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I suppose it all started when Dhruba Chandra Gautam wrote ‘Alikhit’ and got the Madan Puruskar. (It was later translated into English as ‘Unwritten’ by philologist Philip Pierce.) The important thing for me about it was that it forged a friendship with another writer that became significant for me and which I value to this day.

Gautam had a column in one of the leading weeklies of Panchayat time. He asked Shanti Mishra, Chief Librarian at Tribhuvan University, if she could arrange an interview with me. I’ll never know whether he knew my writing or whether Shanti promoted it, but it happened.

During the interview I told him how I had attended the First World Conference of Women Writers in Jerusalem in 1984 and how the then Secretary of International Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Editors and Novelists (PEN) had approached me about establishing a PEN Center in Nepal. We needed 20 members to sign the PEN Charter. The Panchayat would certainly not approve, but Gautam found 20 writers with lots of guts to do so.

Shanti became the first president. We were criticized for this because she wasn’t a writer, but only by those who had refused to sign up because of Panchayat censorship. A librarian had helped Galsworthy found the first PEN so Shanti was our help in founding PEN Nepal and worthy to be its first president. We met in the British Council. Peter Moss, the Head then, now deceased, was married to Norma, who is Monorama Mathai, the renowned Telegu writer.

Gautam and I went to Toronto for the official recognition of Pen Nepal. International PEN paid our expenses. I was Secretary and Gautam Vice-President. Shanti declined her right to go. In fact she never did go to a PEN Congress but always gave her seat to writers. This should be borne in mind because it was a tremendous help to Nepali literature.

We became an established center but were not legally established in Nepal until 1990 when the late Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai as one of his first acts as prime minister made us legal.

I won’t mention the detractors we had, mainly those who declined to sign the charter. They were afraid and we understood that. Panchayat censorship was not a joke. But it is after all ‘the Pen that gives immortality to men’ and it is in this light that I hope PEN Nepal today honours those first 20 members who were not afraid to defend the freedom of expression in those days.

Among the 20 was Ashesh Malla, director of Sarvanam street theater. His group toured the campuses carrying a message of democracy through wit and humor in a language students could understand.

The sisters Benju Sharma and Manju Kanchuli, daughters of late laureate Bhim Nidi Tiwari carried on their father’s tradition. Toya Gurung was also a founding member. So was Bhuwan Dhungana whose short story ‘The 1’000 rupee note’ always seemed to me to be a great literary gem exploring the angst of the ordinary housewife trying to make ends meet. Megh Raj Manjul and Nagendra Raj Sharma were members. Others were Dhruba Sapkota, Binod Mani Dixit, and Hemang Dixit who writes as Mani Dixit, and who signed up despite being the physician to the children of most Panchayat heavies.

One campaign we ran was for the closure of Godavari Marble Quarry, that horrid blot on the landscape. We were privy through other writers of a proposal Kew Gardens had made which would have revived the area, provided sustainable incomes and, unlike the quarry, not deprived the surrounding villages of water.

Twelve thousand people marched for this cause. Krishna Prasad Bhattarai vowed that if he won a second term he would close it down. But he didn’t win and Nepal lost the man who many of us believe was the one just person in the political mayhem of Nepal.

With the help of Lawyers for the Environment we fought a case, the first ever on behalf of the environment in Nepal. Nepal had no environmental lawyers so one was asked to come from India. He fought that ‘locus stand’ case but unfortunately lost. The owners were too smart for us and knew who to pay off I suppose. The case went on and the quarry is now closed.

PEN Nepal’s proudest moment came when it became the first Third World Center to become a member of PEN’s prestigious Writers in Prison Committee, a movement predating Amnesty International. By then PEN Nepal had helped in a number of notable cases, particularly that of Taslima Nasreen. Gautamji was prepared to travel to Bangladesh and bring her over the border disguised as a bride. Many of our writers volunteered to hide her. Fortunately the Swedes managed to get her out.

For me the greatest honor came when I was made an honorary member of the Mexican Center San Miguel de Allende. I had written a letter to President Calderon about his imprisonment of the President of Mexican PEN. I reminded him of the values of Mexico’s great leader, Juarez, and asked if he believed Juarez would have approved of locking up writers. It must have worked because he released her and the writers thought my letter did it.

So that’s that, the advent of Pen Nepal. I ceased being active believing it was time for Nepal’s writers to take charge. They made me an advisor but they don’t need my advice. Literature in Nepal has a bright future and that is what I always hoped for.

The author is the founder of Pen Nepal

I had asked a young researcher studying BP Koirala for her Mphil an easy question: Did she find anything new about him that we haven’t yet been told? Her answer was naive for my taste: she said she found him ‘double-faced’.

