I had a total recall of these reckonings when I saw the obituary notices in the Nagarilk Daily of Saturday, February 18, 2012 (Falgun 06, 2068 of the Nepali Year).[break]
Three 13th-day respects were paid to the late Kazi Mohan Bikram Thapa (MBT), and the photographs of the deceased confirmed that it was the same landlord whose apartment my family and I had rented at Char Burja of Kamal Pokhari from the late 1960s to 1974.
MBT recently passed away at the age of 87 years. Trivial thoughts allow me to calculate that he was born in 1924; he was 10 years old in the Great Tremors of 1934; and he was underage to go to WWII.
His obituaries stated that he was a native of Khanyakharka in Sindhuli and contributed to Nepal as a foremost forest expert, a pioneer in science education, and gave much of his own to social works, and so on. He was lately a banker and a major shareholder in such a financial institution.
What we heard in those days was that he was the first gazetted Chief Conservator of Forests in His Majesty’s Government of Nepal. But when the then system’s sycophants and suckers reportedly manipulated the files and affairs of his department, MBT said, “Take this job and shove it,” and promptly resigned his powerful post without ado.
It was in the later aftermath of this decision, and during his days of quietly minding his own business, that we became one family of other tenants in his four-storey house.
I believe MBT lived with his second family and had two boys and two girls in this new nest. Altogether, he had four houses of various descriptions, and the back had a spread of some sixteen ropanis of farmland where he grew vegetables.
He rode a Honda motorcycle for his outings while his Kazini managed the broods and the house. They were the quietest and a most unassuming couple one could imagine.
In our neighborhoods of Kamal Pokhari, there were three Chhetri Thapa families with distinct middle clan names. Our own landlord was a Bikram Thapa.
Beyond to the south was the palatial address of Nar Pratap Thapa whose Pratap family shrine was called the Char Burja because of the four naga-s guarding the bronze-plated temple on the four cardinal sides. He had long ago perished in the DC3 air crash at Dhorpatan when he was Nepal’s envoy to New Delhi.
On the far side across the road lived the Shumsher Thapas, whose prominent member is the poet and lyricist Ratna Shumsher Thapa who still lives in the clan’s huge mansion. All the older Chhetri Thapas of Kamal Pokhari were men of means, and their descendents still enjoy the privileges and prestige of their family lines.
The Bahadur, Jung and other Thapas lived in Dilli Bazaar, Baneshwor and elsewhere.
In the city of arrival called Kathmandu, I lived in ten locations, beginning with Fasikeb near Ranjana Cinema Hall, then on the incline of Dilli Bazaar; then our bachelor batch moved to Chika Mugal and Pode Tole, right through the hashish-high Hippie enclaves of Freak Street at Jhhochhen.
Then we relocated ourselves to Chhetrapati, which had another community of Flower Children on the other side called Chaksibari.
It was in the Chhetrapati flat I got married to Ranjana. I bade goodbye to my fellow habitués, and Ranjana and I moved to a house at Kuriya Gaon of Thapathali.
Our last rented shelter was at Char Burja of Kamal Pokhari before we moved in 1974 to our own shack-in-the-making at Kupondole where we have been since.
In Kupondole itself, while building our own shed, we lived in two flats before moving to my own tenth abode, my final permanent address, this time in Patan. Now I live in Ranjanako Ghar.
That should be the end of the story, which, after all, took place nearly four decades ago. What of that, indeed!
But a few Dan Browns seem to be lurking in and around the perimeters of this narrative. Therefore, I thought of raising a few pointers to solve the jigsaws in the puzzle. It’s bound to be futile, I’m convinced of it; but for goodness sake, here are the yarns:
Many years later, in the mid-1990s as a matter of fact, when I was well-entrenched in Kupondole, I happened to write in Nepali a long piece called “Deraharuko Katha” (Tales of Rented Houses) detailing the same picaresque I mentioned above.
