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letters exchanged between Bangdel and his beloved (Manu). Muluk Bahira Ma
presents 500 pages of a rare collection of love letters exchanged between
Lainsingh and his consort. There is wisdom, experience, hope and sadness. His
desire for great art and great literature is indomitable. I don’t recommend any
other book to an avid reader like you more than this Muluk Bahira Ma. This
book proves that he had gained an incomparable height and success in Nepali
art. Mostly, it is in the form of a daily diary. On his regular entry of 17 of
th
Curriculum Development Centre
August 1952, one year before I was born, he wrote these lines from Paris:
I visited Musée d’Art Moderne (Museum of Modern Art) today. I had an
opportunity to look at the paintings of all the artists of France, living and dead,
together. The paintings of Braque and Picasso moved me exceedingly. I came
across many artists who have imitated the form of Georges Seurat and styles of
Cézanne and Gauguin.
But I could not see here the paintings of Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir.
Probably they are upstairs. I will come some other day (Page 145).

Nirmal bhaai had described my way to two Museums - Rodin’s and Monet’s.
I set out all alone, for the ¿ rst time in the megacity of Paris. I had to enter the
metro station, deep down below, buy tickets from the vending machine. Nobody
will speak English to me if I got lost, perhaps, because they speak French, but
for me everything is so strange and unknown. I must have spent innumerable
CDC
days and nights in learning France since SLC. We had a map of France, we had
history of France. The French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First and
Second World Wars, the Existentialists… It is an endless story. Lainsingh’s
writing produces a living France; even B. P. Koirala has detailed his brief
journey of France in his book Hitler and the Jews. I have known great people
and the land, and I feel the French people too must know me.
But when I think deeply, I know, nobody knows me. I am alone, and I
wonder about the consequences if I take the wrong line. Then I mustered up
the courage to travel along the underground tubes alone. Nirmal had bought
me tickets and shown routes. I entered the underground world near Paris
Nord station and travelled for about 30 minutes. It was claustrophobic, the
crowd was so huge and shifting all the time. At last I got out of the tube near
Vernon. Then, I ascended to the surface of the earth, as if from nowhere, by
climbing the escalator. I reached a broad street where vehicles were plying
swiftly. I came to a different air, an open space, and I no more felt suffocated.
I didn’t know which direction I was supposed to follow. So I asked a passerby:
Excuse me, can you show me the way to Musée Rodin please? He did not

speak, just pointed towards the direction with his white ¿ngers. Perhaps he
was telling me the direction without any words. Most French like the Chinese,
they say, do not like to speak in English, though they know it, or love to speak
in their mother tongue. He spoke in French, politely of course. I could only
guess what he said. I thanked him, though he had gone a bit further ahead, and
I continued my pace.
36 ENGLISH, Class 10