At a recent social event, I saw a handsome, elegantly-dressed man stepping out of his European car. He looked vaguely familiar, one of those faces one recalls from a momentary flash on TV. When I asked an acquaintance to identify the man, he looked incredulous. "You don't recognise him?" He turned out to be a celebrated doctor whom I'd indeed heard about but never met.

I was saying something sincerely appreciative about the doctor when my acquaintance narrowed his eyes and whispered conspiratorially, "He's made tons of money. Enough for three generations." I remonstrated weakly that I had heard the doctor was a self-made man who'd worked very hard to achieve his material and professional status. But for my acquaintance, the doctor's unforgivable sin was that he transcended his rural childhood poverty and was now strutting about the nation's capital with too much of everything-wealth, status and, surely, health.

I used to think that such corrosive envy (if not character assassination) was on the decline among the Kathmandu sophisticates, and so was disturbed by my naivet?. During the pusillanimous Panchayat era, such caustic observations were daily fare, especially regarding the mandarins of the Panchayat regime. Nepali society remained caught in the culture of chakari and patronage.

Back then, one's ambition and upward mobility, especially in His Majesty's Government service, was linked to one's family background and/or connections, whether one was a humble, fussy pundit in a powerful household or had a grandfather who'd been a minor functionary in the Rana bureaucracy.

Today the educated person doesn't have to rely upon government service, and family connections to secure a position. A well-qualified person can pick and choose among a variety of available professions, especially in the private sector. The Kathmandu elite isn't as tiny and incestuous as it was 30 years ago. Its monopoly over power, status and wealth have loosened. When it has resisted, audacious people have simply crashed through its enclosure.

It is true that in these times of chaotic anarchy, masquerading as democracy, corruption, graft and "source-force" remain powerful agents to propel one towards wealth and status. So, walking by a gaudy, imposing residence, one instantly thinks that the owner must be a smuggler, a crooked businessman or a corrupt politician. How else could he (rarely ever she) afford such a luxurious lifestyle in perpetually impoverished Nepal? We can't accept that people with such possessions worked hard to achieve what he so proudly flaunts. When confronted with conspicuous wealth, our visceral reaction is to think it is subterfuge, and thus deserving of contempt.

Our instinctive contempt for material/professional achievements simply reaffirms the pervasive flaws of our Hindu-dominated tradition and culture, the most conspicuous being caste division. Many bahuns and chhetris can't stomach the achievements of those from the lower caste and class who have now "made it" by, say, going abroad to work and earn. And so when the son of a hardworking sarki returns after a few years of hard labour in a Gulf fiefdom, buys land and builds a home, to his upper caste neighbours he isn't a role model, but that wretched sarki's son showing off.

Few will admire the fact that the young man worked hard and earned his wealth honestly, amidst tremendous hardships. The horror, contempt and avoidance of physical work have led us to scorn achievement. Corrupted by our deep-rooted culture of patronage, we seem totally unable to accept that there are many among us who have indeed pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and worked to achieve their dreams, even if what they have achieved may appear to many vulgar and kitschy.

The next time you're going walkabout in Kathmandu and you see a magnificent mansion or some sleek chap in a shiny new car, stop, think about your thoughts. For there is more than meets the eye in Kathmandu these days. Or you might be blinded with envious rage, echoing the words of an observant writer who remarked, "It isn't enough to succeed. Others must fail."

(Rajendra Khadka is a freelance facilitator in Kathmandu.)