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Satis Shroff's CATMANDU CHRONICLES
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Kagbeni: A new Nepalese film release (Satis Shroff)
Related to country: Nepal
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Journalists can contact *Kashish* at kashish@nepaliaawaz.com for a press
pass. All questions to Kashish.

Nepal's first high definition digital movie, *Kagbeni*, will premiere this Sunday, 20 January, at the Eagle Theater in Jackson Heights, New York.

Very rarely do Nepali movies come to the US and this is the first time that a new release in Nepal is being screened here in the same time as in Nepal. Many have considered this movie to be a groundbreaking moment in Nepali film industry. No other Nepali movie has possibly been able to capture the beauty of Nepali remoteness as this one does. And unlike most Nepali movies, this one is unique in the sense that it has no songs, dances and fight sequences.
The duration of the movie is 2 hrs. 10 mins. and has subtitles in English.

The movie, adapted from the story "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs, has been beautifully shot in the picturesque Himalayan region of Jomsom, Marpha, and Kagbeni, where the entire film screw was based for several weeks during its production. The producers of the movie have managed to incorporate many
contemporary details of the lives in these regions, such as the apple brandy (a famous Nepali liquor) producers of the area, or the many youth that have gone on to work in foreign countries.

"Superbly crafted, seductively acted, meticulously directed. No longer will we have to be embarrassed about Nepali movies." — Kunda Dixit, Editor, The Nepali Times, Katmandu

"This movie sets a benchmark for Nepali movies."— The Himalayan Times, Katmandu

*When: *
20 January 08
3PM at Eagle Theater (73-07 37th Rd. Jackson Heights NY 11372) *
Tickets are $10 and are available at:*
Himalaya Communication
72-30 Broadway (basement), Jackson Heights, NY 11372
Ph. 718.505.9200 and at the venue.

January 20, 2008 | 4:03 AM Comments  0 comments
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Darjeeling Limited: A Chaotic Journey to Spiritual India
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Darjeeling Limited: A Journey to India and Within (Satis Shroff)

Film review: USA 2007, Director: Wes Anderson.

Darjeeling Limited is a road movie with three different protagonists, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman, who we are told are brothers. One looks like a Hawk-nosed Italian (Adrien Brody) with fine features and a heavily pregnant wife he’s left behind, the other a heavily bandaged German (Owen Wilson) on a spiritual trip to chaotic India and the other like a horny Tom Cruise (Jason Schwartzman) with a moustache and ever on the lookout for a quickie, whether it’s in a hotel or a train.

If you want to do a bit of sight-seeing in Darjeeling with its Chowrasta, the former Governer’s House, Birch Hill, Windemere Hotel, the Mall, the Austrian-built ropeway ride to Singla tea estate, Tiger Hill and the Batasia Loop, you’ve boarded the wrong train. It’s definitely not the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway with its toy train, and there’s no Kanchenjunga in the background.

Darjeeling Limited is a train that takes the three brothers to the dunes of Rajasthan, its colourful villages and towns and Punjab, with a lot of Sardarjis making their appearences but certainly not in the foothills of the Himalayas. The brothers are on their way to find their mother, who lives with Christians nuns who run a school somewhere in north-west India on top of a white-was-like building, reminiscent of the Moghul times. In other words the family structure is destroyed. The mother hadn’t attended the funeral of her husband Mr. Whitman of Whitman Industries, who’d died two years ago. There’s a lot of action and scenes that remind you of a melange of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot reels and Ian Flemings’s protagonist and ye olde India from the days of the of the Raj, where the train conductor is a lean Sikh, with a long black beard and a penchant for hypnotising a snake that belongs to one of the Whitman brothers.

The film begins to an old tune I remember by Leonard Cohen ‘Where do you do my lovely.’ Pure nostalgia for people approaching their fifties and beyond. The song and the scenes with Jason Schwartzman have been cut well to illustrate the text of the song. A wonderful, sensuous prelude to the film with an attractive female, Anjelica Huston. She has blue bruises all over on her body, and says she loves him in a Parisian hotel-room, and he replies in a couldn’t-care-less manner.

The three brothers jump in and out of the same train, with their 11-piece luggage, throughout the film but what unfurls is a fascinating landscape of rural India and typical characters that you might have read in Rudyard Kipling’s books on the Raj. The bigger brother Owen collects his brother’ passports and tells them to trust him and other spiritual things associated with Indian philosophy. He also pleads to his two brothers that they should be honest and tell him everything. No secrets. But as soon as one of them goes for a few minutes, there’s backbiting and inquisitiveness in the air. It’s also the story of three sahibs out to discover spiritual India. What might be funny to a Brit or European may seem almost arrogant and forced comedy to viewers in the Indian subcontinent, with its clichés.: a shoe stealing boy runs away with one of the sahib’s shoe, a female service lady gets laid willingly by Casanova Schwartzman. Perhaps it was the sweltering Indian summer that made the protagonists do such things.

The journey is a pilgrimage to a Sikh and Hindu temple with a lot of tikas and bhajans thrown in. A dramatic river rescue in which an Indian boy drowns and the three sahibs bring the limp body to the villagers is touching. A Hindu funeral ceremony with the father of the dead child washing his son’s body, mourning neighbours. Hindu rituals, vedic chants, humble villagers. Then a Hindu village farewell with namastes. Then it’s back into the train, like in Michael Ende’s “Jim Knopf and Lukas,” towards India’s daily subcontinental chaos and normal madness.

The wiedersehen with the meditating mother, a grey-haired energetic lady who feels that she must help the nuns with their charges, than live in London in affluence, turns into a therapeutic séance for family Whitman. The mother suggests to her sons that they should learn to speak without words. It reminds my of Paul Waczlawick saying: you can not not communicate. In German we say: Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren, meaning thereby that you do communicate, even if don’t do it verbally. One communicates non-verbally. Your gesture, your mimic muscles speak volumes.

Towards the end the director (West Anderson) works with metaphors by showing each protagonist in a separate train-compartment as it moves on. There are tears in the eyes of the Indian sari-clad train lady, the Sardarji train-conductor plays affectionately with the snakes, which he’d declared dead, the sensual lover from Paris is also in the train, as is also the dead Mr. Whitman, alive and kicking. I thanked Anderson for the old melody “Oh, Champs Elysees” quietly as the film ended and the credits were shown. The songs of the sixties and seventies were a delight indeed. It was 91 minutes of family conflict, a lesson in Family Therapy, carried out in India’s fantastic backdrop, snakes and all. It was a declaration of love to India.

Life is a long journey, one is given to understand, and when we want to reach our destination, it’s easier to get rid of the cumbersome excess baggage. Simplify your life. All those expensive worldly belongings and destructive emotions make our lives difficult because we tend to clutch on them. You can’t take your traveller’s cheques and plastic cards when you leave this world, for this world is but a maya. An illusion. One thing is sure: the trip is limited to a life-span.

I must admit, I watched Darjeeling Limited in German and a lot of English humour was lost in translation, when dubbing. The humour was dry and the situations absurd. I’ll get a DVD and watch it in English when I have time.

