9/16/2014 1:42:31 PM
NEW BOOKS FROM FINEPRINT Buy these books online from www.bookworm.com.np
READ.BOOK BYTE
CONTENTS
FINEPRINT BOOKS
'Nepal's Development Tragedy: Threats and Possibilities' seeks to find out what factors— capital, policy, governance or institutions—were constraints to Nepal's development. It analyses Nepal's development experiments, agriculture, food security, infrastructure, unemployment, state restructuring, fiscal federalism and inclusive growth based on the author's applied research conducted for various UN agencies. This book is expected to be helpful to the government, development partners, research scholars, academics and students.
SEPTEMBER 2014 GROWING UP
BY NAYAN P. SINDHULIYA
HOW I CAME TO BOOKS
ON BOOKS
BY DIPAK GYAWALI
10
BY ABHAY K
XVIII XIX
NO TIME TO READ INTERVIEW
BY PRAKASH SUBEDI
SANJEEV UPRETY
XX
THE BOOKMAN OF GANGTOK
BY UDAY ADHIKARI
13
BY AJIT BARAL
ERIM TAYLANLAR
94
ETHER
SAMBRIDDHI RAI
96
BY BHUSHITA VASISTHA
XXII XXIV
ON AND OFF THE ROAD CONVERSATION WRITER ON WRITER
BY ASHISH DHAKAL 18
BY CILLA KHATRY PROFILE
BY ADITYA SUDARSHAN 22
XXXVI
AN ODE TO YOU, BUKOWSKI! BY SNIGDHA BHATTA
COVER STORY
XXXVII
BOOKS
THE GREAT INDIAN NOVELIST BY AJIT BARAL
XXXIV
NOTES ON A FIRST NOVEL
THE CHRONICLER BY AJIT BARAL
XXXII
A LITERARY GUILTY PLEASURE
BY SRISTI BHATTARAI 28
XXXVIII
THE SECRET LIFE OF THE READER
THEMED PIECES READ MORE
BY FARAH GHUZNAVI I
OUR SHELVES OUR SELVES BY ANNIE ZAIDI
BY SAMYAK SHERTOK II
TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE
BY KURCHI DASGUPTA
XLV
V
AND THERE SHE IS BY PRAJESH SJB RANA
XLI
READING THE MAHABHARATA IN THE 21ST CENTURY
TO DREAM BY RACHANA CHETTRI
XXXIX
THE LUNATIC
PHOTO TRIBUTE VI
BANIRA GIRI
VIII
FAVOURITE
87
TRAPPED IN A WHIFF BY PRATEEBHA TULADHAR A CHILDHOOD WITH YOU
THE BOOK I LOVE THE MOST
IN ANOTHER TIME BY TIKU GAUCHAN
DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI
READING (MEN) BETWEEN
REVIEW
THE LINES
TO INFINITY AND BACK
BY SEWA BHATTARAI
98
IX
X
BY KANCHAN OJHA
XI
ON WRITING
101
WRITING KATHMANDU BY THOMAS BELL BOOKED FOR LIFE
UPENDRA SUBBA
102
BY RICHA BHATTARAI XIV ABANDONMENT BY AYUSHMA REGMI
BOOK BYTE XIV
SHARADA SHARMA
104
KAFKA’S MADMEN
Kalpana Bantawa : Eight years into publishing and 50 plus books… yet we hadn't published a single female writer. Not that we hadn't tried hard
2 READ | September 2014
AT BOOKSTORES NOW
enough to find female writers, but because those writers who we wanted to publish preferred other publishing houses over us and those who reached out to us didn't have the kind of books we aim for. But the jinx has been broken now, with the publication of Kalpana Bantawa's Kayakalpa, a heart aching story of love and longing, which will establish her as a fresh voice in Nepali literature. She is sure to strut like a queen in the stable of FinePrint hitherto dominated by male writers.
BOOK BYTE.READ
READ.EDITORAL ISSUE- 09 | SEPTEMBER 2014
Dear Reader,
T
hough meant to be a newsletter of the book club that we used to run, READ somehow morphed into a fullfledged quarterly magazine. Once the very first issue hit the market, it was warmly received. Not because it was well laid out or edited, but because it was one of its kind—a magazine devoted solely to books. The reception inspired us to run it as a 'proper' magazine. And run we did, but without giving nary a thought to how we could keep it afloat. No wonder it became infrequent soon after and came out, at times, in tabloid sizes, as a cost-cutting measure. Later it became even more infrequent. Now it comes out once a year, a little sleeker perhaps and thicker too, at the time of the Ncell Nepal Literature Festival. One thing is constant, though: Read might have changed its avatar, but it hasn't lost its focus on books. Fittingly enough, we have themed this issue on books. In this issue, Annie Zaidi, the author of recently released Gulab and one of the participants of the Festival last year, muses about arranging the books in her family collection, which is 'not extensive but has taken a lifetime to acquire.' Farah Ghuznavi, who is participating in the Festival again this year, talks about the life—a secret one at that— of a reader and ends up talking about the book she recently read, The Baker's Daughter, which she wishes she had written. Cilla Khatry makes public her guilty pleasure reading. Sewa Bhattarai boasts of her literary crushes. Richa Bhattarai offers a glimpse of the books
www.fineprint.com.np fineprint@wlink.com.np reigning over a bookaholic family: 'spilling onto the coffee table, on top of the fridge, below the couch, and lying around on every surface possible—chairs, landings, shoe racks, closets, dressing tables, kitchen racks and pillows.' Prakash Subedi explains why short poems 'may be instrumental in reinstating in us a faith in words and their ability to communicate the profound' in these times, when we have the shortest attention spans. Ayushma Regmi, who considers herself a hoarder of books rather than a reader in the true sense, writes longingly of a time when she was confident that her 'grandfather would certainly get his hands on my books and would propel me to place one more book on store counters.' Kurchi Dasgupta meditates on her favorite book: the Mahabharata. Ashish Dhakal writes about always wanting to take off on a journey, taking a cue from Jack Kerouac and On the Road, but never quite doing that. Thomas Bell talks about the writing of his book Kathmandu; Abhay K, the making of an author; and Aditya Sudarshan, the long wait between writing a book and seeing it get published. Besides these themed pieces, the issue contains fiction and poems and our regulars features and also a cover story on Shashi Tharoor—diplomat, politician, cricket enthusiast, scholar and writer of many books and a terrific speaker to boot. This READ is a read for many sittings. Happy reading! Ajit Baral Editor
GPO: 19041, Tel: 4443263, 4421641
PUBLISHER & CEO NIRAJ BHARI EDITOR AJIT BARAL GUEST EDITOR PRANAYA SJB RANA CONTRIBUTING EDITOR RABIN GIRI PHOTOGRAPHY KISHOR KAYASTHA PRODUCTION DENISHA SHAHI LAYOUT DESIGN SAMYAK UDAS CIRCULATION SANTOSH THAPA DISTRIBUTION BIJAY BABU ADHIKARI READ IS PUBLISHED BY FINEPRINT. THE PUBLISHER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY VIEWS, IDEAS, COMMENTS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY THE PEOPLE FEATURED IN THE MAGAZINE. ALSO, NEITHER THE EDITOR NOR THE PUBLISHER CAN BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY ERRORS OR OMISSIONS THAT MIGHT HAVE CREPT IN INADVERTENTLY.
4 READ | September 2014
READ.BOOK BYTE
BOOK BYTE.READ
kmfOglk|G6 a'S;
b]j d'vhL{ / d nflhDkf6df n'¿n'¿ lxFl8/x]sf lyof}+ . PSsfl; ef/tLo /fhb"tn] r9\g] @@l;8L! gDa/sf] ;]tf] dl;{l8h xfd|f] cufl8af6 lgl:sof] . jif{lbg cl3;Dd b]j g]kfndf ef/tsf /fhb"t lyP . …kf]xf]/ ;fn;Dd tkfO{+n] r9\g] of] eJo uf8Ldf cfh cs}{ JolQm ;jf/ 5 Û tkfO{+nfO{ s:tf] cg'ej eO/x]5 < cfh tkfO{+ km'6kfydf dh:tf] d'8L dflg;l;t lxFl8/xg'ePsf] 5 .Ú ;'g]/ b]j uDeL/ eP . …ljho, hLjgk|lt d cg'u[xLt 5' . p;n] PseGbf a9L b]zdf o:tf] emG8fjfn uf8L r9\g] df}sf dnfO{ lbof] . t/ To;sf lglDt eGbf w]/} a9Ls[t1 o;sf/0f 5', cfh km'6kfydf lxF8\bf ha Tof] emG8fjfn dl;{l8h d]/f] cufl8af6 lg:sG5, dnfO{ g t Tof] uf8L km]l/ r9\g] s'g} nfn;f dgdf cfpF5 g Tof] uf8Ldf clxn] ;jf/ dflg;k|lt Oiof{ hfU5 . d cg'u[xLt 5', dnfO{ Tof] uf8L r9\g] / To;sf] ;Lldttf dx;'; ug]{, b'j}yl/ cj;/ hLjgn] lbof] . afO{ b j] ljho, ltdL d'8Ldfq xf]Ogf} . s;}n] ltd|f] ;gskg ;xg ;Sof] eg] Ps} l5gkl5 To;sf k5fl8 n's]/ a;]sf] /dfOnf] dflg; klg e]6\g ;S5 . h;nfO{ d}n] glhsaf6 lrGg] cj;/ kfPF .
ahf/df pknAw 5 . 6 READ | September 2014
September 2014 |READ 7
Exposure READ.BOOK BYTE
BOOK BYTE.READ
GLIMPSES OF THE NCELL NEPAL LITERATURE FESTIVAL-2013
8 READ | September 2014
September 2014 |READ 9
GROWING UP.READ
READ.BOOK BYTE
HOW I CAME TO BOOKS BY DIPAK GYAWALI
T
here is a Russian saying that for a man to be a genuine member of the intelligentsia, it is not enough for him to be an intellectual: definitely his father but also his grandfather must have been an intellectual (or her, femo-fundamentalists please forgive the evolutionary baggage of the English language, unlike Nepali which is more gender-bias free!). As the Russian babushka wisdom has it, this is so because to be a ‘buddhijeevi’, individual cerebral prowess and academic qualifications are necessary but hardly sufficient. Equally important are the broader social capital of the intelligentsia class that the individual has inherited as well as the culture of intellectual discourse and its rich network he has been exposed to from his formative childhood. By this genealogical criterion, I qualify by default. My maternal grandfather Kedar Mani Dixit was the 10 READ | September 2014
secretary of Madan Sumshere, the youngest son of Rana prime minister Chandra Sumshere. General Madan had a private library which was not as rich as that of his older brother Field Marshal Keshar (whose collection—largest in Nepal of those days—is now part of our national library under the Education Ministry). Nevertheless it certainly was generously overflowing with musty hardbound, sometimes gilt-edged, books from Britain that must have been portered from Amlekhgunj over the Chandragiri pass to Thankot and finally to his residence, Sri Durbar, sprawled between Pulchowk and Patan Dhoka. Those books are now with the Madan Puraskar Library (MPL) with some English books having been given to the Social Science Baha library at Battisputali to make room for the expanding Nepali collection of the MPL. The former was set up by my uncle Kamal Mani Dixit, encouraged by my grandfather
some six decades ago when I was a bare toddler (and my octogenarian mother still serves on its board). By I guess genetic default, the setting up of the latter was to see some initial kick start initiative from my cousins Kanak and Kunda, and myself. My cousins and I grew up with that library as an inseparable part of our childhood. It was housed on the first floor of Sri Durbar, just below the Naagbeli Baithak where General Madan’s widow Rani Jagadamba started handing out Nepal’s Nobel prize in literature, the Madan Puraskar, when I was about six years old. One of my vivid memories from childhood is some of us youngster cousins watching from the portico balcony above this library as prime minister B P Koirala’s black sedan pulled up below us when he came to receive from Rani Jagadamba the handover of the other half of Sri Durbar, the Sri Mahal, to the Nepal government (it is now the Ministry of
Federal Affairs and Local Development). While such formal ceremonies were only yearly affairs just before Dasain, for the rest of the year the library was a silent retreat one could wallow in for hours free of any disturbances. The priceless collection of old 'National Geographics' must have been what whetted my appetite for geography in school, and children’s books such as by Enid Blyton certainly inculcated a reading habit very early on in life. I remember spending many, many hours there, and probably was exposed to many subjects and realms of learning long before encountering them formally in school. Indeed, it was an older cousin letting on in furtive whispers that a certain yellow-covered book on the shelf in the back had 'pictures of 137 naked women' as well as some pretty graphic anatomy volumes that must have been the first sex education that I received in the socially puritanical Nepal of those early democratic years! I was also fortunate in having been a boarding student at St. Xaviers Godavari School, where we lived on the campus right next to the Phulchowki forests. Thanks to the untiring and selfless efforts of the Jesuit Fathers, STX Godavari had the best school library in Nepal, which possibly was at par with those in India and even abroad. The World Book encyclopedia was always a friend to resort to during idle hours; the American Life news magazine (which I believe is defunct now) was something that introduced us almost effortlessly into international affairs; and even by 5th standard, some of us were already into classics by Charles Dickens and heavier writers. The Jesuits have been outstanding pioneers of liberal education globally since the founding of their Order by Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier in the mid-Sixteenth Century. I have been a lucky beneficiary of that world-class liberal education in which an incomparable library has been its indispensable feature. Nepal has a serious 'input-output' problem: not only does it lack public libraries for intellectual nourishment;
it also lacks public toilets in equal measure for nature-designed output requirements. Perhaps there is a deep-seated correlation between these two vital needs that some social theorist will uncover and enlighten us; but the net result has been that many of us have had to invest in personal private libraries out of sheer necessity. My father, the longest serving Attorney General of Nepal, who under King Mahendra chaired the reform of Jung Bahadur’s Mulki Ain, had his personal law library that had legal documents and cases meticulously hand-copied that even the Supreme Court of Nepal did not. It's all now part of the Shambhu Prasad Gyawali Legal Collection of the Social Science Baha Library. I too have had to indulge in book collection much like an indefatigable stamp collector out of sheer necessity. While much of my collection of books and grey literature in water and energy are with the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation library at Chundevi, Maharajgunj, I retain a personal library at home dealing with my current research interests. There are books on philosophy, especially philosophy of science and technology, on cultural theory and political economy, on critical theory-type Marxian thinking, on dictionaries of every type as well as on books on Eastern philosophy. Quite a bit of what I earned doing consultancy in the early 1990s for a Swiss research firm in Zurich I remember splurging on a complete new set of Encyclopedia Britannica. I have heard today’s young Twitter and Facebook generation saying, 'You can get all the information by googling on the internet.' I am afraid that is just not true: it is just a bit of over-rated cyber propaganda that such youngsters have fallen victim to. It is even more painful when young Masters and PhD students come to talk to me, and when I mention some critical reference, assume they can just google and find it. They will never find it that way because those who know about that particular issue have not found the time or need or energy to put it on the web. If all information is already on the
internet, why bother writing a PhD thesis, or even a newspaper article? There is no substitute for a good library, especially a personal one with dog-eared books that you digested ages ago, when you want to write a convincing piece. Let me close with an example. I am right now trying to write an article on the philosophy of science for a journal called Darshan Dristi run by a group of young Nepali philosophy enthusiasts. In struggling with the induction-deduction, analysis-synthesis dichotomy, I remembered reading many, many years ago a book by a Catholic scientist, a biophysicist and philosopher that said something that came back to me vaguely as an answer to my qualms. I was not even sure of the name of the author, let alone the particular quote which said that deeper and deeper reductionist analysis would not lead back to the broad synthesized understanding of the human predicament. I remember picking up that book during my college days, but I had travelled abroad for education to the Soviet Union and to California meanwhile, and in Kathmandu had moved to different houses four times. Would I find that book? I did, in my personal library, in a carton that was only partially unpacked from the last house move. It was dog-eared, the cover was missing and the pages were falling apart, but there it was, the quote that I had underlined in the momentous Hippie and student revolt year of 1968! The author was Pierre Lecomte du Noüy and the book, published in 1947, was Human Destiny. The quote I was looking for was on page 25: 'When [the scientist] reaches this point [at the ultimate frontier of analysis, whether in individual psychology or in molecular biology, and especially as he crosses the threshold of one analytical knowledge to another] it is impossible for him by using the inverse method to retrace his steps to any of the original problems.' Try finding that without a library, by simply googling it, especially when you don’t remember the name of the author or the book, you have loadshedding, and the Doorsanchar internet ADSL simply stays dead!
September 2014 |READ 11
Q&A.READ
How did you get into reading? I started by reading Enid Blytons and later moved on to the detective novels by Eric Stanley Gardner and James Hadley Chase. They influenced me so much during high school that I turned myself into a detective in the imaginary world that existed inside my mind. I led a very lonely life without siblings or friends till I was nine, especially because I joined school only in grade four and was home tutored before that. My parents were often away from home, as my doctor father was usually posted in remote areas because of his affiliation with the then banned Nepali Congress. They used to bring lots of books for me, including novels by Enid Blyton, probably to compensate my lonely life. This might have led me to reading. Later, books became both my friends and the siblings that I never had.
Sanjeev Uprety is professor at the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. He received a PhD from Brown University for the dissertation titled â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Double Mimesis: Representations of Mimicry, Masculinity, Modernity and Nation in Colonial and Post-colonial Narratives 1850-1947â&#x20AC;&#x2122;. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines and is the author of the novel Ghanachakkar. Here is an excerpt from an interview taken BY UDAY ADHIKARI:
Your first book was in English, so what made you pen your second one in Nepali? Especially at such a time when South Asian English writing was scaling new heights? I started writing in Nepali seriously only during the Jana Andolan days. My first article in Nepali was in Kantipur when the revolution was at its height. There was a pro-democracy gathering at Gurukul during which police intervened and began firing shots and beating up artists and writers. I was beaten up badly by the police and was very angry. I had heard that when one is in love or angry, the best way to express is through the mother tongue. The day after the incident, I wrote about it in September 2014 |READ 13
Q&A.READ
READ.BOOK BYTE
Nepali and sent to Kantipur for publication. I wrote every week thereafter. The response I got from the readers made me confident that I could write in Nepali too. This led to the writing of Ghanchakkar. Are you happy with its reception? Yes. I am quite happy the way the novel was received by the public. My aim was to show both the mental state of the main character who is obviously less than sane, but also to represent the social chaos—including senseless violence during the Maoist war, with newspapers full of the gory pictures of violence—which, at least to me, was a kind of collective madness. I think Ghanchakkar was able to achieve that aim. And more importantly, I am happy with the effort I put in while writing it. My philosophy has always been to do my best, and not worry about the outcome.
14 READ | September 2014
Your columns in different English dailies over a decade suggest your interest in small things, common people? Why so? Small pleasures of life (like riding a bike to places like Nagarjun and Chovar to gaze at natural beauty, sharing laughter with friends, spending time with the family) hold greater meaning for me than big things. We are all going to die, that is one certainty in this world of uncertainties. And if that is the case, 'big' accomplishments—including acquiring name and fame—are only temporary. Small joys of everyday life are more important, they make life worth living for me. It seems to me all that all people, including the common people like rickshaw pullers and fish sellers, have interesting stories of their own. The only thing one needs to do as a writer is to listen to them carefully and with empathy. The stories are bound to surface. Also, I felt that
journalists have been eulogizing the lives of the rich and the famous for a long time and that it is important to speak of the common people and their experiences too. Their stories are also part of the history; collective history is much more than the stories of generals, kings and courtiers only. You have dabbled a lot in theories and written about them. But in Nepal, neither teachers nor students even at universities seem to be comfortable with theories, why is it so ? A lot of this has to do with the fact that theory is taught in an abstract manner here; theory should be joined with the practices of everyday life. It should be tied to the historical and political contexts through which we are living. Once we do that, theory will stop being an alien philosophy; it will become part of our everyday life as it should be. I hope the my book Siddhantaka Kura will encourage people to look at theory
in that way. In this book I have tried to link theories to everyday practices of classroom and society, and have interpreted western theories in relation to Nepali texts such as Ramesh Vikal’s Aviral Bagcha Indravati, B.P. koirala’s Sumnima, Indra Bahadur Rai’s Kathaputaliko man, Abhi Subedi’s Thamel Ko Yatra, Shankar Lamichhane’s Abstract Chintan Pyaj, Krishna Dharawasi’s Saranarthi, Vijay Malla’s Anuradha, Parijat’s Sirishko Phool and so on. I have also used examples from Nepal’s art scene to discuss the concepts of modernity and postmodernity. In addition, I have used theory to talk about the concept of democracy and social justice in the context of post-jana andolan Nepal. I am hoping that all this will make theoretical concepts—such as discourse, ideology, hegemony, essentialism and constructivism etc—more accessible and interesting to Nepali readers. Some people think that theories are a Western concept, that it is imported, and hence don’t like it. Others think it is full of technical jargons and difficult to understand. If we started rejecting everything that came from the West, we have to reject electricity and air travel as well. And probably shut English departments all over the nation as the English language itself came from the West. As to the second objection, sometimes theoreticians are to blame. Some theoreticians use only jargons and divorce theory from everyday practice, in other words theory gets too theoretical. I think it is possible to relate theory with everyday practice, to the ethics of everyday life, to the concepts such as democracy and social justice. If we can tie theory to the political and social contexts of Nepal I think it would be very interesting to many people. What motivated you to take such a deep interest in literary theories? I came to them coincidentally. When I began teaching at the central department of English, theory was just introduced at the Masters level
and I began my teaching career by teaching various literary theories, including reader-response criticism, feminist theory and Marxist theory. Later when I went to US for higher education the two universities that I studied in (SUNY-Binghamton and Brown) were very theory oriented with well established theorists like William Spanos, Lennard Davis, Leslie Heywood, Immanuel Wallerstein and Christopher Fynsk (at SUNYBinghamton) and Robert schools, Nancy Armstrong, Rey Chow and Neil Lazarus (at Brown) among others. This too might have contributed to my interest in theory. In addition to this I felt that theory is important to question our own class, ethnic and professional locations and to question the social ideologies (including those coming from religion and market) that shape our sense of 'I', our subjectivities in other words. Before coming into theory I used to think that my ideas were mine only, that I was speaking original thoughts that had emerged directly from my inmost being. Theory taught me that my so called original and natural thoughts were neither that original nor that natural. Since my location was that of an upper middle class heterosexual male brahmin based in Kathmandu, my thoughts were being shaped by ideologies emanating from those “grounds of identity.” I think reading theory allowed me to become acutely aware of some of the social stigmas and ideological repressions suffered by marginal groups (like janjatis, homosexuals, factory laborers and disabled people for example) in Nepal, people who occupy positions of relative powerlessness in Nepal; it also exploded many of my ideological blindness and allowed me to look beyond the borders of my own locations. A few years ago, the use of the subaltern figure in your novel was discussed quite a lot, even in newspapers. Do you think of theories while writing?
As a writer I don’t think of theories consciously as I write, but since I also read and teach theories they have become part of my subconscious which is quite natural. I don’t really think a writer has to know theories before writing, let's say a poem or a novel. But theories can help him/her in an indirect manner. Theories are, after all, various windows or lenses to look at the world, including its sociocultural and political aspects. And since a writer (whether a fiction writer, poet or a playwright) also writes about the world, theoretical insights might help his writing, even if indirectly. As for the issues concerning subalternity and subaltern studies, I am glad that Gurukul reproduction of Ghanchakkar initiated the discussion. Some people criticised the play version of the novel concerning the representation of subaltern characters, others praised it for the same issues. Such things are inevitable and I don’t really think of them too much. What was gratifying, however, was that Ghanchakkar helped bring out such issues in mainstream literary culture of Nepal; and that it was taken up by other writers later What are your views on translation? Translation is a difficult genre and in any case, it is very difficult to produce perfect translation. Although I don't like all the translations from Nepali to English, I applaud the work translators are doing. Some translations are very good. Manjushree Thapa, for example, has done an excellent job of translating Nepali literary pieces into English in The Country is Yours. But there are some others that leave me dissatisfied – such as Greta Rana's translation of Seto Bagh. Seto Bagh is one of my favourite Nepali novels, I have read it at least three times in Nepali. But when I read Greta Rana’s translation the novel did not sound the same. The story was there, but the magic was gone.
