I launched my first book and I dare you to forget the event!

The skies could not simply contain themselves as the pre-monsoon rains thrashed everyone and the wind blew away the monstrous PVC/Polyester banners.

It was five minutes prior to the scheduled opening of the program. The publishers asked me for the final call on whether they should move the book launch program indoors. We checked on AccuWeather. Someone even rang to the weather forecast department of Nepal government. Same answer: cloudy but only around 20 percent chance of rain.

We took the gamble and started the program with all the smiles in the beautiful Dabali inside the Nepal Academy premises:

As if to prove our fallibility in weather prediction, it started to shower lightly almost immediately. Still, it was manageable until Kedar Bhakta Mathema, the octogenarian light of Nepal’s dimming academia spoke and yes, lavished praise on me and the book:

I don’t know what pleased the skies so much at the moment. But then the gears shifted and it started raining heavily, eventually clearing the fetid Kathmandu air of its months-long smog but also emptying this outdoor space and forcing all these kindhearted people to the safety below the roof:

By the time I went to the podium for the speech, the wind had also started blowing hard. As I was about to conclude the shortened speech, the banner collapsed in the stage even though two poor souls from the publishing team were desperately clinging to the anchors to avoid the collapse.

May be Mother Nature was in a retaliatory mood for my hypocrisy in using such an environmentally destructive material while calling people to change their ecocidal habits. (In my meaningless defense, I’d say that the banner was already printed by the time I called the publishers to avoid it.)

Almost half of the potential attendees were held either at home or midway through their journey to the venue because of the weather.

Still, it was a fun experience.

Here is what will follow the publication of the book. I’m soon starting the work to transforming the first long chapter—the story from birth of the solar system to the potentially imminent collapse of human civilization—of the book into an illustrated booklet for the schoolchildren.

Second, for the sake of climate literacy in Nepal, I’ve decided to barge in into the world of the young people: Tiktok. And the initial results are promising with 25k+ views over two days for the Hiroshima story that I’ve quoted from David Suzuki documentary in the interview.

Here is the full interview I gave to Setopati recollecting 4-5 striking stories that have found space in my book:

Those in Nepal can buy the book online here. For Nepali speakers worldwide, the publishers have reassured me that the book will be available at Amazon within two weeks. For non-Nepali speakers, I can’t promise the timeline but I’m looking for ways to bring about my works in English. The illustrated booklet based on first chapter of the book will, though, be in both Nepali and English.

I hope some of you will be writing me back after reading the whole book soon. I came across some readers who finished reading the book within two days and that was really encouraging.

Look forward to interacting with you in this forum also. Cheers!

If you missed my earlier post detailing what all the book is about, you may check this out: