Letter From Kathmandu: It's Bad to Be the King

The trouble is that no one knows who might replace him. Though the anti-King movement has wide support, many protesters are teenagers or twentysomething Nepalese men in Nirvana and Metallica T shirts who have no leader and few goals beyond throwing rocks. Cars, shops and the Hyatt Regency Hotel have all been attacked in the past weeks. Ken Ohashi, the World Bank's top official in Nepal, describes royal abdication as a "doomsday scenario. There is no mechanism in place to create a new government. There's no parliament. There's no one to issue orders to the army. The Maoists could walk into Kathmandu by default." At the very least, says the friend of the royals, "autocracy would switch to anarchy."

Out on the streets, even the demonstrators express reservations about life without a monarch. "No one has a clear road map for what might happen after the King," says Ravi Shah, 26, an administrator with a youth charity. "We've had a system of Kings for 237 years. Is it possible to just throw them out?" Bhandari nods in agreement. He says whatever the King's faults, the older generation still reveres him as an incarnation of Vishnu, a symbol of national unity. "The reality is that all the plans for the future are vague," says Bhandari. "Everyone has democracy, freedom and human rights in their hearts. And we know none of that is possible under an autocratic regime. But a life without the King? We're shouting for it. But I'm not sure we can imagine it." Now would be a good time to start.