Saudi Arabia are among Leysin’s graduates.

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and Swatch Group AG Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek studied at the Institut Montana Zugerberg in Zug, about a 30-minute drive south of Zurich. Kerry graduated in 1962 from St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, and then went to Yale University. Most Swiss schools keep secret the identities of their students.

Most Expensive School

The world’s costliest school is Le Rosey, which has campuses in Rolle and Gstaad, Switzerland, said Valerie Scullion, director of admissions and marketing at Bishop’s College School in Quebec. Le Rosey, dubbed the “school of kings” for its royal alumni, charges 92,000 francs for tuition alone.

“Schools like Rosey are up there with Eton when it comes to academic opportunities, but at that price, the offer must go beyond education,” said Tom Parker, the dean of admissions at Amherst College in Massachusetts. “The food must be pretty good.”

Le Rosey has a 25-meter heated indoor pool with a sauna, steam bath and Jacuzzi, two beach volley ball courts, a skateboard park, shooting and archery ranges, a private equestrian ring, a sailing center and a circus tent, according to the school’s website.

The costs for Swiss boarding schools mean they exclude “a great many bright, but under-resourced students,” said Philip Smith, a former dean of admissions at Williams College in Massachusetts, which is rated America’s No. 1 liberal arts college by U.S. News & World Report. He added that students who have attended Williams after graduating from schools such as Leysin and Le Rosey “have succeeded and done well.”

Textile Profits

Silesh’s father wanted to be educated in Switzerland, but he wasn’t able to, according to his daughter. He sent his only child there after his textile company in India became profitable enough.

Le Rosey is a for-profit institution, while Leysin is not- for-profit. Neither makes its financial accounts open to the public.

“No country in the world has been able to market itself as strongly as Switzerland as the image of quality, stability, safety,” said Marc Ott, 38, Leysin’s director.

With the number of millionaires in the Asia-Pacific region equaling Europe’s for the first time in 2009, more parents have the money to send their kids abroad to study. The gross domestic products of emerging market countries such as China, India, Russia and Brazil may match the world’s most-advanced economies, excluding the U.S., within five years, according to estimates from the International Monetary Fund.

Brazil to Russia

Applications from Brazil for spots at Switzerland’s 12 boarding schools for international students climbed 20 percent this year, and the increase was 10 percent from China and up 9 percent from Russia, according to Swiss Learning.

“For customers we talk to, money seems to be less of an issue,” said Bernhard Gademann, president of Institut auf dem Rosenberg, a 121-year-old boarding school in St. Gallen near the Swiss border with Austria. “It’s academia they’re after, and they’re willing to pay for it.”

Even with stock markets in the U.S. and Switzerland down as much as 55 percent during the past three years, most Swiss schools had waiting lists, with Le Rosey turning away two-thirds of applicants to keep its headcount at 380 students.

“In Swiss schools, it’s not uncommon to sit next to a prince from Saudi Arabia,” said Patrick Gruhn, a German national who founded Montreux-based Rayan Partners Sarl, which offers advice on education to rich foreigners. “Once you create the bond in school, these are friendships for life. Maybe you pay 120,000 francs, but a few years down the road it pays off.”

“Better Food”

Private boarding schools in the U.K. and North America also have stepped up recruiting from emerging markets.

“In Switzerland, you’re also paying for the nicer rooms, the better food and the more varied sports opportunities,” said Eric Brodka, an educational consultant in Munich. “In England, schools are paying less attention to the bank account of the parents and look closer at the qualifications.”

Along with algebra, biology and history, Leysin advertises whitewater rafting, sailing, rock-climbing and overnight trekking as outdoor pursuits along with winter sports. Travel abroad organized by the school includes trips to Venice, Paris and Istanbul, with optional journeys for an additional cost to destinations such as Tanzania, Nepal and Egypt.

The average class size at Swiss boarding schools is a dozen students. Classes are taught mainly in English and French, and lead to international diplomas.

China to U.S.

Yangzeyu Yang said she plans to attend university in the U.S. after she graduates from Leysin next year. That’s the “typical path of Chinese students,” the 17-year-old said.

About 95 percent of the students graduating from Swiss international boarding schools go on to university, said Clivaz of Swiss Learning. “Many” students end up at top-ranked universities such as Harvard, Oxford or Yale, he said.

Maria Luiza Lopes Camargos, 17, of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, has other thoughts about the rigors of life as a boarding-school student in Switzerland.

“It’s quite hard to be here,” she said. “I would recommend it, but Brazilians like to party and I would tell them to be aware, you have to study a lot.”

Movie Review: Kites

Vegas Meets Bollywood as Stunts Fail to Lift ‘Kites’: Review
Bloomberg, 26-May-10
Review by Indranil Ghosh

Cars smashed to smithereens,adrenalin-pumping chases, the brawn of Hrithik Roshan and aSpanish beauty shedding inhibitions and clothes all helped“Kites” become the first Bollywood movie to open in the top10 in the U.S. and Canada.

The heady cocktail was mixed by Roshan’s father Rakesh, anactor-turned-director-turned-producer. The movie made almost $1million in its opening weekend as movie-goers forgave itswafer-thin plot.

“Kites” has a backdrop of glitzy Las Vegas and ruggedNevada and New Mexico. It is boosted by high-octane adventureand the star’s looks. He plays Jay, a conman who gets by withhis green card, wits and salsa-dancing skills. Blinded bymoney, he romances the beauteous Kangana Ranaut, daughter ofcasino don Kabir Bedi.

Things go wrong when he falls in love with Barbara Mori,fiancee of Kangana’s brother. As it turns out, Barbara is oneof Jay’s many “wives” he married for cash. What follows is aforbidden romance, with Hrithik and Barbara taking off in arunaway adventure to escape the villainous don.

Originally an illegal immigrant from Mexico, Barbara hadmade a marriage of convenience with Hrithik. Then, they hadgone their separate ways, she to transform into a classy ladylove of the rich don’s son Nick and he, to the arms of Kangana.

Scanty Clothes

While Mori makes obvious attempts to sizzle with scantyclothes and come-hither smiles, she is simply too old-lookingfor the fresh-faced Hrithik. Instead of passionate romance, weget zero chemistry.

Hrithik, a dancer-cum-stuntman-cum-body builder-cum actor,contorts in the usual gravity-defying manner to indifferentmusic. To complete the adventure, there’s a Western-style bankrobbery thrown in.

For the Indian audience, bewildered by the rapid-fireSpanish rattled by the heroine, there’s a Hindi-speakingstranger. He gives over his car to the escaping duo, and is outof the script as fast as many of the other side characters.Kangna Ranaut is convincing in her role of a disturbedyoung beauty. Kabir Bedi and Nicholas Brown, who plays his son,are more comical than menacing, even with ear-slicings andrandom killings.

“Kites” is helped by sleek editing and the build-up ofthe pace toward the end. Still, director Anurag Basu showslittle of his lifelike touch displayed in other films,particularly “Life in a Metro.” Perhaps he was thrown out ofhis depth by the genre -- bordering on an improbable unionbetween a Western and a fantasy. While Basu knows a lot about Western cinema, what he does best is tell an Indian story.

Rakesh Roshan’s attempt to get his son’s entry into Hollywood via a global cast, American locales and a sleek pace,fails because of a simple flaw: It’s a poor copy.Western consumers want authentic Indian fare: hence thepopularity of chicken tikka masala or films such as “Lagaan.”

