Anuradha as I know her

My Republica BY PETER J KARTHAK

I had been planning to write this story, and my pending plan rushed me when I read the weekly “Kopila” of the Kantipur daily of Sunday, November 28. In it, Suraj Kunwar writes that Ranjit Gazmer and I had opened a school called Amar Adarsha in Baneshwor, and Anuradha Koirala came to Kathmandu to join the team. This is fictional journalism, and the “kopila” readers of the weekzine can be misled.

Had the two of us operated this imagined school, I wouldn’t still be working as a copyeditor in Kathmandu and Ranjit wouldn’t have immigrated to Bombay, now Mumbai. Hence, I must write the true story. What I write herein are mostly pickings from my already previously published columns, and I add a few more points in the second part, as the true occasion for writing this particular piece warrants.

Anuradha Gurung in Darjeeling

At Mr. Amber Gurung’s Art Academy of Music in Darjeeling, there was Ajay Gurung as a member who was an excellent tabla player, second only to another member, Ranjit Gazmer. This was in the winter of 1961/62, and the other musicians were Karma and Gopal Yonzon, Sharan Pradhan, Indra Thapalia (Amber’s miitjyu), Aruna Lama, Lalit Tamang, Jitendra Bardewa, Indra Gazmer, Puru Subba, and others – including this writer.

Another Gurung was Abhay (recently departed) who shone for many years as a national footballer in India, Sikkim, Bhutan, and Nepal. In Kathmandu, he was a guru to many national kickers and dribblers and played for many clubs.

These were Anuradha’s older brothers. Since Ajay was a fellow musician at the Academy, I visited his Toong Soong cottage where Colonel and Mrs. Gurung had deposited their six or seven brats to give them a permanent moor in life and save them the military transfers their soldier father had been subject to, as the Indian Army required.

Anuradha and her younger sister were kids to us, and they had nothing to do with our serious business – music. Anuradha was a hockey schoolgirl at Loreto Convent, and we saw her in town in her school uniform, with a hockey stick. And that was that.

In Birgunj

I graduated from college in late 1966, and I had ten months to decide my future course of actions. As people of Darjeeling fled its gloomy and misty winter, an annual event, I was visited by Phurba Tshering – a member of The Hillians whom I led. He asked me to accompany him to Birgunj in Nepal to help manage a new “English medium” school. Ranjit Gazmer also joined us. Phurba had already joined the school, so we were in good hands. So off we went, traveling mostly on railway through India – Siliguri, Galgaliya, Sugauli, Barauni and then Raxaul to enter Nepal at Birgunj. The school was in a rural flatland called Itiyahi, some dusty kilometers away from Birgunj town. When we reached our destination in the evening, I saw, to my surprise, Anuradha Gurung who already was a teacher at the school. Thus began our lifelong relationship.