The promo video for the proposed Kathmandu View Tower on YouTube appears to hit all the right notes. Uploaded by a nondescript user— Kathmandu View Tower Kathmandu—in March this year, the video through computer-generated graphics flaunts the building’s many highlights: a splendid view of Kathmandu, multi-storey parking facility, and a futuristic bus terminal. The building will also house a food court, a theatre, seminar halls, apartments and lounge pools. Calling it the “most impressive and upcoming construction in Nepal,” the video ends with the shot zooming out to a bird’s eye view that underscores the building’s mammoth size and its Space Needle-inspired dome. All this, set to the thumping music of the Russian-born musician Pavlov Dovgol’s EDM track, Faust. The choice of the background score was no doubt merely incidental. But is it ironic that Sailesh Shakya, a 51-year-old community organiser, is labelling the project as Faustian? At a disgruntled public hearing on the project in early September, Shakya, backed by cheers of dozens of locals, asked a pointed question: “This is a project being built on public land with taxpayers’ money. So why are the decisions being made by non-elected government officials, without consulting the public?” According to him, the public hearing—held 11 months after the foundation stone of the project was laid by the Vice President in November, 2015—was nothing short of a ruse that served no real purpose.