Expression»
Shiva Adhikari and Gai Khane Katha
JAN 18 - Shiva Adhikari was merely 50 when he passed away on Sunday January 11, 2004. But he championed vox populi throughout his life.
My relations with Shiva was brief because our fellowship was cut short by an incident causing ripples, pitting both Shiva and me against Purna Prasad Brahman, a staunch and diehard Nepali Bahun Hindu and a member of the then Raj Parishad, among other national positions he held.
It was in 1983 Shiva Adhikari approached me with a proposal. It was at Durbar Marg where I was a travel agent then. He edited and published Suruchi, then a literary magazine.
This curiosity-driven young man sought writers out for articles and stories. That was the purpose of his visit at my office.
“Peter dai, please write a nibandha for Suruchi with your bichar,” he started.
“But Shiva bhai, I’m not an essayist,” I said. “I’m a creative writer and a moody one, erratic, irregular. I have no prosaic thoughts.”
“But you try,” he insisted. “I want to see your expressions in prose. It’s a new stambha for you.”
It was hard to deny and refuse such an endearing young man, ten years junior to me. Then we struck a consensual theme when I showed him a letter from a Khadga friend of mine, written from West Germany. One line read: “Peter, I had to eat gaiko masu here, yaaar!”
The line was tinged with a typical Nepali Hindu Bahun’s remorse and helplessness in an alien land. He committed a cardinal sin. But I noted to Shiva that gaiko masu or cow’s meat is a fallacy for Nepal’s Hindu Nepalis, and explained my logic.
“Don’t explain, dai. You write it - for Suruchi.” Then he left, happy at my assurance that I would vent my opinions based on Khadga’s pathetic letter.
I don’t have that magazine’s issue in which my nibandha, my first attempt at commentaries, was published, but I recall my salient arguments:
That gaiko masu khane (to eat cow meat) and amako poi (I as my mother’s husband) are swear expressions in Nepali to clear oneself of charges or blames. “I didn’t commit the crime, or I’m a cow’s meat eater if I’m lying” or “I’m innocent or I’m my own mother’s spouse if I’m proven otherwise.” It is equivalent to the English oath such as “May I burn in hell if I’m not telling the truth.” These are expressions to one vindicated and save his neck by taking such desperate oaths.
Then my argument went further: That it’s not cow’s meat that is consumed, including female species like she-buffalos or she-goats. Yes, discriminations are made of fowls and fish where gender differences don’t matter. But Nepalis devour ballsy bokas or castrated khasis but not bakhris; male ranga buffs and not bhainsi; not sows but male pork called bandel or bangur.
Then I came to the main point that cow’s meat is universally called “beef” as “mutton” represents other species. And nowhere in the list are included female animals for human consumption.
My case tried to prove the fallacies: How frantic and last-resort oaths and despaired swearings had wrongly assumed literal acceptance based on exaggerated announcements, however perforce to save one’s ass.
Then I reached a stage where I highlighted the dilemmas Nepal’s Hindu Nepalis confront in places where beef is a staple. I emphasise on “Nepal’s Hindu Nepalis” because this is where the problem is chronic and endemic, whereas Hindu Nepalis outside Nepal have never had this hang-up on beef eating. Either use it or refuse it, and then shut up for good: That’s the pragmatic approach - even among the non-Hindu Nepalis of Nepal.
Then I came to the love-hate relationships of Hindu Nepal and its Nepalis with the Mlekchha World of the western and other nations where beef consumption is a given among their kuirey, chimsey and hirsute people who also fry frogs, devour dogs and smoke snakes for satay and snack on snails.
The dilemmas of Nepal and its Nepalis are such that the very beef-eating Mlekchhas contribute to Nepal’s annual budgets, provide scholarships, familiarisation trips, generous employment, and also generate tourism revenues. The irony is, Nepal’s Hindu power wielders and influencers, educated in Christian institutions, consider these largesse as their god-sent own and mostly enjoy these windfalls.
My friend Khadga was such a beneficiary with a German scholarship. Then his problems began in the beef-eating West Germany. He cursed his fate, condemned himself, felt he betrayed his caste and Hindu dharma by partaking of cow’s meat. But he completed his visit, and returned with a radiant image.
Shiva published my essay to his utter liberal glee. Then troubles began.
He appeared in my office, huffing and puffing.
“Peter dai, Purna Prasad Brahman is red with rage at you for your article and me for publishing it. He says he’s found about you as a prabasi from Darjeeling, an ethnic gai khane and a Kristan to boot. He’s also chagrined that you’re a former lecturer. And he berated me as a Nepali Bahun for printing such un-Hindu materials.”
I understood everything in a nutshell. Brahman adhered to Prithvi Narayan Shah’s stance on Nepal as the only “Asli Hindoostan” while turning a Nelson’s eye to Nepal being his avowed “Char varna chhattis jatko fulbari.” Brahman considered Nepal as a de facto Hindu nation and good riddance to the “firangis, Tharus, Mussalmans and speakers of other jangali bhasas”, including the ethnic nations of Nepal, called today the “Adibasis Janajatis”.
But Brahman - May Lord Pashupatinath bless and keep him! - thought of himself as the only true keeper of the Holy Cow Hindu Rashtra of Nepal where even the mention in a magazine of cow slaughter and beef consumption was an abomination. He was myopic to the realities in non-Hindu enclaves in Nepal itself and the far-flung Nepali world abroad. Were he alive today, he would see the increased exodus of Nepali migrant workers to Arabia, the Gulf, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Brunei and Singapore - all beef consumers. Perhaps he was aware of generations-old Nepali Diasporas in may beef consuming countries.
Brahman’s Hindu faith and beliefs are admirable but the reality is something else.
In all fairness, both Shiva Adhikari and Purna Prasad Brahman are not alive today. They can’t leave their funeral pyres to plead their cases. Therefore, this article is not to pass judgement on such a lofty soul as Brahman. This is only to pay my homage to Shiva Adhikari for his blithe and braveheart spirit which caused such ripples.
Shiva visited me once again. “Dai, I’ll take you to Brahman. We’ll face him and clarify our stands.” He was determined to settle the case.
But sadly it was not to be. We drifted apart, he to other magazines and the Gorkhapatra Corporation and I to other vocations in Nepal and abroad. We missed Brahman’s audience. And the rest has been silence ever since.
<peterkarthak@wlink.com.np;
peterkarthak@hotmail.com>Posted on: 2004-01-19 04:24
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