After living for three years in Kolkata during the mid-1980s, when I returned to Kathmandu and started re-familiarising myself with the Nepali capital I would often be struck by commonalities between the layouts of the main parts of the two cities. The striking Dharahara tower loomed over the roadside hawkers of Sundhara, just as the Shahid Minar towered over the Dharamtala flea-markets. The Dashrath Stadium and the area extending from there to Ratna Park, with all the football played in between, reminded me of the Kolkata maidan. Even today, the wall graffiti bears similar phrases – Down with expansionism! Down with imperialism! Translated into English from Bengali or Nepali, these sound peculiar. The politics-breathing citizens of the two cities perhaps found solace in the search for the various nuances of these words. The tax havens of Makhan and Indrachowk in Kathmandu resembled the streets of Burrabazar in Kolkata – in both, the Marwari traders spoke the local language fluently even without treating the city as their home. Their various committees and religious fraternities were little oases made in the image of their own little Rajasthan or Haryana in their adopted cities.
On a recent visit to Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepali government, I become nostalgic about the corridors of Writers' Building in Kolkata. Only the squeaking fans are missing in Singha Durbar, but they are in winter replaced by weirdly designed heaters. The way 'tea money' changes hands, the way signage is meant to confuse rather than guide, the manner in which the Khardars treat you – all these do not differ from how things are at Writers' Building and the way the babus there treat visitors.
The Nepalis in India used the adage 'Sarkar ko kam kahile jala gham', adapted from a Bangla phrase meaning that the work of the government is to wait till the sun goes down. Everybody scrambled for government jobs and they ensured that they retired with a good pension without doing much work. The primary objective was to ensure that their children received a good education and their family a decent life. Surprisingly, the children of the bureaucrats of both Writers' Building and Singha Durbar migrate elsewhere, often overseas, for education and work. Perhaps their parents are happy that they have migrated out of the country seeking greener pastures. Both Kolkata and Kathmandu seem to share a common fatalism that nothing will happen here. Or maybe they feel that their dhamma is to stick to their jobs, in order that their children can provide them retirement options in faraway lands.
Eschewing entrepreneurship
Liberals have always been seen as sympathetic to the left, and if one is educated then one is immediately classified as an 'intellectual'. In Nepal, though, there is a tendency to proclaim one's credentials as an intellectual more aggressively. So if one happens to be a good doctor, then one should surely be leading morchas demanding justice, writing plays and songs, or directing films. Bureaucrats in Nepal aim to leave their mark not through the work they do in their professions; rather, they seek to be judged by the poetry collections they publish. A corporate executive would like to get music albums released or have solo art exhibitions. How can one be educated if one does not indulge in the vagaries of literature and the arts – of course while appreciating the usage of English words such as vagaries? Being labelled a communist during the day and sipping Johnny Walker Red Label at night is the pinnacle of ambition.