By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : One of the most gripping tales to have captured public imagination is the legend of Tutankhamen’s curse, the superstition that the mummy of Egypt’s boy-king took its revenge on the violators of its tomb, causing the death of the British excavators who discovered the grave in 1923.
Though the tales petered out in the 80s, after the woman who was the last link to the expedition died, a similar myth has now sprung up in Nepal, still regarded as a mysterious land that opened up to the outside world only in 1950.
According to Nepal’s tabloid press, a secret room in a temple in western Nepal wields similar power, and could be responsible for the massacre of Nepal’s royal family in 2001 as well as the sudden death of a parliamentarian recently.
More than two centuries ago, the forefather of the present King Gyanendra, swooped down on Kathmandu valley from the tiny kingdom of Gorkha in western Nepal and began annexing the neighbouring principalities.
The old palace still stands in Gorkha, protected by the temple of Gorkhakali, the goddess of war and power.
Like many old temples in Nepal, the Gorkhakali shrine has a “vayu kotha” – a secret room said to contain dangerous powers and kept locked.
Though worshippers are forbidden to enter the secret room, the late queen, Aishwarya, ordered the lock to be forced open and entered it in May 2001, the Jana Aastha tabloid reported.
A week later, the queen, while attending a dinner party with family members, was gunned down along with king Birendra, three of their children, and other relatives, reportedly by her eldest son crown prince Dipendra who also perished in the infamous midnight massacre.
The scared temple authorities boarded up the room once again only to be commanded to re-open it last month, which was once again followed by death, the tabloid said.
Last month, a team of parliamentarians went to Gorkha as part of its mandate to visit Nepalese prisons and advise the government how to improve them.
The tabloid said that the head of the team, Dilli Raj Sharma, went to the temple where the priest told him about queen Aishwarya’s visit.
An intrigued Sharma then reportedly asked the priest to have the door of the secret room forced open once again so that he could go inside.
By evening, Sharma, who had reportedly told his peers that he was in the best of health, had a sudden heart attack and died while he was being rushed to hospital.
“A coincidence connects the queen and the legislator,” the Nepalese tabloid said.
Scores of chilling legends, especially about the royal family, abound in Nepal.
The most repeated one is about how Prithvi Narayan Shah, the warrior king who had begun expanding his kingdom from Gorkha, angered a holy man with supernatural powers, Gorakhnath.
The sage cursed Shah, saying his dynasty would end after the 10th king.
Birendra, who died in the June 1, 2001 assassination along with his entire family, was the 10th king of the Shah dynasty.