By Shambhu Bhujel

    KATHMANDU, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Sheeba Shivangini Singh entered the former royal household of Nepal 15 years ago when as a teenager fresh out of school, she was married to the nephew of the then all-powerful and popular king of Nepal, Birendra.

    Though the royal family tightly guarded its privacy and little was known about its women, in 2003, Sheeba made a stir in Kathmandu when she published her first novel, "Loyals to the crown".

    It was an unusual subject for the then 28-year-old princess to choose.

    Her book was about Lakshmi Devi, an earlier junior queen, who is held responsible for a massacre in the palace in 1846 in which nearly 60 nobles were reportedly killed. The violence was said to have been caused as the queen, who was married to King Rajendra Bir Bikram Shah, went berserk after the courtier she was having an affair with, was killed.

    Though Nepalis did not speak openly about the affair, even nearly one and half centuries later, Sheeba's in-laws -- mother-in-law Princess Sharada, who was King Birendra's sister, and her father-in-law, Kumar Khadka Bahadur -- did not object to her plan to write a book on the ancient queen when she told them in 1999 what she was contemplating.

    Tragically, before her first novel was published, both her in-laws were dead. They had been in the Narayanhity royal palace in June 2001 when a shootout inside killed King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and eight other members of the royal family.

    While coping with the family tragedy and swift changes overtaking Nepal, Sheeba wrote her second novel, "Beyond the illusions".

    The subject is once more unusual, dealing with tantra, complicated rituals of a Hindu worship in which sex is regarded as an essential part in order to attain supernatural powers.

    Though both the novels were well-received by the English-reading society of Kathmandu, the former princess' name remained confined to the Nepali capital.

    Now however, she is poised to hit the international market with her new book, "Facing my phantoms".

    To be published by the New Delhi-based Rupa and Company, the novel is partly autobiographical, drawing on her own family's traumatic experiences and the political upheavals in Nepal which, once the world's only Hindu kingdom, became a secular republic.

    "My new book is a family saga spanning three generations as well as the recording of the most tumultuous period of Nepalese history from the 1930s till the present day," Sheeba told Xinhua in Kathmandu on Sunday, "The book describes an ongoing socio-economic and political process that transforms Nepal from a feudal society into a hopefully more egalitarian one."

    Her novel is also about the changes suffered by her own family. In 2001, her brother Sanjay Bahadur Singh was beaten to death in the family's own home in remote Kailali district by members of the then Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M) in the civil war launched by the party since 1996 with an aim to end monarchy in Nepal.

    "My family became like the thousands of other people displaced by the insurgency," she said, "My father, forced to leave his land in Kailali and take shelter in Kathmandu, now has no means of sustenance. He was a farmer and his land was taken away from him, making him a refugee in his own country."

    "Facing my phantoms" is told through the persona of Sanjeevani, an unorthodox young woman who begins to write her grandmother's biography. By interpolating her grandmother's life and times along with her own, the novel depicts the reign of four kings of Nepal, the chaos unleashed by the insurgency that lasted 10 years and the nation's search for peace.

    Sheeba is awaiting the release of her new book with both joy and a flutter of nervousness.

    "Some of the things I wrote -- about monarchy and Nepal's politics -- may not be liked by some people," she said.

    Despite her misgivings, her third book establishes her as a full-time author, the first member of the erstwhile royal family to take up such a career.

    She has no regrets that with the abolition of monarchy she is no longer a princess.

    "My husband (Lt Col Bikash Bikram Shah who is with the Nepal Army) and I did not use the royal titles," she said, "They were used only by my in-laws."

    "As a student of history, I was sad when the crown was abolished because it was a symbol of the uniqueness of Nepal. But as a citizen, I feel if that was necessary for peace and progress, so be it," she said.