Gone, I guess, are the glorious days of McDonald’s Restaurant and Bar with Dance and Cabin in Thamel.
As I watched the news that night on effervescent Nepal Television -- yes, some of us do watch our national broadcast, I tried to get adjusted to the familiar etches of the franchise on my Kathmandu streets. It would seem that McDonald’s is now only two steps away from marching through Nepal with its mighty golden arches. In 1997 my family moved to Hong Kong where I was enrolled at an international school in Kowloon City and was embarrassed that all the seven-year-olds, from all the 30 plus different other countries in the whole wide world, had one thing in common -- their love for this funny fellow named Ronald McDonald and a happy meal. Ronald McDonald? Happy Meal? The seven-year-old-me felt so small and stupid that I couldn’t chime in about my love for them too.
In the course of some four years we lived there, I developed the obligatory childhood love for the Mcflurry and collected shiny plastic toys. It was around this same time that my parents began asking me questions all too big for a kid, it might have something to do with the crazy hours they kept, rushing to the library and forgetting to eat themselves that some of our quality family time involved questions like what does God look like? (I don’t know. A king? A cloud?). What do you do with guilt? (Ignore it?). Do you understand we punish you because we love you? (No, not at all).
In fourth grade and along the same lines I was telling my father I wanted to make Nepal like Hong Kong. He asked me what that meant. I said I wanted to build the kinds of buildings and stores and elevators and clean roads and he interrupted my listing, asking me if this is what ‘development’ meant. Just the way he asked, I knew I had the wrong idea, but I didn’t know what the right one was; I wanted to build a Nepal with McDonald’s (so that all the kids could be happy and we could trade our toys) and KFC (where my mom especially likes the mushroom sauce with mashes potatoes) and Pizza Hut (where I loved the salmon soup that came in the bowl topped with a soft baked shell).
After my parents graduated and returned to Nepal, my sister and I were enrolled in an international school in North India. This time starting in middle school, I, once again, represented the only country on campus (aside from Bhutan) that did not boast such a franchise. It mattered little that the Subway in India was considered a middle/upper-middle class joint. The point is they all had it and little old me, from the (then) Kingdom of Nepal, did not. Later on in 11th grade I went to Australia and my friends expressed their disgust for the greasy burgers and groaned about how there was a McDonald’s “within one kilometer of another anywhere in Melbourne” – I didn’t bother to check if it was true but it wasn’t until I went off to the US for college that I began to take pride and would offer fun facts about my “exotic” Nepal - “oh and did you know we don’t allow fast food joints in my country?” (So what if I stretched the truth one sly bit?).
Sophomore year, I picked up Eric Schlosser’s renowned Fast Food Nation, watched Morgan Spurlock’s get fat and dumped on Supersize Me, went back for a double Cheeseburger and announced to my soul and anyone who’d listen that Nepal was better off - both socially and economically without such evils destroying our body and society.
I chose to ignore the fun fact my Economic Development professor offered a year after my above mentioned enlightenment; Dim Sum joints across Hong Kong cleaned up their bathroom as McDonald’s popped up all over Hong Kong because the latter maintained hygiene as a priority. So it’s not all bad news. Remind me again, if you can, how clean bathroom are frustrating to use.
But, two years after college - horror of horrors - it comes knocking in on my door! Only this time it isn’t standing grand and tall as it does today in post-Soviet era Yalta, Ukraine; the golden arches staring down Lenin dear across the street is only slightly hilarious (please note my tongue-in-cheek here). KFC and Pizza Hut in Kathmandu today...and well, each of us know the millions that will follow soon after. Though, I can’t say I would object to a Dunkin Donuts coffee or Krispy Kreme’s doughnut anywhere in the world. As a matter of principle I can’t really be frothing at the mouth against Yum! Brands & Co if I am going to down my coke in Rukum, click with my Canon G9, sigh over Crème Brulee at Chez Caroline or wait in line at Jai Nepal for Watchmen. So even I’m not particularly thrilled to have these fast food joints slowly barging in, you won’t see me boycotting the finger lickin’ goodness.
