Wolfgang Graf: A Freiburger Feingeist (Satis Shroff)

Wolfgang Graf was born in Freiburg-Zähringen and did his schooling at the Kepler Gymnasium. Later he studied Biology and Chemistry at the Freiburger University because he thought then that it would be good to be a teacher in a school. But he didn’t teach and worked instead in the quality control department of a factory lab, which produced cigarettes in Freiburg.

He said that science and technology always interested him, a child he looked at what his big sister, who had her own photo-lab and experimented with photo development and used her microscope. Later at school he wrote a paper about the human nervous system as his Abitur dessertation. But that wasn’t all.

“There was something boiling within me that had to come out. It had to be the arts. During his school days he painted a lot, wrote poems, and even a theatre manuscript, which was printed in the school-mag, but which was never staged,” said Wolfgang.

Wolfgang describes himself as a late post-World War II child and he lived with his parents and two sisters in one room at Grandma’s flat in Zähringen, in which there were three rooms for eight persons. Grandpa was semi-paralysed since thirty years.

“My father was 16 when he had to join the Wehrmacht as a soldier but he wasn’t involved in the real fighting. He shot his thumb through an accident. As children we took it as something serious and Dad enjoyed it as a heroic deed to be wounded during the war. He put on a laconical smile and said, “It was more a case of collerateral damage. Dad died last December. Mom lives in Freiburg and is 87 years old.”

“How’s she doing?” I asked him.

He replied, ‘She’s still going strong. She loves watching TV and reading women’s and TV mags and is fond of the Bild Zeitung because of the big headlines.’

I recall an old Freiburger medical professor who was also an avid Bild reader, Germany’s leading Yellow Press Zeitung. During one of our conversations in the crowded S-Ban on our way to Freiburg’s main railway station we’d started talking about the ‘Entartete Kunst’ during the Nazi regime. So I asked him a question about it.

Wolfgang replied, “Germans have a big history but just before the World War II, the Nazis introduced their own version of what art and culture should be. Faschism brought not only war and misery to Europe but also destroyed modern art and culture. In Italy and France the people sing a lot but in Germany there’s no singing culture anymore.”

‘What’s the reason?’ I asked him.

He said, “The Nazis sang too much, al the time and we Germans have now have a disturbed relationship to old German songs.”

In this context I’d like to mention that Alois F. who’s a prominent member of the Zähringia, a local old men’s singing choir, asked me to join them. But Thomas my neighbour from Cologne told me that the old boys’ choir didn’t want new English songs. They didn’t want any innovative ideas. Just their old songs, and this didn’t appeal to the younger generation of Germans who prefer:hip-hop, Eminem, 50 Cents, Tokyo Hotel and gospel songs. When you go to the local church you see only old people and mothers with toddlers. The youth are conspicuous through their absence.

“What about the olde German Liedergut, the treasury of songs?” I asked Wolfgang.

“German culture is rich in songs and they used to sing it a lot before the World war II.” He went on to say, “Even Hitler wanted to be an artist but he was refused admission in Austria. The Art Academy in Vienna refused Hitler the unknown artist twice. If they’d taken him, there would have been no World War II.”

The work in the lab didn’t interest him either and he switched to a dancing career in 1978.

Wolfgang said with a laugh, “I had a girl-friend at that time who was a dancer. Actually he wanted to be an actor and play in the German theatre. She told me: ’Come along, it’ll do you good.’ I complied and then began my life-long love affair with dancing. In those days there was an Alternative Movement, wherein you cold do anything if you wanted to.”

Contemporary dancing (Zeitgenössischer Tanz) was an unknown form in those days, but there was a growing scene for those who were interested. In 1980 he founded a school for New Dance, Theatre and Bodywork with some friends, which exists even till today, and had made Freiburg, besides Berlin, one of the important centres for new dance forms. There was a breakaway from the traditional dance movements and the gender roles were questioned and changed, everyday-movements were brought on the stage and the barriers to the theatre were eliminated. The motto of the school became: “Every movement can be danced” and it produced new professional dancers till today.

‘We were freelance dancers and we opened our own school and performed in festivals in Freiburg (1979-80). The Hippie-Flower Power Culture was long over and a lot of people wanted to try out something new things, new ideas and there was a Häuserkampfbewegung, in which empty houses were boarded by young people, the police came, there was a struggle ensued, the young people were carried away, only to reappear the next day.’