This is an age-old lesson Roshan failed to pick up fromduds going way back to “Shalimar” (1978), starring RexHarrison, Dharmendra and the hip Zeenat Aman, which tooattempted a Hollywood-Bollywood concoction. “Kites,” from Filmkraft Productions India, isdistributed worldwide by billionaire Anil Ambani’s Mumbai-based Reliance Big Pictures. This review is of the 130-minuteversion. “Kites: The Remix,” is due on May 28 edited down to 90 minutes by U.S. director Brett Ratner, with changed background music.

Information: http://www.kites-thefilm.com/
Rating: ** (Good)

Manisha Koirala Marries Samrat Dahal

Manisha's swayambar: A private affair
The Himalayan Times, 18-Jun-10
Abhilasha Subba

The bride-to-be looked more ravishing than one had imagined in a baby pink chiffon sari with silver embroidery as she welcomed the early guests to her swayambar ceremony.

Yes, acclaimed actor Manisha Koirala was busy making guests feel welcome and comfortable for her swayambar that was to take place in the afternoon of June 18. Showing much interest in the little ones around, one could hear her remarking, “Arré kati thulo bhayechha (Oh! How big he’s grown).”

The venue — Gorkarna Forest Resort — was decked just as beautifully for the swayambar of the year on this day. As per their wishes, the decoration was not overdone, it was more subtle and understated in keeping with the private affair. Traditional music filled the air, a huge white tent was set up in the courtyard where guests could relax and enjoy a lavish spread.

Renowned Bollywood actor and Koirala’s good friend Deepti Naval, the bride-to-be’s first co-star (leading man) Vivek Mushran, Suman Ranganathan and Govinda’s better-half Sunita with son Harshvardan along with some business honchos from Delhi had made it to the Capital to bless the couple.

One of Koirala’s co-stars in many films Jackie Shroff is expected to fly in tomorrow.

Koirala is marrying Nepali businessman Samrat Dahal on June 19. It is believed the two met around six months ago at a private gathering.

The swayambar ceremony took place in the Mrighatrishna Banquet Hall, right next to the courtyard.

Looking like a million dollars in a golden yellow coloured sari for the ceremony, the bride completed her look with a dazzling diamond set. The groom looked dashing in a black suit, striped tie and Nepali topi.

The swayambar started at around 2:00 pm and continued till the evening as groom’s family arrived with the saipata, a traditional ritual where the groom’s family brings trays filled with gifts for the bride. The bride’s wedding sari is part of the saipata.

No stone was left unturned to make this swayambar a memorable one. The seating arrangement in the courtyard was more intimate with tables and chairs placed conveniently for a gathering of close family and friends.

The cuisine served had a mixture of both traditional Nepali dishes and international delicacies. The typical Newari dish samay baji was the centre of attraction for foreign guests.

Though the media were not allowed in the venue initially, however, the couple were considerate enough to open the gates for the lensmen to get a few shots.

The wedding is scheduled to take place at Gokarna on June 19 and the reception will take place at Soaltee Crowne Plaza on June 20.

Brazilian Soccer Stars: One Name Is Better Than Two

One Name Is Better Than Two
The Wall Street Journal, 15-Jun-10
By JOHN LYONS

Brazil Keeps Up Its Tradition of Nicknamed Stars; Cheering for 'Duck,' 'Goose' and 'Dopey'

Júnior Silva is outraged about the World Cup team his nation is fielding.

"It's madness that Dopey left Duck and Goose off the team," Mr. Silva, a shop worker in downtown São Paulo, says in Portuguese.

Brazil may take soccer more seriously than any other nation. Some banks will close and even many nursery schools are letting out early in honor of the country's World Cup debut Tuesday against North Korea.

But conversation about the sport can sound like a page from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." A controversial figure in Brazil just now, for instance, is Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri, the national coach whose player selections have sparked reaction even from a member of the nation's highest court.

But most participants in that debate have no idea who Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri is. They know Mr. Bledorn Verri as "Dunga," which is the Brazilian name given to the dwarf "Dopey" of Snow White fame. As a child, it turns out, Mr. Bledorn Verri was short, earning him a nickname that he never outgrew.

Why would he want to? By serving as captain of the nation's World Cup-winning 1994 team, he turned Dunga into a nationally revered nickname.

This year, Brazil's team is the highest-ranked squad in the World Cup, and its star—Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite—is arguably the most talented player on the planet. But even in Brazil, where his celebrity is unparalleled, few people know who Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite is. They know him as "Kaká," a nickname that evolved from a younger brother's attempt to pronounce "Ricardo."

As he grew famous, Mr. dos Santos Leite did manage to change the spelling of his nickname, from the previous "Cacá." The word Cacá is an accent away from Brazilian slang for feces.

Even newspapers never mention the real names of these stars. "If you talk to 10 people, you might find one who knows Dunga's real name, but it's probably zero. The same for Kaká," says Reinivaldo Gomes, who runs a magazine stand in São Paulo. Nicknames have a way of sticking in Brazil. The nation's 64-year-old president, Luiz Inácio da Silva, is known far and wide as "Lula," which is Portuguese for squid and a common nickname in Brazil's northeast for Luiz.

Nickname mania is part of a broader cultural penchant for keeping things casual. Brazilians, for instance, prefer first names to last names, which is why the nation's richest man, mining tycoon Eike Batista, is known as Eike. To anyone wanting to show deference, he is Mr. Eike.

But not everyone's first name is as uncommon as Eike. "My sister's name is Camila, and her three best friends are called Camila," says Andres Tavares, an executive who has been known since childhood as "Gordo" (tubby), even though he no longer carries many extra pounds.

Although nicknames pervade Brazilian society, the best-known world-wide have been soccer players, and that's no surprise: Brazil has won more World-Cup championships than any other country. Ever heard of Edson Arantes do Nascimento—the man widely regarded as the greatest soccer player of all time? How about his more-famous nickname—Pelé? A member of three of Brazil's five World Cup-winning squads, he reportedly received the nickname as a child, when he mispronounced the name of a goalkeeper called Bile.

By now, global soccer fans are used to seeing first names or nicknames on the backs of Brazilian soccer jerseys instead of the traditional last names most athletes use. But as with most things in freewheeling Brazil, there are no hard-and-fast rules to name changing.

On this year's squad, for instance, is the veteran midfielder known as Kléberson. He was born José Kléberson Pereira. His second name was so overpowering it became his whole name.,

At times, soccer nicknames get upgrades for marketing reasons. A striker on Brazil's team in South Africa, Edinaldo Batista Libânio, is known as "Grafite."

But back in 1999, when he showed up at a small soccer club in São Paulo, he was known as Dina—a nickname his coach thought sounded weak. As Grafite, he rose to the top of the national sport.

Theories abound as to why nicknames have such staying power here. But the custom is fitting for a country whose name itself is a kind of nickname. Centuries ago, the Portuguese were extracting so much Brazil wood that the name soon applied to the entire colony.

At least one Brazilian athlete brought his nickname to the National Basketball Association.

As the youngest child in his family back in São Carlos, Maybyner Rodney Hilário became known as "Nenê"—Portuguese for baby.

In 2003, at the outset of his NBA career, the nearly seven-foot tall, 250-pound center for the Denver Nuggets legally changed his name to Nene. As Brazil prepares for its first game, many here remain mystified by Coach Dunga's decision to leave off the team two young stars named Paulo Henrique Chagas de Lima and Alexandre Rodrigues da Silva.

Of course, nobody knows them by those names. They're known as "Ganso" (Goose) and "Pato" (Duck).