Fact is: global brands have a whole lot to do with the appetite of a national market which has a lot to do with development.
I’m not going to get into how KFC = development. Or, on the opposite, how it is the evil truth of development -- let’s leave that to development economists and theorists, but suffice to say, those guys in corporate America and corporate Delhi opening up this branch here says something.
Just like the opening of an authorized apple dealer at Sherpa Mall or the 4-by-4 Swarovski Store at City Center does – it says we are nurturing enough of a middle class that such companies expect their investment in such stores and sectors - within Nepal - to reap enough profits and make it worth the buck. Now, tell me how an emerging middle class is a problem. So, should I even venture into Rolex watches, Zara design wear and Illy’s coffee that are all of our guilty pleasures? Well, all of us that can afford or save enough to indulge in anyway.
So what if the chicken is being imported from Brazil? The way I see it, this is all the more incentive for Nepali poultry farms to deliver on quality and quantity. But, we all know a part of becoming develop-“ing” will do nothing for those at the bottom of Jeffery Sachs’ – at one of time my soul’s favorite economist – “development ladder”. It might open up a few job and/or make the lower-than-middle-class feel even worse off because they can’t afford a happy meal. Poverty, like wealth, is relative. But, this is no different to the hoard of other restaurants that start by asking Rs. 400 plus for a mid-day meal.
So Rs. 69 for a Veg Burger at KFC Kathmandu is not really worth pointing to and acting as though you are so brilliant to ask – well, can an average Nepali afford this? Because, no, just like they can’t afford the Salmon Salad at Casa De Cass or a Sirloin Sandwich at Red Dingo, but were you so outraged when those two opened? I’ll shut up if you are wearing a Daura Surwal, sitting in your mud hut and eating kodoko dhindo with a sarkyam. And I’ll be frozen in mock fright if you were to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Jose Bove, the infamous French farmer who bulldozed a McDonalds under construction in Millau.
The thing is, I would like to think that it may still be possible to have such franchise and simultaneously retain that which is so Nepali -- MoMo, Chowmein, Chicken Chilly and Fried Rice, if they are at all. If the thousand-plus Momo stalls and chia pasal and bhattis and chiura-choela from Freak Street disappear, then I’ll have to mourn the death of such phenomenal cultural and historical giants, but till then go ahead and loosen that chain because one KFC is hardly enough for the Kathmandu crowd.
No one will get hurt if you go and grab a burger and fries every once in a while. But, we will be seriously hurt – both environmentally, physically and socio-economically if Wai Wai and its step-sister Mayos and their illegitimate cousins, Preeti and Ruchi noodles continue to be transported on a doko in the most remote parts of Nepal on a daily basis – rain or shine. This is where the real problem lies, for Rs. 9, you can apparently enjoy an entire meal in a packet – why I even hear it is packed with protein and all vitamins, yes, Vitamin A, B, C, D and E! How about Vitamin F and U?
Stuffing the silly contents down the throats of 7-year-old for lunch on a regular basis meanwhile chucking the plastic – hello NON-DEGRABABLE – off the side of the hills isn’t fooling me. I neither like the noodles or the scene it is creating. But, nobody seems concerned about this. Let’s do it right, we can munch on our chicken - both out of the bucket and off of a tapari. We can profess our new found love affairs Pizza Hut and how we were the first ones to taste KFC Chicken Wings in Kathmandu. Just don’t go pretending it can substitute our good old daal-bhaat-tarkari on a daily basis; otherwise your heart will clog and you will be panting for help.
I suppose there was a time when a bottle of coke wasn’t available in Rukum at any time of the year, while the complaint today is that it isn’t available throughout the year. Be patient, you’ll be que-ing up in Musikot for a small fries and diet coke before I turn 40. But, you won’t find me there everyday.
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