I belong to a generation born into instability. As a Gen Y Nepali, my childhood unfolded during the civil war—what the Maoists called “The People’s War”. Yet, in Kathmandu, we felt more or less cocooned. The war reached us mostly through bedroom TVs and morning newspapers. Conflict, for us, was both near and distant; fear hung in the air, but the bullets and bombs fell elsewhere. This uncertainty conditioned my generation to overvalue stability. Even as corruption hollowed the state and dysfunction became normal, we clung to the illusion of order. We wanted change, but never enough to risk dismantling the status quo.

The younger generation refused that compromise.

On 8 September 2025, young Nepalis flooded the streets. Outraged by corruption and the viral #NepoBabies trend (highlighting the lavish lifestyles of the children of the political elite) on TikTok, encouraged by the revolutions in Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, and fueled by the government’s attempt to silence dissent with a social media ban, students organised themselves with the aid of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and sheer determination. Within twenty-four hours, the home minister had resigned, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was forced out, and Kathmandu was burning.

I was there, standing with them on the first day of the protests. Though I was not of their generation, I felt like I had to express my solidarity in person.

Nepal sometimes feels like a country stuck on repeat. We’ve lived through the royal massacre in 2001, the Maoist insurgency through the 1990s and early 2000s, the devastating earthquake of 2015, the unofficial Indian blockade that lasted almost two years, the abolition of the monarchy, and the halting transition into a federal republic.

Many upheavals left a trail of devastation. Each time, we dusted ourselves off with a familiar mantra: “Nepal will rise again.” It feels like a kind of toxic positivity; a refusal to process grief or anger fully. We restart from ground zero every decade or so, stuck in a cycle we never break.

It’s hard not to be reminded of George Orwell’s Animal Farm: the sense of revolution turning into repetition, power recycling itself, the people left to rebuild once again.

This time, I really hope it’ll be different. This time, the very young are at the wheel. Born into the internet age, this generation has tools we never had—access to information, networks of solidarity, and the clarity to call corruption what it is. If anyone can break the cycle, it’s them. This is the hope our whole nation clings to.

There’s a line from a Nepali poem I grew up with: “In an age, a day comes once. Reversal, upheaval, alteration it brings.”

That day was 9 September.

By morning, Kathmandu was in turmoil. Violent clashes in some police stations, others abandoned by personnel fleeing for their lives. Law enforcement infrastructure was smashed, and several thousand convicts—including those guilty of heinous offences—escaped from prisons across the country. Complete anarchy, which I’ve only seen in dystopian books and movies.

The destruction unfolded in parallel across the physical and digital worlds. People were glued to their smartphones, refreshing endlessly. Every scroll brought either a video of a young protester shot by the police, another building or politician’s residence going up in flames, or yet another rumour impossible to verify. TikTok—one of the few platforms not banned—became a theatre of revolution, as though the uprising itself was being livestreamed in real time.

After Singha Durbar (which literally translates to ‘the Lion’s Palace’)—the country’s main administrative hub and, for many, a symbol of oppression—was set ablaze, the mob spilled into the neighbouring government complexes: the Supreme Court, the Nepal Bar Council, the Department of Roads, the District Court. Vehicles were smashed and overturned, windows shattered, furniture dragged out and set alight, the flames then turned on the very walls of history. Whatever could be carried was looted, pocketed as twisted souvenirs of the chaos.

By then, the prime minister had already resigned, and the Gen Z organisers had disbanded the movement. It no longer looked like a youth-led uprising. Some people, brandishing firearms seized from the police and the Armed Police Force, took charge of the streets on motorbikes and looted vehicles. It was no longer protest; it was pandemonium.

I was outside the Ministry of Health and Population when the first oxygen cylinders began exploding inside the burning building. Each blast hammered the air and my chest. In that moment, despair felt heavier than victory… and then, unexpectedly, came a counterpoint. A cry rose from near the National Archives: citizens were forming a human chain to protect priceless documents. “We can’t let them erase our history,” someone shouted. I rushed to join them, speaking briefly with those holding the line. Amid the smoke and destruction, there was resolve. It reminded me that in every revolution, there are those who burn and those who preserve.

By the end of this upheaval, seventy-four people, including three police officers, had been killed. More than 2,000 were injured and around 125 were in critical condition across the country.

That week was a battle of sanity against insanity.

I saw families mourning at Pashupatinath as funeral pyres burned for teenagers and students killed by police. I met survivors whose shattered bones carried proof the state continued to deny. I saw mobs ransack the Supreme Court, Parliament reduced to rubble, and police stations burnt to ashes.

Yet I also witnessed candlelight vigils at Maitighar and other major city squares, murals painted in memory of the fallen, and citizens stepping forward to defend the fragile memory of the nation.

It was an emotional rollercoaster; rage and grief, despair and hope—all tangled together.

The violence ebbed as suddenly as it had erupted. Within days, Nepal had its first woman prime minister, Sushila Karki. A week after her swearing-in, Kathmandu was quiet again; scarred, but breathing. The national conversation quickly shifted from the streets to the corridors of power: who would claim which ministerial portfolio, and whether an impartial election could truly be held within six months.

For my generation, this uprising was a reckoning. Nepal had felt like a ticking time bomb for the past few years. The blitzkrieg-style revolution showed us what we’d failed to do, and what the next generation refused to accept. The real victory, however, will not be measured in resignations or ruined buildings, but in whether this spirit and refusal to compromise can be sustained.

Nepal has been here before. My sincerest hope is that we won’t circle back again this time. I hope these scars will represent more than wounds—that they will also become lessons. The future now rests with those who grew up in the digital age, armed not with fear but with information. If they can hold on to their fire, perhaps these scars will mark not another false dawn, but the beginning of something to last.

Because sometimes, upheaval is the only way forward. And sometimes, victory looks like scars.

• Tags: Issue 41, Nepal, Robic Upadhayay