How Ranging Is The Eastern Himalaya? with Dr. Mona Chettri

Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

Sony Music

Science, Self-improvement, Comedy, Education, Society & Culture

4.9 • 21.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What comes to mind when you think of the Himalaya? For Jonathan, it’s a whole lot of questions! This week’s guest Dr. Mona Chettri gives us a glimpse at life in the eastern Himalaya, including how political borders have shaped the region; what’s changing amidst rapid development; and what the future might hold for young residents. Mona Chettri is a Post-Doctoral Research fellow at the Australia-India Institute, University of Western Australia. She has worked extensively on urbanisation, ethnicity, environmental politics and development in the eastern Himalayan borderlands of Sikkim, Darjeeling and east Nepal. She is the author of Constructing Democracy: Ethnicity and Democracy in the eastern Himalaya (Amsterdam University Press, 2017) and co-editor of Development Zones in Asian Borderlands (Amsterdam University Press, 2021). Her current research focuses on the intersections between gender, labour, urbanisation and infrastructure in the Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalaya, India and Himalayan immigrant labour in Australia. You can follow Dr. Chettri on Instagram @monagtk, on Twitter at @mona_chettri, and on Facebook at mona.gtk. For more information on the eastern Himalaya, check out The Confluence Collective and Sikkim Project. Join the conversation, and find out what former guests are up to, by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Love listening to Getting Curious? Now, you can also watch Getting Curious—on Netflix! Head to netflix.com/gettingcurious to dive in. Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook. Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our associate producer is Zahra Crim. Our editor is Andrew Carson. Our socials are run and curated by Middle Seat Digital. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIN; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com. Getting Curious merch is available on PodSwag.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Getting Curious, I'm Jonathan Vaness, and every week I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.
0:10.0	On today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Mona Chetri, where I ask her, what's life like in the Eastern Himalaya?
0:18.0	Welcome to Getting Curious, this is Jonathan Vaness, I am so excited for today's episode and also, by the way, I've interviewed people in Australia when I was in Australia, but I don't know that I've ever interviewed someone for getting curious while I was in the States and they were in Australia, so without any further ado, welcome Dr. Mona Chetri, who is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Western Australia.
0:43.0	She researches the intersections of development, gender, politics, and environmental transformation in the Eastern Himalayan borderlands of India and Nepal.
0:53.0	Okay, Dr. Chetri, do you want me to call you Dr. Chetri, Mona, how do you want me to call you for the rest of our gorgeous time together?
1:00.0	Mona is fine, even more is fine, my friends call me more.
1:03.0	Oh my gosh, one of my closest friends name is Mona and we call her Mo. So I love that story, I also call her mookers, but I'm going to call you Mona, I'll keep it professional.
1:13.0	My friends call me Mona, Mona's also good.
1:15.0	That's so cute, and you're coming to us live from birth, right?
1:21.0	Yes, absolutely.
1:23.0	And when we started recording, you said that it was very hot over there right now.
1:27.0	Yep, yep, it's been a crazy summer of intense heat, while it's been floods on the east coast, on the west coast, it's been just really hot, hot, hot summer.
1:39.0	But tomorrow it's going to be cooler, apparently, can't wait for it to be tomorrow already.
1:43.0	So you'll go to that turquoise beach that I went to caught, caught something.
1:47.0	So that beach was next level, so pretty.
1:52.0	It is and the sun sets are amazing to die for in Miss Nostrader. That's the one of the most beautiful things ever.
1:58.0	It is, it is gorgeous.
2:00.0	And like that turquoise water and like obsessed with turquoise water, and it was really like a cool shade of water.
2:08.0	Okay, but this is not what we're talking about today.
2:10.0	We're talking about something that is so interesting.
2:13.0	I talk about this a lot, I'm getting curious. I come from like a corn field, like a small town of like 30,000, 40,000 people.
2:19.0	The Himalaya mountains felt like 15 worlds away and like something that I only read about in the news,
	...

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