September 2014 |READ 15
BOOK BYTE.READ
READ.Q&A YOU SHOULD REALIZE THAT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT IN TRIBHUVAN UNIVERSITY, INCLUDING THE CENTRAL DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, IS NOT REALLY STRUCTURED TO PRODUCE CREATIVE WRITERS. How do you evaluate Nepali writing in English in comparison to other South Asian writing, especially Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan? Nepali writing in English is growing and it has its own flavour, but we need to have more writers to be on par with English writing that is coming from India and elsewhere. With the corpus of English Nepali writing ever expanding and new possibilities for writing and publishing coming to the fore (including e-magazines, blogs and even Facebook) the future of Nepali writing in English looks bright. However, it is also the time to take stock, to consider the theoretical problems that trace the construction of a category such as 'Nepali writings in English' or 'Nepali English Literature.' It is necessary to develop awareness about the problematic of writing in English as a non-native, non western writer, and to interrogate the institutional frameworks within which such writings are produced, published, disseminated and read. It is difficult to compare writers across time and space because they are writing within different historical, political and social context, and also because I believe that there are no universal standards of evaluation. From one evaluative standards one might say, for example, that Shakespeare is a better dramatist than Maori playwrights...but is that really the case? I am sure that Maori people would have a different answer. It depends on what criteria (sales, reviews, literary values taught at educational institutions, etc) one uses to judge the worth of the literary works. 16 READ | September 2014
You have been a student at TU and Western universities. In your experience, what are the commendable features of Western academia that we can adopt to improve our traditional teaching methods? The main difference is the openness of atmosphere and the way teachers and students work together as co-producers of knowledge. In Nepal, teachers are supposed to know everything and students often become mere passive recipients of the knowledge they “give.” This creates unnecessary and unnatural pressure on teachers too, creating what might be called the “trauma of the classroom. The English Department at TU has produced wonderful teachers and researchers, but not writers. Why? You should realize that the English department in Tribhuvan University, including the central department of English, is not really structured to produce creative writers. Their main job is to produce capable teachers of English and professionals who can use English in other spheres of life, including journalism, business, foreign service and so on. From this perspective English departments are doing a great service to the country, despite all the infrastructural limitations within which we work. More things are needed to produce good creative writers (I assume that you are talking about Nepali writing in English, not writing in general in Nepal), not merely good English departments in college and university level. We need good writing courses in high and middle schools to begin with, also platforms (magazines, literary journals and so on) where
emerging writers can be published. We also need a larger readership. All of these things are happening gradually and we should remain positive. At least things are much better for emerging writers now than what they were, let's say twenty years back when I was writing Potato, Butter and Coffee which was probably the first novel in experimental vein (as far as Nepali English writing is concerned ) at that time. I think we can be optimistic about the future. You revised Ghanachakkar for subsequent editions. Doesn't that create doubt about its authenticity? And should not one be leaving a published book as is, as the author is dead as soon as it is out? Your question is based on an older assumption that the value of a literary text is transcendental, and that its meaning is fixed for eternity. In other words it's a crime or at least an ethical fallacy (on the part of the author) to tinker with the text because such tinkering would change the meaning of the text; a meaning which, according to such assumption, is transcendental. I do not subscribe to such a transcendental view concerning the meaning of literary text. And for the same reason, I believe that writers are free to re-write their narratives. After all, we live in the age of re-writing (punarlekhan). If one writer can rewrite another writer's text (as Indra Bahadur Rai rewrote Guru Prasad Mainali 's text, and Dharawasi wrote I.B Rai's text, just to give two among many examples) then why can't writers rewrite their own text? There are numerous examples in world literature when the writers have rewritten their earlier texts. September 2014 |READ 17
CONVERSATION: WRITER ON WRITER
CONVERSATION.READ
After writing for newspapers for some years, Prashant Jha and Aditya Adhikari decided to write books about Nepali politics. Prashant Jha’s Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal, which was published in June, covers much of contemporary political history, especially after the peace process. Adhikari’s The Bullet and the Ballot Box: The Story of Nepal’s Maoist Revolution will be published in October, and is primarily concerned with the years of the civil war. Jha and Adhikari are friends, and READ magazine brought them together for a conversation on their books. Aditya: Both of us started becoming immersed in Nepali politics around the same time. It was soon after the peace process had begun. You had moved back to Kathmandu from Delhi, and I had moved back from Mumbai. The Maoists had entered Kathmandu and the war was over. The army barricades had come down, and after many years people were able to return to their villages. There was a kind of euphoria in the air. The promise of a ‘new Nepal’ resonated with a lot of people. But it was still a tumultuous moment. The Maoists still controlled many rural areas. The law and order situation was still volatile. And then in 2007-8, the Madhes movement erupted and shook the establishment in Kathmandu. It is difficult for me to recapture the excitement
18 READ | September 2014
we felt at that time. It seems strange that the vision of a ‘new Nepal’ was more than just a tired slogan not too long ago. Almost all our conversations in those days revolved around Nepali politics, remember? Prashant: It was quite an exciting period, wasn't it? I had been in Delhi during the time of the royal coup, when many Nepali political activists made India their base or travelled there frequently
to organise the anti monarchy agitation and sign the peace deal with the Maoists. But the magnitude of the change underway in Nepal had not really sunk in until I came back home. I remember the euphoria, laced with the apprehension about the Maoists. I think our class background, and our political socialisation till then, made us skeptical of the Maoist intentions in those early years--we didn't know them, we didn't
know where they came from, and we were taken in by the traditional lenses through which the established intelligentsia of Kathmandu analysed them. But I think that changed slowly. I began reporting from the Tarai, and I remember coming back and telling you all about the depth of alienation there. We slowly began to see the kind of state structure that existed, the one that the Maoists were fighting against. And our own political views evolved.
Aditya: That’s true. Although I was aware that the Maoists and Madhesis had genuine grievances, I tended to see the end of the war and political stability as the most important goals. I remember feeling angry at the Maoists for making what I thought were unreasonable demands, or at Madhesis or Janajati groups for imposing a banda. At the same time, I was fascinated by the Maoists. For years they
had caused such great turmoil in the country. But like others in Kathmandu, I had barely encountered any of them. Now suddenly they were everywhere, and it was exciting to be able to meet so many of them, from all levels in the party and military hierarchy, and ask them whatever I wanted. Also, meeting people in and outside of Kathmandu and reading books in Nepali gave me a more visceral sense of the inequalities in Nepali society. Over time, I came to feel that political order could serve as a facade for the dominance of particular groups and conceal oppression. Prashant: I agree. There was a yearning for stability and order, but not at the cost of justice and dignity and redistribution of political power. And I think the 2008 elections reflected that. That was a turning point for me. Like everyone else we had dismissed the Maoists - but the mandate forced me to question my assumptions about them and look at them afresh. From focusing almost exclusively on the Tarai, I also began focusing on national politics and regional dynamics. 2008, I remember, was also the time when we first discussed doing a book. What we had in mind was of course totally different. Unlike me, you ended up deciding on a book that focused more on the war than the peace. Aditya: I’m attracted to extreme situations. They put people through severe tests and reveal something fundamental about them, something that would not otherwise have come to light. The Maoist movement was one of the most severe ruptures in Nepali history, and it sharpened and revealed the deepest contradictions within Nepali society. The peace process, I felt, was to a great extent an attempt to heal the wounds of war and consolidate a new political structure. This was of course immensely important, and I have written about it in my book, but my main focus was the war, which I felt offered greater opportunities to get at the ‘truth’ of Nepali society. Besides, even though I wrote a column for a long time, my temperament is more historical than journalistic. In fact, the difference between our temperaments is very evident in our books. It’s not just that you wrote a book primarily dealing with contemporary politics and I wrote one primarily about the past. The approach, style and what we
September 2014 |READ 19
BOOK BYTE.READ
READ.CONVERSATION hoped to accomplish seem substantially different. Prashant: You are right about the difference in our temperament, and I think that is why we complemented each other well. I would be taken in by an incident or an event and try to find out the real, the behind-the-scenes story of why it happened the way it did. And you were able to grasp the big picture almost immediately and place the event in a larger historical context--that helped me separate the ordinary from the significant and urgent. The books reflect that. You read so extensively, navigated through hundreds of books and memoirs and official documents to reconstruct the war, besides the interviews - and your academic orientation comes across in the book. I relied largely on my reportage, the meetings over the years with the cast of characters who had a role in the transformation. In some ways, you went back to the archives and I went to the field. And our steady conversations meant that both approaches fed into each other. Aditya: Indeed. You were the indefatigable reporter and I owe much of my knowledge of the intrigues of Nepali politics to you, especially when it came to India’s role. I was--still am--very impressed by your tenacity and your ability to cultivate access and gain information from politicians across the spectrum, even those whom you criticised strongly in your columns. I also felt that your mind worked in a different way than mine. You analysed information very quickly, often during conversations, and even while on the move. You had a natural, instinctive understanding of power and the ways in which it is used. Let me ask you a bit about your book now. The section on the Madhes is the most personal part of the book. Your sketches of the lives of various Madhesi activists are very moving. Can you say something about one of your favourite characters in that section, and what particularly you learnt from them? Prashant: You are right. The Madhes section was the first full section I wrote, even though it comes later in the book. It is deeply personal, and I felt that I needed to put out my own story, the ways in which I had to grapple with the question of identity as honestly as possible. It was important because I think it is
20 READ | September 2014
through this account that readers can understand where I am coming from, why my worldview is what it is. But of course, I have interspersed the personal with pretty extensive reportage from the ground. Two characters stood out for me. One was Rajeev Jha. I had got to know him when he was just one of many young, educated, politically engaged men hanging around in Janakpur. He took me on his own bike all the way to Darbhanga across the border to meet an armed group leader, and within months, Rajeev himself joined the outfit. Over the years, I saw his trajectory and through his life, saw the evolution of the radical sentiment that constitutes one strand of Tarai's politics. He set up his own group; his colleague was killed in an extra judicial execution; and eventually, he returned to mainstream politics and fought and lost in the last CA elections. The other character was Tula Narayan Sah. Tulaji is now a well-established activist in Kathmandu. But he had just started out with the Nepal Madhes Foundation when I first met him. I devote considerable space to Tulaji in the book--his life represents the evolution of young Madhesi men, from rural areas, who were the first generation to be educated in their families, and whose alienation from the state deepened as their encounters with Kathmandu increased. Early on in your book, to explain the change as well as persistence of status quo during the 90s, you use Khagendra Sangroula's novel. I was curious why you picked his book, and what role you think radical intellectuals like him have played in the evolution of Nepal's left politics. Aditya: Sangraula’s novel Junkiriko Sangeet, in my view, is the most vivid and affecting depiction of exploitative caste and land relations in the middle hills. I juxtapose the novel’s narrative with Baburam Bhattarai’s writings in my book to dramatize what the Maoists rather abstractly call 'semi-feudal' relations. As you know, I draw on various Nepali novels in the book to demonstrate various aspects of the Maoist movement. There have been many novelists and poets in Nepal who have been deeply engaged with politics in recent decades. Sometimes their writings help illustrate social and political cleavages in a richer way than would be possible through social science or
journalism. They also help shape public opinion and rally support for a particular cause. Khagendra Sangroula, who had been politically engaged for decades and produced many aesthetically accomplished works, is one of the most important of these writers. Throughout the book, I have used novels and poems to show how the Maoist movement was experienced by some of the most sensitive and articulate members of Nepali society. A final question for you: How was your experience of writing the book and seeing it published? Was it different from your experience of regular journalism? Prashant: The writing itself was a great learning process. I had done long form journalism but to structure a work of this length is enormously challenging, and I was happy with the non-linear narrative that finally emerged. The process also gave me many pangs, because I used to write a bit, and then forget all about it for almost a year and then return to the text. In hindsight, I am glad I took the time I did because Nepali politics was so fluid that if I had written earlier, there was a danger of looking foolish because events would have overtaken the narrative. Now I feel the book covers one phase of politics and history. But at that point, one just did not know whether it would ever get done. But I must add that the writing was also fun. I had a lot to say, there were many anecdotes, the stories behind the stories, which one could not weave into regular journalism and this gave me an opportunity to bring that out. It was also an attempt to reflect on one's own politics, and articulate it at some length, and counter the revisionist history that is being written at the moment since the political power balance has changed. I was writing regular weekly columns for a long time; these were often provocative and unpopular, and so I was used to getting published and receiving some bouquets and many brickbats. But publishing a book, I realised, was an altogether different experience. It is intensely rewarding, and all those pangs are clearly worth it. I am pretty overwhelmed by how well it has been received, and I hope our books continues to serve a useful function of reminding Nepalis of all that we have gone through, and giving outsiders a glimpse into our politics and society.
/Tg k':ts e08f/ RATNA Pustak Bhandar
a}+sdfu{–&!‘u’afuahf/,sf7df8f}+,g]kfn. kmf ]g $@@#)@^, $@$@)&&
BOOK BYTE.READ
THE CHRONICLER BY AJIT BARAL
I
t's early in the morning and Nayan Raj Pandey is sitting by a tea stall at the bus park, drinking tea. A man comes up to the stall and asks the vendor for directions to Pulchowk. The tea vendor looks up at the man, clad in a dhoti yellowed by frequent use, but doesn't answer him. There is crusty mucus in the corners of the man's eyes. Apparently, he has just got down from a night bus coming in from the Tarai. 'Where is Pulchowk?' The man again asks the tea vendor, in a voice so soft that it will melt anyone’s heart. But not the tea vendor's, and he flares up, pointing at his crotch, 'Pulchowk is here, Marsya.' The man slinks away, a little afraid, as if caught trying to steal something. Pandey watches the man disappear among the buses and thinks: Why did the tea vendor have to shout at the man? Where had this man come from? And why? This train of thought leads Pandey to reconstruct the life of the 'Marsya' and thus was born Ular— a book that will make you weep, grit your teeth in anger against the injustices the writer brings to life so evocatively, a book you wish would never end, a book that packs a punch disproportionate to its small size—heralding Pandey’s arrival on the Nepali literary scene. Ular wasn't Pandey’s first book, though. He had already published three novellas before: NangoManchheko Dairy; Vikramaditya, Euta Katha Suna; and Atirikta. The first two, when he was just 21 years of age. That's an early age for publishing a book, by any standards. So what enabled him to write at such a young age? 22 READ | September 2014
READ.PROFILE HIS AMBITIONS GOT EVEN MORE OF A BOOST WHEN HIS FATHER, WHO WAS BIG ON DETECTIVE NOVELS BY KUSWAKANTA, ENCOURAGED HIM TO WRITE A NOVEL, AS NO ONE IN NEPALGUNJ HAD WRITTEN ONE. As a kid, Pandey wasn't verygood at studies, always failing a subject or two, and had to be promoted by grace. 'But I must have had some skills with words,' he says, 'For I started writing tukbandi style poems early on.' Pandey would send these poems to a children’s program on Radio Nepal, which was very popular back then, tempted, of course, by the possibility of hearing his name on the radio. He won a prize for one of his poems, which only encouraged him to write more. So write he did—and not just poetry. At that time, two other writers, Nanda Ram Lamsal and Sanat Regmi, were were big names in Nepalgunj. Pandey followed in their footsteps. 'At one point,' says Pandey, 'I used to write one or two story every day, but they were all filmy.' Not without a reason, as Pandey was a big movie buff and would steal money all the time to go see films. No wonder he wrote formulaic stories, replete with heroes, heroines and villains. Once he showed his stories to Lamsal, who told him that he had the potential to write stories very different from ones he was currently writing, and that one could build a whole story even from small incidents. Lamsal also suggested that Pandey read more books. Pandey then started frequenting the Mahendra Pustakalaya, which had a large and substantial collection of Hindi literature. There, he was introduced to the works of great Indian writers like Premchand and also Russian writers like Chekhov, 24 READ | September 2014
Tolstoy and Gorky in Hindi translations. These works helped broaden his understanding of literature. His fascination with films, however, didn't go in vain.They made him imaginative—a skill he put to good use creating characters and building stories. He realised that he could say a lot through a story and the process of writing a short story itself started to give him a kick. Slowly, he stopped writing poetry altogether and wrote only short stories. After his SLC, Pandey came to Kathmandu, hoping to gain admission to a college. Here, he got an opportunity to meet writers like Shyamal, Bimal Nibha and Dhruba Chandra Gautam, already an established name in the literary circle, who used to live near his aunt's house in Chabahil. Pandey stayed in Kathmandu for five or six months before returning to Nepalgunj. He had failed to get admission to a college but his literary ambitions were fueled further. His ambitions got even more of a boost when his father, who was big on detective novels by Kuswakanta, encouraged him to write a novel, as no one in Nepalgunj had written one. He also thought that if he could just expand on a story, he would have a novel. That is when he gave serious thought to writing a novel. Though long, sprawling novels eluded him, his novellas Nango Manchheko Dairyand Vikramadity, Mero Euta Katha Suna, published in 2044, were very experimental, written as they were under the heavy influence of Dhruba Chandra Gautam and Dhruba Sapkota, who were churning out experimental fiction.
The same year, he went to Kathmandu to do his BA and got an offer to write a television script. He quickly accepted it without second thought. 'I had read many scripts, had a visual sense and acted in plays in college, which gave me the confidence that I could write a script,' he says.This confidence paid off. He wrote the script, which was later made into a serial. Once it was aired, he got more offers to write scripts, both for television and film. There was glamour and a bit of money in writing scripts and Pandey only had time to write stories in between writing scripts. These stories were later collected in the collections Nidaye Jagadamba and Khorbitra Joker. In 2050 BS, he published another novella, Atirikta, in which he analysed the psychology of a third gender person. By this time, Pandeyhad already veered towards social realism, which could be traced to the influence of left-leaning writers. Though he was a democrat, he had many writer friends on the left side of the political spectrum and they would talk about the need for writers to write about class struggles, bidroha, anger and frustration. He agreed with them that literature should serve a purpose andhas to be essentially transformative. What he didn't agree with was their insistence that writers should always talk about class struggle and take positions. So, he wrote subtle works of literature, letting readers react to injustices meted out on his characters, rather than have his characters pick up arms against the oppressive
BOOK BYTE.READ
READ.BOOK BYTE
class or state. The most radiant example of this philosophy is Ular. Though Ular was critically acclaimed, it received the attention it deserved only after it was reissued a decade later, in 2063 BS. This gave him the energy to work on a new novel. He had a story for a novel, which later became Loo, in his mind: a story of life on the Nepal-India border. But the problem was, he says, 'I wanted to write longer, but all I had done was write short books. Writing a longer book was tough.' As he set out to write Loo, he had to learn a trick or two. He says, 'In Ular, there is very little description and the story itself creates a picture in the reader's mind as it moves forward. In Loo, I had to write things in detail. And I also wanted to play with language and imagery. So I practiced by writing short poems, about 150 or so.' This practice and a
26 READ | September 2014
number of drafts he worked on paid off:thousands of copiesof Loo quickly flew off the shelves and it narrowly missed winning the Madan Puraskar that year. Loo brought Pandey both fame and money, opening up the possibility for him to write full-time and give up writing scripts all together. His heart wasn't in script writing anymore. He explains, 'There was little creativity involved as you had to write what your producers or directors wanted you to write.' It was with much renewed enthusiasm that Pandey set out to write Ghamkiri, his latest offering. Initially, he wanted to make it autobiographical, writing about his boyhood days in Nepalgunj: his fascination with films and Bollywood; his running away from home to Mumbai to try his luck in the film industry; his struggles, albeit for a short time; his meeting with
interesting characters in Mumbai; his crush on Padmini Kolapuri. But there were certain things he felt uncomfortable saying in an autobiography and his friends too thought it would work best if he turned it into fiction. He then added many fictional elements to the budding novel, like the reference to Yogmaya, and made it read like a fantasy in an attempt to tell, as he says, ordinary things in an extraordinary way. The result was a fiction so imaginative but so unmoored that readers didn't quite know what to make of it. Pandey has always experimented with different styles of relating experiences, from poetry to scripts to short stories to novellas to fullfledged novels. And while his experiments haven't always brought him commercial or critical success, they are essential to Pandey's own evolution as a chronicler of experiences.
September 2014 |READ 27
BOOK BYTE.READ
READ.BOOK BYTE
THE GREAT INDIAN NOVELIST TEXT BY AJIT BARAL PHOTOGRAPHS BY KISHOR KAYASTHA
28 READ | September 2014
One of the perennial top rankers at school and college, he raced through his education. At 19, he went to graduate school in the US, did his MA and also Masters in Law and Diplomacy and PhD in Indian foreign policy during the time of Indira Gandhi's first administration, 196677, at age 22. Soon after, he joined the United Nations as a staff member with the UN High Commission for Refugees in Geneva. He then moved up the UN ladder, becoming Under-Secretary General in 2001 and narrowly lost the election to the post of Secretary-General to Ban Ki-moon.
September 2014 |READ 29
READ.COVER STORY
I
t's the year 2009 and we are sitting on the lawn of the Diggi Palace, one of the venues for the Jaipur Literature Festival, waiting for Shashi Tharoor to arrive on stage for a conversation with Shoma Chaudhary, former editor of Tehelka. There are surely over a thousand people gathered, looking forward to hearing him speak. A hush falls over the crowd as Tharoor walks towards the stage with Chaudhary in tow, climbs up and takes his seat, smilingly beatifically at the crowd, his greyish eyes twinkling. He is dressed in a black coat and pants, with an ash-grey shirt. His salt-and-pepper hair is parted and falls like a frond over his forehead. He looks regal—so regal, in fact, that we cannot help envy his personality. Chaudhary asks Tharoor question, and he starts to speak flowingly, in an accent out of a PG Wodehouse novel, with the grace of an Olympic swimmer doing laps. There and then, we are mesmerised. Not surprisingly, Tharoor is the first writer we think of for the first Ncell Nepal Literature Festival in 2011.We duly invite him. But as State Minister for External Affairs, Tharoor has other priorities and sends us a polite email professing his regrets. In 2012, we are again at the
30 READ | August 2011
Jaipur Literature Festival, which Tharoor is once again attending. After a session, he is sitting by the bookstore, signing his books. There is a long queue, waiting patiently for his autograph, holding a copy or two of his books. We too line up, with a copy of The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India—The Emerging 21st Century Power. And when our turn comes, we push the book forward for him to sign. As he takes it and opens up the title page to sign, we tell him a little bit about ourselves and once again, extend an invitation to participant in the Festival. 'I would like to come,' he says, handing back the book, 'Write to me closer to Festival time.' We write to him three months from the Festival but again, he expresses his regrets, as he has to be present for the parliamentary session during the Festival. The next year too, we send out an invite. He agrees to participate in the Festival in principle but our festival dates clash with the arrival of the president of Brazil to his home state. Finally, this year, we luck out. He agrees to not just participate in the festival but to also deliver the closing keynote address and be on the cover of Read—and so, we find ourselves at his residence on Lodhi Road, New Delhi, for an interview and photo shoot. But we have only
an hour and a half to wrap everything up, as he is extremely busy. And why wouldn't he be? He is one of the very few politicians from the Indian Congress party who won in the last general election in India, despite the Modi tsunami and the election coming on the heels of the controversy over the death of his wife Sunanda Puskar. That—and the 2.30 million Twitter followers and counting that he has—perhaps explains his popularity. But Tharoor’s popularity has less to do with his being a politician and more to do with his being a writer, a scholar and an under secretary general of the UN, that too with killer good looks. That Tharoor would go on to become a writer was evident early on. He had a very bookish childhood. 'It’s very difficult to remember precisely when I started reading,' he says. 'Books, as far as I can recall, were always a part of my life, even when I was a toddler and they were a constant fixture in the background of our home. My father, Chandran Tharoor, was a senior advertising executive with some of the best-known mast heads in India, and he was a voracious reader.He and my mother would read aloud to me from a very young age. It was from them that I picked up the habit, and my mother joked that she read
COVER STORY.READ
aloud so badly that I couldn’t wait to snatch the book away from her and read it myself! I remember reading my first Noddy book when I was not much more than two years old.' This reading habit, picked up early, stayed with Tharoor. He had asthma as a child and often wasn't well enough to go out and play.The only thing he did outside schoolwork was read. There weren't television, computer games and other distractions at that time to wean him away from books. So he grew up on a staple diet of Enid Blyton's various stories, Frank Richard's Billy Bunter books, WE Johns’s brilliant pilot adventurer Biggles, Richmal Crompton’s hilarious William novels and short stories, the witty tales of Birbal and Tenali Raman. He also read comics, which he believes, helped him build the foundations for future reading. 'I thrived on Tintin and Asterix, as well as Classics Illustrated, which was pure magic, introducing me to delights like Robinson Crusoe and Jekyll and Hyde,' he says.'And of course, I devoured Archie and Superman like any other kid. But they led to more serious reading quite early.' No wonder, he graduated to Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and a lot of Dickens, Wodehouse and unabridged Victorian novels by the time he was 10. Wodehouse was Tharoor’s first great literary passion. He was addicted to Wodehouse because, as
COVER STORY.READ
READ.BOOK BYTE
Evelyn Waugh once said, he was 'the greatest living writer of the English language, the head of my profession.' Tharoor liked Wodehouse's good-humoured subversion of canonical English literature as much as his hilarious plots and witty irreverence.He enjoyed the fiction, with its 'erudite butlers, absent-minded earls and silly-ass aristocrats, out to pinch policemen's helmets on Boat Race Night or perform convoluted acts of petty larceny at the behest of tyrannical aunts.' It was Wodehouse, says Tharoor, 'who awoke in him a sense of the extraordinary potential of language, as both a vehicle and a destination.' He adds, 'I still remember how when the radio announced his death, aged 94, it came as such an absolute shock. Three decades earlier, he had reacted to the passing of his stepdaughter with the numbed words: "I thought she was immortal." I had thought Wodehouse was immortal, and that made the bereavement all the more difficult.' When Wodehouse passed away, Tharoor was at St Stephen’s in Delhi, where they had set up 'what was the only Wodehouse Society in the world then.' A few months before his death, he was sitting on a fan letter he wanted to send Wodehouse telling him about the Society. 'But,' Tharoor says, 'No draft of the letter was per-
34 READ | August 2011
fect enough to send to such a great stylist, and he passed away before I ever mailed him my admiration.' Tharoor had started writing long before he composed the fan letter:he had nothing else to do when he exhausted himself reading books, except to pick up pen and paper. No wonder that he wrote his first work of fiction when he was just six years of age. His father, to his credit, took his writing seriously and when Tharoor was ten years old, he took one of Tharoor's better pieces called 'Henry’s Last Battle,' had it typed up and went out of his way to submit it for publication in a mainstream Sunday newspaper. His father again acted as his literary agent and sent the novel he had written, inspired by the Biggles books, to the editor of the Junior Statesman, a new magazine that had started to come out from Kolkata recently. To his surprise, the novel, which featured 'the heroic exploits in World War II of an Anglo-Indian fighter pilot called Reginald Bellows,' was serialised over six installments of the magazine, the first appearing a week before his 11th birthday. The prose, of course, was indifferent, agrees Tharoor, but it got published anyway because he was so young. The publication of the novel 'shaped his sense of confidence in himself as a writer.'He then went to write short
stories, do campus journalism and even investigative reports for the magazine throughout his teenage years.And so, Shashi Tharoor the writer was born. Sadly, his parents made it very clear that he couldn't take writing full time. They told him: 'You can write, that's fine, please write, please publish, but you do your studies, because no one in India makes a living as a writer, and you better be good at your academics.' And he was good, academically. One of the perennial top rankers at school and college, he raced through his education. At 19, he went to graduate school in the US, did his MA and also Masters in Law and Diplomacy andPhD in Indian foreign policy during the time of Indira Gandhi's first administration, 1966-77, at age 22. Soon after, he joined the United Nations as a staff member with the UN High Commission for Refugees in Geneva. He then moved up the UN ladder, becoming Under-Secretary General in 2001 and narrowly lost the election for the post of Secretary-General to Ban Ki-moon. His work at the UN, says Tharoor, 'became the enemy of my writing, because I write in the evenings and on weekends. One of the first things that happened as my work became more intense was that the evenings disappeared…and the weekends
August 2011 |READ 35
READ.COVER STORY
More
WRITING FICTION, HE SAYS, 'REQUIRES YOU TO INVENT A WORLD YOU CAN ESCAPE TO AND TO INHABIT A SPACE WITHIN YOUR HEAD, WHERE AN ALTERNATIVE REALITY EXISTS, WHOSE EPISODES, CHARACTERS AND CONVERSATIONS MUST BE AS REAL TO YOU AS THOSE OF THE ‘REAL WORLD’ YOU LIVE IN. were never mine during the peak of the Balkan crisis. Every shell that landed in Bosnia had to be reported to somebody, and I was the one whom our Situation Centre would call. So there were these constant interruptions. It was also the fact that one travelled, one worked, one took work home. So writing was always a struggle to carve out time and space.' But he didn't always fail in that struggle. What helped him was his ability to write rapidly. And though the UN job ate into much of his writing time, he was still able to write a fair number of books. He published his first book, Reasons of State, in 1985. But it was his PhD dissertation turned into a book. He published his first novel, The Great Indian Novel, in 1989. In the novel, he sets out to tell 'a history of the Indian movement for independence by marrying it to the theme of the Mahabharata.' The Five Dollar Smile and Other Stories (1990) and Show Business (1992) followed, but it took him years to writehis third novel, Riot, set against the backdrop of riots following the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He hasn't written any fiction since Riot, 'for want of time to create an alternative universe and inhabit it.' Writing fiction, he says, 'requires you to invent a world you can escape to and to inhabit a space within your head, where an alternative
36 READ | August 2011
reality exists, whose episodes, characters and conversations must be as real to you as those of the ‘real world’ you live in. But you have to be true to that alternative reality when you write. Without enough time at my disposal, constructing these fictional worlds has not proved easy, let alone withdrawing from the real world and entering that magical space of fiction. And with constant demands on my attention, and the attendant interruptions, the fictional illusion is too easily shattered. I have to stay away from that fictional world for long stretches of time, and when I return, the illusion is difficult to reconstruct. This is why my last two decades have been littered with incomplete fiction: at least three novels have been begun and abandoned, in each case after nearly a hundred pages were written. I hope to write fiction again and several ideas are bubbling away in my mind, but I don’t have plans to embark on fiction for the moment with all my other commitments taking precedence.' He may not have the uninterrupted time to write fiction, but he had been able to squeeze in time to write for newspapers and magazines like Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Times of India, etc., along with a clutch of non-fiction books on India India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997); Nehru: The Invention of India (2003); The Elephant, the Tiger
and the Cellphone: Reflections on India—The Emerging 21st Century Power (2007); and Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century (2012). What enabled him to write nonfiction? Non-fiction, he says, is a narrative that one does not need to create a new world for. 'All my works of non-fiction have been written during some of the most stressful and taxing periods in my professional life. It needs planning and hard work and the dedication of time, besides the ability to write. But it is interruptible; you can pick up the threads and resume, because you are living in nonfiction prose even when you are not writing it! Undoubtedly the barriers are less insurmountable than when it comes to fiction, which needs that added ingredient of an alternative reality.' However, of late, he hasn't had time to write even in short bursts, as Indian politics takes up much of his time. This, he regrets. He also regrets not being able to read as much as he wants. He says, 'I keep acquiring books that I never find the time to read fully! My reading is mainly on planes and that too, mainly newspapers and magazines. Whenever editors ask me to review books, I make an extra effort to set aside time for them, but reading simply for pleasure has become a luxury.'
