The Sherpa Ponbo of Sherpagaon

Articles, Popular Articles July 26, 2026

The Sherpa Ponbo of Sherpagaon: The Last Keeper of the Invisible World

When I stepped back onto the village road, motorcycles continued to pass, children still laughed somewhere down the slope, and neighbours greeted one another before continuing home. Nothing suggested that, inside one ordinary house, sat the last practicing Ponbo of Sherpagaon, holding a lineage preserved not through books but through memory, apprenticeship, and family. Whether another Ponbo will emerge after Pemsangay Sherpa remains unknown. But one thing is certain: traditions disappear long before the last practitioner dies, when their stories are no longer remembered.

Read More

Dazzling Darjeeling

Kumar Subba

Obituary January 21, 2022

In Memorium: Kumar Subba

There was something about the voice that felt so heavenly the first time I heard it in the National Panasonic tape recorder that my family had recently bought back in the mid 1980s. I was barely 12 then, and I had just started listening to greats like Mohd Rafi and Kishore Kumar, along with new singers like Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan Jha. However, the Nepali songs like the ones sung by the legendary Kumar Subba were something else, and they swam through my cerebral cortex like a wakeful dream, the lyrics, the voice quality, the music notes, all easy on the ears and relaxing me to the hilt.