During his students days he lived with six friends in a provincial nest, an old farm with a gardening complex. It was a time when they thought everything was possible. If someone had an idea they got together and made it work. There were alternative schools, bakeries, car-garages and a lot of other things. They forced their projects without state-subventions, that is with all the advantages and disadvantages. But today, according to him, the people try to find an existing niche, instead of doing something themselves.

To give impulses, produce and work with others together, that’s what made Wolfgang decide to work in the end as a Kulturbeauftragter (culture-manager) in Basle (Switzerland). Wolfgang was a dancer before he became an organisator of cultural events, and travelled as a dancer, choreograph through Europe and worked as a dance-teacher. He remembers working in “The Detective from China” Dance Butter Tokyo, where he spent two months, an Internatonal Ensemble mit 17 dancers from Japan Switzerland, Finnland und Germany and the director was Anzu Furukawa. In Tokyo, Nagano he danced the “Last Toast in Japan”a solo-performance, then came Dornbirn, in Dresden, Cologne “The Diamond as big as the Ritz” Dance Butter Tokyo, a two month stay in Japana, he starred in the International Ensemble comprising 12 dancers and Anzu Furukawa was again the director. Then he danced in “Tonight in The Moon” a duo-dance with Anzu Furukawa, Idar-Oberstein/ Freiburg “Duo” Neuer Tanz und Neue Musik - Improvisations with the Saxophonist Christina Fuchs, Cologne “Alternating Currents” International Improvisations Ensemble, Potsdam, Freiburg, Stuttgart (Sprache des Körpers, the language of the body.

Even though he was a lot of times in foreign countries, he always came to roost in Freiburg. Today he lives with his wife and son in Freiburg Zähringen, where he spent his childhood. Only once did he think of going to Paris and work there but he’d have been another dancer, and not someone who organises and runs events, and on the other hand he really didn’t feel at home in the world of performing arts.

“Perhaps I’m less of a Feingeist and a bit rustical to be a part of it,” he said with a grin.

That’s why he had to balance his life between strenuous dance-performances and organising events, especially when he turned forty. He decided to say farewell to the stage and devoted his time to culture-management. At first he organised different theatre projects in Freiburg, then as the chief of the Theater/Tanz workshop Kaserne in Basel and ultimately as a culture-manager of Riehen. In the meantime Wolfgang rides his bicycle, swims and does a bit of jogging. As one of the founders of Tanzfestival, he made a small come-back during the 25^th Birthday of the dance festival. “I had to summon up a bit of courage, but then I was astonished,” he said with a smile. I hadn’t forgotten anything. I could really dance.”

As a parting question I asked him, “You’ve worked in Germany and in Switzerland. How do you find the Swiss?”

Wolfgang’s answer came like a bullet from a Bretta, “In Switzerland everything’s organised perfectly and one has to avoid making mistakes. We have more time and things go a bit slowly than in Germany. I think it’s the Calvinism behind it. This strict, evangelical form of Christianity in Switzerland makes everything function like a clockwork. The administration is strict but you don’t see this strictness outwards. Things are done in cooperation with others. The Swiss want superlatives and are not satisfied with moderate results.”

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Switzerland:

Impressions From Central Switzerland (Satis Shroff)

It’s a sunny afternoon when Claudia and I boarded the ICE (Inter City Express) train from the Black Forest town Freiburg, then switch trains at the Swiss Badische Bahnhof (SBB) and travelled via Olten in a Swiss regional train towards Luzern. The train sped past small hills, spurs, lakes, scores of tunnels and towns with church spires, Swiss cows and horses grazing on the lush green meadows.

Inside the train were young men and women in trekking outfits, talking rather animatedly and laughing incessantly at their own jokes told in the Schwyzer dialect with a lot of guttural sounds and softly produced words with ‘Ts.’ If you know Schwyzer Deutsch, you’ve won the hearts of the Swiss people. I find it just wonderful to hear and reproduce the Schweizer sounds, especially the Basle dialect.

