High time Book

It's easy for an American to fall in love with Nepal's native mythology. We easily recognize its appeal and harmonize it with our own Western myths of the East. The profusion of local gods promises plentiful objects of worship. They accomodate our own narratives and invite worship without demand for restraint, cooperation or submission.

It's easy for self-absorbed travelers to fixate on these analogies and miss much of what goes on around us when we visit Nepal. I've certainly done it.

During my most recent travels there, over conversations with Nepal's anti-trafficking activists, scholars, villagers, and development professionals, my focus shifted to matters more imminent than myth. I felt that a regard for the social and political reality of Nepal would help me move past my romance with the place into real relationship.

A clerk at a local bookstore recommended "Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy" by Manjushree Thapa as a good starting point.

"Forget Kathmandu" is an intimate and lyrical account of a liberal thinker processing her own nation's attempts at democracy. Her subjectivity is perfectly balanced with a keen eye and ear for history and context. The story itself is tangled, difficult to parse, and immensely interesting. In Thapa's hands it becomes immediate and lyrical.

The word "Elegy" in the subtitle is, in my opinion, a poor choice. The book is more of a journal than an elegy. It offers a view of history that is animated by its participants and is felt deeply by its author. And the book closes with the sense that the story is still very much alive and in process.

I would say that there is a remarkable symmetry between the religion of Nepal and its ongoing struggle for democracy that bears examination, and which might be key to ongoing progress. This concern dovetails with my dissatisfaction at the section on the author's travels in the countryside, where she glimpsed local ideas and feelings on the Maoist insurgency, but provided little in terms of regard for local motives and thinking.

However, I'd say that these concerns might be outside the scope of what is a moving, carefully-wrought document of a nation struggling against massive internal and external forces to install democracy and pursue social justice. I highly recommend this book.