The African American movie producer and director Spike Lee frequently finds himself in controversy for his observations on race relations in the US. It is not his fault that the predominantly White American media is uncomfortable with the bloody origins of their society. “Africans were brought here [in the US], to this land, and then the genocide of Native Americans,” he reiterated in one of his recent interviews, “that’s the foundation upon which this country was built.”
The foundation of modern Nepal is as steeped in violence, starting with Prithivi Narayan Shah’s single-minded campaign to expand the kingdom of Gorkha in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Maoist insurgency and the subsequent Madheshi Uprising are, as such, only the most recent iterations of this vicious cycle of violence set in motion all those years ago.
But not everyone suffers equally from violence. Violence, when observed from a distance, even assumes a veneer of romance.
It was the peak of Maoist insurgency, just after the 2001 Royal Massacre. Four of us friends decided we needed a break from the monotonous (and violence-free) life of Kathmandu. We quickly cooked up a plan. Pokhara it would be.
As luck would have it, another of our close friends was studying engineering at Pokhara University. We decided to give him a ‘surprise’. Little did we know that our surprise wouldn’t be very pleasant for our would-be-host: his finals were starting in a couple of days.
Any concerns about impending exams adeptly cloaked behind his winsome smile, Shobhan made sure all four of us had a rollicking time. It was a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime trip.
The vagaries of globalization are such that my friends are now scattered all over the world—and another such reunion would have to wait for a miracle.
Yet it’s not just for the rare reunion that the brief Pokhara trip remains etched in my memory. That was also the first time I saw the dreaded ‘terrorists’ in flesh.
We were at the station, waiting for our bus back to Kathmandu. It must have been around seven in the evening. A sizable group of masal-wielding Maoists materialized out of nowhere, no more than 10-20 feet away from us, and ran across the street, shouting: “Maobadi jindabad! Prachandapath jindabad!”
Long used to being drip-fed on the news of Maoist deaths from the safe remove of Kathmandu—a city famously out of touch with the rest of the country—I literally froze on the spot. My heart was still thumping up in my throat when the flash mob disappeared down a narrow alley.
A minute later, a platoon of police in full battle gear arrived in a mini truck. I shuddered at the thought: had they been any quicker, I would have witnessed a bloodbath in Pokhara, my beloved, rejuvenating paradise. This much I clearly remember (or so I would like to think).
But a related incident form the same trip had completely escaped my mind. The day we were to return to Kathmandu, I had inadvertently overheard a conversation between a police officer and a kuire at Lakeside. From what I could gather, the tourist had met a Maoist leader and was telling the officer how he thought the insurgency could soon be out of government control.
“Aren’t you afraid?” he asked.
“I’m a Thakuri, a warrior,” the Inspector had replied in his pitch-perfect English, pumping up his right biceps. “I’m not scared of Maobadi-Saobadi.”
My missing mental link was provided by Mahendra Man Singh’s Forever Incomplete: The Story of Nepal that I was reading the other day. In one chapter, Singh narrates the final few days in the life of one of the four original martyrs, Dashrath Chand, who was shot dead by the Ranas for his pro-democracy activities in 1940. When he hears out his death sentence—‘to be hung till death’—Dashrath Chand summons one of his tormentors, “I am a Thakuri, a warrior,” he bellows. “I will not be hung. Go tell your master that my chest is ready to bear bullets.” Click! The long-buried memories come flooding back.
During the insurgency, there was a degree of romance about the Maoists—and Prachanda in particular—among the Kathmandu chatterati. Post-royal massacre, many had come to believe Prachanda and Gyanendra were the same person. We would try to piece together the intricacies of jungle life in our hidebound friends’ circle as well. Do they build their homes up in the trees to escape wild beasts? Was it true that all male combatants were rewarded with ‘bountiful women’ at the end of a hard combat?
The sex appeal of any news bulletin was judged on how many Maoists or security force personnel had been killed in combat in Rukum or Rolpa. Descartes was the first to attribute some human behaviors entirely to the ‘machine of the body’, without any intervention of the mind. During the insurgency, it had become second nature for such machines in the valley to soak up the gory news of the hinterlands without a conscious thought.
Yet, once in a while when I heard the news on BBC, with the crackling transistor pressed to my ears, my mind would float back to that day and I would try to go figure out the faces in that flash mob: Wasn’t there a woman in a housewife’s gown? And a youngster who seemed to have been dressed for school? And a pudgy middle-aged man who had an uncanny resemblance to the uncle next door?