January 18, 2008 | 11:15 AM Comments  0 comments


The Winds of Change in Nepal's Villages (Satis Shroff)
Related to country: Nepal
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Memoir Catmandu Blues: MY VILLAGE DREAMS (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)

Once upon a time there was a kingdom in the Himalayas called Nepal. People in the outside world also called it the Land of the Sherpas, the Land of Yetis and Yaks, the Land of the famous Gurkhas and the Land of the highest mountains in the world. It was ruled by a Gorkha king named Prithvi Narayan Shah, who in 1768 brought the different kingdoms together through his conquests. The rise of the House of Gorkhas (Shah dynasty) has endured since 238 years till November 21,2006.

In 1974, I happened to be a part of a scenario known as the ‘Back to the Village Campaign.’ It was a strange sight in the mountain kingdom of Nepal, which was a forbidden land twenty-four years ago. University professors, lecturers, bank managers, His Majesty’s section officers and other cadres, who normally barked at peons or paleys in the offices of His Majesty’s Government to bring them tea and snacks from the nearby tea-shops, were digging with shovels, lifting stones, plastering up the stone blocks with cement. The place was a remote locality of the Balambu village pan­chayat. And the motley crowd of workers were urbanised white-collar job-holders and citizens of Nepal, working shoulder to shoulder with their rural brothers under the ‘Go to the Village National Campaign’.

The national campaign had a branch office at Balambu, which was located 18-kilometres from Kathmandu along the Kathmandu-Thankot road. In 1975, with a view to enable one to acquire first-hand knowledge regarding the progress made by the government and semi-government workers in the development tasks of the village panchayats in the suburbs of Kathmandu Valley, a couple of journalists from the pro-government media: The Rising Nepal, Gorkhapatra and Radio Nepal were invited to take part in a surprise whirlwind tour of these areas. The ten pan­chayats where the Go to the Village National Campaign was being implemented in the valley were: Naikab-Nayabhanjyang, Purano Bhanjyang, Saritartha, Machhegaon, Mahadevsthan, Thankot, Dahachowk - Chowketar and Ward-Bhanjyang.

The Go to the Village Campaign was the brainchild of King Mahendra, the father of King Gyanendra Shah, and was launched in the Nepalese month of Pousch 1, 2024 (Nepalese calender). The National Campaign was intended to mobilise the masses, taking into consideration the fact that Nepal was predominantly an agriculture-based country. A country where the village forms the most important unit. And every village had its five elders who so-to-say ran the village.

It was believed in the palace circles, and in the panchayat government, that if there was to be an awakening at all in the country, it had to come from the rural masses of Nepal, and a so-called tentative ten-point programme was implemented in the villages of the kingdom, in which His Majesty’s civil servants, students and workers from the urban areas were deputed to go to the villages and help ‘to strengthen and popularise the sentiment of nationalism and national unity’. Nepal’s masses were to be acquainted with the Panchayat Democracy, and thereby develop and further strengthen it.

The panchas at the grassroot-level were required to stick to the principles of the non-aligned foreign policy that the country had adopted, a far sighted policy of the ruling Shah dynasty to maintain their power. As long as you were non-aligned, you could rule a kingdom as you pleased, and there were no allies who’d look over the shoulder and protest when human and other rights were misused. The Kingdom of Nepal had always been a special case as far as geo-politics were concerned. India had a patronising attitude towards Nepal because it was the only Hindu Kingdom, and India’s Hindus and Buddhists flocked to Kathmandu’s holy temples like Pashupati and Swayambhu. After all the Goddess Sita from the Ramayana came from the Nepalese town of Janakpur. Moreover, Gautama Buddha was a prince from Lumbini, another place of pilgrimage for the Buddhists and Hindus. Thanks to the assistance of Japan’s Zen and Shinto Buddhists, Lumbini is an attractive place now.

A campaign was to be started against corruption, injustice, oppression and bungling of works that were of national reverence. The campaign was to make the village population active and conscious. Efforts were to be made to render assistance for the successful implementation of the existing land-reforms, civil code, social reforms and development works which had a national bearing. The idea of cooperatives was to be expanded and propagated. The people were to be made aware of the importance of the forests and wildlife, and were to be encouraged to plant tree-saplings. Since agriculture was the mainstay of the country, agricultural output was to be given greater priority. Cottage industries were to be encouraged and extended in keeping with the blueprint of the national campaign.

All this was the gist of the Go to the Village National Campaign, which a Nepalese linguist named Tara Nath Sharma once dubbed as ‘an echo of Mao Zedong’s repressive measure of closing down the universities and sending teachers, intellectuals and writers to villages for mandatory manual labour during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.’

Showcase villages were taken as examples and the development under the Panchayat government shown to the media. Prior to the implementation of the National Campaign, modern medical facilities were unheard of in a village like Satungal and the local popula­tion had to resort to the shamans of the village, who would practice their ‘strange, archaic, unscientific, mysterious and useless occult art on the simple taboo-ridden villagers (sic).’ The exorcists and shamans didn’t demand money for their services, but the villagers paid them in kind, by sacrificing their best roosters, goats and other animals.

Things slowly changed and a dispensary was set up by the local unit of the Campaign, and the doctors started coming on a three-day rotation to the village and treated the patients. Sample medicines were distributed ‘whenever possible’ (most of the time it wasn’t possible), and the dispensary trained volunteers from the ten panchayats of the area as health assistants. Some of the diseases that were (and still are) common tend to be: ascariasis, hepatitis, colitis, amoebiasis and malnutrition in general. The villagers talked about the family-planning programme, which was also active in the hamlet and the rural population of the village had been vaccinated.

At Chowkitar village, a farmer showed the patch where he was growing pear, plum and peach from the seeds provided by the Campaign and which had been distributed by the local panchayat office. I had the impression that simple Nepalese villagers didn’t know that the seeds that were distributed by their respective panchayats could be used by them, and they’d be free to make a profit out of the produce. Nobody had told them anything about it. There was an unspoken loathing on the part of the villagers, when it came to interactions with the government officials. Many farmers seemed to have the notion that the products obtained through the use of go­vernment seeds would be confiscated.

That the villagers were fully aware of the importance of the forests was amply evident in the higher reaches of the villages, for the mountains were dotted with saplings of Pinus roxburghii. The saplings were, of course, provided by the Department of Forestry, and the planting was done exclusively by the Campaign workers. The farmers were too ap­prehensive about the consequences of bureaucratic involvement. Soil erosion, which has been a prime factor for the lessening of yield in the remote areas of Nepal, can be checked to a considerable extent through the much-publicised tree-planting ventures. The Nepalese farmers were shown films of the royal family King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, Crown Prince Dipendra, and the other two princes Gyanendra and Dhirendra planting saplings in different regions of Nepal to the accompaniment of the ironical song ‘Nepal ko dhana, hariyo bana’ (Nepal’s wealth is its forests).

