Crown Prince Paras of Nepal is not a man to trifle with, especially after he's had a session on the bottle. Johnnie Walker Black Label is his preferred tipple and when word courses around the bars of Kathmandu's fashionable Babar Mahal Revisited, a restored 19th-century Rana palace, that the 35-year-old Paras is drunk again astride his black Harley-Davidson and cruising with his thuggish outriders, down come the shutters on the nightspots. Some clubs even employ Paras-watchers to keep an eye on the car park, lest the royal posse show up and wreak havoc.
Nepalis know that Prince Paras has form. He's allegedly killed three men, including folk singer Praveen Gurung, who challenged Paras while rescuing a woman the prince was said to be man-handling outside a club. Paras is reported to have run over him a few times in his four-wheel drive. A half-hearted police investigation took no action.
Violence seems to follow the Shah dynasty. Paras is the only heir to the throne because his cousin, Crown Prince Dipendra slaughtered 10 family members, including himself, in a regicide in Narayanhity Palace five years ago. 'It's no mystical mountain Shangri-La kingdom of smiling people any more,' said Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times.
But since April, Nepalis haven't seen a lot of Paras or his equally unpopular father, King Gyanendra. The recent political upheaval in Nepal, topped off last Saturday when parliament stripped the king of his right to veto laws, has put paid to the prince's nightclubbing. If Paras were to mount his Harley and head out to party these days, he'd likely be killed at the hands of the mob, such is the deep-seated and now widely aired derision held for the god-king and his family.
It was a close-run thing for the royals. As protesters advanced towards the palace earlier this month demanding loktantra, or total democracy, Gyanendra had the helicopter engines whirring on his lawns. The Indian ambassador laid out the home truths: resist and in 24 hours you'll probably be dead if you don't leave; or step down, perhaps go into exile in India or, more likely, Africa or France where the royals have recently bought some property. A massive mid-afternoon hailstorm broke the tension and the king, a superstitious man who has his own palace astrologers, saw a sign and allowed parliament's restoration in return for his family staying in Nepal. An unwieldy seven-party governing coalition is now trying to craft a new constitution.
'The man did not have the intellectual or organisational skills to run a police state,' said Kanak Dixit, who like his brother Kunda is one of Nepal's leading journalists.