The hostel was a nineteenth century palace. An impression of an archetypal European architecture, it was built by aristocratic Rana Rulers of Nepal for their profligate lifestyle, revelry, and carnage. After the ouster of this brutal regime, the palace was abandoned. The palace was then leased to a private boarding school by the government. Its colossal foundations, reverberant rooms with high ceilings, woody gazebos and corridors, were the talk among the students for its haunted souls that were believed wandering about there. The principal, Mrs Shakuntala Devi was bold and a highly feared woman, whose mere shadow would give all the pupils and teachers, shudders of fright. An inarticulate speaker in her mother tongue, she used to address her students everyday in the morning assembly with added emphasis on cleanliness and etiquette in perfect English. She?d sometimes get hysterical and vent her anger on her pupils? demeanours with squeamish remarks and witty demos in the assembly. For all the pupils were quiet and irresponsive, she used to remind them their school motto every morning, ??.?, that was daubed with veneering yellow over green on the main school gate.

Classes would follow assembly on maths and then science, mathematics and so on. Gopal?s class was a group of twenty boys and twenty girls. All girls looked pretty on their compulsory pink-ribbon-tied hair-dos, in two braids at the sides. Boys were forbidden to grow their hair long and all of them had brut crew cuts. Their class teacher, Mrs Ghimire, always used to say, ? Boys! Your heads look like that of the extra-terrestrials?. She would then giggle giving her toothless grin again and again.

?You are an average student with possibilities of improvement and better results. And, if you don?t take your studies seriously now, you might just as well end up repeating the whole year again. The choice is yours, Gopal.? Mrs Ghimire would tell Gopal to do better every time she came across his academic progress. He would have ended up an intelligent boy if he listened and tagged on to his teachers? advice. But, he was indifferent. He was very inquisitive and fussy about everything but too stubborn and reluctant to believe what others said. Nobody was right but him.

?I?ll come up with better results the next term, Ma?am? Gopal would slide his palm down his nape and reply her coyly every time with the same gesture and tone.


It was the winter of ?97. The final board exam was only a week away and the usual schedule had been changed into a particular one that required studying from morning to evening until dinnertime. Gopal woke up every morning to see fog envelop his hostel building and dews splattered white on the grounds. These foggy mornings, it occurred to him like he is somewhere in a world of clouds above the sky. But, as the sun emerges slowly and melts dews into glistening water droplets and vaporizes fog into a wintry zephyr, it cropped him up with a feeling of rejuvenation and brought him back to his mundane existence. Crows flitting and crowing on naked boughs of deciduous trees seemed to him, a reminiscence of folklores that marked an arrival of something predestined. On a clear wintry day, a distant panoramic view of snow-capped mountains was visible beyond the hills. Having spent his entire childhood and adolescence in the valley of Kathmandu at his hostel, the world beyond these hills remained a mystery to him and was confined only within his imaginations.

During the preparation, Gopal?s batch of all forty pupils except some prodigies spent the whole day rote learning their syllabus for the coming exams. Everybody was serious this time though there were occasional pranks and sudden outbursts of hysteria during the study periods. For no particular reasons, they would read their books the same way as monks chant prayers in a monastery. At length, they would hum like pundits reciting mantra in a Hindu marriage ceremony. Some boys would keep them rekindled in their books during the study periods, with sudden outbursts of Pink Floyd?s ?we don?t need no education? in deep unified baritones and falsetto, someone pausing for an oral jing jing jak jing jing interlude. At another moment, they would act like patients quarantined in a mental asylum. Gopal was just as excited and distracted to the thoughts of having him eluded in a world outside the hostel, after the exams. The longing for freedom during the preparation evoked such euphoria on him; he would show signs of apprehension and restlessness. His mates would squint and howl at him, ?Are you alright??

The final board exams were only three days away. Gopal and his two friends, like the rest of the students were all busy preparing for their science examination inside a classroom. All of them were concentrated in their books.

?I?m still not confident with this theory of relativity.? Gopal complained his friends.

Mohan, who was quietly practising a derivative equation, reacts with a smile and said, ?These geniuses who came up with all these laws and theories must be schizophrenics. A normal mind couldn?t come up with an idea of law of gravity by just looking at an apple falling from a tree.?

?Newton, Einstein, and Archimedes- they all are psychos.? Gopal said. Everybody laughed aloud at Gopal?s response. An electronic bell rang stridently for almost thirty seconds signalling their dinnertime.

The exams were over at the drop of a hat. Gopal did well in his exams too. Time came for their parting in the end. The school organized a farewell party for them on the last night of their schooling. It was a moment of grief and joy, of hopes and dreams, and of reality and confrontation. Girls wore sequinned saris and boys put on their finest suits at the party. They danced tirelessly to the rock n? roll music played blaringly in the conference hall. Some of them just sat down and chatted with the teachers. At length, they would hug and bid each other farewell as a show of parting. In the end before the party was over, Mrs Shankuntala gave a brief speech. She addressed,
Dear students,
Wish you would all reach higher heights of prosperity in your future. All the students stood up and gave the principal a standing ovation after her speech.


