I met a rather
interesting person on the train from Calcutta on my way back home
late in December. Old, bespectacled, strongly built and balding, this person
was travelling in the same compartment as me and occupied the berth opposite
mine. As the train set out from Calcutta, we began speaking to one
another. On being asked “aap kya karte hain? (what do you do in
life), he replied, “main baatein karta hoon” (I merely talk). And
talk he did. A good deal too. He spoke about everything from the cold wave
beginning to sweep through the Ganges plain, the surprisingly slick
performance of the Indian cricket team (it was slick then), the prospects of
the Indian economy over the coming year and even the impending marriage between
Abhishek Bachhan and Aishwarya Rai.
As the journey
progressed, the conversation veered from politics to sport, then back to
politics and then to the economy, and then back to politics again. (This is
inevitable in Bihar). We began talking about politics in the state, in the
country, and in neighbouring Nepal. It was then that he really caught my
attention. His knowledge of Nepal’s politics was enormous and he seemed to
understand its intricacies better than most.
The following morning,
as we reached our destination, I asked him if I could drop him home since he
lived in a town that would be on my way to the Nepalese border. On the way
there, in the course of a rather mundane conversation, he mentioned
nonchalantly that he was friends with GP Koirala (Nepal’s Prime Minister), and
a host of other senior Nepali leaders. I got him to tell me more about their
relationship and learnt that their friendship went back almost 40 years when he
had spent a few years with GP when the latter had left Nepal to escape from the
monarchy and was in hiding in India due to his struggle for democracy in Nepal.
I had already formed a high
opinion of the man and was in awe of him. Little did I know what lay in store
for me. The man lived in a town named Farbesganj, which happens to be
nondescript, dusty and lifeless. However, his bungalow was like a breath of
fresh air. It had large lawns dotted with fruit trees and flowers of every
kind. Within five minutes of stepping onto the premises of his bungalow, I had
seen as much greenery as I had in the entire town.
We sat down to parathas
and chai in the verandah overlooking the garden. There was a smile on the old
man’s face which he could not conceal, try as much as he did. I asked him what
the matter was. He then told me that the Congress Party of Nepal was founded in
the very verandah we were sitting in. I almost dropped my teacup. This man just
didn’t cease to surprise me. The gist of the very long conversation that we had
following his disclosure was that the top leaders of Nepal in the mid 20th century
had all met at his home in Farbesganj to decide on the their future plan of
action for the country. Nepal was not safe enough for them and the
easiest way out for them was to slip through the porous Indo-Nepal border into Bihar.
Once there, following lengthy deliberations, the leaders decided to form a new
political party, the Nepali Congress – the political party that led Nepal’s
struggle for democracy for over four decades… and eventually succeeded.
I didn’t know what to
say or how to react once he had finished telling me all he had to say. The best
I could come up with was a request that he write a book on these matters. It
was beginning to get dark by this time, and I decided to take leave. It seemed
like I had leaden feet, for I did not want to leave the place. The sense of
history attached to it had an overbearing effect on me.
As I finally settled
into the backseat of the car and left his home, the last twenty-odd hours began
playing themselves out in my mind. Before long, we were at the Nepal border.
There was a strike in Nepal, and so, I got onto a rickshaw – baggage and
all – and began the last leg of my journey home. Not a great homecoming by any
means.
Over the last twenty
hours, I had discussed politics. Now I was a victim of it.
