http://www.shelfari.com/books/25562397/The-Royal-Enigma

Set in the unsettling politics of India and Nepal as a backdrop, where the popular leaders have to be assassinated mostly, Nawin lives through the Maoist-war in the country, bearing the hardship it caused to the ordinary people like him. He finally discovers how much his step-mother had helped him, when his mother had died recently, when he and his brother were too young. He also feels his helplessness for not being able to support her, in her efforts to maintain her mentally-invalid son, at a late age. Also is described the rule of monarchy in Nepal in this book, when it held the absolute power, and the royal massacre, which eliminated the entire family of the king, when the monachy had become constitutional. During the Maoist-war, the violence unleashed by them and counter-violence by the security forces of the state too are dealt in fair-details. This book is a serious effort to define the socio-politics of the Indian subcontinent, through fiction, which has been remarkably violent–as far as one could remember. Also it speculates on how things have turned in a way that the economy is suffering in most of the world–while the Moguls like Rupert Murdoch have fallen.

“ 

(1)

The pursuing security personnel, on a search after the failed ambush of the night by Maoists, discovered those mass graves the next day, which were fresh and not adequately covered. And the newspapers brought the pictures of the bodies piled one upon another, in an exposed mass grave, which had not decayed at all, yet. There were rumors that the fighters, seriously wounded but yet not dead, too were buried, as the retreating guerillas were not able to carry them far–for they could leak the intelligence, if found wounded and alive. But in some places the Maoists were winning as well, killing all the security personnel at an outpost, who had surrendered, and taking away their weapons. They now had several M16 rifles, as were shown in the pictures in the newspapers, which also displayed the AK 47 rifles too, in the Maoists’ hands, which were not used by any of the security forces inNepal. The taking over of power, by the king, had made the war more open. The day-to-day politics, which was creating confusion among the security forces, on how to deal with the situation, which was claiming more lives of their ranks, was there no more, after the king took over. This situation has strangely drifted the political parties towards the Maoists, and against the king.

       An hour later, a truck full of army men came. They, after making sure that there were no explosives, carefully removed the trees from the road and the buses moved ahead. They stopped an hour’s drive later. The passengers disembarked. Some of them started brushing their teeth, before they had the breakfast at the eating places under the roof of dried grass over the walls made of mud and wood.  Nawin felt skeptical about the people, who were getting on with their daily activities so normally, after a night-journey which was full of so many uncertainties, and unpleasant surprises, apart from being a sleepless one. They were gobbling up boiled eggs, beans and sel rotis. The Israeli tourist had a little juice and was smoking again his hashish cigarettes, while Nawin had his black tea. The tourist said to Nawin that he had recently completed his mandatory military service and was on a holiday now. He felt bitter indeed, when he talked about his experience in the army. He was just a few years past his twenty, and was tall and slim. A brown beard covered his handsome face, under the thick hair. He wished that the war inNepalended soon.

       As soon they reached the next base of the army, a few hours’ drive further, half of the passengers left the bus. They were army men returning to the duty from their holidays in their homes in the various places the bus crossed. Nawin was surprised that no one doubted their identity, including the security people checking the bus so often. Traveling with so many security personnel in a vehicle was full of risk for the civilians, as Maoists had recently blown-up one such bus in Chitwan, in which many civilians too were killed, apart from the security personals. Maoists have issued a warning to the civilians, to avoid traveling with security people in a public transport vehicle.

(2)