T
here are few things as pleasurable as writing—and reading—about books. That's the reason we asked writers to pen pieces that relate to books—and words, and literature, and all things beautiful. The result is an array of wonderful pieces grouped in this section. The writers talk of everything, from the book they would give their life to write or go back to time and again, the writer who changed their life in more than one ways, their guilty pleasure reading, the characters they were infatuated with, their fear of leaving purchased books unread, the joy of seeing their first book published, their life as a reader, journeys they made on and off the page…
BOOK BYTE.READ
READ.BOOK BYTE
OUR SHELVES
OUR SELVES BY ANNIE ZAIDI
T
he monsoon is a fraught experience for those who live middle-class lives, particularly on the ground floor. In cities like Mumbai, it means four months of squelchy feet, wading through gutter water and praying that if one must die a premature death, dear god, let it not be of something as unsexy as leptospirosis. For people who own a lot of books the monsoon is particularly nerve-wracking. Leaky walls and ceilings mean ruined books. And if, like me, you’re on the ground floor, you will never be at rest during the rains. The house can get flooded at high tide. If the water rises four inches, books on our bottom shelves could be destroyed. If it rises two feet, we stand to lose upto three hundred books. We lost a lot during the 2005 flood in Mumbai—furniture, clothes, books. Children’s books were on the last shelves since we didn’t read them any longer. Lots of Agatha Christie detective novels, Enid Blyton’s work, ranging from Noddy (the first series I could read on my own) to Secret Seven and Malory Towers. Amar Chitra Katha comics, which were responsible for introducing me to a lot of history and mythology. But the ones I miss most are a few Russian books bought in the 1980s. The Indian market was not yet flooded with American literature; pop culture was not totally dominated by the USA. With the Russian books gone, a slice of my cultural history was lost. Our book collection is not extensive but it has taken a lifetime II38 READ | September 2014
to acquire. It bears witness to the reading habits of two generations. It includes my mother’s university books, my brother’s literature textbooks, and mine. Books from all genres that shaped my politics, taught me to look at gender as a continuum and not a binary, taught me about love and faith. Books in English and Hindi; some of my grandfather’s books in Urdu; even a couple of Punjabi ones although I cannot read the scripts. I stack books in double rows on each shelf so that an invisible row sits behind the visible row. Some shelves are three thick. I’ve also begun to stack books in horizontal piles on top of a row. Last year, I donated a boxful to a children’s library. But a donation cull is one thing; sentencing a book to death by drowning is another thing. To leave a book vulnerable is to say that the ideas it holds are insignificant. Which leads to a difficult question: what books are more significant than others? There is no better time to evaluate a book than a physical crisis. A couple of years ago, the house was flooded again. As the water rose around my ankles, I decided to put on a pair of gum boots and get down to the dirty work of classifying books in descending order of ‘significance’. On the lowest shelf went the most ‘dispensable’ ones. I’m not naming names but most of the new popular fiction from India went south. That decision was easy . On the topmost shelf were religious texts including the Bible, Geeta, Quran, Jataka Tales. There was Nehru’s Discovery of India and MK Gandhi’s My Experiments with
Truth, three types of dictionaries, titles as diverse as gardening, psychology and health. I can’t dispute the significance of these books (although nobody in our family has referred much to the book on party wear for kids). About twenty books were brand new, waiting to be read. I wrapped them in plastic and placed them on the highest shelf in the second cupboard. They were important because they were potentially brilliant. They were un-dismissible because I didn’t yet know them. Poetry came next—significant without a shadow of doubt. The shelf included selections of Paash, Kedarnath Singh, Kunwar Narain, Dom Moraes, xeroxes of Arun Kolatkar’s Jejuri poems, a few anthologies. Parallel to this shelf, I arranged Indian prose writers whose work I admire. This was a surprise move because I feel no reverence or distress viz ‘Indian’ literature. I have always thought of Shakespeare and Shaw as writers without
borders, as much ‘mine’ as Mirza Ghalib and Kabir. In fact, I had recently gotten into a bitter argument with another writer. We were talking about what’s more important to Indians who read and write mainly in English. My friend argued that we undervalue contemporary fiction and overvalue the ‘classics’, particularly British and American writing. I argued that the ‘classics’ have survived the test of time and therefore deserve to be read with greater seriousness than a book that brings little more than the promise of novelty (a promise that often fails to materialize). Yet, faced with an emergency, I found myself moving good books from the Indian subcontinent to higher ground. And my decisions were not based purely on literary merit. For example, Siddharth Chowdhury is not necessarily a better storyteller than Jane Austen. Yet, it felt more important to save a copy of Chowdhury’s Patna Roughcut than Pride and Prejudice. Perhaps,
without being conscious of it, I do harbour a vague sense of responsibility towards Indian literature. I buy more of it. I respond fiercely to it. My memory holds the stories in sharper relief. There is a stronger need to ‘save’ books rooted in my own soil. Books that tell me who I am, what brought me to this point in history, what fantasies were wrought along the way. So, it felt imperative to hold onto a copy of Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s translation of Tilism-e-Hoshruba, Krishna Sobti’s Dil-o-Danish and Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan. This led to yet another hard decision: should Hindi, Urdu and English writers from the subcontinent sit on the same shelf? Do translations belong on the ‘IWE’ (Indian Writing in English) shelf? Does Jeet Thayil belong with Amrita Pritam? Does Manto belong with Vikram Seth? I think a lot about organizing literature. Most bookstores split fiction along the lines of ‘literary’ and ‘bestseller’; ‘Indian’ and everyone
else. But the divide is an artificial one as evidenced by writers like Amitav Ghosh, who simultaneously occupy three different cupboards —literary and Indian and bestseller. Besides, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali and Sri Lankan writers are routinely placed on ‘Indian’ shelves (I must confess this is a sweet, secret source of joy—watching literary neighbours sitting peacefully side by side makes me feel warm and hopeful). Indian writers’ tone and social context makes them a natural fit with Pakistani or Nepali writers. Farooqi’s translation of Syed Muhammad Ashraf's The Beast sits beautifully with Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari. Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes and Our Lady of Alice Bhatti‘ is part of the same conversation initiated inside my head by Train to Pakistan‘ and leading, most recently, to Zahida Hina’s All Passion Spent. At the same time, I decided against clubbing together all books by the same author. I decided to split Rushdie first. Midnight’s Children belonged with the must-preserves. Shalimar the Clown (which I still haven’t been able to finish) went lower. Similarly, Kiran Nagarkar’s Ravan and Eddie and Cuckold sat higher than God’s Little Soldier. On the third shelf, I placed 'Foreign English' writers I love. Margaret Atwood and Dostoevsky and Shakespeare. Jane Austen sat with the Bronte Sisters and Hilary Mantel. On the second-last shelf, their position was a little precarious but I was not worried since I could buy these books again. Then, there were books which had seemed important when I first read them but I found I had little trouble letting them go. For instance, I had been blown away by Paul Aster’s New York; it broke up genre and form in remarkable ways. Yet, I placed it lower during the reshuffle. The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, which caused such excitement when I bought it, also went south. In fact, I surprised myself by moving my beloved Agatha Christies to the last shelf, along with Dick September 2014 |READ 39 III
OUR BOOK COLLECTION IS NOT EXTENSIVE BUT IT HAS TAKEN A LIFETIME TO ACQUIRE. IT BEARS WITNESS TO THE READING HABITS OF TWO GENERATIONS. IT INCLUDES MY MOTHER’S UNIVERSITY BOOKS, MY BROTHER’S LITERATURE TEXT-BOOKS, AND MINE. BOOKS FROM ALL GENRES THAT SHAPED MY POLITICS, TAUGHT ME TO LOOK AT GENDER AS A CONTINUUM AND NOT A BINARY, TAUGHT ME ABOUT LOVE AND FAITH. Francis and John Grisham. I always say that I love detective novels and courtroom dramas. But among other things, a flood brings emotional clarity. I don’t ‘love’ as much as enjoy the lawyer-detective-crime genre. I don’t need Grisham the way I need Camus. Another difficult decision was Indian non-fiction. It needed to move up from the bottom shelf but I had run out of space. I stood there, debating whether non-fiction was more or less significant than fiction, wondering which among them was most likely to go out of print. There are books critical to my understanding of Indian culture and politics, like DN Jha’s The Myth of The Holy Cow, The Shaping of Modern Gujarat by Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth, and Radha Kumar’s History of Doing. These may well disappear from market shelves. I definitely needed to prioritize them over others. But are P Sainath, Pinki Virani and William Dalrymple not as important as Nagarkar and Rushdie? Of course they are! How was I to make room for all? Besides, there were books written by friends and contemporaries. Literary considerations aside, most were signed at debut book launches. By what yardstick does one judge the worth of friends’ work? In a small, fractured way, their work will always be tied to mine. Being in a writer’s personal space, being part of the human climate in which the book is set, witnessing the intellectual struggle and ambition along the way—in losing such a book, IV
how much would I lose? Even the books I was ‘saving’, for what was I saving them? I only have a vague sense of a future for which I wanted these books to survive. Perhaps the world will change so much that the hopes and betrayals described on their pages will seem outlandish—a sort of science fiction/fantasy/horror narrative we can no longer believe. Even so, the books will remain relevant. Lest we bury our past too deep, lest we start to believe the lies of a new power elite. That rainy day, I was about to pack a bag and leave the house when I stopped to take a final look at my handiwork. At the back of the bottom shelf, there were copies of Reader's Digest from the 1980s, and some copies of Parade magazine. I picked up a copy. On the back cover, there was a picture of Vinod Khanna claiming that he bathes with Cinthol soap. I wondered why I had never thought him handsome before. Clearly I, and my tastes, had changed. Suddenly, a new fear took hold of me. My tastes may change again. In ten or twenty years, I may love a different set of books. Is it not possible that I’d miss ‘dispensable’ ones the most? I cannot guarantee that I will not turn into an old woman who likes nothing better than the timepass reads of her childhood and teenage years. There was no other way but to save everything. So I lifted a metal trunk and put it on top of the bed. I pulled out the books from the last
two shelves and placed them on the trunk. Now all the books were two feet off the ground, as safe as I could leave them. What remains of this story is one last bookish decision. I was stepping out to go to my uncle’s house. My head was ringing with the memory of a bad dream from a few days ago. In the dream, the whole city was flooded again. One of my favourite film directors was standing knee-deep in water, as I floated on a raft made entirely of old plastic bottles. I was crying, telling him that I cannot swim. I wondered if the dream was a premonition and the flood would be as bad as 2005. Teenage boys were playing cricket on the street. The sewage-tainted floodwater was already waist-high. One of these boys would later lift his shirt to show me a nipple piercing as I waded through the muck. But before I set out, I worried about what book to take along to read on the train or bus. What if I fell into the water and couldn’t get up? If some kind soul got me to a hospital, he’d surely open my bag to find a phone or address book. He’d see what I was reading. I felt I ought to think about that. I shall not name the books I wouldn’t be caught dead with. But I will admit that I did not want to be caught dead with an ‘educate me’ book. It would be too much of a statement, rather than just plain honest reading. Finally, I settled on poetry, as I had known I would. For life and in preparation for death, and for everything in between—poetry.
TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE
TO DREAM
Some nights or some mornings when I know I must wake up to the everyday, breathing becomes difficult. Muscles no longer respond to nervous signals and I must count then, so that my brain and my body begin working together again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. I count. By the time I get to Fifteen I always start worrying. BY RACHANA CHETTRI
O
n days when the air feels heavy—with sticky, sickly moisture, I find myself quite unable to breathe. Inside locked rooms, where windows are never opened for fear that the neighbours might see, my lungs crave oxygen. Sometimes, I like to climb up to the terrace and gulp in the air at night. This makes me easy, as if I might have just given my body all the air it needs to feel alive. Some nights or some mornings when I know I must wake up to the everyday, breathing becomes difficult. Muscles no longer respond to nervous signals and I must count then, so that my brain and my body begin working together again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. I count. By the time I get to Fifteen I always start worrying.
Once I saw a hand; gloved in luminescent silk it was floating above the foot of my bed in the darkness. It smouldered into bright red flames the moment the door opened and the pale yellow of the light bulb I couldn’t sleep without at the time came back into focus. I keep my door open these days, breathing is a lot easier that way. I had screamed. I used to cry in my sleep—wail would perhaps be more precise for there were never any tears—as a child, but that night was the first I had screamed. Screaming is difficult when you cannot control muscles. I find myself unable to speak. My lips don’t part, and the sounds that I am capable of making are only the Ich, ich, ich, ich of the poet who once found her tongue stuck in her jaw. I cannot shout. I cannot speak. And so I count and breathe, patiently, till Fifteen, before the panic sets in and I try desperately to call for help. But I can hardly make a sound, no one will hear me. And so I try and will my fingers to move. Fingers move, for some reason. Sometimes, they half-clench into a fist and I am roused to consciousness; for fractions of a second on most occasions, enough to assure me I am safe in bed, only going through the natural stages entailed in falling asleep and waking up.
V
I remember my dreams once I’ve woken up. They are uncomfortable, and I tire sometimes of recalling things long-forgotten in my dreams. They scare me, like not being able to breathe and move and speak scares me. The mind remembers; the exact colour and texture of a concrete pavement that has not been walked on for decades come back to me in dreams. The grass comes back to me, exactly as it was many years ago, and I am aware that nothing has changed, although I am really too old to be here. Sometimes, when I dream of the cold, concrete basketball court that stood in front of my sad little classroom, I find myself swinging through the trees that once lined its far edge; inside a little pink plastic bubble I fly past the grey old leafless poles while the girls talk and laugh and giggle in the distance. I can feel them from inside the silence of my plastic bubble. I am trapped, and wish not to remember any of it when I wake up. But I cannot will myself into waking up. I am ‘less conscious,’ ‘less in control’ when dreaming than when I am counting and breathing and telling myself it’ll end soon. And awake, I cannot choose to completely forget. The dream and the suffocation remain with me. Uneasy, I get out of bed. My body submits itself to the going through of motions; my mind seeks distractions and finds them easily. All the while I am breathing; there is nothing easier in this world. Some days, I am more aware of it than during others. On these days, it is almost as if my brain can sense the sound of words before my mouth has had time to utter them. The days follow nights and mornings of uneasy breathing. It is as if my mind and body are trying to compensate for their loss of contact with each other. REM sleep, as far as I can figure it out, is strange.
VI
AND THERE
SHE IS
She seemed concerned and spoke in a kind gentle voice that felt comforting. She talked about pain that day, talked about life, about people and about hope. She stayed with me that day, stargazing and dreaming of ideal worlds that live only in dreams. I kept her handkerchief that day, a small white piece of cloth, smeared with dried blood and the soft scent of lavender. BY PRAJESH SJB RANA
S
he smelled like lavenders that day. I remember lavenders, like she always did. She felt soft like she was melting and from the top of my shoulder, I could feel soft tears melt away into the fabric of my shirt. She didn’t say anything and nor did I, we held each other as people inched by, lost in their own thoughts of places to be and people to meet. The soft buzz of conversation lingered in the air, occasionally interrupted by a loud formal female voice calling out flight numbers. We kept an ear out for the voice, both of our hearts racing, fearing that one moment, that one number, that one goodbye. We shared our last cigarette that day, within the confines of a small dank smoking room that stank of wet cigarette-butts. She sat next to me, eyes on the ground, feet moving on the smooth marble floor. “Where do we go from here?” she asked me and I couldn’t answer. I wanted to ask her to stay, I wanted her to be here, with me but I knew things are bigger than what I want them to be. She took a final drag from her cigarette and stubbed it fast. She kissed me soft on the cheek and left, leaving the soft smell of lavender in the air, the lingering warmth of her lips and a cigarette butt still alit, refusing to go out. I lay in a field of grass, the sky above me clear and bright. The stars were bright today, glimmering like diamonds in a sea of blue. I was aching that day, throbbing on the right side of my face, swelling of my eye and pain in the abdomen. My nose seemed broken with a stream of crimson
fluid spewing out and I felt numb. Everything around me seemed cold and grey, dying slowly and then a feeling of loneliness, emptiness. The wind swept by and the grass danced, lights from speeding cars and urban apartments flickered in the distance mixed with the feeling of broken jaws and ruptured lungs.
It was then that I spoke to her for the first time. She emerged as a stroke of colour in the dullness of my life and healed me. She spoke to me of hurt and pain as the gentle breeze played with her hair. 'What is it about people that makes them want to hurt other people?' she asked, half angry and
half sympathetic. I had no answer and nor did she. She seemed concerned and spoke in a kind gentle voice that felt comforting. She talked about pain that day, talked about life, about people and about hope. She stayed with me that day, stargazing and dreaming of ideal worlds that live only in dreams. I kept her handkerchief that day, a small white piece of cloth, smeared with dried blood and the soft scent of lavender. I wake up to soft morning light dancing on the ceiling, a small white ceiling fan whirls slowly. She sleeps beside me, the soft bump of her shoulder peeking out from under the sheets, golden under the light of the rising sun. The city bustles to life outside, buzzing with early morning pleasantries as eager vendors set up shop. She holds on to one of my arms and I struggle to sit up, I can feel her warmth through her clutch. She mumbles something in her sleep and draws closer, her breath warm. I try not to wake her as I reach for a cigarette but a slight jerk and she’s awake. I light a cigarette as she slides up behind me and wraps her hands around me. She feels warm and radiates a slight smell of lavenders. There is a sad heaviness in the air as things remained unsaid, unspoken of but weighing heavy. 'I wish life was as simple as this, I wish time would stop for us,' she says leaning on my back, the soft warmth of her breath on my skin. The sun filters through the soft cream colored drapes, soft shadows dances on the walls. Everything feels so dull and lifeless as the world wakes up to another day, wakes up from the beauty of dreams to the stillness of life. Life feels so hopeless and then, there it is, a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. In the midst of lifelessness and decay, a soft heartbeat, alive. VII
TRAPPED IN A
WHIFF BY PRATEEBHA TULADHAR
O
n those special days, Ajee would wear a georgette sari, with pastel-floral shades, as though the muted tones were supposed to remind the world that her flowers had lost colour the day she became a widow. Or perhaps to say: hey, flowers in pastel shades are a good idea because they mean happiness without really meaning them. The Dhaka shawl propped on her left shoulder, ran under her right arm to come back where it started. A full circle. The only jewelry I really remember on Ajee, were her tuki, pierced in a file along the spine of her ears. On her earlobe,
VIII
a stud with nine diamonds shaped like a flower. No other accessories. As on other days of that nature, a rickshaw would be waiting at our galli’s threshold. Mamu would balance Ajee’s right hand, while with her left, my septuagenarian grandmother would grab the circular armrests of the rickshaw seat and haul herself up on the three-wheeler. Dressed in a pale pink frock and my Bansbari chalajutta, a four-year-old-me would clamber up next to Ajee. My legs too short for the seat, I’d have to halfstand and grab the arm rest. Time to head to Ajee’s thaachhen in Thamel, where everything amazed me because it was so different from our four-storey-century-old house.
Thamel house was built of cement. And instead of sharing the courtyard like we did with our neighbours, they had their own garden-courtyard and verandas running all across the entire five floors. And it always took me forever to climb up the cement stairs. The walls of their living room were blue. Against one were windows that ran everywhere from the floor to the ceiling. The adjacent wall was fitted with a glass shelf. It too, stood from the floor to the ceiling. I was Ajee’s tag-along and was allowed to gatecrash all events she got invited to. Often, her maternal home in Thamel was our stopover, before we headed off with her relatives to our final destination.
So, Ajee and I waited in the living room, while the people in the house ran up and down the cement steps, their slippers making flip-flop and slap-slippy sounds, some calling for last minute help with their hair, some for the others to hurry-up. Across me sat my cousin in her beautiful black dress with large red flowers. I stared at the twinkling sequins on the flowers. Her hair was braided around her head and held down in a pigtail with a red ribbon. It made me think about my own hair- wavy and cropped like some bird’s nest. She was taller than me and everyone knew she came first in class. My concentration on her flowers was interrupted by her mother sprinting into the room. She used a key to open one of the glass shelves. She brought out a small frosty rectangular bottle, uncapped it, lowered it to my cousin’s shoulder-level and pressed the nozzle, releasing in the air a strong smell that reminded me of awkward evenings and greasy meals. It was that familiar smell—one that reminded me of the Thamel family. She repeated the act on all the others seated in the room, save Ajee and me. Perhaps Ajee was too old for the perfume. And maybe I was too young. Rest of the evening, the smell hovered around me like a reminder that such a bottle did not exist in our home. I saw the bottle again several years later, when my father returned from a foreign trip with one. Baa brought other bottles with him. A tall green one with a badge around its neck, and a beautiful bottle, the colour of milk. He used these ones every morning. But he put them on this face instead of his shoulders. Mamu used hers sparingly on her clavicle and wrists and behind her ears. The presence of those bottles in Mamu’s glass shelf brought me some comfort. When I turned 12, paju presented me my first vial of perfume—My Melody Dreams, which smelled like an
infant version of fragrances trapped in my mind. Over the years, more vials made their way into the house as relatives and friends returned from foreign trips. If they were given to Mamu, they found their way into the bathroom shelf and I’d spend my weekends reading their labels. I liked to say the names out loud. If ever I ran into people who were wearing the same perfume as those I was familiar with, I would pronounce their names inside my mind. While crossing the duty free during transits, perfumeries lure me to touch the free samples. And I return to the airplanes smelling sometimes like Miracle, Flower by Kenzo and Light Blue, all at once. They’re all within reach in the form of testers, even though the price-tags might be exorbitant. And I’m briefly transported to the time they were locked in shelves, safely out of reach. Over the years, more people have decided to gift me vials of perfumes. It’s as though they’ve taken notice of the dozens of bottles lying unused on my dresser, ranging from Elizabeth Arden series to those dedicated to Christina Aguilera, and are guessing I’m perhaps still waiting to find my signature fragrance. Ironically, much that I love to be around people who smell pleasant, most of my treasured bottles just sit there, untouched, as though they signify something but mean nothing. For I have learnt that one doesn’t need to smell a certain way to be appreciated. This one says he loves the way I smell in the middle of a busy working day, the musk in me stronger than ever. And my being agrees, when I breathe him in with the city’s smoke clinging to his back after a long day; and all I want to do is to hold him close. I agree, when I return home after long trips, hug Mamu, and breathe in the flavor of ginger-garlic-ghee that embrace me through her kurta. My beautiful vials are here to stay and remind me: I’m not what I’m not.
A CHILDHOOD WITH YOU IN ANOTHER TIME BY TIKU GAUCHAN
I
We dangle large sailcloths from a forgotten powerline; lie waiting on the sere grass below. When crows swerve around the sails, we are to catch their falling caws with our tongue. II Every morning, we walk on eggshells on a red beach, listening for the cracks hidden in the swells before the waves break: that listening is prayer to clear the day’s dark clouds away.
III
We are digging large shapes in the dirt. You shuffle your feet under you, as you crouch beside me, under that large leafless tree, on whose hundred branches sleep a hundred hairless cats, each dreaming of a hundred different moons. IV I collect for us the moonlight’s sheen become powder on a moth’s wings; you collect for us the hundreds of moons swallowed by the moth’s eyes: moons unalloyed by muck. V I bring you birdsongs— trills like little tadpoles squirming in my cupped palms. The songs ask you to be an ancient moon, dancing, to the songs’ ebbing away. We are ancient song—chaos held in check; and these songs are our restraints snapping.
