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Reviews of Gates of Bronze<br />
‘I intended to hold off reading this <strong>book</strong> until I had completed some<br />
other work but could not resist and, once started, could not put it down.<br />
It is a compulsive and inspirational account of how a tragedy became a<br />
powerful force for good, turning around not just one life, the one most<br />
immediately affected, but hundreds of others in a different continent.<br />
‘Anyone who has suffered a bereavement, particularly a suicide,<br />
or seen depression at close hand and wants to make sense of the<br />
unimaginable should read this extraordinary and poignant <strong>book</strong> to find<br />
inspiration and hope. It’s about loyalty, redemption, extreme suffering<br />
and abuse as well as carrying a torch for a departed loved one. It also<br />
contains much advice about ordinary life including helpful information<br />
regarding setting up a charity, mixed religion marriages and moving not<br />
just home but continents.<br />
‘But do not read it as a self-help volume this is far more inspiring<br />
and moving.<br />
‘Philip Holmes is a natural storyteller but also a fighter with<br />
endless enthusiasm which shines through these pages. It’s impossible not<br />
to read this <strong>book</strong> without believing that some people have the power to<br />
move mountains. He may be one of them.’<br />
- Anne Sebba, journalist and historian biographer most recently of That<br />
Woman, A life of Wallis Simpson and Les Parisiennes, How the Women<br />
of Paris lived loved and died in the 1940s – www.annesebba.com<br />
‘A heroic, heartfelt journey through personal loss to the salvation of a<br />
thousand children on the other side of the world: caring, compassionate<br />
and inspirational.’<br />
- Rory MacLean, bestselling author of Stalin’s Nose, Falling for Icarus<br />
and Gift of Time – www.rorymaclean.com<br />
‘Over the years, Nepali Times reporters have accompanied Esther<br />
Benjamins Trust and ChoraChori on many stories to do with children's<br />
welfare. Some of those collaborations are mentioned in the manuscript.<br />
It was not until I read the manuscript of Gates of Bronze that I learnt<br />
about the background to Philip’s total commitment to the cause of<br />
children. I never knew that side of the story: of his wife's tragic passing,<br />
her love of children, her despair at not being able to have them herself,
Philip's affection for Nepal through his neighbours at Church Crookham,<br />
and how the activities evolved as time went on and as the need of<br />
children changed.<br />
‘This is a very important <strong>book</strong>, and in a lot of ways a piece of<br />
investigative journalism. It chronicles in meticulous detail, in an intimate<br />
and personal way, the vulnerabilities faced by Nepali children. It exposes<br />
the predators, their political protectors and the cross-border nature of<br />
trafficking. This <strong>book</strong> is important because it will alert governments,<br />
charities, international child welfare groups, as well as potential dogooders<br />
and donors about the need to be careful with where they put<br />
their money.<br />
‘Gates of Bronze will also be a high profile expose of the security<br />
agencies and powers that be that profit from the abuse and exploitation<br />
of our children. It also needs to be translated into Nepali and local Indian<br />
languages for fuller impact.’<br />
- Kunda Dixit, Editor of English language weekly The Nepali Times –<br />
www.nepalitimes.com<br />
‘Philip’s account is a raw insight into an underworld in Nepal. An honest<br />
narrative of his own journey towards establishing ChoraChori, it is an eye<br />
opener to the power of human resilience. Proud to be an Ambassador off<br />
Philip’s charity, Gates of Bronze was my introduction to the years of work<br />
he has put into empowering the lost children of Nepal and equipping<br />
them for a future. Having visited his centre in Kathmandu myself, I have<br />
seen first-hand how much has already been done by the strong team<br />
Philip has built. I know Philip’s account will pique interest and more<br />
awareness towards the unspeakable horrors children are going through<br />
and what it takes to help them.’<br />
- Amrita Acharia, Ukrainian-Nepalese actress,<br />
of ITV’s Good Karma Hospital and HBO’s Game of Thrones
Philip Holmes was born and brought up in Northern Ireland. Immediately<br />
after qualifying as a dentist from Queen’s University, Belfast in 1982 he<br />
joined the British Army, seeing service in UK, Germany and Belize. He was<br />
promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1995. In response to the suicide of his<br />
first wife, Esther Benjamins, in January 1999 Philip resigned his<br />
commission to set up a charity for Nepalese children in her memory. He<br />
married Beverley in September 2002 and in 2004 the couple moved to<br />
live in Nepal so that Philip could lead his charity’s anti-child trafficking<br />
operations on the ground. Philip and Bev returned to UK in 2012 with<br />
their adopted Nepalese children, Alisha and Joe. Their life’s work in Nepal<br />
continues through the UK registered charity ChoraChori which they<br />
founded in January 2015. ChoraChori is currently at the forefront of the<br />
fight against child rape in Nepal.<br />
The Holmes family now live near Kingsbridge in Devon, UK.