Ravi Singh: "I am not a great fan of lists or literary awards"

I am not a great fan of lists or literary awards
The Kathmandu Post, 30-May-2010

Ravi Singh is the editor-in-chief of Penguin India, India’s largest publishing house. He spoke to Amish Raj Mulmi about his reading habits, and why no author has been able to write like Dostoevsky.

What are you currently reading?
I am reading a manuscript by Patrick French, whose most recent work was The World Is What It Is (V.S. Naipaul’s biography). His new book is tentatively titled India: A Portrait, and is about contemporary India.

What’s the last book that you read?
I read a very interesting book called The Lost River: On the trail of the Sarasvati (Michel Danino). The issue is a very contentious one, and there are very sharp divisions because of questions on nationalism, the Aryan theory, etc. Danino makes a very logical case that the Sarasvati was a very major river, and that it was as important, if not more, than the Indus.

Before that, I read The Hindus: An Alternative History (Wendy Doniger), which is the best tribute to a great, yet flawed, religion.

Who are your favourite authors, except the ones you publish?
I suppose I am old-fashioned, but the one writer who I would name is Dostoevsky. I don’t think there is anybody who has reached that level of genius. Then, there is the Mahabharat—probably the greatest story ever told—which you can’t attribute to a single author. Among the more contemporary ones, V.S. Naipaul is a favourite, who’s a fantastic writer. Then there is this fairly underrated author called Christopher Isherwood, who championed transparency and simplicity in prose. If you are judging only by the writing, then he’s probably among the greats for me.

Any favourite books?
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), definitely. The Mahabharat has to be on this list, even though I don’t know whether it qualifies as a book. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) is great, as is Lord Jim (Joseph Conrad). Then, A Passage to India (E.M. Forster), which many people find strange. But I wish I would read more translations, and that there were more translations in English. For instance, among Hindi writers, I can’t identify a single work, but if you look at their whole body of work, Dharamvir Bharati and Manohar Shyam Joshi are the two authors I really like.

Any overrated and underrated books?
There are many overrated books, and the ones that I remember are obviously contemporary books. But I am not going to identify them; a couple of them are Booker winners. But I personally think Martin Amis is overrated.

There are many underrated authors; Christopher Isherwood is one. From India, there is this author called Arun Joshi, who wrote this phenomenal book called The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. Globally, I think Elfriede Jelinek, who’s won a Nobel Prize, is also underrated. Another writer, who I think should be read more in this part of the world, is Alice Munro, the best living short story writer. Then there is this Japanese writer called Yukio Mishima, who’s kind of going out of fashion now because Haruki Murakami has become ‘the great Japanese writer’.

Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?
Both, actually. I find reading a really great work of fiction a transformative experience. But I read more non-fiction, which is like knowing an aspect of the world you weren’t really clued into. I think the books that do that are near-miraculous. Travel writing interests me quite a lot; I would also really like a popular science book. And the large theme-books, like The Hindus.

What do you think of book lists?
They are fun, but you shouldn’t take them too seriously. Of course, out of a 100 books’ list, 30 would appear on any list. So there is some value in that if you are looking for recommendations on what to read. I am not a great fan of lists or literary awards, because this is not a horse race. You can always tell a bad book from a good book, but if you are looking at really-good writing, how do you distinguish one great book from another? If you are a sensitive reader who has been reading a lot, you will make your own list. It’s better to discover books that way than being recommended all the time.

And book reviews?
They are absolutely necessary, because they sustain a culture of reading, and they are crucial for writers and publishers. Even a bad review often works in your favour. What is really damaging is no review or notice at all. But most reviews tend to be amateurish or irresponsible.

Why should one read?
I might sound facetious, but the world is not going to end if you don’t read. And I am not even sure if reading makes you a good person. But there is a lot to be said in favour of reading; it helps you make sense of the world that you are living in, it helps you connect with people, and it broadens your mind. Of course there are fanatics and bigots who may be great readers too, so I am not going to make any large claims about reading, but it is essential for any person interested in his or her world.

Applying for Non-Immigration Visa in Nepal

Applying for Non-Immigration Visa in Nepal

If you are applying on or after Monday, May 31, 2010 you must apply using the free, online, DS-160 visa application form. We will no longer accept applications submitted through the EVAF from Monday, May 31, 2010.

Applying with the online DS-160 application form

To apply in Nepal for a non-immigrant visa for temporary travel to the United States, you must:

• Complete the online visa application form, and click “Submit”
• Print your DS-160 confirmation page
• Bring confirmation page and $131 equivalent in Nepalese rupees to Nabil Bank to schedule your visa interview
• Interview for your visa at the U.S. Embassy’s Consular Section
• After successful interview, pay visa issuance fee, if any, at U.S. Embassy

How to use the DS-160 Online Visa Application Form

1. Before scheduling your visa interview, you must first complete the free, online, DS-160 visa application form. This online application replaces the Electronic Visa Application Form (DS-156 EVAF). Read the “Instructions” page for details on completing the form.
2. To fill out your online application, click “Start Application,” and answer all the required questions.
3. Upload a digital photo of yourself. Photo requirements can be found here. If your photo is not accepted, submit your application and bring a passport photo with you to the U.S. Embassy at the time of your scheduled interview.
4. To complete your online visa application, click “Sign and Submit” and print your confirmation page (with bar code). You will need to bring this page with you to Nabil Bank to schedule your interview. Nabil Bank will return the confirmation page to you after you schedule your interview. Bring the confirmation page with you to the U.S. Embassy on the day of your interview.

Please note: The online system will time out after 15 minutes of non-use.

How to schedule your visa interview

Nabil Bank is responsible for collecting the visa application fee and scheduling visa interviews for the U.S. Embassy. Please do not call the Embassy's consular section for any appointment information. Applicants should bring with them to Nabil Bank the following items:

• A passport with at least six months of validity beyond the initial date of travel,
• A clear printout of the completed online visa application’s confirmation page (with bar code),
• The equivalent of $131 in Nepalese rupees to pay the visa application fee.

Please note: the application fee is a non-refundable administrative processing fee. It is collected whether or not a visa is issued.

These should be brought to any of the following Nabil Bank locations in Nepal to schedule a visa interview:

• Maharajgunj, Kathmandu
• Biratnagar
• Birgunj
• Pokhara
• Butwal
• Nepalgunj

Nabil Bank will inform the applicant of the date and time when he or she should come to the U.S. Embassy’s Consular Section for a visa interview. At the scheduled appointment time, applicants need to bring to the Embassy their passport, their printed application confirmation page, and the yellow fee receipt they receive from Nabil Bank. Applicants will not be allowed into the U.S. Embassy if they do not have their yellow fee receipt with them. At that time, applicants are welcome to bring any additional documents they wish in support of their application. If your photo was not accepted by the online application, you need to bring a passport-sized photo with you to the interview (see photo requirements here).

Interviewing for a visa at the U.S. Embassy's Consular Section

After you have scheduled your interview at Nabil Bank, bring your yellow fee receipt to the U.S. Embassy at your scheduled interview time. You may also bring any additional documents to the interview that you feel may support your case. Please note that supporting documentation is secondary to the interview itself.

Visa application fees

There is a standard application fee of $131 for all visa types. This covers the administrative expenses of processing your application and the interview. This fee is payable at Nabil Bank when scheduling your visa interview appointment. It is non-refundable, regardless of the outcome of your interview.

In addition to the $131 application fee, some visa types require additional issuance fees. These are paid in cash (rupees or USD) at the U.S. Embassy only after a consular officer has told you that you qualify for your visa. The issuance fees are as follows

Note: These are the current visa application and visa issuance fees, as of December 2009. Fees are subject to change.

