Those good old days abroad: But Nepal is home

KATHMANDU, June 23: It was with his globetrotting that Ashoke Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, the Chief Executive Officer of Himalayan Bank, started his teenage years. He began traveling from the young age of six. From Indonesia to Burma, then to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and to Pakistan, he followed his father, Himalaya Shumsher, as he was assigned by the UN.[break]



“Sri Lanka was called Ceylon when he used to be there,” Ashoke jokes for reminders.



He remembers not being able to go to Afghanistan again to meet his father there because he had to study at St. Xavier’s School in Jawalakhel and Godawari as well. “It was then I made Nepali friends,” says Rana.



Then he went to a boarding school in the United Kingdom where he thinks he spent the most wonderful years of his life. “I did some mischief, like smoking on the sly, but none of them was serious enough to mention,” says Rana, laughing.






He played a lot of rugby in those days. “At the end of the term, we used to have rugby tournament followed by parties,” says Rana. “Once we were having a party at my friend’s home, and as they were high, they broke the furniture and started a campfire,” he says, clarifying the fact that it was illegal in Britain to make bonfire on the lawn. He recalls getting lost as the police arrived but all partygoers having to pay the friend for the part of his house that was damaged by fire.



Ashoke then went to the United States of America for his higher studies. “I studied with one of my sisters and brothers in the same university,” he says. “Before that, I met my siblings once or twice in two years.”



Rana recalls traveling a lot during his schooldays and teenage years. “I used to go from UK to Burma to meet my parents during holidays, and sometimes to Paris and other places, visiting my friends.” But Rana indicates that he is tired of traveling these days.



Though he traveled all over the world, Rana says he never even thought of settling down abroad. “I always thought of Nepal as my home and London was the next one,” he says. “London is as homely as Nepal, and people there are also very easygoing, like Nepalis.”



Not having Internet and phone during those schooldays is the reason he thinks he lost contact with his friends. “As my son attended the same school that I went to, I got the addresses of my old friends from him and started contacting them. That was six years ago,” Rana says.



“Then we had a reunion in the US as well as in the UK. My UK friends are settled down pretty well with their families, but my US friends are still the same,” he says, recalling the time when only 12 out of 30 students had managed to graduate with him. “In the US, there was a choice between studies and parties,” he jokes.



Rana is now a successful banker in Kathmandu.