A grey-haired obese lady was siting with her husband near us. She was wearing spectacles and had a cloth bag in beige leather dangling in front of her legs with the words: ‘Wir handeln für die Umwelt.’ There was a pun on the word ‘handeln,’ which means ‘we trade for the environment’ or ‘we do something about the environment.’ The Swiss engage themselves a lot in humanitarian, cultural, environmental and money matters.

We are surrounded by hummocky hills and then blue snow-capped mountains. There are Swiss farms in the foothills of the mountains. Miles of maize fields appear. The Swiss train is heading for Central Switzerland. We’re approaching Luzern. An impressive grey castle fleets by and then you come across pompous mansions. An Appenzeller advertisment appears with the message: ‘Seit 700 Jahre in Einklang mit der Natur,’ which means that the Swiss cheese is in harmony with Mother Nature since seven hundred years.

A well-dressed, curt train-conductor comes along the gangway with his ticket-puncher looks through his glasses and says, ‘Richtig, gute Reise.’ Something like ‘Richt ho! Have a good journey.’ We’ve left Luzern behind. You see myriads of Schreber gardens, which are small patches of gardens for city dwellers who want to flee from the smoggy cities and enjoy a bit of greenery, flowers and barbecues in the weekends. A lake algae-green water dashes past and hundreds of houses on the lakeside hillocks and spurs. That’s quality of life for you. The hills in the outskirts of Luzern reminded me of those in Grindelwald, where you can ride up almost to the mountains Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau in scarlet cable-cars. Suddenly a wonderful view of a lake and mountains appeared, with the Swiss autobahn below. An ugly landslide scar made its appearance. Aqua-ducts, bridges, hills, meadows, houses with the old traditional church of Arth-Goldau.

A merry holiday whiff floated in the air. A sleek train from the Südostbahn came by. Near the railway station was wood stacked for the winter. A crane, a lorry and cars sped by. The well-fed and obese Swiss youth in the train were having a jolly time. We went via Schwyz and took a bus to Morschach at an elevation of 800m, with mountains all around.

It’s evening and the sun is going down in the central Swiss Alps. You can see the snow on the summits and the ice-walls from the spacious balcony of the Swiss Holiday Park. There’s a serene and tranquil atmosphere, and the air is so fresh in the Swiss Alps. That’s landluft for you.

Morschach lies on a plateau at the foot of the 1922m peak called Fronalpstock with 900 souls, and its known for its Swiss Holiday Park and also Landal Parks. Morschach lies above the Lake of the Four Cantons (Vierwaldstättersee). A cable car brings you to the skiing area of Stoos-Fronalpstock, where you can also do a bit of trekking in spring, summer and autumn. The scenery of the Lake of the Four Cantons really took my breath away, even though I’m originally from the foothills of the Himalayas.

After a sound sleep with an open window to let in the fresh alpine air, you are woken up by the ding-dongs of the Swiss cow-bells, as they are herded and walk languidly on their way to the higher meadows. As you look out of the window you see the black and white coloured cows grazing in the green meadows above the Bauernhaus which is three-storied with white windows and dark brown wooden walls.

The next morning it was refreshing to go to the local bakery run by Ms. M. Judd and her lovely Swiss girls. You could buy balance bread, Schnitzer, Kneipp and Ballenberg-bread in addition to croissants and small round buns. Digestion is excellent in Switzerland due to the cereals and high percentage of Ballaststoff (roughage) in the bread in addition to folic acid.

After a hearty Swiss breakfast we went from Morschach (800m) to Stoos (1300m) and from there to the Fronalpstock (1922m), which is the highest viewpoint of the Stoos region.

There is a relative easy panorama walk up to Fronalpstock but you can also use the cable-car and ski-lift to the top and can see the healthy cows grazing below you. They don’t even bat an eyelid when the ski-lifts come near. They’re used to visitors from all over the world. There’s an excellent summit restaurant and naturally souvenir-shops. Last summer, one of the most beautiful ridge hiking trails in Switzerland underwent thorough reconstruction for the 150^th anniversary of the hiking trails in the Canton Schwyz.

A burly Swiss man and his wife who had rosy cheeks said to me in the cable-car, ‘I’ve worked in Basle for 41 years. We live in Morschach now and are very happy. In Basel I had a brain-stroke and had to take Marcumar, and as a side-effect I developed asthma. I had to inhale all the time.’