Richard Morley and Jayaram Khadka

How We Met; Richard Morley and Jayaram Khadka
The Independent, 25-May-1997
Interviews Phil Sweeney

Richard Morley, 43, millionaire entrepreneur and social experimenter, was born in London and spent periods as a naval officer, actor and producer. In 1982 he founded his "molecular family", currently eight members who live in a castle in the Forest of Dean. In 1990 he brought to England Jayaram Khadka, son of a man who had saved his life in Nepal; after a long, much-publicized fight with the previous government, Morley has just won residential status for him. Jayaram "Jay" Khadka was born, he thinks, 20 years ago in a village south of Kathmandu. From his early teens he worked to support his mother - until meeting Richard Morley, whom he now refers to as his father

By Richard Morley
In 1984 I went to Nepal to research tribal groups: I wanted to go to the most remote part of the planet to find people not influenced by outside society. One day I walked too far, too fast, too high, and got a collapsed lung. I was taken to a village coughing up blood. An ex-policeman called Mr Khadka said he'd go and get help; I later learnt that he'd covered six days distance in three, even though he himself was not well.

After I recovered, I went to thank him, and he told me how ill he was. I thought he was going to touch me for money, which I would have given gladly. But he asked for a favor: he wanted a photo of me and he asked me if I'd take care of his son if he died. I said yes, and off I went - I didn't really pay much attention, I just thought this was a way of expressing friendship.

Some five or six years later, myself and members of my molecular family had the opportunity of going back to Nepal, so we decided to go and visit Khadka. When we got there we were told he had died, and the son had moved to another village, Bhaktapur. We took an overnight bus there, arrived early in the morning, and went to a restaurant for tea. As we sat down, we saw a serving boy sweeping the floor, and he started staring at me in a strange way. Eventually he came up and, in half English, half Nepalese, said: "Are you the man who has come to rescue me?" I thought he was slightly round the twist or after money or something. I wasn't being very friendly first thing in the morning, I wanted a cup of tea. Eventually I said: "Look, who are you?" He said: "I am Jayaram Khadka."

He was tall, fresh-faced, taller than the other people around him. He told me his age was 17, almost 18, and that fitted. Then he told me his father had given him a photograph and told him one day the man in the photo would come and rescue him when he was in trouble. I thought: "My god, this is the boy I'm looking for."

I said, "Can I help you with some money?" And he refused point blank. That was the thing that struck me most, the sincerity with which he refused the money. He asked me to promise to come and see him again. We were on our way to Indonesia, but had a return flight through Nepal, so I said I could come back in two or three months.

In Indonesia we discussed how to help him, and decided the best way was to take him to England for six months, get him some language training, and then he could go back and get a better job. So I went back to Nepal, made my way to the restaurant, and there he was again, beaming away. I outlined the plan, but Jay didn't leap at it like I thought he would. He had been exploited, so was wary of all adults - he didn't trust me and he just couldn't decide what to do.

Eventually we went for a few days to a little tourist resort where you could see the big peaks of the Himalayas. We spent two days together walking and talking and it was very quick -he trusted me and I trusted him, and we then agreed he should come over to England.

Jay had said he was 18, but back in England we realized he was much younger. On the first or second day he had to have a bath which he'd never had before, he was terrified, so we helped him into the bath, and as we did we noticed he wasn't as physically developed as an 18-year-old. Also in England he seemed more of a child, playing with teddies and Lego bricks, so we soon realized he wasn't capable of going to college, he wasn't emotionally mature enough. So I asked the Home Office for three years to let him grow up a little.

During the fight to keep Jay here there were bad moments, very distressing times, but we never thought the family would lose him, because if he'd had to go we'd have gone, too. Obviously I feel paternal towards him. If you brought any kid up, you'd feel paternal.

My position in the family is due to democracy. I'm thought to be the person most suited to be captain. When everybody thinks I'm not, I'll be told, and I'll step down. I want to hand over to somebody who can deal with it properly.

Jay is the most likely candidate because of his personality, his style: he is in no way polluted by society. When he arrived he had no concept of dishonesty, aggression, theft, deceit, and, though I was aware that our family's wealth might make him arrogant, he has no greed. He's heir to the entire family.

By Jayaram Khadka
I was born in a very rural mountain area when my parents were both in their forties. My father had more than one wife and rarely visited our home. On one visit he gave me a photograph and said one day this man will come and help you. I didn't think much of it and then life moved on.

After my father died in 1988 of heart illness, my school life ended and I had to earn money. I found work in a restaurant in Bhaktapur. I slept on the restaurant floor, got up at six in the morning and spent most of my time washing up, shopping and helping in the kitchen, getting pounds 4 a month. I should explain the caste system. I'm from the Chetri caste, traditionally warriors and rulers, but my father didn't live his life in a dignified way - he drank and had a lower-caste wife - so I didn't have the best of my background. Basically, I got onto the bottom of the pile. Every day in the restaurant was the same. I didn't have a watch, radio or calendar, so I told the time by looking at the sun. I was feeling pretty miserable, but that was the best I could get. I didn't really think of the picture of the man, it was just like a dream; but then eventually came the time when my new father walked in the door.

I went up to him and started asking questions and he didn't quite know what I was talking about. But eventually we started having conversations in mixed English and Nepalese. He offered to help me with money. But I received money in the restaurant, I was fed, so I didn't think money was important to me. Also, I think money had a bit of tastelessness ... you earn your money rather than be given it. I suppose that comes from being Chetri. So I said no thanks.

He went away and my normal lifestyle resumed. I think during our first meeting there was something unspoken, something had connected. When he came back we sat down after breakfast and discussed his proposal. It was so different, it was something I had to think about, going to the other side of the world. Also I felt a sense of duty, I couldn't just leave the restaurant, or my mother.

We talked for some days. My father drew a map of Europe on the breakfast table and he told me about his castle. I got hold of a Nepalese dictionary and looked up "castle" and it meant literally a fortress, a round wall or something you build quickly to defend yourself, and I thought how the hell can you live in this place?

I left the restaurant and we travelled round the sights and talked about what was to come. By this time I understood my father much better. I had a bad foot, cracked, and he applied some antiseptic cream and a human rapport began to build up. He was somebody who cared about me, wanted to help.

Landing at Gatwick was like being picked up and put on Mars - a hi- tech, completely different planet. There were things like escalators, automatic doors, strange food - ham, red wine. I tried it and was almost sick, like drinking paraffin.

When I got to the house the thing that hit me was the carpet - so soft, better than what I slept on. For six weeks I didn't communicate with the other members of the family. I couldn't understand anybody in the house. But my father had picked up how to communicate with me. He understood a lot of things without me saying them in words.

The family itself didn't really surprise me. I come from a culture where everything is shared with your mates. If you buy a sweet and your friend hasn't any, you bite off one half and give half to your friend. And Nepalese family life prepared me for a family which includes people who are not directly related to you: a man can have more than one wife and keep those wives and children together.

I made a formal, permanent commitment to the group two years ago. I understand everything about the family, what we are doing, what is involved. I know it is not straightforward like an average household, we are pioneering a new concept and it's something I'm proud to be a part of. I consider my growing up was my previous life in Nepal. And my life here is my new adult life. I'm married into the family - as far as outside relationships are concerned, if I get involved (which I am at the moment) with anybody, I make it perfectly clear what it involves having a relationship with me.

