…are the facts of Kathmandu,” Kipling famously wrote in 1895, but I suspect even the great adventure writer would have been disenchanted by the new facts on the ground in Nepal. According to The Guardian “Maoists tightened their grip on Kathmandu yesterday when two powerful bombs were detonated and a policeman seriously wounded by suspected guerrillas who have blockaded Nepal’s capital for a third day.”
Maoists in 2004, who’d have thought it? But who’d have thought our election would be revolving around Vietnam? All the world’s a flashback.
I visited Kathmandu in 1989 on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas with some friends, but I found the city itself relatively uninteresting compared to the mountains and the Sherpa/Tibetan Buddhist culture of the high country (and I do mean high). Kathmandu itself suffered from a retro sixties feel (still does in another way, obviously) with a neighborhood of backpackers dealing hash. I won’t say whether I indulged, but if I did, I promise you I inhaled (but did not bogart). I did have a great trip and always wanted to go back with my family, have Sheryl and Madeleine see Annapurna, just as I wanted them to see Luxor and Abu Simbel, the nubian villages of the Sudan, all places I got to visit. I wonder now if that is meant to be? What’s happening to the world?
But one place we know not to ask for help is the UN.
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13 Comments
1. Charlie (Colorado):I wonder now if that is meant to be? What’s happening to the world?
It’s changing.
That damned “transitory nature of conditioned existence” thing again.
Aug 20, 2004 - 7:33 pm 2. Terrye:Roger:
Not long after 9/11 I linked to a story about a terrorist attack by Maoists in Nepal and had much the same reaction. I thought Maoist? there are not even Maoist in China anymore.
a time warp kinda place.
Aug 20, 2004 - 7:36 pm 3. dougf:‘I won’t say whether I indulged, but if I did, I promise you I inhaled (but did not bogart).’-Roger
A man of honesty and fairness in all things.
Aug 20, 2004 - 7:42 pm 4. thedragonflies:Isn’t Not In Our Name headed up by a Maoist named Kissinger? Or maybe it was Act Now Stop War End Racism (ANSWER). These are the folks that were leading the anti-war protests in San Francisco earlier.
Aug 20, 2004 - 7:58 pm 5. TmjUtah:The same old thing, Roger. Just the same old thing. Shakespeare was right.
The production never closes, the curtain never comes down, and all the lines are ad-lib. It’s a coin toss whether it will be the cast or the audience to speak…and an even weaker chance that the words will be appreciated, regardless of delivery in a shout or whispered in an aside.
It would seem, in truth, that the willingness of a lot of people to be honest about their world just happens to be at a spectacularly low ebb right now is all. That’s what makes our time seem so formless and threatening.
I see what I think the world to be… at what I think the world is come to, and dare to imagine I see into the haze just a little further down the road. And then left and right, I look at the agendas and people and pride and fears and desires and ignorance and ambition…and smile at the thought that one man ever presumes to be more than an observer. It happens all the time, though. The playbill of history remembers people by name, often with honorifics; very few groups ever get the nod for changing worlds…it always comes down to a man, or men (rhetorically speaking, ladies) that stands out just long enough to carry the scene he walked in on.
What theater. What a hall. What magic happens, happens, and mostly by accident is the common rule… tragedy is more the standard fare. Poorly plotted, without redemption or lesson. Waste. Misery. Desperation. But sometimes the cast reaches across the lights and the audience that happens to be in the seats spent their pennies seeking empathy and not escape…and the audience reaches back.
I fear we have a matinee crowd on a rainy day right now…anxious to be anywhere else but unwilling to face the storm. They aren’t listening. They haven’t the faintest idea that no cast on earth can carry a house that refuses to join the production. They intend to murmur and chew the popcorn regardless of what unfolds around them. They have no one but themselves to blame if they waste their tickets.
We all have our part in the play. This is mine. I hope to graduate from sweeping popcorn in the lobby someday; maybe I can hold a spear in the chorus if I’m really lucky. But for now, this will have to do. Just let there be worthy men on the stage….just let there be some magic, in modest amounts, to get us through these times.
Aug 20, 2004 - 8:02 pm 6. Knucklehead:Good golly, Miss Molly! A Maoist thread! I promise not to join – I cannot remain remotely civil when it comes to Maoists. Bummer.
Aug 20, 2004 - 8:23 pm 7. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):This has been going on for ages, but I don’t know a lot about it.
Just guessing, I’d say this was more Chinese imperialism.
Anyone know?
Aug 20, 2004 - 9:12 pm 8. DSawyer:Ah, Nepal… I was a polisci major in college so I always knew they had Maoists…
But I have a personal anecdote that I thought I might share since Nepal is rarely heard of.
A couple years ago, before the tragedy with the royal family in Nepal, I was at St. Louis airport and took the light rail down to Busch Stadium… which was sentimental for me since it was the first (and only) professional ball game I had ever been to (when I was a kid).
On the sparsly populated train I saw an interesting and somewhat exotic looking gal, and we started a converstaion… she was the daughter of Nepal’s ambassador to the US and was studying journalism! We talked for a bit about literature (i like English novels myself from the 30’s) … she was more advanced and knew authors I didn’t know.
In any case, I had her take a picture of me in front of Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and I took a picture of her. Was sorry to hear about their tragedy six months/year or so later, I’m fairly sure she mentioned that her father and her were related.
Sorry, long post, but I thought you might like to see another (rare?) Nepalse anecdote!
Aug 20, 2004 - 10:53 pm 9. richard mcenroe:We say we love progress but in fact humanity treasures its mistakes. That’s why we keep repeating them…
Aug 20, 2004 - 11:28 pm 10. leni:Another Maoist moment here! I was traveling in India in 2000 and discovered “Naxalites”. I had never heard of them before. They are active in the Andhra Pradesh state mostly in the North West. They did not cause me any troubles while traveling but I did become a little concerned when a local police chief wanted my passport number and next of kin information. I have followed their activities since returning … back in July they tried to blow up a state chief minister, fortunately they were unsuccessful. I recall reading after the assassination attempt an Indian op-ed about the danger of Naxalites and Al Qaeda cooperation. I know these groups do not share a similar philosophy but they both have, “by any means necessary” mentality. I could see these local terrorist groups entering into “unholy” alliance with Al Qaeda. I wonder if this cooperation could occur with the maoist in Tibet.
If you are interested in finding out more about Naxalites: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/oct/02spec.htm
Aug 21, 2004 - 4:12 am 11. Annalucia:“I promise you I inhaled (but did not bogart).”
I guess I don’t read the right publications, but I didn’t know that “bogart” had become a verb. What does it mean?
Aug 21, 2004 - 5:00 am 12. D Anghelone:Maoists in 2004, who’d have thought it?
Who’d have doubted it?
A video I much recommend, for reasons near opposite the intent of the producers, is, The Weather Underground. One of the amusing moments, in the commentary by Bernadine Dorhn and Bill Ayers, is when Dorhn can’t/won’t say “Mao.” Todd Gitlin had compared an intended action by the Weathers to the mass murders of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Dorhn, in commenting on that, wouldn’t say “Mao.”
I can say Mao, can you?
Aug 21, 2004 - 6:09 am 13. Charlie (Colorado):Annalucia, you must have lived a pure life. When you “bogart a joint”, you keep smoking it yourself rather than passing it on.
I’ve got no idea where it originated, but I’ve always presumed it was because of a supposed analogy to Humphrey Bogart smoking in solitary misery in Casablanca.
Aug 21, 2004 - 6:55 am