When Bartman died last week, newspapers were having their longest break of the year. Some radio and television stations did mention about the death of this accomplished raconteur and sensitive poet in passing, but star-struck audio-visual media habitually prioritize celebratory news over coverage of grief and bereavement. Mourning for a celebrity is very much a media affair, but other than fellow scribes, few take notice when a mere columnist passes away.[break]
Yamraj, the king of death, has strange ways of choosing his victims. Veteran Hindi film director Yash Raj Chopra (1932-2012) fell to health complications arising out of dengue fever, a disease associated with the poor and unwashed masses living in unhygienic and mosquito-infested slums rather than with the lifestyle of ultra-rich of Bollywood with their climate-controlled mansions and limousines.
The above-40 cohort, young no more to dream of distant future nor old to realize distance society has traveled since Rana past,
is accursed to struggle with frustrations of the present.
Another South Asian public personality Jaspal Singh Bhatti (1955-2012), the ace satirist of Indian television and a committed anti-corruption campaigner, died in a road accident in the course of promoting his latest flick.
The name of the film: Power Cut. It appeared as if the creator of Flop Show and Ulta Pulta (Upside Down) had anticipated the way his life’s power would ultimately be cut: In a tragic yet spectacular manner. Meanwhile, Bartman, a writer neither as successful as filmmaker Chopra nor as popular as funnyman Bhatti, succumbed to symptoms of what medical practitioners these days call lifestyle diseases: Excessive bleeding of haemorrhoids (piles), blood pressure, and liver infections.
TENSE TIMES
Religiosity is the time-tested way of coping with grief. Immediate families often find solace in sermons. Those whom gods love often die young and the date of departure from this world is indeed determined by the Supreme One who had chosen the arrival of the soul in a specific body in the first place. Artistic expressions—music, poetry, painting and sculpture to take some examples—are also effective ways of dealing with sorrow. This medium, however, is available only to the talented individuals.
A few grieve publicly to recover from shock and some lapse into temporary silence to spring back again, as if reenergized after realizing the futility of their withdrawal. Looking for scientific explanations too could be a method of understanding an unexpected and heartbreaking occurrence. Was it deep disappointment that caused the stress, which ultimately took Bartman away?
Nobody can answer a hypothetical question with any certainty. But it is not difficult to accept that disillusionment is the defining feature of the generation born between 1950 and 1970, a time of extreme turbulence in Nepal’s history. The above-forty cohort of Nepalis, which is young no more to dream of a distant future nor quite too old yet to realize the distance society has traveled since the Rana past, is accursed to struggle with frustrations of the present.
Stress is said to be caused by mismatch between demands of living and physical and emotional resources at one’s command. Hans Selye (1907-1982), the Hungarian endocrinologist credited with the discovery of stressors, coined an acronym GAS to describe symptoms of General Adaptation Syndrome. Perhaps idealists of post-1950 and pre-1970 era are more susceptible to GAS than the strugglers of yore or realists of contemporary age.
LOST GENERATION
Ambitions of pre-1950s conscious youths reflected realities of their time. Ramhari Sharma, who missed being a centenarian by a whisker and died contented, aged 96 early this month, probably never thought that he would live to see a republican Nepal when he escaped death penalty due to the caste of his birth. (Hindu scriptures proscribe capital punishment when the one guilty of a crime is a twice-born Brahmin.) Overthrow of Rana rule and restoration of Shah monarchy was all that many of the pre-1950 revolutionaries had thought about expecting that an enlightened king would be duty-bound by religion to address realistic aspirations of his loyal subjects.
Initiated into active politics during Indian independence movement and enthused by the socialistic visions of European intellectuals, BP Koirala (1914-1982) would have worked happily with a constitutional monarchy. Absolutist ambitions of King Mahendra radicalized BP to certain extent. Yet, a humble homestead for every Nepali family—complete with a plough, a pair of oxen and a cow—was the modest program of political economy that inspired BP’s lifelong struggles. And then Mahendra introduced his utopian visions. The post-1950 generation was assured that Nepal would do in decades what other developed countries of the world had taken centuries to achieve.
A Maoist monarchy is an oxymoron, but the adjective does full justice to the kind of politics King Mahendra practiced in the name of Panchayat democracy. Rebellious politics usually reflects the ruling system it seeks to replace. Oppositional politics of post-1950 generation, which began to come of age after 1960s, was almost as utopian as that of Mahendra’s illusions.
The order of adjective and noun was reversed and monarchist Maoists took Nepal by storm. Maoists of the 1970s called themselves Marxist-Leninists, their politics was messier and hence less successful, but their attitude was no less doctrinaire than what Pushpa Kamal Dahal would later tell SNM Abdi of Times of India in November 2001: “All moderates are opportunist dogs, I detest them. There is no alternative to People’s War and the gun is the best tool for social transformation”.
History, however, has strange ways of dealing with politicos unaware of compulsions of geography. The credit of establishing a republican order did not go to a post-1950 generation revolutionaries. Girija Prasad Koirala (1925-2010) introduced the move and Kul Bahadur Gurung, even older than his leader, announced the passing away of monarchy into the pages of history.
Nepal has a ‘Maoist’ Prime Minister, but what is there for the Marxist-Leninists of to gloat about in this achievement? The generation of pre-1950 elders successfully led multiple movements and conducted Constituent Assembly elections during extremely testing times. Their successors—politicos of the post-1950 generation—have frittered away gains and are contended being custodians of status quo. A few plebeians of recent past are now living like princes, but not much has changed for most Nepalis. Who can blame if Bartman agonised in private over broken dreams of his generation?
Among politicos, moderate Marxist is a contradiction in terms. For writers and intellectuals however, it is a compulsion to continuously seek a balance between opposing ideas. “The test of a first rate intelligence,” observed F Scot Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” The task apparently takes its toll. The chronicler of Jazz Age, a term Fitzgerald himself coined, died of ‘lifestyle diseases’ when he was barely 44 and at his creative best. Bartman, some of his friends recall, was a “Moderate Maoist”. He fell due to the spectacular failures of Maoist’s promise.
cklal@hotmail.com
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