Indra Bahadur Rai (1999)

I have been asked to read out an hour-long paper on Nepalese literature. It is obviously enough a vast subject as history of literature in any language even of a particular period is apt to be and nothing less than writing up a tome can do it some justice. As such the objective of this paper must necessarily be severely delimited, restricting it to presenting the outline of the subject with comments wherever called for. It will be more an informative account than analytical. It is made up of three parts. First, a paragraph or two on the genesis of Nepali literature as also of Indian Nepali literature. Second, a note on those illustrious writers and poets who were mainly instrumental writing. Third, dealing with in somewhat greater detail, contemporary writers who have made their mark in the spheres of different genres.

Part I

Nepal has been likened to the proverbial yam that lies squeezed between two huge embedded rocks, namely, India and China. And Nepali literature taken as a whole, i.e. inclusive of Indian Nepali literature, is again, to repeat the comparison with a variation, like a yam that subsists on two soils, that of Nepal and India. The Treaty of Sugawli concluded in 1815 after the British-Gorkha War marks the inception of Indian Nepalis politically. The incorporation of Darjeeling and the Jalpaiguri Doars regions in British India in the mid-nineteenth century and the merger of Sikkim in India in 1975 were augmentative of the same process.

Unlike literature in most of the Indian languages, which owe their origin to religious or devotional compositions Nepali literature is held to have incepted from historical heroical writing. The same may be said about the beginning of the Indian Nepali literary writing. Manipurko Ladaiko Sawai (Sawai-poem composed in folk metre, Sawai—of the Battle of Manipur) was penned by Tulachan Aley in 1893. He was a soldier who had taken part in the battle that took place in 1891-93 between the king of Manipur and the British East India Company. Sawai of the Battle of the Abbar Hills composed by Dhanbir Bhandari in 1894 and Sawai of the Battle of the Naga Hills composed by Gajabir Rana around 1913 came in quick succession. There were Sawais on the Assam earthquake of 1897 and the Kangada (then in Punjab) earthquake of 1905, and also on the Assamese Nepali life and people too. Indian Nepali literature seems to have set off with consistence for a secular beginning.

Part II

Around the third decade of the twentieth century the emerging contour of modern Nepali literature becomes discernible. Nepali writers and poets in Nepal and India were making for modern writing in their respective but mutually complementary ways.

Of them five stand out as the most prominent ones, who can be considered as the forerunners. Three of them, Lekhnath Poudyal, Balakrishna Sama and Lakshmiprasad Devkota hailed from Nepal while two, Dharnidhar Sharma and Rupnarayan Sinha contributed their share from India.

Lekhnath was the final product of the long running Bhanubhaktian tradition. He kept to the old Sanskrit metrical form of poetry but made such a dexterous use of it so as to be able to articulate the changing social awareness of his time. His was a case of sense being abetted by the pliant metric form of his poetry. He longed for the glorious past of the sub-continent. This longing of his stood for his yearning for a change which is of the essence of modernity. His work Tarun Tapasi expounds the best virtues the past has handed down to us and calls for the nation rectifying itself.

Balakrishna Sama, the doyen of Nepali literature, studiously kept himself abreast of European writings and was well-versed in Sanskrit literature. His play Prahlad (1938) written on the eve of the second World War underscored the basic conflict between the Fascistic and the Gandhian principles as evidenced in Hiranyakashijpu and Prahlad respectively. He was the first Nepali writer to swear by rationalism and professed a rationalized explanation of the Puranic myth, thus demythologizing it. His great epic Chiso Chulho (The Cold Hearth or Fire-place) carries the theme of humanism, decrying untouchability, still a persisting social evil in Nepal and India. He is refreshingly very modern in the fashioning of his poetic language which in a way may be viewed as non-poetic. From Wordsworth down to Eliot, Pound and Brecht, practitioners of poetic art have insisted that the language of poetry should not be too deviant from the language of prose. Sama holds himself in check from being given over to unbridled imaginings– so the sobriety of his language. To a not inconsiderable extent, he seems to have modelled himself on Sanskrit poets, particularly Panditraj Jagannath whose fancy is bound to or rooted in the factual and practical.

