It happens in the best of families: Someone gets mad and,
before you know it, heads are blown off and body parts are landing in the tea
cups. With the recent disaster at the royal palace in Nepal, the mysterious
East has gotten a little less mysterious, suddenly more like Weehawken, Boise
or Scarsdale. According to the first reports, when Crown Prince Dipendra Bir
Bikram Shah Dev got mad at his mother for denying him the bride of his choice,
he got drunk and lost his temper, or so it seems-once again proving right those
who say that guns don’t kill people, people with guns do.
Of course, it’s hard to know just what his sister and
brother had done to deserve such a final punishment. Perhaps they were smugly
enjoying the conflict between older brother and parent. Siblings can be like
that-always jockeying for a few extra points when the rival is down on the mat,
snickering when the other is most vulnerable. You might think that the prospect
of being king one day, of a life of ease, respect and luxury, might make a
young man glow with warmth and resolve to help his fellow man. But Hamlet
wasn’t a happy camper, either, and palace intrigue and disaster have been the
stuff of legend and literature from the time of the first monarch.
As is usual in such stories of boy-takes-gun-to-his-parents,
those who knew the killer report that Prince Dipendra-“Dippy” to his Eton
friends-was a good boy, a fine student, intelligent with maybe a hint of a
temper. As usual, the neighbors and teachers knew nothing of the thoughts of
the soon-to-be killer. One intriguing clue appeared in a New York Times story. At 18, the heir apparent was excused from
attending chapel at Eton because he was considered a god in his country, and a
god should not be caught worshipping another. It is here that one sees the
potentially deadly collision between the East and West-a problem so serious it
could cause a guy to go off the deep end. In one world he is an ordinary person
who is required to make friends, play sports, study, and in another he is the
manifestation of the holy, born to rule over others. How odd it must feel to be
both a god and a boy, to be tied to a tradition that has prayers, clothes,
attitudes that are completely different from those you are also familiar with,
tempted by, tainted by.
In the front-page picture of the newly appointed King
Gyanendra, Prince Dipendra’s uncle, in a formal procession through the streets
of Katmandu, we see a portly, woeful-looking man sitting on an Oriental rug
with his hands in the position of Eastern prayer. He wears what appears to be
an elaborate jeweled crown topped by a plume of white feathers. But above his
traditional tapered pants, he is wearing a gray tweed jacket like the executive
he is. This jacket, worn on such a solemn occasion, speaks worlds of the uneasy
mash of cultures, the strange, magic customs of a country tucked away in the
Himalayas combining with the everyday rationalism of Bond Street, Wall Street
and Cambridge.
It is possible, as some in Nepal are saying, that King
Gyanendra-who was conveniently out of town the night of the fatal
supper-engineered the massacre, leaving himself the only possible monarch of
this unstable kingdom. Hamlet’s slimy uncle thirsting for throne and queen
comes to mind, along with Richard III, who wanted no child left alive who might
have a claim on his exalted place. There is apparently a throng of would-be
rulers in Nepal right now planning an assault on the palace. Has King Gyanendra
consulted with the witches? They told Macbeth the truth, as he, a
Western-educated man, must know.
But if Prince Dipendra did what he seems to have done, this
passing news event will live and be
elaborated in song, dance and theater as a great love story-tinged, of
course, with tragic and terrible rage. If he wanted to marry a particular
woman, and his mother, known for her autocratic ways, insisted that he marry
someone else, we have here a passion play about a man who wants his own choice
in love-and how very Western that is. This is a clash of values: We believe it
is our God-given right to forge our own romantic and erotic destiny, while for
other peoples such an idea is laughable (if not subversive). No wonder the
Muslim fundamentalists want to keep all Western TV channels dark.
The traditionalists have no interest in Prince Dipendra’s
chosen loved one, but we can imagine what she must be feeling: pride in having
been loved so fiercely; grief at her loss. This is worth an aria, maybe two. It
is not impossible that the thought of losing his loved one drove Prince
Dipendra into such a state of rage that he killed the woman who would deprive
him of his deepest desire, and all around. The mischief-maker here is the idea
of love as choice. As it destroyed the kingdom of Troy, so it destroyed the
kingdom of King Birendra and took his life. It is possible that this Western
idea of free love met in Prince Dipendra’s mind with his sense of himself as a
god entitled to anything he wanted. His fury at being thwarted was unmodulated
by the ordinary disappointments most of us suffer before we are 30. He did not
think of running away with his bride. He did not think of establishing a
kingdom in exile. He did not think of getting a job with a bank in London.
Instead, he erupted like a volcano and, in his rage, killed himself as well,
proving once again that murder and suicide are but two sides of the same coin. Heads
or tails, it’s sometimes a matter of accident which turns up.
But when this kind of rage bursts forth in royal families,
it has political ramifications that are not so pretty. If the Maoists who are
in the mountains come down, death may be
shared democratically. If the country cannot regain its footing as
either a monarchy or a constitutional entity, there will be hell to pay, and
all because a boy learned in the West that he was a mortal being with a heart
of his own that could not bear being broken. He who dares wound a god must die.
Now that our world is practically one, linked by computer,
as New York Times columnist Tom
Friedman often writes, there will be
many more victims of cultural confusion. As the West dominates with its TV and
movies and Big Macs, there will be more and more sons raging at fathers and
forlorn parents who don’t understand why their children are demanding such huge
helpings of personal freedom. This fact alone will provide us with a century’s
worth of dramatic intrigue.
