Two days after Pokhara we headed for Naranghat. I went with the BDS bus as Deep has gone trekking in Upper Mustang with his family for the holidays. The schedule keeps changing so it is very hard to plan one’s life outside the Beauty and Brains and if one does the dates will change to the week you planned to do something else. Subass is valiently trying to keep me posted, and for all my “definite, definite?” I know it is not in his control.
Naranghat is described in the lonely planet as a bus stop of a town. It is large, sprawling and most buses do stop there on their way to east and west Nepal. It is a busy, hot, humid and flat town. Unlike Katmandu, there are rickshaws everywhere. Naranghat might be a bus stop but it cannot be dismissed as only that. It is the gateway to Nepal. Much of what comes into Nepal passes through Naranghat. Indeed the province of Chitwan has many intellectuals and is where many of the Maoist leaders come from. There is even talk of moving the capital of Nepal there. I can see the advantages such as good location, communication links and room to expand, but personally I think it would be a mistake as it is far too hot. It made work hard.
The office of BDS is call Human Consciousness Society. Another R, who is gay rather than transgender, runs it. He is HIV+ and explains his situation well. He discovered he was HIV+ after failing the medical in Dubai. Even when told he was HIV+ he was given no information, no councilling and no support. He did not know what having HIV meant. His family’s way of helping was to try and arrange a marriage for him. This seems a typical to response when confronted with anything to do with LBGTI. Needless to say it did not work out. R was isolated until he found BDS. I know many people who are HIV+ but R was the first person Sameer had ever met with HIV. HIV/AIDs is not something that the general population is familiar with. The office seems really efficient at education and outreach and has good links with the community. A press conference was organized to promote the contest. Not all press ignores LBGTI issues as I first thought. However, the Naranghat press did have a problem with the title of the show. They did not think that transgenders could be beautiful. Beauty for many of them is exclusively female. This point was not resolved in the meeting, but I do wonder if the contest helped the journalists changed their minds.
Training. It was hot. The Pokhara contest had upped the stakes in terms of the talent round. Many of the Katmandu and Naranghat contestants had gone to Pokhara to support their friends so had seen how the talent round had changed the result. They could not be complacent. This group were coached hard on their performances by the trainers. The people that stood out for me were Sondya who is very beautiful and did the most original drama so far, the stunning Melina, local girl Sushma who is determinedly trying to teach me Nepali and Jyoti who has a haute couture look and is articulate and well educated
The show was delayed, as Sunil’s plane was late. He is now something of a celebrity and it was felt the show couldn’t start without him. The theatre was packed. It was larger than the Pokhara place. The competition was close. Sondya, Jyoti (who did a speech), Melina (who read a poem), Swashstika (who did a drama) dominated the talent round. The top five was Jyoti, Sondya, Melina and the two local girls Sushma and Anjeli. The top five could not all be from Kathmandu. The audience was behind Anjeli and Sushma. Anjeli did badly in the question round. The best answers were Jyoti, Sondya and Sushma. Melina was a little hesitant. The final result was 2nd runner up – Jyoti, 1st runner up – Sondya and the winner was Sushma.
Next we go east to Biratigar. Because of the floods in that area we have not met these contestants yet. Because of the roads we have to fly. I leave tomorrow at 8am.
I’ll write again when I’m back.
