Originally, the Limbu people came to Nepal from Tibet. In our own language we refer to ourselves as yakthumba, which translates as ‘yak herders’. There are no yaks in Nepal, so this shows that our ancestors came from the Tibetan plateau. Yet while Tibetans are almost all Buddhists, and while there are some Limbus who are Buddhist, my family follows the ancient Kirat religion. Unlike Tibetans, we believe in a god whom we call Bhagawan.
Until the age of seven, I lived with my parents in my paternal grandfather’s house, which is situated at the upper end of Khebang village. These days my aunt and uncle and several cousins still live there, as my grandfather and grandmother have both passed away. It is a traditional house built with mud walls and a wooden veranda running round the first floor, and a single attic room in the roof. Like most of the other houses in the village, the outside is painted – in this case brown at the bottom and cream above, with the veranda painted blue. Overall, the effect is very colourful. But while today the roof is of corrugated iron, when I was younger it was thatched with straw. We replaced the roof with tin at my expense when I went home on my first leave as a Gurkha. I felt very proud to be able to repay my grandfather for all his kindness to me in this way. Thatch may look better, but the old style of roof has to be changed every two years – a very big and dirty job. Also, thatch is a fire hazard, so tin is much preferred.
Inside the house were six rooms, one large and two small ones on each floor. I suppose the ground-floor area was about the same size as a double garage, so it was a bit above average compared with other houses in our district. This was just as well because, amazing as it may seem, it was home to more than thirty people in total! My father had several brothers and they all stayed with us, along with their wives and children, so that these kids could go to school locally. As a result, my grandmother spent her whole life cooking vast amounts of food. I remember that she had three enormous pots – one for bhaat (rice), one for makai (maize) and one for dhal (lentils). We didn’t eat meat very often, but sometimes – maybe once a month, or if guests came – we would kill an animal and have a proper feast.
Looking back on my childhood, I see that it was something quite remarkable in this day and age. We had no electricity and hence no TV or telephones or household appliances. And because the nearest motorable road was so far away, I was fifteen before I saw my first car. It’s different today, as there are several generators in the area, and the school and several other buildings have light. Some families even have satellite television. Also, a lot of people now have mobile phones, though there are still no iPods or computers. But during my childhood we had none of these things and my life was all about playing – and fighting – with other children as we accompanied our elders to the fields. It was a really healthy outdoor life out in the clean mountain air. We didn’t lack for entertainment, as there were lots of religious festivals and dances and picnics in the forest, and in the evening stories about ghosts and witches and the glorious deeds of our ancestors.
One of my favourite stories as a very young boy was about how our family came to Khebang. There were two ladies from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, who travelled together on pilgrimage to a place called Kashi near Benares, the holy city of India. One of the ladies got married there and stayed. The other did not and returned to Tibet. The one who stayed had a son, and it was he who eventually came to our district in Nepal. On arrival, he learned that there were two rajas who ruled the place between them. One was a good raja, generous to his people and just. The other was a bad raja, who thought only of himself and how much money he could extort from the people. My family’s forefather made an alliance with the good raja and, taking a bow and arrow, he went into battle and shot the bad raja. As a result, the good raja rewarded him with a lot of land. To celebrate their victory, this raja called the best ladies to his palace and offered our forefather the choice of any one of them. At that point, my ancestor tried to refuse, and it was only when the raja insisted that he reluctantly made his choice. Unfortunately, it turned out that he had chosen the raja’s own brother’s wife. But the raja gave this lady to him anyway. After that, our forefather and his descendants ruled the family lands as subba, one who is the next rank below raja in authority.
The place where my ancestor settled was given the name Kingba, a word that comes from the Limbu word for ‘ambitious’, in recognition of our forefather’s ambition. You could say it’s a characteristic I have inherited myself.
The village of Khebang lies more than a day’s trek from the nearest road, even if you are very fit. If you are not so fit, the journey can take two or even three days. It is about the same distance to Tibet, which we call Bothe, although this track is very difficult and only open at certain times of year because of the snow and danger from avalanches and rockfalls. There is also a track that leads to the Indian border about one day’s walk away. This one is much easier and a lot of people use it to get to Sikkim, where they take jobs for six months of the year. Part of that time they spend harvesting medicinal plants, such as the alchi grass, which grows in the area and fetches a very good price.
There are several other villages in the same valley as Khebang. The closest of these, called Surukim, is right opposite and it takes only twenty minutes to walk there, except that to do so you have to use a narrow rope bridge which has a drop of at least 400 metres. This bridge is really flimsy and it often has to be repaired after heavy rain. Even when it is in a good state, it sways a lot as you go over and every so often there are accidents. I remember one time when I was young there was a mother crossing with her baby in a basket on her back. The bridge moved so violently that, tragically, the baby fell out. There was no chance of saving it. Even if by some miracle a person could survive the fall, the torrent in the river below is so strong that you would be swept away and drowned instantly.
