Free Republic or Death! by Alex Marshall Page A

of music that’s like a trip into the Maghreb’s most menacing souk. Then there’s Puerto Rico’s ‘La Borinqueña’, which has a certain heat to its trumpets, a remnant of the fact it was originally a dance tune called ‘Gorgeous Brunette’, written for swinging partners around rum-soaked music halls. But on the whole you’d be surprised how rare it is to have such local character in an anthem. There are no rumba rhythms in Cuba’s, for instance, and no bossa nova in Brazil’s; there’s no oud being plucked in Iran’s and no highlife guitars in Ghana’s. It’s as if everyone’s afraid of sounding unique – as if they heard ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘La Marseillaise’ and decided, ‘This is the music that means patriotism, let’s copy this,’ even when their musical heritage couldn’t be further from the West’s.
    But even bearing that handful of examples in mind, no one has taken the leap into local music quite like Nepal. It’s surprising that a country this small is the only one to have had the guts to stand up to 450 or so years of anthem history and pick such a unique tune. It’s also a surprising choice for another reason: ‘Sayaun Thunga Phool Ka’ isn’t at heart a peaceful song as the music and lyrics imply, but a song of revolution and struggle. It’s also one with a far from gentle story behind it, one that involves four men: Baburam on one side; the former king, Gyanendra, on the other; and two poor composers – one poet, one musician – trapped in the middle.
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    Pradip Kumar Rai is, I’m almost certain, the only man to have met his wife thanks to an anthem. On 1 December 2006, a poem Pradip had written – under the pen name Byakul Maila – was chosen over 1,271 others to become ‘Sayaun Thunga Phool Ka’, Nepal’s new anthem, and help end over 200 years of devotion to Nepal’s royal family (Nepal was created in 1769 when a family called the Shahs came down from the hills to conquer a host of princely states; in 2006, King Gyanendra was still on the throne, but the Maoist agreement meant it was clear the monarchy would soon be abolished).
    From that day, Pradip, then a shy thirty-four-year-old from a one-road village in the eastern mountains, became a celebrity. He got invited to events all over Nepal, where people would drown him in garlands made from bright orange marigolds, piling them around his neck until he could barely see, or else they’d ask to touch his feet, the most respectful gesture a Hindu can make. People would come up to him in the street (‘They always recognised my moustache’), while bus drivers would refuse his fare. Once he crashed while driving in Kathmandu, smashing another car’s sidelights. The driver demanded all the money Pradip had, until he realised who he was.
    ‘Wait, aren’t you Byakul Maila?’ he said. ‘I can’t charge you anything.’
    As the plaudits built up, a family friend, Nanu, kept calling him to ask how he was doing and where he was going next, to tell him she was so happy he’d brought attention to their home region. Pradip didn’t get the hint until one day she came to his house to say thanks in person and asked to greet his wife. ‘I haven’t got one yet,’ he said. She blushed.
    Pradip tells me all this with a proud grin on his face. We’re drinking milky spiced masala tea in the front room of the house he rents in Lalitpur, a city just to the south of Kathmandu. His daughter is sitting on his knee in a pink dress, pulling faces and throwing a Barbie doll around, while Nanu is hiding in the kitchen cooking lunch, embarrassed to hear herself mentioned. The walls are covered in silver plaques and a portrait of Pradip – prizes he’s been given for writing the anthem. It feels like the home of a genuinely content family and that’s the story Pradip would like me to tell. But the problem is his tale of overnight success isn’t as straightforward as he makes out. Pradip finishes talking then looks at me