Kamal is one of the guys that I’m living with this summer. This past week, his mother and aunt stayed at our house. They are both Brahmin Hindus, always wearing saris and tikas. One evening, Kamal’s neighbor, an overweight Newari woman (an ethnic group in Nepal, particularly prominent in Kiritpur), came over. The three women wanted me to take their picture. After I took it, Kamal looked at it and burst into to laughter. I couldn’t figure out what it was about, and finally he said in English, “The Newar is fat, and the Brahmins are thin. It’s a buffalo and two goats!” I laughed nervously, hoping he’d stop, but he went right ahead and told the women in Nepali (none of the women understand English). They all laughed and the Newari woman hit Kamal jokingly.
I found it very interesting that he had no self-restraint in what he was saying about the weight of these women, specifically in relation to their ethnicity. Whether he meant it as a joke and they knew it, I’m not sure, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard a Nepali comment about someone’s weight, appearance, occupation or ethnicity in ways that, for the most part, would be socially unacceptable in the United States.
