This happened to me in 2011. I was a fool trying to reason with a band of unreasonable guys while they were dragging me out of a tourist bus. Deployed by political institutions to forcefully shut down entire Chitwan, the cadres were making sure that not a single Nepali traveled that day. Tourists were exempt from the strike, and Nepalis were not allowed to enjoy their privileges, not even as tourist guides. I was left with no way but to hit the road back to the lodge I had stayed at. I left my companion with a sad hug.
I had faced many such incidents before, but it was the first one that made me feel guilty about being a Nepali, the identity which, eventually, began to erode inside me. Questions kept thundering in my brain: Why am I subjected to such harsh discrimination from my own kind? Would my suffering justify their political cause? No answers did I see anywhere within the horizon of my socio-political milieu. I was stranded in Sauraha with trekkers asking me from Kathmandu, “When the hell are you coming?” My answer was, “I don’t know”.
The strike was called by sister organizations of different political parties to demand an autonomous Tharuhat. I could not make out who was supposed to respond to the demand, because all the political parties were out in the streets, and at the same time were running the government. Ordinary Nepalis were caught between the rather devolved politicians incapable of inventing a new, non-violent, form of protest, and the pathetic government’s state mechanism. And yet the fervent believers never tire of repeating the jargon of ‘New Nepal.’ I am pretty sure by now that I will be the last person to call myself a citizen of New Nepal, after another incident on the same tourist bus two days later that marked my life.
PHOTO: AUTHOR
After two days of moaning, I walked back to the tourist bus park. I had on a fleece hat with a French flag, a DSLR camera hung on my neck, a rucksack on the back, and Zorba the Greek in my right hand. My beard had grown thicker in the past two days, and I had a speck on my nose. I approached the bus, worrying that I might be dragged out of it again. Then the conductor asked me in English, “Going Kathmandu?” His language signaled my safe journey to Kathmandu. Elated, I boarded in the bus. And yet, the thought that banda activists might smell my Nepaliness worried me. I tried to read the book in my hand, but my mind was with other Nepalis who were waiting desperately to go home from their vacation in Chitwan. I did not dare look out of the window which was surrounded by political cadres. I wanted the bus to drive out of the station so badly that I kept checking the departure time. Thirty minutes in that bus felt like ages. At last, when the bus did move out of the bus park, my heart leapt, half with joy and half with worries of potential threats.
Every cross section of the road was occupied by banda activists. They would stop the bus and a couple young men would sniff the bus thoroughly, looking for Nepalis. At every stop, I felt my heart throbbing faster, and I pretended to read the book, Zorba the Greek, to veil my anxious appearance. The last inspection took place at Bharatpur. This time four angry looking young men entered the bus. Their demeanor was more official than many officers in Nepal. They were deadly serious and powerful, with bamboo laathis in hands. The police were mere spectators, enjoying the show from nearby. As they approached my seat, I pretended to read the book.
After a while, I sensed someone breathing in my ear. It was one of the guys, who, after no sign of Nepaliness in me, asked, “you where from?” A word slipped my lips “Zorbania!” “Why?”I asked the guy. My question put him off. As a Nepali, I knew what makes them most uncomfortable. I had seen traffic police letting foreign bikers off without punishing them, only because they were asked to offer a reason. After my question, the young man replied with smile, “you looking Nepali.” The conductor came to my rescue, the first one who thought I was a tourist. “Can’t you see he is a tourist?” he replied for me, and showed the boy the door. I emptied my lungs with a big relief, and then realized that I had been holding my breath for quite some time. I kissed the book, the first thing I did when the bus moved. I thanked Nikos Kazantzakis for the book’s title.
When I pretend to be foreign, I feel safe, but a question gnaws at me: why am I punished for who I am, in my own home?
I repeated aloud in Greek accent, “I am from Zorbania.” A gentleman next to me smiled at me and said, “Never heard of your country before.” I smiled back and explained, “I am not surprised, gentleman, since the country has just earned its independence from the tyranny of political cadres.” A little confused, he asked, “But you are Nepali, right?” “Not anymore. From now on, I am a Zorbanian” I replied and laughed as if I was a visitor from a lunatic asylum.
Political activists throw me out of a tourist bus just because I am a Nepali, caring little that I am a tourist guide. There are policemen running after my long locks, I am tagged a junkie or criminal, just because I am not a foreigner. In his collections of essays Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie claims back his lost “Indias of mind” after facing discrimination from natives of his adopted country, where he is an unwanted foreigner. I guess we Nepalis are made of different politico-cultural elements; it is Nepalis who get treated like a piece of dirt in Nepal. What is the ‘Other’ to Rushdie is the savior for us. To be humiliated at the hands of our own kind is the rarest pain. This is the point where identity cultivated so far begins to wither, where anything foreign passes without questioning, and where anything that smells Nepali gets mercilessly censored.
Nowadays, I travel by tourist bus without a flicker of worry. I have long locks, but and I am not stopped by the police; nor am I looked down upon as a junkie or runaway criminal. It is because I am a Zorbanian from Zorbania, and refuse to speak to those activists and police in Nepali. I bear nothing with me which says I am Nepali. I feel safe in the imaginary homeland. Yet, I do not feel sanguine, for deep inside, a question gnaws me: why am I punished for who I am, in my own home?
The author manages Adventure Samsara, a company which operates bird watching tour and trek in Nepal
preminnthapa@yahoo.com
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