Most of my earliest memories involve fighting, which I really enjoyed. I particularly remember one night when I was about three or four. At that time, as the youngest children in the house, I and my aunt Radika, who was only a few years older than me, had the privilege of sleeping with our grandparents in their warm bed. The problem was that she always got to sleep in between them – which was, of course, the warmest place of all. So one night, I woke up and started pulling Radika out of bed with the idea of taking her place. I thought that because my grandmother had given her some raksi (a traditional drink made from fermented rice, and quite alcoholic) before she went to bed, she would not wake up. But actually she did and I discovered then what a good fighter she was.
It was in fact my grandmother who did not wake up, as she herself was completely drunk. Luckily, our grandfather took my side and he let me move in and made my aunt sleep on the outside. As a result, Radika and I became sworn enemies.
Like I say, my grandmother was completely drunk – as often happened. I remember one time she drank so much that when she was serving our food, she dropped it on the floor – a huge pot of dhal. There was a shocked silence as we all turned to look at my grandfather. He was very strict and we were all waiting for the explosion. I was afraid he was going to chase my grandmother out of the house. But he just laughed and told us to clear up the mess. The truth was, he really loved his wife, and even when she was like this, he forgave her.
It may seem surprising to say that my grandmother always gave us children alcohol at night time, but it is true.
‘This will help you sleep,’ she used to say, although I never liked the stuff. Radika, on the other hand, developed a taste for it and I remember once when she became very drunk during daytime. She was about nine years old, and for no reason that I could tell she came up and slapped me in the face.
‘What did you do that for?’ I demanded.
‘Because you’re a pig!’ she screamed.
I hit her straight away, and we had another big fight that left her in tears. Luckily for both of us, everyone else was outside working in the fields, so nobody saw.
My father too was a big drinker. Unlike my
grandfather, who was very even-tempered, Dad had an extremely aggressive side to him. It never lasted and most of the time he was kind and warmhearted and took really good care of his family. But when he was drunk, he got angry very easily, and when this happened he would chase after me, stumbling and shouting.
‘Come to me you little jatha! I’ll show you who’s boss round here!’
That was one of the reasons I became such a good runner. I knew that if he ever caught up with me, he’d thrash me hard. I suppose it is also one reason why I personally never touch alcohol. I am afraid that if I did, I might become one of the bad guys myself. Luckily for me, when I was in Class Seven my dad went to work in the Gulf States for two years. A lot of Nepalese men do this, as the money is quite good, though in my father’s case he didn’t do very well out of it. He said it was hard work for not much reward.
My grandfather was a very impressive man and highly respected in our community. For a short time he had served as a Gurkha in the British Army in India, around the time of Partition in 1947. Unfortunately his military career was cut short by the death of his father, as he had to return home to look after his family. He was also a very religious man, very pure in his habits, and, unlike my grandmother and father, never touched alcohol. It was a rule that no one ever drank in his presence.
In a lot of ways, I grew up closer to my grandfather than to my father, and I shall never forget his example. Every morning he would get up early and walk the 200 metres to the spring where we used to get our water. There, after washing, he would pray for a while before coming back to the house and praying some more at the little shrine he kept in one corner of the room next to my parents’. This was very simple, with just a small altar, a picture of the god and, hanging on the wall, a special kukri.
During his prayers, my grandfather would light a small fire and burn a mixture of aromatic leaves and sit cross-legged on the floor, where he would recite the names of the saints and all our family members, including our ancestors. I can hear him now, softly chanting while the rest of the house slept.
Bhagawan, Bhagawan, Bhagawan …
Bishnu, Bishnu, Bishnu …
Patibharai Devi, Patibharai Devi, Patibharai Devi …
Mohadeb Bhagawan, Mohadeb Bhagawan, Mohadeb Bhagawan …
It was very soothing to listen to.
My grandfather always kept this part of the house very tidy, and once every two weeks, without fail, on the day of the full moon and on the day of the new moon, he used to sweep it carefully with a cowpat. This may sound strange, but dried dung works very effectively as a brush.
The special kukri – to which we all used to pray on certain occasions – was only ever taken down from the wall once a year for the purpose of sacrificing an animal, usually a goat. Once the blade was drawn, we believed that it could not be returned to its scabbard until it had tasted blood.
I am not sure how common this practice of worshipping the kukri is among the other castes, but among Limbus it is very strong. First my grandfather would light some special herbs and start chanting. After a while, when the spirit of the god was inside him, he would start to shake. At that point, he would take the weapon and withdraw the blade and hand it to the person chosen to actually kill the animal. When I was about ten or eleven years old, I remember, he handed it to me. I felt very proud, though also quite nervous. It is considered very unlucky if the person doing the sacrifice cannot do so with a single stroke.
Happily I succeeded, and in fact it is not difficult for someone used to handling a kukri – as any hill boy is from a very early age. But if you are not skilled and you don’t know what you are doing, they are not very effective. Most of the weight of the blade is at the tip end, so you need to keep your wrist straight.
