Arresting God in Kathmandu
“During the rule of the Rana dictators, which lasted for one hundred and eight years, he had been their outspoken critic, lashing out at their cruelty, writing poems comparing the situation of him and his countrymen to that of a caged parrot, whose hunger is not for food but for freedom, whose only desire in the world is to fly away into the woods. The Ranas immediately banned the circulation of the poems and threw the poet in jail. When the revolution finally toppled their regime (it was a clas...sic rebellion, led by the legal king, who had been treated by the Ranas like a eunuch, locked inside the palace and barred from even reading the news), the poet, generally known as Acharya, was regarded as a hero by the people. The king called him into the palace and awarded him several prestigious tides, including one given only to outstanding soldiers on the battlefield, although Acharya had never advocated physical violence. After the elections—as bitter quarrels erupted among the freedom fighters for high-ranking positions in the government, causing a general climate of corruption and ultimately a severe setback in the economy—Acharya was presented with an award given only to the nation’s foremost poets.MoreLess
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