Each one of the house-hunting, flat-finding and living in it in the various ten localities of Kathmandu and Patan is described in my journal. This serial was published in “Garima,” the monthly magazine of Sajha Prakashan.
It so happened that the late Mr. Janak Lal Sharma (JLS) happened to read my fables of the flats I lived in. Studious and writerly as he was, JLS promptly wrote a rejoinder in “Madhuparka” with his own speculations on MBT.
Somewhere in my series, I had mentioned the Prajapatis of Jana Bahal of Kathmandu as my “sasurali,” as Ranjana came from a particular Bhaktapur family living at Bheda Sing.
Attaching my Prajapati connection and dealing only with my “dera” years at Kamal Pokhari, JLS launched his reportage on MBT. His stories go this way:
Bal Bahadur Prajapati (BBP) was a rich and wealthy man of Bhaktapur, with some 900 ropanis of land surrounding his homestead alone, with lands and properties at Lahan and other parts of the Tarai.
His father had received the honorary title of Kaptan (Captain) from the then ruling Shree Tiin Maharaj, the Rana Prime Minister.
The father one day took BBP to the Premier for darshan, and the son was also forthwith given the honorary rank of Laptan (Lieutenant) because of his robust physique and alert mind. These Prajapatis were in the good books of the ruling Rana Durbar.
Certain landed gentry among the Prajapatis of Bhaktapur, Thimi, Sano Thimi, Nagadesh and Bode were pious-minded, in that they emphasized on the spiritual aspects of Hinduism, and so promoted the devotional disciplines of meditation, bhajan and deep study of the Hindu scriptures and epics, such as the Veda, Vedanta, Upanishad and other religious works.
BBP himself had plans to establish a guthi on his land, and with his own personal means he wanted to establish a forum for the worship of Lord Ram, study of Ramayan and historical enquiries into Ayoddhya.
For these “adhyatmik” purposes, he had to petition the absolute Rana Prime Minister for permission to fulfill his dreams of dharma.
It’s worth surmising in hindsight that the Thakuri Chhetri Ranas, Shahs and their many ruling clans being bloodthirsty Tantrik Hindus practicing animal and fowl sacrifice, it was easy to expect BBP’s petition trashed in the wastepaper basket of the Rana Prime Minister’s office, or be grilled in person for his daring to display such “hurmat,” eh? The Ranas frowned upon education, dissemination of information, discourses for enlightenment, and scholastic curiosities among the “raiti.”
But JLS rather points to BBP’s petition itself; that the concluding lines of which were far from being polite, as is the custom in such pleading. Instead of tail-ending his “darkhwast” with “Sarkarko jo hukum, jo adesh!” and other prayerful humbleness from a “agyakari praja,” he reportedly ended his “nibedan” with something like, “If you grant me my wishes – great, fine! If you reject my petition, I don’t give a shit, either.”
Or something to that dreadful effect! This kind of “bit marne” language was coarse, much more so when the addressee was no less than the absolute despot Rana Prime Minister of the day.
According to JLS, the Rana Durbar was “angry” at the letter, and a “purji” was promptly issued. Lieutenant BBP eluded the arrest warrant and made himself scarce by slipping off to the safe haven of his second home in Nepal – Lahan. About this, some more later.
Though feudal, rich and wealthy in every way conceivable even during those arbitrary times, BBP was spiritual at heart and was in the habit of donning saffron and sadhu garbs and visited the holy places of India.
He was also active in the Free India Movement and knew Rajendra Prasad, JP Narayan and other leaders on first-name basis.
He was known as Himali Baba, Nepali Baba and Pahari Baba among the throngs of the Indian freedom fighters and holy men and was jailed along with them for their Quit India agitations.
In one instance, according to JLS, a certain Mohan Bikram Thapa approached Pahari Baba somewhere in India for a seat in one famed forestry institute.
He had arrived at a time when all the seats had been allocated for the next academic terms. So Nepali Baba wrote to Rajendra Prasad, the future first President of the Republic of India and himself a former educationist, requesting him to oblige him with the favor.