GATES OF BRONZE<br />
One man’s journey from heart-breaking loss to finding<br />
redemption and purpose in Nepal<br />
Philip Holmes
GATES OF BRONZE<br />
Published in the United Kingdom by Philip Holmes through Juntara Ltd<br />
Visit our websites at www.juntara.co.uk and www.gatesofbronze.com<br />
First Edition: April 2019<br />
Copyright © Philip Holmes, 2019<br />
The right of Philip Holmes to be identified as author and illustrator of this<br />
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the<br />
Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988<br />
All rights reserved. No part of this <strong>book</strong> may be reproduced or used in<br />
any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except<br />
for the use of quotations in a <strong>book</strong> review.<br />
The events and conversations in this <strong>book</strong> have been set down to the<br />
best of the author’s ability, although some names and details have been<br />
changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Every effort has been made<br />
to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publisher will be pleased to<br />
make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their<br />
attention at the earliest opportunity.<br />
Cover photographs © Dermot Tatlow and Graham Uden<br />
Cover design by Simon Avery at www.ido<strong>book</strong>covers.com<br />
Line illustrations by Philip Holmes<br />
Printed and bound in UK by Biddles, King’s Lynn, Norfolk.<br />
Photo credits:<br />
Graham Uden (Hong Kong) Images 5 – 10<br />
Herbert Grammatikopoulos (Germany) Images 14 - 15<br />
Min Bajracharya (Nepal) Images 13, 27-37<br />
Tom Bell (Nepal) Images 21 - 22<br />
Philip Horgan (UK) Image 23<br />
Mark Robson (Inept Gravity) Image 50<br />
ISBN: 978-1-912804-81-8 (paperback)
AUTHOR FOREWORD<br />
Through Gates of Bronze I have tried to distil and unite highlights from<br />
over three decades of my life into some 260 pages. Inevitably, I have had<br />
to sacrifice detail in the interests of brevity and flow of the narrative. The<br />
content is derived from contemporaneous notes but also from memory.<br />
Of course memories fade and my perceptions may on occasions have<br />
been distorted by the episodes of extreme emotion that I experienced.<br />
These ranged from the depths of despair and heartache to moments of<br />
sublime triumph and absolute jubilation. Therefore, I offer apologies for<br />
any errors and omissions that may have crept into this memoir; I am<br />
happy to amend and include any facts in subsequent editions if I agree<br />
their authenticity and import.<br />
I must point out that, through the need to respect privacy and<br />
anonymity, some names and identities have been changed, events might<br />
have been compressed and dialogue has been recreated. Most<br />
importantly, in the interests of child protection I have changed children’s<br />
names. Some of the children’s stories that are interspersed between<br />
chapters should be read as being illustrative of actual children’s<br />
sufferings that I have witnessed after family life disintegrates in Nepal or<br />
when criminals descend to prey on vulnerable people. These vignettes<br />
represent a fusion of experiences and do not relate to specific,<br />
identifiable children and their families but are nonetheless totally realworld.<br />
Within these constraints this is entirely a true record of one-off<br />
activities and human endeavours<br />
which I have been privileged to join<br />
and lead. I feel honoured to document<br />
and indeed salute achievements by<br />
remarkable people who would<br />
otherwise go unrecognised - and<br />
before memories fade further. Most<br />
importantly, I assert the authenticity of<br />
the synchronicities that I record. These<br />
might seem far-fetched or fanciful,<br />
and, frankly, I would not have believed<br />
these accounts had I not experienced<br />
them personally. They spanned the<br />
gulf with the divine and ensured that<br />
mine would be a very spiritual journey.
