Kissinger’s leaders and the drifters

Nepal needs a leader who can combine the qualities of the statesmen and visionaries that Kissinger describes.

One afternoon, I visited Mandala Book Point to pick up a book for my interdisciplinary quest. The astute and humanist bookseller and publisher Madhab Lal Maharjan—who can read the minds of the academics and drifters who visit his bookshop—was there. As far as I remember, he has maintained a continuum as a bookseller from the hippie days to the present. I recall several moments when Madhab encountered book readers, including scholars and writers. I remember one moving and eloquent moment of such an encounter. Rishikesh Shah, the great Nepali historian, came to the bookshop as was his habit, and asked for some books published in Delhi. After getting the book, the frail-looking Shah said he did not have cash at that moment to pay for it. Instead, he fished out a gold coin and offered it to Madhab who, refusing to take it, said, “Shah-ji, please pay another time whenever you have the money.” Shah died a few weeks later. I recall that as a moment when a scholar and bookseller met in a contact zone imbued with the creative power of book reading and selling.