The family is very important to me. They were prepared to give up everything for me, and when people suggest that it is not a proper kind of relationship, it's most hurtful. I think if my family were just a normal household of father, mother and children, we couldn't have survived, we would have cracked up ages ago. Because we are such a diverse bunch of people, we were able to sustain the constant fight with the Home Office. So this is central to me and no one can change it. My father's worked hard on this, and he's got a brilliant mind and I admire him for that. I look at him as a sort of guru. I certainly intend to follow in his footsteps by taking on his responsibility in eight to 10 years' time. !

Mr. Indra B. Tamang inherits $8.4 million estate including 2 coops in Dakota in UWS (NYC)

The Butler Did It—at the Dakota
WSJ, 10-May-2010
By JOSH BARBANEL

After Decades as Caretaker and Cook for Ruth Ford, He Inherited Valuable Apartments

Indra B. Tamang, who grew up in a mud house in a farming village in Nepal, has reached a pinnacle of society after more than three decades of loyal service as a butler, cook and caretaker to a socially prominent American family.

The cook became the master—as the inheritor of two apartments at the Dakota, the legendary West Side apartment building, and a valuable collection of Russian surrealist art—after the death last year at the age of 98 of Ruth Ford, a film and stage actress who was the wife of Zachary Scott, a dashing Hollywood star.

At a time when many Americans are puzzling over how an immigrant from Pakistan could turn on his adopted country and plant a bomb in Times Square, the rare fortune of Mr. Tamang, a new American citizen, shows another side of immigrant life: how many years of painstaking dedication is sometimes richly rewarded.

In her will, accepted for probate last month in Surrogate's Court in Manhattan, Ms. Ford turned over her entire estate including the apartments and an art collection, with the exception of her clothing and costume jewelry, to Mr. Tamang.

She specifically disinherited her daughter, Shelley Scott, and her two grandchildren in favor of her Nepalese employee, but did not give a reason for doing so.

Court records show Ms. Scott filed an objection to her mother's will and received a modest settlement. Through her attorney, Arnie Herz, she indicated that she was "very happy" for Mr. Tamang.

The value of the estate is about $8.4 million, according to court records, though it may be worth somewhat less with the sagging real estate market.

Mr. Tamang was brought to the U.S. in 1974 by Ms. Ford's brother, Charles Henri Ford, a surrealist poet, novelist, photographer and collage artist, who had lived for several years in a house in Katmandu.

In the 1940s Mr. Ford published the "View," an influential avant-garde magazine that featured contributions from the likes of Pablo Picasso and Albert Camus.

When he arrived, Mr. Tamang was in his early 20s. He soon went to work for Mr. Ford. After Mr. Ford's death in 2002, he went into service for Ms. Ford.

Now 57 years old, Mr. Tamang has a wife and three daughters and owns a two-family home in the Woodside section of Queens. Mr. Tamang also owns the house in Katmandu where he first worked for Mr. Ford.

In addition, he now has a multimillion-dollar inheritance and the views of a co-op board to consider. He became a U.S. citizen last year, more than 20 years after first applying for citizenship, with the help of Ms. Ford.

"I was always hearing about America," Mr. Tamang said. "I took my chance and I came. I had no idea how the work was going to go and how long I would stay."

When Mr. Ford brought Mr. Tamang to New York, they moved into the Dakota—into a studio apartment on the 10th floor owned by Ruth Ford. The apartment was built under the eaves of the roof and had once been a maid's room, albeit one with a park view.

Mr. Tamang said he shopped and cooked for Mr. Ford and looked after him as he traveled around the world. He took up photography, and collaborated with Mr. Ford on collages and other artistic endeavors. In recent years he became a caregiver as the Fords became frail.

Ms. Ford and Mr. Scott moved into a larger three-bedroom apartment at the Dakota in the early 1950s and Ms. Ford lived there until her death more than half a century later.

She turned her apartment into a salon, throwing parties where artists, playwrights, novelists and composers would gather. Leonard Bernstein, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams and Andy Warhol spent time there.

The 14-foot-high walls were covered with gold-flecked wallpaper and scores of paintings and drawings by Pavel Tchelitchew, a Russian-born surrealist who was her brother's partner for several decades before he died in 1957. Mr. Tamang was often assigned to assist in her soirees.

Several brokers said it was unlikely that the Dakota's co-op board, known as one of the most fastidious and unpredictable in the city, would let a former staffer live in the building. A spokeswoman for Prudential Douglas Elliman, which manages the building, declined to comment.

Even though an heir can be the beneficiary of shares in a co-op, the board can refuse to approve the transfer of the shares or can block the right of the beneficiary to live in the building under the basic co-op document known as a proprietary lease.

The issue may not even come up. Karin P.E. Gustafson, an estate attorney who is Mrs. Ford's executor, said that after discussing the taxes and other expenses of the estate, Mr. Tamang agreed to put one of the units, Ms. Ford's three-bedroom apartment, on the market.

Asked if he thought the board would approve him, Mr. Tamang said he didn't know. "I am satisfied living where I am," he added. The larger apartment was listed in December for $7.5 million with Alexander Peters of Prudential Douglas Elliman, but the price has since been cut five times, including a 10% drop at the end of April, to $4.5 million.

The apartment, half of a much larger corner unit, faces north toward 73rd Street and south toward the Dakota's interior courtyard.

While it doesn't have the prized views of Central Park of more expensive apartments in the building, the park can be glimpsed from the living-room windows.

The lowered asking price for the apartment may be offset in part by the rising prices for Tchelitchew's work. For years a portrait of Ms. Ford hung over a fireplace in the Dakota apartment. Tchelitchew painted it in 1937 when she was 26 and had just moved to New York from Mississippi.

Last month, the painting sold for $986,000, including commissions, at Sotheby's spring sales of Russian Art, far above the $150,000 minimum and the highest price paid for a Tchelitchew's work.

Ms. Scott, Mrs. Ford's daughter, had been estranged from her mother for many decades, but according to Mr. Herz kept track of her and was occasionally in touch with Mr. Tamang.

"The one thing that everyone seemed to agree upon is that the guy who took care of her mother and the uncle is a very well liked and well respected," Mr. Herz said. "Shelley also liked this guy and is happy for him."

Mr. Tamang said he hoped to hang onto the second apartment, on the 10th floor, for a while because it is still full of Mr. Ford's photographs and artwork.

In the meantime, Mr. Tamang said he had not decided what to do with the new wealth headed his way, except to pay down some of the mortgage on his house in Queens.

Bisundev Mahato receives coveted Harvard Award

Nepali scholar receives coveted Harvard Award
Nepalnews.com, 24-Apr-2010

A Nepali scholar Bisundev Mahato has been awarded with Steven A. Schroeder Fellowship award 2010 at Harvard Medical School for his proposal titled "Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions, High Variation Conditions, and Regional Variations in Health Care Utilizations and Costs."

Mahato is the first Nepali national to win this highly competitive this award at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, USA. The award is awarded to only one person every year.

Bisundev is a researcher, an educator, and a social entrepreneur, based in the US. He was educated in acclaimed institutions including Harvard University, Brown University, and Columbia University

CA Election: Who voted for who

CA Election: Who voted for who
TKP, 14-Mar-2010
Sudhindra Sharma and Bal Krishna Khadka

A small news item on March 11 which did not make it to the headlines or TV discussions mentioned that a former assistant minister and Nepali Congress central committee member Hari Shanker Pariyar had joined the Maoists with some of his Dalit followers. With the Maoists threatening to launch a people’s revolt come end of May, and the other parties in the coalition government considering this merely a bluff, it would be pertinent to explore the support base of the Maoists. Who are the supporters and sympathisers of the Maoists? What are their demographic characteristics in terms of age, educational qualifications and caste/ethnicity? Does Pariyar’s quitting the Nepali Congress and joining the Maoists have any significance?