He made a hand movement as though he was inhaling.

‘Don’t you have to take Budes, Salbutamol and Singular anymore?’ I asked him.

‘Nein, Gott sei Dank! Meine Lungen sind frei.’ Thank God, my lungs are free now.

I ventured to say, ‘It’s the wonderful Swiss alpine air, I suppose.’

‘Jawohl, it is. We’ve bought a house and don’t want to leave this place anymore.’

From the summit of Fronalpstock you can not only see the Lake of the Four Cantons but also the village of Brunnen, where we went later to visit a dear friend Gertrude, who is a nun in retirement. Her home-peak (Hausberg) is the Mythen.

An expression of cool exhilaration comes across as you peer at the Swiss landscape unfolding before your eyes. Nature manifests itself in every season in its characteristic way and all the four seasons have their own charms. The Spring in the mountains with its Crocus flower mantle and patches of snow covered meadows. The Summer with its magnificent and colourful alpine flora pristine in beautiful sunshine. The grey misty and rainy days, accompanied by thunder and lightning, landscapes after the torrential rains and Swiss houses under water and schlamm. Muddy everywhere. The Autumn with its brocade of diverse leaves in the trees and everywhere. Strewn wantonly by the wind in yellow, scarlet, light green and brown colours. And in the distance clear views of the mountains, valleys and spurs. Just as in Nepal’s hills you hear the grass-cutting women singing their ghasi-geet (grass-songs) and a refrain or even a spontaneous reply comes from the other side of the hill, the people of the Alps fold their hands to a cup in front of their mouths and shout their prayers to the Gods in the Alps. It could be Jesus, Holy Mary or one of the many Saints. The prayers deal with the protection of the people, cows, Alpine-huts, meadows and they expect the blessings from God or Maria Hilf.

When humans are confronted with the elements and Nature they have similar lines of thinking irrespective of their domiciles. In Hinduism and Buddhism for instance when a bhakal (Gelübde) or promise to God has been made in exchange for a favour, then it is expected that the promise is held. My Mom had wished a son and had prayed to Shiva, Sita and Mahakal and had promised to go on a pilgrimage if her wish came true. She got her son and complied by undertaking a pilgrim’s journey to Darjeeling’s Mahakal temple, Kathmandu’s Pashupatinath temple, Jagannath Puri, Hardwar and Sita’s temple in Janakpur. If she hadn’t fulfilled her promises then she’d have remained an uneasy, restless soul for the rest of her life.

Memoir Kathmandu Blues:

MY VILLAGE DREAMS (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)

Once upon a time there was a kingdom in the Himalayas called Nepal. People in the outside world also called it the Land of the Sherpas, the Land of Yetis and Yaks, the Land of the famous Gurkhas and the Land of the highest mountains in the world. It was ruled by a Gorkha king named Prithvi Narayan Shah, who in 1768 brought the different kingdoms together through his conquests. The rise of the House of Gorkhas (Shah dynasty) has endured since 238 years till November 21,2006.

In 1974, I happened to be a part of a scenario known as the ‘Back to the Village Campaign.’ It was a strange sight in the mountain kingdom of Nepal, which was a forbidden land twenty-four years ago. University professors, lecturers, bank managers, His Majesty’s section officers and other cadres, who normally barked at peons or paleys in the offices of His Majesty’s Government to bring them tea and snacks from the nearby tea-shops, were digging with shovels, lifting stones, plastering up the stone blocks with cement. The place was a remote locality of the Balambu village pan­chayat. And the motley crowd of workers were urbanised white-collar job-holders and citizens of Nepal, working shoulder to shoulder with their rural brothers under the ‘Go to the Village National Campaign’.

The national campaign had a branch office at Balambu, which was located 18-kilometres from Kathmandu along the Kathmandu-Thankot road. In 1975, with a view to enable one to acquire first-hand knowledge regarding the progress made by the government and semi-government workers in the development tasks of the village panchayats in the suburbs of Kathmandu Valley, a couple of journalists from the pro-government media: The Rising Nepal, Gorkhapatra and Radio Nepal were invited to take part in a surprise whirlwind tour of these areas. The ten pan­chayats where the Go to the Village National Campaign was being implemented in the valley were: Naikab-Nayabhanjyang, Purano Bhanjyang, Saritartha, Machhegaon, Mahadevsthan, Thankot, Dahachowk - Chowketar and Ward-Bhanjyang.

