We sat together in her living room while I shouted the words of a project I had been working on about Inger and her late husband – the great Boris of Kathmandu – over digestive biscuits, namkeen and her favorite Lady Grey tea. I read it to her because her eyesight was failing as a result of advanced macular degeneration. I shouted it at her because her hearing was by now similarly poor.[break]
The dream was lucid enough to include these and more authentic details, gleaned from visits made to her home over the last two years. The dream also included Inger’s interruptions, which would come at regular intervals in the form of requests for clarification, repetition, or to chastise me for getting an important detail unforgivably wrong: “Colin, where was your mind?”
The meeting never happened, of course, because in reality I’d barely started my project. I had wanted to go to her with something substantial, tired of performing the old routine of if and when. The meeting never happened because I always had something to do that I erroneously felt was more important. The meeting never happened because I didn’t devote the time to her that I’d promised myself I would. Above all, the meeting never happened because I lied to myself that she’d always be there.
Thankfully, other meetings did happen. There was the first, after my tracking her down via Rabindra. I’d been enthralled by Michel Peissel’s ‘Tiger for Breakfast,’ which chronicles the life of Boris and by association his marriage to Inger, and centres around his establishment of Nepal’s first hotel, The Royal, in 1951. She was a little surprised anyone was interested: Inger was by nature shy of the limelight, and uncomfortable around the few journalists who approached her for stories.
This first meeting began with one such enquiry; I was to contribute a piece about the lives of long term expats living in Kathmandu for a book that, in the end, never materialised. Our ‘interview’ sprawled over two-and-a-half hours, with Inger’s initial misgivings about her memory giving way to a riptide of memories, anecdotes and opinions.
Inger spoke of Boris in tender terms, and appeared as a woman who had come to terms with the reality of losing the love of her life, but whose love for him had not diminished in the 26 years since his passing. She spoke of 1950s Kathmandu with the same fondness and sense of irreplaceable loss, lamenting the noisy, carcinogenic concrete jungle it had become, before her very eyes.
I wept when I returned from that first encounter. Not because she was lonely; some of her friends in Kathmandu had passed or moved away, but many still remained. I wept because Inger was in love with two mammoth, beautiful, fascinating actualities – Boris, and her golden era Kathmandu – both of which were now abstract concepts in a country that sometimes seemed not to remember them at all.
Inger underwent a more positive change in the few hours I spent with her that day. She changed from a reluctant, self-conscious informant to a grandmotherly figure full of kindness, wisdom and love. I was due to leave Nepal soon after, but resolved to return before my flight.
I’m glad I did, and did so several more times when I returned to Nepal last year. When I visited I would offer to bring shopping for her, but she was so well cared for by her friend, Rabindra and his family, that this was seldom necessary. When it was, we’d squabble over who’d pay, and when I refused to let her, Inger would steadfastly refuse to let me make the tea.
Photo Courtesy: Rabindra Puri
When I met with Rabindra on Wednesday, it was for the first time. Though we’d spoken before on the phone, and via email, we’d never met in person. This was a source of some displeasure for Inger, who was convinced we’d get along. But of course, one or both of us was always busy doing something else. Thankfully with him, that thing was often making sure ‘Ma’, as he called Inger, had everything she needed.
Inger moved house a number of times over the years since Boris passed, but eventually settled in Bhaktapur to be closer to “the second most fascinating man” in her life, Rabindra. And so we finally met on Wednesday, prompted by the passing of our mutual friend. She was absolutely right, just as you’d expect a lady who lived as full and as long as she did to be. Rabindra and I formed – I hope – the bond Inger had wanted us to, albeit too late for her to see.
‘Ma’ wrote kindly of Rabindra some months after she had first met him, in a dedication in his copy of Tiger, dated 4th November 2002. Eleven years later – to the day –Inger died of a suspected stroke in her apartment, having celebrated Laxmi Puja at a private party the previous night, holding court in her favourite blue nightgown with close friends and family.
Perhaps Inger will be remembered by some as someone in the shadow of her husband (which, I suspect, was often her preference too), but for those who knew her, recalling those irretrievable old days while surrounded by friends was a fitting farewell. I’ll always regret not seeing her these last few months, but it was both a pleasure and a privilege to have known Inger at all. More than anything, I’m delighted to have finally met her beloved Rabindra, and that I have someone to read my project to, after all.
A memorial service will be held at the British Cemetery in Lainchour on Sunday at 3pm.
Colin Cooper is a journalist based in Kathmandu.
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