Three months after the completion of the Constituent Assembly election in April 2008, Interdisciplinary Analysts (IDA) had undertaken a nationwide survey in July-August 2008 with its statistically stratified random sample spread across 30 districts asking which party the respondents had voted for. A few months after the collapse of the Maoist-headed coalition government in May 2009, IDA had conducted another nationwide survey in July where an equal number of people across the country had been asked what they thought of the row over the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and who they thought was right — the then Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda or President Ram Baran Yadav. From the responses to these two questions, it is possible to ascertain the demographic characteristics of the supporters and sympathisers of the Maoists, at least in very broad terms, and to glean valuable insights.

In the survey carried out in 2008, the following question was asked: "Which political party did you vote for under the proportional system?" As is well known, surveys such as those done by IDA allow for disaggregating the data by variables such as age, sex, urban-rural settlement, development region, ecological region and caste/ethnicity. Disaggregating this question by a respondent’s caste and ethnicity reveals that a person’s choice of a political party is related with his/her caste and ethnicity. This is shown in the Table 1.

Among the eight broad caste/ethnic groups, support for the Maoists is the strongest among the hill Dalits followed by Tarai and hill ethnic communities. While two out of three hill Dalits reported voting for the Maoists in the CA elections, so did almost every other ethnic voter (both among the hill and Tarai ethnic communities). The data also reveals that the Maoists have a fairly good presence among the hill castes. The support base of the Maoists is the weakest among the Madhesi groups — among Madhesi castes, Muslims and Madhesi Dalits.

After the row over the COAS and the collapse of the Maoist-led coalition government, IDA in its nationwide public opinion survey had asked the following question: “On May 3, 2009, the government under the premiership of Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda sacked General Rookmangud Katawal from the post of Chief of Army Staff. Late in the evening the same day, President Ram Baran Yadav wrote to the army headquarters informing General Rookmangud Katawal to stay in the post of Chief of Army Staff and continue his job. What is your opinion in this regard — who do you think was right, Prime Minister Prachanda or President Ram Baran Yadav?”

A high proportion was ambivalent with regards to the row over the COAS: 50 percent said “don’t know/cannot say” on this issue. Among the people who did express their opinion, 25 percent thought that Prime Minister Prachanda’s action was right while 20 percent thought that President Ram Baran Yadav’s action was right. What is revealing is the response to this question by educational attainment levels of the respondents.

When disaggregating the public’s opinion on the COAS row, one notices that a high proportion of the illiterate said “don’t know/cannot say”. With a rise in the educational attainment, people begin to form a definite opinion on the matter. If, for instance, 76 percent of the illiterate said "don’t know/cannot say", this comes down to 13 percent for those who have passed Bachelor’s level. Likewise, once educational attainment increases, those who say that the prime minister was right also increases. It, however, reaches the zenith among those who have passed School Leaving Certificate. With a further increase in the level of education after SLC, those who think the prime minister was right begins to decline. Among those who have passed the Bachelor’s level, only 24 percent think the prime minister was right compared to 41 percent among those who have passed SLC.

The data reveals a clear correlation between the level of educational attainment and the thinking that the president was right with regard to the row over the COAS. Unlike support for the prime minister, it does not taper off after reaching its zenith at a particular point. However, among those who have passed the Intermediate and Bachelor’s level, there is a substantial number of ambivalent opinions that consider neither of them to be right. The fact that support for the then Prime Minister Prachanda in the COAS row is highest among those who have passed SLC need not be construed as being highest among young people in general. Those who have passed SLC could be young people; it could also be older people who were not able to continue their education after SLC.

Combining the findings of the two surveys allows one to form some ideas of the support base of the Maoists. It, however, also leads to the following question: What could be the common feature behind hill Dalits (and hill and Tarai ethnic communities to a lesser extent) and those that have modest educational attainment levels? Though these are quite different entities — one a caste category and the other an educational level — hill Dalits and those who could not continue their education after SLC are those sections of society that feel that they have somehow been disadvantaged by the existing system. Feelings of having been deprived of the things in life that others have, and thus being “stuck” to where they are, could be the feature that ties together and links these disparate entities.

In a much-discussed op-ed piece in Kantipur on March 3, 2010, Pradeep Poudel, chief of the student wing of the Nepali Congress, lamented that Dalits were no longer attracted to the Congress, the political party which had been at the vanguard of the equality movement for half a century. What the news report mentioned above of Hari Shanker Pariyar’s joining the Maoists only said was that he was all praise for the Maoists for uplifting the Dalits. It did not give any clue as to what may have been his real reasons. With two out of three hill Dalits having voted for the Maoists during the CA elections as revealed by the IDA survey, one can only imagine the pressure exerted on Pariyar from the rank and file to join the Maoists!

Sudhindra Sharma, a sociologist, is executive director of IDA and Bal Krishna Khadka is a statistician at IDA.

Muluki Ain to become history soon

Muluki Ain to become history soon
TKP, 1-Apr-2010
By KAMAL RAJ SIGDEL

The government has prepared a complete and comprehensive body of criminal and civil laws to replace the entire Muluki Ain, the one-and-a-half-century old legal code enforced by first Rana oligarch Jung Bahadur Rana during his reign in 1854.

The new body of laws, organised into two codes, namely Criminal Code and a Civil Code, will modernise Nepal’s justice system, claim officials involved in preparing the drafts. For these laws to come into effect, the Cabinet and the Parliament will have to endorse them.

The Ministry of Law and Justice (MoLJ) will submit the final drafts of the codes to the Cabinet in the next few days, said MoLJ Secretary Madhav Poudel.

For the last two years, two expert committees under the leadership of Justice Khil Raj Regmi and Kalyan Shrestha were engaged in codifying the laws.

The new legal codes, said Poudel, are urgent for the country, given the changes following the Rana rule such as the country’s increased dealings with the international community, emergence of new types of crimes, and new perspectives on crime and punishment. “The Muliki Ain—despite over a dozen amendments—has several weaknesses.”

Structured in 6 Parts, 51 Chapters and 728 Sections, the Civil Code is the longest ever law to be enacted in the country, according to Poudel. The code includes chapters on “law of persons”, “family law”, “property law”, “law of obligation”, and “private international law”. The law, however, does not recognise gay marriage.

For the first time, the chapter on property law has defined servitude, trust (Guthi), usufruct to effectively resolve all legal disputes relating to land and property issues.

Considering Nepal’s obligation to the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption, the new civil code has provisioned separate section on the same. Nepal became signatory to the convention in April 2009. The new codes are prepared by codifying the SC precedents, and inheriting the best of Muluki Ain.

The move has evinced mixed reaction from legal experts. While former Nepal Bar Association Chairman Bishwo Kant Mainali said a country should shed off old systems to mark its entry into a new era, advocate Bhimarjun Acharya said replacing the legal document of historic significance would cost dear.

Day Traders 2.0: Wired, Angry and Loving It

Day Traders 2.0: Wired, Angry and Loving It
NY Times, 26-Mar-2010
By DAVID SEGAL

REMEMBER the day traders?

They were hard to miss during the tech-stock mania a decade ago, when the Nasdaq seemed like a casino built by morons and a chimp with darts could pick winners. You would hear about these guys — nearly all of them were guys — and wonder: Could anyone make a living this way? And if the answer was yes, why were the rest of us suckers still holding down regular jobs?

