Busy as he was during the days of conflict, with the demands that were placed on him in his capacity as an insurgent, Japrel, aka Shakti, Platoon Commander of the 4th Division Parivartan Smriti Brigade was able to participate in sports events only after the ongoing peace process between the Maoists and the government brought about an end to the active warfare on the front. His prowess on the field encouraged him to continue with his newfound vocation; earlier in the year, he had come in ninth at the Tokha marathon. But it was his fourth-place finish in the national-level marathon—which he ran in his newly bought running shoes, price stickers still stuck on them and all—that marked a mini-denouement to his still fledgling running career.
And he has certainly come a long way. Japrel, 28, who was born in a rural village of Bajang, found his path to national-level athletic meets blocked because the government and the PLA were not on the best of terms. “We could thus participate only in the annual sports events organized by our party when the people’s war was going on and while we lived in the cantonments after the peace process started,” says Japrel.
Japrel, who has been a member of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) since 2002, does not regret his past. He participated in several battles during the war, and he was a combatant at Kiratori, Agulte, Kumati, Pandoun and Manma, among others. But he’s more excited about his present and the future. “During the war years, I joined the insurgency because I felt that it was my duty to do so; and now, during these peaceful days, I am participating in the National Games because I wish to do so,” he says.
Maybe that enthusiasm that Japrel has for his new calling explains why Japrel has been performing so well at the games. For a competitor who had to train within the confines of his cantonment in Bajhang, under conditions that were so strikingly different from those under which so many of his competitors trained— most of his competitors trained at sports arenas in the regional centers—Japrel has exceeded his own expectations at these games. Besides the fourth-place finish in the marathon, he came in sixth in the 10,000 meters and seventh in the 5,000 meters.
His achievements are not going unnoticed. In fact, none other than the venerable Baikuntha Manandhar, the undisputed marathon king in decades past, has good things to say about Japrel. “He doubtless needs to take his performance to a higher level, but I’m impressed with the raw potential that he possesses,” says Manandhar.
Most importantly, it’s a welcome development that Platoon Commander Japrel has gone from worrying about how to handle mines, grenades, magnums, SLRs, and M-16s to now worrying about whether he’s removed the price stickers from his sneakers. There is thus hope that Nepalis will one day celebrate Japrel’s completely integrating into society. But the nature of Nepali politics being such, our hopes, and Japrel’s too, are prisoners to the caprice of the times we live in. “I would love to continue competing in races and make a career for myself in athletics,” says Japrel, “but if the people demand it, and my commanders order it, I am ready to get back to the battlefields again.”
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