http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20050207/books2.shtml&SET=T Cry, My Beloved Country Nepal's most promising novelist travels in memory and history to redeem her nation from comforting myths By Sam Miller FORGET KATHMANDU: AN ELEGY FOR DEMOCRACY By Manjushree thapa Penguin Price: Rs 350 Pages: 260 Year 2001 was one of unbelievable news stories. In the months running up to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the international media was obsessed with another incredible tale, a now largely forgotten massacre. A small nation, already in the throes of a Maoist insurgency, had woken up one June morning to discover that its royal family had been practically wiped out as a result of that most common of events-a dinnertime argument. In a codicil to the story that appeared too bizarre to be anything but invention, the assassin, Crown Prince Dipendra, briefly became king, eventually succumbing to self-inflicted gunshot wounds. And then came the conspiracy theories-that Dipendra was not, after all, responsible and that the new king, his uncle Gyanendra, or the new Crown Prince Paras was behind the massacre. Or maybe it was America. Or even India, for that matter. PICTURE SPEAK THAPA: Democracy is my cup of tea Nepalese novelist Manjushree Thapa has now written a courageous and important work of non-fiction which starts with her retelling of the Kathmandu palace massacre. She declares that "most Nepalis will conclude that we just don't know what happened on the night of June 1, 2001. We lost the truth, we lost our history. We are left to recount anecdotes and stories and to content ourselves with myth". And in this vein, she goes on to examine the history of Nepal, interweaving it with her own history; writing about her inner turmoil and despair (and her retreat into meditation and gardening) as she sees her country falling apart. Thapa examines other myths, of Nepal as a "pre-political Shangri-La, good for trekking and mountaineering and budget mysticism", a seductively untruthful portrayal that helped bring in lots of tourists, but which some Nepalis were so keen to disseminate that they started believing in it themselves. She savages those diplomats and international aid workers "munching hors d'oeuvres and canapes" at Kathmandu cocktail parties, who declare their support for the new king, as the only way of stopping Nepal from becoming the next Cambodia. Thapa has a hilariously pointless wander through the national museum with its impressively wide-ranging collection of nasty weapons. She also points out that it is not only foreigners but also members of the royal family who have shown an active, long-term interest in inhaling Nepal's large marijuana crop. Thapa's often cavalier approach to the norms of historical scholarship is like a wondrous breath of fresh air for those who have tried and failed to make sense of the long lists of kings and ranas, prime ministers and regents which figure in all traditional accounts of Nepal's history. It is an approach that also, on occasion, brings real insight, as when she makes an unexpected but thought-provoking comparison between the pre-1990 monarchist, panchayat system of government and the communist one-party states in other parts of the world. In the second half of Forget Kathmandu, Thapa leaves behind the materialist middle class of the capital (which presumably explains the imperative of the book's clumsy title) and heads to the countryside in search of the origins of Nepal's Maoist insurgency. Here she finds the poor of Nepal, people who have long given up on the country's incompetent politicians. Some of them, she says, find new hope and excitement in joining a movement which has brought government after government to its knees. She declares that if she had grown up in a small village, "Hell, I would have joined the Maoists, too .... Join the Maoists is what any spirited girl would do." But she ends up cursing all sides-the monarchists, the Maoists and the endlessly bickering political parties-and concludes with an impassioned, if rather nebulous, plea for Nepal to become a real democracy. Forget Kathmandu is a hugely ambitious and largely successful book, that could have been even better with a little more effort in production. An index would have been useful, as well as some help with clunky phrasings ("Members of parliament even exchanged fisticuffs"; "We got in a rush to leave"). But overall, this book, a highly personal view of a country quite unlike any other, is intelligent and challenging and deserves to be widely read, not just by those with an existing interest in Nepal.