The Paths We Choose - Monica Rana

My daughter Monica's debut novel is now available on Amazon and in bookshops in India and Nepal.

https://www.biblionepal.com/products/the-paths-we-choose?srsltid=AfmBOorLGIb20ZmOqnA-Xszj_dBuijCH4bKHos5PUoB7PvdkwxLBKmBX

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BRONZE WARRIORS FOR EVER

D uring my first visit to Helsinki, Finland I was intrigued to find the huge statue of Tzar Alexander II adorning the center of Senate Square in the heart of the city. Didn't the Finns actually fight the Russians for independence? Then I remembered that, of course, Finland gained its independence during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 A.D. when Russia was convulsed by its civil war. Finland escaped the clutches of the Bolsheviks. A reformist Russian emperor is appreciated incongruously in a foreign country and not in his own! What is it about revolutions that the past has to be so negated? Does one have to end history to move forward, even while this motion is at the same time making history? Or is it the certitude of history repeating itself and toppling the present protagonists from their high pedestals that these revolutionaries are so afraid of? The French Revolution devoured its own children and gave birth to the French empire under Napoleon Bonaparte. Czar Nicholas II of...

THE GHOSTS FROM MY PAST

The Headless Horseman, Murkatta in Nepali, was the bogeyman conjured up by Nimbu Didi my nanny every time she wanted to frighten me into submission. The mere thought of this Netherworld being shut me up promptly and I meekly ate the uneatable porridge, or drank the untimely glass of milk or went to sleep when it was still playtime. Murkatta was galloping amok at the Kalo Pul , the Black Bridge constructed by Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana bridging the Patan side of town to Kathmandu at Teku. I could imagine this fearsome creature stealing past sentries into Kiran Bhawan, my father's mansion, at midnight looking for me. I used to shudder at the mere thought of it. The Pachali Bhairab Temple near the Black Bridge was the least of my favorite deities simply because the place was too spooky to explore. They told me one of the martyrs was hanged there. Even during my teens I never dared drive across that forlorn bridge, day or night. The Nepalese ghosts have so much in similarity...

THE MEN WHO WOULD BE KING

H istory is replete with cases of some would-be kings losing their natural inheritance and of some other accidental kings being crowned. In Nepal we have two very good examples of a legitimate heir to the Shah throne who was shunned aside thus changing the course of dynastic progression and a pretender who would have been crowned if his ambitious mother's well laid out gambit had succeeded! So who are these two men who would be king? Nepal in the 18th Century Family of King Rana Bahadur Shah It was during the reign of King Rana Bahadur Shah that the royal lineage of the Shah dynasty was changed. His first son Crown Prince Ranodyat, born 1794 A.D., and his younger brother Samarsher Shah were children of Junior Queen Suvarna Prabha Devi, his senior queen having given birth to a daughter. Popular legend has it that during the annual pilgrimage to Pashupatinath Temple on the occasion of Maha Shivratri, King Rana Bahadur Shah was smitten by the staggeringly beautiful Kantabati, a Maith...

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