As everyone knows, the kukri blade is curved and at its thinnest where it tapers and joins the handle. With most, there is also a notch, called a kaudi, just in front of the handle. This is to stop the blood running onto your hand and making it slippery to hold.
Kukris come in many different shapes and sizes. The sirupathi blade used by Limbus is longer and thinner than the blade you see in other parts of the country. Also, we Limbus tend to decorate both the blades and the handles more than people in other parts of Nepal. The one in my grandfather’s house was particularly ornate. However, although the kukri is very important in our culture as a symbol of power and as a weapon of war, it is also a very practical tool. Besides being used for sacrifices, they have more ordinary uses such as in harvesting crops, felling trees, chopping firewood, skinning animals, and even opening bottles.
After the kukri, the most important things my grandfather kept in his shrine were some precious stones that had been found on our land. When I say they were precious, I don’t mean they were valuable like jewels, but that they had special powers. The most important of them was the mothi stone from a snake. There are certain snakes in the Himalayas which are believed to possess magical abilities. These snakes are blind by day but, using mothi, are able to generate light from inside themselves at night and so to see in the dark. We believe that if you can catch one of the snakes and extract the mothi stone from it, you will possess something of great power. One day when I was very young, an Indian Nagaman – that is to say, someone with knowledge of snakes – came to our village. It seems he had some supernatural indication of one of these special snakes living near our house. Eventually he succeeded in capturing it and was able to extract the mothi stone from its mouth. He then sold it to my grandfather for an enormous sum of money – something like forty thousand rupees, which in those days was easily enough to buy a field or to build a house such as ours. Yet although this sounds like a crazy amount, the mothi stone brings such good fortune and prosperity to the one who possesses it, my grandfather explained that it was not too high a price to pay. You could say it is just coincidence based on superstition, but looking back on his life – he died a few years ago at the time of writing – I have to say that I cannot disagree with him. We certainly did prosper, and throughout my childhood the harvests were good and the animals stayed healthy and productive.
As a result of this prosperity, my grandfather was able to use his wealth to benefit others in the community. He built a small hostel for the poor and gave money to help build the school in our village. This was a fine two-storey building about half an hour’s walk downhill from the house, very simple, and painted colourfully in blue and white. He also paid for better roads in our area (though of course I don’t mean motorable roads) and for the construction of a pipeline to bring water to people who lived far from the nearest stream.
My grandfather also used to say that another reason for his success in life was the jackal horns that he had obtained when younger. Like the mothi stone, these also have special powers. They came from a kind of jackal found in the Himalayas which has horns not on the front, but on the back of its head. Now the peculiar thing about these horns is that they only appear when the jackal is howling. If you see one of these animals when it is just roaming in the daytime, they are not visible.
It was late one night when he was walking home from the fields along a road that took him past a graveyard that my grandfather had his opportunity. From a long distance away, he could hear some wild animals howling in the moonlight. Sure enough, when he got close to the graveyard, he saw three jackals sitting there, their heads upturned to the moon. Keeping as quiet as he could, my grandfather crept behind them and when he had got into a good position, hurled his stick with all his strength. With a great yelp, all three ran off but, just as he’d hoped, the horns of one had fallen off and he picked them up and took them home. My grandfather told me that if ever I had the chance, I should try to get hold of some jackal horns for myself. Unfortunately, I have not been lucky enough so far.
Of course, not all the wildlife in our area possessed magical powers, but there were some that were also quite rare. From time to time, people reported bears in the jungle nearby, and every so often a tiger would appear. I
’ve never actually seen a bear, but I did see several tigers when I was young. Because I was armed with my kukri, I wasn’t too scared. In fact I remember on one occasion how, when I saw one, I picked up a stone and threw it at the tiger. It turned and ran away.
All in all, mine was a happy childhood. I lived the typical life of a hill boy, little different from that of my ancestors for hundreds of years, if not a thousand and more. It was a simple life and in some respects also quite hard. From a very early age, I had to help out on the family farm. We grew mainly rice and maize, but also some wheat and potatoes, as well as fodder for the cattle. Together with the other children, I had to cut and collect firewood and to help at harvest time and plough the fields afterwards. I had to take the bullocks into the jungle to forage and to carry baskets of hay for them home on my back. I spent hours up to my knees in water in the rice paddies and many more bent over repairing the earth mounds that ran round the sides to keep the water from running away. But the worst time was in winter, when the cold came. When it gets into your bones as it does when the only heat you have is a small open fire in the house, it is almost impossible to get warm again. Yet the difficulties we experienced were eased by the fact that we bore them all together as a family – a fact that has helped me a lot in later life. As a Gurkha, you do the same. When we face hardship, we do not face it just as one person, but as a member of a group – a section, a platoon, a company, a battalion, and finally a whole brigade. You are never alone. In fact you could say that to be a Gurkha is to be a member of one very big family, of which your section is the closest part.
3
Into Now Zad
I’ll never forget the flight into Now Zad, and nor will anyone else who was on that helicopter.
Gurkha: Better to Die than Live a Coward: My Life in the Gurkhas Page 2