After the death of his father, Dinesh has gained an enormous amount of weight; as, unlike his father, Nisha was not able to take him for walks. There was another mentally-invalid girl of the same age in the town. Nawin went to meet her parents, whenever he went to visit his home lately, as he felt a profound cordiality with them. They expressed a genuine concern for Dinesh, and asked about his habits and then compared them to that of their daughter’s. It was quite unlike the routine words of sympathy other people expressed towards Dinesh. More recently, the father of that invalid girl had died at a young age of fifty-five. Her mother, on his next visit to her, to express his condolence, said to Nawin, that even only a day before herself she wanted her daughter to die. She said that if the daughter outlived her, like she had to her father, she will face a great trouble. She speculated that the mentally invalid children mostly die around the age of thirty, but she expressed a surprise that her daughter and Dinesh have been proving such burdensome exceptions. Nawin consoled her as best as he could, aware that, after the death of her husband, she was more worried about her invalid-daughter. He asked her to take more care of herself, as she will have to live longer, to look-after her daughter. His heart was filled with more pity, on the thought that, sex, which proves such a driving force in the lives of the normal people like him and others, has eluded his half-brother Dinesh and that hapless girl, who also menstruated regularly, entirely. They both were virgins past the age of thirty. That unreleased energy, so potent a symbol of life, must have transformed the psyches of Dinesh and that girl, in some strange ways. Nawin wondered what could be the manifestation of it, in their personalities.

       Nawin often found Nisha too saying the similar things, about her own death and that of Dinesh. A few days with them made him so emotionally tired, that he hastened to return toKathmandu, to his job and family. But in his heart there always was a thought of the hardship Nisha was bearing, while taking care of Dinesh, at her ripe age. Also was there an ever-present fear, for what would happen if Nisha died of her old age. The duty of looking after Dinesh, after Nisha, intimidated Nawin. So the future was as uncertain as ever. Coming once in a while to see Dinesh and Nisha could only be a symbol of his kind-feelings towards them, but by no means a real physical help, which Nisha needed so obviously at her age. He wished something to transpire in a way that he will be relieved of the financial worries to maintain his family inKathmandu, and devote more of his time to live with Nisha and Dinesh. But it was at best a few years ahead, as his children were to be given a few more years of schooling, before they became independent. So he came to see Nisha and Dinesh, not more than for a week, almost every year or two.

(3)

“Long time, no see?” said Dilip, on meeting Nawin near a bank’s office at New Road.

“That is the Khusi,” replied Nawin winking. Khusi meant happiness, in Nepali. Dilip’s face distorted, due to his efforts to suppress the laughter on hearing it, while they shook hands. The feeling of companionship among them was alive as ever, though they were meeting after a long time.

“Let us go and see the Kaiser library, we talked about last time. I am sure being a lazy person, you have not been there, in spite of my persuasions,” Dilip suggested. Nawin nodded and followed him. The library was indeed in a big building. The entrance was from a room which might have been the drawing-room of Kaiser Rana. There were skins of tiger or deer on the floor, on the carpet; and the small, black and white, framed pictures of Rana elite on one of the walls. The pictures, at times, had a crowd of the wives of a Rana around him, apart from their children; at others, a Rana had his foot on a body of a tiger or a wild-buffalo, hunted-down, with the rifle in his hands perhaps. Stuffed whole-animal skins on the tables, of different species, also adorned the drawing-room, with their jaws and claws intact. Stuffed-heads of wild-cats and buffaloes, occupied the another wall on one side, with their glass-eyes staring at the visitors. There were also life-size oil-portraits of the ancestors of Kaiser Rana, wearing their military regalia and colorful turbans, with a sword supporting them while they stood, on one of the walls of the drawing-room. The sofas and carpets were damaged though, as were the beautifully carved wooden-chairs, which needed an immediate maintenance. In the gallery next to the drawing-room were the shelves, containing many books. Many of them leather-bound and printed in theUSAorUK, at the turn of the last century, or later; as Dilip had said.

“Till this day leather remains a symbol of luxury,” Nawin said, while they were observing and browsing the books in the gallery, “haven’t you noticed the stuffed animals in the drawing-room?”

“You know, inEngland, there in a library is a book, bound in human-leather of a slave, which feels grainy on touching,” replied Dilip.

“The current recession inEuropeis really bad,” Nawin said, “It seems their whole financial system was like a house of cards. Apart fromGermany, there is no other viable economy that exists inEuropetoday. Now they are asking for Chinese money to bail them out: the countries likeGreece,Italy,Spain, who knows, may beFrancetoo.