READING (MEN) BETWEEN THE LINES Later, my choice diverged from wise, intense men to include wise, funny men. One of my biggest crushes was Hercule Poirot, who features in more than half of Agatha Christie’s detective novels. BY SEWA BHATTARAI
W
henever Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) series, walked into premiers, fans cheered for him as loudly as they would for stars like Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler. A reporter who was covering the LOTR craze was amazed, because Peter was not pretty. He was short and fat (then, now he has lost weight) and hairy and walked everywhere without shoes. 'They are cheering for him!' she remarked. 'Why shouldn’t they?” Peter’s partner Fran countered, 'He is a star like them!” This statement struck me as I was making a photo of John le Carre my desktop background. And why shouldn’t I? Even at the age of seventy, Carre retains traces of his former good looks or it may have been the radiance of wisdom that makes his picture arresting. But still, with all those wrinkles, he was not John Abraham. To me though, he was a much bigger star, just like Peter Jackson was to the LOTR fans. I don’t know if I can call Carre a crush, because I feel a reverence and awe towards him that devotees reserve for deities. Still, I would give anything to meet him and his face on my desktop inspires me to do my best in a way no motivational speech can. Carre is a teller of stories so nuanced
X
that I always wonder how he can peep into people’s souls. He writes of sensitive men who struggle to make sense of a world turned upside down. He writes of idealistic women disillusioned by the world, struggling to gain back their courage. I identify with these men and women, and somehow this simple identification touches a deeper chord than the crushes I have on romantic heroes. When I came to think of it, my crush on Carre was the culmination of literary crushes I had had before. My crushes had all been like his characters: confused people struggling to adjust with things over which they had no control. The earliest of them was Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Romantic and cruel in the same breath, he was not someone I would be fond of but I like his story nonetheless. He had feelings that he could not do anything about (not that he would if he could). His obsession with Catherine, the one friend he had known since childhood, was above and beyond everything else for him. And for me, that was life as it is, and not as it should be. We all act spurred by feelings, not logic. I continued to fall for men who had too much on their plate: men who could not get away from their duties, from their demons. Remus Lupin, a werewolf forever worried about how to save people around him from
himself, appealed more to me than glamorous Sirius Black in the Harry Potter series. Aragorn, the careworn leader who walks around at night healing his soldiers after a hard day of fighting, attracted me more than pretty-boy Legolas in LOTR (Of course, it helped that Aragorn was played by the poetic Viggo Mortensen in the movie!). As I grew older, my crushes grew wiser. I remember a slim (and underrated) volume called The Bronze Bow that was categorised under ‘children’s literature’ but spoke to anyone with a thimble of literary sense. Set during the first century AD, it is the story of a young boy who loses his family to Roman invaders and decides to join an outlaw gang to avenge them. But as he works with outlaws, he grows wiser, realising that idols have feet of clay, that those he thought of as rescuers were in fact just out for themselves and that a ragtag band cannot wage war against Rome successfully. Should he continue the outlaw life, which has promise but may ultimately lead him nowhere, or should he return to his village where there is no chance of getting vengeance ever and where a regular life of labour awaits him? Daniel makes a wise choice, but that is not the point. His whole journey where he confronts his demons and becomes honest about himself is
a very endearing one. I still think of Daniel fondly. Later, my choice diverged from wise, intense men to include wise, funny men. One of my biggest crushes was Hercule Poirot, who features in more than half of Agatha Christie’s detective novels. He’s short, he’s fat and he is wont to pepper his sentences with incomprehensible French expressions (I still don’t know what n’est ce pas means or even how it is pronounced). But if I am ever marooned on an island, I would rather be with Poirot than, say, the taciturn Mr. Darcy. Poirot knew how to treat a woman (courteously), he knew how to lighten up any situation with humour, and he is so wise I’m sure he can solve all of my problems— right from who is stealing my food to where I left my scooter keys. And he has volumes of knowledge about human nature, which is, at the end of the day, the most interesting subject in the world. I can just imagine myself on a moonlit walk, with Poirot bouncing on the balls of his feet, preening as he recounts his successful cases! Soon I met the love of my literary
life, another wise and funny man. Perhaps the wisest and funniest of them all. Harry Potter’s headmaster Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was one of a kind. A man who could say four words—just these four words: Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment and Tweak—at the welcome address for his students, and still be the coolest person ever. Because he wears a midnight blue cloak studded with stars, because he can bind the feared Lord Voldemort in invisible ropes, because he can crack jokes at the tensest of moments, because he remembers courtesy even as he is dying, because he knows how to inspire people who are at the end of their tether, because he knows when to ask questions and when to listen, when to be severe and when to be compassionate. So what if he is so old, that his silvery beard reaches his belt, he knows everything worth knowing in the world. He is still my moral, educational, etiquettal (if there is such a word) compass. I later discovered that he was gay. But honestly, I would give up an entire lifetime of romantic dinners with Mr.
Darcy for one platonic dinner table conversation with Dumbledore. (Sorry Ms. Austen for battering your hero so much, I love Mr. Knightly though). Years after the Harry Potter series ended, I was to be taken up by another fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Ned Stark, a man who was doing his best with the duties he liked worst, was one of my early favourites. And then I found out why I was destined to have only literary crushes and not real ones. I learnt that the average age of Game of Thrones (the TV series based on A Song of Ice and Fire) watchers was 41. And Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn in LOTR, was known to be a favourite of women above 40. Now, it could not be a coincidence that I had the same taste in men after a gap of 10 years. So I decided my mental age must be somewhere near 40, and always has been. If my soul-mates are all 40 plus, how can I expect to find love among youngsters in their twenties? Ned Stark, wait for me, I am about to reach your age. (Ok, Ned Stark may be dead but Sean Bean is still alive!) XI
kmfOglk|G6 a'S;
;bfaxf/ a]:6;]n/
WRITING KATHMANDU Part of the idea was to include as many different kinds of material and sources of information as possible, and I wanted to show these live voices and passages from texts in the book. BY THOMAS BELL
W
hen I began to write I wanted to make a book that would simulate, between two covers, the complexity and the variety of all the life that exists inside the city. Obviously it’s not possible to get it all in, but I wanted it to feel like everything was there. I had an idea that somehow it would be like the models of molecules that you see in shampoo adverts, with many little balls linked by a frame of tiny rods. Everything is there at once, all interconnected, and you can turn it around and look at it in different ways. There were a couple of problems with this. First, and obviously, with everything that anyone could ever say or do in Kathmandu up for grabs I had to be very careful about what I included. The book’s quite long, but it could easily have been two or
three times longer. A more specific problem with my concept was repetition: because it’s all inter-connected, the same things come up again in different ways. I think that’s the way a person experiences the city, but in a book I discovered I had to be careful how I handled it, in case the reader just thinks: ‘This is a mess. He’s forgotten that he said that already.’ Part of the idea was to include as many different kinds of material and sources of information as possible, and I wanted to show these live voices and passages from texts in the book. It’s the equivalent of including photographs to show what a place looks like: these stories and documents are what the history of the city is built from. I found a phrase somewhere—and I used it in the book—which describes the sources of
history as ‘written monuments’, and that’s how I saw it. In fact, the historical passages are organised not exactly as a history of the city, but as a story of how that history was invented and uncovered and reinvented, repeatedly. It’s partly the story of the story; or historiography in other words. I was lucky that I’d come across the nineteenth century vamshavali from Patan known as The Wright Chronicle very early on in my time here; because it was a perfect way to jump in, and it leant itself very well to the structure I was trying to develop. That’s because, as it turns out, The Wright Chronicle is a complicated and misunderstood document, which isn’t at all what it appears to be. The same goes for so much around here, so The Wright Chronicle
served me very well. (In fact, almost 140 years after it was first published in an extremely inaccurate translation, two scholars are currently working on a second, definitive edition. For people like me, who’ve become fascinated with the tangle of Kathmandu’s history, that’s quite exciting.) I came to the city a dozen years ago and now I’ve made my family here. There’s a passage in the book where I describe my kids being born in a hospital beside the Dhobi Khola; and observing in the banks of the river all the layers of plastic bags, where strata of Lichchhavi pottery shards were once preserved. Like much historical writing, I wrote about Kathmandu’s history very much with the present in mind. I felt I had to tell a long story to show what, in my understanding, the things we see today really mean. All sorts of terms, such as ‘democracy’ or ‘communism’, ‘government’, or ‘middle class’ signify something quite different here from what they mean according to a Western or supposed global norm. And it seems to me that using words like these to analyse Kathmandu— without emphasising what the structures they describe are in reality—obscures what’s most important in how things actually work. Lots of people won’t agree with everything I’ve written and some people will possibly be angry. But of course there is a lot to feel strongly about in Kathmandu, so if I didn’t take on those subjects I’d have thought I wasn’t being true to the city. XIII
BOOKED FOR LIFE
BY RICHA BHATTARAI
A
sack of rice, a vacuum cleaner, children's fees, that glittery blue dress. Everyone has plans for their salaries. I do too. But what I would really like to splurge on, all the time, are books. Eighteenth century poetry and the latest novels, popular fiction and obscure ones that booksellers shake their head at, romance series and toe-curling mysteries. My lifelong affair with books began because of a broken promise. Strange how one thing leads to the other. We had this Korean 'uncle', Park, who promised to take the whole family out to a Chinese dinner. I forget what the occasion was. Perhaps Buwa had generously helped edit chunks of his thesis, as he usually did. I had never been to a Chinese place and pestered Aama with questions— is the food going to be tangy? Are there going to be golden lights? How will I hold the chopsticks? Aama tried to shove some more rice into my mouth so that I would stop talking, and then pinned a handkerchief to my shirt and sent me off to school. That evening, two days before we were to go to the 'city', Ditee and I met Park Uncle as he was cycling out of the University gates. We flagged him, and he chatted with us happily. He was a frequent visitor to our home, and always arrived with a gracious present—shiny green guavas with leaves still clinging on, bunches of bananas, and sleek watermelons with wonderfully red hearts. But that day, he had something else with him. About a dozen books hitched to his luggage carrier. Seventeen years later, I still remember the first book of the lot— it was called Mystery of the Lost Treasure. Why does he have such a strangely titled book with him, I wondered. And then he said, 'I'm so XIV
sorry, I won't be able to take you out. But please accept these books.' I was both relieved and disappointed. Relieved that I wouldn't have to be acquainted with unfamiliar, perhaps unsavoury dishes, and disappointed that I would be missing out on something I had looked forward to. About the books I had no particular feelings. I had attempted reading English books before, and never liked them much. Tinkle was fine, as were Balhans and Chandamama. And perhaps a few basic Enid Blytons. But the bulk of my childhood was spent with Nepali and Hindi texts. It began with the ubiquitous magazine for children, Muna. Buwa would get it for us, and because I couldn't read it yet, I would colour all the pages with my crayons. Poor Ditee, she had a hard time deciphering the words beneath my reds and blues. Finally, when I reached the first standard, she extracted a promise from me that I would stop defiling books and scribbling my name all over. I promptly agreed, having just read my first Champak. She then led me to a tin trunk filled with books, and this treasure lasted me for some months— Likhure Ra Chature, Char Changeri, Rupaiyan Falne Rukh. Simple novels and stories in Nepali that I read and reread. But now I was in a fix. I had outgrown those books, and there were none in those languages meant specifically for someone about to enter her teens. Because everyone else read, I had to perforce read anything that I could lay my hands upon. That meant badly researched and gorily presented news in Sadhana, philosophical translations of Siddhartha that I couldn't comprehend, and stories from course books prescribed in I.Ed., B.Ed, MA. And at just the right time, arrived Mystery of the Lost Treasure. It was
not a special book, I know that now. Just one of those random, slightly juvenile mysteries with a watery storyline. But it appealed to me greatly, so much that I waited around corners and took notes in my diary of people and vehicles passing by, so that I could report them to the police if I saw anything suspicious. I even wrote a poem on the novel: Aunt Melinda, Aunt Melinda Mr. Grimes, Mr. Grimes, Jim and Joey And Jan and Heather Are all as light as a feather. Why? Because they have found the treasure ! Except for such cringe-worthy poetry penned about semi-insipid books, my tryst with books really began from this point in time. We had no TV, and almost no other means of entertainment, because our parents were buried in theses and proposals all the time. So after Ditee and I had our fill of running around trees and hopscotching in the terrible heat, we would flop down to the marble floor and open a book. The greatest pleasure in life for me, from then till now, has been to get hold of a
particularly emotional and exciting novel and lose myself in it. *** While all bookaholics will own a collection of books resembling a library, how many can actually boast of a library? Ditee and I can. I forget how it came to be about, but suddenly one day, we categorised our books and magazines into neat sections, and began charging Rs 5 for membership. It was the most rudimentary library ever—the books were arranged in piles on the floor, in the hollowed out space where a closet ought to have been. We noted down, in a register, the titles borrowed by friends, and charged fines when they were brought back late. All of the money earned went into buying more books, roaming around the second hand markets of Koti in Hyderabad. We continued in this fashion until one day, Buwa took us to a nondescript shop in Lingampally and handed us a rubber stamp that proudly proclaimed ‘Doyens Children’s Library.’ And with this authentic device in hand, we stamped all our volumes. Only much later were we to discover that Thulo Mama had already done that years ago, fed up with his books
being misplaced, he had carved ‘Saa Pu’ (Saano Pustakalaya, literally Small Library) on the rubber sole of his slipper, and stamped it on his books. Decades after that, his nieces’ library flourished, too. We lived in a colony, and had no dearth of friends streaming into our room to take books away, sit and read, or just simply gaze at our collection. Those who did not want to pay the membership fees could hand over three books instead. There were many friends who let us have their entire collection. Leaving that library behind in India was quite a wrench. We rebuilt the library, of course, once we were back in Kathmandu. Buwa’s books on postmodernism and diaspora and translation were stacked all over the floor. Aama preferred Reader’s Digest and heavy bound novels by Bengali authors. Ditee was into history and myths, and I had an enviable collection of novels by South Asian writers. Sometimes two or even three of us would end up buying or being gifted the same book, and we have multiple versions of the same book lying around. As in all book lovers’ homes, I grew up with books everywhere: spilling
onto the coffee table, on top of the fridge, below the couch, and lying around on every surface possible— chairs, landings, shoe racks, closets, dressing tables, kitchen racks and pillows. Aama has a tottering pile of books at the dining table, which she uses as references. Buwa has a whole computer table assigned to Dictionary and Thesauruses. When I see bare rooms in other people’s houses, I panic 'What do they do in their spare time?' I am not surprised that most of our household budget is spent on books—on buying them and buying newer places to store them. Ditee read somewhere that a library was sinking into the ground each year because it can no longer bear the weight of the books, and she fears our house will soon disappear forever, too. To save ourselves from such a tragedy, we try to clean out the books once in a while. We stack the ones meant to be thrown away and pledge to donate to a library, but the next day the stack is just shifted to another place in the book rack. And hence, it is a nightmare for me if anyone asks to borrow books. One of the reasons, is, of course, that some people do not see books as the treasure they are. Often, they will declare the books to be lost, borrowed by someone else, or simply forget both the book and me. A lot of our precious books are now weeping softly in someone else’s homes. But even if there are some people whom I would like to lend a book to, I can never, ever find the book they ask for. I know it is somewhere, rolling itself into as small an entity as possible so that I cannot find it, flinching from my touch, hiding from my look. I will discuss a book excitedly with a friend, but still dread the moment they ask me to lend it. Or worse still, when they request me to seek a book from Buwa’s collection. It is there, they insist. Please search for it. 'Have you ever sought a needle in a haystack?' I want to retort. Now, when anyone asks me for a book, I simply say, 'I don’t have it.' 'But I’m sure you have it!' they will say, stung by my miserliness, 'You have every book that is out in the market.' Yes, I sigh to myself, that is the whole problem. XV
ABANDONMENT I continue to be baffled at the obsessive manner with which grandfather would gobble up every single book that came his way. It must have served some kind of need, but I've never met anyone be so dispassionate towards something they invested so much time doing. BY AYUSHMA REGMI XVI
A
single shelf takes up most of the eastern wall in my room. There was a time when it was tightly packed, radiated something of a military aura. Books standing erect, practicing self-discipline. Now there are gaps, like a wicked grin on an aging man's face. Whatever remains of the books now recline on one another; some tilt towards the left, others towards the right. All intoxicated beasts. A few of the thinner volumes crowd surf atop their friends. There is a vulgarity about the way the books look at me. A haunted house? No, they don't speak the language of death. Abandonment is the word that most comes to mind. A spillage of half-attempts have made their home in different parts of my 12x14 room. Wobbly towers of different heights decorate what can be called a very messy room. I'm not much of a reader, you see. Just a hoarder. My self-constructed idea of organised chaos tells me the very tall pile of books next to the shelf are the ones I'd like to read the most. Yoga books, books on poetry—Tagore and Rumi, some Thich Nhat Hanh, a Totto-chan. A smaller pile, hidden beneath a debris of paper,
bills, and envelopes, has a Kurt Vonnegut and the diaries of Kafka. And since much of what Vonnegut writes is surreally autobiographical, why not call this the Column of Biographies? The five books on my table, sleeping under a tiny version of The Little Prince, are mostly books on Buddhism and Buddhist practices. That's my spiritual reading pile. It's a really neat pile. Doesn't get touched much. At the foot of the bed is my collection of young adult fiction. The latest addition to my burgeoning city of unread books. One pile–a random assortment — that's taken a significant portion of the top of the shelf, is not my doing
at all. It is the work of who can perhaps be called the only real reader in our home. There was a time when the contents of that pile would rise steadily. On a daily basis grandfather would pull out a book from the shelf and stack its predecessor atop the pile, making it rise higher. At one point, it became so tall I had to shove half the books back in the shelves below. But remnants of his reading still remain. India after Gandhi. Beat Diabetes Naturally. The BFG. I continue to be baffled at the obsessive manner with which grandfather would gobble up every single book that came his way. It must have served some kind of need, but I've never met anyone be so dispassionate towards something they invested so much time doing. There is nothing to be said of his sensibilities looking at his indiscriminate encounters with the written word. I've had weeping fits, sleepless nights, frantic dreams, nightmares, multiple conversations with friends, often a crazy impulse to write, reply, return the favour to the writer, while reading just some of the same books. But not him. Books had to be read and that was that. He never talked about them afterwards. There were no favourites. Favourite genres. Favourite authors. Favourite books. He consumed them with the same steady deliberation with which he would take his diabetes pills. It was the same with the newspaper, the latest edition of the Engineering Association's journal, or electronics manuals. All that reading did not point to any particular destination. It never felt like the books were nourishing him, adding to his sense of self. There are only a handful of instances when he has stated that he did not like a book. From them I can gather that he is not a fan of the Morrisons, the Gordimers ('I don't understand how this woman won a Nobel prize in literature,'—his response upon reading Something Out There.) or the Murakamis of the literary world. Having read a handful of Murakami myself, I can understand his unease with the author. Pages of meandering storytelling that cheats the reader
of any tangible conclusion. If I were to pinpoint, that is perhaps the only thing that binds our literary interests. A confusion over what to feel towards this writer called Murakami. That's little. But am I trying to hold on to it as a way to subconsciously bond over grandfather beyond familial ties? Being family by default means living in the same household with the minimum of intimacies. Faces approached at face value. There is neither occasion nor interest in exploring other possibilities. Families don't sit and reflect on how they relate to each other. I always felt like there must be another side to him though. A side blindspotted by the things I am expected to understand, appreciate about him. Did it help me see him as a person, like myself, independent of the myriad of roles he had to play? It was little, but it was something. Things have changed now. On the table in the living room lies Gao Xingjiang's Soul Mountain. It's a slightly tattered copy I bought at a secondhand bookstore in Thamel a few years ago. Of course, I haven't read it. That's not what I do with books. I'm a buyer, a hoarder. Not a reader of books. An airmail envelop, folded in half, serves as a bookmark for the 500 page-long novel. It's been slipped somewhere within the first 100 pages. It's been there for a while. Looks like grandfather isn't going to finish this one. Elsewhere on the same table lies the real cause of grandfather's divorce with books. In its glossy rectangular casing, the laptop may be touted as modern man's greatest inventions. To me it's nothing more than an electronic contraption that houses all the demons known to destroy humankind. That wretched pandora's box. Modern man's greatest affliction. It all started with innocent visits to setopati.com. Reading was what he was hungering for, after all. And then Google Chrome gave him access to the world's largest collection of videos. All it took was one click of that seductive red button, one pursuit in the direction of that unwaver-
XVII
ing white triangle, and he'd fallen into an abyss. At first, evidence of his visits to YouTube would echo through the whole house. Following the devious breadcrumb trail YouTube laid out with its recommended videos, grandfather went through his share of whacky homespun videos. There was a time when, to my horror, he stumbled upon 'Top 10 Sexy Female Aliens'. It didn't bother him in the least. But I got him a pair of my old earphones. He could keep his YouTube exploits to himself. To his delight, he soon found Hindi films. Then Tamil films, Telegu films, all dubbed in Hindi. Then Maithili and Bhojpuri films. As with books, quality is not a concern. Quantity is the priority. Which means he'll watch almost anything. It started with one screening in a day. Then two. Now he watches up to three movies a day. The internet and its evils have ensnared grandfather. Sometimes, when the internet connection is slow or disrupted, grandfather becomes a bit of a bumbling fool, pleading me to help him connect to his YouTube account. There is a childlike restlessness to his demeanor. Newfound cravings have changed him. On the one-seater next to him sits grandmother, effusing a selfdiscipline wholly missing in the old man. All day, while grandfather dips in and out of a sea of user uploaded videos, grandmother, hearing aid tucked into one ear, makes an art out of listening to silence. There was one point when she could not stop saying, 'Kati hernu hunchha. Aja lai pugi halyo ni.' By now she's stopped complaining. Resigned perhaps to the fact that she's lost her husband to a machine. As people age, they lose themselves to physical ailments or dementia or senility. My grandfather's fate is of his own choosing. Sleepy siamese serpents slither across his belly and plug themselves into his ears, doing the devil's work. Slowly but steadily, they pluck away at grandfather's consciousness. More than once I've seen him dose off whilst plugged in. A hand
XVIII
still holding the chin up, the eyes resolutely shut. Sitting upright but unconscious. Like something picked from the garden and placed in our living room. My grandfather. A degenerating vegetable. Recently, I found a copy of Train to Pakistan that I'd hidden in a drawer from long ago. It was brand new when I bought and hid it. Unopened as it was, the book still looked compact. But the pages had begun to yellow. Abandonment. The fate of all my books. Not only had this one been abandoned, it had been imprisoned as well, in solitary confinement no less, to please my whims. I'd been protecting the book from my incredible book eating grandfather. I was greedy about devouring a book in its newness. Its crisp, virgin pages, I'd wanted for myself. Deep down though, I should have known I wasn't going to read it. Ever. I've never been much of a reader. Just a hoarder. Now Train to Pakistan lies within grandfather's reach, on a shelf in the dining room. But that copy is never going to be read, is it? Maybe this would have been the one book he would have loved. Maybe this one he'd have held up to me and said, 'Nanu, this is a great book. Do you have any more books by this writer?' These days, I'm afraid of entering bookstores. The sweet smell of new books call to me. My hands itch to buy and hoard. Lifelong habits die hard. But I resist. There was a time when the comfort of knowing grandfather would certainly get his hands on my books would propel me to place one more book on store counters. Now I resist. There's no saying for sure the books I buy will get read anymore.
KAFKA’S MADMEN BY NAYAN P. SINDHULIYA 'This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.'
Franz Kafka
This business of Making sense by killing, and Tearing into pieces the joys And laments of outside; Or just forgetting, suppressing Rainbows under foot-soles Becoming numb, but Not becoming a defeat Against an enclosed vastness within Has made madmen Out of ordinary people. Within Kafka’s one revelation is a refuge For a multitude of madmen; for A communion of tragic heroes— Some obscure, and others invisible Because: Not every heroic has its face Traced on a map, or its voice Recorded in time. Not paying heed to time Or timelessness Kafka’s madmen keep tearing Infinitely into pieces that are Always remote, but sometimes Painfully close— Like my deserted hills, The broken bridge Under the old, dying Kadam tree— Like the tears From those melancholic eyes Of the forgotten sweethearts.
ON BOOKS
BY ABHAY K
B
ooks have always fascinated me. Their smell, texture and feel, their appearance, have all attracted me since I was a child. I have here something to confess. As a child, I once stole a book to read. My father was a teacher. He used to get lots of books for the children he taught at school. I used to pull out one book from each bundle to read and place it back after reading. Thus, reading has been a secret pleasure for me since my early days. I grew up with books all around me. Even as a school kid, I used to read Rashmirathi by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar. I had a copy of the book at home. Its cover, though ,was torn away. I liked the sound and rhythm of reading Rashmirathi, especially its third chapter. I memorised couplets from Kabir and Rahim by heart when I was in the ninth grade. I found their couplets simple but deep, rhythmic as well as melodious. I was a voracious reader, reading whatever came my way. I read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway after entering the Indian Foreign Service. This slim book inspired me to write my own. I was filled with joy at the prospect of writing a slim book of my own. Then I read The English August by Upamanyu Chatterjee, another slim book that whetted my appetite for writing my own book. I started writing Proactive India, a book on how India could transform itself into a proactive country, but I abandoned it midway. After joining the Foreign Service Institute in Delhi, I was sent for district training to East Godavari in Andhra Pradesh. My job was to see how a district was
governed. I started penning a district diary. But that too, I abandoned midway. The desire to write my first memoir dawned on me when I arrived in Moscow, Russia in August 2005. For the first year, my work was to learn the Russian language at the Moscow State University. I started writing my memoir at that time. I sat through the evening till late night to write every day. I carried on like this for the next six months. The manuscript of my 30,000-word memoir was ready for publication at the end of 2006. I was in seventh heaven while writing my first book. I did not know that my trials and tribulations were going to begin soon after completing the manuscript. I needed to find a publisher but even before finding one, the manuscript had to be approved by the competent authorities of the government. I also needed blurbs or comments from a few well-known people so that readers would take my book seriously. Finding a publisher was a herculean task. Finally, a friend recommended my book to his publisher and the publisher agreed to publish my book. I had to request a very eminent person, a union minister, to release the book. The publisher hired a hall at the India Habitat Centre for the release of the book. I had the responsibility of making a list of the people who could
attend the book release function. The media also had to be invited to provide adequate publicity to the book. All this was quite a task for a new author. But this was not the end of my woes. The book had to be reviewed. The publisher sent copies of the book to several newspapers and magazines for a possible review. The Hindu Literary Review positively reviewed my book after six months of publication, to my great relief. I finally had a book of my own. But at the end of all this, I was left to ask myself, were all these efforts worth it? I still don't know. Perhaps most writers do not know the answer to this question. The only thing I know is that writers can't do without writing. Once they end up writing, they naturally want to get published. They end up going through the whole process of publication, publicity, marketing, review etc, as I did. The tedious process of getting published has not dimmed my enthusiasm to write more books and get them published. I read more books these days than I ever did. In fact writing my own books has further whetted by appetite to read more books. I think, the ideal life for me would be a life of solitude in the company of books, somewhere in the Himalayas. I know one thing for sure, my long and deep friendship with books will endure the vagaries of time. XIX
NO TIME
TO READ The demands of life are quite something, and there are times when you can't read as much as you would want to. For someone like me, whose reading and writing at present has been limited mostly to academia, short writings, and even more so, short poems, have come as a great respite. BY PRAKASH SUBEDI
L
et's read short poems, then! Size matters. And it matters even more for time-starved individuals from so-called modern times, like me. This April, I downloaded an Android application called 'Poems. Emily Dickinson' on my smartphone. It contained a total of 1,082 poems by the reclusive 19th century American poet. I read all the poems over a period of two months, and that I did on a microbus from Ratna Park to Hattiban and back, on the way between the university where I work and home. I have loved Dickinson's poems since my early college days. But that was not the only reason why I read so many of her poems on public transportation. Almost as important was their length! Most of them, and those happen to be the ones I love the most, are just a few lines long and neatly fit into the screen of my phone. So, there was no need to scroll down. I could just click on them, finish reading in a minute or even less, and then remove my eyes from the screen to ponder over their meaning amidst the chatter of fellow commuters and the sound of horns blaring from vehicles on the road. The poems were probably the only truly literary and aesthetically pleasing reading I had done in months. The joy of reading her short poems and the realisation that one can express so much with so few words was, to put it simply, amazing. A two-line poem, entitled 'Not', for instance reads like this: Not 'Revelation'—'tis—that waits, But our unfurnished eyes. What more remains to be said?
