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Poetry & Prose

Gyanendra Shah’s Death

by Prawin | June 2005

The unthinkable happened circa 2013—China decided that it wanted to be the moral guardian of the world. Many foresaw that and beat their heads and chanted the name of their political and religious saviours, but the Americans were too arrogant—when McCain was elected to the white house after George W. Bush, even the democrats smiled and pretended to be dignified losers, but they also took the American art of navel-gazing bit too far and laughed at China for suddenly clamping down on restaurants serving sushi on naked women. Of course, the Indians, too, muttered through mouthful of curries about Chinese designs: they wanted to be the guardians of the world, too. On 4th July 2016, George W. Bush opened a new gallery in his presidential library, and with a face incapable of betraying the complex bitter-sweetness of his own prophecy, observed that the world had indeed become a battleground of different "ways of life," defending themselves to death. The fledgling civilization called America, which had once been prosperous enough to spread political ideologies on the strength of military might, sailed past the zenith.

The unthinkable happened circa 2013—Gyanendra Shah lived much longer than any of his predecessors, and after doggedly dragging himself through three heart attacks, he died one quiet morning, unsure of what he had achieved. He had been a gambler all of his life, as had been his grandfather, and many of his ancestors who gambled, mostly in cards and each other— women, in jewellery looted in Lucknow. Gyanendra was fond of looking at bats that slept on the trees outside his house, and on this morning too he had been tracking the flights of bats, and evaluating his achievements. That was the trouble—as a businessman, he had had the pleasure of translating everything into money, but it was no longer easy to count coins with what he had done. Both his cruelties and his kindness—for he wouldn't submit in his grey days that he had never been kind—both his cruelties and his kindness had been of the kind that no price can be put on. "And what a son," he had closed his eyes and touched his chest, just under the sternum, as if he was being shot, and wondered the fate he had written for the inheritance he would leave behind.

Only three people know what killed Gyanendra Shah on that day: it was a letter to an editor of a broadsheet with a circulation of three thousand, published in Chandranigahpur. In it a man wrote: "Dear Sir, do you realize that ours is the last generation of Nepali children to have had a peaceful childhood? I think it is time we recognized the wisdom in a monarch— vision to declare this country a zone of peace." There is the sentry who had to scramble after the newspaper the day before when the wind stole it from Gyanendra— feeble grip. The paper was blown around the corner, and the sentry being new to the job, he happened to glance at the letter as he ambled back. The second person who knows what killed Gyanendra Shah used to be the aide, and so struck was he by the dead man— grip on the newspaper, the thumb ripping through the paper right under the letter, that the aide immediately sensed that there was a man somewhere who had killed Gyanendra Shah with two sentences.

That was 2013. People did mourn Gyanendra Shah—even those who had been his enemies, because he was at least rational, if not reasonable. You could depend upon him to be a sturdy adversary, and that made things so much simpler. When pages from his personal diary were posthumously released, many scoffed at the stunt. But, when people read the pages they couldn't help but smile—the same empty and sad smile that had been associated with Gyanendra Shah much of his life, which made him not at all trustworthy. It was difficult to tell if the man had been deranged, or if he had been simply deluded by the pandering of kinsmen who were also cronies and cogs of the machine to which he was appointed hereditary master. But he had been a sad man, and the pages left no doubt about that. So tortured had he become by the burning marks of destiny that he had once attempted to reverse fate—he had come to hate kings who showed themselves under a serpent— hood, alluding to Vishnu and Krishna and gilding their likeness in gold. He had become angry once, and in an alcohol driven rage, attempted to reduce the kings of the past to exactly what they were: mortals, who left behind likenesses that were mere handiwork in metal or stone. He had attacked statues, keenly aware that someday he might himself be made into one. He wanted to uproot them, sell them to people who would not see them as anything more than stone, or gilded bronze.

India, China, Pakistan and the US had signed a joint treaty, through which China was allowed to set up military facilities in Bangladesh, Pakistan was allowed to set up its bases in Burma, India chose Afghanistan, and the Nepali army welcomed the Americans. It was a win-win situation for all, for the three superpowers had increased their striking range considerably, creating a friendly doomsday scenario, and Pakistan could pretend to belong to the big boys' club. Nepali army had become big, but blood was still shed in the mountains and the plains. Terror had reached its logical conclusion: almost all instances of violence involved suicide attacks. Both the king— men and the men-kings of the communist parties had wantonly armed the common man, until a resurgent middleclass had claimed righteousness in 2010 and declared sole proprietorship of violence. Now, it was not the soldier or the rebel with blood on his hands, but the man walking the streets.

Gun culture had finally arrived. The most popular edition of handguns was four inches from trigger to snout and sold almost exclusively to women between twenty nine and fifty nine. One in every 2.3 individuals in Nepal had been shot at least once, one in every four had been shot at least twice, and one in every 4.7 had been shot three times or more. Among those receiving gun shot wounds, the average age at which a person was shot for the first time was fourteen. Men were shot more often, but only by six percent.

An odd normalcy had returned to politics when less lethal firearms were introduced to the populace. A hundred percent of those who had been shot had returned fire. Among the population to have never been shot, only forty five percent had never shot another individual in self-defense or on design. Average life expectancy swung wildly from year to year. When the common person took up arms, the extremists could no longer make a point simply by hurting others—they had to be willing to kill themselves, too, and drive home not the terror but the outrageous futility of non-compliance. Politicians stopped being ambitious, civil servants stopped asking for bribes, army generals were routinely ambushed by their disgruntled gardeners. People stopped being as cocky in general when the ordinary hand became seeped in blood. A new dawn was arising, and it was sweetly bloody. 2013 was still an exciting time to live in, or to die. Gyanendra Shah died with the knowledge that it was as good a year to die as any.

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Gyanendra Shah’s Death

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