As for Lakshmiprasad Devkota, a poet’s rightful vocation was the exercise of the faculty of which romantic imagination formed the core. He forced language to break the bounds to keep pace with the onrush of his imagination which came thick and fast, and rich. No hankerer for social or topical themes, he felt free to soar up to any legend or legendary figure of any land, who embodied the loftiest human aspirations and achievements.

Lekhnath, Sama and Devkota, the great three of Nepali literature, were each in their own way craftsmen of the written word. They enormously helped mould modern Nepali literary language.

Dharanidhar Sharma’s poems as collected in Naivedya published in 1920 gave a clarion call for the awakening of the Nepalese people. This, in the context of India, meant the surging forth of Indian Nepali nationalism. Ever since then it has been the predominating feeling or emotional life to engulf the majority of the later Indian Nepali writers. We cite Agam Singh Giri as an illustrious example.

Rupnarayan Sinha on the count of his short story Annapurna published in 1927 and novel Bhramar published in 1936 stands a strong contender to the dual distinction of being the first modern Nepali short story writer and novelist. He is modern both in content and form. From the very beginning, he seems to have completely dispensed with the then prevailing expressly moralistic mode of writing. His works bear the impress of an alert mind, a keen observer of realities around him and a precisian of art. His novel Bhramar set itself up as an unstated law which laid down that to depict the state of the Nepali nation, [that it] was the most worth-while subject for any Indian Nepali novelist to take up. He was truly a rebel and his rebelliousness found vent in unsubdued romanticism in his writing.

Part III

Now let us take up some prominent contemporary trends and the writers who pioneered them in Nepali writing, I will pick up a few of the writers who have succeeded in writing excellently and significantly. Great thoughts do not necessarily make for great writing, nor does writing beautifully alone, without some sort of experiential cognition, suffices to accomplish it.

First, let us take up the novelists. For they, rather than the poets, were quicker to assimilate the sense of modernism in their works. They had had to be careful and vigilant even more than the short story writers about the subject matter and the form to be given. Moreover, writing novels was literally a novel mode in Nepali as in other Indian languages. After Rupnarayan Sinha came Lain Singh Bangdel. Bangdel broke away from Sinha and his romanticism, and implanted realism in the writing of Nepali novels. He emulated realism of the French school. His novels Muluk-Bahira (1948)– Outside the Country– and Langarako Sathi (1951)– The Lame Man’s Companion– insist upon presenting factual realities, and this often-times verged on opting for the portrayal of the hapless, taken for the typical. There is now a whole and healthy breed of realistic novels of more than one strain.

The year 1965 saw the publication of Sirisko Phool (The Acacia Flower), Parijat’s first novel. She was an accomplished story writer and poet. In this novel of hers, existentialism of Camus-affinity inclining towards the depiction of absurdity of human condition, has been masterfully harnessed to its writing. Vijay Malla’s novel Anuradha (1961) had preceded it. That was Freudian through and through. Malla’s novel too had the effect of wrenching Nepali novels off the social realism peg. Parijat’s work proved the more powerful to this end. Existentialist novels generally do not strive to draw characters in the round. We get not many convincingly realistic characters. Examples of course, can be adduced to confute this statement, citing for example, Meursault by Camus. Parijat likewise is reputed to have created in Sakambari the most remarkable character in Nepali fiction.

Bishweshvar Prasad Koirala is the other distinguished existentialist writer who has written two novels of the first order, Teen Ghoomti (1968)– Three Turnings– and Narendra Dai (1970). Indra Maya, the protaganist in the novel, remains steadfastly true to her nature as a person and woman in taking three crucial decisions, making three existential choices: to marry the man she loved, to have a child by another man when the husband was in prison, and to leave the husband and quit his house when he disapproved of her conduct. The writer has summoned the aid of Freud too to underscore her ‘conscious’ motives. Narendra Dai records the bedevilment and ravages of Narendra’ life by the ever looming Absurdities that refuse to be shaken off.