XX
Most of my favourite poets, who have written short poems in English—Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, ee cummings, A.R. Ammons, W.S. Merwin, among others—all belong to the 20th century. I’m not sure why poets in the early 20th century developed such a fascination towards this form. Could it have been that the industrialisation, modernisation, and the resulting rush in people’s lives forced the poets to compose short, compact, terse verses in opposition to the ornamental and optimistic verses of the romantic period, which to imagists represented ’careless thinking’? Or, was it because they were tired of material advancement and saw a way out through verses that had embedded in their very form a spiritual potential beyond the materialism that obsessed the whole world? But then, of course, the sonnet has been around in English poetry for centuries, as have various short forms of poetry in almost all the major literary traditions of the world. Ruba'i, for instance, is a popular form in Arabic poetry, which comprises four lines, and usually blends the themes of worldly love with spiritual love. I personally am a big lover of the 11-12th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam and the 13th century Persian poet, Rumi. These poets wrote in quatrains, each of which was meaningful in itself, but the collection of quatrains, called Ruba'iyat, was also meant to be read in a progression. Be it in times of joy, or times of distress, I have always found constant solace in their poems. The modern Hindi and Urdu Sayari also closely follow the pattern of the Ruba'iyat. Japanese haiku, in the same way, is renowned all over the world for its short, penetrating expressions. A
haiku, which consists a total of seventeen ons, with three phrases, each of 5, 7, 5 ons respectively, is probably the shortest of the poetic forms. Considered to be one of the inspirations behind the Imagist movement in English poetry, a haiku tries to bring about a realisation in the reader by juxtaposing two images or ideas, which mostly come from nature. Poets from all over the world have tried to imitate this form in their languages, usually with not much success. Another Japanese short poetic form popular for its brevity and underlying insight is Zen poetry. These brief anecdotal and conversational poems by poets like Ikkyu Sojun, Matsuo Basho and Dogen Kigen, usually highlight Buddhist insights as well as traditional Japanese teachings. The great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, is known for its allencompassing nature. In fact there is a popular saying that if there is anything in the universe, it has surely been mentioned in the Mahabharata; and if there is something that has not been mentioned in the Mahabharata, then it surely cannot exist in the universe either. But the popular late 20th century Indian philosopher Osho claims that all the worth of the Mahabharata lies in the short section called the Geeta. If not for the Geeta, thus claims Osho, the Mahabharata would either have been long forgotten or remained an ordinary Hindu myth. People who revere the Mahabharata and consider each of its verses deeply holy may find Osho’s claim irreverent, but what he says makes a lot of sense to me. I find it remarkable that in that sprawling epic, it is a short section that holds the most meaning. Mahakavi Devkota, in his essay Ke Nepal Sano Cha? thus praises the importance of things small: 'A diamond is small, a pearl is small, a gem is small, an innocent sweet-speaking child is small, and the pupil of the eye is small.' I believe, a well written small poem is as valuable as a diamond, pearl or gem, or as precious as an innocent child or the pupil of an eye. In just a few words, a short verse can say something so starkly insightful that it might take a novel or an epic hundreds of pages of struggle to express. I was (it saddens me to confess) a voracious reader once. I loved reading books of all genres. But the demands of life are quite something, and there are times when you can't read as much as you would want to. For someone like me, whose reading and writing at present has been limited mostly to academia, short writings, and even more so, short poems, have come as a great respite. We live in a world with a progressively diminishing attention span. We are used to composing and reading 140-character tweets, 160-characters SMSs, and watching images on screen that change every second. At a time where the mundane seems to have left no space for any kind of sublimity, these short poems may be instrumental in reinstating in us a faith in words and their ability to communicate the profound. This is not to undermine Shakespeare's plays, Milton's epics or Dostoevsky's novels at all. But at a time when people fight to stake their claim over seconds and bind them into tweets and updates that constantly vie for our attention, I believe short poems can provide a sense of timelessness to time-starved modern individuals, and deliver in small, condensed capsules what they have missed of art and literature.
MY SIX PICKS Scarecrow in the Hillock - Matsuo Basho Scarecrow in the hillock Paddy field – How unaware! How useful! Fame Is a Bee - EMILY DICKINSON Fame is a bee. It has a song It has a sting Ah, too, it has a wing. In a Station of the Metro - Ezra Pound The apparition of these faces in the crowd; petals on a wet, black bough. Separation - W.S. Merwin Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. Ruba'i (52) - Omar Khayyam And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky, Where under crawling coop't we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help -- for It Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
(Edward Fitzgerald's translation)
Night - Sulochana Manandhar Dhital The night is a pregnant mother If you don't believe me, just wait and see Tomorrow morning She will give birth to the sun.
(My translation)
XXI
THE BOOKMAN OF
GANGTOK BY AJIT BARAL 'Shame on you, publishing industry.' That's what Raman Shresta, the owner of Rachna Books in Gangtok, wrote on his Twitter account. His outburst came after an email that Penguin had sent out to booksellers requesting them to place fresh orders for books by Khuswant Singh a couple of hours after his death. An author's death, a famous author's death at that, provides an opportunity for publishers and booksellers to push through more copies
XXII
of the author, and Penguin was trying to cash in on the opportunity offered by the death of Singh, 'the sardar of sex, scotch and scholarship.' So the Penguin email shouldn't have come as being in poor taste to booksellers. But Raman isn't any other bookseller for whom books are just a commodity to be sold for profit. 'He is more of a social worker than a business person,' says Prajwal Parajuly, the author most recently of Land Where I Flee. I agree. Walking into his bookstore, which is ten minutes' walk away from Sikkim's vibrant Mahatma Gandhi Road, I don't see any popular/bestseller books by the likes of
Chetan Bhagat and Durjoy Datta. He says, 'If someone wants, I bring them on order. But I wouldn't recommend a Chetan Bhagat. I would instead tell them to read another book, let us say, The Great Gatsby, which one can buy at the price of Chetan Bhagat's books. If readers don't like the book I have recommended, they are welcome to return it. I want to see the young generation growing up reading books of substance. Students have a limited budget as it is. Why waste it?' No wonder then that Prajwal says, 'A new generation of Sikkim is reading, thanks to Rachna Books. Mine was a generation that
was starved for good reading material when we were growing up. The bookstores in town were sad—we had to make trips to bookstores in Kalimpong to buy books, but these bookstores were real ‘stores’—you couldn't linger for hours, you couldn't get tea as you read, and you couldn't talk to the owner about books for hours. Rachna Books is a Gangtok institution.' But how did it come to be an institution? Named after Raman's sister, Rachna Books was founded in 1979 by his grandfather Sri J S Lal Shresta, who had retired as a school headmaster. His father, Rajiva, supported the venture wholeheartedly while his mother, Ranjana—who is originally from Bhimphedi, Makwanpur and later Nardevi, Tangal in Kathmandu—looked after the everyday running of the bookstore with the help of a few staffers. Raman says, 'I guess it was the most natural thing for my family to start a bookstore. I think my grandfather and father already knew what I discovered much later—the joy of
spending all your money buying books. Sadly, you don't get to keep them, but if the books get to the right people, it's not so bad either.' The bookstore had a good run for over a decade. Unfortunately, it had to be shut down. When asked why, Raman says, a touch philosophically, 'Our shop had to close because everything in life reaches a zenith and then it has to live out its life.' In fact, what happened was, homes were invaded by television and cable TV. Technology followed with VCRs and VHS tapes. Books no longer remained the only source of entertainment. Life got busier and people had less time for books. And fewer and fewer people continued to frequent the bookstore. Gradually, it went out of business. And one more bookshop in Gangtok closed down. That loss gnawed at Raman, doubly. He had grown up reading books. And before that he had grown up hearing stories from his mother and grandmothers, both in Sikkim and Kathmandu. His paternal grandmother would tell him stories, sung out in verses. He says, "I still remem-
ber some of the stanzas from those tales." His maternal grandmother was a great storyteller too. He says, 'She had a wild imagination. When I got my first job in Pokhara, we visited the caves there. She refused to enter beyond a few steps because she was sure she could hear lions breathing inside. Magical realism was a part of her conversation!' His mother and aunt used to read out stories too. And his grandfather and father had a small library in their house in Rhenock. He remembers being handed abridged copies of Treasure Island and Kidnapped by R.L Stevenson when he turned eight. So a love for books had been instilled in him early in life and there was no television to wean him away from books. That love for books remained even as he pursued higher education. After obtaining a diploma in hotel management in Kolkata, Raman worked at a Pokhara resort for a little over a year. It was his first taste of independent living and he loved it. But he felt something was missing.
XXIII
A few books he read then prompted him to pursue his calling. His soul searching led him to many places, but his calling was right there, at home. He says, 'If everyone is put on the earth to do their bit, this must be mine—hunting down and acquiring books for their rightful owners and appearing to be damn wise and cool while at it!' And thus, in 2001, a decade after Rachna Books had closed down, Raman restarted it. It wasn't easy, as he had to start from scratch. Of course, the old shelves were there, but hidden under layers of dust that had piled up over the years. It took him almost a week to hose them down and wash the dust away. Thankfully, Rachna Books still had very strong goodwill among publishers and distributors, even after over a decade of not being in business. Some regular customers from earlier days had fond memories of the bookshop. His friends gave him moral support and provided ’shameless’ publicity for the bookshop. And his family, especially his parents, who were very happy to have him back home, was very supportive. That made restarting the bookshop much less challenging. Since then, Raman has moved his bookstore from the ground floor to the first floor to make room for a coffee shop called Café Fiction. Its interior, done by him, has a very minimalist look. Its menu, again prepared by him, is varied. The coffee he serves, says a comment on tripadvisor.com, 'is delicious, the snacks (sandwiches and cakes) are yummy and the atmosphere unbeatable. The place is full of style and beautiful details.' The bookshop is designed well too, spacious and arty. It looks more like a personal library than the ordinary bookstores where one tends to cram in everything in stock just so they can be seen. But I wonder if it is doing well commercially. When asked, Raman says, 'It is just about doing all right.' He adds, 'I keep hearing news of legendary independent bookshops all over the world closing down. Shops with a bigger clientele, higher footfalls and with far better locations that I visited in the cities have closed down in the last few years. It is as sad as it is alarming.' Maybe it is to counter this alarming
XXIV
prospect that Raman started the coffee shop and opened up a part of his home for Bookman's Bed & Breakfast. 'These are add-on enterprises that complement the bookshop perfectly. Anyone visiting any of these three places will be in for a surprise. The collective experience the bookshop, café and the B&B offer are distinct. Very few places can offer that,' he says. The profits from these should help him continue running the bookstore even if it doesn't make much money. And the fact he doesn't have to pay rent for the space makes running the bookstore much easier. So even if bookstores start closing down right and left, as we are seeing now, Rachna Books, it seems, is here to stay. That we can be certain of, as long as the bookstore is run by the Bookman. 'Curating books and running the bookshop is a labour of love,' he says. 'I won't ever turn it into a business.'
XXV
ETHER
I turned around to look at him. His four inch long black hair tufted at par with the frenzy of the storm. He was laughing noisily like a little kid. I wanted to ask him what he said but two comets of dusts exploded into each of my eyes. BY BHUSHITA VASISTHA
I
had the first conscious experience of it when I met Prakrit two years ago, in a meditation workshop at a resort in Pokhara. During the three consecutive sleepless nights we spent together, we had breached its territory, over and again. He was a young researcher, preparing for his PhD defense on the effect of mindful meditation on human brain neurotransmitters at the University of Pennsylvania during the time of the conference. It was the month of April. The mountain range, whittled into many pockets of greyish blue, popped up clear throughout the days. The first real spring shower had washed the city, the day our workshop started. A wild barrage of wind howled through the life size glass doors of the conference hall. The reckless, carefree wilderness of the wind evoked nostalgia of something youthful among every one of us. Rantipole, he had whispered to me as we ran through the wind to reach the closest restaurant after the first session. The wind barged through my hair, threatening to uproot each strand from my scalp. I turned around to look at him. His four inch long black hair tufted at par with the frenzy of the storm. He was laughing noisily like a little kid. I wanted to ask him what he said but two comets of dusts exploded into each of my eyes. He explained to me later in the restaurant that rantipole meant a wild reckless person. He dipped hot pakoras into béchamel sauce, and a whizz of steam rose from them, infusing the air with an aroma of fried onions and herbs. He had a thing for words. He explained everything with exotic words, bringing a new, magical feel to these events.
XXVI
For instance, we were still in the restaurant when the wind gave away to the first drizzle that spring. Petrichor, he had told me. The smell of rain on dry, parched earth. *** The first evening, we stayed outside on the narrow balcony of our shared room, which, by the way, had happened by serendipity as the management mistook me for a male participant thanks to my name. My father says Suman is a genderneutral name. But apart from me, I haven’t really met another girl with the name. It means fragrance in Sanskrit. I have developed my own theories about the name, which we will come to later. The balcony overlooked a large body of natural spring water. As night deepened, scintillating rays from the waxing moon sparkled ephemerally. Two large stone-carved gargoyles presided over the garden by the stream. Everything appeared serene under the moon-blanched night. We whispered our arguments passionately and whenever either of us would break into a giggle, the other would put their index finger on lips and try to drown out the sound with a cautious sshhhhhhh!!! We spent entire nights talking. Despite being sleep deprived for three consecutive nights, I didn’t feel tired or drained. You could even say I was throbbing with life. He said good conversations reduced the secretion of cortisol, which in turn promotes happiness and health. I argued that the joy came from meditation sessions in the afternoon, if only to vex him. Either way, I looked forward to those sleepless nights. The resort was located on a beautiful spot in Pokhara, where I had been living for the last four years. Even
though I saw the Annapurna range almost every day in the past years, it had never appeared as beautiful as it did those mornings. Our bodies stiffened from sitting down in rather uncomfortable metal chairs for nearly eight hours. But just as the nascent sun arose from the horizon, spilling orange over the peaks, a magical feeling permeated the earth. Silently, we would gaze at the mountain range. I felt an organic connection with everything around me. Numinous, he said. A strong feeling of the presence of something divine. *** Something extraordinary was happening to me. My boyfriend of two years, who is a filmmaker by profession, was living in a different town then. Initially, both of us had decided to partake in the workshop. But in the meantime he received an invitation to a month-long residential arts program. It was a good offer and he was leading some of the sessions. Meditation didn’t particularly fascinate him either. I, on the other hand, was having an early mid-life crisis. I had just resigned from a so-called posh job at a realestate agency and was having serious doubts about my self-worth. I would be turning twenty-six next month. A small but visible depression—the size of a thin Indian clove—had etched itself into the corner of my left eye, from where my eyebrows began. I was worried that I had started having the first traces of wrinkles on my face and it didn’t come from wisdom but staring at a computer inanely for ten hours a day. I worked in an air-conditioned room with a gypsum board ceiling. Eight neat rows of sparkling neon lights lit the room. It was a micro cosmos with
a custom-made galaxy of eight linear rows. Right opposite the complex, an ugly five storey concrete building with gaudy billboards on each balcony, stood defiantly to give a reality check. Dust and noise fuzzed outside the glass windows in homologous fumes. Once you walked down the stairs of the air-conditioned lobby, dust and sun made one febrile. I spent entire days analyzing the fluctuating trend of real estate on Excel sheets. The global economic breakdown had started having repercussion in Nepal as well. Most investors, who had joined in the fad of building multi-storey malls and complexes during last year’s boom, were filtered out in the bank’s 'Know Your Customer' (KYC) scheme as ‘high-risk’ clients. The banks were trying to recuperate from bad loans, as most of these loans had land or houses for mortgage, whose value had nose-dived sharply when compared to the prior valuation of lending agencies. After the Maoist joined mainstream politics, a large diaspora from conflict-
ridden districts returned to their homelands, leaving the real estate market in Kathmandu volatile. Nepal Rastra Bank had also revised the lending rates of the bank to discourage large scale real estate ventures. As the market of real estate shrunk in the capital city, the return of displaced families ignited a boom in the mofussil. Tapping this trend, my company had branched out to Pokhara, Itahari and Nepalgunj. Every morning, I carefully mascaraed my eyes and painted my lips to convincingly coax people into buying bigger houses they didn’t need. Like me, most of my coworkers were native to Kathmandu. Distraught by the strange musical accent of Pokhrelies, we huddled together in isolated groups. During lunch hours, we had sandwiches and salads delivered in cellophane wraps. 'We wash all vegetables in iodine water,' read a footnote on the restaurant’s menu, from where we ordered our lunch. During lunch hours, we used to discuss pictures from ‘Last Night’ in an online portal of People
magazine. I had a friend, who always joked that Pippa Middleton couldn’t have been Duchess Catherine’s own sister, as the former’s lack of 'x-factor' was unforgivable. It wasn’t for us to worry if some of their home loan perpetuated bankruptcy. But, actually, I once came across one of my clients who was shortlisted in a newspaper for a bad loan. Something guilty had streamed into my bloodstream then. By the time I decided to quit my job, this stream had become a viscous, greasy thing, which, I imagined, clogged my veins. What was I doing, for God's sake? I was in my twenties and already treating my body like a money-minting machine. I couldn’t allow myself a day with bad hair or skin. A zit or pimple or barely noticeable limp hair challenged my confidence. It was insane. When I was transferred to Pokhara, I had been promoted as the chief research officer. But seriously, the more I climbed up the corporate ladder, the more insecure I grew. What for? I didn’t know. Then, one fine day, I quit my job. I wanted to change my lifestyle-everybody was swearing by the ‘lifestyle management’ catchphrase. Okay, no processed food, no caffeine, no alcohol, no smoking, no couchpotatoing, no consumerism, no etc, etc, but what else would be left for me to do then? The idea of 'self-discovery' kept on buoying away from me like an expensive dream. While I couldn’t keep myself away from either of these malaises, my newfound willingness to do otherwise sunk me deeper into unsolicited guilt. And then came this workshop. I was strolling alone through lakeside, when a leaflet with a bright, radiating face caught my attention. 'From Medication Towards Meditation' was inscribed on the top in slim, modern font. The design was very minimalistic and they used a lot of mute pastel colors. My boyfriend would’ve approved of the design. I had come across similar notices about different meditation camps earlier, but I never gave a second thought because the uncomely and almost gory designs gave me a prevision of fanatic and intolerant congregations. I had held my ability to reason as my greatest forte. But as you could
XXVII
see, I was on the losing side of the battle already. So, the workshop. I took out my tiny rice-paper notebook and inscribed the details. iwilllivehappily@meditation.org Even then, I couldn’t resist smiling sarcastically at their email address. They replied a day later saying I could enroll myself and make my payments online on so and so account at so and so bank. But once the letter came, a different sadness took over me. What if meditation required me to give up dressing up, or make-up, or Internet, you know things like those. I pictured myself meeting my friend from my ex-office with bushy eyebrows, an unmade face and boring, artless clothes. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how I was going to explain myself. It wasn’t that I put on a lot of make-up but I did love dressing up. And most depressing of all I couldn’t imagine the pain of being a vegetarian. So, much to my surprise, on the first day, I was glad to sit among an impressive gathering of young people with good, I would even say, commendable sense of style. These were bright young people seeking ’happiness’. And needless to say, they were different from my usual circle of friends who spoke of a quilted Chanel bag that a certain Hollywood actor carried to a certain award function with the fervour of a religious fanatic. I had requested twin-sharing accommodation. I have this strange habit, which I can never quite explain reasonably. Whenever I go shopping, I spend blindly on overpriced clothes or books even though I know that with a little bit of surfing I could get a much better deal. But I indulge anyway. And perhaps, as compensation, I console myself by trying to save on things like getting twin-accommodation instead of a single room, even when I know the latter would be a much better decision and I could afford it comfortably. With apprehension, I took the key from the resort lobby and went to my room. And there he was, with his suitcase flung open on the floor like an enormous dead hawk as he absentmindedly fumbled through it. He hadn’t even noticed me; the door had been wide-open too. So, I walked out quietly and rechecked with the girl at reception. It was indeed the room registered
XXVIII
for me. I checked for his details in the registration book. Name: Prakrit Sharma Age: 37 Country: United States Profession: Scientist. He had very artistic handwriting for a scientist. Or perhaps, I haven’t really met a great lot of them. But scientist sounded good. I thought what if I had to share a room with a Catholic Priest. So, I decided to keep the room. Hi, I think we are sharing this room for the next three days,' I told him as I stood in the threshold of the door. The suitcase lay slain on the floor with the same gory effect. He turned around and looked at me with that classic absent-mindedness you associate with ’scientists’. 'Are we? How come?' 'I don’t know. We can change if you want to but I am comfortable.' So, that is how it all began. *** After eventful and exciting days during the day sessions, we spent nights reflecting on what we’d learnt that day. He had come to India to meet his parents and had read about the workshop on the Internet. So, assuming it might be good for his research, he decided to give it a try. The first night, we tried sleeping. Slouched comfortably into the decks of my Dunlop, I kept imagining what those hushed sounds he made were coming from. Behind my closed eyelids, I saw him pull on his quilt, toss it to the opposite side, turn around and lie down on his back, pulling both arms to make a pillow of knitted palms. I could even see him gazing at the beige ceiling and the way his eyes would blink momentarily. The whole time I lay as noiseless as a cat. But my nerves were in a frenzy. Rantipole, I kept repeating in my head. Dampness had started to wet my loins. As his Dunlop kept making those creaking noises, I increasingly felt that something had to be done to break this sexual tension. Thankfully, after around an hour, he turned on the lights and asked if I would like to try some of the jasmine tea he had purchased in Sikkim. I think, to dilute the tension both of us hurriedly admitted to having partners. He was getting married to his childhood sweetheart next month and I, too, was in a very committed rela-
tionship. Nervousness broke through these rationalisations. We had a great deal to talk about. He was researching how 'compassion' escalates one’s capacity to forgive and could per se be used to treat heart patients. We talked about my father, who recently went through an angioplasty after three successive heart attacks left him paraplegic. But the paralysis, fortunately, had been a temporary one and he was on his feet again. I told him how my father was the most compassionate person I knew. That invariably led me to explain why I had a ’male’ name, as he put it. I told him Suman was a genderneutral name. Like all hypersensitive teenagers, I too spent a lot of time trying to find the significance of my name. And here is what my theory was— I was the second of two sisters. My elder sister was fairer and more beautiful in the classic sense. Wherever we went, we were compared for our looks and it stung me badly to be the one of a darker shade. We were to grow up
to the time when fashion magazines would do exclusive photo-shoots on ‘dusky beauties’ and the fairer among us would have tanning lotions on their toilette. But, fortunately, this sense of not being ‘enough’ prompted me to develop other skills to be attractive. That was when I developed my panache for dressing up and artful conversations. I listened to influential speakers on the BBC and emulated their style. What started as a personal-development chore became my hobby. I loved watching BBC documentaries, while my sister kept complaining that I was getting tedious. It was in one of those documentaries that I heard that white flowers were more fragrant when compared to colourful ones, because it was their sure-shot USP to attract insects that made pollination happen. I was the white flower. Just as they needed to be extra fragrant, I too needed to find something more than my physical looks to feel content. So, my name ‘Suman’ made perfect sense to me.