If, for instance, there was a conflict regarding land-ownership- rights in the Eastern part of Nepal, as in the case of my college-friend Karki, the petition had to be filed in front of the Narayanhiti Royal Palace as a last instance of justice on earth. Even though Mr. Karki was educated in a college in Kathmandu, and could read and write in Nepali and English, he was obliged to have a petition filed, and written, by an official petition-writer, whose duty was to write a letter in longhand with sentences that were standard examples in circumlocution and archaic, courtly, subservient manners of expression. Having paid the writer for his trouble and artistry, one had to leave the matter to the Gods, and wait and pray that it be heard somewhere in the chambers of the spacious, modern Narayanhiti palace. For Vishnu, who is also called Budanilkantha in Nepal, reposes on his bed of serpents in the primeval waters, couldn’t be bothered with such earthly matters. Vishnu’s preserving and restoring power has, in the past, been manifested to the world in a variety of forms through his incarnations.

During a visit to Lalitput I met Tschering Lama, a lean, bespectacled, restaurant-owner, who’d bought a plot of land smack on the shore of the beautiful Phewa Lake in Pokhara (Central Nepal). He was extremely proud of his new acquisition. Sometime later, when he actually wanted to build a house on his patch of virgin Nepalese earth, he came to know that the land definitely hadn’t belonged to the man he’d bought it from, and that his purchase document wasn’t worth a rupee. The land was the property of the Royal Family, and as such, not for sale to the commoners.

Mr. Lama was awfully disappointed, frustrated and depressed, because his life-savings had gone in this bargain. He’d had plans to build a lodge for the foreign tourists and also cater to their gastronomic delights. And there he was, a broken man with a glum expression on his face. He did have his smart attitude though, and that’s one trait I really admire among the Nepalese from the mountains. They keep a stiff upper lip.

You can see this smartness even under desperate situations amongst the hill-tribes and the Gurkha war-veterans from Flanders to the Falklands. The Nepalese are indeed a stoic, proud and sympathetic people, and a visitor to Nepal notices it, and learns to cherish it after a journey in the teeming cities, crowded trains and blazing plains of the Indian subcontinent. If you’ve had the pleasure of travelling around in India with its maddening crowds, a visit to Nepal can be so exhilarating. Due to the tourism trade, the tourist or traveller might be pestered by curio-sellers and money-changers in Kathmandu’s famous Freak Street (Jochhey Tole, as the Newars call it) and at the bazaars in Thamel. But the people in the countryside are grateful if, and when, they have visitors. These visitors were, before the tourists came en masse, travellers, ascetic holy men (sadhus), monks and pilgrims, or trading Thakalis and Tibetans with mule and yak caravans, and it was normal for the travellers to be questioned about their heritage, caste, birthplace and so forth.

A Nepalese invariably asks, ‘tapaiko jat kay ho?’ Which caste do you belong to? This is because the caste-system and tribe-clans are well-established in Nepal, and every Nepalese name also bears evidence to his or her caste or tribe. For instance: Birendra Bahadur Karki. The first name is this case is Birendra, and then comes ‘Bahadur’, which means ‘courageous’ because all Nepalese males would like their sons to be brave and courageous. And finally ‘Karki’, which denotes that the person belongs to the sub-caste of the Chettris, the second highest order in the Nepalese Hindu hierarchy.

The life of a Hindu, from birth till his remains are turned to ashes, is saturated with religion. Everything he or she does, even eating and drinking, is connected with a religious ceremony. Whereas India has thrown away the shackles of colonialism, as well as the privilege of hundreds of Rajas and Maharajas, because it is a secular state in accordance to its constitution, Nepal still remains Hindu, perhaps due to the fact that its doors were closed to the outside world, and foreign influence kept at bay. But in this Himalayan enclave which has been conserved by dynasties of Shah kings and Ranas who usurped the throne, there are also other ethnic Nepalese who practice other religions, like Buddhism, Animism, Islam etc. India has solved the problems of underprivileged tribes and castes by giving them the status of ‘scheduled’ and has created scholarships from the school-level to the University level.

The reason why the Maobadis under Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Comrade Prachandra,became stronger in West Nepal (Rukum, Rolpa, Jajarkot und Salyan) was because of Nepal’s general poverty, corruption, nepotism and lack of perspective. Only a small section of the Nepalese population benefited from the schools, colleges und universities and the blessing of Nepal-aid from foreign countries and mountain-tourism. The Maobadis are fighting now for the banishment of monarchy and removal of the feudal structures in the society.

In Nepal it was always difficult for a poor dalit (lower caste) or someone from the hill-tribes to set foot in Kathmandu, and give them a good education. It is a sad fact that only the rich can send their children to the best English schools in Kathmandu, Darjeeling, Kalimpong or Gorakhpur. The rest of the Nepalese parents sent their children to the government-run schools, where the standard of education was miserable. Nevertheless, thousands of Nepalese students pass their School Leaving Certificate exams and go to colleges and universities, with an English handicap.

In the Hindu society of Nepal, the King has always been the patriarch, who swears to his descent from ancient Vedic heroes who were worshipped by the people. A Newsweek interview with the former King Birendra Shah also didn’t help to throw new light into this ancient tradition, for His Majesty coughed up a diplomatic reply and that was it. The Bada Raj Guru, a Brahmin, was the first State Minister in ancient times, though the Nepalese Raj Guru has still retained his power, because in this Hindu set-up every governmental or stately decision is associated with a religious ceremony. For instance when the King of Nepal leaves his Narayanhiti Palace and visits his own country or other countries, the court astrologer is consulted to choose an auspicio­us day. The King is for the Hindus, not only the protector and preserver of ancient Hindu culture, but is also a manifestation of tradition and development in the Hindu world.

In September 1995, I was astonished how far the winds of democracy had swayed into Kathmandu valley. In Kathmandu Valley there are three former kingdoms: Kathmandu, Bhaktapur (Bhadgaon) and Patan (Lalitpur). At the Rato Bangala, an elite school in Patan smack in the middle of the Sri Durbar, run by a dear family I personally know, I had the privilege of taking part at a school theatre and there were parents and guests from Kathmandu’s upper society. A literary natak (play) in Nepali was staged, in which the protagonists played the role of the people of Kirtipur during the times of Prithivi Narayan Shah. The entire play was from the viewpoint of the besieged and cheated Kirtipurians, and not from the angle of the attacking and marauding Gorkha king in 1768.

I found it rather innovative and courageous on the part of Patan’s man-of-letters Mr. Kamal Mani Dixit, in comparison to the pre-democracy days when everything was controlled, and lips feared to speak about human rights and democra­cy. The people of Kirtipur had put up a brilliant fight in those days, but were defeated, and the males of this brave kingdom, located on a hillock near the Tribhuvan University, had to pay a terrible price. The Shah king ordered the lips and ears of the Kirtipurians to be cut. Only the traditional wind-instrument players retained their lips and ears. It was a bloody affair with a huge pile of lips and ears. The barbaric treatment meted out to the Kirtipurians spread like wildfire in the other parts of Kathmandu Valley and soon Patan, Bhaktapur and Kathmandu fell.