No doubt, it’s been a long time since a question like that troubled your imagination. And perhaps you assumed that the twin calamities of the Internet crash and the Great Recession had doomed the day-trader species in the unruly jungle of American capitalism. But some dreams refuse to die, and few, it seems, are more resilient than the dream of beating the market while wearing nothing but tighty-whities.

Or, if you are Andy Lindloff, a pair of jeans and a black waffle-pattern shirt.

“Banks are seeing a nice little lift,” he says, staring at computer screens one recent Wednesday morning, sipping coffee from a Denver Broncos mug. “The European banks are up, so that may bleed over to ours. Bank of America might be one to watch.”

Mr. Lindloff, 49, is sitting in his living room here in a city known as “surfer’s paradise,” about 25 miles north of San Diego. Surrounded by the playthings of his daughter — a toy oven, a doll house — he appears to be alone. In fact, he has plenty of company. With a hands-free headset, he is speaking to Steve Gomez, his partner in Today Trader, a two-year-old Internet venture that is “about helping traders find success through virtual technology,” as it says on the company’s Web site.

The company charges aspiring traders $199 a month for a live, real-time view of Mr. Lindloff’s computer screen, along with the running banter, commentary and advice that he and Mr. Gomez provide through the morning. (After lunch, it’s just Mr. Lindloff.) The service is billed as a chance to look over the “virtual shoulder” of two veteran stock traders, but you don’t really see anyone’s shoulder. It’s more like staring at the instrument panel of a jet while eavesdropping on the pilots, plus the ceaseless tap-tap of a keyboard.

By the opening bell, 21 subscribers are logged in.

“Citigroup’s at $4.10,” says Mr. Gomez, 43, who is in his home in San Diego. “Probably going to hang around that strike price.”

“AMD is at an interesting stop there, too,” says Mr. Lindloff, hopscotching from one chart to another.

“Keep it tight,” says Mr. Gomez. “Don’t fight the momentum.”

All the while, subscribers send questions and share ideas in a chat room that is part of the service.

“DRYS over 6.”

“MNKD short?”

“Watching this ALD.”

“HBAN?”

It might read like a teenager’s idea of a haiku, but this is the new frontier in do-it-yourself trading. Today Trader and its rivals are tiny operations, and they have modest followings. But they are harnessing all the crowd-sourcing features of the Internet circa 2010: YouTube, Twitter, and companies like GotoMeeting, a Web conferencing service.

They are also harnessing a lot of market-related rage. The gruesome stock plunge of late 2008 and early 2009 was a searing, fool-me-twice moment for many people. The market again seemed hopelessly treacherous, a mug’s game. And if you had an account with the brokerage arm of any number of Wall Street stalwarts — like Lehman Brothers, Citigroup or Merrill Lynch — your losses were doubly galling. Your team helped put a sleeper hold on the economy, the near-collapse of which then ravaged your portfolio.

Even many of those who took the safe route and years ago bought index funds have seen little upside. Look at the performance of the Standard & Poor’s 500, the most popular index out there. If you put $1,000 in it in 1999, you now have slightly less money in your account (about 0.3 percent less, actually).

If the motto of the original day-trade boom was, “If the pros can do it, so can we,” the motto today is, “We can’t do much worse than the pros.”

“There’s this idea out there that retail investors are dumb,” says Howard Lindzon, the co-founder of StockTwits, which curates a gusher of stock tips and financial news alerts tweeted by 20,000 regular contributors. “Well, it turns out that the institutional investors are pretty dumb. They nearly blew us all up with leverage.”

Of course, anyone hoping to join the day-trade caravan had better wear a seat belt, as Mr. Lindloff’s experience on this Wednesday morning demonstrates. Before lunch, he will buy and sell about 44,000 shares, in 17 trades. He starts off poorly, losing about $500. But a timely bet on a company called Rackspace Hosting (“I don’t know what they do,” he says), as well as quick investments in Applied Materials, Eagle Bulk Shipping and a few others, have turned things around.

“Up $210,” he says, removing his headset. Factoring in commissions, he’s made $60.

IT is hard to say how many day traders are currently plying their craft, if that is the right word, in this country. Brokerage firms track the activity and demographics of their customers, but they have been reluctant to share that data. About the most we know is that the day traders skew male, and the number of trades per $100,000 in client dollars is a little less than half what it was back in 2000, according to the Charles Schwab brokerage firm.

Even that figure seems high. As a job, “day trader” registers in roughly the same way as “disco ball manufacturer” or “Brooklyn farmer.” You know that someone has to be making disco balls and that maybe there are still a few plots of arable land in Brooklyn.

Still, it can seem strange to see TV ads for an Atlanta company called Long Term Short Term, which offers two-day investment seminars, as well as DVDs, CDs and online tutoring, in cities across the country. Price: $3,995 a person. Part of the pitch taps into the simmering anger at professional investors.

“People put their trust in stock brokerages that are now out of business, and have seen their 401(k) drop by 40 percent or more,” says Michael Hutchison, an executive vice president of Long Term Short Term, which does business as Better Trades. “Meanwhile, mutual fund companies are making $85 billion a year, and look at their performance. There are people who see all this and think, ‘Why don’t I educate myself?’”

Mr. Hutchinson hastens to add that his company doesn’t encourage anyone to quit a job and trade full time. But more than a few attendees may be looking for a change in career. Many of the new day traders are people who recently lost jobs and can’t find work.

“I get e-mails from people saying, ‘I worked for XYZ company for 20 years and I just got laid off,’” says Brian Shannon of Alphatrends, which, for $60 a month, offers proprietary online videos and a once-a-week live chat. “They’ve got a severance package or a nest egg that they want to invest themselves.”

Mr. Gomez and Mr. Lindloff are among the few who started day trading in the late ’90s and never stopped. At a late breakfast, just after that $60 morning, the two are sitting at a sidewalk cafe. You expect them to be revved up and antsy. Instead, look like members of a mellow Southern California rock band that split up 15 years ago. The most agitated either gets while trading online is the occasional “goddangit,” Mr. Lindloff’s idea of an outburst.

For years, Mr. Gomez was a manager at a self-storage facility, but he couldn’t resist trading commodities during office hours, and he had a hard time keeping his mind on his work. Mr. Lindloff worked at an Isuzu dealership for years, then made cold calls — knocking on doors — for Edward Jones, the brokerage firm. He left after three months.

“I knew I wanted to trade,” he says.

How good are they? Mr. Lindloff, who Mr. Gomez says is the more skilled of the two, says he has averaged somewhere between $100,000 and $120,000 a year for the last 10 years, even during the worst part of the Great Recession. With low expenses, he lives comfortably, though hardly extravagantly.

“I basically have $80,000 to $100,000 in my trading account every day,” he says, “and take my earnings out of that account to live.”

It is, to be sure, an odds-defying performance. The great mass of studies point to the same conclusion: trading is hazardous to your wealth, as an academic paper memorably put it. The losers far outnumber the winners.

Exactly how far is clear from one of the most comprehensive looks at the subject in a yet-to-be-published study conducted in Taiwan. (The country is ideal for this kind of research because all trades go through one place, the Taiwan Stock Exchange, which is willing to share the information.) The authors sifted through tens of millions of trades, from 1992 to 2006, and found that 80 percent of active traders lost money.