“It produces nothing of value anymore, as manufacturing has shifted toAsia. A second industrial revolution looks impossible to begin there, inEurope, as we do not need those toys anymore,” Nawin said, “and their universities are creating a crowd of socialists, who could just talk and want their social-benefits. Only second-rate people now live inEurope, others migrate to theUSA. Do you think there will be a revolution and the whole ofEuropewill become a socialist republic?”

“Maybe, you are right. But at present the revolution seems to be happening in the north-Africa and the Arabian world, mainly Muslim,” Dilip said, “while EU nations are providing the military support under the banner of NATO to the rebels, to oust the regimes they had supported for decades.”

“It is their design to out-source their own revolution. But this is an information age. You see their art and culture being rejected by the people elsewhere. Even their pornography is losing its appeal. I only watch Indian-porn nowadays, on the net. I might have preferred a Nepalese one, but they do not know where to keep the camera.”

“Yes, without colonies they are at a loss. Do you think that real decolonization would happen any time soon?” asked Dilip.

“What else you think is happening? Only you have to see who is on which side. The daySwitzerlandis held accountable for the benefits it derived out of world-wars and then from the dictatorships around the world; you should assume that it is working.”

“You have not given-up your day-dreaming,” Dilip said with irritation, “Let us get out and have some hot-drinks. This place is really cold during winter. I am losing patience with these books. May be I will not come here again. They appear so out-of-date. With those stuffed animals this place looks ghostly.”

(4)

When Laxmi returned with Shyam from her parents’ village, she brought with her a kid only a few weeks old, which was milky-white in colour. Nawin soon grew fond of it. He took the kid on his lap, while he roamed in the streets of the town. He fed it and talked to it for hours, caressing its soft white hair. It looked beautiful with its big black eyes in the pink-coloured eye-lids. A few weeks later the horns started to appear on its head. On one morning his parents took away the kid, saying that they were going to the temple of the town, and when they returned the kid was not with them. When Nawin asked about it, they gave him evasive answers. Only by the evening, when they served him the food, Nawin was told that the meat he was about to eat was of the kid they had slaughtered, to offer sacrifice at the temple. He fell silent on hearing it, and did not eat the food that evening. For the several months afterwards, he did not eat the meat, as the sight of it brought the memory of that kid, to his mind.

       But soon Nawin became accustomed to this ritual of animal-sacrifice, as it was routinely performed at a temple. At the temple of their village, a two-mile climb away in the hills, which was situated between a pine-forest, a little distance away from the village, at times more than a dozen goats were sacrificed on a religious occasion, which often begun in the evening only and continued till late in the night–which was poorly lit by candles inside the temple, and by the light of the fires in the open, around which the children played and the elders talked–giving a ghostly appearance to every one, in the wilderness of the forest. Afterwards, the corpses of sacrificed animals were roasted on those fires, to which were continuously fed more of pine wood or cones, dropped around or snatched away by the young village-boys, who climbed the pine trees effortlessly, which Nawin could not do at all. Thin, dried stem of pine were used to remove the burnt hairs from the skin of the corpse, by scratching. During this process the meat was already half-cooked and often broke the skin with a soft burst, to ooze out with a sizzling sound. He saw the children of the village snatching away a burnt tail of a sacrificed goat’s corpse, or the oozing-out meat, with their hands, and eating it without letting it cool. They were probably hungry and impatient, waiting all the while, while the goats were ritually being sacrificed and roasted in their skins. Nawin remained ambivalent about meat-eating however, often dropping it to take it up again, sometime later.”  

–From this book.

Delhi-return

Your most memorable moments of life may include the time you spent reading the work of your favourite author. Which could remain with you when you are lonely, apart from a few other memories.

It is about thoughts, ideas, emotions and a vision. Remembering, relating and so much else. All these need very little instruments that are visible. The mystery begins to deepen.

Krishna Bhatt

The new release at Amazon Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Delhi-return-ebook/dp/B004EYUD00/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1307460553&sr=8-2

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Underclass-Lover-Krishna-Bhatt/dp/1595943641/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_4

Annie Altamirano
English Teacher
Madrid Spain

The Work of Nik is available at www.outsiderwriters.org , a remarkable literary web site organised by a few vosionary  editors and contributors; among others.

