Making It Big

by Binod K Chaudhary

  1973

  Kiran had just returned after completing a hotel management course in Japan. He was running Laligurans Hotel at Lazimpat, a diplomatic enclave in Kathmandu. I was quite impressed with the way he talked and carried himself. He was slightly older than I. Being a St Xavier’s alumnus, he had a wide range of friends and a broad way of thinking. On the other hand, I was raised in a traditional Marwari family and had gone to a general school. I thought Kiran was the person who would help me broaden my horizons. He was the one who could pick me up from a blind alley in Khichapokhari and lead me into the new era that Kathmandu was entering.

  I started to adopt his ideas and mingle with his friends. I was able to make the acquaintance of Neer Shah, S.K. Singh, Ram Bhattarai, Rajendra Rijal, Divya Mani Rajbhandari, Rasendra Bhattarai and many others from the social elite of those days. They were close to the seat of power in one way or other. Rajendra’s father, Nagendra Prasad Rijal, had been prime minister a number of times. Neer Shah was very close to Prince Dhirendra. Neer and Kumar Khadga, King Birendra’s brother-in-law, were siblings. S.K. Singh was also a close relative of the royal family.

  In the beginning, I felt they did not want to mix with me. They were members of the establishment and came from elite families, while I was a boy who had just graduated from a school and who was trying to start a business. Moreover, they looked askance at anyone who was from the Marwari community. However, the distance between us gradually narrowed. Two things brought us together: style and adventure.

  I had long hair and wore bell-bottoms that were in vogue then. To top it all, I wore stylish leather boots, and was also often seen slinging my guitar over my shoulders and singing with Kiran and his friends. I would also roam New Road and King’s Way, trying to impress the girls. I would attend parties thrown by the social elite of Kathmandu and spend hours at the upscale Indira Café on New Road. I also had my hobbies of motorbike riding and later, of driving fast cars. The Austin Healey two-seater, which I had got after staging the hunger strike at home, was our favourite toy. Kiran and I drove to Darjeeling many times in that car. We would also go on jaunts to Nagarkot and Kakani. We were fond of movies, travelling as far as Raxaul, Muzaffarpur and even Patna in India to watch new Bollywood releases.

  Someone, probably one of our friends from Birgunj, brought the news one day: ‘A new film has been released in Patna.’

  ‘Zanjeer,’ Kiran said. ‘Amitabh Bachchan is the hero.’

  We took out the car. We hit the brakes, so to speak, only after reaching Birgunj, having had our foot on the accelerator all the way down from Kathmandu. The friend who had tipped us off about the movie joined us there. There was no space for a third passenger in the Austin Healey, but we could not ditch him. So we left the car in Birgunj and went into Raxaul in a mule-driven cart. At Raxaul, we took a rickety public bus and reached Patna late in the evening. We had travelled some 600 kilometres to another country to watch a movie. Nepalis do not require a passport or a visa to enter India, but we were so crazy about movies that we would not have baulked at the journey even if a visa had been mandatory!

  When I returned home on the third day, I felt like a criminal confronted by the police. Father’s earlobes were vibrating. He blasted me. I felt so weighed down with remorse that I could not utter a word.

  Two days later, Kiran and I again whizzed away to Kakani.

  I had learned a lot about fashion and style through hobnobbing with Kiran. We would order new designer clothes from boutiques in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Sometimes we travelled to those places just to buy clothes. It was cashing in on that exposure that I opened Arun Boutique in Kathmandu, the first fashion outlet in Nepal.

  Back in those days, advertising to promote a business was almost unknown. I, however, wanted to advertise the Saree Sansar and Ghar Sansar outlets within Arun Emporium. Kiran was related to the writer Bhupi Sherchan. I went to Bhupi’s house with Kiran and asked him to write a poem for me. He instantly wrote four lines, right in front of us:

  Nari sundar phool ho bhane

  saree usko bahar ho,

  usko sundartalai chamkaune

  yo nai anupam upahar ho.

  (If a woman is an exotic bloom

  then her saree is her spring,

  it is the priceless gift that enhances

  her beauty.)