“Since he’s a hillbilly Nepali, he can study even by sitting on the classroom floor,” concluded the Himali Baba to Rajendra Babu in his request letter.
Thus the Nepali young man was able to study forestry in India and later became a ranger in Nepal. The rest is history.
“So it must be the very Mohan Bikram Thapa, Peter wrote about as his Kamal Pokhari landlord in his article,” suggested JLS and left it at that and narrated other interesting facts.
He deftly connected my marital relations to one Prajapati clan and equated it with that of a very notable Prajapati, an aristocrat-like Bhaktapurian in his own rights. It was very clever indeed of JLS to do what he did.
On my part, though assuming that MBT read JLS’s reminiscences in Madhuparka, I thought nothing of verifying the facts with him.
After all, some twenty years had elapsed since I had left Kamal Pokhari, and I simply didn’t bother to do anything about it. But I phoned JLS one evening to thank him for unraveling those interesting historical nuggets.
He, however, went ad lib on other things on the phone. Only later I knew that his hearing had deteriorated, and our conversation served no intended purpose. He passed away some years ago.
Laptan BBP, the Himali, Nepali and Pahari Baba and India’s Freedom Fighter, had turned anti-Rana and remained in his protected estate in Lahan.
In case Rana “tilanga” and “kampu” approached to apprehend him and drag him to Kathmandu, he could hop over to India in a jiffy. He was safe in his province of which he was the lord and master.
One day, according to JLS, BBP’s durbar and Lahan town saw Jaya Prakash Narayan (JPN) and his followers fleeing the British in India.
They crossed the borders and entered the settlement of Lahan. BBP received JPN and his entourage, sheltered and fed them and kept them in comfort. Meanwhile, the British threateningly asked Kathmandu to have the Indian renegades extradited to India – or else!
However, JLS says in his story that even the despotic Ranas had their own credenda, one of which was to weigh between “maran” (death, incarceration, arrest) and “sharan” (sanctuary, asylum).
They chose to exercise the latter. So the Kathmandu Durbar had no intention of obliging the Angrej Bahadurs, and instead had JP and his freedom fighters interned at the Lahan jail as guests of Nepal.
On his part, BBP, as the absolute laird of Lahan, mobilized the entire population of the local Mushar (rodent hunters) laborers, those fantastic demolition experts of the Tarai, to raze the prison to its very foundation.
Thus were JP and his faithful freed and they vamoosed into the northern green mansions of the nearby Churia Range.
Retracing this story to MBT as my landlord at Kamal Pokhari, some uncanny mysteries remain to this day. Did MBT know and consider, as JLS seemed to hint at in his story, my Prajapati connection through my wife Ranjana? Was that why he was always reluctant to raise our house rent? We began living in his flat, paying Rs 250 a month.
Months passed, and occasionally Ranjana and I calculated that a five-room apartment like the one we lived in was now worth Rs 500, then Rs 750 after sometime, and then Rs 1,000 in the early ’70s, and so on. We were in moral dilemmas many times. Was it a hint to vacate the house, judging by the Thapas’ cool indifference?
So, as we decided one day, we requested MBT and his kind wife to increase our rent.
“Well, we haven’t thought about it, actually,” Mr. MBT shouted from the other side of the compound. “So do as you please, and that’s it, hai?”
For a man of very few words, he had spoken volumes that day. We ourselves raised our apartment rents twice after that.
Was there a return of favor on MBT’s part to one Prajapati because another Prajapati had been instrumental in determining his professional future?
In his story, JLS is merely diplomatic in his suggestiveness or suggestive in his diplomacy as raconteur. I didn’t ask MBT, either, after my and JLS’s stories were published in Garima and Madhuparka. Nor did MBT ever reveal his true intentions from behind his quintessential quietude.
Now he is also gone! There is only one way out: The answer must be blowing in the wind. But the wind cannot read, nor speak, or tell.
pjkarthak@gmail.com
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