If you are planning to go to Nepal soon, do visit the brave town of Kirtipur, near Kathmandu. The triple-roofed Bagh Bhairab temple walls in Kirtipur are still decorated with swords and shields of the Kirtipurian troops defeated by Prithivi Narayan Shah’s victorious Gorkha army. There is also an image of Vishnu astride the Garuda. Underneath you’ll see the elephant-headed God Ganesh and Kumar. The Nepalese king is also revered as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. I don’t want to sound like Borat, but blood sacrifices are made on two auspicious days: Tuesday and Saturday mornings. Another place in Kathmandu valley where such blood-sacrifices are made is in the temple of the Southern-Kali, where the Nepalese cook their lunch and have a feast after the temple visit.

I had a chance to meet King Birendra at the reception in La Redoute (Bonn) and had a small talk with such niceties as ‘How long are you in Germany? When are you returning?’ At the Graf Zeppelin Hotel in Stuttgart and Echterdingen airport, where I had the opportunity of handing Queen Ayeshwarya, who was a fellow poet despite her cruel role during the democracy revolution in 1990, a bouquet of flowers which I’d brought along from Freiburg im Breisgau. The late Madame Busak, the Stuttgarter Royal Nepalese honorary consul, was also there, in addition to Herrn Späth, the then Minister-Präsident of Baden-Württemberg. The Nepalese anthem never sounded more nostalgic then, and the traditionally quaint, triangular Hindu Nepalese flags fluttered in Stuttgart’s windy airport as the Bundesgrenzschutz played the Nepalese and German anthems.

In the meantime, Nepal’s multi-party government and the Maobadis have signed a peace accord and declared a formal end to a ten-year war of terror that killed more than 13,000 Nepalese. The agreement paves the way for the Maoists to give up their weapons and be confined to UN-monitored camps. An assembly will draft a new constitution and decide the future of the King Gyanendra Shah’s dynasty as the monarch of Nepal.

One thing is definite: the Maoists and the other communists don’t want the 200 year old monarchy anymore. What is encouraging, and curious, is that they have vowed to honor the outcome, even if the assembly decides to maintain a ceremonial monarch, stripped of his powers. A new wind blows in the Himalayas. Will the Maobadis give up all their arms like the Khampas (Tibetan freedom fighters from Eastern Tibet who’d come to Langtang) did in 1974, after they were confronted by the Royal Gurkhas? With a little bit of monitoring from the UN and Swiss officers, it might be possible to fill up a few containers, but will all the Maobadis surrender their arms? We can only hope and trust them to do so.

What will happen to the angry, restless, mobilised Maobadi fighters and child soldiers? Will they go back to their schools, if not destroyed, or for treatment in case they are traumatised? Will there be social programs for those who suffered under the atrocities of the government troops and the Maobadis? There’s a lot to be done in this country under the shadow of the Himalayas. Will it be a back to the village dream, after the triumphal march of the Maobadis into Kathmandu, heads and hands smeared with red vermilion powder and automatic guns in their hands? Or will the new government use the manpower resources by mobilising and subliming their youthful energies, towards the development of new jobs and a new economy?

Copyright © 2007 Satis Shroff, Freiburg
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About the Author: Satis Shroff is a writer and poet based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) who also writes on ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Science in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.

Writing experience: Satis Shroff contributes regularly articles and stories to www.Americanchronicle.com with its 21 affiliated US newspapers. He has written two language books on the Nepali language for DSE (Deutsche Stiftung für Entwicklungsdienst) & Horlemannverlag, and an anthology of poems (www.Lulu.com). He has written three feature articles in the Munich-based Nelles Verlag’s ‘Nepal’ on the Himalayan Kingdom’s Gurkhas, sacred mountains and Nepalese symbols and on Hinduism in ‘Nepal: Myths & Realities (Book Faith India) and his poem ‘Mental Molotovs’ was published in epd-Entwicklungsdienst (Frankfurt). He has written many articles in The Rising Nepal, The Christian Science Monitor, the Independent, the Fryburger, Swatantra Biswa (USIS publication, Himal Asia, 3Journal Freiburg, top ten rated poems in www.nepalforum.com (I dream, Oleron, an Unforgettable Isle, A Flight to the Himalayas, Which Witch in Germany?, Fatal Decision, Santa Fe, Nirmala, Between Terror and Ecstasy, The Broken Poet, Himalaya: Menschen und Mythen, A Gurkha Mother, Kathmandu is Nepal, My Nepal, Quo vadis?). Articles, book-reviews and poems in, www.isj.com, www.inso.org., www.nepalikhabar.com. Please also search www.google & www.yahoo under: Satis Shroff.

January 18, 2008 | 1:13 AM Comments  0 comments
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Music has left its cultural confines and is universal. Listen to it, feel it, dance to it, it's everywhere where your heart is. (satis shroff)
Related to country: Nepal
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

MUSIC IN MY HEART (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)

As the Breisgau-train dashes in the Black Forest,
Between Elztal and Freiburg,
I am with my thoughts in South Asia.

I hear the melodious cry of the vendors:
‘Pan, bidi, cigarette,’
Interspersed with ‘garam chai! Garam chai!’
The sound of sambosas bubbling in vegetable oil,
The rat-ta-tat of onions, garlic and salad
Being rhythmically chopped in the kitchen,
Mingled with the ritual songs of the Hindus.
The voices of uncles, aunts, cousins
Debating, discussing, gesticulating, grimacing,
Uttering palatal, guttural,
Lingual and sub-lingual words
In Nepali, English, Newari, Hindi and Sindhi.

I head for Swayambhu,
The hill of the Self-Existent One.
Om mane pame hum stirs in the air,
As a lama passes by.
I’m greeted by cries of Rhesus monkeys,
Pigeons, mynahs, crows,
And the cracks of automatic guns of the Royal Army.

There’s a brodelndes Miteinander,
Different sounds, natural sounds,
Musical sounds.
I hear Papa listening to classical ragas.
We, his sons and daughters,
Dancing the twist, rock n’ roll, jive to Cool Britania,
The afternoon programme of the BBC.
Catchy Bollywood wechsel rhythms,
Sung by Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle,
Rafi, Mukesh and Kishor Kumar.
In the evenings after Radio Nepal’s External Service,
Radio Colombo’s light Anglo-American melodies:
Dean Martin’s drunken schmaltz,
Billy Fury, Cliff Richards, Rickey Nelson,
And Sir Swivel-hip, Elvis Presley
Wailing ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.’

Out in the streets the songs of the beggars,
‘Amai, paisa deo,
Babai khanu chaina,’
Overwhelmed by the cacophony
Of the obligatory marriage brass-band,
Wearing shocking green and red uniforms.
A tourist wired for sound walks by,
With a tortured smile on his face,
An acoustic agitation for an i-Pod listener,
Who prefers his own canned music.

From a side street you discern the tune
Of ‘Rajamati kumati’ rendered by a group
Of Jyapoo traditional musicians,
After a hard day’s work,
In the wet paddy fields of Kathmandu.
Near the Mahabaoudha temple you see
Young Sherpas, Thakalis, Tamangs, Newars
Listening, hip-hopping and break-dancing
To their imported ghetto-blasters:
Michel Jackson’s catchy tunes,
Eminem, 2 Pac, Madonna, 50 Cents.

