God Guru Ghosts

I had read Samrat Upadhyay’s “Arresting God in Kathmandu” while I was still back home around 2002. One of my friends had lent me the book for a few days and there were people queued behind me to read it. But just so I could pace my reading at my own will I went out and had the entire book photocopied (Sorry Copyright has no significance in Nepal). Something I had picked up and adored while in boarding school was ‘reading’. I grabbed anything and everything I could get my hands on, but, unless you had a really good source like a well outfitted library or an avid reader uncle of some sorts your choices were limited. And I had none.

I was a twenty year old reader and “Arresting God in Kathmandu” was a pleasant surprise. It was a piece of work that lived up to the enthusiasm it had created around itself. Lot of critics (especially Nepali) called it an exploitation of Nepalese culture and society, and some even called it soft porn. I was in my marketing class in Katmandu and Mr. Singh, my favorite teacher that year, denounced me telling me it was a ‘waste of time’, and that I should concentrate on my text books rather. Well he read it in the first place to be able to comment on it. So I jumped on the issue and said so should I stop listening to music, watch movies,television etc? Because they corrupt my mind a little more easily than a book does. He did not dwell on the issue much and continued teaching.

Anything and everything that does not fit into our resolute boundaries of normality we have to pummel on it with all our might. Growing up in Nepal this is very prominent. My parents wanted me to learn English, act intelligent and thus sent me to the best schools they could afford. Thanx to that I turn out to be eager to learn and strongly opinionated, with my own identity and ideologies, and when i expressed them at school or at home i got names like ‘Neta’ and ‘Kuraute’. Similarly, when you grab the book written by probably the first English writer of a Nepali descent you expect certain things and for some of you may be it turned out a little more then you bargained for. How can a ‘sasura’ have an affair with his own ‘buhari’? Samrat writes human stories and human emotions do not follow norms and when those emotions tend to break barriers we ‘hush..hush’ and pull the curtains so the outside world cannot see it.

I seem to defend Samrat’s work and yes, I am an admirer of his work. But “Guru of Love” , the second book I picked up disappointed me to some extent. Merely because it was a little too obvious on its plot. I finished the book just because I started it. It reminds me of the greatly anticipated “Saint Anger” by Metallica, all the hype the movie I had watched about the making of the album had created. How Lars, James, Kirk kept insisting that this album was going back to Metallica’s roots of thrash and speed. But then I heard the album in ten minutes with my finger on the skip button. Not one song could capture my attention. I felt the same way with “Guru of Love” .Maybe I was expecting too much from Samrat and likely his publishers must have insisted that he come up with another best seller because it almost feels like he had rushed through that book. Yes, Samrat indeed created a “monster”.

After a long pause in reading due to life circumstances and other priorities, I rediscovered a zest to read again. The Last book I remember reading was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë for an English class. Reetu probably ignited that zest, books lying around the apartment and seeing her deeply engrossed in “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. She had a few others lined up to read after she was done and she wanted to read more and asked me to suggest a few more while she was on the Internet shopping for books. I asked her to pick “Arresting God in Kathmandu” and my eyes fell on “The Royal Ghosts” for $1.75 . Eh…Can’t beat that. Read the whole book in about a week’s span. Killed some major boring hours at work with ease.

Unlike the former two books “The Royal Ghosts” is a lot more grown-up. It kept me flipping through pages with a constant sense of curiosity. Is it going to turn all seductive and spicy? And pleasantly it didn’t (not that I would have gone oh! no she’s getting boned). But Samrat is a brilliant story teller and for those who put him in a different category are not going to like him, period. Let go of your sophisticated literary bias and read this book with just the pure sense of discovering what happens at the end to all the different character that the book creates. Characters that as a Nepali, I can so easily relate to.He explores relationships, some that have names and some that do not have names. We do not know why we feel certain emotions , we just do, and each chapter in this book evolves and dissolves around such relations and emotions. Samrat has a gift of seeing our society from a different vantage point, the point where normalcy is often overshadowed by something as simple as being ‘human’ . How often do we see two ’sautas’ getting along and finding comfort in each other. How often does brotherly love overcome ‘homosexuality’ rather than ’samaj le k bhancha’ phenomenon.Each story is filled with a shimmering fragrance of hope. This rarely is the case in reality but the fragrance of hope sure is sweet to imagine.

The backdrop of the story being in Kathmandu makes it even more personal. I am walking along characters as they walk the streets of Katmandu. I can see myself sitting at the tea shop just watching these characters walk by as Samrat’s voice narrates their story to me within my head.

A movie, a painting, a song, a book… all nothing but a piece of the creator’s mind. It’s easier for me to relate to the art if I look at it from the creator’s perspective, mutually becoming a hand-on-the-chin, “Hmmm..”, moment.