Ghatana

A 24-minute song by Nepathya about the tragic 2004 Maina Pokhari incident as a call for peace during the Nepalese civil war. On a mountainous highway, a public bus was caught in the crossfire of army troupes and Maoist guerillas. Within an hour, eight innocent Nepali lost their lives. When the press flashed an image of a surviving grandmother holding a 20-day-old grandchild, more emotions broke loose. Nepathya's lead singer Amrit Gurung, disheartened, traveled to the incident site and captured the heavy air and grim ambience of such a disgraceful act. Talking with villagers, survivors and helpless eyewitnesses, instead of chords, Amrit remained surrounded by silence. Out of this painful contemplation of the Maina Pokhari incident has come 'Ghatana', in a blend of the narrative folk art of the wandering Gandharvas - the Nepali troubadours, fused to Rock Ballad. It is a portrait and a condemning of such a disgraceful incident that has hardly stopped to cease in Nepal and elsewhere.