The Tutor of History
Arresting God in Kathmandu
Upadhyay’s followed his maiden effort with a novel, The Guru of Love—a story of a fortysomething Kathmandu maths teacher, Ramachandra, who is married into a well-connected family. He has no real friends and supplements his modest income by private tutoring. The ensuing story is predictable, an affair with one of his tutees, resulting in his wife, Goma, leaving home for her parents’. But the twist and the novel’s interest lies in the way she handles the situation—Goma demands her husband’s student Malati and her one-year daughter move in with them.
Upadhyay paints a slice of contemporary Nepal that is almost always overlooked in the books written by outsiders. Guru of Love is a moving novel written with tenderness and compassion.
