Summer Love established him as one of the popular writers in Nepal, and his next two works, Saaya and Monsoon, sealed in that fate. Subin Bhattarai, best known for his love stories, has always managed to deliver just exactly what the readers want and it’s no wonder that people are eagerly awaiting his next book. In the meanwhile, The Week caught up with him to learn more about his interests and inspirations to understand the writer, we have come to love, a little better.

As an actor, he has been able to reach out to every generation through his satirical comedy acts. Madan Krishna Shrestha is not only an entertainer but also an extremely influential figure who has been successful in spreading awareness about numerous social and political issues. This creative mind never fails to bring an interesting and influential piece of work before us, and he is now working on his autobiography ‘Maha ko Ma’ which is to be out on the first week of September this year. Swasti Gautam caught up with the brilliant actor to bring to you the other side of this wonderful artist, illuminating his interests in literature and writing.

Hajuri Bista’s journey from housewife to entrepreneur started with her spending six months searching for skill development training programs till she finally got an opportunity at WEAN, Women Entrepreneurs Association of Nepal. This was 24 years ago. Today, Bista owns the pickle brands, Navaras and Kitchen Recipe. Both the brands specialize in pickles made with Nepali spices.

I don’t really like attending weddings because all that women seem to do at these functions is show off their ‘golden’ stuff and expensive saris. I tell my wife that it is better to wear fake jewelries rather than breaking one’s neck (and the bank in the process) with tons of gold. And what’s the deal with saris and lehengas costing not just a few thousand rupees but more than half a lakh these days? Why do most women buy new saris every few months? And because of Facebook, you can’t be caught wearing the same sari at another wedding even if it’s after a few years because you will have pictures of the previous party wearing the same stuff somewhere out there.

You needn’t bother with the next few lines of that celebrated song because our country roads are not designed to take us anywhere, never mind home. Around this time every year the monsoon lays bare our infrastructural deficiencies – whether it is the death trap‘roads’ in far flung parts of the country,the only ‘highway’ connecting Kathmandu with the rest of the country or even the major roads in the capital. I’ve been in Nepal for quite a while now and the roads of the capital, in particular, are as bad as I’ve ever seen them.

There are traffic lights in 35 junctions of Kathmandu but, at the moment, not a single one is functioning. In fact it’s been years since Kathmandu residents even saw them flicker. In all this while, the metropolitan traffic police department has been handling traffic in the capital manually. While the public suffers because of mismanaged traffic, the authorities don’t seem to be all that concerned about the non-functional lights. What’s going on with the traffic lights in Kathmandu? Neeraj Chandra Roy reports.

In the original “Planet of the Apes” movies, Caesar and his simian co-stars were buried beneath layers of prosthetic makeup, severely limiting their ability to emote. In Fox’s recently rebooted “Apes” trilogy (three and counting), the computer-generated chimps appear more human than the homo sapiens — which is clearly what the series has been working up to. In purely technical terms, director Matt Reeves more than achieves that goal, although it requires rigging the screenplay and reducing the human characters to crass two-dimensional stereotypes in the process.

SoundCloud has introduced us to quite a few artists that we currently cannot do without. If you haven’t already, then it’s time to add Rajan Shrestha, bass guitarist of the post-rock act Jindabaad, to the list. Shrestha’s debut album Cinema, out on Bangalore based record label Consolidate, is worth a listen and many more.

She has a degree in environmental law but you will also find her instructing zumba or piloxing classes at various fitness studios across town. Grishma Bista believes in living a life where you work hard, extremely hard, to make your dreams come true. But this ambitious young woman isn’t only focused on improving her own life. She recently organized a charity event to help children in Kenya.

Some lines are just hard to forget. As any reader can attest, you don’t even have to go on a hunt for quotable quotes, some lines just stick with us. The Week asked some readers if they would like to share theirs with us. It’s not like we planned to collect worthy life lessons but their picks this time around just turned out that way.