He practiced Zen Buddhism. My understanding of Zen was limited to delicious haikus by the Zen monk Basho, inscribed in my boyfriend’s notebooks. I recited my favorite haiku on the second night and suddenly, the night stood still. Heard, not seen Camellia poured rainwater When it leaned. Meditation was making us more loving, more giving and more of what I cannot even begin to explain. The sexual tension between us hadn’t subsided but it had taken on a less urgent and more poetic turn. We would turn off the lights, boil water on an electric kettle that emanated turquoise light while on and drink jasmine tea. As I gathered my unruly silken hair in a twist, he had whispered Cafuné. Running fingers through your lover’s hair. *** He went to the University of Pennsylvania five years ago on a scholarship. His father was a professor of English literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. They used to live in a rented apartment at Nelson Mandela Road until he was seven years old. But as his father was granted permanent assistant professorship, they moved into JNU’s academic staff quarters. They had dislodged furniture from their previous apartment when they moved into the campus. However, the only furniture that made its way into their new residence was a small triangular box of sandalwood, where his mother had a picture of kali and a black and white portrait of a bearded man in white kurta and loincloth, his right hand raised high in some imperceptible mudra. When he visited the temple at Dakshineshwor in Calcutta, he knew the man was called Ramkrishna Paramhansa. Prakrit was ten years old then. When his mother told him Ramkrishna could freeze for hours in a trance, like he did in that portrait in his house, he felt an urge to explore what ignited these moments. Being analytical by nature, he took to science to explain this sense of spiritual awe logically. He said that he was greatly impressed by Osho, who amalgamated the division between science and art, meditation and medication and East and West as complimentary disciplines and not conflicting subjects
as they were usually seen as. I didn’t know much about Osho except that a colleague of mine at the real estate agency often spoke of him as the ultimate paragon of a libertine. Thinking of which, I wondered how that definition didn’t instigate me to read further about Osho. When I told him of my cynicism about marriage, he happily clasped his hands and asked me to read Osho again. I didn’t know what I wanted of my life. It scared me to think of getting married to someone and waking up everyday to find them lying lethargically on my bed. Having kids didn’t even enter my imagination. My elder sister had been married for four years with a daughter. I loved my niece but it failed my imagination how my sister could keep up with her child’s incessant whims and temper. And my niece was only three years old! Apart from that, the idea of being legally accountable when you decided to leave your partner struck me as brutal. He listened to me gently and unquestioningly, as if he agreed with what I said. But at the same time, he was also happy that he would be married to his girlfriend of twenty-years next month. I was convinced it would work out all right for him. I mean they had been together for twenty years already! *** I became a different person after the workshop. I kept my make up and dress but also started meditating every day. Vegetarianism came its natural way. I stopped blow-drying my hair to Sarah Jessica Parker-inspired curls. I am still put off by uncomely pimples but I stopped coating them under a slather of concealer. These days, I work for a Japanese man, who owns an organic coffee farm on a small hillock near Syangja. I commute everyday to the farm with this Japanese man on his army green land rover. We hardly have any conversations with each other. They are limited to the barest minimum. He almost always says gomen, when we arrive at the brink of the Bhaloo Pahad, from where a bumpy uphill road winds up to the farm. He sometimes also thanks me with an arigato gozaimasu when I roll down the car windows during the month of April, when whimsical storms hit the roads of Pokhara and Syangja. Even during my interview, he merely looked at my CV and credentials and
XXIX
I WAS IN MY TWENTIES AND ALREADY TREATING MY BODY LIKE A MONEY-MINTING MACHINE. I COULDN’T ALLOW MYSELF A DAY WITH BAD HAIR OR SKIN. A ZIT OR PIMPLE OR BARELY NOTICEABLE LIMP HAIR CHALLENGED MY CONFIDENCE. IT WAS INSANE. asked, 'Will you be happy to do this job?' I was surprised, by the way, because he had an impeccable American accent that made ‘job’ sound like ‘jawb’. I think he is a widower. He carries an old model Nokia phone but no one ever calls him on it. This is possibly why, if I have to sometimes call him on his phone for sick leave, I feel like I have violated some sacred space. Once, during one of the April showers, when thunder broke in the distant skies of Waling, I saw him savour it dreamily and break into a satisfied smile. It would take five months of a companion with that inane face to appreciate what a treat that smile was! I work as his marketing manager. The spacious one-story hut is separated into three liquid sections by moveable wooden partitions with Sakura blossoms. The first partition serves as a coffee-testing lounge with a small wooden table and plump kapok seed cushions on the floor. The remaining two partitions are his and my offices. Large sliding glass doors look out to the expansion of succulent coffee shrubs in all directions. He doesn’t have any computer on his desk. Instead, he spends the whole day reading books and underlining them. He has a soft, compassionate way with coffee bushes. As we sometimes walk through the combs of these bushes, he takes a bulb of ripe red coffee beans in his hands lovingly and caresses them. When he is not around, I have started doing the same. I smile when I do this. I feel light, raw, passionate. My boyfriend got a scholarship to study filmmaking at New York University last year. Eight months later, we decided to call the relationship off. What does it mean to be in a relationship or to call it off? We speak to each other almost everyday. He remembers the date of my cycle and can detect PMS before myself. We have acquired each other’s sense of humour. There are jokes we XXX
can only tell each other. Apart from small flings and occasional hook-ups, I’ve been single for most of the time. But most importantly, I’ve been really content, for the first time in my life. I don’t even know why. Perhaps meditation works like a placebo. Perhaps, I have come to realise that it is enough to be myself in my ’suchness’. This whole ’fragrance’ trip was just my version of keeping up with the social axiom of continuously becoming somebody. Bettering myself everyday. These days, I don’t really worry a lot about this. And I enjoy the company of people so much more, inviting them to see through me and not attempting to keep them distracted by the painted attractiveness of my face. I feel like a greater intelligence is taking care of me and I can stop planning my life ahead. I feel good things will come without stressing morbidly about achieving them all the time. Naturally, this worries my mother. And I receive pictures of possible suitors in my email from my relatives every day. To be honest, they’ve become akin to a horoscope site you cannot unsubscribe from. So, I don’t even reply to them anymore. And the only person I can talk to about this is Prakrit. We talk to each other on Skype every day. I think a part of this compulsive need to talk is owed to the fact that I work eight hours a day with a man who manages to pass his entire day with not more than ten words. Prakrit’s wife is expecting. He has been really happy, on his way to a much-coveted professorship. Sometimes, I wonder what would’ve happened if we’d kissed, to begin with, on that narrow balcony on the workshop resort. It’s delicious to imagine. Both of us have our own theories and every once in a while, we indulge them with gluttony. Basorexia, he had once said. The intense, compulsive desire to kiss.
But I think we just do that out of habit. I mean, we are programmed to believe that the best thing that could happen between a man and a woman is to make love, or something like that. As I grow older—I have started using this phrase a lot as a pretext to reinforce my wisdom—I realise there are more satiating depths, parametre— less—oblong, square, rectangular, hexagonal—relationships, non-physical ways of making love, the orgasms that come from fondling coffee buds, the sadness of winter nights or ethereal dreams that leave you impregnated. Just the other day, I dreamt of kissing my Japanese boss. We were both standing amidst a vast expanse of desert. Sand dunes stretched to eternity, merging with ether in the distant horizon. Some abnormally tall humanoids were digging square holes in the sand. They wore knee-length togas in vibrant red and white. As a caravan of other toga-clad humanoids marched towards us with a wooden cot, he kissed me softly on the lips, his fingers combing through the waves of my hair. He fondled my breasts through the thin material of my yellow silk blouse, tenderly. While he did this, his face melted slowly into the face of my ex-boyfriend, which melted into the face of Prakrit, which melted into the face of this seventeen year old Gurung boy, who roasted the plucked beans at our farm. These melting faces kept making love to me. Under their weight, my body kept sinking into the golden sand. As the sun floated through the clear sky, its barbed skin cooling off into a round red ball, I felt my own belly starting to swell like a melon. A clear, colourless, shapeless, odorless piece of sky was growing inside my womb. Ether, came the voice from these melting faces. A very rarefied and highly elastic substance believed to permeate all space, whose vibrations constitute light and other electromagnetic radiation.
[OGb|hfndf gf/fo0f 9sfnsf]]] efiff sflJos, ;/n / ;/; 5 . ljDa, cn+sf/ / zAbsf] Goflos tyf k|fl1s k|of]hg 5 . – g]kfn ;fKtflxs
ON AND OFF THE ROAD A quick skim through the first pages and I knew that the book would definitely be one of the best reads in recent years. Such spontaneity (as pointed out by countless reviews and essays which helped me see the technique); such rawness in writing that could have been Joyce’s companion; such talent with words and sentences which did run like a road, continuous and flowing; and such an engrossing narrative that you couldn’t help but beg it to go on and on, and you needn’t raise your head from the pages. BY ASHISH DHAKAL
I
have always dreamed of packing my bags and hitchhiking my way out of Kathmandu and seeing the country for what it truly is and perhaps writing about it later—always very vaguely planning but never taking off and planning once again and so on. That's why I thought maybe Jack would be an inspiration. You see, he actually took off on a trip in 1947, not unlike the ones I planned, and later documented it in what we today know as On the Road, typing continuously for three weeks on a 120 foot long scroll that when unrolled ran like a road. The first reports of Jack came to me through my first cousin who had greatly benefitted from his friendship with him. 'You should read what he writes,' he would recount to me over snacks during his visits, 'They just go on and on and all you want is for them to go on further.' My cousin would show me Jack’s letters and words with a different story attached to each of them and wish for me to admire them as well. These letters were of special interest to me because of their crudeness and truthfulness.
XXXII
They were simply naïve and, well, true. It was from this cousin that I first heard of the story behind On the Road and it led me to spend hours on the internet trying to uncover more about this intriguing phenomenon called Jack Kerouac. So, once my A Levels were done with, and for good, if I might add, I walked out of the Educational Book House in Kantipath, Jamal sometime in the summer of 2013 with the movie tie-in edition of On the Road in a paper bag. The cover wasn’t what I was hoping for—my cousin had promised a vintage kind of photograph of a smiling Jack; instead, my version had Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart and dry west and a dusty car surrounded by discoloured plants and cacti. I had twice asked the man in the shop to look for other editions. Both times he had said that there wasn’t any. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for the third time, so I quietly paid for the book and walked out of the shop with a neatly wrapped package of enthusiasm and excitement that would have certainly helped me score better grades at school. 'Finally, you got it,' I told myself quietly so as not to let passersby turn around and glance at me, 'Your very own On the Road.' A quick skim through the first pages and I knew that the book would definitely be one of the best reads in recent years. Such spontaneity (as pointed out by countless reviews
and essays which helped me see the technique); such rawness in writing that could have been Joyce’s companion; such talent with words and sentences which did run like a road, continuous and flowing; and such an engrossing narrative that you couldn’t help but beg it to go on and on, and you needn’t raise your head from the pages. Over the next four months, I collected every single work by Jack, mostly in electronic format because of the little allowance that I was entitled to at that moment—although I am not a big fan of ebooks. I just had to have them, everything Jack ever wrote, from poems to essays to songs and novels and stories. Every single word that Jack scribbled on his worn out notebooks. Everything. But did I ever open them up and read them? No, I didn’t. You see, there are three kinds of books. One which you love so much that you can’t wait to get to the end; and you’re ready to spend as many hours curled up on the couch just to finish it even while your mother is shouting from the kitchen reminding that your lunch is getting cold. The second are the ones which midway through the first page you see don’t deserve your attention at all; and you ask yourself a major philosophical question over and over again as you read on absentmindedly ('Should I complete this or not?'), not getting the story all the while as you waste your good day. Books of the third kind are the most dangerous. You build up such grand preface for these books, researching about their every single word and their implications, exciting yourself throughout so much that by the time you actually open them you are so overwhelmed with a fear of the book’s eventual ending that you end up not reading it after all. On the Road has become such a book for me. The first time I sat down to read the book was after the day I bought it. My parents went to work, I checked my inbox, then I made myself comfortable on the couch and turned to the first page:
'I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up —' Suddenly I was hit by a sudden revelation that this little book in my hand would eventually be over and all the excitement I went through to get it and read about it would mean nothing. And thus, for the first time in my life, I was tempted to put off reading. Like homework. And it was dreadful. I had even gone as far as to recommend the book to everyone in my reading circle while drowning myself in doubts and fear. It was a brand new car and all of a sudden I had lost interest in driving. I really wanted to read it, but, I mean, as long as I didn’t read it, I wouldn’t know how it really flows, right? And I wouldn’t have the slightest idea if it was like what all essays and reviews claimed it to be and I wouldn’t know if I’d like it or not. I didn’t want to unlike the book. Some of Jack’s poems had already been my favourites. Surely, the novel was a lot better. Everybody said so. It had to be. On my birthday the following year, a friend of mine got me the original, unedited version of On the Road (On the Road: The Original Scroll) which is remarkably different from the version first published in 1957 and reprinted in different editions ever since. Now I have one more problem to worry about, thanks to him, and I can’t decide which to read first, that is, if I ever decide to read it. So now when I complete a book and put it aside, I sense all the road going, all the people walking, talking and making up stories that grow intriguing word by word, and nobody, just nobody knows what will happen the next moment, whether they’ll like a book they bought years ago, or if they’ll be surprised to find that it isn’t what they think it is; that is when I think of Jack, I think of Jack and all my on and off the road adventures. P.S. Sometime during the coming summer I want to go on a road trip. Yet another planning, I’m aware but I just might, you never know. Maybe reading On the Road would do the trick. XXXIII
A LITERARY
GUILTY PLEASURE
While the range of human emotions can be tapped virtually in any genre, there’s something about crime novels that makes them compelling. Reading is vicarious living. Everybody and anybody who reads will tell you that, but reading crime thrillers is vicarious living at its best. BY CILLA KHATRY
I
t was one of those not-so-rare days when Aama was watching the repeat telecast of one of her favorite Hindi serials. Yes, one of those where the dead character is brought back to life after a month or so, and the story drags on before he dies again, and the cycle continues. And no, Aama hadn’t missed the episode the previous night. From the occasional glimpses I got and the snippets I heard on my way to the kitchen, or while trying to get her to listen to my more-interesting-than-what’son-TV stories, all the serials she watched seemed the same to me. For the umpteenth time, I casually made a remark that I couldn’t understand how she watched the mind-numbingly tedious work of crap and that too twice within 24 hours. Perhaps hearing me crib ever so often had annoyed her quite a bit and that day she was ready with a retort. 'You read all those murder mysteries and suspense novels, don’t you?” she said. 'Same thing here!' And my mind went to the many Mary Higgins Clark, Sidney Sheldon, Ruth Rendell, and other crime fiction books that line the shelves in my room. Addiction. Sweet addiction. It hit me. That was all it took to shut me up. For good. I haven’t once commented on Aama’s serial serialwatching thereafter. Not even when she has watched the same episode thrice. Here I must confess that I’m more than occasionally inclined to read crime fiction. In the past two months, I’ve read three murder mysteries-Count to Ten by Karen Rose, Hurting Distance by Sophie Hannah, and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.
XXXIV
And that’s not counting the Agatha Christie novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that was gifted by a friend, and Sophie Hannah’s The Other Half Lives which I had misplaced while reading and found again when searching for another book by the same author. Guilty pleasures, I call these books because there’s not much you can take away from it. But they surely are entertaining for as long as they last besides being extremely addictive. You finish one and want to pick up another just like it and that leads you to more works by the same author. That was how I ended up reading most of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta books, Sue Grafton’s alphabet series, and many other crime fiction books. My love for crime fiction started with Famous Five and Secret Seven by Enid Blyton. I would rush home from school and read the thin volumes while pretending to be doing my homework. Then I graduated to Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. Anyone who gifted me a Nancy Drew omnibus made it to my list of people-who-I-wish-would-liveto-be-a-100. A few years down the line, Sherlock Holmes and the Miss Marple series by Agatha Christie were the requirements to make it to that highly coveted list. I loved the page-turning, heart-racing element of suspense the best.
Back when I was in school, the concept of a library was lost on me. I didn’t want to just borrow books; I wanted to own them. I got a weekly allowance of some Rs 200-300 to buy a book. I would finish reading it in a couple of days and then emotionally blackmail my parents (Dad, more often) to buy me another. He always did, thus fostering my reading habit. During one of my weekly trips to Ekta Books near my home in Jawalakhel, I discovered Sidney Sheldon and Mary Higgins Clark, and I was hooked. I still remember negotiating a deal to hike up my book allowance to Rs 400 or thereabout because Sheldon and Clark were expensive. Dad was getting late for work but I wouldn’t let go, so he quickly relented. From then on, I would add a little bit extra to the Rs 500 he would give me and buy two books instead of just one. A Sheldon and a Clark. These two writers introduced me to the world of crime and sucked me into that dark space. There was no turning back. While the range of human emotions can be tapped virtually in any genre, there’s something about crime novels that makes them compelling. Reading is vicarious living. Everybody and anybody who reads will tell you that, but reading crime thrillers is vicarious living at its best. You’re there amidst the dangers and the pulse-pounding adventures. You feel trapped, hunted, and live in constant terror. Trust me. I’ve stopped reading The Missing, the first book in the Darby McCormick series by Chris Mooney because I couldn’t bear the torture anymore: The victims were being kept locked up in an underground cell, and I was obviously one of them. But as soon as I had finished reading it, I picked up The Dead Room by the same writer and devoured it in a day and have been on the hunt for The Secret Friend and The Soul Collectors in the McCormick series ever since. Unlike fantasy fiction—which I can’t make much sense of— crime fiction lies within the realm
of possibility, and that makes it gripping. It’s a glimpse into a twisted world that actually can and does exist. The events that the books describe, with some slight variations, can actually happen in our lives, and that very thought is what makes you draw the curtains at night, double check the locks on the door, and yet still break out in a nervous sweat when you hear a squeaking sound in the dead of the night. Fear creeps in instantly, and you find yourself thinking of the serial killer who’s on the run in the latest installment of Jonathan Kellerman’s crime books that you’re currently reading. I’ve chatted with my best friend on the phone while getting a glass of water from the kitchen at night, turned on the TV to fill the eerie silence, pulled the blanket up to cover my head even during sweltering hot summer nights, and slept with the lights on. Oh, the repercussions of a good crime novel! They continue to haunt you long after you’ve turned the final page and you revel in that creepy, unsettling feeling. Some of my friends who browbeat me for reading crime fiction watch crime series on TV. What they aren’t aware of is that the television series Bones featuring Temperance Brennan is based on a book series by Kathy Reichs; David Baldacci’s books on two former Secret Service Agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are behind the series King and Maxwell, and Women’s Murder Club starring the fictional heroine Inspector Lindsay Boxer comes from James Patterson’s books by the same name. The popularity of crime fiction is undeniable. But then there are some ‘serious’ readers who claim to be above the genre. A friend once said crime novels are handy diversions at best. But who doesn’t need diversions in life? A distraction from all the thoughts that lurk in your head. Also, what these people conveniently sideline is the fact that crime in one form or the other is a part of many plots in literature.
Dickens used crime to underpin his plots. Murder and suspense can be found in The Odyssey and Hamlet. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment revolves around Raskolnikov killing the elderly pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna. In her apartment. With an axe. And he also murders her half-sister. Even JK Rowling, the author of the bestselling Harry Potter books, has written two crime thrillers under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. And what’s more, she also confessed to having always enjoyed crime fiction to the point of drawing inspiration from the genre for the Harry Potter series. A colleague who scoffs at me for my indulgence in ‘guilty pleasures’ couldn’t stop raving about Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, so much so that she even suggested I read it. How her fascination with Lisbeth Salander is any different from mine, with countless such similar characters, is beyond my understanding. But her fascination with the series proved my point. Maybe it’s the good-versus-the-evil dichotomy we are suckers of, or the thrill of anticipation, that we all love a good whodunit. Whether we admit it or not. One of my favorite crime fiction writers, Harlan Coben, said, 'We’re living in a new golden age of crime fiction. Never before has there been such a wealth of great writers in the genre.' And am I glad about that! While desperately searching every other bookstore in Thamel and New Delhi for Mooney’s books, I came across Nicci French. Nicci French is the pseudonym for the husband and wife duo Nicci Gerrard and Sean French who write psychological thrillers. I’ve read one, and if the others are even half as good, it’s going to be one heck of a year. I also recently found out that Mooney has a new series out, and also a fifth book in the McCormick series. There are just so many dark stories to read. Life has never looked this bright!
XXXV
NOTES ON
A FIRST
NOVEL
BY ADITYA SUDARSHAN
'Because it isn't there.' I suppose that's why any writer writes, and that's why I began. The novel formed in my head all through the start of 2007, when I was doing my final internship at the trial courts of Delhi. There is a great deal of waiting in litigation, and I had plenty of time to piece together the setting, an ancient house in a Himalayan town, the characters, a maverick criminal court judge and his young and innocent clerk, the central turmoil of a clash of small town and urban sensibilities, and the murder and the solution, which I won't give away. It was going to be a fine, thoughtful mystery, the kind that Chesterton and Eco had shown was possible. I wrote it in the last three months of my time in law school, and then put it into storage. Getting it published was in my mind, but for the time being only at the back of it. Other things had primacy, not least my job as a lawyer's junior. By September that year my priorities were shifting. One empty Sunday I slaved from morning to night writing the dreaded synopsis, the prospect of which had deterred me for months. But when sixty thousand words were reduced at last to six hundred I had a real sense of achievement. It was a step towards professionalism, a step away from the hold of the 'artistic temperament.' With the synopsis
XXXVI
done I started the long and patient process of sending out proposals to publishers—and waiting. And waiting. In the meantime I read biographies of the writers I had always admired—Fitzgerald, Dickens, Kipling, Chesterton—and I understood more clearly than ever that they had nothing dramatically different, no additional creative muscle that I didn't. Just their own, personal genius—and that was personal. I learned early not to let foreign names cast a spell over me and to admire my heroes without being under their heel. Two months later I had my first rejection—a remarkably quick one; I had to wait two more months for the next. These were sobering, because my secret belief was that no one could possibly reject my novel. Now I knew they could, and what was more, they could do it with the most supreme indifference. It was another harsh truth
of the writing life: publishers don't need you, but you need them. However, I was in the game, and the thrill of receiving responses was not entirely sullied by what they contained. Paradoxically, the rejections also helped dispel the abiding doubt, reinforced at intervals by well-meaning acquaintances, that one needed a 'connection' to win at this game, a little something to load the dice. I didn't have that, but they were writing back anyway, and if they said No they could equally say Yes. I do believe there is a pleasant answer to the question: Do you need a contact? No, you need a product and you need perseverance. At any rate you need perseverance. Meanwhile, in January of 2008 my brother in far-away Stanford emailed me news of a competition in close by Mumbai. The writer's group Caferati was holding a 'book pitch' at the Kala Ghoda Festival and all the top publishers would be in attendance. It was worth a shot; I had the material at hand. I made my submission and promptly forgot about it. But things moved quickly—at last. In February a publisher I had written to in the usual way asked to see my manuscript. In March the contest results were in, and my eventual editor made me her second request. (Her first had landed in my spam, a rather cruel trick that Fate, thankfully, grew bored of.) It was only days later that I had a concrete offer. The terms were not Rushdie-esque, but at such times it is tough to play it cool and I accepted without much fuss. There followed many months during which nothing much happened to my book, but I quit my job and wrote my second novel. Gradually, I was becoming a writer. The acid test is what you say when the stranger on the bus asks what you do, and I had started to reply, 'fiction', not law. Then the editing process was on, and I discovered its peculiar thrill—the thrill of being under attack. The year ended, the novel was good and ready, and now A Nice Quiet Holiday' is on the shelves. And that's the story so far.
AN ODE TO YOU,
BUKOWSKI!
Bukowski was a prolific writer who often relied on his past to explain the chronic loneliness and depression that he had suppressed throughout his childhood. His usage of aggressive and sadistic sexual imageries often left me both confused and disgusted at first. BY SNIGDHA BHATTA
T
oday is the kind of evening when I allow Bukowski to destroy me beautifully in ways I cannot explain in a few words, a few paragraphs, even. It was the summer of 2009 when I first discovered this man. Henry Charles Bukowski. I was fifteen then and this name has stuck with me since then. There has been absolutely no turning back from this genius. I’ve morphed with Bukowski. I’ve evolved. I have allowed this man to transform me, for better or worse. Reading him has been a tumultuous ride, though. It certainly has. Often, I’d chance upon a wonderful poem that would appear to be sexist, misogynist, and too realist, even and for the longest time I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. What would seem seemingly idyllic at first would always lead me to two recurring themes in his work: escapism and alienation. And I had never read anything remotely close to those themes before. We never read Plath or Bukowski, Raegan Butcher or Paul Celan in high school. In fact, these names are unheard of even now, aren’t they? Literature classes ask us to bring along with us a copy of Keats, Blake, and Wordsworth. Occasionally, we will chance upon a few obscure artists and will discuss their work at length and yet, in the end, we follow our instinctual need to stick to the 'mundane'— Shakespeare and Shaw for plays, Frost and Poe for poems. But Bukowski and poets alike have somehow gone unnoticed. Bukowski was a prolific writer who often relied on his past to explain the chronic loneliness and depression that he had suppressed throughout his childhood. His usage of aggressive and sadistic sexual imageries often left me both confused and disgusted at first. But what I might have considered vulgar before is now beauty to me; beauty in its purest form. My inability to appreciate his work at first is partly society’s fault. I believe everyone believes that poems are supposed to give us an idyllic vision of a subject. But this preconceived notion of what poetry should be like is exactly what Bukowski avoided and preached all his life. He wrote as he wanted, following no 'proper' syntax, no 'proper' rule. My friends are continually disenchanted with his poems, but his sheer creativity and originality is what enthralls me the most. His misogynistic outlook is something I have grown to accept in the course of time. Bukowski always had a bitter experience with his family. The most honest moments I have with Bukowski are when I can read a poem or a line or a word and know exactly how and why he wrote that. Years of suppressed emotions get an outlet through writing or any other form of art and to judge a person XXXVII
for the misogynist he is without understanding the reason or the context behind it would be wrong. Do we blame Shakespeare's plays for having anti-Semitic tendencies? No. Or the childhood cartoon books for always portraying men to be the saviour? No. Beneath all the chauvinism, nonchalance and narcissism was a deep rooted fear towards mankind and love and life that Bukowski tried to shake off through his writing. My mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, telling me to be happy: 'Henry, smile! Why don't you ever smile? And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw. These words by Bukowski grip me every time I read it. While his poetry saw inconsistencies, his novels provided an even deeper insight to his life. Reading Ham on Rye let me know that his childhood was tormenting to say the least. A hard alcoholic, Bukowski always has sexual undertones to most things clubbed with the anxiety of alcoholism. Bukowski, through his writing, has grated my nerve sometimes. I wouldn’t deny that, but he has made me appreciate the little things in life and see the world for what it really is than the flawed version which is so often fed to us by the consumerist society. For you to read, I would recommend Love is a Dog from Hell, Burning in Water Drowning in Flame and The People Look Like Flowers At Last. Though poems in these collections are written around a similar theme, they will madden you, in the right way. I will also recommend the short story Tales of Ordinary Madness, which has affected me like no other and till date, and the novels Factotum and Post Office. These novels give an insight into who he was and why he was who he was. I’ve changed along with him. Any psychology textbook will tell us that our basic patterns of behaviour and way of thinking are most influenced in our early years by the books we
XXXVIII
read. Bukowski’s poems have always made me broach the serious issues of life with ease. He has reinforced in me the idea that people can be scarred by their past experiences and that they are allowed to unload their frustration in the forms of writing, art, speech and not get judged. His novel Ham on Rye has helped me understand existentialism. His works have always propelled me to take challenges in life with a healthy dose of humour. Bukowski has a lot to do with helping me be assertive, gritty and cold, but also helped me grow into a mellow and mature individual. If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. .... This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. .... It could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail, It could mean derision, mockery, isolation. .... Do it, do it, do it. In the year 1994, this genius was buried beneath a gravestone that reads, 'Don’t Try.' This is the dictum he abided by all his life. In his letter to John William Corrington, he wrote, 'somebody at one of these places…asked me: ‘What do you do? How do you write, create?’ You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: "not" to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on a wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.' No other quote has affected me as much as this one has. Thank you, Bukowski.