I didn't mince words to say that she was being utterly naive. Humans are complex in all manners, more so in matters of morality in politics.

The foundation of Nepal's Grand Old Party was laid in India, inspired by the Indian National Congress. Established as an elite intellectual group in 1885, the INC slowly evolved into a political force, with years of rigorous deliberation. By the time the Koirala sons were growing up in exile, the Congress under Nehru-Gandhi was preparing for succession of power after the British. It was a movement that united India.

Young Nepali students studying in India started organizing themselves and finally, BP was able to unite three different parties—two in Varanasi and one in Kolkata to form the Nepali Congress.

From letters and diaries of that time of the legend himself and those of friends and relatives, the researcher had concluded that BP was double-faced. I laughed out loud. After research of many years, she had finally found out that BP the legend was also human.

I admire BP for the liberal-semi anarchist-renaissance man he was. King Mahendra punished a popularly elected government and established People's Panchayat—different name for Democracy by King's Grace, and put BP in jail. His prison years were well spent in creating some of the masterpieces of Nepali literature.

He was learned, and had the gumption to take up challenges and live for those. But his charisma was more of a romantic sort. Some calculations went wrong, and many decisions backfired. His health too did not support him much, and the rest is history: he has become the most-hyped leader in Nepal with very less real impact and hardly a legacy to speak for him.

In politics, there isn't much that has come from BP after King Mahendra hijacked history, but the real question is: why could Mahendra himself not become the Lee Kuan Yew of Nepal?

Lee came to power in Singapore around the time of Mahendra's coup. And he was the prime minister for 31 years, till 1990, drawing strong parallels with the Panchayat rule of 30 years in Nepal.

What worked there and what did not here? This is an important question to be asked.

A simple explanation that has been tried is that Nepal is bigger and more complex. To some extent, this may be true. It may be unjust to draw parallels between city states like Singapore and a geographically difficult country like Nepal. Even the ethnic diversity is far more precarious in Nepal.

But blaming it all on the environment and structure is not the right approach. However difficult the task of sorting this mess, somebody has to get it done.

In the book Makers of Modern Asia published in 2014, Ramchandra Guha hasn't included BP among the 11 leaders profiled: Gandhi, Nehru and Indira Gandhi from India; Chiang Kai Shek, Mao, Zhou, and Deng from China; with Ho Chi Minh, Sukarno, Lee, and Bhutto closing the list.

Some intellectuals in Nepal were disgruntled that no Nepali was included in the list; they believed at least BP deserved a mention. But I thought his exclusion was justified.

The fact that in the 70-plus years of post Rana rule, we do not have a name that can be taken as the maker of an era speaks volumes about the lack of leadership Nepal has lived through. We have names that have been in power for a long time, like Mahendra, or leaders who have been able to keep politics centered on them for long, like Prachanda, but hardly anyone whose legacy will have an enduring impact.

In Nepal, there is a class of intellectuals whose main job has been to normalize all kinds of eccentricities that the political class has thrown at us. They are so tightly engaged with the ruling elite that knowingly or unknowingly, they are hardwired to take side of the status quo, and justify inefficiency, ineptitude, and lack of character among leaders.

This class of intellectuals has long been arguing that the hunger for a charismatic leader is misplaced, and development of healthy institutions is at the core of long-term progress. There are no fundamental flaws in this line of thinking, but it ignores one important factor: the context and the demographic window of opportunity. There can be no doubt that a charismatic leader with high integrity can make a real impact.

Politics and culture are not homogenous, and hence the mindset pushed by Western thinking ignores our context completely. The institutions of the West developed gradually while those of most new states were put into form immediately.  

In non-Western nations, institutions have been made strong only by extraordinary dedication of legendary personalities. Saying that Nepal's case will be an exception, is stretching the idea of institutions too far. The fact is that we need a Lee Kwan Yew to sort out the mess we are in, and however hard the punditry tries to make a case against it, without a transition to a presidential system of governance, we are doomed.

There has been a never-ending debate whether circumstance or personality shapes events. In case of Singapore, Lee settled the argument in his favor through sheer grit, and dedication. Singapore is a living statement now which the world can't disregard with any pile up of words or clever punditry.