City Women and the Ghost Writer

I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve never been to Nepal or India. I’ve never trekked through the mountains or eaten curry for a few rupees or bathed in the small river behind my house. Damn you, Krishna Bhatt, for confusing my already easily distracted and malleable mind!

City Women and the Ghost Writer collects observations and idiosyncrasies of Nepalese and Indian culture like an entomologist collects exoskeletons. Like a bug doctor, it examines these cultures with a neutral, sometimes detached, affect, but its fondness for the subject is evident. It floats through six-hut villages, over rivers crisscrossed with cattle, through the alleys of cities packed with village ex-pats scraping for a better life, and occasionally peeks its head up in a foreign country, a smug smile etched across its face.

Krishna Bhatt oscillates between nostalgic spectator, societal psychologist, and purveyor of scathing rants. For most of the book, an assortment of vignettes, (fictional?) short stories and musings, he relays everything with such an evenhanded, unexpressive tone that’s so voyeuristic, you almost feel guilty for intruding.

In Desires, a father toils for years in order to start a hotel, hoping to pass the business along to his sons. He begins: ‘I never thought my son would dump me into this hotel at my age, when I have broken my leg[…] I thought he was expanding the business, when he started building this hotel, but like other works he does, this too he left incomplete.’ Which pretty much sets the tone.

In Terminated Abortion, a pregnant woman is given an ultimatum by her family to kill the child or be excommunicated. She’s already has too many daughters, and the ultrasound is, well, less than promising. Her husband teeters between his unborn child and the security of her wealthy family. Then the story takes an unexpected turn…

Bhatt mixes rants and musings with the vignettes, to a surprising effect. While the stories remain neutral, there’s still a subtle hopefulness there, just barely. Or maybe it depends on your mood while reading. But these other pieces lend such a frustrated tint to the overall book that it causes you to reevaluate your entire perception of the book.

At times, they’re humorous, as if he has enough time and/or money to get so worked up over people underlining passages in the Hornsby-esque Underlining Borrorwed Books Overruled! (when only a few pages previous, the couple contemplates abortion.) Other times, he’s contemplative, ruminating on the relationship between reader and author. Sometimes he’s sarcastic, wondering why English has become the lingua franca, then relaying an incident with a friend who ‘does not purchase the [English language] newspaper to read, but to put it on the seat of his bike’ when it rains. The friend suggests that Bhatt do the same. He becomes outright furious as well, railing against the biased media and fellow countrymen whose concept of success is being able to move to another country.

Bhatt never resorts to yellow journalism. Even when angry and offended, he writes in measured sentences that are more or less objective. It draws the reader into his world and allows them to mix alongside the farmers, the scammers, the prostitutes, Brahmans, entrepreneurs, beggars and vendors. It’s the secure voice an accomplished author uses to pull you along, and you never realize he’s done it until you’re already in the heart of Kathmandu.

Nirad C Chaudhari, who lived most of his later life in Britain and died there a few years ago just a few year short of hundred, has presented in this book his deep understanding of Indian culture and Hinduism.

He repeatedly maintains that he technically is a Shudra: the lowest caste among the Hindus. His criticism of the Independence heroes of India and the writer Rabinrda nath Tagore is plausible and a little intemperate if one is to consider it in the present context, when most of the people he criticised has been deified to the extent that they are considered beyond any scrutiny.

Also is remarkable of his recognition of Hindu militarism and its going unacknowledged by the conquerors who ruled the India for centuries. It is presented as something different than the others and is directed inwards; and remains dormant to appear sporadically and surprisingly in the history. Nirad’s analysis in this regard is important as he was hired as a military expert by the colonial government during the second world war.

Nirad Chaudhri has intended in this book to put ahead the debate that the Aryans of India were migrants from the West and became brown by the ’sun and wind’ of the continent over the centuries.

