It is said that there are only two kinds of elite in any developing country: the “born-to” and the “been-to.”[break]
The ones born into the traditionally privileged group dominate the security forces and politics, which are often conjoined. Then there are the yuppies of the middle class who have been to places and seen the world. They gravitate towards the bureaucracy, the professions, and the flourishing I/NGO industry.
It doesn’t, however, say anything about those who have been fortunate to be born into Nepal’s aristocratic families and then dedicated enough to have seen the world. It seems their domain is arts, philosophy and literature.
Manjushree Thapa is an icon of the international Nepali. Born in Kathmandu in 1968, she grew up and studied in Nepal, Canada, and the USA. Of her itinerant upbringing, she says, “The first school I ever attended was in Canada in 1971—my family lived there when I was learning to talk, which is partly why English became my first language. Later, I was in St. Mary’s (a private Kathmandu girl’s school run by Christian missionaries) till class 6. When my family moved to Washington DC, I studied at the National Cathedral School, from which I graduated a year early in 1985. At that time, I was interested in visual art. I went to college at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1989. My graduate studies (MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Washington, as a Fulbright Scholar) took place in 1996-1998. I spent all the time before and after that in Nepal, working in a variety of organizations, while trying to focus on writing.”
Manjushree’s first book was “Mustang Bhot in Fragments” (1992), a travelogue set in the high Himalaya. She published her first novel, “The Tutor of History” (Penguin India, New Delhi, 2001), which she had begun as her MFA thesis in the creative writing program at the University of Washington. Of this book, Indian author and journalist Anees Jung says it’s an “evocative glimpse into the truth and turbulence of today’s Nepal.” Her best known book is perhaps “Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy” (2005), published weeks before the royal coup in Nepal on February 1, 2005. After its publication, she left the country to write against the royal-military coup. Once back in Kathmandu, she published a short story collection, “Tilled Earth” (Penguin India, 2007).
Her “A Boy from Siklis: The Life and Times of Chandra Gurung” has been acclaimed for a sensitive portrayal of a brilliant conservationist who died in a helicopter crash. In her most recent work, “Seasons of Flight” (Penguin India, 2010), the novelist tries to trace the flight path of an exploratory soul who is looking for self-definition, and ends up discovering that the journey is a continuous one, without a distinct destination.
Manjushree has the reputation of being a fiercely independent recluse. What sets her apart from all other Kathmandu-based writers—men and women—is the fact that English is the primary language of expression for her. She is a twenty-first-century woman whom the English-speaking elites of Kathmandu consider as one of their own, even though a somewhat deviant one. It doesn’t harm her reputation that her father has had been a government secretary, a minister, and an ambassador, and her mother an international civil servant until quite recently.
Perhaps to balance the family background, Manjushree once preferred to hang around with self-proclaimed Marxists. She is an imaginative creator, but an equally confident critic of contemporary events, too. How she manages to do both with such mastery is a mystery.
She has a user-friendly website (http://www.manjushreethapa.com/) for Net-savvy readers, giving brief descriptions of her works.
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