Bhuwan Chand: Aama

It all started on 7 Oct. 1964, when the first movie made in Nepal, Aama, premiered in Kathmandu. Bollywood filmmaker Hira Singh Khatri came to Nepal on King’s Mahendra’s invitation to direct it, and despite the undercurrent of Panchayat propaganda, Aama was the beginning of a Nepali film industry. The movie became immensely successful, screened for months in the old Jai Nepal Cinema Hall. Moviegoers stood in line for hours to get tickets while some sold tickets in black. The cast included Uttam Nepali, Indra Lal Shrestha, Basundhara Bhusal and Hari Prasad Rimal. While Shiva Shankar played the male protagonist, Bhuwan Chand took up the role of Sani, his female counterpart.

Bhuwan Chand was born Bhuwan Thapa in June, 1949 to mother Gujeshwori Thapa and father Ustad Bhairab Bahadur Thapa. With a singer/ songwriter for a father, she grew up with art around her all the time. “A lot of singers and musicians would be constantly coming and leaving the house,” she says. It should hardly come as a surprise that Bhuwan was only five years old when she made her theatre debut as the character of Chinchi, a daughter in Andha Bheg by Bal Krishna Samha. Bhuwan tried schooling at the newly opened Demonstration School in Lazimpat, but she chose to focus more on her art and study with a private tutor. While growing up, she found herself interested in theatre rather than watching movies or being in them. It about 10 years later after her debut that she was offered to play Sani, in Aama. “There were so few actors back then that Shiva Shankar dai, who was actually from a musical field, had to be the lead actor,” she recalls. “Things changed after coming on screen, we became public figures.”

By the time the movie came out, Bhuwan had already earned a reputation for her theatre performances and would often be sent to foreign countries for cultural exchange programs with a troupe. In fact, she missed the premier of Aama because she had to be in China for one such cultural exchange program. But it seems the actress has few regrets about the whole thing. “We got to see Mao Tse-Tung at the Tiananmen Square during a big show there in October. He was only a commander at the time. It’s one of my more fond and interesting memories,” she says.

But really, how does someone who has been performing for decades trace her favorite memories? Having been a part of the Rangamanch, if any VIP show needed to be put on in Nepal, it was usually the troupe with which Bhuwan performed that would be asked to do the job. Her troupe performed in all of the 14 zones of Nepal, and Queen Elizabeth is just one of the many foreign guests that she performed for. “I don’t know if people remember this, but there used to be a huge tree in Tudhikhel and once we performed there for a Russian official whose name I can’t recall,” she says laughing. “There were so few of us that we would be performing for everyone, from local audience to foreign guests on official visits to Nepal. Before we could wash our make up off, it would be time to go on stage again. There wasn’t much money and we were always busy, but we loved what we were doing.”

Nepali society remains largely conservative even today, and so it is surprising to find a woman who has dedicated her life to performing arts while making sure she doesn’t miss a beat of being a wife and mother. “I am lucky that my husband supports my work,” she says. “And every time I see her old pictures, I know I am married to the most beautiful woman,” her husband Michael Chand adds. Although the two lived in the same neighborhood, it was only while both of them worked at Rastriya Naach Ghar that she and him got talking. While she was the actress, he was an English MC there. The two got married on 6 Oct. 1976. But one day after the wedding, Bhuwan had to leave for Moscow, and day after that, Mike had to leave for Germany. It was only three months later that they met in Germany. in 1978 Bhuwan became a mother of her first of three daughters, Sheila Chand. The changes in her personal life weren’t a big deal for her, as she loved every bit of what was happening. It was the changes that she began to see in the performing arts industry and it’s audience that she wasn’t too happy about. “Back in the day the audience was more interested in the story. But slowly it became more about quick entertainment. There’s hardly any audience for art movies in Nepal,” she says. “And back then people used to line up for hours to watch plays. Today, things are quite different.”

Bhuwan Chand’s career now spans over 50 years of countless theatre performances and just as many TV shows. Her second movie as the lead female actress was Hijo Aja Bholi. “Movies were being made in time gaps of several years so by the time I took up my third movie project, I was already into character roles rather than the ‘heroine’, so to speak,” she smiles. She has now starred in over three- dozen movies. She has been working for the Rastriya Naach Ghar for more than 44 years is nearing retirement. But her passion for performing arts remains the same. Many in the field see her as a role model while some still respect her work and seniority and refer to her as “aama.” “I don’t miss a day of work, and retirement is just a technicality. My work with theatre will continue,” she say confidently.

Source: Wave Magazine, March 2005

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