The Go to the Village Campaign was the brainchild of King Mahendra, the father of King Gyanendra Shah, and was launched in the Nepalese month of Pousch 1, 2024 (Nepalese calender). The National Campaign was intended to mobilise the masses, taking into consideration the fact that Nepal was predominantly an agriculture-based country. A country where the village forms the most important unit. And every village had its five elders who so-to-say ran the village.

It was believed in the palace circles, and in the panchayat government, that if there was to be an awakening at all in the country, it had to come from the rural masses of Nepal, and a so-called tentative ten-point programme was implemented in the villages of the kingdom, in which His Majesty’s civil servants, students and workers from the urban areas were deputed to go to the villages and help ‘to strengthen and popularise the sentiment of nationalism and national unity’. Nepal’s masses were to be acquainted with the Panchayat Democracy, and thereby develop and further strengthen it.

The panchas at the grassroot-level were required to stick to the principles of the non-aligned foreign policy that the country had adopted, a far sighted policy of the ruling Shah dynasty to maintain their power. As long as you were non-aligned, you could rule a kingdom as you pleased, and there were no allies who’d look over the shoulder and protest when human and other rights were misused. The Kingdom of Nepal had always been a special case as far as geo-politics were concerned. India had a patronising attitude towards Nepal because it was the only Hindu Kingdom, and India’s Hindus and Buddhists flocked to Kathmandu’s holy temples like Pashupati and Swayambhu. After all the Goddess Sita from the Ramayana came from the Nepalese town of Janakpur. Moreover, Gautama Buddha was a prince from Lumbini, another place of pilgrimage for the Buddhists and Hindus. Thanks to the assistance of Japan’s Zen and Shinto Buddhists, Lumbini is an attractive place now.

A campaign was to be started against corruption, injustice, oppression and bungling of works that were of national reverence. The campaign was to make the village population active and conscious. Efforts were to be made to render assistance for the successful implementation of the existing land-reforms, civil code, social reforms and development works which had a national bearing. The idea of cooperatives was to be expanded and propagated. The people were to be made aware of the importance of the forests and wildlife, and were to be encouraged to plant tree-saplings. Since agriculture was the mainstay of the country, agricultural output was to be given greater priority. Cottage industries were to be encouraged and extended in keeping with the blueprint of the national campaign.

All this was the gist of the Go to the Village National Campaign, which a Nepalese linguist named Tara Nath Sharma once dubbed as ‘an echo of Mao Zedong’s repressive measure of closing down the universities and sending teachers, intellectuals and writers to villages for mandatory manual labour during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.’

Showcase villages were taken as examples and the development under the Panchayat government shown to the media. Prior to the implementation of the National Campaign, modern medical facilities were unheard of in a village like Satungal and the local popula­tion had to resort to the shamans of the village, who would practice their ‘strange, archaic, unscientific, mysterious and useless occult art on the simple taboo-ridden villagers (sic).’ The exorcists and shamans didn’t demand money for their services, but the villagers paid them in kind, by sacrificing their best roosters, goats and other animals.

Things slowly changed and a dispensary was set up by the local unit of the Campaign, and the doctors started coming on a three-day rotation to the village and treated the patients. Sample medicines were distributed ‘whenever possible’ (most of the time it wasn’t possible), and the dispensary trained volunteers from the ten panchayats of the area as health assistants. Some of the diseases that were (and still are) common tend to be: ascariasis, hepatitis, colitis, amoebiasis and malnutrition in general. The villagers talked about the family-planning programme, which was also active in the hamlet and the rural population of the village had been vaccinated.

At Chowkitar village, a farmer showed the patch where he was growing pear, plum and peach from the seeds provided by the Campaign and which had been distributed by the local panchayat office. I had the impression that simple Nepalese villagers didn’t know that the seeds that were distributed by their respective panchayats could be used by them, and they’d be free to make a profit out of the produce. Nobody had told them anything about it. There was an unspoken loathing on the part of the villagers, when it came to interactions with the government officials. Many farmers seemed to have the notion that the products obtained through the use of go­vernment seeds would be confiscated.

