My name is Dhruba. I hail from ABC Village Development Committee in Eastern Nepal. In high school and college, I was on the forefront of anti-Panchayat student union activities. After finishing my Master's from Tribhuvan University (TU) in Kirtipur, I joined Nepal's civil service to support my family and to get to know the Panchayati machinery better. It was then that, eighteen years ago, at the age of 32, I won a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States of America.
In the beginning, I found it tough to adjust to the American way of life. I missed Nepal. I missed eating dal-bhaat-gundruk. I was tired of Americans' asking me "Are you having fun?" all the time, everywhere. I missed my student union activities from back home. I missed listening to Bacchu Kailash's song , and I missed reading the then underground Nepali newspapers. Loneliness drove me into my studies. I did reasonably well in my studies. One day, one of my professors asked me to stay on to finish my doctorate. I obliged happily.
Half a dozen years later, I completed my dissertation titled "A time-series analysis of maize production in Nepal from 1933 to 1983". By the time it was done, I was the world's number-one authority on Nepal's maize production capabilities. I was very proud of this fact until I realized that no American university showed interest in hiring me. Besides, my original Fulbright contract stipulated that I spend at least two years working in either Nepal or a third country. Since my future in Nepal looked uncertain, I went to Canada.
In Canada, life was both easy and hard. Easy, because, thanks to state-socialism, living expenses were minimal. Yet living there was hard because a few jobs that I did find were as visiting lecturers, with contracts never being renewed. I thought about going back to Nepal, but couldn't decide for sure. Then suddenly the Jan Andolan of 1990 took place, and the hated Panchayati system was overthrown. I was overjoyed.
Soon, I dusted off my democratic credentials to jockey for a juicy post in Nepal. I thought that, with the right moves and the right connections, I might be made a member of the Planning Commission. Or, I might even end up as an advisor to the Prime Minister. Or, who knows, maybe even the ambassador to the US and Canada.
With great expectations, I rushed home to Nepal, paid homage to Ganesh Man and Krishna Prasad, and shook hands with everyone from Girija to Man Mohan to Madan Bhandari and his wife. I even wrote for newspapers and appeared on NTV panel-discussions on the state of Nepal. But ultimately, I got nothing. Instead, the spoils of democracy went to my former TU friends. Someone got the UN ambassadorship. A close rival's father-in-law became the ambassador, and the Planning Commission membership went to punks with PhDs from places like Durgapur. I was mad as hell, and was heart-broken. Was it any way for the democratic leaders to reward this intellectual's tyag, tapasya, sangharsha and bali-daan?
Later years brought no relief. I shuttled back and forth among Canada, America and Nepal. I accompanied every single Nepali neta on his and his family members'taxpayer-financed medical check-up trips to the West and to Bangkok. Still, nothing important came my way. Life was passing me by, and my academic career in the West was stagnating due to inactivity. . Obviously, I couldn't advance much on the sole basis of where I had earned my degree from. Yet in Nepal, no matter how many times I flaunted my American degree, Canadian connections, cheerful bonhomie and polished sophistication, I was always treated more as a short-term tourist than as a freedom-loving intellectual patriot with a "can-do" attitude. I felt stuck with my nose always pressed to the glass . . . looking inside Nepal and missing out in all that fun that was democracy.
Recently, with the re-emergence of such Panchayati ghosts as Lokendra, Surya Bahadur, Prakas Lohani and others of their ilk, I've decided that I've had enough of Nepal and Nepali politics. I'm convinced that Nepal is doomed as long as it fails to recognize Canada- and America-based Nepali intellectuals like myself. And so, tired of chasing the rainbow in Kathmandu, I sold off my old house there and bits of ancestral land in the village to pay the mortgage in Nepaliville, USA.
Condemn me, if you will. And make fun of me. But so what? At least, I get to spend the rest of my life with other patriotic Nepalis abroad -- discussing how to set Nepal straight through our collective long-distance nostalgia . . . and bright ideas and brighter discussions.
[Originally published in The Kathmandu Post.]
