When I reached the top of Dharahara after walking up through the long spiral stairs, my head was virtually spinning. On the top, however, I was gripped by extreme delight. I began to wonder how Junga Bahadur had dared to jump from such a height, simply to please the-then Crown Prince Surendra Shah. Also, from the top, people below looked like Lilliputians. And then, for a moment, I felt I had triumphed over history.
There are two engravings in old Nepali, almost undecipherable to modern eyes, just above the entrance. I have sought to transliterate (and also translate) the portions I could understand. One says, sambat 1882 chaitra … lalita tripurasundari devile yo dharahara banaunu bhai tayar gari gajur chadhaunu bhayako ho. In Chaitra 1882 BS (1826/27 April), Lalita Tripurasundari Devi made this tower and commissioned its topmost adornment. The other reads sambat 1882 sal chaitra … lalita tripurasundari devibata banai bakseko yo dharahara bikramsambat 1990 sal magh 2 gate sombar ka din mahabhukampale bhatki bigri dui talla samma purano baki bhayekoma aru talla uthai banai shree tin maharaj juddha samser jangabahadur rana bata bikramsambat 1992 salma jirnoddar garibakseko. This tower made in Chaitra 1882 BS (1826/27 April) by Lalita Tripurasundari and broken down to two storeys in the 1990 BS (1934) great earthquake was renovated and rebuilt by Maharaja Juddha Samsher in 1992 BS (1936).
There are strange ways in which history seeks to communicate, confuse and orphan us.
What baffled me most about the engravings is the exclusion of Bhimsen Thapa. The hero who is said to have built Dharahara in 1832 (note the contradiction; the engravings state that it was built in 1826 by the-then regent queen), the hero who is believed to have rebuilt it after it collapsed in the great earthquake of 1890 BS (1834) and who is still an icon of Nepali nationalism has been blighted off as a nobody.
Another thing that interested me about Dharahara is its life. Dharahara is 184 years old now and in these two centuries it has collapsed twice – first, according to history, in 1890 BS (1834), then in 1990 BS (1934). And by a strange coincidence, both in great earthquakes. Is this, then, an ominous warning to us that 2034 is only 16 years away? That we must be prepared to withstand yet another great earthquake? Very interestingly, the fall of the tower has also marked the end of regimes in the past. Bhimsen Thapa was “made to” commit suicide in 1839, five years after the first great earthquake. And the voice of republic began to be heard, for the first time, from 1934 and the foundation of the Rana regime started to shake.
Perhaps, there are strange ways in which history seeks to communicate, confuse and orphan us. Allow me to relate another incident. I wanted to write a paper on “First English School Textbooks” prescribed to the first generation of Nepalis who got to study at home. The journey this assignment necessitated was more tiring than climbing Dharahara had been. I navigated a few libraries in the capital: Kaiser Library, Library of Curriculum Development Center, Bhaktapur and the library of Durbar High School, the first English school of the country. The librarians there were first amazed by my undertaking. “Nobody comes here to look for such things”, they said. But they cooperated when I explained why I needed them. Some even rummaged the entire bookshelf. But no school textbooks even from the 1950s and 60s could be traced, let alone from 1850s and 60s. Finally, they suggested me to visit other libraries but with the foreboding that I will fail. So far, they have proven themselves right.
However, these encounters, at times confusing and unsuccessful, are not bereft of lessons. They have reaffirmed the theories that history functions in exclusionary rules. That history fails to recover truth and truth fails to recover history. The politics of what to and whom to keep documented can deny the right to our future generations to know the past. More importantly, for good or worse, I have had this realization that I have an obligation to document the history of my time. I feel that everything and anything that I posses, the cellphone I use, the clothes I wear, the books I have been reading can be a source of knowledge for my grandchildren and their grandchildren to know about my time.
Let me use a little space to talk about an Indian writer Kamlsehwar’s Kitne Pakistan to share with you one of my far-fetched wishes. Adeeb, a litterateur possesses power to transcend time and space, travel back in time and summon history in the court of time. Even centuries-old cases are given a hearing in that court so that the ultimate truth is laid before all. He summons Aurangzeb, Lord Mountbatten, Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein and fiercely interrogates them about the atrocities they had committed. If I were Addeb, I would call upon Jung Bahadur, Bhimsen Thapa and all those who betrayed and were betrayed by the nation and history for interrogation.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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