Thomas Bell describes with child-like amusement his first few days in Patan, Nepal. His gazing over rooftops of the neighbourhood, his rental agreement which was a piece on paper on which his landlord scribbled names of months, his learning of a new set of rules on the road and eventually trying to get a grasp over Patan and Kathmandu, which would be his home. In ‘Kathmandu’ (Random House; Rs. 599), he narrates his impressions on the multi-layered society, caste system, hierarchies and more importantly, draws attention to the land’s political history. Bell moved to Kathmandu to report on the civil war in Nepal after studying at Oxford and the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has also worked as the South East Asia correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.
Edited excerpts from an interview with the author:
What prompted you to write about Kathmandu, dipping into its political history? Did you find lacunae in what’s already been documented?
I thought there was a story to tell and that I had something to say. As for lacunae — most of what’s in there is already documented somewhere. I thought of the book while I was writing it — I found the phrase somewhere — as being partly structured around a collection of the city’s ‘written monuments’. But at the same time I felt that what’s documented — what should be known about the place — is often overlooked or misunderstood. It’s also structured around a collection of characters and places and incidents and buildings — because the book’s about the life of the city and its physical development as well. There are stories in there too which have never been written down before. I wanted to collect what seemed important and put it in front of people in a way which evoked Kathmandu tellingly.
How long did it take you to research and write?
About four or five years. At times I was busy with other things as well, and I wasn’t always efficient.
At any stage of writing the book, were you apprehensive of sounding like an outsider offering perspectives on a country that’s been home only for a few years?
I was very conscious of that, and of course I am an outsider. But I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with it. Like anything else you obviously have to ‘get it right’ in some way, and obviously that’s for others to judge. Being an outsider can also be an advantage, I think. People must be able to write about places they weren’t born in — and of course lots of people write things about places they were born in which obviously aren’t true. It was important to me how people who live here would receive it, even at the risk of occasionally eluding people who don’t, and so far thankfully it’s been positive.
You describe your initial impressions of a new place, in chaos, in the neighbourhood of Patan, where you observe the caste and ethnic hierarchies. How long did it take you to get a grasp of the place?
When I got here I had in mind that two years might be about right to do some journalism and move on. Soon I told myself, ‘it will take at least three before I feel I’ve understood it’. Now I’ve been here more than a decade, and although there are many things which I feel I see clearly I’m still provisional in lots of the new conclusions I draw, on questions big and small. I’m pleased when someone makes me realise something I hadn’t appreciated before, and that happens often.
What was your impression of Kathmandu before you arrived in Patan in 2002?
I didn’t have any strong impression. I knew it was a city with some historic or scenic appeal as a place to go and live for a while, but I’d been to enough places to realise there was no use trying to imagine it. I didn’t know anything much about Nepal, I’d done only basic research. It was the fact that there was a Maoist insurgency in the countryside, not Kathmandu, which attracted me.
The book also talks about the Nepal civil war. How did you go about researching this part of political history?
I reported the second half of the war for various newspapers and I used a lot of what I saw at the time to describe it in the book, as well as other material. But there’s a chapter that deals with secret operations against the Maoists in Kathmandu, and especially the role of Britain’s MI6, and that was something I only became aware of later. For that, I used leaks reported in the Nepali press and a lot of interviews. In general there’s a fair amount of documentation on the war, although it’s striking how the memory is worked upon as soon as the event is in the past.
What is the feedback you are receiving to what you’ve written about the civil war?
Oddly, perhaps, very little. The controversial stuff like the abuses, covert operations and the foreign role was picked up internationally in several news reports, and Kantipur, which is a big daily newspaper, ran a full-page excerpt. But in terms of a response from any quarter to that material specifically — nothing. I don’t think the people concerned want to talk about it, and not many others want to go there either. Well informed people already knew that the secret was blown, and I’ve shone a bit more light on it.
Are you working on another book?
No, but I’d like to.
