Narahari Acharya’s Thanks Giving Meeting

Narahari Acharya, while giving me the Nepali Congress manifesto and his book about national restructuring, tries to show me something from the manifesto that was related to our conversation. Pics by Suraj Kunwar

Sharada Sharma, the writer and wife of politician Narahari Acharya, had invited us (Suraj and I) at a small gathering of writers and literary figures in their home on Sunday 11, May. I haven’t stopped wondering how and why I fell into the category of ‘writers’ for her but I saw no harm in attending the program as a reporter though I wasn’t there to report the event.

Sharada had invited us before the elections of the CA and, now that Acharya won from Kathmandu-5, they wanted to thank us for our “wishes and cooperation and help”.

As long as there was Suraj (and his newly bought Hero Honda Shine of course), I had no problem in going to Acharya’s home in…What’s the name of the place…I forget at this moment…that’s near Maharajgunj. Chundevi, I think. Suraj came to pick me up at the book fair in Bhrikutimandap where I was studying the body language of people in the crowd (more about this in other posts).

Last time, in the pre-poll gathering, we were late. When we had reached the venue, Acharya’s home, the meeting was almost over. We quickly chatted with the pair; I asked a couple of questions to the then candidate and came back. This time, though we were late by about half an hour only. The program had just started as we reached the Acharya residence. The program…that is Narahari Acharya standing in front of the guests and briefing them on the latest political developments. He expressed his happiness over the election victory.

We took snacks and tea. Sharada joined us and we chatted with her for a few minutes. (Later, in the farewell conversations, I promised to help her install the Unicode environment in her laptop and set up a blog site where, I suggested, she could post her Campaign Trail diaries. She said he had wonderful experience of knowing different things about people and their expectations while campaigning for her husband.)

As we were chatting with Sharada I saw someone who almost looked like Krishna Dharabasi, the acclaimed writer of, among others, the novel Radha that I had bought an hour or so ago in the book fair in Bhrikutimandap. (More about this in the next post.)