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Poetry & Prose

The Ascendancy of Gyanendra Shah

by Prawin | June 2005

In 1947 C.E., Lachhuman Das Kayastha of what was then a mosquito infested Nepalganj had a mean mother who despised her daughter in law and berated that the firstborn would be a girl, through constant taunting forcing Lachhuman's sixteen year old bride Sona Devi to make the two day bullock-cart journey to her parental home, across the border in Rampur. Sona Devi gave birth to a son; the priest named him Rambharosa Das Kayastha. When Lachhuman Das lost his mother to tuberculosis he visited his wife's father to ask for Sona Devi and the child's return. In 1952 the family made a pilgrimage to Janakpur for the bibaha-panchami festivals, and decided to stay in the bustling new town. In 1956 C.E. Lachhuman Das Kayastha was visited by a cadre of Nepali Congress who wanted to register the family for ballot and citizenship, fresh fodder for a fledgling democracy. It was there that Lachhuman Das Kayastha, himself born in the erstwhile British India but without any real sense of a political border because there was no distinction culturally, decided to change his surname to Shah. Rambharosa Das Kayastha was registered in the citizenship rosters as Gyanendra Shah, born 1949 C.E., Janakpur. Like most devout Hindus along the fresh political division after the British Raj, Lachhuman Shah was glad to be living under a Hindu king, in quiet and peace, away from massacres of Muslims.

So there he was—Gyanendra Shah, quietly maturing through Panchayat and the massacred democracy, making his daily rounds to Janaki Mandir, reciting Hanuman Chalisa in the mornings as he took his dips in temple ponds. He smiled when people asked why his father hadn't named him Birendra instead—he could have shared names with the king himself. And picture this—a large signboard atop his small shop of puja knick-knacks, proudly proclaiming: ‚ÄúBirendra Shah's Shop, puja material available here, flowers guaranteed fresh.‚Äù But he merely smiled and chewed his paan until a neighbour suffered a horrible case of mouth cancer, after which he gave up paan, tobacco and beetle-nut.

How long can a man destined for greatness remain nameless and inconsequential? 2001 happened. Gyanendra Shah shaved his head in mourning and contributed a full 500 rupees note to a local publication to take out a half-page condolence message along with other shopkeepers on the lane. For some reason the graphic artist designing the condolence message decided to put his name on top, right under the official portrait of the slain family. When another merchant by the name of Gyanendra Shah decided to print a congratulatory message to the new king, people of Janakpur mistook him for our Gyanendra Shah and wondered if it wasn't a cosmic ploy, if Janaki maiyya hadn't finally blessed the deserving man. On his 52nd year—or the 54th, depending upon how old one took him to be—Gyanendra Shah was quietly reborn.

Never been a political man, Gyanendra Shah, a simple businessman content with his small shop and petty vices of beetle-nut and paan, he was now a sudden, accidental celebrity. People who had ceased to ask him why his father hadn't named him Birendra started their jokes anew. A shrewd local politician who smelled the demise of democracy stepped forward as Gyanendra Shah's steward, and overnight various broadsheets praised our man. His foresight was recounted, his insight was venerated, his vision was extolled, his oratory skills were praised, and his numerous contributions to the nation since his early days as political activist were recorded, flaunted. Very soon, Gyanendra Shah found himself surrounded by sycophants who knew more about his exploits than he remembered. In six months, Gyanendra Shah knew by heart everything he had allegedly ever done. How could he not see that he was a born leader? What else could he be but a leader of the people like him? Gyanendra Shah was a man of the masses, and didn't June 2001 prove that Gyanendra Shah was destined for greatness? He has only to suggest, and greatness will act itself out. Gyanendra Shah, the seller of trinkets and mild vices like paan-supari, became the designated leader, the quasi-messiah of an unresponsive mass.