Everyone hears music, everyone makes music,
With or without music instruments,
Humming the latest Bollywood tunes,
Drumming on the tables, wooden walls,
Boxes, crates, thalis, saucers and pans.
Everyone’s engaged in singing and dancing.
The older people chanting bhajans and vedic songs,
Buddhist monks reciting from the sutras in sonorous voices,
When someone dies in the neighbourhood.
Entire nights of prayers for the departed soul.

The whole world is full of music,
Making it, feasting on it,
Dancing and nodding to it.
I remember the old village dalit,
From the caste of the untouchables,
Who’d come and beat his big drum,
Before he proclaimed the decision of the five village elders,
The panchayat.

I remember the beautiful music from the streets of Bombay,
Where I spent the winters during my school-days.
Or was it musical noise?
Unruhe, panic and flight for some,
It was the music of life for me in that tumultuous, exciting city.
When the sea of humanity was too much for me,
I could escape by train to the Marine Drive,
And see and hear the music of the breakers,
The waves of the Arabian Sea splashing and thrashing
Along the coast of Mumbai.
Your muscles flex, the nerves flatter, the heart gallops,
As you feel how puny you are,
Among all those incessant and powerful waves.

Music has left its cultural confines.
You hear the strings of a sitar
Mingling with big band sounds.
Percussions from Africa
Accompanying ragas from Nepal.
A never-ending performance of musicians
From all over the world.
Bollywood dancing workshops at Lörrach,
Slam poetry at Freiburg’s Atlantic inn.
A didgeridoo accompaning Japanese drums
At the Zeltmusik festival.
Tabla and tanpura involved in a musical dialogue,
With trumpet and saxaphone,
Argentinian tango and Carribian salsa,
Fiery Flamenco dancers dancing
With classical Bharta Natyam dancers,
Mani Rimdu masked-dancers accompanied
By a Tibetan monastery orchestra,
And shrill Swiss piccolo flute tunes and drummers.

I reach my destination
With the green and white Breisgaubahn,
Get off at Zähringen-Freiburg.
The Black Forest looks ravishing,
For it’s Springtime.

As I walk past the Café Bueb, the Metzgerei,
The St. Blasius church bells begin to chime.
I see Annette’s tiny garden with red, yellow and white tulips,
‘Hallochen!’ she says with a broad, blonde smile.
I walk on and admire Frau Bender’s cherry-blossom tree,
Her pensioned husband nods back at me.
And in the distance, a view of the Schwarzwald.

As I approach my residence at the end of the Pochgasse,
I hear the sound of Schumann’s sonate number 3,
Played by Vladimir Horowitz.
That’s harmony for the heart.

I know
I’m home abroad.

Glossary:

Wechselrhythmus: changing rhythms
Bahn: train
Mumbai: Bombay
Bueb: small male child
Chen: Verniedlichung, like Babu-cha in Newari
Schwarzwald: The Black Forest of south-west Germany
Miteinander: togetherness

What others have said about the author:
Brilliant, I enjoyed your poems throughly. I can hear the underlying German and Nepali thoughts within your English language. The strictness of the German form mixed with the vividness of your Nepalese mother tongue. An interesting mix. Nepal is a jewel on the Earths surface, her majesty and charm should be protected, and yet exposed with dignity through words. You do your country justice and I find your bicultural understanding so unique and a marvel to read. Reviewed by Heide Poudel in WritersDen.com 6/4/2007
Since 1974 I have been living on and off in Nepal, writing articles and publishing books about Nepal-- this beautiful Himalayan country. Even before I knew Satis Shroff personally (later) I was deeply impressed by his articles, which helped me very much to deepen my knowledge about Nepal.Satis Shroff is one of the very few Nepalese writers being able to compare ecology, development and modernisation in the ‘Third’ and ‘First’ World. He is doing this with great enthusiasm, competence and intelligence, showing his great concern for the development of his own country. (Ludmilla Tüting, journalist and publisher, Berlin).

What others have said about the author: Satis Shroff writes political poetry—about the war in Nepal, the sad fate of the Nepalese people, the emergence of neo-fascism in Germany. His bicultural perspective makes his poems rich, full of awe and at the same time heartbreakingly sad. In writing ‘home,’ he not only returns to his country of origin time and again, he also carries the fate of his people to readers in the West, and his task of writing thus is also a very important one in political terms. His true gift is to invent Nepalese metaphors and make them accessible to the West through his poetry. (Sandra Sigel, poetess, Germany).

January 10, 2008 | 4:35 AM Comments  0 comments
Tags:


Lyrics On War From the Himalayas (Satis Shroff)
Related to country: Nepal
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

(Sketch© by Satis Shroff)
(A Gurkha in tears after the senseless battles in the foothills of the Himalayas)

Nepalese metaphors: Satis Shroff writes political poetry: about the war in Nepal, the sad fate of the Nepalese people, the emergence of neo-fascism in Germany. His bicultural perspective makes his poems rich, full of awe and at the same time heartbreakingly sad. In writing ‘home,’ he not only returns to his country of origin time and again, he also carries the fate of his people to readers in the West, and his task of writing is a very important one in political terms. His true gift is to invent Nepalese metaphors and make them accessible to the West through his poetry. (Sandra Sigel, poetess, Germany).
*****

HOPE IN THE SHADOW OF THE HIMALAYAS (Satis Shroff)

Hush, an unholy alliance made the rounds,
The political parties and the Maoists are united.
They rattle their sabres no more,
Under Vishnu’s bed of serpents.

Narad brings us good news.
We don’t have to shiver together in angst.
There is hope in the Himalayas.
Hope of a separation of powers,
Hope of free elections,
Hope of fair trials before impartial tribunals,
Hope of amnesty.
We’ll do what Nepalese normally do:
Wait and drink Ilam tea,
And watch the scenario unfurl,
In the shadow of the Himalayas.


Glossary:
Narad: A heavenly messenger mentioned in the Rig-veda, he was a great Rishi, chief of the heavenly musicians who invented the lute.
Vishnu: The second God of the Hindu-triad, preserver and restorer, the supreme being from whom all things emanate.
_____________________

Not in Nepal (Satis Shroff)

Nepalis look out of their ornate windows,
In the west, east, north and south Nepal
And think:
How long will this krieg go on?
How much do we have to suffer?
How many money-lenders, businessmen, civil servants,
Policemen and gurkhas do the Maobadis want to kill
Or be killed?

How many men, women, boys and girls have to be mortally injured
Till Kal Bhairab is pacified by the Sleeping Vishnu?

How many towns and villages in the seventy five districts
Do the Maobadis want to free from capitalism?
When the missionaries close their schools,
Must the Hindus and Buddhists shut their temples and shrines?
Shall atheism be the order of the day?
Not in Nepal.
The religion is too much with us,
Within us.