While watching ‘A Suitable Boy’ (a TV adaptation of Vikram Seth’s novel) last week I noticed the village scenes set in 1950’s India are exactly what you would see today. The same can be said for many parts of Nepal. But yet, in others, time has moved on…

Around 15 years ago I visited Meghauli in Chitwan district. At that time Meghauli had an operational airstrip, mainly for guests to Tiger Tops lodge, but empty seats were also available to locals. Being familiar with ‘jungle’ village life, Meghauli, even at that time, was pretty progressive. Thanks mainly to one man, Hari Bhandary. The story starts back in the 1980’s when, the then young Hari was determined to lift the health conditions of his community. Through various chance meetings with visitors, most importantly Peter and Beryl Shore from the UK, who remain firm friends today, Bhandary started on his journey.  While working with leprosy and handicapped patients in Kathmandu, Bhandary came to realise his desire to study medicine would involve years away from home. Whereas his community needed help now. So in 1997, Bhandary opened a health post called Clinic Nepal.

When I visited around 2005, Bhandary was busy installing tube wells in the area so that women would no longer have to trail down to the river to collect tainted water for household use. A total of 246 hand pumps were installed and seven ground wells dug to supply clean water to five to 10 households. 

As time went on the projects under Clinic Nepal’s umbrella grew to incorporate, not just health and free mobile health camps, but water and sanitation, education, income generation, and even a Scout Group. I continued to visit over the years to watch this transformation. But I have missed a couple of years…

In those missing years, those tube wells of old have been overtaken by the Meghauli Town Water Supply and Sanitation Project (MTWSS) that benefits a whopping 1,892 households through a huge water and reserve tank. Not content with this, Bhandary set his heart on a more sustainable way of providing clean drinking water. In only a year (2019-2020) Clinic Nepal, with funds from the Government of Nepal through the Town Development Fund, ADB, as well asits own funds, set up a 100kW solar PV plant. 

Not only does this solar plant provide electricity for the immediate area, they are selling electricity back to the grid, and the proceeds of this (over Rs 73,000 in the first month!) are going back into the community. Initially to pay back the loan and now for system maintenance. The final repayment of the loan from the Town Development Fund was made last month (one year after the start of the project) and everything is up and running. A sustainable and environmentally-friendly way to pump drinking water and provide electricity to the community while saving money. Quite an achievement.

And as we are talking, I think back. Actually I had been to Meghauli twice before that meeting in 2005. In the early 1990s, and then towards the end of the decade, that second time accompanied by my aunt. Both times I went to watch elephant polo, organized by Tiger Tops, which used to be held annually in Meghauli. Now discontinued in favour of responsible tourism, I do remember on one of these occasions seeing the American actor Stephen Seagal there. I may even have bumped into Hari Bhandary without realising it!  

Rabia of Basra, an eighth-century Sufi saint, was on her deathbed when Sufyan visited her. He asked if she needed any help. A peerless mystic, Rabia said she had given herself to God, so no help was necessary. He then asked if she desired anything. Rabia answered: “My desire is meaningless. I have given all my desires to God.”

Sufyan’s ego got a great jolt. The famed and powerful scholar of his time felt dwarf in front of a frail old woman. He fell to his knees, and said: “O God, forgive me! My devotion is not as strong as this woman’s.”

Rabia smiled, and remarked: “You don’t get the point. You are seeking forgiveness for yourself. Forgive God first, and you will be forgiven.”

Thus goes the story. Believing it or not is up to us. We can either draw valuable lessons from it or set it aside as a myth. A mind open to truth can find many gems of wisdom in this little story.

Perhaps the most obvious gem here is that of bhakti, or true devotion. Sufyan considered himself a man of God, but in front of the God-attuned saint, he saw his own meagerness. But still he couldn't get the point. What could be the point here?

Rabia told him to forgive God instead of seeking forgiveness for himself. For a true devotee, God is not different from yourself. When you consider yourself different from God, bhakti gets corrupted and trade begins. And the corrupted bhakta (devotee) pleads: "O God! Please do this for me. If you do this, I will visit your temple. I will make offerings to you."

For Rabia, God is not different from her. It's His desire that she desires, it's His plan that she is working out. If He has planned destitution and disease for her, why try to change? Since she has God with her, any outside help would be redundant. Why would God—the ultimate source of all help—need anybody else's help? If you have got the ultimate itself, what else would you desire?

Rabia's oneness with the ultimate is rare. And when you are in total unison with it, you know what works and what doesn't. You know the rules that govern this world. One such rule that Rabia was trying to tell Sufyan is that you leave aside your desires. You leave aside your selfish motives. You leave aside even the wish of forgiveness for yourself. Instead, you wish everything for God. When you are one with the ultimate and you wish something for it, you will find fulfillment for yourself, in higher degree, imbued with a higher potency. That happens with faultless devotion, or true bhakti, the way Rabia lived.