A Lost World...

“Pass me my hat and coat
Lock up the cabin
Slow night treat me right
until I go
Be nice to know

Kathmandu I'll soon be touching you
And your strange bewildering time
Will hold me down…”

Thus sang Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam) in the 1970s of the city cradled in the arms of the mighty Himalayas.

I started going to Nepal – Kathmandu and Pokhara – from December, 1977; and, till the middle of 1983, was almost a monthly visitor. A part of my soul got stolen, permanently, by the magic of Nepal.

I have not been back since then... since I moved from one business house to another. More than three decades have passed since I last tightened my seat belt as the aircraft I was in circled once and then descended steeply to land in Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport nestling inside a ring of majestic mountains. A long, long time since my last take off from there, but the memories of the strange bewildering times I spent in Kathmandu has never released me from its siren hold...

I started loving Nepal before I got married. Pritha started loving Nepal from the time we went there for our honeymoon. We made several trips together subsequently till 1983. We have talked many a times about going back, but we have not done so as yet. Now, I think, we may never will.

My memories of Kathmandu -- and Nepal -- are locked up in a time when songs had lyrics and music had tunes springing out of the fountain of heart, not software programmes. A time when an unknown land was made known by actually walking its streets and alleys and trails, not by mousing through the world wide web of the Internet.

Memories of mystical Kathmandu locked in a time when the temples and the palaces of Bhaktapur still retained the fragrance of its glory days during the great Malla Kingdom; when Patan was still a city of festivals and feasts, and of fine ancient art; when the Durbar Square in Kathmandu still displayed to the world the amazing skills of the Newar builders, artists and craftsmen who thrived in centuries gone by; when the narrow cobweb streets of Thamel had mountaineers and flower children brushing shoulders and breathing in an air thickly laced with fumes of marijuana and smell of human waste...

Today, those myriad hues lie buried under a blanket of death and destruction unfolded by nature in her own paradise. I am now scared even to contemplate visiting the nearly 2000 years old city of Kathmandu to find Ground Zero instead of magnificent temples and palaces. I want my memories to be as they have been over the last many years...

My memories are an absurdly patterned quilt -- of colours and of smells; of shady lanes and of shops laden with foreign goods not so freely available in India then; of age-old heritage structures and of glitzy hotels and a casino that lured you in with promises of money, but took yours instead before sending you out; of swiftly flowing rivers with white waters, and of hills and valleys and soaring snow-capped mountains that resided in the heights of the azure sky...

Landing in the languidness of Kathmandu from the bustle of Calcutta (it was not Kolkata then), it took me some time to understand the ethos of the city. I would be there on business trips and so the siesta time in the afternoons stressed me out as I thought I was wasting company time and money. That business deals would be struck not during the daylight hours in clear mind over product analysis and prices, but in the evenings over endless servings of fried chicken and fried chicken liver washed down by generous pourings of Khukri rum topped by a peg of Coca-Cola befuddled me initially. But, then I understood and learnt to swim with the tide. I started talking Bollywood and avoided business. I swore by Khukri rum and swore off comparative price charts. I avoided business calls and started making social ones. Business started pouring in. I learnt that things being equal, more or less, heart would always rule over mind in Kathmandu...

After the first few visits, and once I had evolved to the city, I shifted my base in Kathmandu from the typical business hotels I used to stay in, to the exotic Kathmandu Guest House. A converted "Rana" mansion, it had a lovely courtyard-cum-garden bordered by pomelo trees and flower beds. It was certainly not a luxury hotel, but a place "to be in"... kind of an icon! As a guidebook writes: “Kathmandu Guest House acts as a magnet for mountaineers, pop stars, actors and eccentric characters.” Even the Beatles stayed there in 1968.

KGH had a unique charm of its own. A sense of adventure… outdoor… mystery... permeated through its corridors and garden. At the bar, or in the restaurant, people talked about climbs and treks and white-water rafting. As they compared notes over gallons of Khukri rum or chilled Gorkha or Everest beer, they talked of not only Nepal, but their adventures in far-away places in alien corners of the world. In that smoky bar, in the midst of men and women who could have easily chatted up Ernest Hemingway, I was the only one belonging to a world that was far removed from rafts and ice picks. But, I somehow always got accepted in those circles of long haired bearded men, and women whose eyes spoke of windswept hills and valleys deep. Over rounds of drinks and puffs of smoke, the strangers on the neighboring stools became friends. I also did dare to chip in with stories of tigers in Indian forests and the palaces of maharajas! I laugh at myself now when I think that the next day some of those guys and gals would be off to the base camps of Everest or Annapurna, while I would be off selling orange juice and peach in syrup...

My business necessitated visits to luxury hotels like the Soaltee, Annapurna, Yak & Yeti and others, in addition to our Kathmandu distributors. Once the day's work got done, I used to look forward to exchanging my formal business attire for a pair of much worn jeans, a tee shirt, and Show less