Parshu Shrestha
Ranahaar is a Nepali novel written by Yogesh Raj, a historian, on the matter of an important historical event of Nepal. Published by Nepalaya Publications in 2075 B.S., it received the famed Madan Puraskaar the same year. The novel has depicted the life story of the last Malla king of Bhaktapur, Ranajit Malla, and the war in which the Gorkhali king Prithvi Narayan Shah had defeated him. The title ‘Ranahaar’; with double meanings: ‘defeat in war’ and ‘defeat of Ranajit Malla in war’; seems to have been wisely chosen for the book.
According to a report published in Setopati.com on 18 Jestha 2075 B.S., Nepalaya Publications had released the book without any fanfare on the request of its writer. Perhaps it played the role in its relative anonymity in comparison to other titles published in the same year. It was almost out of the talk of the town till the day it was given the prestigious prize. Many readers have appreciated the novel’s narrative written in a simple and succinct Nepali language that spreads along 152 pages. It has 19 episodes each of which has elaborated the historical events and myths related to the Malla dynasty in Nepal.
The novel begins with the scene in which the last moment of the attack of Gorkhali soldiers in Bhaktapur is depicted. They have already killed many people and have finally arrived at the corner in the royal palace where Ranajit Malla, 75, the elderly king of Bhaktapur, Tej Narsingh Malla, the king of Lalitpur, and Jaya Prakash Malla, the king of Kantipur, are hiding with their people. The kings Tej Narsingh and Jaya Prakash have been taking refuge in Bhaktapur, the then most powerful and the richest Malla kingdom, since they lost the war with the Gorkhalis.
The Gorkhalis had defeated Lalitpur quite easily without shedding a single drop of blood. They had also captured Kantipur on the day when the residents were busy in the celebration of Indra Jatra (a cultural observation in the name of Lord Indra). Both these easy wins had been possible for the Gorkhalis through the economic blockade they had imposed on the valley. It reveals how the Malla kingdoms were destined to lose their status due to the geographical situation and the smart war strategy of the king of Gorkha.
King Ranajit Malla surrenders to the Gorkhalis without any fight. After the win, Prithvi Narayan Shah, the king of Gorkha, offers King Ranajit, his elderly Mitba, the kingship of a village-state, but he does not accept it. He thinks going to the Kashi, the sacred shrine for a dying Hindu man, is better than living on the pity of the enemy king. The eighteenth and the nineteenth episodes of the novel further elaborate this event until the king’s departure from his lost kingdom.
The episodes two to seventeen are the flashback description of the life story of King Ranajit and his father Bhupatindra Malla. Ranajit is a young boy in the episodes two to five. He is a very delinquent and whimsical prince who often enjoys torturing his servants. However, he is, like most young children, afraid of ghost and the darkness of night. The narrator has elaborately described the beauty and the complexity of the ninety-nine squares inside the royal palace. It is the effort of the writer to show how developed the situation of the art was in the then Bhaktapur.
Prince Ranajit wants to have sightseeing experience outside the royal palace. Kaji Bhairab Joshi, the most trusted courtier, takes charge of it and takes him out with other royal servants, both males and females. While the nine years old prince is being carried in a palanquin, he is teased by them along the way because he is always afraid for no reason. Unexpectedly, the prince is abducted by unknown people from Duwakot, and finds himself at an unknown place guarded by unknown men when he regains his consciousness. He is kept in a house near Changu Narayan temple. He cries a lot, but no one comes for his help. The narrator describes the temple through the eyes of the child prince, and contemplates about its glorious history. However, the writer does not provide any identification of the abductors. Neither he gives any details about the prince’s rescue later on. The reader expects it till the end of the novel.
The event of the prince’s abduction hurts the self-dignity of Kaji Bhairav Joshi, and he is doomed to permanent despair until he dies after two years. Before dying, he undertakes a difficult mission of bringing the bride for the prince from Betiya via Chadragiri. He completes this journey to and fro in three months and twenty-one days, yet unsatisfied and remorseful about the mistake he had made for the prince’s abduction. However, how he dies and where has not been mentioned in the novel. This is another mistake of the writer.
The episodes six to eight present scenes of the reign of Bhupatindra Malla, Ranajit’s father, and his making of famed Nyatapola temple. There is a sudden and unexpected spread of an epidemic in Kantipur. Hundreds of people, animals, and birds die every day. King Bhupatindra receives this information and seems worried. No one knows the reason, but people have various superstitious estimates. The astrologers think the Goddess Jagadamba is expressing her anger at people’s celebration of Dashain that year, the leap year. Others claim to have seen the growing tusks in Lord Pashupatinath’s idol. The Buddhists think it is because of the fire that the chariot of Chaakbahadhya had caught earlier. Various other groups of people try to treat the epidemic in their own ways, but no one knows the real cause behind it, i. e. the rotting of the dead animals; cats, dogs, and rats; at the squares due to a flashflood and improper management of sewerage. This event shows the conscience of the people of that time, i. e. they, both the kings and the people, were far away from the science in their thoughts and mostly superstitious ideas dwelled in their minds.
