NEPAL I REMEMBER

I get woken up by the loud barking of our dog “pintu”. My eyes half open, wanders over the study table in a blurry attempt to locate the alarm clock that daddy had gotten for my 12^th birth day. It is 4:30 in the morning and is the day I am expected to join daddy on his routine morning walks as a punishment for not doing well in one of the unit tests in school. The clearing below my bedroom door lit up as Hari Dai turned on the corridor light yawning and yelling “baabu, otthibaksyo buwa ready bhaisaknu bho”.

It was a cool morning of 2001, and the whole of Kathmandu was in deep sleep. I could hear the bamboo brooms sweeping across the gravel road right outside our house. A minister at that time had promised to turn our city Kathmandu into Singapore, and these sweepers were employed by the government as their first move. “Aaah, doesn’t it feel great to be awake when the rest of the city is still sleeping”- daddy started his pre jogging stretches out in the courtyard. He was a firm believer of starting the day early.

With our palms covering up our nose and mouth we started our jog right pass the cloud of dust created by the sweepers.

Waking up that early and going out jogging with daddy was one of those punishments that I always looked forward for. It was the only quality time that I got to spend with my father growing up. With daddy, it was almost like playing a never ending game of hide-and-seek and he would be the hardest one to spot. By the time we were out of bed, he was already out and always returned home way past our bed time. I remember mummi telling us about daddy being very busy and stressed because of all the businesses that he was starting up at that time.

As part of the jogging routine, we visited the naag pokhari (snake pond), peeked through the tall silver gates of the royal palace hoping to get a glimpse of the royal life inside and at the end ate the fresh made delicacies from local vendors at the nearby bazaar. I enjoyed doing all of it and most of all enjoyed the company of daddy next to me. However, I always pretended to have hated these morning walks so that it would still count as a valid punishment for my up coming mischief.

Every time we passed through the palace gate, Daddy always talked about the time when he worked for the government and had met the king in some function. To that I always retaliated by bragging about the spelling contest that I had won and gotten a first prize handed over by the Queen herself. Our arguments would not stop till we reached the bazaar and the aroma of the warm “jerries” in the mithai shop would distract both of us. We both would look at each other and share a secret smile, as if we were part of a top secret mission. We both knew clearly that this is something mummi would kill both of us for.

We both would wipe off the crumbs of jerry from our face and get back to our jog licking the sweet out of our sticky fingers. We were on the longest stretch of our jog from the Sikchya Mantralaya till Khani tatha Bhuwarga Bibhaag that would take us back home. This is the part of the jog where we would run into all of daddy’s friends and colleagues from his old days in the government job. Daddy would greet them in the beginning but always passed a comment or two for being lazy at the end.

Unlike other days, today we saw a big group of people including Daddy’s friends gathered outside the west gate of the royal palace. The bats were flying high above the tall trees and everything seemed very quite as if no one even spoke a single word for that big group of men congregated at one place. We slowed down from our jog and started walking slowly towards the group of men. As we grew closer I could recognize few of daddy’s  friends there as well. I saw both Regmi uncle and Shrestha uncle there. Daddy went off and started whispering to Regmi uncle in his ears trying to find out what had happened. I was told to stay on the other side of the road and wait. I was watching the expression on Daddy’s face changing swiftly. He walked towards me and whispered into my ears – “The Royal Family no longer lives, Crown Prince Dipendra went on a shooting spry and killed everyone.....everyone. Let’s go home, mummi must be worried, it’s not safe to be here any longer”