I grew up in city, concrete surrounding me everywhere, so I didn’t had much of vocational or practical training. I did all what a typical boy in city would do, go to school in weekdays and got to Tundhikhel or Narayan Chaur to play Cricket/Soccer during the weekends. The reason I brought up this issue is recently I made a fool of myself when using a knife.

Most Americans are competent in using various tools (they have tools for everything) in their daily life. Most know how to fix their own car, and majority of them love hunting. It’s all part of their culture. Last week at work I had to cut open a sturdy package, so I had to borrow knife from my colleague. When I asked does anyone have knife, everyone reached their pockets and took it out. I also got a glare from few with disbelief that I don’t own one. People here love carrying ‘multi tool in one’ kind of stuff, similar to Swiss knife. We Nepali, especially me, don’t have the culture of carrying something like that because we are so dependent on someone else to fix our utilities, unlike people here who even make their own houses (not the whole house, but something like putting new bathroom, remodeling the kitchen, adding a patio etc). If we do carry something like that it will be more for a showoff rather than use itself. I am wondering if there can be any use of it in Nepal; I will be carrying one with me to Nepal to see how helpful it can be in our daily life. Coming back to my office incident, I borrowed the biggest one and as I was about to cut the box, everyone gave a huge gasp, one of them hurried and open the box for me. It’s not that I am stupid not to know how to hold and cut with a knife, it’s just that I undermined the potential of that particular knife and ignored the safety basics. That’s where my lack of practical experience caught me off guard.


Couple of days later one of my officemate brought two knives for me and asked me to choose one. He thought I need to have one to get a hang of it, and it’s always nice for Biologist like me to carry one with me whenever I go to the field. I thanked him for his offer but didn’t take his knife; I promised him that I will get one for myself soon. I learnt that he is very enthusiastic about guns and knives; after all he is from Louisiana, a sportsman paradise. He has a huge collection of knives, and he even created few knives from the old steels that he found in the rubble. He was very excited to know that I am from Nepal, because he loved Khukuri. He had one replica of Khukuri that someone brought him from India. As he sat there talking about the design of the Khukuri which leads to more control, balance, effective point of impact, etc, I couldn’t feel prouder.

Although our country is underdeveloped and in political mess right now, I always thought there should be something good produced from Nepal, a country with relatively older history. Like Swiss have Chocolate and Watch, like Germans have BMW and Mercedes, we too have something. A something that is produced after generations of use and refining, something that is unique, something that has a glorious history, and something that has been scientifically proven for its effectiveness. Yes, our very own Khukuri.