Sometimes you meet someone who stays within your heart and soul for decades, someone you never forget.
That’s Kirann BK, affectionately called Busha. As a survivor of the years-long Nepal civil war, uprisings, unrest and military take-overs, he kept his eyes open. His father, of the lowest Hindu social class, was a casualty. His mother, another casualty, unable to cope with a hacked-up husband and grief stricken, ran away. She left behind young, terrified and soon starving, children. Resilient Busha did what he could at his young age to make it through. Making it through meant getting to Butwal, and clearing tables in a restaurant, hoping to make a few rupees. Making it through meant scrawling signs in his childish lettering and posting them around Butwal asking for help for himself and his siblings.
A country doctor saw a sign. He rescued Busha and his siblings and brought them to an orphanage. A few years later, when unrest lessened, we met. That particular time is memorialized.
It was 2006. Our volunteer charity was taking its first steps. Both Rosemarie Briggs, my daughter, and I weren’t new to India or Nepal. She’d volunteered in a beggar camp in Himachal Pradesh, India. There, the “classroom” in use as a cow shelter was scrapped clean in the morning. Additionally, we had found Canadian sponsors for refugees from Tibet who’d escaped to northern India.
Then, in 2006, after a meditation retreat in Lumbini, Nepal, I came upon the orphanage. Repeating the orphanage name to the bus driver, he let me off at the dusty steel gates. The gate into the compound creaked open, and I entered a new world. It was a world of needy but smiling children existing on little and thankful for anything. Rats ran rampant and glassless windows where blasts of wind propelled mosquitoes, dust or rain spurred me on to do something. Tea, rice, dahl, vegetables and some fruit was their fare, but it was minimal. Hunger, lack of bedding or essentials like clothes, beset them. All those incidents created Hands of Hope — Books and Basics for Kids in India and Nepal. And we haven’t stopped. How could one?
Those kids in the Nepal orphanage didn’t lack for love or care. That was the pivotal time when I met Busha. He was the one who scraped up extra food for the 24 kids in the orphanage. His alert ears knew when it was safe to go out, or if there would be a Maoist bandh (road strike) and burning tires on the highway to Bhairahwa, southern Nepal or elsewhere. From 2006 to 2025, both Rosemarie and I managed to fundraise to help with basic living needs and provide post-secondary education for Busha and the other boys and girls. In 2006 and 2007, Busha was the helper shopping for orphanage building supplies. He finagled the bicycle rickshaw driver (baksheesh helped) to rush us at break-pedal speed to catch the last bus of the day to Rupandehi, 30 kilometres from Bhairahwa. Grinning, he hung on, half in and half out of the bus door, after we’d loaded the bus top with supplies. The harried conductor hadn’t refused us.
Another time, Rosemarie and I evaded a Maoist road closure, to deliver library books from a Kathmandu book store to the start up library. Busha lugged in books saying, “Maybe, if I am good, someone will want me.” He felt the loss of parents, with no real family, and hungered for acceptance and for guidance. Haphazard email and unreliable electricity in Nepal created obstacles to communication. Somehow we managed, even though we weren’t there all the time. Through disappointments, such as failing math in a Kathmandu college, we all recognized his abilities, such as writing and verbal communication.
Since 2017 until now, Busha has written and produced material. He’s well known. A full three-year scholarship for a bachelor of film studies at the Oscar International College, an affiliate of Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, spurred him on to make the film The Fault of Being Human. It’s a caring look at life released in 2022, through Drishyalaya Cinema. He then wrote The Scent of Blood, a short film series tackling taboos. In 2024, Non Sense Nepali was published; it is both sarcastically serious and amusing pieces about common sense.
Throughout, Busha has never, ever forgotten his roots and struggles, the hard times or the help from Hands of Hope. Now his life has taken another turn. In Kathmandu, he’s been a public figure for years, which includes as moderator for a literature festival in Pokhara, Nepal, and, since 2022, commenting on Kathmandu urban development while working on a master's degree in urban studies.
As a writer and an activist, there’s always something new to hear about. A couple of months ago, I opened Messenger and read that the boy turned man, who calls me Grandma and sends me birthday greetings, is now preparing to run for Kathmandu mayor in the Nepali year of 2082, which is 2027. He has two years to plan. The current mayor, Busha says, won without an agenda because the populace was frustrated with the governance. He states this mayor “chases poor people.” Poor people can’t survive as the current mayor doesn’t believe in human rights, is against street vendors and is touted as a misogynist. Busha stands for the poor people and business. He knows deprivation. Under him the little old fingerless leper woman begging on the steps near Bagh Bazaar won’t be threatened, nor will independent vendors in Thamel selling shawls or Tiger Balm. Now, their life is too difficult under a mayor who Busha recounted saying that Hitler was his hero in a speech.
Kirann BK will draw on his roots while building for the future. Nepal is on the brink of many changes; Kirann BK is just one of them. He and Muna, his wife, live in Kathmandu. In between book publishing, film releasing and studies, Muna and Kirann BK married in 2023. It’s been quite a trip since 2006, and we’re happy to have been part of it!
Liesel Briggs
Whitehorse
Hands of Hope is a Yukon-based Canadian organization that assists underprivileged children and adults in India and Nepal develop independence and self-reliance. Learn more at www.hands-of-hope.ca
