Aashish Mishra

The Kathmandu Valley was once arguably the largest open-air museum in the world. Three whole districts – Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur – and their settlements seemingly frozen in time. The houses were marvels on their own, specifically designed for the climate of Kathmandu; the alleys that people wandered seemed to get narrower with every step until suddenly, it opened up into a large courtyard, comparable to rivers flowing into a lake; and centuries-old temples and rest houses located around every turn. Everything in Kathmandu was a heritage.

And for a long time, we understood this. We understood the importance of Kathmandu’s physical makeup to our national identity, civilisation and culture. That is why we did not mess with it. We did not build over our ponds, encroach upon our Bahals, destroy our Hitis and build houses taller than they needed to be. We lived a sustainable life in a sustainable city. But then came the 1960s and brought with it western ideas of development.

Suddenly, our houses, built with locally available materials, became a sign of poverty and backwardness.
Cement was the new fad, pushed and promoted by the government. Concrete houses became a sign of wealth and social status, a notion reinforced by King Mahendra’s demolition of the old Narayanhiti Palace made with Bajra (a mixture of pozzolanic materials like burnt pieces of bricks, sand and lime in 1:3:1 ratio which gave the building a “breathing capacity”) and its replacement with one made of concrete.

As we entered the 70s, our fascination with concrete developed into a fetish and we began cementing everything. From homes to temples to stupas to ponds and roads, in our quest to fix what was not broken, we cemented every surface we could find. And as the 80s and the 90s rolled around, Kathmandu came under attack by the new notions of development and urbanisation. Tall houses became desirable because people wanted to rent out rooms to an increasing number of immigrants coming to the valley from other parts of the country and also because towering over the neighbours was seen as a statement of power and position. An increasing population also led to a rise in the demand for housing which turned the valley’s land into real estate. Canals, ponds, Hitis and Phalchas were now seen as a nuisance occupying land that could instead be sold for millions. So, they began to be torn down or covered up to make space for houses. The expansion of the intra-valley road network and the growth in vehicle ownership did not help either. By the early 2000s, Kathmandu had well and truly lost its soul.

If we want, we can be optimistic about the positive signs we have seen over the last decade. People now understand the need to conserve our past for a sustainable future.
Light has finally been shed on how scientific our past settlements were and democracy has given citizens a say in development policies. But, are they too little too late? We have lost too much of Kathmandu to ever be able to recover. Water no longer flows from our stone spouts – their channels and canals have been destroyed. Many of our ponds, dahas and kundas have been built over and the ones that still exist, exist as stagnant pools without inlets and outlets.

Our skyline today is dominated by malls, towers and apartments, not pagodas and domed stupas. The number of temples, rest houses, dabalis and other communal buildings we have lost is too large to even comprehend. We can also never regain our lush fields which have been consumed by concrete monstrosities. The loss of rivers, despite what we tell ourselves, is also permanent.
Of course, we need to conserve what we have left but I cannot help but feel that the much we lost was what made Kathmandu Kathmandu.