New experiments in writing Nepali novels seem to have been conducted along two lines. First, that of Okima Gwayin (Okiuyama Gwynn, to be correct) as exemplified in his two novels, Nagbeli (1970)– The Serpentine Creeper– and Sunakhari (1978)– The Orchid. His are metaphysical novels. Putting aside earthly themes, characters and actions he gives novelistic form to religious-philosophical conceptions, ideational mentations and spiritual precepts. There have been critics who hesitate to accept these works as novels. A debate is generated. The second route is pursued by Dhruba Chandra Gautam who has till date written six or more novels in as many modes. Whether there is any emerging system or linkage in his ever adopting new techniques is yet to be discerned. Techniques reflects the world-view of the writer and as such, we feel, it paces in easy stages.

The novelists discussed so far have each delved deep in their chosen field. Still they are found to have restricted themselves to portraying certain sections of society and to dissecting certain ailments to the exclusion of others. Two novelists stand apart from others to provide us with the largest possible scenarios of the Nepalese world.

Bhawani Bhikshu of whom, more when we talk of him as a superb short story writer, in his voluminous novel Aagat (1975)– The Time That Has Arrived– has recorded a momentous transitional period of Nepali history, that of land-reform and the uprooting of feudal aristocracy.

In a still more epic scale, Dawlat Bikram Bishta in his novel Ek Paluwa: Anek Yaam (1969)– Many a Season and a Sprig– succeeds in encompassing almost the entire Nepali social world of not too distant past.

Disdaining to be anaemic minor writings, so to say, these two epical works have injected a massive dose of life and blood in the corpus of Nepali novel writing.

There are other novelists too who have penned novels that are equally good as the ones mentioned here. Let me be clear that I have picked up those novels that have broken new ground and set off new trends.

Among the Nepali short story writers, Bhawani Bhikshu and Govind Bahadur Malla stand out as the most prominent ones. Bhikshu’s first two collections, Gunakeshari (1953) and Maiyasaheb (1950) contain almost all of his best stories. He did not subscribe to any literary-ism, nor followed any of the modernist writing fad. He was a sort of empiricist who relied most on his own observation, experience and above all empathy, that is, the capacity for participating in another’s feelings or thoughts. Gifted with a wonderfully penetrative insight, he excelled in unfolding the working of the mind of men and women to the minutest trail. Just one significant gesture or act or situational state sets in motion the unrolling of a chain of mental and emotional actions and reactions activated as waves and counter-waves. These are dexterously woven into the fabric of the story. His short stories can be compared favourably with the works of any of the masters of the genre.

Rivalling Bhikshu is the other genius of short story writing in Nepali– Govind Bahadur Malla. His celebrated collection Kathaikatha (Stories after Stories) made its appearance in 1959. He is a naturalist in the sense the French realist Emile Zola was or wanted to be, viewing men and women to be creatures of external and internal forces. External forces emanated from the circumstances which hem them in Freudian libido or sex drive in the main constituted internal forces. Malla’s power to delineate characters remain unequalled when it comes to exposing inner cramp and torpor that have seeped to men’s soul while in the mean time infusing profound compassion for them. His novelette Pallo Gharko Jhyal (1959)– Window of the Yonder House– exhibiting marvellous symmetry of structural form and unity of effect is a superlative achievement of this mould.

Next comes Shiva Kumar Rai, the most ‘Nepali’ of all Indian Nepali writers. His short stories running into several collections are thoroughly steeped in and fully the product of Nepali national social milieu. His impeccable use of chaste Nepali words and turns of speech conjure up and convey an unadulterated Nepali world-view, now so hard to come by.

Next to Shiva Kumar Rai, Sanoo Lama probably commands the widest readership. His short stories exude a happy and mature sense of life which is felt as a relief from the painful grimness that saturate most of the modern-day writing. It does not mean that he shirks from looking at inconvenient truths. He has with singular success put down on paper poignant and trying situations obtaining in society and families. Lama has brought out two collections, Katha-Sampad (1974)– Stories Riches and Mrigatrishna (1990)– The Mirage– the latter winning him the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award. One needs to dip in his stories to feel the heart-beat of Sikkim and its people.

The short stories of Lakhi Devi Sundas as collected in Aähat Anubhuti– Feelings and Afflictions– stand in a class by themselves. They defy with vantage some of the cherished precepts of this genre. No unity of effect but a conjoining of dispersed impacts, no symmetry of construction but a coalescence of multiple or parallel running strands and no final moment of crisis but holding it over in an indeterminate abeyance. These innovations stem from her understanding of characters as fractured plural selves, deconstructed entities. Also very much within her ken is the bane of self-alienation that beset present day man and which festers as social anomy– a state of society in which normative standards of conduct or belief are weak or lacking. She turns out to be a writer holding brief for a sociological approach.

