NEPAL: Nepal’s cursed palace opens its doors

FROM GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Ed Douglas takes a tour of the compound that witnessed a royal bloodbath and the death of the monarchy in Nepal  

People's palace ... Narayanhiti Palace is now open as a museum, as the last king was deposed last year. Photograph: K Perronet Miller/Rex Features

The two banknotes I handed over to get inside Kathmandu’s newest museum told the story. On one were the mild features of King Birendra, whose reign ended in June 2001 when Birendra’s son, the Eton-educated Crown Prince Dipendra, killed dad, mum, his brother and sister, and five others before turning the gun on himself. Allegedly. On the other, newer banknote, there is a picture of Mount Everest – and no king at all. 

That’s because Nepal’s monarchy is now history. After years of grim authoritarianism and mismanagement by King Gyanendra, who succeeded his brother, Nepal’s people finally got the chance to boot him out last year, via the ballot box. Gyanendra quite literally handed his crown to the new government and after 240 years, Nepal’s ill-starred Shah royal dynasty was gone. 

So what to do with their digs? Even before Gyanendra quit the throne, plans were laid to turn the Narayanhiti palace into a national museum. This opened in February to intense public interest. Nepal’s then prime minister, Maoist and former rebel leader Prachanda, cut the ribbon. Ordinary citizens queued round the block to see where Birendra died and how their recent monarchs lived. 

I had been behind the high steel fence surrounding the complex to cover the wedding of Gyanendra’s daughter six years ago. But I hadn’t been allowed inside. Instead, I drank sweet milk tea from plastic cups and marvelled at the baroque sight of South Asia’s aristocracy gathered on the lawn. Now I was desperate to get beyond those vast palace doors. 

The building itself is a bit surreal. Looking at its salmon pink walls back in 2003, the phrase “motel pagoda” popped into my head to describe its architectural style. It was commissioned in 1966 by Birendra’s father, Mahendra, from the American architect Benjamin Polk, then living in Delhi and running the biggest architectural practice in South Asia. 

His Highness Maharajah Sir Prithui Duisiaj (1880 - 1911), Sovereign of Nepal. The rule of the Maharajahs, with their Shah puppet kings, was exemplified in the endless building of Italiante palaces in the Kathmandu valley

Queen Elizabeth II with King Mahendra, known for his stylish presence, in Kathmandu, 1961

Crown Prince Birendra is visited by his younger brother, Prince Dhirendra, on St Andrew's Day at Eton College in 1960

 

The Kathmandu valley is full of crumbling Italianate palaces built a hundred years ago by Nepal’s Rana family, the Maharajahs who kept the Shah kings as puppets until 1950. Mahendra wanted a new palace to show the break with the past. But Polk was a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. And organic architecture may not have been the shrewdest option for an absolute monarch who regarded himself as an incarnation of Vishnu, even one with the taste of a Madison Avenue advertising executive. 

Polk was also rather undermined, as an American used to celebrating newly independent India – he designed the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial in Amritsar – in building for a king who had not long before stymied Nepal’s first attempt at democracy. But the architect put a brave face on it. 

“The building I would design would be a symbol by and for the people of Nepal,” he later wrote. “I make no apologies to those who think these expensive public symbols are out of place where people are in poverty. On the contrary, tangible rallying points are needed more than ever in new nations.” 

Polk got one thing right. The front of the palace complex did become a rallying point for ordinary Nepalese in their long struggle to establish democracy and ultimately get rid of the king who lived inside. Time and again armed police or soldiers faced crowds gathered in front of the steel gates. Now I was stepping through, that struggle finally over, alongside a crowd of young people getting a chance to see, after more than 40 years, how their money had been spent. 

The short answer to that is: not well. Of the 52 rooms, only 19 are currently open to the public. Little has been done to update Polk’s original interiors, a fading paean to 1960s consumerism with a Himalayan twist. These are not rooms to be comfortable in but clearly cost huge sums to decorate. 

They are packed with the sort of geegaws world leaders like to share, mostly dating from the 60s and 70s, before Nepal’s lustre began to fade. The Shahs were once the kind of royal family the Windsors could snuggle up to, and so there are plenty of shots of the Queen and other royals. The most poignant shot for me was a photograph of Birendra with General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan. Both dead (one assassinated the other a victim of a mysterious plane crash), both heads of state of Himalayan nations that now barely function. 

Interspersed among the detritus of state visits are more personal touches, a fabulous chair with built-in speaks favoured by Mahendra, a group of china owls that look like they came from Poundstretcher. Eclectic is not the word. Most confusing of all is the throne room, its four concrete columns representing banana tree trunks, decorated with garish Hindu deities. 

Far more interesting was watching the crowds. Many women had put on their best saris for the tour, and peered with rapt attention at each item. Two men asked the attendant in Gyanendra’s study what it was exactly that went on here. The debris left behind after a regime has outstayed its welcome is somehow funny and dispiriting at the same time. 

Outside, the crowds were stepping carefully through the outline of the building where Birendra was shot, a suite of rooms that predates the new palace. It was here that the family liked to relax and where Dipendra finally snapped. The rooms were demolished soon after. Many Nepalese believe that Gyanendra and his despised son Paras were somehow behind the massacre. Paras now lives in Singapore, partly for his own safety. 

Signs point out bullet holes in the wall, and a small flight of steps has been rebuilt to indicate where Dipendra, according to official reports, caught up with his mother. Thwarted by her from marrying his girlfriend, who wasn’t quite posh enough for the Shahs, he treated her with savage cruelty, shooting off her face. 

The Maoist government were talking about building a convention centre in the grounds immediately in front of Polk’s strange pink facade. Given the current standard of most new buildings in Kathmandu, it wouldn’t have been an improvement. But as I examined the faded glory of the Shahs, Prachanda was resigning his post as prime minister. Narayanhiti is safe for a while.