*****

A THOUSAND DEATHS (Satis Shroff)

It breaks my heart, as I hear over the radio:
Nepal’s not safe for visitors.
Visitors who leave their money behind,
In the pockets of travel agencies, rug dealers,
Currency and drug dealers,
And hordes of ill-paid honest Sherpas
And Tamang and other ethnic porters.
Sweat beads trickling from their sun-burnt faces,
In the dizzy heights of the Dolpo, Annapurna ranges
And the Khumbu glaciers.
Eking out a living and facing the treacherous
Icy crevasses, snow-outs, precipices
And a thousand deaths.

No roads, no schools,
Beyond the beaten trekking paths
Live the poorer families of Nepal.
Sans drinking water,
Sans hospitals,
Where aids and children’s work prevail.

*****

Development and Destruction (Satis Shroff)

My Nepal, what has become of you?
Your features have changed with time.
The innocent face of the Kumari
Has changed to the blood-thirsty countenance
Of Kal Bhairab,
From development to destruction,
From bikas to binas.

You’re no longer the same
There’s insurrection and turmoil
Against the government and the police.
Your sons and daughters are at war,
With the Gurkhas again.

Maobadis with revolutionary flair,
With ideologies from across the Tibetan Plateau and Peru.
Ideologies that have been discredited elsewhere,
Flourish in the Himalayas.
Demanding a revolutionary-tax
From tourists and Nepalese
With brazen, bloody attacks
Fighting for their own rights
And the rights of the bewildered common man.

Well-trained government troops at the orders
Of politicians safe in Kathmandu.
Leaders who despise talks and compromises,
Flex their tongues and muscles,
And let the imported automatic salves speak their deaths.
Ill-armed guerrillas against well-armed Royal Gurkhas
In the foothills of the Himalayas.

******

Child Soldiers (Satis Shroff)

Nepali children have no chance,
But to take sides
To take to arms not knowing the reason
Against whom and why.
The child-soldier gets orders from grown-ups
And the hapless souls open fire.
Hukum is order,
The child-soldier cannot reason why.
Shedding precious human blood,
For causes they both hold high.
Ach, this massacre in the shadow of the Himalayas.

*****

Time Stands Still in Nepal (Satis Shroff)

Globalisation has changed the world fast,
In Nepal time stands still.
The blind beggar at the New Road gate sings:
Lata ko desh ma, gaddha tantheri.
In a land where the tongue-tied live,
The deaf desire to rule.
Oh my Nepal, quo vadis?

The only way to peace and harmony is
By laying aside the arms.
Can Nepal afford to be the bastion
Of a movement and a government
That rides rough-shod over the lives
And rights of fellow Nepalis?

Can’t we learn from the lessons of Afghanistan, Romania,
Poland, East Germany and Iraq?
The Maobadis will be given a chance at the polls,
Like all other democratic parties.
For the Maobadis are Bahuns and Chettris,
Be they Prachanda or Baburam Bhattrai,
Leaders who’d prefer a republican rule
To monarchy in Nepal.

*****

GUNS INSTEAD OF BOOKS (Satis Shroff)

My academic friends have changes sides,
From Mandalay to Congress
From Congress to the Maobadis.
The students from Dolpo and Silgadi.
Dolpo, unforgettable through Peter Mathiessen
In his quest for his inner self,
And his friend George Schaller’s search
For the snow leopard.
The students wrote Marxist verses and acquired volumes
From the embassies in Kathmandu:
Kim Il Sung’s writings, Mao’s red booklet,
Marx’s Das Kapital and Lenin’s works,
And defended socialist ideas
At His Majesty’s Central Hostel in Tahachal.
I see their earnest faces, with guns in their arms,
Instead of books,
Boisterous and ready
To fight to the end
For a cause they cherish
In their frustrated and fiery hearts.

But aren’t these sons of Nepal
Misguided and blinded,
By the seemingly victories of socialism?
Even Gorbachov pleaded for Peristroika,
And Putin admires capitalist Germany,
Its culture and commerce.
Look at the old Soviet Union,
And other East Bloc nations.
They have all swapped sides
And are EU and Nato members.


About the Author: Satis Shroff has written over a period of three decades, what the Germans would call a “Landesumschau,” for his readers with impressions from Freiburg, Venice, Rottweil, Prague, Paris, London, Frankfurt, Basel and Grindelwald. Satis Shroff has worked with The Rising Nepal (Gorkhapatra Sansthan), where he wrote a weekly Science Spot and editorials and commentaries on Nepal’s development, health, wildlife, politics and culture. He also wrote weekly commentaries for Radio Nepal. He has studied Zoology & Geology in Kathmandu, Medicine & Social Science in Freiburg, and Creative Writing under Prof. Bruce Dobler (Pittsburgh University) and Writers Bureau (Manchester). Satis Shroff sees his future as a writer and poet. He was awarded the German Academic Prize. Satis Shroff’s bicultural perspective makes his prose and poems rich, full of awe, and at the same time heartbreakingly sad. In writing ‘home,’ he not only returns to his country of origin time and again, he also carries the fate of his people to readers in the West, and his task of writing is a very important one in political terms. His true gift is to invent Nepalese metaphors and make them accessible to the West through his prose and poetry. Satis Shroff writes in German & English.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE NEPALESE REALITY (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)

All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Could not put Nepal together again.

Nepalese men and women
Look out of their ornate windows,
In west, east, north and south Nepal
And think:
A decade long war between the Maoists and Royalists
Has come to an end
We have suffered so much.
So many innocent men, women, boys and girls
Have been slain by bullets,
From both sides.

Kal Bhairab seems to be pacified,
For Vishnu has crept to his bed of serpents.
He peers at the unfurling scenario:
A new interim government,
A new constitution,
More amendments.
He hisses with a sulk:
‘What can they do better than I?’

When aristocrats, chauvinists, egoists and phallocrats
Were in power,
The underprivileged castes and tribes,
Women and children,
Went always with empty hands.
A new revolution and democracy is in the land,
But have the people changed their minds?
Or are they still conscious of their caste, birth and tribe?
Of their earlier prejudices, hatred and malice
Towards the dalits, the have-nots?

Our fervent prayers have been heard.
The people are rejoicing in the streets of Kathmandu.
May there be ‘everlasting’ peace again in Nepal,
Though ‘everlasting peace’ has become inflationary.
Rejoice and take reality as it is.
We have no choice,
But to lay our hopes on the fragile signatures
Of two protagonists,
In the Shadow of the Himalayas.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Lure of the Himalayas (Satis Shroff)

500 years ago near the town of Kashgar,
I, a stranger in local clothes was captured
By the sturdy riders of Vali Khan.
What was a stranger
With fair skin and blue eyes,
Looking for in Vali Khan’s terrain?
I, the stranger spoke a strange tongue.
‘He’s a spy sent by China.
Behead him,’ barked the Khan’s officer.
I pleaded and tried to explain
My mission in their country.
It was all in vain.

On August 26, 1857
I, Adolph Schlagintweit,
a German traveller, an adventurer,
Was beheaded as a spy,
Without a trial.