Sharad Chettri has been labouring to work out an allegorical mode of writing modern short stories, pouring contemporaneous contents into the time-tested form. Of late he has also been trying his hand in what may be called critical and/or interpretative deviatory rewriting of extant story-texts. His works– he is the most prolific writer of us all– call for hard critical perusals.

For Sanjay Bisht, more important than conceiving subject matter is throwing it on paper, i.e. writing it out. He strains himself to writing feelings coincident to story elements. In the process, language is foregrounded. He holds that a single word or sentence tend to and actually do make up separate stories. So we can write myriad of inter-tangled brief stories inside a story.

Indira Prasai strikes me as another notable short story writer who despite of the topicality of the subject is boldly innovative in structuring the writing up of the story. Often the mode is akin to cubistic, well not exactly cubistic but nearing it in that the stories are presented in slices with telling voids in between them.

Gupta Pradhan writes stories having great depth. He is especially powerful when symbols are embedded in them.

Now we come on to the dramatists.

Balakrishna Sama, the greatest Nepali dramatist so far, has more then twenty full-length plays to his credit, of which six are tragedies. Contemporary good plays almost invariably tend to be tragedies. But there is a difference in the nature of old and new tragedies. Former ones were, what may be called, plays of personal tragedies, it is the individuals who meet the tragic end. Modern Nepali tragedies are of the collective of collective, bodies. It is not one Macbeth or Hamlet or Lear bearing the cross of tragedy but the whole people. The whole country or nation hurtling towards the tragedy in store or of its own making.

Mohanraj Sharma’s Vaikuntha Express– The Express Bus to Paradise– is a play simulating what the scientists call ‘thought experiment’: where will the nation given over to consumerism in the end land? The bus full of consumerists having to pass through sectors of various odd influences turn, as they reach Pashupur, violent and beastly, destroying the vehicle and jumping at each other’s throat. Only the two lovers manage to retain their sanity and salvage their hope. In olden plays villainous characters harmed people and society, now it is cults and rages that bring forth ruination in dreadfully larger scales. The tragedy is that we are ALL willy-nilly, swept up by this and other global trends. There is no escape. In so far as the play is a critique of this bind resistance to it can be deemed to be possible.

Avinash Shrestha’s Ashwathama Hatoh Hatah–Ashwathama is Killed– as the title signifies, is based on that infamous episode in the Mahabharata when Yudhisthira who was universally acclaimed as the embodiment of truth had to, to win the battle of Kurukshetra, articulate a deceitful half-truth. Deceitful utterances and acts emanate from a deep-seated trait in human character, the play holds, and it stubbornly withstands efforts directed at its eradication. The world and its affairs are replete with half-truths of varied hues, social, political, religious, scholastic and what not? Mankind has to live with them. But this is again a tragic situation.

Saroo Bhakta’s Malaami–The Funeral– is another but more forceful play underlining the same tragic predicament. The dramatic action is kept at a bare minimum. Some one has died, we don’t know who, and the dead body is taken away to the burning ghat. That exhausts the action. The play begins as the funeral procession is led through the auditorium onto the stage, thus making funeral-goers of us all in the audience. It soon comes out that there is nothing really funereal about the funeral or the funeral-goers. It becomes evident that they have shed their humanity, they have let fall the quality of being humane. What is actually dead is their humanity. They are funeral-goers of their own dead humanity.

Pursuing their own dehumanisation to its logical end, they jostle among themselves to partake of and relish the corpse on the burning pyre as roast meat. Two funeral-goers of the old generation and two of the young generation flee away in protest from their sub-humanly orgy of corpus-voraciousness.

The playwright, Saroo Bhakta has driven home the point that dehumanisation and the pathological state of mind are concomitantly on the rise with the mindless progress of material civilisation.

