King Mahendra (महेन्द्र)महेन्द्र

The name on the poem

King Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, born on 11 June 1920, was king of Nepal from 1955 until his death on 31 January 1972. He also wrote poems meant to be sung, and he signed them M.B.B. Shah (म.वि.वि. शाह), which is how the initials of his name look in Nepali. They were printed in a palace magazine called Ramjham (रमझम), and many of them were sung. This page names the poems. The lines stay in the magazine and in the recordings, because the poems are still under copyright, which means the right to copy them still belongs to his heirs.

Ramjham

Later writers say the magazine existed because Crown Prince Birendra's Nepali was weak, and Mahendra thought that editing it would make the language stronger. Birendra was the editor, and the king's own office was the publisher. Sitaram Baral, writing in Nepal Khabar, says the Ashoj 2025 issue in the Bikram calendar, which is the autumn of 1968, printed a poem called Euta Machine (यौटा मेशीन), "A Machine," under the name M.B.B. Shah. The poem is about an old Nepali machine, about half a century old and made of steel, that works long days without extra pay or repair until a part fails before evening. The same account says he wrote it after a heart attack the year before, in the Bikram year 2024, while he was hunting in Kailali and Kanchanpur, and that he was past forty-eight. The lines stay in the magazine.

Sahitya Post, which is where this page takes the pen name and the lake poem, says Rara ki Apsara (रारा कि अप्सरा) sets Lake Rara beside an apsara, a heavenly dancer, after he had gone to the water. A third piece people still name is the song Garchhin Pukar Aama (गर्छिन् पुकार आमा रोइ कराई जोडले), a patriotic song in which a mother calls out, crying. Taranath Sharma later said he was jailed for a hard review, because he argued that the lines sat too close to Urdu songs, and that Mahendra released him once the king knew why. That is Sharma's account, which Sahitya Post repeats, and this page has not checked a court paper.

Abhi Subedi, writing in Kantipur Koseli on 25 December 2021, retells a scene from BP Koirala's memoir Atmabrittanta (आत्मवृत्तान्त), the story of his own life. Before a trip to India, Mahendra read BP a poem about leaving for foreign cities, while the people who stay rest by the river and the chautari (चौतारी), the shaded seat under a tree, and remember him. BP called the poem tender. Other critics called the feeling staged, which means put on for show. Both remarks can stand, and the lines stay in the memoir.

The same man

On 15 December 1960 he suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, dismissed the cabinet, and jailed BP Koirala (विश्वेश्वरप्रसाद कोइराला). The order he put in place was the Panchayat, a stack of councils with the king above them and no legal party under them. The poems do not cancel that day, and that day does not erase the poems. BP's page tells the jail. Bhupi's page tells the street under that rule. The poems were printed and sung because he was the crown, so they sit beside the writers who lived under that crown.

Accounts of the Royal Nepal Academy, the Nepal Rajkiya Pragya Pratisthan (नेपाल राजकीय प्रज्ञा प्रतिष्ठान), say he was its first head, and that he later gave the chair to the poet Kedarman Vyathit (केदारमान व्यथित). Later essays say a Mahendra scholarship brought Banira Giri (वानीरा गिरी) from the Indian hills to study Nepali in Kathmandu. Banira's own page does not say this, so it stays those essays' claim. Queen Aishwarya (ऐश्वर्य) became queen the day he died. Her poems are on the last page of this book, under the name Chadani Shah (चाँदनी शाह).

What to carry out of the room

Carry M.B.B. Shah as the name on the poems, and Ramjham as the palace magazine that printed them. Carry Euta Machine, Rara ki Apsara, and Garchhin Pukar Aama as names. The lines stay in the magazine and in the recordings. Carry 15 December 1960 as the act of the same man.

Where it sits

The page before this one is Bhupi Sherchan (भूपि शेरचन). The page after it is Prema Shah (प्रेमा शाह). On the front of the shelf he sits with the writers of these years, after Bhupi, because the Panchayat is the weather of that part of the book. Queen Aishwarya (ऐश्वर्य) is at the end of the book. Her page is the last page of the book, and it points back here, because she became queen when he died.