  This poem by Bhupi featured in the advertisements for both Saree Sansar and Ghar Sansar.

  ‘Okay, let’s do business together,’ I said.

  ‘What business?’ Kiran asked, surprised.

  ‘Something special, something creative.’

  We were sitting by a window at Indira Café.

  Dusk was falling rapidly.

  It had been raining and the leaves of the sacred fig outside the restaurant were thoroughly sodden. Through the window, we could clearly see drops of water dripping from the drenched leaves. The water gushing from the projected roof of the restaurant drummed in our ears, probably battering the corrugated steel sheets of the roof of one of the houses below. The chatter of the people inside the restaurant had been muffled by the downpour. Now that it had stopped raining, soft voices could be heard. The couples in there, who were waiting over tea or coffee for the rain to stop, were suddenly restless to leave. The tables became empty, one after the other.

  Kiran and I were in no hurry. It was our daily ritual to pass our time at Indira Café in the evening before heading to a disco where we would party until late.

  Kiran was brooding over something, his eyes fixed on the rain-washed road.

  ‘Sir, you don’t get new ideas by wracking your brain,’ I said. ‘Wait until an idea just spontaneously pops up in your mind.’

  We paid the bill and left.

  The loud western music at the disco drowned out our voices. Even our shrieks sounded like whispers. On the dance floor, couples were boogieing with their hands on each other’s waists. The exposed backs of the women clad in backless evening wear changed colour like chameleons in the disco lights. And when their male partners’ hands roamed over those backs, we who only stood around watching the action, would ache with desire. Some of the men would take to the dance floor after emptying their glasses at the bar. After exhausting themselves on the floor, they would again hit the bar.

  That was a popular discotheque in Kathmandu.

  Leny (Lendup Dorjee), who was displaced from Bhutan, had opened a casino at the Soaltee in 1968. The discotheque was located inside the casino, where the Shahs, Ranas and other aristocrats and members of the social elite gathered in the evening. Most of the parties there were informal or private. The unmarried came with their partners. The married, too, came with their boyfriends or girlfriends. It was rare to see married couples there together. Many young hippies, both Nepalis and foreigners, with their dreadlocks and baggy pyjamas, also frequented the discotheque.

  Thanks to my association with Kiran, I got a chance to witness the flourishing nightlife of the early 1970s in Kathmandu, which the hippies oddly called Cat-Man-Do.

  I had never seen the discotheque empty, right from the time I started going there. While the rest of Kathmandu was sleeping soundly, this place, with its flashy, coloured lights, kept going all night. The movers and shakers came to this discotheque. They drank there. And they also danced. This was the same class that went on shopping sprees to Hong Kong and Bangkok because they did not find enough to spend their money on in Kathmandu. They would spend their nights at discotheques and parties, tipping the waiters after every drink. During their leisure time, this lot would also make jaunts to Nagarkot, Kakani and Pokhara.

  They were very limited in number but they were loyal customers who spent the day waiting for nightfall. They were addicted to nightlife the way some people are to drugs. I could also see that the number of foreigners visiting the discotheque had been increasing because of the large numbers of hippies flocking to Kathmandu. All of them were eager to spend their money on a good night out.

  An idea spontaneously popped into my mind, s
omething special and creative.

  We too would start a discotheque. We named it Copper Floor because the dance floor was made of copper. The discotheque, which I launched in partnership with Kiran at Laligurans Hotel at Lazimpat, was my first independent undertaking. There were other discotheques in Kathmandu—Peter’s Place and Foot Tappers on King’s Way—by the time we opened ours. To stand out from the competition, we imported a sound system from Singapore and disco lights and other accessories from Hong Kong. Kiran and I went there to select the equipment.

