Madhukar SJB Rana

Kathmandu:

Being invited to play in the 3rd Parsyang Veterans’ Open Tennis Championship (35 and 45 years’ categories) was a veritable honour, and pleasure, for me as I got a marvelous opportunity to revisit Pokhara - well, more than a decade later. And what a delightful experience it has turned out to be. Within a few years Pokhara tennis has picked up by leaps and bounds. Binode Kayastha’s leadership says it all. The hospitality, joie de vivre, camaraderie and respect for elders, that the youth of Pokhara displayed, is a memorable feature that was so profusely and spontaneously felt by us all going to play there from Kathmandu and Lalitpur. It was also a demonstration of how each tennis lover can do their bit for the sport, materially and morally, even as the national institution, ALNTA, has failed to conduct its duties and responsibilities as per its charter and the sad aspiration of the players.

Ekai Kawaguchi, a Japanese monk who visited Pokhara in 1899, has written (Three Years in Tibet: 1909: P 42-43) in unmatchable prose that “ Pokhara looked like a town of villas at home, the site being chosen for the beauty of its natural scenery.

Bamboo-covered ravines, flower-roofed heights, rich in green foliage, picturesque because of rushing and winding streams, itself set in the midst of high mountains… In all my travels in the Himalayas I saw no scenery so enchanting as that which enraptured me at Pokhara”.

If one can add anything more, then, I would venture to add that I had the good fortune to be utterly enchanted and enraptured by being in the Shangrila Village Resort and to be able to see, from the sheer comfort of one’s room, the unbelievable panorama of the surrounding hills and the spectacular mountains unfolding right in front of you; at arm’s length, or so its appears. The stunning view of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges, with the Machapuchare playing hide and seek in the course of the day, and the view of the cascading hills upfront of the Himalayas is truly a unique sight never to be erased from memory.

Although the Village’s public relations selling point asserts that “it is a place to dream.” To me, at my age, it was more a place for self-evaluation about my duties and responsibilities as a person, son, husband, father, grandfather, and, not least, one’s duty to Nepal and God. To be confronted by nature in all its grandeur and majesty triggers a spiritual experience that is, at the same, both liberating and humbling, as we are led to introspect and ponder the various meanings about the self, Self and SELF.

A new development is the International Mountain Museum. It is an impressive place where one needs spend at least 2.5 hours to take in all the impressive exhibits. I was particularly touched that a peer and friend, late Kumar Khadga Bickram Shah, was given due recognition as the visionary for the museum. One sincerely hopes that this is a beginning of a new trend amidst the Nepalese government and civil society to recognise individuals for their contributions to society at all levels-and to honour them fittingly, as was done in this case .

At the museum, I bought a copy of Dr Harkha Bahadur Gurung’s ‘re-incarnated’ PhD thesis of 1965; now entitled Pokhara Valley: A Geographical Survey ( 2001). We learn from it that the first tourists visited Pokhara starting in 1962 and they numbered 387 only. Then, the number of Pokhrelis living in the municipality areas was just 14, 624.

Now there may be around 2,00,000. Tourism reached its peak in 1999 when roughly 10 per cent of the 5,00,000 coming to Nepal visited Pokhara. It was a period of virtual economic boom that even the ‘people’s war’, declared by the Maoists, had had little impact. However, what is believed to have severely affected tourism in Pokhara are the cumulative effects of a series of incidents such as the Hrithick Roshan episode and the hijacking of the Indian Airlines by Muslim terrorists in 2000, the Royal massacre in 2001, and the politics-of-the-street being followed by the political parties not holding the reign of executive power since 2002 have crippled tourism more than the what the Maoists could hope for.

From Harkha we learn that “ the evolution of Nepalese society must be seen as the outcome of the mixing of diverse peoples within the geographic confinement enclosed by the Himalayan range and the Mahabharat Lekh. Acculturation in the intermediate low hills where the downward tribal and the upward Hindu population movement impinge. Another point of assimilation are the bazaars which act as the melting pot for different ethnic and caste groups”. Acculturation and assimilation is highly visible in Pokhara as the Mongoloid race of Gurung, Magar, Tamang, Thakali and Newar live side by side in peace and harmony with the Caucasoid race of Bahun, Chetri, Vaishya and Sudra.

A new form of acculturation is being provided by Kathmandu-based hoteliers which wil deepen the process of assimilation. As, for example, the Maithali interior décor so aesthetically rendered at Shangrila; and the exquisite and splendid royal Newari architecture of the Fulbari Resorts & Spa.

About my impression of the Shangrila Resort frankly, I must admit, I felt rather morose to see it in the condition that it is at after only eight years of construction. What went so wrong? Was it because of entrepreneurial faults? Or was it owing to factors beyond the entrepreneur’s control? Are these entrepreneurs really “economic renegades and commercial terrorists” as disseminated by the Nepal Bank Ltd?

Madhukar SJB Rana is the newly appointed finance minister. He regularly contributes articles to various national and international publications.

(to be continued)