FIFTH COLUMN

Faces

By C K Lal

Jan Salter draws and paints our faces, for people like us. Looking at her paintings is like looking into a mirror. One knows one’s face, but yet, wants to look at it again and again. Enough is never enough.

Dr. Harka Gurung knows those faces better than most of us. He has seen them, learnt about them, empathized with them, and worked for them; first as a geographer, and then as a planner, a politician, an intellectual, and lately, even as a social campaigner.

To be in the company of Jan and Dr. Gurung together is a rare opportunity. Himal Association made that possible at NAFA Hall on Saturday when it brought together a motley crowd of scribes, socialites, pretenders, achievers, has-been and to-be celebrities, expatriates as well as activists alike, for the inaugural function of an exhibition of Jan’s oil paintings and drawings Faces of Nepal and All our Daughters.

Those of you who could not make it to Basant Thapa’s invitation list still have a chance to be moved by Jan’s pictures and Dr. Gurung’s text in the second edition of the book Faces of Nepal. However, I think it’s worthwhile to discuss salient features of Dr. Gurung’s inaugural address.

Dr. Gurung opined that ethics in Nepal are divisions on a horizontal plane, while castes form a hierarchical division on a vertical scale. A pretty neat sound-byte, one must say, that aptly presents an overall pictures of Nepali society. And then he came up with an even better description: despite their differences, Nepalis are one in their struggle for survival against the quickies of geography.

Despite his years of  effort in rounding up himself, it’s a little sad that Dr. Gurung continues to remain a geographer and a physical planner first and foremost. His concerns appear to be still spatial. An equally, if not more, important dimension of our struggle is temporal in nature. We are what we are not just because of our geography, but   because of  our history as well. Geography is our prison, but what really chains us is our history. To break free and attain real freedom, perhaps we must learn to fight on both the fronts.

Our deprivation has as much to do with political economy of exploitation as with the vagaries of nature. Inequality in our society has as much to do with our socio-cultural milieu as with the issue of control over resources. Geography is only part of the explanation of the morass we are in. The other, and perhaps more compelling component, because we can change its course, is our history.

Could it be that people like Dr. Gurung willfully neglect history, because at some point of time, they too have been with the conspirators in it? For those who can, and want to, read; our faces are composite records of our history as well as geography. Thanks, Jan.