Sunday, February 17, 2002		Literature

Memoirs of King Birendra
by Shyam Goenka Goenka Publications New Delhi (December 2001) Pages 155, price not stated.

KING Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev was the most popular king Nepal ever had in recent times. The people of this little kingdom of theHimalayas not only regarded him as the "most beloved monarch" but also as God Incarnate. He was also a close friend of India and many other South Asian countries. In the last three decades or so, he had established a personal rapport with the people of India so much so that the regular visits of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya were a subject matter of discussion in every nook and corner of this country.

Not surprisingly, the world was shocked at the ghastly assassination of the royal family on June 1, 2001 under some very appalling circumstances. In fact, there are still some sections in Nepal and elsewhere which are yet to recover from the tragic loss of the royal family. For India and the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), it was a personal loss. His absence at the recent SAARCsummit at Kathmandu was conspicuous and the SAARCfraternity missed him and Queen Aishwarya very much.

As the world’s largest democracy, India had high regard and affection forKing Birendra for having pioneered the Panchayat system of democracy through a referendum and for his various other liberal initiatives from time to time. It is said that KingBirendra was so obsessed with the spirit of democracy that he was thinking of ushering in his modern wrap of democracy as far back as 1972, but could not go in for the transition for obvious reasons. And when he did take the plunge and introduced the multi-party system in 1989, his importance in the command structure, not just in the constitutional scheme of things, increased further even after his voluntary and historic renunciation of absolute power to the elected representatives of the people.

"Memoirs of King Birendra" is a humble attempt by the author, Shyam Goenka, to place on record the valuable contributions and achievements of the late King Birendra and his family. Goenka’s efforts in using some rare pictures of the royal family, some of them from the personal collection of King Birendra, is no doubt commendable. However, unfortunately, the book suffers from too many drawbacks. It does not seem to have been planned properly. Its design and layout are not up to the mark. The pictures too have not been laid out properly. They do not follow any scientific or specific pattern. The superimposition of some pictures at the centre of some pages looks shabby and disturbs the eye. And as if this is not enough, the author has not taken care to give captions to most of the pictures. A picture without caption is as good as an undated letter. Worse, no white space has been provided between the pictures. This has spoiled the beauty of the illustrations and the overall image of the publication.

The title of the book itself appears to be misleading as "memoirs" are usually written by the personalities or dignitaries themselves of their own life and experiences. Apparently, despite his experience in theHimalayan kingdom and his reported close contact with the magnificent Narayanhiti Royal Palace, the author has not done his homework well. The entire focus seems to be on pictures than on providing some good reading material to the readers.

The introductory notes for various sections are too short and will not help those interested to know more and more about the royal family. The writer should have collected data on the socio-economic contributions of King Birendra and his family in the last three decades including the travails of the nascent democracy and incorporated it suitably in the volume. Of course, it would have been a different matter altogether if the aim and objective of the author was to publish just an album of the royal family. And to call a photo album as "memoirs" would amount to putting the cart before the horse.

One cannot treat memoirs in a casual and perfunctory manner as the author has done in the case of this publication. There is no single instance of the author having taken the help of any primary source of information on the ins and outs of the royal family even though the author calls this publication as "memoirs". Some of the sections such as the King’s monarchical responsibilities and visits to various countries could have been written well by using the primary sources of information especially when the author boasts of having known KingBirendra well. The history of Nepal in the appendix looks more like a government handout for tourists than as a dispassionate survey of the bounties of nature and the overall splendour of the little kingdom.

These shortcomings notwithstanding, the book might quench the thirst of those interested to have a glimpse of the royal family. For years to come, King Birendra will continued to be remembered by the people of Nepal and other countries as one of the greatest kings of the Land ofBuddha. The book, encapsulating some of the memories of this Patriarch, with vivid illustrations, might prove to be of some use to posterity at least from this angle.