Metropolis culture has seeped in them too. Many households, now, own television sets and made-in-china DVD players. The children watch movies from Harry Potter series to Bollywood flicks under the stone-slate roofs of the mud houses. Blaring horns of vehicles that occasionally ply the rural roads have started to pierce the ears of the village folks too. The plastic wrappers of instant noodles and biscuits lie scattered in the lanes and paths. But there are things that balance this contamination.
Today’s Kathmandu is a metaphor of malevolence. It’s a metaphor of political change, gory battles, crimes, lawlessness, dirty politics and so forth.
The surrounding mountains and hills with green terraced paddy fields, sprawling with life, offer a perfect setting. The sights of mud houses and huts straggled against the green backdrop is surely an invitation to sublime serenity. There you don’t get to hear much of Kathmandu-centric politics. Village folks are more concerned about whether their toil will be paid off during the upcoming harvest season. Living amidst such setting, I for once, happily forgot Kathmandu.
For scores of reasons Kathmandu deserves to be forgotten. Those of us who are conditioned to take life for granted or are used to recurring pestilences may afford to live here feigning ignorance of the anarchy in the streets and terror in the air. Though, until a few decades back, it was an unspoiled land, a myth of an eternal attraction replete with pagodas, narrow cobbled lanes, old carved windows and stone shrines, Kathmandu no longer retains these myths of beauty. Crowded streets, choking pollution, irritating horns, stinking garbage heaps strewn everywhere, skyrocketing price rise of daily commodities, unpredictable strikes, expensive house rents, and rising crime rates are the defining characteristics of modern day Kathmandu. Walking the lanes of Kathmandu one feels like penetrating through the narrow labyrinthine gaps with brick houses all around misted into the ever blowing dust. Today’s Kathmandu is a metaphor of malevolence. It’s a metaphor of political change, gory battles, crimes, lawlessness, dirty politics and so forth. It’s a venue to collude for the formation and toppling down of governments. It’s here political party leaders mortgage people’s votes and earn their luxuries. Notwithstanding, it is a heartening reality that large-scale movements also escalated into success here and brought even the most notorious of the tyrants down to their knees.
Kathmandu, in the Kirat and Lichchhavi eras, served as a cradle of civilization. In the eighteenth century it became a politically and culturally contested zone during the unification campaign of Prithvi Narayan Shah. In 1846 it witnessed a gory bloodbath of Kot Massacre which established the culture of political collusion and assassination until 1950 and which, perhaps, found its final manifestation in royal massacre of 2001.
While in village, I thought of these aspects when I thought of Kathmandu. Perhaps these musings should have held me there. But I did come back for there is no easily getting rid of this city once you have become its inhabitant. It is in its nature to continuously attract people from across the country and beyond, the trend whose beginning can be traced in the Kirat era. The nature of this town has been such: It is tempting, mesmerizing and captivating, so much so that once you are here you succumb to its shallow charms and perturbing ills and develop no returning attitudes at length.
So I am back to be among people from diverse classes and backgrounds this city has nestled. Once again, I am among those elites who live in the sumptuous palatial houses, buy the latest modern gadgets in the supermarkets and enjoy lavish parties and gatherings, who are often unaware of the existence of the people living in miseries, who travel in the sleek cars and whose ways of life are Western. Once again I have come among the middle class; living here in rented flats or owning their own houses, who nurse two most prominent goals of their lives, to reach up to the level of elites in terms of looking modern and fashionable and to maintain the standards and middle class values. Once again, I am among transients consisting largely of job holders in private offices and shops, students in government colleges and university, construction workers, fruit and vegetable sellers, street vendors, porters, hill villagers, hawkers, who regard their future life as gravitating toward homeland and who survive on city’s meager economy.
I wish to draw an analogy between Kathmandu and Circe of Greek mythology. Circe was an enchantress and whoever came her way would be entrapped and were subjected to ordeals of privation and miseries. And she was a beautiful seductress too; almost nobody could escape her charm. Once under her spell, they would remain her slaves. They would no longer remain what they were originally; they would become numb and insensitive. But Circe was also capable of effecting spiritual purification. Kathmandu has given its people much of the former. Will it be capable of effecting spiritual purification?
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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