  We set up a ‘members’ club’, charging Rs 2500 for annual membership. There were around 300 regular members. Most of them were either blue bloods or diplomats. Prince Dhirendra and Prabhakar Rana, the great grandson of Juddha Shumsher, also frequented our discotheque. Sudhir Rai, a senior captain with Royal Nepal Airlines, was the voluntary disc jockey. Women, too, thronged our place. Around half a dozen female flight attendants from Royal Nepal would visit regularly. All the men were interested in them. Our discotheque was also the meeting place for film stars from the Nepali movies. Many famous personalities of today would come to the discotheque accompanied by girls whom they would introduce as their girlfriends from Darjeeling or Kalimpong. I too was attracted to some of the girls, and some of them were attracted to me.

  Copper Floor became a successful business venture.

  Father was not very pleased with my decision to start a discotheque, though he did not actively oppose it. He wanted me to look after Arun Emporium, but I was not interested in the retail business. I wanted to do something novel and creative like Copper Floor. I think the fact that his son was at least involved in a business gave him some consolation.

  I would always return home between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. I would take off my shoes and try to climb the stairs stealthily, like a cat, so as not to disturb my parents. It was a wooden staircase, however, and it would creak on even the lightest step. Father would wake up. Sometimes he would be waiting for me. I would sneak into my room and close the door lightly, only to find father there. It would scare the hell out of me.

  Still, my father did not scold the son who came home like a thief in the wee hours of the day.

  ‘Oh, you’ve come,’ he would say. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes,’ I would reply timidly.

  ‘In that case, you’d better go to bed.’ He would close the door as he left the room.

  Father had unusual confidence on me. He was confident that any son of his must have intrinsic business sense and would never let him down. That was why he never interfered in my work. And I never let him down either. Even when I was hanging around with friends, I never smoked or drank alcohol, though I do smoke and drink now.

  Many people were under the impression that we had opened the discotheque just for fun. They thought it was all about drinking to excess and dirty dancing, and held the place in contempt. But it was purely business for us. Though afternoons were leisure time for us, Kiran and I were totally disciplined and thoroughly professional, I would say, when it came to our job.

  The broader society, of course, could not comprehend this. Chaudhary’s son comes home at midnight! I became the talk of the town. Some people even started to defame my father indirectly: ‘His son is spoilt rotten’, or ‘His son has fallen into bad company’. Some even tried to poison my father’s mind against me. However, malicious gossip could never affect the relationship between my father and me. I wanted to give a fitting response to my detractors, but before I could do so I became even more notorious, under circumstances I would never have wished for.

  Tinku was my cousin, son of my mother’s sister. Because my aunt had financial difficulties, my mother had taken care of Tinku as a member of our own immediate family from the time he was four or five years old. Mother would say, ‘I have four sons, Arun is the third and Tinku is the youngest.’

  Then, one day, Tinku suddenly disappeared.

  There was absolute panic at home. We put notices in all the newspapers. We informed the police. But the boy was nowhere to be found until five days later, when the body of a child was found in a blind alley in Tebahal, close to our neighbourhood.

  We were horror-struck. It was gut-wrenching. My mother broke down.

  Father and I went to identify the body. As we reached the alley leading to the Nepal Airlines building, a foul smell turned our stomachs. Many policemen were there. I was too afraid to face what might lie there but father went ahead. It was Tinku. He had been murdered.

  ‘Judging by the state of the body,’ a policeman said, ‘he must have died four or five days ago.’

  The police started to take statements from us, day in and day out. Sometimes they summoned father and mother, and sometimes just me and my brothers. I became the prime suspect! I was suspected of killing my cousin to prevent him from getting a share of our inheritance. The police appeared to have made that assumption solely on the basis of my profession as a discotheque operator and what was to them my flamboyant lifestyle. They went to Laligurans Hotel and to Copper Floor to conduct investigations. I noticed that people I had thought were friends now started to turn their backs on me. At the hotel, I felt unwelcome. One day, Kiran openly told me, ‘The police obviously see you as a suspect. This might lead to big trouble for all of us.’

  I was speechless.

  Had some other friend said that to me, I could have endured it. However, my closest friend, the very one I turned to for sympathy and support, was, it appeared, trying to get rid of me in my moment of crisis. Nothing embitters the heart so much as betrayal by an intimate friend.

