Kailash Badu

Kathmandu

Early in 1991, my father was sent to Dolpa as the chief district officer or the CDO.

A few months later we were to follow

him there. Mummy, my two kid brothers and I were in Mahendranagar at the time. I was in junior school and it would soon be summer vacation.

Mummy told us she was taking us to Dolpa for holidays. What was my idea of Dolpa then? A hilly place beyond several mountains with no roads and no electricity. Aeroplanes and helicopters were the only way to get there though Dolpa was the largest district in Nepal, larger than the whole Mahakali zone. That was what we were taught in our GK classes.

Karnali Pool that links mid-western Nepal to the far-western wasn’t constructed yet, so we flew to Nepalgunj via Dhangadi and headed straight north to Dolpa. While weighing our luggage at Nepalgunj airport I weighed myself too. I was exactly 26 kilograms — a number, I don’t know for whatever reason, I still remember.

Just half-an-hour’s flight and we were surrounded by vast mountain ranges. The plane landed at Jufal airport, a place immensely beautiful. Cold air blew and the weather was chilly. Some people had come to pick us up. I remember only two of them now. One was an accountant in my dad’s office, a friendly drunk middle-aged person whose breath smelt of alcohol most of the time. Another was my dad’s bodyguard.

They had brought a horse for us. The accountant and I rode to our place. We were taken to Dunai bazaar — Dolpa’s headquarter — a small, serene and beautiful town that stood along the banks of the Bheri River, guarded by two steep and lofty mountains that soared like giants. One had to throw one’s head back to see its peak.

My dad’s quarter was attached to the office. It had three rooms and a kitchen. The office building was perhaps the prettiest house in the whole of Dunai bazaar. A long cottage-style building painted in white with green corrugated roof. There was an orchard where apple trees grew and a beautiful garden with many colourful flowers. At its centre stood Nepal’s flag. A wall surrounded all these. At the gate half-a-dozen policemen guarded the office day and night. There were no Maoists then and no war.

To one side of the office was the District Police office and at the back were the District Development Committee’s office and other offices that I don’t remember now. To the south was a big playground that stretched right up to the foot of the mountains. This was the playground where I first rode a horse all alone, holding the reins in my own hands.

Our office had its own horse and horse riding became one of my favourite things. Everyone told me it was too early for me to ride alone. Obstinate that I was, I kept riding and became a good rider.

I don’t know when my family decided to stay on till my dad got a transfer. But I was enrolled in a nearby school. I made some friends who would come to our quarter and play. We had some rabbits for pets and my little brother, who had just learnt to smile, would play with them. The rabbits would run and we would catch them and bring them to him. Little brother was just nine or 10 months old.

We watched him take his first step in that lovely garden. Narendra dai, our cook, who loved singing Hindi songs, would play with him when mummy was busy with her chores. The people were warm and welcoming.

There was a little market down the road where we would do our shopping. My father bought me a jacket there. On the other side of the river, which was big and violent with only one bridge, was the prison and military base. We didn’t go there much. They had a small theatre, powered by generator, where we would go for movies. We had some privileges — they didn’t charge us money because we were the CDO’s children. Pity, but they insisted.

My father did two things that I remember. He built a small room where he kept a library to work after office hours. In one corner was a table and a chair where I studied and did my home works. A poster of a lion that read, “Silence please” was stuck on one wall. He also built a ‘Pratikshyalaya’ of wood before the office for people to wait in. We would run around it and play after office hours.

When winter arrived, the temperature fell below freezing point. The tap did not run till midday. We used to leave water-filled bottles outside to see them frozen the next morning. That delighted us.

Dad’s room had a big fireplace and we would snuggle around it. And once we had a snowfall. It was a splendid, awesome sight that I long to see again. Snowflakes drifted slowly like cotton wool in the air. Mummy did not let us go out. We cried to be able to run out and let the snow fall upon us.

The next morning, everything was painted in white. The garden was white, our roof was white, the giant mountains were white and everything, everything was white. When the sun shone on them, it was lovely!

I have so many memories of my days there that it is impossible to write them down. But one of them was Girija Prasad Koirala’s visit. He was the prime minister then and it was like a fair.

My father tells me that Eric Valli was also shooting his documentaries then. Valli was not so famous those days. We have a good collection of photographs taken by him. I don’t know who gave it to my father. May be I should ask him. We spent a year in Dolpa before father was transferred again.

One fine day we left Dolpa — the house we lived in, the garden we played in, apple trees and the lovely people. We left everything behind and flew to Nepalgunj where I finished my schooling.

The beautiful days of Dolpa were over but memories remained in my mind. One dark cold night in September 2000, Dunai bazaar was hit by Maoists. News the next morning said that dozens of policemen had been killed.

The CDO office, obviously one of their main targets, had been bombed and vandalised. The house we lived in, our bedrooms, the library, my dad’s office — everything had been burnt to cinders.

The CDO fortunately had survived but six of his guards had been brutally killed. The garden we had played must have been filled with blood. The DSP’s office suffered the same. Everything was destroyed. The two giants that saw me ride a horse alone had silently watched this too.

What does Dunai look like now? And our house? It’s probably been rebuilt. What happened to the apple trees? Our horse? Probably dead or old. Where is Narendra dai? I have ho idea.

And the war still rages. Our land has seen the blood of more than 9,000 people flow. They still say they will make a better Nepal. Let’s see. I sure would like to visit Dolpa and see it again. When? I don’t know.