LETTERS: Moving experience

It was in March 2015. We boarded the Raxaul-bound Mithila Express at Howrah on our way to Nepal. As we entered the compartment and took our designated reserved seats, we noticed a dignified smiling lady of about 60 years of age seated beside us. We got to know that she is also going to Nepal with the very same travel organisation with which we were also going. In the very same cubicle, our tour guide was also travelling. We came to know that she is a widow hailing from a prosperous family with a corporate son working in Bangalore. And she travels to various places almost four times a year with this very tour company. And she will start for Mansarovar, Tibet within a few months after completion of the Nepal tour. And when she came to know that our co-traveler Nepal guide will also lead that Mansarovar tour, she got extremely excited. She was bombarding him with questions after questions revolving around the beauty of Mansarovar, the precautions to be taken and the formalities to be completed.

It seemed that she was obsessed with Mansarovar, and it was the ultimate dream of her life to reach that Himalayan paradise. Since she was travelling alone, she was tagged with another single-travelling widow. They shared the same hotel room throughout the Nepal tour and sat beside each other in our tour bus. And it is obvious that we visited the Pasupatinath Temple at Kathmandu as well. Why mention that highly revered temple? We will come back to that. As they were constant companions in Nepal, both ladies remained in touch with each other even after that tour. Thanks to her, we came to know that indeed she managed to fulfill her passion of setting foot on Mansarovar, but passed away there itself in a fateful dawn! Just a fall within the camp and she was gone for ever in an instant! She traversed to the abode of God right on the lap of her obsession --- Mansarovar!

Kajal Chatterjee, Kolkata

Violence

Apropos of the news story “IED targeting Pun’s vehicle goes off” (THT, November 12, Page 1), sadly violence has become entrenched in Nepali society. We need not be surprised if violence becomes a way of life at all times not just during the election days in the land of Lord Buddha. We should not make the cardinal mistake of jumping to conclusion as to who did it. It could be anybody, it might as well be the disgruntled insiders who could have feel alienated and taken advantage of. Or even outsiders who may have a big stake in the outcome of election. It could be stage managed. It needs serious investigation to establish the truth behind two ‘leaders’ being already targeted in as many days. It is also time that Nepalese politicians stop being so naive as to imagine that they are the only ones that can steer the future of this country. A billionaire prime minister of a sovereign country renounced his position from the soil of a friendly country recently. Everyone should brace themselves for any and eventualities.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu