The bizarre story of Nepal’s Prince Dipendra gunning down his relatives over dinner probably struck most Americans as an improbable farce, like a plot device out of a Greek tragedy. But for me, the reported regicide and subsequent riots had personal implications, since my good friend and roommate Gavin had landed in Katmandu on June 1, the same day as the royal massacre. Gavin and his parents had traveled to Nepal to visit his sister, a junior at Bowdoin who’d been studying there for the school year, and it just so happened that their sojourn coincided with the worst mass murder of a royal family since the Bolshevik revolution led to the demise of the Romanovs.

Fortunately, Gavin and his family are alive and well, although he says via email that his family’s been “forced to stay at a guest house with threats of being shot” and that his dad has a gnarly case of dysentery. Gavin will be in Nepal until the end of June, so I asked him to articulate his impressions of the torn capital, Katmandu. Below is an excerpt from his email.

All the chaos began right after we got here. The morning after we arrived, we heard the news. We were eating breakfast at a restaurant my sister frequents when, after we’d finished the meal, the woman who owns the restaurant, and who my sister refers to only as “didi” (Nepali for “sister”), told us that the royal family was dead. She shared the news with us not as if it was hot gossip, but as if she were sharing a personal tragedy.

That sentiment, as well as the mourning of a beloved king and uncertainty of the future, has continued throughout my stay here. I can only imagine how the press has focused on the sheer spectacle: shaved-headed mobs and curfews upheld by threats of being shot. Both are realities, but far more prevalent is a feeling of sorrow and loss. Has the media shared why everyone has shaved heads? It is a sign of respect to the king.

Two nights after the killings we were near the palace, where most of the unrest has been, and there was a mob chanting something my sister couldn’t make out. At first we assumed the worst, but after asking a few people we learned that they were paying their respects to the king.

There is definite anger and frustration here. Can you blame them when the circumstances are as mysterious as they are? And when the people find out their king is dead via BBC — and Nepali radio doesn’t report it until the day after the killings? But it’s not anger and frustration that I have personally encountered, but sadness and questioning of the future. The Nepali people are mourning a king they loved and a Nepal that is quickly changing. I hope the best for these people. Humanity has so far to go.

Issue Date: June 14 - 21, 2001