That the villagers were fully aware of the importance of the forests was amply evident in the higher reaches of the villages, for the mountains were dotted with saplings of Pinus roxburghii. The saplings were, of course, provided by the Department of Forestry, and the planting was done exclusively by the Campaign workers. The farmers were too ap­prehensive about the consequences of bureaucratic involvement. Soil erosion, which has been a prime factor for the lessening of yield in the remote areas of Nepal, can be checked to a considerable extent through the much-publicised tree-planting ventures. The Nepalese farmers were shown films of the royal family King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, Crown Prince Dipendra, and the other two princes Gyanendra and Dhirendra planting saplings in different regions of Nepal to the accompaniment of the ironical song ‘Nepal ko dhana, hariyo bana’ (Nepal’s wealth is its forests).

If, for instance, there was a conflict regarding land-ownership- rights in the Eastern part of Nepal, as in the case of my college-friend Karki, the petition had to be filed in front of the Narayanhiti Royal Palace as a last instance of justice on earth. Even though Mr. Karki was educated in a college in Kathmandu, and could read and write in Nepali and English, he was obliged to have a petition filed, and written, by an official petition-writer, whose duty was to write a letter in longhand with sentences that were standard examples in circumlocution and archaic, courtly, subservient manners of expression. Having paid the writer for his trouble and artistry, one had to leave the matter to the Gods, and wait and pray that it be heard somewhere in the chambers of the spacious, modern Narayanhiti palace. For Vishnu, who is also called Budanilkantha in Nepal, reposes on his bed of serpents in the primeval waters, couldn’t be bothered with such earthly matters. Vishnu’s preserving and restoring power has, in the past, been manifested to the world in a variety of forms through his incarnations.

During a visit to Lalitput I met Tschering Lama, a lean, bespectacled, restaurant-owner, who’d bought a plot of land smack on the shore of the beautiful Phewa Lake in Pokhara (Central Nepal). He was extremely proud of his new acquisition. Sometime later, when he actually wanted to build a house on his patch of virgin Nepalese earth, he came to know that the land definitely hadn’t belonged to the man he’d bought it from, and that his purchase document wasn’t worth a rupee. The land was the property of the Royal Family, and as such, not for sale to the commoners.

Mr. Lama was awfully disappointed, frustrated and depressed, because his life-savings had gone in this bargain. He’d had plans to build a lodge for the foreign tourists and also cater to their gastronomic delights. And there he was, a broken man with a glum expression on his face. He did have his smart attitude though, and that’s one trait I really admire among the Nepalese from the mountains. They keep a stiff upper lip.

You can see this smartness even under desperate situations amongst the hill-tribes and the Gurkha war-veterans from Flanders to the Falklands. The Nepalese are indeed a stoic, proud and sympathetic people, and a visitor to Nepal notices it, and learns to cherish it after a journey in the teeming cities, crowded trains and blazing plains of the Indian subcontinent. If you’ve had the pleasure of travelling around in India with its maddening crowds, a visit to Nepal can be so exhilarating. Due to the tourism trade, the tourist or traveller might be pestered by curio-sellers and money-changers in Kathmandu’s famous Freak Street (Jochhey Tole, as the Newars call it) and at the bazaars in Thamel. But the people in the countryside are grateful if, and when, they have visitors. These visitors were, before the tourists came en masse, travellers, ascetic holy men (sadhus), monks and pilgrims, or trading Thakalis and Tibetans with mule and yak caravans, and it was normal for the travellers to be questioned about their heritage, caste, birthplace and so forth.

A Nepalese invariably asks, ‘tapaiko jat kay ho?’ Which caste do you belong to? This is because the caste-system and tribe-clans are well-established in Nepal, and every Nepalese name also bears evidence to his or her caste or tribe. For instance: Birendra Bahadur Karki. The first name is this case is Birendra, and then comes ‘Bahadur’, which means ‘courageous’ because all Nepalese males would like their sons to be brave and courageous. And finally ‘Karki’, which denotes that the person belongs to the sub-caste of the Chettris, the second highest order in the Nepalese Hindu hierarchy.

