Look Down Not Up Kama Shakya
Sahayogi Press Kathmandu 1988
NRs 130
Review by Rajiv Regmi After reading Kama Shakya´s new travelogue/nature guide/biography/diary, Look Down Not Up, it is difficult to decide which way to look.
The book is about the author´s quest of the shy, elusive and near extinct Pygmy Hog, the tiny jungle swine that doesn´t grow more than a foot tall. It is obviously so small that the author had to look down and not up, hence the title.
The call of the wild lakes Shakya from the ex-jungles of Chitwan and Kosi Tappu to national parks in India, including one in Assam. We can feel the Pygmy Hog lurking in the undergrowth, as it were, and what holds the reader spellbound is the author´s adventures and flashbacks as he goes about trying to find it. Shakya´s description of the people he meets (expat ecologists, Indian sepoys on the Assam Mail, Nepali game wardens) are sharp sketches that bring the characters leaping out of the page.
One character that really leaps out is Jungli, the Tharu girl who entices workers to help the author plant teak trees near Bhairawa. Shakya´s delicious description of lungli is a cross between Rudyard Kipling and Harold Robbins, and is interesting enough to distract the reader from the hog hunt.