Archive
I hardly leave Baudha, our cozy village-like neighborhood on the outskirt of Kathmandu city. But with a classmate it is fun to go downtown through the bumpy dusty roads. The seat of the Nepal manuscript archives also hosts the archeology department, that mythical place that stamps all statues and artefacts leaving Nepal. And mistakenly that is where we go first. This tiny grey office filled with administrative rubbish adorns any export artefact with a bright red wax stamp fixed on a little cotton string. It comes with a short handwritten note – you may call it custom poetry. Soon we find our first link to the actual archives: a red lipstick lady sitting in front of a computer in a deserted office. Kindly she indicates “five number room” a bit further on the same side of the building. Never sure whether we get it right and what we are actually looking for, we follow cryptic indications that lead us in and out of the buil...