  On the way back home, my head was spinning. Everything in front of my eyes looked shaky and blurred. I walked straight into my room, locked the door, covered my face with a towel, and cried my heart out for a long time.

  The police would have sucked us dry had Indra Bhakta Shrestha not come to our rescue.

  Indra Bhaktajee (prominent industrialist Ravi Bhakta Shrestha’s father) was a family friend. His father treated my father as his son. Both grew up together in the same neighbourhood. Ravi Bhakta and I became good friends too. At a time when the entire neighbourhood had stopped supporting us, Indra Bhaktajee came to our rescue. His son-in-law, Narayan Prasad Shrestha, was head of administration at the royal palace. ‘No one in Lunkaran Das’s family would be capable of an act like that,’ Indra Bhaktajee told his son-in-law. ‘I can personally guarantee that.’

  Narayan Prasadjee immediately directed the zonal administrator of Kathmandu, Surya Prasad Shrestha, to ‘conduct the investigation properly and impartially and stop harassing the family’.

  At the height of the Panchayat era, such a directive from an officer at the royal palace made the entire police administration stop and take notice. The officers who used to summon us to the police station for interrogation became nervous. I must assume they had been planning to extort money from my father, a wealthy Marwari businessman, as they saw him, by framing me or possibly one of my brothers for murder. After Indra Bhaktajee’s intervention, the case took a new turn and fresh investigations began in earnest. It took less than two days for the police to find the real culprits.

  A couple of carpenters who had worked in our house had abducted Tinku. They had noticed how my mother pampered him, and came up with the idea of kidnapping him for ransom—just a few thousand rupees, ironically. They waited for an opportunity and grabbed him. Tinku, however, started to cry at the lodge where he had been held captive. They gagged him by stuffing rags in his mouth and the child choked to death. In panic, the kidnappers stuffed his body into a bag and dumped it in the alley in Tebahal. Both the kidnappers pleaded guilty.

  This horrible event did not destroy the close relationship we had with my aunt’s family. My mother took good care of her sister throughout her life, and we still support her family today.

  I, however, become disenchanted with my friends. This is how the world treats you, I thought. You have to fight your own battles! You need to stand up, and give a hand to yourself. The
people I had thought of as firm friends had turned away from me when I was in trouble. Once the trouble had passed, perhaps they would have liked our friendship to go back to the way it was, but I now turned away from them.

  I quit Copper Floor.

  I decided to become a chartered accountant.

  I had to go to New Delhi to appear for the entrance examination for chartered accountancy. I did not have good contacts in Delhi back then, in 1975.

  In those days, I had a close friend, Sudhir Rai. He was employed at the reception of Hotel De L’ Annapurna on Kingsway. He had a red Toyota Corolla. In the evening, after office hours, he had a second job, hiring out his car as a taxi with himself as the driver. I have done rounds of the city in his taxi. We would drive, and I would pay him for his time.

  Sudhir was born and brought up in Dehradun. He had keen interest in music. He was for many years a drummer in a band with his friend Malcolm Edwards in New Delhi before he settled in Kathmandu. Sometimes he pitched in as the DJ at Copper Floor.

  After completing the formalities for the CA entrance examinations, I said to Sudhir, ‘I have to go to Delhi to appear for these exams. How do I go about it?’

  He agreed to accompany me. We went to Delhi.

  Malcolm Edwards had a two-room apartment there. He took me to his flat. We stayed there for around fifteen days while I wrote the exams. There were also other guests at Malcolm’s place. There was a large cushion in the living room. I would sit on it to study during the day, and sleep on it at night.

  Sudhir always wanted to fly. He had taken lessons at a flying club while he lived in Delhi. One day, he took me to the club. The aircraft parked there looked like toys to me. He asked me to sit in one and then got in to sit beside me. I thought he was kidding, but he suddenly turned on the ignition and started the plane. The toy-like plane jolted along like an empty kerosene can on a bumpy road. I did not know whether he could actually fly the aircraft though he had said he had trained to fly. The ear-piercing sound was enough to scare the wits out of me. I was completely shaken with fear; I felt I was suddenly being hurled out of a Ferris wheel.