Or maybe it was my mind with its bagful tricks.
sourse by republica
The foundation of modern Nepal is as steeped in violence, starting with Prithivi Narayan Shah’s single-minded campaign to expand the kingdom of Gorkha in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Maoist insurgency and the subsequent Madheshi Uprising are, as such, only the most recent iterations of this vicious cycle of violence set in motion all those years ago.
But not everyone suffers equally from violence. Violence, when observed from a distance, even assumes a veneer of romance.
It was the peak of Maoist insurgency, just after the 2001 Royal Massacre. Four of us friends decided we needed a break from the monotonous (and violence-free) life of Kathmandu. We quickly cooked up a plan. Pokhara it would be.
As luck would have it, another of our close friends was studying engineering at Pokhara University. We decided to give him a ‘surprise’. Little did we know that our surprise wouldn’t be very pleasant for our would-be-host: his finals were starting in a couple of days.
Any concerns about impending exams adeptly cloaked behind his winsome smile, Shobhan made sure all four of us had a rollicking time. It was a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime trip.
The vagaries of globalization are such that my friends are now scattered all over the world—and another such reunion would have to wait for a miracle.
Yet it’s not just for the rare reunion that the brief Pokhara trip remains etched in my memory. That was also the first time I saw the dreaded ‘terrorists’ in flesh.
We were at the station, waiting for our bus back to Kathmandu. It must have been around seven in the evening. A sizable group of masal-wielding Maoists materialized out of nowhere, no more than 10-20 feet away from us, and ran across the street, shouting: “Maobadi jindabad! Prachandapath jindabad!”
Long used to being drip-fed on the news of Maoist deaths from the safe remove of Kathmandu—a city famously out of touch with the rest of the country—I literally froze on the spot. My heart was still thumping up in my throat when the flash mob disappeared down a narrow alley.
A minute later, a platoon of police in full battle gear arrived in a mini truck. I shuddered at the thought: had they been any quicker, I would have witnessed a bloodbath in Pokhara, my beloved, rejuvenating paradise. This much I clearly remember (or so I would like to think).
But a related incident form the same trip had completely escaped my mind. The day we were to return to Kathmandu, I had inadvertently overheard a conversation between a police officer and a kuire at Lakeside. From what I could gather, the tourist had met a Maoist leader and was telling the officer how he thought the insurgency could soon be out of government control.
“Aren’t you afraid?” he asked.
“I’m a Thakuri, a warrior,” the Inspector had replied in his pitch-perfect English, pumping up his right biceps. “I’m not scared of Maobadi-Saobadi.”
My missing mental link was provided by Mahendra Man Singh’s Forever Incomplete: The Story of Nepal that I was reading the other day. In one chapter, Singh narrates the final few days in the life of one of the four original martyrs, Dashrath Chand, who was shot dead by the Ranas for his pro-democracy activities in 1940. When he hears out his death sentence—‘to be hung till death’—Dashrath Chand summons one of his tormentors, “I am a Thakuri, a warrior,” he bellows. “I will not be hung. Go tell your master that my chest is ready to bear bullets.” Click! The long-buried memories come flooding back.
During the insurgency, there was a degree of romance about the Maoists—and Prachanda in particular—among the Kathmandu chatterati. Post-royal massacre, many had come to believe Prachanda and Gyanendra were the same person. We would try to piece together the intricacies of jungle life in our hidebound friends’ circle as well. Do they build their homes up in the trees to escape wild beasts? Was it true that all male combatants were rewarded with ‘bountiful women’ at the end of a hard combat?
The sex appeal of any news bulletin was judged on how many Maoists or security force personnel had been killed in combat in Rukum or Rolpa. Descartes was the first to attribute some human behaviors entirely to the ‘machine of the body’, without any intervention of the mind. During the insurgency, it had become second nature for such machines in the valley to soak up the gory news of the hinterlands without a conscious thought.
Yet, once in a while when I heard the news on BBC, with the crackling transistor pressed to my ears, my mind would float back to that day and I would try to go figure out the faces in that flash mob: Wasn’t there a woman in a housewife’s gown? And a youngster who seemed to have been dressed for school? And a pudgy middle-aged man who had an uncanny resemblance to the uncle next door?
Or maybe it was my mind with its bagful tricks.
sourse by republica
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