This evening, Harka Bahadur gave away a dinner treat at a Chinese restaurant ?Noodle Bowl? near Thamel - the famous tourists? ghetto in Kathmandu. Dining out was once in a blue moon delight for the Thapa family. Tonight, the treat was for their reunion and Gopal?s homecoming. The paintings hung on the walls, the crockery decorated and set, were only an imitation of Chinese arts and crafts for a fine dining restaurant that well-known in Kathmandu. Nothing was Chinese but a graffiti of Chinese scripts smeared on the wall. They ordered a bowl of fried noodle with eggs, shrimps, and vegetables, giant king-size prawns marinated in oyster sauce. A bottle of chardonnay and a plate of dumplings as an entr?e.

?What do you want do now, son? Harka Bahadur asked his son and took a sip of wine.

?I don?t know,? Gopal garbled back with his mouth full of dumpling.

? You can?t even afford a pair of pantaloons with a job in Kathmandu unless you are a bureaucrat.?

?I?ll start a small business on my own after I save some. I want to do something innovative, Dad? Gopal?s mother smiled at his son?s response. Her lips glistened with the greasy fried noodle she slurped in with her unfamiliar hands on chopsticks.

?Business is not as easy as you think it is, son. You need extraordinary entrepreneurial skills while soldiering is good enough a career for us.? Harka Bahadur retorted back sarcastically. A moustachioed customer at the side glanced askance at them on Harka Bahadur?s rising tenor.

?You father and son can discuss this later back home.? Parvati quietly cut in at her husband?s loss of temper. Nobody said anything for a while. Gopal was busy munching his share of fried noodles. The dinner seemed like a wholesome treat for a boy who was just back from hostel.

The labyrinth of streets around Thamel looked dead with the mellowness of the falling night, on their way back home, which was only a quarter of an hour walk from the restaurant. Most of the shops had already shut down except for few watering holes and restaurants that catered the likes of tourists, insomniacs and well-to-do residents of the valley. A mob of young khate boys were chatting and chafing their freckled cheeks by the fire they set on a tyre. And, a couple of brindled mongrels danced around the boys as if they all belong to the same family and background, waifs and strays. Next to them was a big yellow hexagonal garbage container that bore a reading,? Keep Kathmandu Municipality Clean?, in Devanagari scripts.

?Whatever we say is for your own good, Gopal. Its time now you make your own decisions.? Parvati said and held her son?s hand. Harka Bahadur was walking on the left side of his wife with his left hand in his pocket. Gopal didn?t say anything but kept moving ahead which followed a dark alley away from the main street.

?If you pass your exams with good results, I?ll send you to America for further studies.? Harka Bahadur said as if he?s consoling his son.

?Alright? Gopal replied and pursed his lips. Parvati took out a bunch of keys from a satchel she was carrying underneath her cashmere shawl, and opened the gate. A small lawn led them to their house?s main door and into the living room. It had a red sofa at the corner and an oblong Tibetan carpet on the middle of the floor. On the anterior wall of the living room, drooped an antler. A wooden closet at another end of the room was decorated with Harka Bahadur?s trophies he had achieved during his service in the army, and a frame of insignia and medals on the top he had received as an accolade.

Harka Bahadur sat on the sofa and switched on the TV for the late night news. A smart newsreader on NTV read,? Supporters of a left wing party planted a bomb that killed three people and injured dozens at the parliament??

Gopal was as free as a bird after he left hostelling. There were no early mornings; he could sleep until late, eat whenever he wanted and do whatever he wished. There were no timetables or any examinations. In no time, he realized that Kathmandu was very dull and politicised. The ongoing political upheaval shook the whole nation that resulted in increasing number of work force suffering from drug addiction, alcoholism, poverty and destitution and their offspring as a result, from illiteracy, famine, and homelessness. People in the valley spent their whole day arguing in a heated desultory debate about politics and economy. They would gossip about some blasphemous acts or just about an upcoming Saturday blockbuster in the national broadcaster, NTV. The situation of the country had been deteriorated with constant political conflicts and Maoists? insurgence. Riots, curfews, and bloodbaths made the major headlines in tabloids and newspapers. Politicians lost faith of the whole populace. They just fought against each other for the power obsessed by corruption and greed. These political conflicts and violence degraded Nepal to such an economic depression that almost all the labour force were alienated, outnumbering the exodus of the Tibetans all over the world during the Red army invasion in the 1950s.It didn?t take Gopal long to realize that he?d be leaving somewhere in search of opportunity with this exodus.

P.S. No comments or feedback please. I want to concentrate more on my private matters. This is just my short story.

Kalebhut, BEAUTIFUL.

If this is your true story then we have one thing in common, I too spent my life a lot like the way u did. 10 darn (wasted??) years in a hostel.

We had a lady principal too, same Rana building. Came our of the hostel, had all these illusions about life, saw the real life, packed my bags and came here.

Could not help but comment.