I was a German who set out on the footsteps
Of the illustrious Alexander von Humboldt,
With my two brothers Hermann and Robert,
From Southhampton on September 20,1854
To see India, the Himalayas and Higher Asia.
The mission of the 29000km journey
Was to make an exact cartography
Of the little known countries,
Sans invitation, I must admit.

In Kamet we reached a 6785m peak,
An elevation record in those days.
We measured the altitudes,
Gathered magnetic, meteorological,
And anthropological data.
We even collected extensive
Botanical, zoological and ethnographic gems.

Hermann and I made 751 sketches,
Drawings, water-colour and oil paintings.
The motifs were Himalayan panoramas,
Single summits, glacier formations,
Himalayan rivers and houses of the natives.
I still see myself and Hermann working
With our pencils, brushes daubed in water-colours and oil,
Trying to capture the colours and perspectives
Of the Himalayas.
Fond memories of Padam valley, near the old moraine
Of the main glacier at Zanskar in pencil and pen.
A view from Gunshankar peak 6023 metres,
From the Trans-Sutlej chain in aquarelle.
A European female in oriental dress in Calcutta 1855.
Brahmin, Rajput and Sudra women draped in saris.
Kristo Prasad, a 35 year old Rajput
Photographed in Benaras.
An old Hindu fakir with knee-long rasta braids,

Bhot women from Ladakh, snapped in Simla.
Kahars, Palki-porters from Bihar,
Hindus of the Sudra caste.
A Lepcha armed with bow and arrows,
In traditional dress up to his calves
And a hat with plume.
Kistositta, a 25 year old Brahmin from Bengal,
Combing the hair of Mungia,
A 43 year old Vaisa woman.
A wandering Muslim minstrel Manglu at Agra,
With his sarangi.
A 31 year old Ram Singh, a Sudra from Benaras,
Playing his Kolebassen flute.
The monsoon,
And thatched Khasi houses at Cherrapunji,
The rainiest place on earth.

The precious documents of our long journey
Can be seen at the Alpine Museum Munich.
Even a letter,
Sent by Robert to our sister Matilde,
Written on November 2, 1866 from Srinagar:
‘We travelled a 200 English mile route,
Without seeing a human being,
Who didn’t belong to our caravan.
Besides our horses, we had camels,
The right ones with two humps,
Which you don’t find in India.
We crossed high glacier passes at 5500m
And crossed treacherous mountain streams.’

My fascination for the Himalayas
Got the better of me.
I had breathed the rare Himalayan air,
And felt like Icarus.
I wanted to fly higher and higher,
Forgetting where I was.
My brothers Hermann and Robert left India
By ship and reached Berlin in June,1857.

I wanted to traverse the continent
Disregarding the dangers,
For von Humboldt was my hero.
Instead of honour and fame,
My body was dragged by fierce riders in the dust,
Although I had long left the world.


My soul had raced with the speed of light to Heaven
A Persian traveller, a Muslim with a heart
Found my headless body.
He brought my remains all the way to India,
Where he handed it to a British colonial officer.

It was a fatal fascination,
But had I the chance,
I’d do it again.

******

MY NEPAL, QUO VADIS? (Satis Shroff)

My Nepal, what has become of you?
Your features have changed with time.
The innocent face of the Kumari
Has changed to the blood-thirsty countenance of Kal Bhairab,
From development to destruction,
From bikas to binas.
A crown prince fell in love,
But couldn’t assert himself,
In a palace where ancient traditions still prevail.
Despite Eton college and a liberal education,
He chose guns instead of rhetoric,
And ended his young life,
As well as those of his parents and other royal members.
An aunt from London aptly remarked,
‘He was like the terminator.’
Another bloodshed in a Gorkha palace,
Recalling the Kot massacre under Jung Bahadur Rana.

You’re no longer the same
There’s insurrection and turmoil
Against the government and the police.
Your sons and daughters are at war,
With the Gurkhas again.

Maobadis with revolutionary flair,
With ideologies from across the Tibetan Plateau and Peru.
Ideologies that have been discredited elsewhere,
Flourish in the Himalayas.
Demanding a revolutionary-tax from tourists and Nepalis
With brazen, bloody attacks
Fighting for their own rights
And the rights of the bewildered common man.

Well-trained government troops at the orders
Of politicians safe in Kathmandu.
Leaders, who despise talks and compromises,
Flex their tongues and muscles,
And let the imported automatic salves speak their deaths.
Ill-armed guerrillas against well-armed Royal Gurkhas
In the foothills of the Himalayas.

Nepali children have no chance, but to take sides
To take to arms not knowing the reason and against whom.
The child-soldier gets orders from grown-ups
And the hapless souls open fire.
Hukum is order, the child-soldier cannot reason why.
Shedding precious human blood,
For causes they both hold high.
Ach, this massacre in the shadow of the Himalayas.
Nepalis look out of their ornate windows,
In the west, east, north and south Nepal
And think:
How long will this krieg go on?
How much do we have to suffer?
How many money-lenders, businessmen, civil servants,
Policemen and gurkhas do the Maobadis want to kill
Or be killed?
How many men, women, boys and girls have to be mortally injured
Till Kal Bhairab is pacified by the Sleeping Vishnu?
How many towns and villages in the seventy five districts
Do the Maobadis want to free from capitalism?
When the missionaries close their schools,
Must the Hindus and Buddhists shut their temples and shrines?
Shall atheism be the order of the day?
Not in Nepal.

It breaks my heart, as I hear over the radio:
Nepal’s not safe for visitors.
Visitors who leave their money behind,
In the pockets of travel agencies, rug dealers, currency and drug dealers,
And hordes of ill-paid honest Sherpas and Tamang porters.
Sweat beads trickling from their sun-burnt faces,
In the dizzy heights of the Dolpo, Annapurna ranges
And the Khumbu glaciers.
Eking out a living and facing the treacherous
Icy crevasses, snow-outs, precipices
And a thousand deaths.

Beyond the beaten trekking paths
Live the poorer families of Nepal.
No roads, no schools,
Sans drinking water and sans hospitals,
Where aids and children’s work prevail.

Lichhavis, Thakuris and Mallas have made you eternal
Man Deva inscribed his title on the pillar of Changu,
After great victories over neighbouring states.
Amshu Verma was a warrior and mastered the Lichavi Code.
He gave his daughter in marriage to Srong Beean Sgam Po,
The ruler of Tibet, who also married a Chinese princess.
Jayastathi Malla ruled long and introduced the system of the caste,
A system based on the family occupation,
That became rigid with the tide of time.
Yaksha Malla the ruler of Kathmandu Valley,
Divided it into Kathmandu, Patan and Bhadgaon for his three sons.

It was Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha,
Who brought you together,
As a melting pot of ethnic diversities.
With Gorkha conquests that cost the motherland
Thousands of ears, noses and Nepali blood

The Ranas usurped the royal throne
And put a prime minister after the other for 104 years.
104 years of a country in poverty and medieval existence.
It was King Tribhuvan’s proclamation and the blood of the Nepalis,
Who fought against the Gorkhas under the command of the Ranas,
That ended the Rana autocracy.
His son King Mahendra saw to it that he held the septre
When Nepal entered the UNO.
The multiparty system along with the Congress party was banned.