BOOKS BY SRISTI BHATTARAI Untidy, though they are bound, and stacked next to each other, they seem to bloat and bleed into one another, the starched thread, visible, that holds them together, their musty smell and exhalation of dust, they seem to be decaying between their covers which are nothing but semblances of solidity. Yet they sit side by side on shelves pretending to be proper, and firmly held together. With theirboards and hinged spine, I imagine They must have been thought up by someone boxy and straitlaced, with little room in his mind for the vagaries of doubt. Someone so jittery and anxious inside, and afraid of death, that he flapped himself closed between covers.
THE SECRET
LIFE OF THE READER BY FARAH GHUZNAVI
I
recently came across a statement to the effect that people who read a lot of books don’t do it because they 'have no life', but because they have several lives. Not only was I amused by this,I was struck by the truth underlying those words. Growing up as a voracious reader in Bangladesh, I experienced life vicariously by chasing smugglers with the Famous Five along the rainy English coast, hunting down clues with Nancy Drew and solving mysteries with Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in sunny California, discovering demons and winged horses in the fairytales and myths of the Indian subcontinent, and wandering further afield to the snowy Finnish landscape of Moominland and the exotic adventures of Doctor Dolittle in Africa. Books brought the wider world to my fingertips, effortlessly. Of course, actually getting hold of the aforementioned books involved rather more effort! In those days, bookstores in Bangladesh did not have access to many English story books, so I would wait impatiently for my parents to return from their travels—especially from their trips to India. They invariably came home bearing a precious cargo of fiction waiting to be deposited into my eager hands, which were itching to turn the pages and immerse myself in the adventures of others. My commitment to feeding my reading habit was such that I even tolerated the daughter of my parents’ friends (though our relationship was characterised by mutual loathing in childhood, subsequently followed by a close friendship as adults), because they had a wonderful collection of books, which I could dip into to my heart’s content. The other little girl—being an equally avid reader— did exactly the same. As her mother once perceptively put it, 'Those two only ever visit each other’s houses in order to borrow each other’s books!'
XXXIX
SO CONSTANT WAS MY ANXIETY REGARDING THE INSUFFICIENCY OF READING MATERIAL THAT I COULD TRUTHFULLY HAVE CLAIMED TO BE SUFFERING FROM 'A BIBLIOPHOBIA,' DEFINED BY WIKTIONARY AS THE 'FEAR OF RUNNING OUT OF THINGS TO READ.' Indeed, so constant was my anxiety regarding the insufficiency of reading material that I could truthfully have claimed to be suffering from 'a bibliophobia,' defined by wiktionary as the 'fear of running out of things to read.' Hence, it was one of the best days of my young life when the British Council library, the only lending library in town, allowed me to 'graduate' from being a junior member entitled to borrow four books at a time to being a young adult member who could borrow a glorious eight books every week. It was through my explorations in the British Council library that I was first able to appreciate just how many lives books would allow me to experience, as I journeyed through their pages. And I was recently reminded, once again, of this secret life that all readers have, as a result of one of my most recent reads: a novel by Sarah McCoy titled The Baker’s Daughter. The story initially follows Reba, a somewhat troubled young American woman, who is assigned the tiresome duty of coming up with a suitable 'Christmas story' by her newspaper editor. But what Reba finds, when she visits a German bakery run by an elderly immigrant woman named Elsie in the hope of writing a fluff piece on a typical German Christmas celebration, is very far from what she expected. The story moves back and forth in time between Elsie’s life as a young woman in Hitler’s Germany, and Reba’s own journey, in contemporary America, in coming to terms with the demons from her past. XL
For me, the most interesting part of the story was reading about the young Elsie, helping out at her father’s bakery, living her everyday life in Nazi Germany and being courted by an SS officer who she didn’t love, but whose protection was vital for the survival of her lower-middleclass family. The novel provides some interesting insights into what it was like to be an ordinary German family in the last years of the Second World War. It also incorporates some fascinating historical details, for example, using the exchange of letters between Elsie and Hazel, her older sister, who participates in the 'Lebensborn' programme as a volunteer, providing sexual services to senior Nazis in order to produce perfect Aryan children for the Third Reich. Though Elsie (in contrast to Hazel) is already something of an independent thinker, Hazel’s experiences contribute further to Elsie’s growing understanding of the nature of the regime in power. In the course of the novel, Elsie finds herself faced with a very difficult choice: to follow her conscience and risk putting her family in jeopardy, or to look away from the ugliness taking place and live with the consequences that it will have for her soul. Elsie’s decision also brings up a question that has always intrigued me: what is it that gives ordinary people the courage and conviction to do the right thing in dire circumstances, even when they risk paying a high price for such a decision? We see examples of this throughout history, and they exemplify the contradictions between
the cruelty and destructiveness that the human race has so often proved itself capable of, and its capacity for beauty and love. While Reba’s story was not quite as compelling in my opinion, it was sufficiently engaging to keep me interested. Reba’s relationship with the elderly Elsie and Elsie’s adult daughter helps her, quite unexpectedly, to make sense of her own life. The supporting characters in the novel are fleshed out beautifully: Reba’s sister, who has dealt with their shared experience of a troubled childhood very differently, is one example. Her boyfriend Riki, born legally in the US of immigrant Mexican parents, is another. As a border patrol officer, Riki finds himself in the ironic position of deporting illegal Mexican migrants, and he struggles to reconcile the ethical conundrums involved with what he knows to be the letter of the law. As the reader travels through time between Elsie’s story and Reba’s journey, she also finds herself travelling through the intimate lives of this diverse and very human cast of characters—Elsie, Hazel, their parents, the Nazi officer Josef, Reba and Riki—and becoming increasingly invested in each of them. As a result, by the time the last page is turned, the reader will feel richly compensated for the hours that she has invested in this novel. And if she is a writer herself, she will find herself sincerely wishing that she had written it!
THE LUNATIC
I
am a whirl-brain. A whirl-brain. Surely, my friend, I am insane. Parrot, the Nepali teacher’s, throat swelled like that of a bullfrog in monsoon and his nose seemed to get a little longer every time he thrust his head forward at the slumbering rows of the eighth-graders at Bihani High. As he read the penultimate lines of the famous poem by Devkota, he lost the control of his voice, and the muscular recitation ended on an effeminate pitch. It was almost noon, and the April heat trapped by the corrugated tin roof had turned the classroom into a furnace. Some of us were already feeling our lunch boxes through the canvas of our backpacks. Even the first two benches of girls depended on the fanning of their notebooks to keep themselves awake. Then the bell rang. Parrot seemed agitated by this interruption. He checked his wristwatch as though doubting Pale Dai. He walked over to the dais and unhurriedly wrote down the homework on the blackboard next to the poem he had already written in the beginning of the class. Is the speaker of the poem really mad? Explain. Then he exited. Parrot always left the board unerased, showcasing his inimitable penmanship. Sometimes we wondered whether
BY SAMYAK SHERTOK he was trying to impress Double-Pomegranate, the math teacher, who came in right after the lunch break. Every time she walked in, before returning our Good Afternoons and telling us, ‘Down, down,’ she carefully scanned the writing on the board as though looking for clues to a cryptic message that we could not decode. Sometimes she made us stand for five full minutes. Outrageous, I know. But when she turned to face us, all would be forgiven instantly. Double-Pomegranate’s face was not much to look at and her hips were as curved as the spine of a book, but her chest, I tell you, man, her chest was like nothing we had ever seen. Her breasts were just the size they should have been. Each was roundness perfected. Bholenath himself would have left Mount Kailash and all for that pair of fruit. 'What a stupid question!' said Hari afterward at the playground. We were eating our lunch in the shade of an Indian laurel tree on the slope. From there we could see the whole playground. A warped circle of boys and girls playing Handkerchief Hide. A knot of boys wearing slippers passed a rubber chungi around. The red dust hung in the air about the goal post where a cluster of boys XLI
AT FIRST, WE THOUGHT HE HAD COME ONLY TO REPRIMAND US FOR THE RUCKUS WE HAD CAUSED, BUT WHEN HE PICKED UP THE MATH BOOK LYING ON ONE OF THE DESKS AND STARTED SOLVING A MENSURATION PROBLEM, WE KNEW HE WAS GOING TO TAKE THE FULL PERIOD. kicked at everything, including each other’s shins, but the ball. 'The man is shouting "I am a lunatic, I am a lunatic" and Parrot asks whether he is mad,' Hari went on. 'Even nonsense has a limit, no?' He hated Nepali and English, particularly poetry, which he never seemed to get. 'It’s Parrot who’s losing his mind, is what I think,' Subodh said. Parrot had slapped him when he couldn’t recite a single line from Kal Mahima, a metric poem by Paudyal. 'Did you notice how his eyes turned red as he neared the end of that poem? You’d think he was reading his own death certificate or something.' 'I just hope Rambo finds out everything,' said Kumar, 'If he doesn’t, why, I’ll go tell it to him myself this time.' Rambo was Double-Pomegranate’s husband. He served in the Nepal Army and came home once a year during Dashain. Kumar had a crush on Double-Pomegranate and was convinced there was something going on between her and Parrot. 'Anyone believe, the story behind the poem?' I said. It was said Devkota composed The Lunatic as a response to a neighbor who declared him psychotic after he saw Devkota dancing on a full moon night naked on his dooryard. 'Two things, my friend, never trust in life,' Hari declared, 'Women and poets.' 'Say what you like,' Kumar said, 'but I wouldn’t mind being betrayed once or twice for a taste of those ripe pomegranates.' He laughed lecherously. 'An urban legend, is what I think,' Subodh said, 'Can’t see no man dancing naked in the middle of night like that.' 'Who gives a rat’s ass about why he wrote the poem? Or how,' Hari said. 'All I wanna know is, is the speaker mad or is he not? Parrot is
XLII
going to ask me first tomorrow in class, I already know it. I seen it on his face when he looked at me today. That son-a-bitch is after my life.' Kumar elbowed me on my ribs, gesturing me to look to his left. A few yards behind us, sitting under a mulberry tree all by himself was Kali. He was eating his lunch and looking wistfully at the panoramic view of the playground dotted with boys and girls. Some book lay splayed open next to him on the grass. Teachers called him Kalidas. There was not a question he did not have an answer to. If a teacher made a mistake on the board or during the lecture, he would raise his hand and point it out for them. Whenever there was a math problem Double-Pomegranate couldn’t solve, which was quite often actually, she would give it to Kali as homework. He had been the School Topper for three years in a row now and was tipped to make it all the way to the Top Ten Board in the nationwide SLC exam in two years to come. But I always thought the name Kalidas didn’t do justice to his precocity. The poet Kalidas was so stupid, according to the legend, he used to hack off a branch sitting on the wrong end. It was only after he prayed to the Gods and was duly blessed that he became one of the greatest writers. Kali, on the other hand, had always topped his class as far as I could remember. He didn’t need divine intervention to spell all two-hundred-andsix bones in your body in under five minutes. Teachers adored him. But we despised him with every drop of milk we had drunk from our mothers. Teachers and parents tortured us alike because of him. A Brahmin’s son beaten by a Bhote’s son. Chhee, chhee, chhee. One day Kali will become the
manager and own a mansion. You will have a place in that house, too—as the doormen. Learn something from Kalidas, you dung-heads! Bow your head to his feet, if you have to. At times we almost wished Kali were a Brahmin instead. But he was a Tamang and lived with his parents in a white house at the tail of the village. 'Is it true, what they say about him?' A group of sixth-graders from another village had gathered before us. One of them gestured at Kali with his chin without looking in that direction. 'Is true what?' 'That he has cow meat in that box of his,' one of them muttered. It was rumored that Kali ate cow meat for his lunch. That’s why he had to sit all by himself. But those of us from the same village knew it wasn’t true. In fact, he didn’t eat meat at all. His parents were Buddhists, and his mother cooked fish curry once or twice a month only because she was worried that he was getting pale and his shoulders were starting to droop. 'How badly you wanna know?' Hari asked. 'Just curious as everyone else, that’s all,' the tallest of them said. He had a taproot scar on his forehead. 'Real bad,' a younger one said, “We wanna know real bad.” Hari looked at me and then at Subodh. Kumar shook his head. 'Ok, we’ll tell you, but share it with no one,' Subodh said. 'And when I say no one, I mean no one, understood?' The boys nodded and hushed. 'Come here, bring your ears real close,' Hari instructed. 'Right next to our mouths.' They did. And we raised our left hands to place them next to their ears. Then we quietly worked our throats and hacked a mouthful of spit into their ears.
The boys jumped back. They instinctively reached into their ears and ended up making a big mess of it. They wiped their hands on their pants. We laughed and rolled on the grass. 'How’s that for a secret, boys?' Subodh said, and we started laughing again. The boy with the scar wore a stern face. 'You will pay for this,' he said pointing a finger at us. 'We shall not forget you.' But we just continued laughing. When the group remained there standing, Hari got to his feet abruptly and feigned a chase. The boys ran away, but the tall kid stopped about ten meters from us and squinted back at us. 'Remember, you will pay with interest,' he shouted. When I looked toward the mulberry tree, Kali was looking right at us. I could tell he had been laughing a little. I waved and quickly withdrew my hand. The bell rang. That day Satya Sir, the science teacher, was on leave because his wife had born a daughter the day before. We were all excited to have the last period off and were jumping about the classroom, peeking out the windows, and launching paper planes with not-so-subtle notes toward the front rows. Then Walnut entered our classroom. The headmaster himself. At first, we thought he had come only to reprimand us for the ruckus we had caused, but when he picked up the math book lying on one of the desks and started solving a mensuration problem, we knew he was going to take the full period. He solved a problem on the board and moved to a side so that we all could see. His small round face glowed with a smug smile. We pretended to look interested and impressed. Then Kali raised his hand. 'Yes, Kalidas?' 'Sir, I believe you forgot to take into account the fact that half the workers leave after twenty days.' The smile on his face disappeared. 'Come again?' Kali walked up to the board, grabbed chalk, and started solving it on the empty space. 'You see, with
half the workers gone after twenty days, we only have ten workers to feed now.' After some calculation, he declared, 'Hence, the provision will last for forty-five days.' Walnut had thirty-five days as his answer. He looked at the question again and stared at Kali’s steps and compared them with his. Some of us had already turned to the answer key by then. 'Yes, sir, forty-five days,' Subodh bluted out, 'You answer is wrong.' Someone at the back let out a subdued laugh. “Who said that?' Everyone held their breath and looked down. 'I said, Who said that?' Subodh raised his hand reluctantly. 'Will you stand up, please?” He did. 'Repeat that again for me, will you? My ears are starting to fail me.' He leaned his head toward Subodh, holding the lobe of his right ear between his thumb and finger. 'Sir, I said, Kalidas is correct. You forgot about the men who leave—' The hand that was holding his ear swung and landed hard on Subodh’s cheek. He fell sideways over the boys next to him. Good thing he wasn’t sitting by the wall that day. Walnut was a small man, but his hands were made of steel. It was rumored that he had taken a bullet to his left calf in the Jana Andolan of 1990. 'I said, Repeat it, word for word.' 'Sir? his voice was trembling. 'I’m sorry, sir,' Kali interrupted. 'I made a mistake, your calculation is right. Let me erase mine.' He reached for the duster. 'Stay where you are. You Bhote. Don’t you dare mock me, boy! You cow-eater.' Kali’s hand froze midway. His face turned red-black. Then Walnut landed another slap on Subodh’s other cheek. 'Never. Ever. Say. Your teacher is wrong. You understand, dung-head? I wanted to see how alert you monkeys were. I made that mistake on purpose. When I started teaching, you were not even in your mothers’ pathetic wombs. Monkeys.' Walnut gave the class a menacing look. Most of us had our heads bowed. He looked at Kali, but Kali was
looking down at his feet, too. Then Walnut walked out without saying another word. Subodh stood holding his cheeks on his palms. Kali had not altered his pose. We didn’t know if Walnut was going to come back with a willow switch. Then the bell rang and students started to pour out of the other classrooms. No one moved for about five minutes after the bell. Then Subodh broke down and started crying like a little girl. We gathered around him and started to console him. The girls wiped his tears away with a shawl. But deep inside we were all relieved that it had not been us. Hari grabbed Subodh’s backpack and we walked out together. Subodh still covered his cheeks with his hands. When I looked around, Kali was nowhere to be seen. Later that day, Subodh’s father, who had a reputation for belligerence in the entire village, came out of his house brandishing a sheathless khukuri. The whetted blade glinted lavender as it caught the last of the setting sun. 'Today, I shall not return without slicing that puny’s neck. The world will know what a Chhetri’s blood tastes like tonight.' We watched him run on the suspension bridge that spanned the Kausiki River, his wife trailing him. 'Baba, wait, now come to your senses! Don’t be a bull. Enough of that drama.' But he had already crossed the bridge and disappeared at the descent of the cow path. The following morning Walnut was at the assembly for the Morning Prayer just like every other day. We looked for signs of a black eye or a dislocated shoulder, but there was none. He looked strong as ever. But when he subjected us to yet another harangue of his regarding some virtue of a good student, I noticed he paused at the wrong places. He seemed a little surprised at his own words as though he didn’t believe them anymore. And, when the congregation broke, I could tell he was not the same person anymore. Something in him had buckled. The steel in his eyes was gone. Kali stopped correcting the teachers. When Double-Pomegranate gave him a math problem, he came back
XLIII
XLIV
'Yeah, why, it was.' He looked utterly pleased at this piece of knowledge. A few days later, around midnight, Kali’s mother came banging on our doors. Have you seen my child? My child isn’t home. Karma, my son. It is unlike of him to not be home by this hour. Did something happen at school? Krishna, didn’t he come home together with you today? Oh Buddha, my son isn’t home. Did he get into a fight or something? No, we haven’t seen him. No, not a word. Don’t worry, Bahini, he will come home. Where can he go? Go back to sleep, Bahini. You worry too much, Nani. Pray to Lord Vishnu, and everything will be alright. If he wants, he will come back. If he doesn’t, he won’t. Simple as that. Now don’t you bother us no more, you hear? Some of us here have to wake tomorrow before the rooster. Children these days too smart, is what I’m saying. They’ll do the first thing that comes to their mind. Back in our days, we couldn’t even leave the house without telling our father. Come, have a cup of tea with us. Why, when you get home, he will be there in his bed, sleeping like a lamb. Where else can he go? Even we are afraid of such darkness. As I went back to bed, I realized why Kali had come to smoke with us that evening: He had come to tell us good-bye. But Kali wasn’t the only one who left the village of Bihani that year. Few months later, Parrot and Double-Pomegranate vanished. The sin was starting to show, our mothers whispered. When Rambo came home for Dashain that year wearing a brand-new uniform after promotion and learned of his wife’s cow-brain, he unloaded his handgun on the windowpanes of the Teachers’ Room, he loaded and unloaded again, loaded and unloaded until there was no more glass left to shatter and only three bullets were left in the cartridge. He burned his new uniform, badges and all, in front of his door. He slept with the revolver on his naked chest, cocked and cool to the touch. Walnut decided not to replace any of the shattered glasses, for he feared that Rambo might unload the remaining bullets in his chest. Three families sold their ancestral homesteads and
moved to the city. Hari failed science and math once again and decided he had tried enough. He left for Qatar on New Year’s Eve that year. Some evenings those of us who were still around gathered on the school playground. We played cards, and when it was too dark to tell a king from a jack, we smoked and drank the local wine that we had brought with us from Kanchhi’s bhatti. At this hour, the school was quiet as a graveyard. After a few drinks, we talked about finally telling our fathers that we had had enough of the pastoral life, about asking our mothers to make money ready so that we could join Hari in Qatar. But we all knew it was nothing more than bullshit—we were not going anywhere. If we had the slightest of mutu to leave the place we would have been gone already. We heard the Maoists were gaining momentum in the north and were headed in our direction, but we knew we wouldn’t join them either. It’s not that we were scared of blood and all that, we just happened to believe a man was more than some cause. Then at some point we would start talking about Kali. That Kali, man, that boy was something else, wasn’t he. If he wanted, why, he could have become the Prime Minister himself. But he wasn’t into any of that shit. He was after something else. Something pure and real, if you know what I mean. This here is no place for a man of his mutu and brain. He could have been up there. One of them. Yeah, but he was a Bhote. A cow-eater. He could really have been something. All that rotten meat fucked up with his brain, is all I got to say. We passed the rice wine around and talked in the dark without looking at each other. We lay down on the grass and gazed at the peppered night sky through the grey plume of the smoke. In the distance a stray dog howled more out of habit than loneliness. Above, the stars were flimsy and blunt. Even all the darkness that had gathered around them struggled to make them beam.
Death of Duryodhana, 2010, mixed media on canvas, Jayant Prasad
saying, 'No luck this time, Miss.' Some days he forgot to bring his books altogether. His pens ran out of ink often. He came late to classes and skipped the last period. He moved from the middle row to the far left and found a seat by the window. Teachers often caught him staring at the sparrows hop about the red earth outside. When Satya Sir said whether he didn’t care about the Board anymore, he said, 'Board, what board? Oh, yeah, yeah, that Board,' and he laughed the entire class time. We heard the teachers talk. Something’s eating that boy inside out. I thought it was only in my class. You know what’s wrong with him? He is a Bhote’s son, that’s what’s wrong with him. Sooner or later, the blood always shows. Why, how long do you expect Saraswati to dwell in a cow-eating brain? One evening Kali joined us in the bush beyond the frontier of the playground. Before we could figure out how he had found our secret spot and if anyone else was with him, he ferreted out the pack I had hidden under my thigh and lighted a cigarette. He coughed a little but kept at it. We looked at each other. We had never hung out with him, especially while we were smoking. No one spoke for a while. Then Hari said, 'You’re not going to tell on us, are you?' Kali looked at him as though that was the most pathetic question he had ever heard. He laughed. 'What’s your secret, Kali?' Subodh asked, 'Tell us your secret.' Kali seemed to think over it for a long time. Then he stood to face us and said, 'In my math, if you take away one from one, you will still have one.' He stabbed the smouldering butt on the red earth. 'So long.' Then he walked away. 'What the hell was that?' Kumar said when Kali was gone. Subodh chuckled. 'Season of madness, is what I think. Haven’t you seen the stray dogs going crazy one after another?' Then Hari said excitedly, “Wasn’t that a line from The Lunatic?' He looked at us for confirmation, and when he got none, he said to himself,
READING THE
MAHABHARATA IN THE
21ST CENTURY
Duryodhana is not ashamed of his envy because it is part of a larger and consistent egoistic philosophical outlook,’ says Das, while ‘Yudhishthira, in particular, will offer a competing view of the world, based on dharma, which he explains as a universal duty of righteousness, applicable to all and founded on non-violence, truth and concern for others. BY KURCHI DASGUPTA
W
hen I was asked to write on a favourite text, I looked back on my reading of the last ten years and I realised the one that has stayed with me is the Mahabharata. It is a text which, once read in its entirety, is quite impossible to outgrow for the rest of one’s life. However, to write about the original, which I read in Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s English prose translation of 1880s, would be irrelevant to some. So I choose Gur-
charan Das’s The Difficulty of Being Good as a point of departure. It was reassuring to note that Das’s journey into the epic was driven by a newly-acquired longing to trace his cultural roots and an inquiry into the nature of human moral values that were specifically spurred by the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Satyam Computers scandal of 2009. Das himself comes from a hardcore corporate back-
ground, having been the CEO of multiple national and multinational companies, including Procter and Gamble Worldwide. The reason I chose his text over other scholarly or literary forays is the fact that he comes from the world of business and it is undoubtedly global capitalism that weaves together our reality today. It is therefore not surprising that Das begins his commentary on the epic with Duryodhana and his
character trait, envy. Duryodhana’s envy drives a civilization to smithereens. Its treatment in the first chapter allows Das to introduce the unforgivable game of dice and the accompanying public disrobing of Draupadi—possibly the epic’s most exciting, titillating points of popular interest. It also allows him to present Yudhishthira, the righteous king, at his weakest. ‘Duryodhana is not ashamed of his envy because it is part of a larger and consistent egoistic philosophical outlook,’ says Das, while ‘Yudhishthira, in particular, will offer a competing view of the world, based on dharma, which he explains as a universal duty of righteousness, applicable to all and founded on non-violence, truth and concern for others.’ Das, however, is all in favour of a healthy dose of envy, which he calls healthy competitiveness that makes a business thrive. Using Ambani saga as an example, he says, only when envy descends to selfdestruction, does it become a problem. And then comes the piece de resistance, the sub-heading: ‘If greed is the sin of capitalism, envy is the vice of socialism’ because ‘envy is felt more strongly by near equals than those widely separated in fortune.’ This glosses over the fact that it was actually Duryodhana’s greed that translated into envy, and the two are irrevocably entwined in human nature. The globalized reader, however, finds comfort in Das’s thus favouring of capitalism over socialism, especially when the Mahabharata proves to be an unsettling read where no one person is judged inherently good or bad and where dharma, as Das notes, is present more by its absence. Interestingly, another very interesting commentary called The Book of Yu-
XLV
Time, 2009, mixed media on canvas, Tsering Gelleck
dhisthir by the renowned Bengali scholar and comparatist Buddhadev Bose begins with the Vana Parva instead. Incidentally, I call these texts ‘commentaries’ because loosely holding true to the bhasya format, they help us unpack and weave together the meaning of the epic. ‘A successful philosophical commentary helps its target audience to read philosophically the text being commented upon, and mediates between the text and a given readership.’ This brings us to the question of the target readership of the two books as well. The Difficulty of Being Good is by the author’s own admission a ‘wider audience’, obviously to an India that feels more comfortable with ‘Krishan’ over ‘Krishna’ and ‘Dharam’ over ‘Dharma’ and to a ‘country turning middle class’ and necessarily English-speaking. Bose’s subtle analysis is, on the other hand, was first written
1. 2.