To Bev, Alisha and Joe, with all my love
Contents<br />
Acknowledgements 1<br />
Prologue 3<br />
Part 1<br />
Chapter 1 Return to Groningen 10<br />
Chapter 2 A Downfall Observed 19<br />
Chapter 3 Unbearable 27<br />
Chapter 4 Dreams 36<br />
Chapter 5 Tsedekah 47<br />
Chapter 6 Coast to Coast 56<br />
Part 2<br />
Chapter 7 The Yam Between Two Boulders 78<br />
Chapter 8 Gates of Bronze 93<br />
Chapter 9 Alpha and Omega 108<br />
Part 3<br />
Chapter 10 Circus Children 118<br />
Chapter 11 Raid and Rescue 134<br />
Chapter 12 A Bad Day at Gonda 143<br />
Chapter 13 No Man’s Land 152<br />
Chapter 14 Alisha 171<br />
Part 4<br />
Chapter 15 Changing Strategy 182<br />
Chapter 16 Joe 193<br />
Chapter 17 Shailaja’s Wager 206<br />
Chapter 18 Feet of Clay 215<br />
Chapter 19 Journey’s End 237<br />
Epilogue 247
Acknowledgements<br />
In spite of the dreadful personal trauma and loss that I experienced in<br />
January 1999 and subsequent challenges, I consider myself to have had a<br />
blessed life. Unlike so many of the children in Nepal whom I would come<br />
to meet, I enjoyed a happy and stable childhood and every opportunity in<br />
my upbringing, education and career. I have been happily married twice<br />
and am the proud father of two wonderful children. My life and work has<br />
purpose and above all I have found myself spiritually. Therefore, I could<br />
write paragraphs in gratitude to the family members, friends, charity<br />
supporters who have helped me along life’s path. However, I hope they<br />
can forgive me if, in the interests of brevity, I confine my appreciation to<br />
those who have helped me write and produce this memoir.<br />
Encouragement has been for the most part gentle, but one<br />
individual in particular, Els Horst, has been more robust than the rest and<br />
I am deeply grateful to her for a directness that jolted me out of a certain<br />
degree of literary inertia. My main reader has been my wife, Bev, who<br />
has not only supported and sustained me, as ever, but has superb editing<br />
skills. I recognise how well she has performed this role, one that will have<br />
been particularly challenging for her in the early chapters of the <strong>book</strong>.<br />
My other main readers have been my wonderful, ever-loyal, big<br />
brothers, Tom and Willie, church ministers Willie McNaughton and<br />
Graham Dear, and friends Angela Sherman, Abha Karki, Grace<br />
Mulchrone, Neal Gillespie, Simon Boyd and Susie Wren. I am particularly<br />
indebted to literary consultant Victoria Roddam for her transformative<br />
input.<br />
I would like to thank those whose photographs have been<br />
reproduced, namely Dermot Tatlow, Graham Uden, Herbert<br />
Grammatikopoulos, Tom Bell, Philip Horgan, Mark Robson and Min<br />
Bajracharya.<br />
1
Prologue<br />
‘Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school<br />
an intelligence and make it a soul?’<br />
- John Keats, letter to George and Georgiana Keats<br />
2
4<br />
Kingsbridge, Devon. January 2019.<br />
Dear Esther,<br />
I<br />
t’s been 20 years since you passed over and here is my belated<br />
response to the one-liner you left me on the day of your death. How<br />
those stark words of yours have haunted me ever since in their<br />
pathos, their excruciating brevity.<br />
At the end you had convinced yourself that you’d become worse<br />
than worthless, a liability who stood to ruin my future. I couldn’t<br />
persuade you otherwise or help you to shake off this false perception.<br />
Ultimately it dragged you under. Through this memoir you will realise<br />
that, on the contrary, you were my inspiration not just in life, but also in<br />
death. Although I can’t imagine taking a greater, more traumatic, body<br />
blow, your loss didn’t become my nemesis. On the contrary, I became<br />
stronger, more focussed and resolute. Your death proved to be my<br />
redemption. It’s tough for me to make such an observation, but it is<br />
undeniably true. For I found a professional and personal fulfilment that<br />
undoubtedly wouldn’t have happened if our marriage had continued<br />
beyond those first, sublime, ten years. While you were at rest I lived life<br />
in abundance, on a bizarre and remote path that neither of us could have<br />
anticipated.<br />
Do you remember how I used to joke with you that you’d never<br />
find a job with the KGB as you were too secretive? I laughed at the<br />
methods you adopted to protect your privacy, flushing shredded<br />
paperwork down the loo or encoding your diary notes into Hebrew. I<br />
hope you will understand and forgive my candour, some of which relates<br />
to our private life. Actually, intimate details have already been in the<br />
public domain, cruelly so, and there’s no privacy to lose. But this is a<br />
memoir that I believe is worth sharing in tribute to you and to document<br />
what has been essentially your legacy.<br />
I have no idea how much of all this you know already. It felt as if<br />
you remained with me for a while following your death but after a year<br />
or so I sensed you’d moved on. Did you stay around in those first few<br />
months to make sure I was okay? If so, thank you, it helped, for I seemed<br />
to absorb some of your strength and wisdom and that sustained me<br />
through eight years of living in Nepal. Yes, Nepal – somewhere that you<br />
once told me you’d love to visit. It’s not the Shangri La you’d visualised,<br />
and not all the locals are as decent and endearing as the Nepali<br />
neighbours we knew in England. But Nepal is never boring, ever
challenging, and the country I was always destined to adopt. It continues<br />
to draw me back, a lodestone and second home that has taken<br />
possession of my soul. When I’m there I meet up with special people that<br />
I can’t wait to tell you about.<br />
Is that persistent blue tit tapping at my bedroom window<br />
anything to do with you?<br />
5