Nanda Hangkhim has, in his play Abhishek– Consecration– tried his hand in writing a poetic drama and has succeeded in no small measure. The play is fashioned basically in the form of ancient Greek tragedies, especially of Sophocles, and we are confronted with a question implanted in a Kirati myth– to accept or not socially an offspring born of an incestuous relationship? The playwright elects for an existential acceptance of the given and the factual. The acceptance is decided upon at the existential level much above the secondary levels of social, political or religious considerations. The play is a call for social change.

Kiran Thakuri wrote and presented the play Jai Mahakal in a manner which can be called futuristic. The spectators were made to sit around a circular stage, but there were four more open box-like stages in the four cardinal corners behind the spectators. Altogether five stages. Scenes were enacted on the stages alternately and at times simultaneously. In justification of this experiment in dramaturgy we can say that in real life too things don’t always happen before our very eyes. We have often to piece together bits of what we see and snatches of what we hear from others who too have seen but fragmentarily.

Amongst essayists, the well renowned ones are Lakshmi Prasad Devkota, Hridayachandra Singha Pradhan, Shanker Lamichane, Ramkrishna Sharma, Ramlal Adhikari and Raj Narayan Pradhan. A few other names are being bandied around, too.

Finally we turn to contemporary Nepali poetry.

In this, my task is made the easier as I can quote the poets directly which I could not do in the cases of writers of the other genres. Direct quotes are generally self-explanatory and they dispense with explications.

I have selected the passages on, what may turn out to be, an arbitrarily fixed test as it usually happens in brief exemplifications like one attempted here.

The context is, no doubt, an essential component of a poem, but of still more decisive importance is its form for a poem is finally embodied in its form. And of form the chief constituent is language. Language operates or functions by means of images it generates. Poetry, as language itself, is sustained by images. The cluster of images emplaced in poetry can be discordant images or concordant images going by the incongruity or congruity of the images in the given verbal collocations. It has been very well put that the image is the poet’s pigment. Images transcribe feelings, invigorate expressions and convey intuition that succeeds perception. It would be interesting to note, to some extent examine, the meaningful discordance and/or concordance of images in contemporary Nepali poetry.

I give the English translated versions and also the original Nepali of the selected portions. Modern poems are better translated literally to ensure that the transitional loss of imageries is kept at a minimum.

First, a few lines from Mohan Koirala. Just five lines.

रङ्गको पालामा आगो सूर्य नै झुसी पारेर
पोखिंदै जान्छ ज्वाला जहाँ जिब्रो स्वयंभरि ज्वाला
आन्द्रा भुँड़ीको पुष्ट अनन्तमा
हात एक सूर्य हात
नअस्ताएको स्वयम् आशाको विम्बहीन म एक सूर्य

Literally:

Fire in earthern lamp of colours the sun overfilled
Flame flows over where tongue itself filled up with flame
In plump infinitude of the maw and bowels
Hand a sun hand
Un-set self I a rayless sun of hope

These lines from Surya-dan– Sun-offering or Offering the Sun– are the poet’s exhortation to men and women to become suns in their mortal frames with flaming tongues, with entrails infinitely urging them on to the same end, holding out a sun and turning themselves into so many suns. Discordant images (earthern lamp of colours, plump infinitude, a sun hand, rayless sun) cut through one another. Illogical and irrational as they are, they validate the autonomous power of language.

Now lines from Bairagi Kaila, from his Sabathko Baila Utsav (The Barren Sabbatical Celebration):

हान्निएर  अँध्यारोले  गाँज्ला  कि ?
खुम्चियो  कोठा  एक  स्लाइस  रोटीको  भूगोलमा !
अब  रोटीको  घाइते  खुम्चाइमा  पनि  थुनिएर
ढुँढ़ीमा  स्याउँस्याउँती  उम्रिन्छन्  मानिसहरू
पराजित  युध्दको  खण्डहर  उचालेर  चेप्टा  मान्छेमा !
आँखाले  चेप  समयलाई  भूइँसम्म  तानेर,
हो, गंगटाले  चेप,
ढुङ्गाले  कस  मुट्ठीलाई  बिच्किन्छ  कि !

