BP Koirala is obsessed with his failing health, and thinks his psychological condition under detention is worsening his medical problems. These pages from his prison diary written in English show that he also fears that the king intends to keep him in jail for a longer period.

17 February, 1977
Sundarijal
Spent the day brooding and feeling disconsolately sad. Since yesterday homesickness has assailed me again. This constant state of agony-how long will it last? I am not getting reconciled to the incommunication of incarceration. If it continues for sometime my heath will suffer serious damage. I am in for heart trouble. If only this isolation is lifted. I don't know how the Jews lived in death camps in Nazi Germany. Our life here is not so bad. Except for total segregation, there are no physical discomforts.

Papers did not come. We wait for newspapers-even those sheets of paper known as Kathmandu dailies, with some interest. After all that is the only source of information of world happenings available to us. Tomorrow being National Day there will no newspapers. And day after is Saturday. Hence we will get papers only on Sunday.

The Captain informed me that the matter about the supply of zarda to me has been referred to Dr (Colonel) Bhattarai, whether I can take it or not on medical grounds. It means that perhaps I will be permitted to take zarda. Since they had stopped it once in the name of a jail rule that no madak padartha must be supplied to us they want to get one if through the agency of a doctor's permission. A face-saving device.

18 February
Sundarijal
Today is National Day which is also celebrated as Democracy Day. It was on this day 26 years ago (1951) that I was inducted in a coalition cabinet as Home Minister, inaugurating a new era, a new dispensation in governmental setup-I was slightly over 36 years old. What a red letter day it was for all of us-for the country and the people. I was from the people's side, the most popular and at the same time most powerful man. Since I am a man of honour and ideals, I was very weak in my power motive, and therefore I did not use my influence and power, which had come to me without my making efforts for them, to maintain myself in power through manipulation and machination. I could have done that. I don't regret it. But since then I have been subjected to buffetings of political fortunes-up and down, up and down-and I am now landed, at about the fag end of my life in jail-in a condition of total isolation from where I don't know when, if, I will be liberated.

I am not in good health since I am imprisoned. Digestion continued to be bad, there is bleeding from the nose, this morning there were some traces of blood in my sputum, there is a constant buzzing in my ear and peculiar heaviness in the head, headaches too. I look a little haggard, wrinkled, feel weak in the legs and continue breathing with difficulty and palpitations of the heart. A long list of physical complaints. Basically they are promoted or even induced by my present psychological state. I suffer from depression constantly, and sometimes the depression assumes the maniac intensity.

I do some writing every day, but it does not at all calm my nerves. I am not intensely occupied with this routine. The quality of my writing has also suffered because I can't bring concentration of thought to bear upon it. I devise innumerable ways to divert my mind from the obsessive brooding over the present state of destitution-but such make-belief only promotes my depression by the awareness that they are false beliefs. Yesterday I wrote 1,100 words. How empty these are!

Today the Captain informed us a new set of utensils would be supplied to our kitchen which is outside the jail compound. They had been using big army utensils to cook our food, and we were interpreting this improvisation in our favour supposing that our detention was a temporary affair. But now they seem to be making a permanent arrangement for the kitchen, which means a long detention. I don't mind a long detention provided, 1) interviews are allowed, 2) correspondence is allowed 3) books and newspapers are allowed to be supplied by our people.