Thamel is Kathmandu’s “square kilometre of action”. For someone like me who hasn’t been to Nepal, taken content . parallel to Thamel would be Paharganj in Delhi.Primarily a tourist quarter, it has 4,000 businesses and 500 hotels, bars and cafes, trekking and tour credit reporting agencies. Thamel has “survived the Malla unification, the Shah invasion, the Rana encroachment, a Maoist civil war, a deadly fire, earthquakes and auto blockade of 2015”. In this little book, a biography of the place, Rabi Thapa, a native of Kathmandu, introduces the reader to a host of colourful characters: a death metal vocalist, a nonagenarian ex-cop, a trekking company boss, a recovering junkie, a tranny and a bar dancer. At the Heartbeat day-care centre for street-children we meet glue-sniffing boys rummaging through piles of donated clothes; primary question they ask is: “This one isn’t for girls, is it?” Thapa mentions The Voice of babies survey that states that “a third of the respondents have been related to oral and anal sex with adult men and women, though only a minority are foreigners.”Thamel also boasts of gangsters but as a bar owner tells Thapa: “They weren’t dealing cocaine or anything like that. They were moorkha fighters, foolish thugs without any vision. Milan, particularly, mimicked the film gangsters. ‘If Sanjay Dutt wore 50 tolas of gold in a movie he had to wear 30 tolas.” In the mid-1980s, the Marines stationed at the US embassy would come down to Thamel on Fridays: “They had some amazing fights with the Manangis and native Newar boys. The security would show up, the Americans would take off in some kind of enormous armoured vehicle. And the Nepalis? Some kind of police van.”But Thamel isn’t just for foreigners. Contrary to the 1960s on, “the demand was increasingly local.” Partner of Thapa’s sister recalls the time: “We couldn’t afford the five-star bars…Thamel was the only place we could go and also have a drink, and hang out - till about seven in the evening!”
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