On the afternoon of 14 February, following a tour of a number of potential projects for the future, my host, Basu dev Golyan and another member of his Rotary Club and I, as I stated earlier, attended a part of a Rotaract Club function - the junior Prince and Princess competition. The hall where the event was held was an elegant building, which in its day must have been rather spectacular. When we drove to the function, part of the road had been blocked off by piles of rocks strewn across the major portion of road surface. We left the function, got back into Basu's car and backed out of the parking area out onto the road (a dusty gravel road). We proceeded down the road and when we reached a right-hand turn intersection, but wanted to proceed forward, we noticed the roadway had been completely blocked off with more piles of rocks. There was no way, other than if we had a Range Rover or a Hummer that we would be driving over these piles of sharp rocks in the road. Basu stopped the car, and as he did, I saw a rather sizeable group of young men approaching our car.
You must understand that although it was only about six o'clock in the evening, it was totally dark, other than for an occasional flickering oil lamp in a window or a smudge fire in front of a shop. The group of young men began shouting as they neared the car, and the shouting got louder and louder the closer they got. When they reached the car - with Basu in the driver's seat, the other man in the back seat, with me in the front passenger seat, they yelled something at Basu, opened his door and roughly pulled him from the car. They did the same to the man in the back seat, all the time yelling at both of them. The hoodlums, for lack of a better description, continued screaming at Basu, shoving him, slapping him and pushing him back against the car. You can imagine how safe and content I was feeling about this time! They told him the road was closed, that there was a bandh ( from Wiki-Pedia: Bandh (Hindi: बंद), originally a Hindi word meaning 'closed', is a form of protest used by political activists in some countries in South Asia like India and Nepal. During a Bandh, a major political party or a large chunk of a community declares a general strike, usually lasting one day.) throughout all of Biratnagar, and that he had no right to be driving anywhere in the city, but especially on this dirt road. Now I was beginning to realize the reason I had not seen any, or very many cars since I had arrived in Biratnagar. Moreover, I determined just why we had traveled from one part of the city to another, going by back alleys and the like. The bandh had been happening for at least five days, and these young men were very angry that Basu had the temerity to even dream that he had the right to travel over a closed road, to say nothing of actually driving on it. The reasons they voiced for the bandh were the fact they had pleaded with the local government to pave several of the roads in Biratnagar and the government, thus far, had refused. The dust filled their homes, their shops and their lungs. Even though many of the residents and shopkeepers sprinkled buckets of water on the road in front of their homes or shops to keep the dust to a minimum, such practice yielded little relief.
Meanwhile, back at the car, the thugs were really roughing up Basu and the other Rotarian. One of them grabbed the keys out of the ignition. Basu protested and somehow was able to retrieve the keys. He put them back into the ignition, but when nobody was looking, I removed the keys and put them into my pocket (to what possible end, I have no idea). Basu tried to get back into the car, but was pulled out again into the street and smacked on his chest for doing such a thing. The yelling persisted with a lot of rough talk. Basu told them he was a Rotarian and they were having none of that, either. They could care less about Rotary (only not put so calmly, and with a lot of expletives and not deleted!) I was still sitting in the front passenger seat, when I saw two rather strong-appearing young men approaching the front of the car. They reached under the front bumper and began to pick up the car and tried rocking it. I was totally convinced they intended to roll the car over either sideways or by flipping it, and with me inside! This was NOT good.
I am unsure as to whether or not Basu actually saw these guys doing this, but somehow he managed to quiet them down a bit and pointed to me in the front seat. He explained to this very angry crowd that had grown to about fifty or sixty men, he had a friend who is a foreigner in the front seat of the car and what kind of an impression do they think I am feeling from their behavior. He went on to tell them that if they continued with this behavior, I would have no other recourse than to tell people at home how poorly behaved they were (now THAT was an understatement if I ever had heard one). The two men set the car down, allowed Basu to get back in, as well as the other man, and he panicked a bit when he did not find the keys in the ignition. I tapped him on the shoulder and passed him the keys. He started the engine and even while trying to go a few feet ahead to be able to have room to turn the car around, the men pounded on the hood of the car and on the windows, yelling at Basu again that he could not go down that road any further. He was able to turn the car around and we proceeded down a side street, and into some very dark alleys, eventually making it to the main road, to drop off our friend in the back seat and then to proceed back to Basu's home. However, before seeing his friend to his home, Basu insisted on proceeding down the main street even further to where a wedding was taking place, right next to an open area which he owns where there was a Valentine's Day dance being held. We arrived at the wedding venue, a hotel in which Basu had a financial interest. He had taken me there in order to show me what accommodations a future group of Rotarians coming for a work project would be housed. The hotel (?) may once have been splendid, but I believe all of the stars had been painted out on the front of it. The stench of fresh urine was nearly overpowering and the noise from the generator was deafening. Other than that, I am sure the facility would meet our needs - NOT.
While driving home, I asked Basu if it is not a worry to him the kind of action we witnessed earlier and he seemed to brush it all off with nonchalance. I guess he was actually trying not to worry me, but that attitude did nothing but make me more apprehensive.
We arrived at his home and I excused myself to go to bed. I had experienced far more than I wished to that day and needed sleep. I went to my room. I closed one window (the one with the torn screen) opened another window, quickly got ready for bed and fell onto the king-sized mattress and fell blissfully asleep. Not even ONE mosquito bothered me during the night.
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