XLVI
in the vernacular and serialized in the middle-brow literary magazine called Des in eighteen installments in 1972. At that point in history, the magazine defined literary taste in West Bengal and its readership, which held pretensions to erudition, was mostly restricted to the cultural hub of Bengali-speaking Calcutta and its suburbs. The two books can therefore offer subtle insights into an erudite but regional versus a low-brow but widely popular reading of the same text. That Bose starts with the Vana Parva, in fact its last fateful day when the yaksa prasna episode takes place must also be a reflection of this. The twelve year-long exile is equivalent to what I would call a gap year for the Pandavas, a period of intense experiential learning. The lessons learned culminate in a test, that of the questions put forth by the Yaksa, who was actually his
own father Dharma in disguise: ‘What is the news?’ ‘The world full of ignorance is like a pan. The sun is the fire, the days and nights are fuel. The months and seasons constitute the wooden ladle. Time is the cook that is cooking all creatures in that pan; this is the news,’ answered Yudhisthira and brought back to life his four brothers. Wisdom set the tone of Bose’s reading; consumerist envy and desire for Das’s. And so Das’s second chapter must inevitably be on Draupadi, the ultimate object of desire to Kaurava eyes for she was desired and protected by their superior rivals, the Pandavas. Speaking of Draupadi, I find it difficult not to revisit another commentary on the epic, one from the anthropological perspective of Iravati Karve. And be disillusioned somewhat when she answers ‘What was Draupadi’s biggest mistake?’ with that
Yuganta The End of an Epoch by Iravati Karve, 1968 Imaging Vengeance: Amba and Draupadi in the Mahabharata by Janaki Sreedharan in Reflections and Variation on the Mahabharata, Sahitya Akademi, 2009
Draupadi had questioned Yudhishthira’s right to stake her in the game of dice—and that ‘Draupadi was standing there arguing about legal technicalities like a lady pundit when what was happening to her was so hideous that she should only have cried out for decency and pity in the name of the kshatriya code.’1 Gurcharan Das’s chapter called Draupadi’s Courage thankfully offers an alternative perspective. ‘Control over the woman was a unit of the political vocabulary of the language of the Kshatriya ethos…and what is significant in the epic narrative is that Draupadi, the Kshatriya woman deprived of her prior rank and status, absorbs onto her body the symbols of political fraudulence perpetrated on the Pandavas… Draupadi is constantly spoken of as ekavastra, as a reminder of her ritual defilement… (through which) the sociopolitical identity of the Pandavas enter a liminal stage,’2 put together in a nutshell is Draupadi’s predicament. Das tackles such a position gracefully with his own — that while Draupadi’s ‘disrobing is consistent with the moral paradigm of patriarchy,’ her polyandry was initiated by the epic to challenge the same paradigm. He also reminds us that the epic blithely challenges Manusmriti on the arbitration of dharma and instead leaves it to, not God, but to human reason and goodness and an individual cultivation of an ethical self. For three years starting 2008, I immersed myself in the Mahabharata, an engagement that spawned three full-fledged solo exhibitions of paintings that were almost immediately showcased in Kathmandu’s Siddhartha Gallery and London’s Nehru Cen-
DAS BEGINS HIS COMMENTARY ON THE EPIC WITH DURYODHANA AND HIS CHARACTER TRAIT, ENVY. DURYODHANA’S ENVY DRIVES A CIVILIZATION TO SMITHEREENS. tre. 2008 was also the year that Nepal was declared a republic by the newly elected Constituent Assembly. Having witnessed the country’s tortured transition from an autocratic monarchy to a democratic republic and experiencing the daily disillusionments that such transitions inevitably bring in its wake, I was in need of clutching onto a text that would bring reassurance as well as some much needed explanations of human failings. Das’s often loquacious arguments remind me of how the epic helped regenerate my confidence in human reason. As Das perceptively points out, Draupadi was the voice of the caste-specific action based svadharma, and Yudhisthira, consciencebased sadharana dharma. Citing her example, Das takes the Indian administrative service to task, 'I believe that Draupadi’s example is an inspiration to free citizens in all democracies.’ The statement does not spring from a misguided romanticism but an awareness that ‘her legal question was a terrifying social and moral challenge to the society of her time, when everyone believed that a wife was a husband’s property, and not an independent free agent,’ and that it should ‘embolden citizens to question the dharma of public officials, especially when they confront the pervasive governance failures around them,’ for the question can easily be translated as a ‘call for accountability in public life.’ To this Das has entwined the ‘immorality of silence’, for let us not forget that the entire Kaurava court stood and watched, as the Pandavas were made to lose unfairly; and soon afterwards, witness dumbly the terrible humiliation of a young bride of their own clan. Interestingly, though Draupadi is omnipresent in Bose’s reading, she never claims a chapter of her own. Though Arjuna has been the perennial favourite as the action hero of the Mahabharata, whose acts of violence have been given moral justification by God himself, it is the quieter, thoughtful Yudhishthira who has emerged as the ideal for humankind. This perhaps corresponds to our increasing realisation that the Mahabharata is less a war
epic or a romantic tale and is more of an itihasa (historical compendium) with a strong novelistic narrative treatment. While Arjuna’s ‘actions were straight, not experiential’ though ‘with a touch of conscience’ (Amiya Dev, 2009), Yudhishthira emerges from the fog of indecision, apparent acts of weakness and a lack of physical aggression and valour—slowly but steadily over the course of the nearly hundred thousand slokas—and shines radiant in his adherence to an universal, humane ethical system that somehow manages to uphold individual experience and action through the lens of innate, human goodness. The very last two parvas, The Mahaprasthanika or The Great Departure and The Swargarohinika or Ascenion, are devoted to the glory of Yudhishthira, the unlikely but true representative of the everyday individual who rises to greatness through small, unsung humane acts daily. As Bose points out, ‘at this peak of Yudhisthira’s great departure, where he confronts Indra’s divinity with his own humanity, where he refuses to be persuaded by Indra and is ready to forsake entry into heaven for the sake of a dog – if we recall at this point many other past events, then shall we realize that this noble and human poem is but an account of Yudhisthira’s life.’ Gurcharan Das dedicates the last of his character-interrogations to Yudhishthira. ‘Damn the kshatriya way! Damn the power of the mighty chest! Damn the unforgiving stubbornness that brought us to this disaster…Because of our greed and our confusion, we…have been brought to this condition for the sake of a trifling kingdom. Now that we see our kinsmen lying dead upon the ground, no one can rejoice at being king,’ he quotes directly from the Mahabharata to make Yudhishthira’s case. He calls the chapter Yudhishthira’s Remorse and goes on to contradict the common, masculinist perception that Yudhishthira’s remorse was actually self-absorption or self-pity with ‘a moral sentiment like remorse is valuable for it offers a psychological basis for the moral life,’ and further
adds that ‘empathy for Yudhishthira’s remorse at the end of the Kurukshetra War was invaluable in my dharma journey. It opened up a new understanding of dharma and taught me how to cultivate the moral life.’ That this comes from a representative of global business, what if a retired one, is oddly reassuring. Das refers to his own corporate career at this point, and takes on the mechanism of global capitalism with, ‘Yudhishthira does reflect. Unlike most of us, he makes a deliberate choice between following his own interest unthinkingly – his kshatriya-dharma – or doing something more difficult, which might even involve some inconvenience, but which is the right thing to do from the larger perspective of a universal sadharana-dharma of his conscience…the theme of the Mahabharata is not war but peace.’ The one regret I feel over Das’s commentary is its refusal to enter into dialogue with the Mahabharata’s multilayered narrative structure, for it is this structure that allows a multiplicity of voices and perspectives to build up a polyphonic world. As scholars like Amiya Dev have pointed out, it is the frame within a frame within yet another frame structure that enables the epic to remain active across temporal differences without losing its immediacy. By now it must be obvious that I was impelled to enter the world of the epic in 2008 by the two Gulf Wars, 9/11, Godhra, 26/11, the global financial crash and recession and also, the gradual revelation that the recent Maoist revolution had less to do with right and more to do with power. In 2010 I had written in the catalogue for my exhibition The Mahabharata: An Impression that ‘it is not just a tale of how a race, if not humanity, is wiped off the face of the Earth – it is also a tale of how stupefying chaos may at times progress into unity and peace.’ We are in the middle of yet another such dark moment and I return to it hoping for answers and direction as innocents suffer and die in Gaza. XLVII
READ.BOOK BYTE
84 READ | September 2014
BANIRA GIRI
B
anira Giri was born in Kurseong near Darjeeling in West Bengal. She became the first Nepali woman to be awarded a PhD from Tribhuvan University, for her work on the revolutionary Nepali poet, Gopal Prasad Rimal. She is also the first woman writer to receive the Sajha Puraskar, for Shabdatit Shantanu, a poetic fiction. She has also published two other collections of fiction, Karagar, and Nirbandha and a number of poetry collections, including Eauta Eauta Jiundo Janga Bahadur, Jeevan: Thayamaru, Mero Aviskar. She, to quote Madan Mani Dixit, is the heir to Parijat's legacy. 'Poetry is my first love; it is my most personal urge,' writes Giri. 'If someone wanted to punish me, forbidding me to write would be a far greater punishment than sending me to jail. The s.pirit that drives my poetry emerged from hearing my mother recite Sanskrit and Nepali shlokas in her morning puja. Directly or indirectly she prepared the ground for my poetic consciousness – whatever creative powers I have first sprouted in my earliest childhood. 'My father played his part as well. During the cruel period of Rana rule, he traveled from east Nepal on a tiresome journey to settle in the small Indian town of Kurseong. There he started a small roadside business selling cloth – more a kind of meditation than business. He’d ask whoever came from Nepal about the political unrest there. His queries and stories about the revolutionaries, the martyrs, became the foundation of my political consciousness. And I was brought up on the Nepali books and journals he brought into the house – Bal Krishna Sama, Devkota and Rimal. Whatever he earned he sent back to the village, but though he wanted to, he never returned. I can also say that the earthly and spiritual beauty of Nepal – its wide and varied landscape and views, its heights and depths, shaped my poetry. Most of my poems express love for this country, my life and its surroundings.
PHOTO TRIBUTE.READ 'Without spontaneity what is the point of writing poetry? In The Chant Freedom! the lines came spontaneously, quickly and honestly. This stream of language has meaning, sound and depth and overall expresses the very sympathy of my heart. Many of my poems came to me in this way. But my poems are not just personal expression; they are forged in the workshop of political and social sensitivity. If one thinks the poem ‘Wound’ is about a part of the human body or is bound to a particular incident, this is absolutely wrong. The poem is rather concerned with willful violations of the innocent and powerless by the powerful. All my poems have ideas in play and it is up to the reader to recognize them. In whatever way the poem is read or interpreted, the language, the way of writing and the honest intent of the poet is what makes the writing poetry. 'In Pashugayatri I emphasize the eternal relationship of humans with nature, the environment and the universe. The sacred verses of the Rig Veda read for a dying person reverberate here, as do the intonations of my mother’s voice. If the poem is read well, the concern for the death of the Bagmati River is also concern for the environment at large, the fate of the earth in this age of environmental degradation. We are all connected to life and nature. Poetry celebrates this connection. It also raises a warning voice to those who would ignore and violate all that is human and natural. To ignore the call of the earth, to violate our human connection to ourselves and to our surroundings – is that not also to strike a blow against poetry, against inspiration? The poet will always raise his voice against this desecration.' From the Introduction to From the Lake, Love by Wayne Amtzis
READ.PHOTO TRIBUTE
POEM FROM THE LAKE, LOVE Far somewhere far, stunning Manasarovar on the far side of a mountain range beneath a gift of blue sky rippling splashing it’s said that 'Sarovar' ever waiting towards the road looks out there are those who are drawn to her enamored of her; others experience her and there are those enchanted by her. The old ones say—time before time, who knows when—once— from the untold vastness of the Himalayas a woman without compare became enchanted with Sarovar’s unrivaled beauty and immersed herself, emerging her gentle comely youth turned at once to gold and then and there a gaggle of young men grabbed her, tore her to pieces and shared her among themselves. Some go so far as to say that among them a handsome and youthful hunter lovingly stole away with her heart and in a moment and with gestures that would not be seen pressed it against his own warm heart. On full moon nights in the dreamlike shimmerings of Sarovar those two hearts transformed into white swans murmuring their love talk. They say—they are waiting for the wedding procession, the wedding band, the ritual implements for the ceremony, the hand-woven leaves for the wedding feast, colored rice grains for the procession and those leading the procession and most of all, from the lake-born language, in that diamond clear voice, for love. Translated by Wayne Amtzis
92 READ | September 2014
September 2014 |READ 93
READ.Q&A
Q&A WITH ERIM TAYLANLAR
CEO, Ncell Pvt. Ltd. When and where do you like to read?
Daron Acemoglu Robinson.
I am not one of those individuals who make reading a discipline, and read only to utilize my spare time. That's why I usually read on the weekends and flights.
What’s your favourite literary genre?
What were your favourite books as a child? Travel and adventure books were my favourites. Were there books at home when you were growing up? Yes, always. My mother read nearly everything and my father did too, though mostly related to his profession—mechanical engineering. It is through them that I caught the habit of reading. It is good to grow up seeing your parents read. Share with us your reading habits, if any.
interesting
Whenever I come across a sentence that dazzles me with its brilliance, I linger over it, reading it a few times, and then leave the book for a few minutes and read the sentence again to 'digest' it. What are you reading now? Currently, I’m reading two books: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Why Nations Fail by
and
James
I don't favour any particular genre. What’s the funniest book you’ve ever read? The stories of Paddington the Bear, which I read as a child. I can still feel the rib-tickling feeling they induced in me then. What’s the book that you've absolutely hated? There is no such book. I believe that there is a time for every book. Some book may not appeal to you at a particular time, but at some other time, you may find the same book interesting. What’s your favourite writer? Why? I like Paulo Coelho very much. His books not just entertain you but also give you many life lessons. Have you got a chance to read any books by Nepali writers? Not yet, I’m afraid. But I would love to read a few. What do you plan to read next? I have never had a reading list. I like to let books find me. PHOTO COURTESY : NCELL
94 READ | September 2014
September 2014 |READ 95
SAMBRIDDHI RAI
EDITOR OF M&S, A LIFESTYLE SUPPLEMENT OF THE KATHMANDU POST How did a model and beauty queen like you end up in the world of journalism and writing? Actually, it was the other way round. I was 17 when started working for The Kathmandu Post and 18 when I participated in Miss Teen 2006. I have always wanted to take up journalism as a career. Beauty pageants were simply a pastime and a childhood longing to see a crown on my head. In 2010, when I didn't win any titles at the Miss Nepal pageant, I felt the need to explain to my fiercely supportive friends and family that I felt like a winner, having won moments and experiences beyond my expectations. That I did via a note on my Facebook page. That note was shared many a times and was published in Republica. Thus began my journey as a writer and a blogger.
Were you fond of reading and writing during your school days? I have often mentioned on my blog that I failed English in the sixth grade and that I didn't read much, even though I found kids who read books quite sophisticated and intelligent. But I always knew I had the literary bug in me. I used to write letters to my favourite TV shows (secretly, of course) and a lot of poems for my friends. This love for writing has only grown, which was fueled by my passion for reading. Now I read at least four books a week and thoroughly enjoy writing. From hating books to loving them, it looks like I have come a long way (smiles). There isn’t much scope in fashion journalism, is there? If anything, the scope is growing by the day. Young Nepal's growing
fascination with urbane lifestyle and all things fashionable is creating a new market for fashion journalism and it will only expand in the days and years to come. What do you want to do in the future? I am currently pursuing music, and see my future there. My choices in career and life have confused many, and I can tell with some surety that they will be more confused in the future (laughs). I started writing and composing songs in 2012 and want to explore this spectrum further. In about a decade, I will write a book, surely. But who knows what the future holds? Maybe it has much more exciting plans for me! At least, that has been the pattern so far.
FAVOURITE.READ
READ.BOOK BYTE
THE BOOK I LOVE THE MOST PIKETTY INTRODUCES THE FORMULAE THAT R IS GREATER THAN G—R BEING THE RATE OF RETURN OF CAPITAL AND G, A GENERAL RATE OF THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY. DR. BABURAM BHATTARAI
I
have been a life-long reader and read books on all subjects. Time permitting, I read books on philosophy, history, cosmology, but my real interest is in political economy. I recently I read a book by Thomas Piketty: Capital in the TwentyFirst Century. It is casting ripples around the world and is being dubbed as one of the pioneering works of the 21st century. I personally feel that very few people have written as good a book as this on political economy. This book will help us make sense of our society, as it moves from feudalism to capitalism. In most parts of the world, especially in America and Europe, capitalism has developed since the early 19th century and is in a very mature stage, but underdeveloped countries like ours are slowly inching towards capitalism. In this context, it's important for us to understand the laws of capitalism. More so at a time when we are seeing systemic crises, especially after the great recession of 2007/8, in the classical capitalistic countries in Europe and in America and people are being forced to rethink the viability of capitalism and structural crises besetting capitalism. Piketty’s Capital only broadens our understanding of how capitalism works. The laws of capitalism have been well defined by Karl Marxin his monumental work on capital, which consists of three volumes. His central theory was, as capitalism develops the law of fall in re-
98 READ | August 2011
turn of profit would create a crisis and it will ultimately be replaced by socialism. However, this theory was questioned by many Marxist thinkers later on. In Capital, Piketty defends Marx. Marshaling vast amount of data compiled over two hundred years, he conclusively proves why inequality is inherent in capitalism. In the book, he introduces the formulae that R is greater than G—R being the rate of return of capital and G, a general rate of the growth of the economy. Because the rate of return of capital is always greater than the general rate of the growth of the economy, he says, there will always be growing inequality or systemic crises in capitalism. This was the general trend in the initial stage of capitalism. But during the first and second world wars, the rate of inequality decreased, which led Nobel laureate economist Simon Kuznets to propound a theory that the development of capitalism reduces the high rate or trend of inequality . Piketty questions this theory and claims that the decrease in the rate of inequality was an aberration and that inequality becomes more acute in capitalism. He says, inequality decreased during the first and second world wars because of a massive state intervention and disruption in the economy. Now after the 70s and 80s, we are seeing a rapid increase in inequality all over the world, especially in the more developed capitalist countries. This is proven incontrovertibly by the fact that the richest
1 percent in the United States own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent and richest 85 people in the world own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world's population. The rising inequality had demanded a coherent theory and Piketty has produced one. No wonder his theory has drawn the attention of policy makers all over the world. He says, though capitalism is beset with systemic crises, it could be managed and made sustainable through political and policy interventions and argues for the creation of a social state and introduction of a global capital tax. But I don’t think so. Capitalism as a system is deeply flawed and this gives rise to inequality and the contradiction between labor and capital is irreconcilable. So the capitalistic mode of production has to be replaced by a higher mode of production or a higher stage of society or socialism. So a socialistic restructuring of society is inevitable. Though I don’t share Piketty's optimism about setting capitalism right with a few structural fixes, his analyses are correct—more or less. Marxists all over the world would do well to read his book, as they go about thinking up a new model of socialism suitable to the 21st century—a model the collapse of socialist projects in Russia and East Europe has urgently demanded.
September 2014 |READ 99
REVIEW.READ
READ.BOOK BYTE
TO INFINITY AND BACK
There are books that leave us dreaming, and then there are others that bring us face to face with reality. The Fault in Our Stars does both. BY KANCHAN OJHA How often have you lain out on your back, looking up at the night sky, and wondering if the stars above govern our fate below? As John Green would say, 'There is no shortage of faults to be found amid our stars.' In the bestselling The Fault in Our Stars, Green’s likable protagonist, Hazel Grace, is sixteen. She has long suffered from thyroid cancer— meaning that she needs to carry around a portable oxygen tank to breathe. Her life might seem tough but Hazel simply wants to live like any other teenager. Her mother has the same idea, too and pushes her into a support group for cancer patients—so her daughter can make friends. Reluctant at first to even attend the sessions, Hazel befriends (or rather, is befriended by) Isaac, who in turn leads her to the love of her life, Augustus. Now, Augustus is a case unto himself. A former cancer patient, he gradually regains his health, and also his love for life. Green has worked hard to make his characters distinct, the metaphor-heavy dialogue of Augustus being a case in point. Also his unbelievable generosity, when he uses his last wish to fulfill Hazel’s long cherished dream to meet her favourite author and have some questions answered. Against all odds, these two impossibly ill and ill-fated youngsters meet the writer. At this point, it is almost as if a fairy tale has come true, as if they will finally find their miracle. But no. The writer turns out to be a mean-spirited drunkard, showing no mercy even to these two miserable youngsters fighting for their one great love. 100 READ | August 2011
After this encounter, things spiral downwards as the duo return, shocked and hurt to the core. But this is just the beginning of the end. The biggest catastrophe of their life awaits the two, and it is a secret that will leave readers aghast. But even at this difficult time, as everyone, including readers, watch with bated breath, Augustus never lets us down. He fights his battles bravely, never weakening even for a moment, and makes the best of the side effects of cancer— an effect called living. He rouses a flurry of emotions and memories in readers—of love, care, anecdotes and above all memories, of how life is led in a dignified way. There are books that leave us dreaming, and then there are others that bring us face to face with reality. The Fault in Our Stars does both. The pages are choc-a-bloc with multiple emotions, many of them in the same line. The relationships are well interwoven with love and life, dreams and fantasy, friendship and parenthood. From the very beginning, there is a feeling in your gut that this is not going to end pleasantly. But you still can't keep yourself from wishing that things turn out well, that poetic justice is delivered. And so, you keep praying for Hazel and Augustus at every turn of the page. Hazel, who is as graceful as her name, and Augustus, who is simply awe-inspiring. Every other character adds excitement to the story and makes it worth your while. To quote Green, 'Some infinities are bigger than other infinities,' and this book does, indeed, hold great, infinite space. A recommended read.
The Fault in Our Stars By John Green Pages : 260, Price : Rs 560
September 2014 |READ 101
BOOK BYTE.READ
READ.ON WRITING Upendra Subba is a poet, short story and screenplay writer. He has published three collections of poems: Dandamathiko Ghamjoon, Gadteerka Rankebhootharu and Kholako Geet. An excerpt from an interview: Did you have a good writing environment at home? Not at all. My parents were illiterate,so were two of my elders sisters. I was the first person in the family to go to school. My younger sisters went to school after me. When did you start to write? After I completed school, I went to Ilam to do an Intermediate in arts and shared a room with friends who were doing their BA. They used to write poetry and once, read out a poem by Bairagi Kainla that they had to study for their BA. After hearing them, I felt that even a Limbu can write poems. That was when I was attracted to poetry. But I started writing poems only during my BA. But I didn’t show my poetry to anyone until much later. Who has inspired you to write? I used to write lyrics. Once, when I came to Kathmandu to record my songs, I met Rajan Mukarung and Hangyug Agyant, who had started a literary movement called Srijanshil Arajakata. It was Rajan who asked me if I had written any poems. He introduced me to Nepali writers and literature and told me that my poems were good, that they weren't like theirs, which tended 102 READ | September 2014
to be very intellectual. If it hadn’t been for Rajan I wouldn't have stepped into the writing field. But it was Hangyung who influenced me more and I always wanted to write like him. What made you want to write? Writing has now become karma. I cannot live without writing. I write for different reasons: first, out of a sense of duty. Second, I feel if I don't write the things that I see in society, who will write them? Third, I write to fulfill the objectives of Sirjanshil Arajakata, the literary movement that I am part of. Fourth, I write to give meaning to my life. What is your writing process? I don't have a fixed routine, as I cannot write when I sit down thinking to write. Once I went to a hotel to write but couldn't get anything written. When an image, incident or feeling comes to me, it remains in my head for months, years, ripening and only then I write. I can write only when there is peace inside me. When my mind is restless or even when something small happens to me, I cannot write. I cannot write if someone at home suddenly calls me out to eat in the middle of my writing. This makes me really angry. Everyone at home gets
frightened when I say, I will write! Most of the time, I know the ending to my stories. It is the same with my poems. So I usually work backward. I don't do much rewriting. I do only small revisions like when I don't quite like the language or when am image doesn't come off well. Do you show your writing to friends? Yes, I do, for selfconfidence and to see if it indeed good enough or if something is missing. What is the best piece of advice anyone has given you? No one has given me any advice, unfortunately. We talk about poems in our small circle of friends, but
I don’t remember anyone giving me a concrete suggestion. What advice would you like to give to upcoming writers? What advice can I, a 'nathe lekhak,' give! But if I have to, on the basis of what, I think, are my weaknesses, I suggest writers study their society to the fullest, read poetry by writers outside their circle or community, and write considering the future effects of their writing. What are you working on currently? I am working on a few scripts. A few—like Tandro and Desh Khojdai Janda—have already been made into films. I am in the process of putting together a collection of my stories. September 2014 |READ 103
READ.BOOK BYTE What was your favourite children book? There aren't many children books even now and when I was a child there were none. I specially remember reading magazines called Nani and Balak. These have to be my earliest readings. What book(s) are you reading at present? I recently read parts of Dukheko Europe by Dadi Sapkota. Heart touching stories of Nepalis in Europe, it is very good. He has put much effort into it. A little earlier, I read Prayogshala by Sudheer Sharma. Many facets of Nepali politics that the journalist-writer had seen and experienced first hand but were not known to the public have been interestingly woven into narratives and it reads almost like a novel. There are always a few books on spirituality that I have liked beside my bed. I reread the portions before sleeping. These books reassure me and get rid of my anxieties. What kind of books do you usually read? I liked to read autobiographies and personal accounts. Philosophy too. Of late I like reading spiritual books. How many books do you read every month? I re-read parts of books that I like. I don't even read cover to cover, most of the time. Even if I am not reading books, I read one thing or the other. At times, time is spent without buying any new books. I am not in the habit of counting books that I have read. What book has influenced you the most? Many books influence in you in many ways. But if I have to name one particular book that has influenced me the most in its totality, I would say the Mahabharat. Who are you favourite international writers?
Sharada Sharma is a leading female voice in contemporary Nepali literature. A regular contributor to Nepali newspaper, she is the author of many books, including Taap, Bhuinphoolko Desh, Agnisparsha. She has received a number of literary awards, most notable of them being Padmashree Sahitya Samman. Are you writing anything? I am working on a number of books. A collection of my travel essays is coming out soon. When did you start to read? I don't know exactly when, but I think I started reading books outside the school curriculum with interest when I was seven or eight years old.
104 READ | September 2014
There is no such thing as an international writer. Every writer writes about his/her specific environments. If you are referring to foreign writers then I have to say I have read works by very few foreign writers. Also, I think it's not right to categorise writers as foreign or local. What books would you like to recommend? The Mahabharat is equally interesting and useful to children and older people. We can find all the diversity of life in it. It's good to read Panchatantra as well. It's an important moral text where you find answers to life's complex mysteries. Who are you favourite authors and why? I like Madhav Prasad Ghimire's poems and his recitation style. I had liked Madan Mani Dixit's Madhavi immensely. Sarubhakta is a good fiction writer. I love Kumar Nagarkoti's prose. Manjul and Shrawan Mukarung write beautiful poems. I like the works of Buddhisagar, Amar Nyaupane, Sarita Tiwari, Anbika Giri, Bimala Thumkhewa, Sarswoti Pratikshya. Their works are original in their own ways and powerful too. There are other equally powerful writers but I cannot remember their names offhand. How do you select books? On the basis of media coverage and how books are being talked about. I do read when someone recommends something.