Word: birendra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...were allowed. Crown Prince Dipendra, 29, offered to pour drinks. The Queen Mother was with her friends in the sitting room; the young crowd hung out around the bar and CD player in the billiards room. Dipendra, however, would quietly retire 45 minutes after the party began. When King Birendra arrived, in good humor and drinking a Coca-Cola, he was ready for some gossip. He was involved in chitchat about cholesterol and gout when Dipendra returned, dressed in commando fatigues and carrying two assault rifles, and strode toward him. "Dipendra just looked at his father?he said nothing...
...whose preferred mode of transportation is a Lexus SUV and whose favored intoxicant is locally processed hashish. By the time the night was over, the two would become central figures in the succession to a throne traditionally occupied by a reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. Until Friday, King Birendra, the Crown Prince's father, was the god's avatar...
...party like Westerners has left them wondering what will become of the formerly elder-respecting, ancestor- worshipping, opposite-sex-avoiding youth. Traditionalists and monarchists lay blame for the nascent dissolution on the liberalism engendered by a 10-year-old democracy that has already seen 10 Prime Ministers. King Birendra ruled Nepal as an absolute monarch until 1990, when he was forced by violent protests to step down in favor of a constitutional monarchy. But critics have assailed the new democratic values, saying they encourage people to do whatever feels right, regardless of the consequences: dump the Prime Minister, take...
...Birendra had made the transition from absolutism gracefully, staying above factional politics and striving through literacy programs and public works efforts to project an image of the royal family as a discreet, benevolent force. Ambassador Keshav Raj Jha, a former Chief of Protocol, recalls that when the King visited Italy in 1994, he traveled by unmarked bus and stopped at McDonald's for coffee and snacks. "He refused to allow his security detachment to tell people who he was," says Raj Jha. "He waited in line just like the other motorists...
...fact, Narayan Shrestha was crown prince Birendra Shah Dev's tutor. Today, following Shah Dev's murder, he suffers from a "huge emotional loss," according...