Skip to main content

The search for a Living in Nepal

 There are cravings that a person must fulfill in this world, and they can mostly be categorized into two types: material and spiritual. The spiritual one is highly individual and requires a different sort of effort than the materialistic one. Today, I would like to talk about my materialistic needs. As a person born and raised in Nepal, an underdeveloped nation in Asia, I, like most other Nepalis, have to find means not only to support myself but also to support my family, however possible. Even though I have chosen the written word as a medium for my spiritual fulfillment, I must admit that it is not a viable way to make a modest living, at least here at home.

I am reminded of a quote by Gabriel García Márquez: "If you're going to be a writer, you have to be one of the great ones... After all, there are better ways to starve to death." Well, we all can't be the great ones, now can we? So, as a means to make a living, I have chosen a quieter profession that I have been practicing for a year or so now—teaching. I mostly teach mathematics to a few students here and there. My father has taught mathematics for more than 25 years. He never wished for me to become a teacher, at least not for the financial rewards, which are not quite satisfactory. I can attest to that now.

The one field where teachers in Nepal seemingly earn more than most managers is teaching English as a Foreign Language (IELTS, TOEFL, PTE, etc.). I almost hold a Master’s degree in English Literature (I have yet to submit my thesis, as I want to take my time with that). However, with proper dedication to teaching myself how to better teach English to students, I might be able to earn a modest living. I would rather not promote students going abroad to make a meager living, but I am aware of the lack of opportunities for them here at home. It is sad that we must face the fact that our nation is experiencing a brain drain crisis—a crisis that would be devastating to any country. Here I am, confessing that I am about to practice, hypocritically, the very act that I know will contribute to further brain drain down the line. I make no presumptions of goodness in doing this, other than the fact that it is my only means of making a sufficient living here at home.


Tribhuvan International Airport, Nepal.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nepal Ascendant the 2300s: Imagining a Future as a Global Power

 I've been reading and learning about world history. The lessons I can take from it are many. What amazes me is that there are so few key events that shape history; much more is shaped by various wild probabilities and chances that determine who we are today. As a student of Literature, I am interested in learning about the truth just as much as about fiction. After all, fictional worlds often imitate the real one, and sometimes it's the opposite as well. Yesterday, while talking with a friend of mine, I had an insight: in the Nepali literary scene, there are hardly any fictional works that try to imagine a future for Nepal, purely in fictional terms. The idea is to write about Nepal as an underdeveloped nation reaching the heights of a superpower, with the span of this dramatic rise taking place over decades or centuries. Imagining a few aspects of this story excited me, but working on it and actually thinking of the conditions that might result in that kind of importance on t...
Post a Comment
Read more

How my Nepali parents raised me and How I'm changing : A personal story

 Comparison is the thief of joy. At least, that's how it has been for most of my life. If you knew my folks, you'd understand—growing up, it was always about who scored better in exams: me or my friends. This instilled in me the belief that I had to compete and compare myself with others to earn the love I deserved. It's not their fault; I was their first child, and many other parents in our society acted the same way. But this constant comparison of everything you do and have with someone else stifles your satisfaction. What years of reading self-help books and incredible fiction has taught me is that even the great people who led the world were once trapped in this same mindset. So what changed for them? Most of them started competing with themselves—comparing who they were yesterday with who they are today, and with who they want to become tomorrow. This is one powerful way to transform your life, and I am working on putting it into practice. I still catch myself compari...
Post a Comment
Read more

How does a Nepali feel in a new land ?

 From James Baldwin's "Stranger in a Village" ; "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." As the story goes, I understand it is about a clash of cultures, a clash that probably let those cultures meet; the black and the white one, American-made. I see those ideas that underlie there everywhere around me as well, maybe in different terms. I do not understand my own culture deep enough to talk about it, but I do feel there is a necessity of un-reality that surrounds it. By un-reality, I mean a way of seeing things that are a tad different than the way things actually are. Nepalis are an optimistic bunch; most of us believe fate will play its role and good will come out of everything—a far stretch from the reality that we live in. We're not chained down or enslaved physically but mentally. I feel the unea...
Post a Comment
Read more