| ashu |
Posted
on 03-Jun-01 04:49 AM
Unspeakable evil visited the Royal Palace in Kathmandu
last Friday night.
And we in Nepal and around the world are left shell-shocked, dazed, stunned, confused, heart-broken and afraid. There are
no rational explanations -- just rumors chasing rumors.
Sri Pashupati Nath -- whose new main priest, BTW, started his job only last Monday on the day of Nepal Bandh after meeting with the King in the morning (SPN, we all know, was always evoked in the late King's speeches to the nation) -- failed to do the
"rakchya" he was supposed to do.
May the souls of Their Majesties and their deceased family members rest in peace.
And may there be a speedy recovery of those who are in critical conditions at the hospital.
The late King, a former resident of Quiny House (now across from
Prahlad KC's present store on Mt. Auburn Street) at Harvard University was a Nepali in Boston before there were other Nepalis
in Boston. Indeed, of all the places in the US, the King spent
the most amount of time in Cambridge, Mass . . . and in that sense, quite logically, the GBNC has also lost a former member.
**************
As for Deependra, if it turns out with evidence (and this is important before further definite conclusions are drawn) that it was indeed he who killed his own parents and siblings and more, then one way to understand why he did what he did could be through the lens of biology.
That is to say, for whatever reasons, maybe tensions surrounding his marriage ko kura (with all the previously bottled/unspoken grudges/neuroses/psychoses) made Deependra's emotional circuits snap altogether AT THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT.
He lost self-control altogether, and, emotionally, he was in a free-fall state in which giddiness and bravado outrank prudence.
At that stage, it is conceivable that ALL his previously bottled rage came pouring out, and Deependra was, as those who study mass murderers would say, 'flooded' with blinding rage in which only aim was: revenge and revenge alone for years of bottled/unspoken grudges/neuroses/psychoses.
And so, he did the killings in blind, blind fury -- in a state of mental craziness for a minute or two or maybe longer.
When he finally came to his normal senses, he realized what he had done, and was flooded again, this time with heart-felt remorse, and then RATIONALLY tried to take his own life: a gruesome attempt at murder-suicide that defies traditional
linear rationality but not the hardwired-since-ages and
acquired-through-genetics blinking of axons and dendrites of
the nerves.
For argument's sake, if such a murderer were an American and
were he to stand trial in an American court, his lawyers
could save him from execution by pushing for what they call: "insanity defense".
I don't know what others would call such an act.
But with reasons, and some one with long-standing fascination
with neurobiology and evolutionary psychology, I have my own
word for just such an emotionally blinding state that aims at
the destruction of others and of one's self.
The word is: 'shagong'.
May the real cultprit of the massacre be found, and may we all have the strength to put this terrible, terrible tragedy behind
us to move ahead.
oohi
ashu
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