The life of a Hindu, from birth till his remains are turned to ashes, is saturated with religion. Everything he or she does, even eating and drinking, is connected with a religious ceremony. Whereas India has thrown away the shackles of colonialism, as well as the privilege of hundreds of Rajas and Maharajas, because it is a secular state in accordance to its constitution, Nepal still remains Hindu, perhaps due to the fact that its doors were closed to the outside world, and foreign influence kept at bay. But in this Himalayan enclave which has been conserved by dynasties of Shah kings and Ranas who usurped the throne, there are also other ethnic Nepalese who practice other religions, like Buddhism, Animism, Islam etc. India has solved the problems of underprivileged tribes and castes by giving them the status of ‘scheduled’ and has created scholarships from the school-level to the University level.

The reason why the Maobadis under Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Comrade Prachandra,became stronger in West Nepal (Rukum, Rolpa, Jajarkot und Salyan) was because of Nepal’s general poverty, corruption, nepotism and lack of perspective. Only a small section of the Nepalese population benefited from the schools, colleges und universities and the blessing of Nepal-aid from foreign countries and mountain-tourism. The Maobadis are fighting now for the banishment of monarchy and removal of the feudal structures in the society.

In Nepal it was always difficult for a poor dalit (lower caste) or someone from the hill-tribes to set foot in Kathmandu, and give them a good education. It is a sad fact that only the rich can send their children to the best English schools in Kathmandu, Darjeeling, Kalimpong or Gorakhpur. The rest of the Nepalese parents sent their children to the government-run schools, where the standard of education was miserable. Nevertheless, thousands of Nepalese students pass their School Leaving Certificate exams and go to colleges and universities, with an English handicap.

In the Hindu society of Nepal, the King has always been the patriarch, who swears to his descent from ancient Vedic heroes who were worshipped by the people. A Newsweek interview with the former King Birendra Shah also didn’t help to throw new light into this ancient tradition, for His Majesty coughed up a diplomatic reply and that was it. The Bada Raj Guru, a Brahmin, was the first State Minister in ancient times, though the Nepalese Raj Guru has still retained his power, because in this Hindu set-up every governmental or stately decision is associated with a religious ceremony. For instance when the King of Nepal leaves his Narayanhiti Palace and visits his own country or other countries, the court astrologer is consulted to choose an auspicio­us day. The King is for the Hindus, not only the protector and preserver of ancient Hindu culture, but is also a manifestation of tradition and development in the Hindu world.

In September 1995, I was astonished how far the winds of democracy had swayed into Kathmandu valley. In Kathmandu Valley there are three former kingdoms: Kathmandu, Bhaktapur (Bhadgaon) and Patan (Lalitpur). At the Rato Bangala, an elite school in Patan smack in the middle of the Sri Durbar, run by a dear family I personally know, I had the privilege of taking part at a school theatre and there were parents and guests from Kathmandu’s upper society. A literary natak (play) in Nepali was staged, in which the protagonists played the role of the people of Kirtipur during the times of Prithivi Narayan Shah. The entire play was from the viewpoint of the besieged and cheated Kirtipurians, and not from the angle of the attacking and marauding Gorkha king in 1768.

I found it rather innovative and courageous on the part of Patan’s man-of-letters Mr. Kamal Mani Dixit, in comparison to the pre-democracy days when everything was controlled, and lips feared to speak about human rights and democra­cy. The people of Kirtipur had put up a brilliant fight in those days, but were defeated, and the males of this brave kingdom, located on a hillock near the Tribhuvan University, had to pay a terrible price. The Shah king ordered the lips and ears of the Kirtipurians to be cut. Only the traditional wind-instrument players retained their lips and ears. It was a bloody affair with a huge pile of lips and ears. The barbaric treatment meted out to the Kirtipurians spread like wildfire in the other parts of Kathmandu Valley and soon Patan, Bhaktapur and Kathmandu fell.

If you are planning to go to Nepal soon, do visit the brave town of Kirtipur, near Kathmandu. The triple-roofed Bagh Bhairab temple walls in Kirtipur are still decorated with swords and shields of the Kirtipurian troops defeated by Prithivi Narayan Shah’s victorious Gorkha army. There is also an image of Vishnu astride the Garuda. Underneath you’ll see the elephant-headed God Ganesh and Kumar. The Nepalese king is also revered as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. I don’t want to sound like Borat, but blood sacrifices are made on two auspicious days: Tuesday and Saturday mornings. Another place in Kathmandu valley where such blood-sacrifices are made is in the temple of the Southern-Kali, where the Nepalese cook their lunch and have a feast after the temple visit.