And so on. Let us not dwell on the drabness of history that has already passed. What wonder is there in petty slaughters? Twenty thousand Nepali died between 1997 and 2007, but that was nothing compared to the great earthquake of 2008. Tethis sea moved ever upwards in its inching crawl, and shook the Himalayas. Everyone had dreaded and awaited this catastrophe, and it had finally arrived. Kathmandu had swelled to a population of two million souls by February of 2008—the frogs of the pond, who had lacked the courage to venture outside the valley, the destitute that poured in from all over the country, parachuted horde of preachers and beseechers, stealthy killers seeking betrayed brethren—Kathmandu and its two million souls were shaken one morning and flung to the ground. Basundhara, the Earth-goddess, swallowed many a widowed Sita slummed on Tundikhel. Lahure neighbourhoods in Dharan were reduced to rubbles. The taller the avarice and arrogance of a man, the harder his illegally, immorally constructed stories fell. Bricks rained upon dancing wedding guests. The dam in Sundarijal broke and washed away the praying filth lined along the slums on the banks of Bagmati. Seti opened wider in Pokhara and Fewa drained to the drudge. Hospitals caved in upon the patients. Bridges fell into Narayani. Pious Hindus refused to bury their dead, but there was no wood to burn them either. Among the scarce few structures left standing in Kathmandu were the aged wooden temples, and pious Hindus refused to strip them for pyre-wood. The dead decayed—because the dead obeyed the laws of nature where the living had forgotten every natural law that binds humans. The dead decayed and beasts came out of the woods, enticed by the smell of abundant flesh. Mothers died with infants sucking their breasts, infants dried in their mothers' arms. Diseases set in. Famine followed to finish off the remaining. Those that were too awed by the sight of Kaal-Bhairab so fiercely descended upon the kingdom were struck dead. Kathmandu became a city littered with corpses—international humanitarian agencies declared the valley unfit for any venture. In the hills, the mud and stone houses were shaken so hard that scarce few survived. Houses built on terraces on the mountains slid into the valley in a rumble fiercer than Rudra's cry when he witness creation. Only those who had enough of neither the land nor the means to build a pakki house were left to witness the first footfalls of Kalki.

Cities in the terai weren't spared either—but when cities fell, the poor rural populace dug their way out from the rubble of bamboo and straw huts and wondered what sins the city-folks had committed that the penance was so swift, so great. Maoists in caves were killed, but those out to raid villages heard the rumble of distant giants and came to their senses after being flung into rocks and trees. The RNA headquarters in Kathmandu was razed, but the soldiers with jumpy fingers on American triggers survived to mourn their families that had been left in Kathmandu or cities in the terai, far from the fighting of men, secured away from everything but the cold neutrality of the universe.

After attending to its own crisis, the Indian government decided that it needed to intervene. Survivors from the hills descended to the terai after salvaging what food and property they could carry, but tension immediately flared up in the plains. As the pahadi populace put pressure on the scare resources of the plains, ethnic conflicts escalated. Vigilante groups raided each other for food and medicine. Women were raped, children killed, crops burned. A man wore a garland of chopped fingers, but no Buddha came forward to chide him.

Infighting amongst the Maoists lead to the expulsion of Baburam Bhattarai, who begged the Nepali people for forgiveness and proclaimed a Government in Exile from New Delhi, but he was assassinated shortly after. As India publicly began the debate about whether or not it should send troops to stabilize its northern neighbour, the Maoists decided to do everything to delay the inevitable. In a show of brazen foolishness, dams on Marshyangdi, Kulekhani, Trishuli, Kaligandaki, Karnali and the Koshi barrage were destroyed in a concerted show by the Prachanda faction, the day since made infamous as the day of the Great Fireworks. Settlements in the terai, which were more sympathetic to a breakaway faction that demanded a new Nepali identity constructed around the Madhesi heritage of the populace, were swept away. North India was dealt a severe blow. The Maoists had expected that the floods would subside by the time they reached Bangladesh, but Ganga betrayed their calculations and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Bangladeshis. The Bay of Bengal choked with corpses—from every corner of Nepal, from north India and from Bangladesh. That year, there was a record yield of fishes from that sea, but pious Hindus of India refused to eat the crop.

The RNA was harassed continuously by the rebels, who were now on equal footing after raiding and looting the army's arsenals. As their fire-power grew, they also became the largest single employer in the country. Soon, the RNA became little more than a para-military outfit, struggling foremost for its own survival. The rebels claimed legitimacy as the RNA descended to extorting its own wards for the means to buy weapons to continue fighting the rebels. Finally, the United Kingdom and India declared a joint war against the rebels in order to defend the kingdom of Nepal. India deployed its Gurkha divisions, as did the United Kingdom, as such a deployment of brother against brother no longer qualified as a breach of the spirit of the treaty binding the two kingdoms and India. New settlements arose in the terai around new army garrisons of two affluent nations, and there were ample opportunities for leaders who were also good businessmen. There was just one such man who had survived the earthquake in Janakpur—Gyanendra Shah. Thus began the ascendancy of Gyanendra Shah of Janakpur.

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The Ascendancy of Gyanendra Shah

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