Might the darkness sweeping grab it up?
The room shrunk to the geography of a slice of bread?
Shut in the wounded shrink of the bread
Men swarming grow on the mould
Hoisting high the ruin of the lost battle in flat men!
(Picture of man reduced to the status of a mere bread-earner.)
Grip time with eyes dragging it to the ground,
Yes, grip it by the crab,
Clench fist by the stone lest it should escape!
(The poet tells us to seize time, to seize the present hard)

The lines present an amalgam of violently disparate images. In ‘Grip time with eyes’ for example, the second term of ‘Grip with hand’ (hand) and the first term of ‘See with eyes’ (see) have been dropped and the residual second and first terms are yoked together. A chain of analogies has been structured with each link omitting one of the terms.

And here is Keval Chandra Lama:

उ परबाट लङ्गड़ाउँदै आइरहेको
आन्दोलनको पूर्वघोषित मृत्यु ।
उसका छालहरू बलजफ्ती ह्विलचेरमा बाधिएका ।
यौटा बूढ़ो बैसाखीमा आश्रित उसको खहरे ।
झ्यालखानको पिञ्जरामा बाघ पक्रन नपाएको उसको जोला ।

उ अचेल रात दिनभरि पर्छ ।
अचेल पिण्डरोगी हिमाललाई
सिह्रानीको एक डीलमा
एक आँखा गीत गाएर बोलाउन सक्दिन ।

A limping he, a fore-declared death
of a movement. His tides forcibly bound
to the whee-chair. A hill stream
hanging upon the aged crutches. His web
the one that could not a tiger entrap in the prison-cage.
He these days befalls night through-out the day

I cannot the ever sickly Himalaya call over
with an eyeful song
at the pillow’s edge.

His multiple images are constituted of over-lapping and intersecting metaphors. Mind and matter meet, perception and expression blend in his composite images.

Now we will have a look at some of the lines written by poets who have more or less consistently put together concordant or congruous images. The lines from Jagadish Shamsher’s Narasimha Avatar provides a near perfect example. The lines represent the rising of the people against the tyrant who tries to pass for a saviour, the rising of the coast land against the encroachment by the sea with an allusion to the expansion of the sea-trading British power in India.

​
तर आज त छापाखानामा नाम नछापिनेहरूको दिन
बस्तीबाटै सूर्यहरू उदाएको प्रभात ।
हिजोका बासी कथा खकालेर पिच्च थुकेको बिहान ।
भट्भटाउँदै उड्छन् बस्तीमा बग्रेल्ती बासिन्दा ―
बतासिँदै स्वच्छन्द आकाशमा ―
खुकुरीका धारजस्ता पखेटाले
धुजाधुजा पार्दै राक्षसी कानूनहरू…
… … …
भटेर चरो बास्ने थलो
नाङ्गो फकिरको दरिलो चुरो,
हत्पताएर फर्कन्छन् सतहे छाल,
कोही आत्तिएर सेता
कोही निसास्सिएर नीलो …

But this the day of those whose names never came out in print,
the dawn suns rose from the countryside.
The morn stale tales of yesterdays were rinsed and spat out.
Phalanx of countryside people soar up to the free sky fluttering
and cutting down the demonic laws with the Khukuri-edged wings.…
The stout tip of the naked fakir rock
Perched on which the bhater pipes
Hasten back from it the surface tides
Some white with fright
Some asphyxiated blue….

Next Rajendra Bhandari. From his poem, The Concreted Sky. . . ​कङ्क्रिटको ​आकास Note the modernist imagery.

​हुर्र उड़ेर जान्छन्
आकाशको हाताभित्र रकेटका सुगा मैना
प्लास्टिकका चराचरुङ्गीहरू गुँड़ लाउँछन्
फलामका रूखहरूमा ।
दुंगाको खोला बग्छ ।
पानीको बगर चुप् लाग्छ ।
बाख्राहरू भुक्छन् ।
गाई गर्जिन्छन् ।
… … …
प्रत्येक बिहान
ईश्वरले मानिसको आरती गर्छ ।

They flutter away
Rockets of parrots and mynahs to the enclosure of the sky
Birds of plastic make their nests
In the trees of steel.
Rivers of stone flow.
The bank of water just keeps quiet.
Goats bark.
Cows roar.
… … …
Every morn
God performs the aarati of Man.