King Bhupatindra decides to build the famed five-story Nyatapola Temple, and laborers are hired. For the wood needed to make the temple, one hundred men cut down the trees for one whole month. Almost 24 hundred servants prepare 4 million bricks, including one lakh high quality ones and 6 thousand others with pictures of cock and birds. More than three hundred and fifty kilograms of iron is melted burning two hundred and thirty sacks of coal. It reveals the situation of art and technology of the time.
The king has a nightmare which wakes him up at night. He wakes up and remains afraid. Lord Bhairav is angry and violent in his dream. Queen knows his worry and tries to comfort him. She offers her body to him for sexual intercourse.
The episodes nine to seventeen present the scenes of the prince Ranajit’s birth, king Bhupatindra’s death, and other various events in the prince Ranajit’s life. The prince is born, and there are celebrations across the kingdom, but the royal astrologer finds that his horoscope has the possibility of the end of his lineage.
King Bhupatindra dies, and the whole kingdom mourns at his death. After the king’s death, the new king who is just six years old is coroneted. However, he does not understand anything what is going on and around him. The narrator has seen everything through the young king’s eyes.
The Bhaktapur royal palace has been depicted as replete with arts and crafts. The whole palace is a big labyrinth of squares and lanes. Bhairav Chowk, the main square of the palace, is the most complex and ferocious one with weird art pieces. It is the source of both attraction and fear for the young King Ranajit. He and his queen are not happy because they have lost their only son. However, the event has not been given in detail. The king is often haunted by unknown fear because of his growing age and diseases. Therefore, he has been a devotee of Lord Bhairav, the angry incarnation of Lord Mahadev.
Kaji Jhagal Thakur, the faithful royal servant of Kantipur, has been presented with his waning influence and power. He is assigned the task for the attack in Babhu, a fort in Bhaktapur, which the kingdoms of Gorkha, Kantipur, and Lalitpur together want to snatch away. However, he doesn’t see any profit for Kantipur by fighting for and capturing that place. He feels humiliated because he knows clearly that Kantipur is going to waste its power and resources for useless fight. However, he has no option than to obey the royal order. It is another place in the novel where the reader is left confused by the writer without providing the details about the war and its consequences.
The adolescent king Ranajit is attracted to a young Newar girl, and becomes lovesick for her. He falls in the ditch of depression, wishes for his own death, and loses his interest in his daily administrative works. One night, as he is delirious with fever in his bed, he gets his dream girl Manamaiju in his bed. The trusted royal servants have understood his wish and have managed to call the girl for him. They spend the night together in the bed and the king satisfies his thirsty soul with bodily pleasure.
Ranajit had his birth calendar with the prediction of the end of his lineage in his lifetime. Therefore, he was anxious from the beginning about the future of Bhaktapur as a Malla kingdom. He was defeated psychologically long before Prithvi Narayan Shah attacked his kingdom. His name itself (Ranajit, i. e. Victorious in the war) had been a self-mockery. He was, as the effect of his conviction, more interested in arts and their expressions than in the warfare and diplomacy, the indispensable qualities the then kings needed for their life and kingdom.
The narrative of the novel progresses at a too slow pace and the reader can easily be distracted while reading it. The writer has also paid a very little of his attention to his art of story-telling and play with words. Rather, the historical facts and figures have dominated the main corpus of the novel. As a result, the reader may find this novel monotonous and lacking attraction to the end.
However, it is not a wrong choice for the prestigious prize. Ram Lohani as quoted by journalist Ashwini Koirala in Onlinekhabar.com (on 2 Bhadra 2076 B.S.), says that the novel deserves the prize for its depiction of the culture, lifestyle, and thoughts of the people of Bhaktapur of 250 years ago. The writer has imagined most characters and the settings on the basis of the public conscience of that time. Therefore, the characters have come alive in the novel through their actions and speech. While reading the book, the reader feels that s/he is reading a history book, not a fiction with imaginary characters. The ecology and the events that take place in the novel are often convincing for a reader. They have been very much effective for satisfying the quest of a modern reader to some extent about an epoch of the history of Nepal. As a result, it can be taken as a distinct historical novel written in Nepali.
The minute and detailed descriptions of the Royal Palace and its surroundings, the stone taps, the tundaals and the windows, the idols, and many other places have been successful to emboss the lively picture of the then Bhaktapur in the modern readers’ minds. It is the strongest of the pros of the book. Besides, there are many facts from the history about the Malla kings and their demos, their prosperity in arts and culture, their religions and thoughts, the politics, economy, and the development efforts of their time, etc. Therefore, the novel is a treasure trove for anyone interested in Nepali history.
(Parshu Shrestha (1981) lives in Itahari, teaches English, and writes stories.)