Their inability to accept the black colour as equal; and their love and appreciation of rivers and other traits Nirad had presented as a proof to this end. The waters of a holy river lapping the ample breasts of a half-naked Hindu woman, while she is chest deep in it to offer prayer to the deities, while the naked Naga Sadhus pass from a  holy river bank nearby, with their genitals pierced and chained to suggest their celebate lives and the detachment to worldly matters is a scene depicted in the book, to explain the times, people and attitudes the writer knew.

He has hinted at the unavailability of Hindu women for blacks, unlike the European or American women, as a proof of the loathing the black color receives from Hindu higher caste. He maintains that Hindus are incapable of seeing any beauty in black colored people. This all may look a needless point, unsuitable for this remarkable book, that has an acuity rarely seen in the work of recent authors from the continent, and the writer’s deep study of the Hindu religious books that the authors refers to frequently in this book, and a first hand knowledge of the Sanskrit language. Nirad was not called ‘Brown-sahib’ for nothing.

Then he focuses on the matter of cow slaughter and debates that eating cow meat is nowhere prohibited in Hindu religious books. And he argues that the Indian cows are more beautiful than anywhere else. Nirad maintains that it is due to the color only that the buffalo milk is unacceptable to higher caste Hindus though it is more nutritious than the cow milk. Also the buffalo is slaughtered in the religious ceremonies of Hindus.

Nirad also dwells on the issue of Hindu sexuality, sounding a little prudish, when he rejects the ancient erotic art carved on the caves and the literature like Kamasutra as of little value and not the genuine representative of it. He argues it is lecherous in nature and meant to stimulate or satisfy the physically incapable or mentally perverted, men or women. He also disapproves of the Western curiosity and appreciation of the same. He states that the Hindu way of sex is not Gandhian non-violent type. Then he goes on to express his dismay when he noticed among an old married couple in his childhood, the amount of verbal abuse, sallies and innuendos going on,  the man mostly receiving them. Though they looked perfectly happy to the other people. 

He maintains that there is much self-wounding and violence taking place among a married Hindu couple than ever noticed or reported, by the scholars – indegenious or foreigner. The latter actually have no means to understand the cultural nuances of Hindu society, Nirad often asserts.  

He also reports the continuous emtional black-mail a Hindu man, particularly a jobless one, suffers for the sex he receives from his wife. The thought of the sex he would be receiving from his wife in the night keeps him going through all the harshness he is subjected to by his wife or the larger world, for his joblessness or other matters, keeps him going on. The couple hating each other to the utmost go to bed and fulfil their carnal desire in the dark, and detest each other for everything the next day, to became again aroused br the desire by the evening; never coming out of the fatigue of copulation really. Gratifying oneself by courtesans is what most people could not afford and having extra marital relations is always a risk of another marriage, entailing a lot of family quarrell and sufferings, more than anything else, as per Nirad. But he also states the Hindu capacity to ignore the inevitable adultery in some cases. These observation are of a time Nirad lived. They may look relevant or not in todays context, when the Hindu sexuality too, like many other things, has undergone a remarkable shift.

Nirad subtantiate most of his arguments in this regard by quoting from saskrit and French or Latin literature, displaying  his eclectic source of knowledge, to lend credence to the same. Defying his tyrannical observations would take a longer appranticeship with an intelletual career and greater insight than his, though the informations are more readily available nowadays.

This book also has the attitudes of English rulers before independence and shows how much they were worried about the mob overwhelming them and a possible sabotage. It was an uneasy relationship that is well explored by Nirad. 

And at times the arguments may appear without any sound proofs, that the author forwards with emotions, ran out of the quotes in different languages; and it seems the author is never ready to concede on anything he is arguing about. But it was a book written more then fifty years back. So such flaws could be ignored. Considering the fact that even today this is how matters are debated in the Continent.

For the people interested in the history of the Indian sub-continent, that is not much reported nowadays, or is tempered with even in the academic papers, this book is a delightful read, if one can ignore this singular flaw of the book: Of presenting the Aryans as the European Migrant.