“More importantly, we found that if you were to look at the past performance of these traders, only 1 percent of them could be called predictably profitable,” says a co-author, Brad M. Barber, a finance professor at the University of California, Davis. Everyone else, it seems, was on a short-term winning streak. Even those who did modestly well found their that profits were wiped out, and then some, by transaction fees like commissions and taxes.

“It’s not impossible to make money actively trading,” Mr. Barber continues. “There are slivers of people out there who are quite good. And everyone thinks they will be in that group of 1 percent.”

So why do people persist in this line of work?

“The technical term is thrill-seeking,” says Hersh Shefrin, a professor of behavioral finance at Santa Clara University in California and author of “Beyond Greed and Fear,” an exploration of investors’ mindscapes. “There’s an adrenaline rush. And the thing about day trading is that it gives you pretty quick feedback. If you buy and hold, a lot of things need to happen before you see a result, and much of what happens relates to external factors that are beyond your control. With day trading, you’re in charge.”

Also, he says, “people enjoy trading.”

IF Mr. Lindloff is earning steady six-figure returns, he is squarely in the rarefied 1 percent of winners. But for $199 a month you sort of expect a man with a mansion, a hot tub and hyperbolic claims of double-digit returns. Why do a few dozen subscribers pay to watch these quite appealing but hardly world-beating guys at work?

“Eighty percent of it is camaraderie,” says Mr. Lindzon at StockTwits. “Look, my wife watches cooking shows and I tell her, ‘That’s not going to make you a better cook.’ With these guys, you get a community, you get to hang out with people who love stocks, and if you get a couple great ideas in a month, even better.”

Services like Twitter are naturals for traders, and not just because they offer a geyser of pointers, whispers and news flashes. They also give a far-flung group of people a simulacrum of fellowship, which is something that day traders need almost as much as good ideas.

Asked about the Today Trader method of buying and selling, both men seem momentarily stumped, as if they never saw the question coming. Then they talk about the search for “set-ups,” which seems to translate roughly as “golden opportunities,” but they struggle to put a finger on what set-ups are, or how to spot them.

It has something to do with tracking trading volumes of stocks and buying heavily traded stocks as they rise in price. But how to know a stock will keep rising? Intuition, they say. It tells them whether they’ve arrived at the party too late (in which case they won’t buy), at the right time (in which case they buy), or just before it ends (time to sell).

“A common phrase in this business,” says Mr. Lindloff, “is ‘the trend is your friend.’”

The more you listen, the more you realize that for all the high-tech gadgetry behind Today Trader, at its core is a Newtonian principle formulated more than 300 years ago: a body in motion tends to stay in motion.

The problem is that stocks aren’t bodies and their motion is subject to forces Newton could never have fathomed. Some of those forces are hard for the Today Trader duo to fathom, too. Mr. Gomez says that day trading has become far trickier in recent years because of the rise of robo trading — the use of computers to automatically buy and sell huge numbers of shares in superfast bursts, based on algorithms.

Big, muscular Wall Street veterans like Goldman Sachs have the money, smarts and brute power to dominate this computerized battle, and many day traders may not even be aware how outgunned they now are.

“It’s not something we fully understand, but algorithms don’t have emotions,” says Mr. Gomez. “It’s like these machines can smell a human. They can smell the fear of a discretionary trader. Stocks will still go from Point A to Point B. But what used to be a waltz is now more like mosh pit.”

Daily hand-to-hand combat with a bunch of robots? It seems kind of crazy. But is it any crazier than leaving your money in the same place where it languished for the last decade?

This is a not a simple question. Fortunately, one man is ideally suited to answer it.

UNFORTUNATELY, Charles Schwab doesn’t do interviews.

This is ironic, as has been noted by reporters who have come calling of late, because the company has spent five years and a fortune on an ad campaign whose kicker is “Talk to Chuck.” But in 2008, Mr. Schwab vacated the C.E.O. job — he is now chairman — and the company would like to wean the public off the idea that Charles Schwab is the public face of Charles Schwab.

No small feat, given the name of the company and given the ubiquity of that face in many years of advertising. Mr. Schwab once said he took his grandchildren out trick-or-treating on Halloween and some people thought he was wearing a Charles Schwab mask.

Though he wore a jacket and tie in his TV spots, he seemed to have the heart and soul of a revolutionary. The idea behind the company was to cut commission rates so low — they started off at $70 a trade in 1975, which was then a steal — that the average investor could trade without paying exorbitant fees to Wall Street. If day trading had a patron saint, it was this man.

The current C.E.O. is Walt Bettinger, 49, who is sitting one morning in his San Francisco office, which is next to Mr. Schwab’s and has a killer view of the Bay Bridge. He knows the subject is day trading, and you can tell he finds this topic slightly annoying, the way a movie star would find it annoying if you asked about a film he made 20 years ago.

“I think the day-trade concept is a paragraph in the story of Charles Schwab,” he says. “But it’s not the book.”

The book, he says, is Schwab’s evolution from a company that was just focused on what he calls “self-directed investors” to a company that also offers advice to those who seek it and full-on portfolio management for those who prefer to leave their investment decisions in someone else’s hands.

As a strategy, this makes sense because it turns out that traders are fickle customers. Even during the banner years, Mr. Bettinger said, the company had to constantly replenish its base of very active traders.

The push to advise clients and to manage portfolios started gaining traction in 2005, and the company says that last year, customers moved $21 billion into assorted fee-based advice offerings — which suggests that the era of professional hand-holding in the wealth-management world is hardly over.

Schwab now offers every item at the steam table of financial offerings, and Mr. Bettinger will not say he prefers one investment strategy to any other. He is, in fact, completely agnostic on the question and surpassingly unhelpful at opining about day trading. If that works for you, do it, he’ll say. Unless you’d like someone to manage your money — in which case, do that.

It is a politic, even-handed answer that proves just how over the whole trading phenomenon the company is. Schwab today is a bit like that part-time insurrectionist you knew in college who denounced “the man” and later became a management consultant. You can understand the evolution and appreciate the maturity, but you can still think fondly of the days when he stood outside the dining hall pushing copies of The Workers Vanguard.

About the most Mr. Bettinger will say about day trading is that it’s a “tough gig.” “You’re competing against mega-institutions that are trading in hundredths of a second.”

HE’S right, and the Today Trader team keeps clashing with those mega-institutions. At one point, Mr. Lindloff buys shares in Patterson-UTI Energy, because he thinks it looks ripe for an uptick. Instead, it dives a few cents, and because Mr. Lindloff has an automatic stop on the trade — which sells the shares if they dip below a certain threshold — they are sold for a loss. A moment later, the shares shoot up.

Mr. Lindloff thinks he has been juked and jived by a robo trader.

“That was nothing but an algorithm boogie,” he mutters to the Today Trader faithful. “Goddang it. Drives me crazy.”

“My analogy is that whole sector is doing great and they find one weak animal in a herd,” replies Mr. Gomez, “and they’ll attack it.”

Mr. Gomez trades his own accounts but spends much of his time answering questions posted in the chat room. One is from a subscriber, Rick, who asks, “What do you guys do to stop kicking yourself (emotionally) about missed opportunity?”

“The only thing you can control is your attitude,” Mr. Gomez replies into his microphone, moments after the question is posted. “Not looking back, not kicking yourself for not catching the whole move. You’re never going to be perfect. Nobody is going to be perfect.”

Not even Today Trader. By the end of the day, Mr. Lindloff has traded 60,000 shares and is up $165. It would be a satisfying return, but commissions on those trades cost $300.

“You know,” says Mr. Gomez, “a lot of people tell us that our down days are every bit as instructive as our ups.”