Lost In Time

When protesters flooded the streets of the capital and blockades of burning tires sealed off roads across Nepal, people in this tiny mountainside village paid little attention.

When the king's regime appeared on the verge of collapse, and when he finally gave way to his opponents, life remained quiet.

Things here are almost always quiet.

There was one night during Nepal's weeks of political turmoil, when a group of activists marched along the road chanting anti-monarchy slogans, but nearly everyone stayed inside. "We were scared" said Badal Thakuri, an 18-year-old villager. "All this trouble. The situation has made us scared about politics."

This is how life goes for most of Nepal, a nation of farmers living near the fringes of desperation, where life changes so slowly it sometimes appears to be moving in reverse. In this world, the turmoil held little importance at all.

Even the country's Maoist insurgents, who have taken control of many rural areas with their guerrilla war and promises of a classless society, remain just a shadowy influence to villagers in this part of eastern Nepal.

"People don't even bother with what is happening outside, with politics," said Pal Bahadur Thakuri, a farmer taking a break from making - by hand - a wooden plow to work his narrow, terraced fields of rice and corn. "Whether it's the king or Girija Prasad Koirala in power, it makes no difference."

Early this week, King Gyanendra, the one-time constitutional monarch who seized complete control last year, agreed to return power to elected politicians.

On Thursday, he named Koirala, the ailing leader of Nepal's largest party as the next prime minister. Parliament reconvened Friday for the first time in four years and legislators proposed a cease-fire with the Maoist rebels and elections for a constitutional assembly. The next step is writing a new constitution, expected to substantially limit - perhaps even eliminate - the monarchy.

"We heard about what was happening in Katmandu, but we don't pay much attention," said the farmer, a smiling man with a sprawling family, deeply cracked feet and a thin beard going gray with age. Along with many people in Irkhu, he shares the name Thakuri.

Nepal is in many ways a nation trapped in its past. Three-quarters of the country's 27 million people live off agriculture, barely a quarter of women are literate and 42 percent are unemployed.

Change comes desperately slowly. In Irkhu, they still talk about when electricity finally arrived - 1978 - and speak proudly of the fact that over the past few years more families educate their daughters.

But some things, they say, cannot change.

"We worship the king as a god," said the farmer.

Such beliefs were once near-universal in Nepal, a deeply traditional Hindu county where kings were seen as reincarnations of the god Vishnu. While creeping modernity - along with a 2001 palace massacre that left the last king dead at the hands of his son - has chipped away at the reverence for royalty, in Irkhu it is still deeply felt.

"Even with all his problems, the king is still a god," said the farmer, shrugging.

But to some Nepalese, such talk must be abandoned.

Over the past decade, Maoist insurgents have made inroads across rural Nepal. Some areas they fully control, but many others - including Irkhu and the surrounding villages - fall under their occasional influence. Their fighters sometimes pass through, their "tax collectors" demand donations and their political workers seek followers.

Certainly their rhetoric has appeal in areas like this, where many are illiterate, desperately in debt to moneylenders and hoping for better lives for their children.

"The Maoists have promised to uplift people's lives once they come to power," said Narayan Giri, a schoolteacher from a nearby village whose monthly salary of about $60 puts him in the upper-middle class.

They promise, he said, to erase debts, offer free education and hand out land. "I don't believe it, but this is what they tell people."

The Maoists, whose decade-long fight has left more than 13,000 people dead, softened their stance last year, allying with the country's opposition to force the king to relinquish power.

They have declared a three-month cease-fire and could, theoretically, join the political mainstream.

For now, though, they remain underground. And to hear them talk is to wonder if they even want to be in the mainstream.

Despite the cease-fire, the rebels abducted 11 unarmed soldiers Thursday as they headed home from vacation in eastern Nepal, the army said Saturday.

In a region where little remains private, the Maoists aren't hard to find.

Ask around, and soon a regional leader has pulled up a wooden bench in front of a grocery store to talk about Marxism.

"Only revolution can change this system," said the man, who uses the name Bigul. The son of a farmer, Bigul put himself through college before joining the Maoists. "Without blood, without deaths, we cannot change."

The villagers, he insists, back him fully.

Many, however, say otherwise.

"Why should we support them?" asked Thakuri, the farmer. "We don't have money to feed our families, so we don't have money to support them too."

Badal Thakuri, the 18-year-old, sees some logic in the Maoists' arguments, but is unnerved by their demands for radical change.

He gave up a decent-paying job in a Katmandu guest house a few months ago, anxious to return home to Irkhu.

"There cannot be a better place anywhere than the village where you were born," he said.
By Tim Sullivan