Blog 5 topic 3 Chapter 5- junge The savage and the playboy era

 

Blog  5

topic 3

Chapter 5- junge

The savage and the playboy era

It wasn’t like I was always serious or planning every step of my future. My life was chilled, wild, and glorious once I held the power of a nation. Back then, even while solving my country’s problems, I lived in a fountain of happiness. On November 1, 1860, I reclaimed Banke, Bardiya, Kailali, and Kanchanpur. It wasn’t hard—I sent my Gurkha regiments to help the British East India Company capture Gorakhpur and Lucknow, and in return those districts came back under Nepal’s flag. Soon, hill people settled in Kailali and Kanchanpur alongside the native Tharus, living in peace that endures even now.

A decade earlier, I had already defied the heavens. In 1850, I became the first high‑ranking South Asian ruler to sail to Britain. Crossing the “dark waters” was no small thing—it risked my soul, my caste, my very identity. So I carried purity with me: Ganges water, live cows, my brothers Dhir and Jagat, and forty loyal men aboard the SS Ripon. On deck, I proved myself. Rifle in hand, I shattered glass bottles tied to the mast, showing the English that a highlander’s eye never falters.

In London, I stood before Queen Victoria at St. James’s Palace, bearing a diamond and a king’s letter. She met me six times. The London elite marveled at my jewels, but I marveled at their industry. At Woolwich Arsenal, I wasn’t a guest—I was a student of war. I studied percussion caps, rifled barrels, and the chemistry of gunpowder. Flintlocks were relics; the future was steel and precision. At James Purdey’s workshop, I spent eighteen hundred pounds on twenty‑three rifles and pistols, arming my inner circle with the finest weapons the West could forge. These weren’t trophies—they were blueprints for Nepal’s survival.

Amidst the galas, I found Moti Lal Singh, a Gurkha reduced to sweeping London’s streets. I lifted him from the gutter, dressed him in silks, and made him my interpreter. Even when I met the Duke of Wellington, whom I found less impressive than legend claimed, my mind was fixed on the mechanics of power. In Paris, I stood before Napoleon’s tomb, admiring the man who had once shaken Europe. The French, however, were strange—whispering that I ate raw meat, locking my hotel doors over petty disputes, even provoking a brawl with my guards before diplomats intervened.

The journey home was heavy with reflection. I had seen the true scale of British power—their factories, their ships, their discipline. Nepal’s survival depended on friendship balanced with strength. Yet the spiritual cost of my travels weighed on me. Before returning to Kathmandu, I stopped in Benares for purification rituals, bathing in the Ganges to wash away the “taint” of the West. By February 1851, I returned not just as Prime Minister, but as a visionary who had stared into the heart of empire and carried back the secrets to secure our dynasty’s future.

I didn’t live a boring life. I introduced so many things in Nepal that children of later generations would memorize for exams. My focus in England was never on galas or praise—it was on the cold, hard weight of weaponry. I watched their machines press percussion caps and bore rifle barrels with precision we had never seen in the Himalayas. I knew that bravery alone was no longer enough; chemistry and industry defined power.

Every rifle I purchased, every factory floor I studied, served one purpose: to ensure that when the British looked toward our borders, they saw a reflection of their own lethal efficiency. I carried back the seeds of a military revolution, directing my smiths to adapt our arsenals to Western standards, pushing for percussion systems and disciplined drills. I had seen their cannons, their infantry moving like a single iron‑willed machine, and I brought that vision home.

I promised myself that when my family’s rule ended, it would not be through selfishness or endless struggle for the throne. It would be through unity—through the strength and vision I carried back from the West, ensuring Nepal remained a sovereign jewel in the mountains while the rest of the world bent beneath empire.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…..  with my death