Then came thirty years of Panchayat promises of a Hindu rule
With a system based on the five village elders,
Like the proverbial five fingers in one’s hand,
That are not alike and yet functioned in harmony.
The Panchayat government was indeed an old system,
Packed and sold as a new and traditional one.
A system is just as good as the people who run it.
And Nepal didn’t run.
It revived the age-old chakary,
Feudalism with its countless spies and yes-men,
Middle-men who held out their hands
For bribes, perks and amenities.
Poverty, caste-system with its divisions and conflicts,
Discrimination, injustice, bad governance
Became the nature of the day.

A big chasm appeared between the haves-and-have-nots.
The social inequality, frustrated expectations of the poor
Led to a search for an alternative pole.
The farmers were ignored, the forests and land confiscated,
Corruption and inefficiency became the rule of the day.
Even His Majesty’s servants went so far as to say:
Raja ko kam, kahiley jahla gham.

The birthplace of Buddha
And the Land of Pashupati,
A land which King Birendra declared a Zone of Peace,
Through signatures of the world’s leaders
Is at war today.

Bush’s government paid 24 million dollars for development aid,
Another 14 million dollars for insurgency relevant spendings
5,000 M-16 rifles from the USA
5,500 maschine guns from Belgium.
Guns that are aimed at Nepali men, women and children,
In the mountains of Nepal.
Alas, under the shade of the Himalayas,
This corner of the world has become volatile again.

My academic friends have changes sides,
From Mandalay to Congress
From Congress to the Maobadis.
From Hinduism to Communism.
The students from Dolpo and Silgadi,
Made unforgettable by Peter Mathiessen in his quest for his inner self
And his friend George Schaller’s search for the snow leopard,
Wrote Marxist verses and acquired volumes
From the embassies in Kathmandu:
Kim Il Sung’s writings, Mao’s red booklet,
Marx’s Das Kapital and Lenin’s works,
And defended socialist ideas
At His Majesty’s Central Hostel in Tahachal.
I see their earnest faces, then with books in their arms
Now with guns and trigger-happy,
Boisterous and ready to fight to the end
For a cause they cherish in their frustrated and fiery hearts.

But aren’t these sons of Nepal misguided and blinded
By the seemingly victories of socialism?
Even Gorbachov pleaded for Peristroika,
And Putin admires Germany, its culture and commerce.
Look at the old Soviet Union, and other East Bloc nations.
They have all swapped sides and are EU and Nato members.
Globalisation has changed the world fast,
But in Nepal time stands still
The blind beggar at the New Road gate sings:
Lata ko desh ma, gaddha tantheri.
In a land where the tongue-tied live,
The deaf desire to rule.
Oh my Nepal, quo vadis?

The only way to peace and harmony is
By laying aside the arms.
Can Nepal afford to be the bastion of a movement and a government
That rides rough-shod over the lives and rights of fellow Nepalis?
Can’t we learn from the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq?
The Maobadis must be given a chance at the polls,
Like all other democratic parties.
Time will tell us whether they can integrate
In Nepal or not.
I have hope,
For the Maobadis are bahuns and chettris,
Be they Prachanda or Baburam Bhattrai,
Leaders who are Nepalese.
The game of bagh-chal goes on,
For Vishnu no longer holds,
The executive, judiciary, legislative,
Spiritual and temporal powers
In the shadow of the Himalayas.

---------------

A GURKHA MOTHER (Satis Shroff)
(Death of a Precious Jewel)

The gurkha with a khukri
But no enemy
Works for the United Nations
And yet gets shot at
In missions he doesn't comprehend.
Order is hukum, hukum is life
Johnny Gurkha still dies under foreign skies.

He never asks why
Politics isn't his style
He's fought against all and sundry:
Turks, Tibetans, Italians and Indians
Germans, Japanese, Chinese
Argentenians and Vietnamese.
Indonesians and Iraqis.
Loyalty to the utmost
Never fearing a loss.

The loss of a mother's son
From the mountains of Nepal.

Her grandpa died in Burma
For the glory of the British.
Her husband in Mesopotemia
She knows not against whom
No one did tell her.
Her brother fell in France,
Against the Teutonic hordes.
She prays to Shiva of the Snows for peace
And her son's safety.
Her joy and her hope
Farming on a terraced slope.

A son who helped wipe her tears
And ease the pain in her mother's heart.
A frugal mother who lives by the seasons
And peers down to the valleys
Year in and year out
In expectation of her soldier son.

A smart Gurkha is underway
Heard from across the hill with a shout
'It’s an officer from his battalion.
A letter with a seal and a poker-face
"Your son died on duty", he says,
"Keeping peace for the country
And the United Nations".

A world crumbles down
The Nepalese mother cannot utter a word
Gone is her son,
Her precious jewel.
Her only insurance and sunshine
In the craggy hills of Nepal.
And with him her dreams
A spartan life that kills.

Glossary:
gurkha: soldier from Nepal
Johnny Gurkha: Eine Bezeichnung für die Nepalis die in Englands Gurkha Einheiten (z.B. King Edward’s Own Gurkha Rifles) dienen. Sie leisten auch heute noch ihren Eid auf die britische Königin und ziehen u. a. vor dem Buckingham Palast als Ehrenwache auf. Britische Gurkhas dienten in Malaysia, Indonesien (Borneo), Hongkong, Brunei, Zypern und neuerdings auch in Kosovo.
khukri: curved knife used in hand-to-hand combat
hukum: Befehl/command/order
shiva: a god in Hinduism
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE NEPALESE REALITY (Satis Shroff)

All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Could not put Nepal together again.

Nepalese men and women
Look out of their ornate windows,
In west, east, north and south Nepal
And think:
A decade long war between the Maoists and Royalists
Has come to an end
We have suffered so much.
So many innocent men, women, boys and girls
Have been slain by bullets,
From both sides.

Kal Bhairab seems to be pacified,
For Vishnu has crept to his bed of serpents.
He peers at the unfurling scenario:
A new interim government,
A new constitution,
More amendments.
He hisses with a sulk:
‘What can they do better than I?’

When aristocrats, chauvinists, egoists and phallocrats
Were in power,
The underprivileged castes and tribes,
Women and children,
Went always with empty hands.
A new revolution and democracy is in the land,
But have the people changed their minds?
Or are they still conscious of their caste, birth and tribe?
Of their earlier prejudices, hatred and malice
Towards the dalits, the have-nots?

Our fervent prayers have been heard.
The people are rejoicing in the streets of Kathmandu.
May there be ‘everlasting’ peace again in Nepal,
Though ‘everlasting peace’ has become inflationary.
We have no choice,
But to lay our hopes on the fragile signatures
Of two protagonists,
In the Shadow of the Himalayas.
Rejoice and take reality as it is.

January 3, 2008 | 3:08 AM Comments  1 comments


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