Name: RP.

Gurung Full name: Ramprasad Gurung

Age: Fifty-seven in 2017, twenty-six in 1986. But if he says I’m “this” old, people will say incredulously, “No! Really?” He doesn’t look his age.

Height: Just tall enough for the Army.

Educational qualification: To be honest, I find this term ‘educational qualification’ a little controversial. To say that Ramprasad is merely an “eighth-class pass” would be a gross injustice because though the fact is indisputable, his intellectual is no lesser than many who have received their bachelor’s degree.

Appearance: His father had an inter-community marriage with a Thulung Rai woman and he has taken completely after his mother. Meaning, wherever he was posted, his features could land him in trouble.

Occupation: A soldier in the Indian Army for five years. A spurned, drunken lover, like Sarat Chandra’s Devdas, for close to half a year. Thereafter, branch vice president of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), the Party, for about a year. And branch chief of the Gorkha Volunteer Cell (GVC), the militant wing of the GNLF, for three years.

There is a worm of politics inside Ramprasad’s brain. Now and then it wriggles and prods him to play a role in village politics, but Ramprasad has always regarded himself more as a revolutionary than a political leader. Lately, he has taken to writing “Farmer opposite “Occupation” in the column provided in official forms. He does this to receive the paltry grants given to farmers by non-governmental organisations, by farmers’ welfare associations, by the block development office and by the agriculture department of the West Bengal government – grants that trickle down with difficulty. But even though he is from the Gurung clan, he is not a farmer. I have never seen him working in the fields. The bean and sweet pea creepers that grow in the few terraces above and below their house are sown by his wife, Shanti Bhauju.

Address: The place about which the old-timers used to say, until recently, “We’ll die before we see roads or electricity.” The place which I call “my village”.

Meaning: Village – Labda, Post Office – Mungpoo, Police Station – Rungli Rungliot, District – Darjeeling, 734313.

Though there were many who paid obeisance to his – his, meaning Ramprasad Gurung, meaning RP Gurung’s – sacrifice, the story of that sacrifice is not the “complete truth”. In 2017, a question mark appeared before the story of the supreme sacrifice he made, which we had been hearing about since 1986, and the seed of doubt started germinating inside some of us. By story, I mean the one which I am about to narrate to you. Lately, some of us in the village have been made aware of another aspect of that story which generates doubts about its “complete” truth. But I haven’t yet made that episode public.

You might say the fear that Ramprasad would add two and two to make five, have me labelled an “anti-Andolan” and get me socially boycotted, kept me from expressing doubt about his story’s veracity. Which is why you might conclude that this narrator was afraid. It is possible that had I known about this episode many years ago and made it public, I could have been called an “anti-Andolan”.

But I don’t think I would’ve divulged that secret even if I had known about it then. Okay, let’s say that I might have been afraid. What about now? Now he’s vulnerable, a deer running downhill. If the doubt about his story is made public now, who can prove that the one who did the revealing is “anti-Andolan”? But the truth is that I have always wanted to forget that particular aspect which we were made aware of. I even warned those two to keep their mouths shut about it. I did this in the hope that Ramprasad’s version of his story would live on in our midst as an inspiration.

Anyway, I have a story about Ramprasad which I don’t believe. A story about the supreme sacrifice that he made. It does not matter that I personally do not believe his story. Or that there are two or three of us who doubt it. There is no doubt that Ramprasad, who looks more Rai from his mother’s side than Gurung from his father’s, has a very interesting tale about a beating in Lucknow to prove the “complete truth” of the sacrifice he made. It is a tale many have believed over the years. And there are many who still believe it.

“You know what they say? Banaras ka subah, Lucknow ka saam,” says Ramprasad at the beginning of this story, which he has told to many people many times. He never says, simply, “These cities great fun!” Which is why ninety per cent of his listeners do not understand the saying that he quotes. At first, I was among that ninety per cent. Later, after I went to Banaras for my education, to that hoary city believed to rest upon the trident of Lord Shiva, I finally understood this saw and could be included among the ten per cent. The strange thing is, no listener has ever asked him the meaning of this proverb. Those among the ten per cent who understand the saying doubt whether Ramprasad can himself answer, if asked.

Since he begins, each time, with “Banaras ka subah, Lucknow ka saam”, the title of his story could be “Banaras Ka Subah, Lucknow Ka Saam”, or even just “Lucknow Ka Saam”. If someone were to say that this tends more towards Hindi, they could replace the “ka” with “ko”, join the “ko” with “Banaras” and “Lucknow”, and take the title closer to Nepali. Those who strongly believe in the idea of a distinct identity for the Gorkha people in India can even use “Labelled a Foreigner in His Own Country” as a title for Ramprasad’s story. After all, when is the title of a story ever important? The title does not really influence a work. It cannot make an extraordinary piece of writing ordinary, nor can it transform an ordinary work into a work of genius. To me, it seems that a title is simply a writer’s unsuccessful attempt to lift their work beyond its natural level. However, though many untitled works have been described as excellent, no untitled work has ever been written or published. A title is necessary since the tradition of writing demands it. I liked the title “Tunday Kababi of Lucknow” a little more than others and that is what I named this chapter. Readers have the freedom to change the titles of works. You may do so with this chapter, too, if you wish.

“You know what they say? Banaras ka subah, Lucknow ka saam – there are just two things worth enjoying in life, the mornings of Banaras, the evenings of Lucknow,” says Ramprasad and begins his story of a fight in Lucknow.

The story which he has told the village many times to prove that he is a staunch supporter of the Andolan goes like this.

Having finished his duty, Ramprasad had reached the barracks, changed out of his uniform and washed up, when Shyamkumar Thapa of Balasun Busti said, “Chalo yaar, today I’ll treat you to Tunday kabab of Lucknow.”

“What’s that?”

“Really! What are you saying, RP? How long have you been at your Lucknow posting?”

That day, Shyamkumar took Ramprasad to a large restaurant in an autorickshaw, making many detours on the way, where he treated him to such a tasty dish of kababs, accompanied by delicious parathas, that RP soon started saying at every opportunity, “Eh SK, let’s go there …”

In Ramprasad’s story often heard by the villagers in which the subject remains the same but the plot changes with each telling and some chapters get left out while others are added the name of the restaurant is always “Tunday Kababi” and the address is Naaz Cinema Road in Aminabad and each time he says the name of the restaurant Ramprasad wets his lips with his tongue and gulps down the saliva flooding his mouth. When he does this, those in his audience who know about Tunday Kababi and in whom a doubt about his narratorial credibility has arisen find their suspicion lessening.

Excerpted with permission from This Place of Mud and Bone, Sanjay Bista, translated from the Nepali by Anurag Basnet, Penguin India.