The poet bemoans the reversal of order and propriety in the so called modern world. The images likewise have undergone reversal. Even nature has assumed a grotesque aspect. What is to be noted is that quite contrary to the romantic humanisation of nature, that is endowing human character to nature, here there is a de-naturalisation of nature itself, a vile reduction of nature to inert matter, for the greater part, industrial. ‘Rivers of stone,’ is an incongruous image. But a new strange meaning is begot of the incongruity.

Ishwar Ballav wrote poems by indirection, often leaving readers wondering what they were about. Of late he has become more direct and confirm-able. Still his images retain the trait of abstractness. Here are some lines from his poem A Question Aches in My Mind.

​एउटा  प्रश्न  मनमा  दुख्छ

कही  पनि  एउटा  सानो  मन  बनिरहेको  हुन्छ
त्यसले  केही  नभए  केही  आकाश,
त्यसले  केही  नभए  केही  स्वरूप,
त्यसले  केही  नभए  केही  मौसम
आफ्ना  अनेकौं  धागोहरूमा
उनिरहेको  हुन्छ,

एउटा  अनुहार  ज्सतो
त्यसका  स्वभावहरू  हुन्छन्
म  उसलाई  सुम्सुम्याउँछु, स्पर्श गर्छु
त्यस  बेला  पनि  उ
एउटा  प्रहार  र  आघात  जस्तो  रङ्ग  लिएर
उभिरहेको  हुन्छ,
यो  कुरा  वर्तमानको  कुरा  होइन
… … …
म  आफै  के  बुझूँ?
म  यिनबाट  के  बन्न  खोजिरहेछु …

Anywhere, a mind is in making
It, if not anything, some sky
If not anything, some form
If not anything, some season
Is stringing together
In its many threads,
Its nature is
Like a face
I touch, feel, stroke it.
Then too it keeps standing
In colours of infliction and injury.
What am I myself to make of it?
What am I going to be carved into?
This question these days aches in my mind.

A slight shift is noticeable now in Nepali poetry in that some poets have made it a point of writing poetry in the simplest possible language and on subjects of common men’s concern. I will pick up two such poets.

Bikash Gotamay of India. In his poem, I Got Entangled.

A certain poet has said —
I got entangled in the dark cloud-like
Curls of yours,
Got enmeshed in your doe-eyes,
Am by your lips and teeth ensnared.
Whereas I
Got entangled in tea gardens,
Got enmeshed in rice fields,
Am by the brush and pen ensnared.
What infatuation with this earth!
What affection for man!
Relationship with the exploited,
Relationship with the downtrodden,
Really am I on this soil
Entangled in these relationships.

​म अल्झिएँ

कुनै कविले भनेका थिए ―
‘म तिम्रो मेघ जस्तो
कालो कपालमा अल्झिएँ,
हरिणी आँखामा अल्झिएँ,
दारिमी दाँत र कोमल ओंठहरूमा अल्झिएँ ।’
तर म भने
म चियाबारीमा अल्झिएँ,
म खेतबारीमा अल्झिएँ,
म कुची कलममा अल्झिएँ ।

कस्तो मोह हो यो पृथिवीको !
कस्तो माया हो यो मान्छेको !
साइनो उत्पीड़ितको
साइनो शोषितको
साँच्चै म यस माटोमा
यिनै साइनोहरूमा अल्झिएँ ।

Lastly, Kshetra Pratap Adhikari from Nepal.

Many things in life remain yet to be done.
And the most important of these is to die.

​जिन्दगीमा धेरै कुरा गर्न बाँकी छ,
सबैभन्दा ठूलो कुरा मर्न बाँकी छ ।

Did much loving, did many work,
Life ended, Dear, the bondage ended too,
It remains now to shieft to the quiet of grave.
Many things in life remain yet to be done,
And the most important one is to die.

​धेरै भयो माया मोह, धैरै भयो कर्म,
टुट्यो क्यारे जुनी, रेशम्, छुट्यो क्यारे पर्म,
कुनै शुन्य समाधिमा सर्न बाँकी छ
सबैभन्दा ठूलो कुरा मर्न बाँँकी छ ।

This paper was prepared by Indra Bahadur Rai for ConVerse 99 held at Gangtok, Sikkim in the year 1999. It has been republished here with the permission of the editors of Indra Sanpurna.