I had a chance to meet King Birendra at the reception in La Redoute (Bonn) and had a small talk with such niceties as ‘How long are you in Germany? When are you returning?’ At the Graf Zeppelin Hotel in Stuttgart and Echterdingen airport, where I had the opportunity of handing Queen Ayeshwarya, who was a fellow poet despite her cruel role during the democracy revolution in 1990, a bouquet of flowers which I’d brought along from Freiburg im Breisgau. The late Madame Busak, the Stuttgarter Royal Nepalese honorary consul, was also there, in addition to Herrn Späth, the then Minister-Präsident of Baden-Württemberg. The Nepalese anthem never sounded more nostalgic then, and the traditionally quaint, triangular Hindu Nepalese flags fluttered in Stuttgart’s windy airport as the Bundesgrenzschutz played the Nepalese and German anthems.

In the meantime, Nepal’s multi-party government and the Maobadis have signed a peace accord and declared a formal end to a ten-year war of terror that killed more than 13,000 Nepalese. The agreement paves the way for the Maoists to give up their weapons and be confined to UN-monitored camps. An assembly will draft a new constitution and decide the future of the King Gyanendra Shah’s dynasty as the monarch of Nepal.

One thing is definite: the Maoists and the other communists don’t want the 200 year old monarchy anymore. What is encouraging, and curious, is that they have vowed to honor the outcome, even if the assembly decides to maintain a ceremonial monarch, stripped of his powers. A new wind blows in the Himalayas. Will the Maobadis give up all their arms like the Khampas (Tibetan freedom fighters from Eastern Tibet who’d come to Langtang) did in 1974, after they were confronted by the Royal Gurkhas? With a little bit of monitoring from the UN and Swiss officers, it might be possible to fill up a few containers, but will all the Maobadis surrender their arms? We can only hope and trust them to do so.

What will happen to the angry, restless, mobilised Maobadi fighters and child soldiers? Will they go back to their schools, if not destroyed, or for treatment in case they are traumatised? Will there be social programs for those who suffered under the atrocities of the government troops and the Maobadis? There’s a lot to be done in this country under the shadow of the Himalayas. Will it be a back to the village dream, after the triumphal march of the Maobadis into Kathmandu, heads and hands smeared with red vermilion powder and automatic guns in their hands? Or will the new government use the manpower resources by mobilising and subliming their youthful energies, towards the development of new jobs and a new economy?

Copyright © 2007 Satis Shroff, Freiburg

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About the Author: Satis Shroff is a writer and poet based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) who also writes on ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Science in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.

Writing experience: Satis Shroff contributes regularly articles and stories to www.Americanchronicle.com with its 21 affiliated US newspapers. He has written two language books on the Nepali language for DSE (Deutsche Stiftung für Entwicklungsdienst) & Horlemannverlag, and an anthology of poems (www.Lulu.com). He has written three feature articles in the Munich-based Nelles Verlag’s ‘Nepal’ on the Himalayan Kingdom’s Gurkhas, sacred mountains and Nepalese symbols and on Hinduism in ‘Nepal: Myths & Realities (Book Faith India) and his poem ‘Mental Molotovs’ was published in epd-Entwicklungsdienst (Frankfurt). He has written many articles in The Rising Nepal, The Christian Science Monitor, the Independent, the Fryburger, Swatantra Biswa (USIS publication, Himal Asia, 3Journal Freiburg, top ten rated poems in www.nepalforum.com (I dream, Oleron, an Unforgettable Isle, A Flight to the Himalayas, Which Witch in Germany?, Fatal Decision, Santa Fe, Nirmala, Between Terror and Ecstasy, The Broken Poet, Himalaya: Menschen und Mythen, A Gurkha Mother, Kathmandu is Nepal, My Nepal, Quo vadis?). Articles, book-reviews and poems in, www.isj.com, www.inso.org., www.nepalikhabar.com. Please also search www.google & www.yahoo under: Satis Shroff.