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Kathmandu Sunday June 18, 2000 Ahsad 04, 2057.
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The doctor with the literary knife
By Dr D B Gurung
If the book we are reading
doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first
place? So that it can make us happy? Good God, we’d be just happy if we had no books
at all ... What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune... A book
must be the ax for the frozen sea within us... - Franz Kafka, letter of January 27, 1904
Nepal has never been in hurry to ducate its citizens: The Rana regime despotically dumped
the Nepalese in the "darkness", totally maiming the intellectual and creative
freedom for over a century, an the single-party Panchayati policy did no better than
driving the nation towards the "menacing doldrums". During both these eras in
the Nepalese history, the freedom of expression and human rights fell in the dungeons, and
literacy lingered somewhere far-out like the Birbal’s lamp. Than dawned the
multi-party democracy in 1990, storming and thundering, dragging the almost-twenty million
Nepalese commoners all into the sea of chaos, providing education more than needed. Thus a
handful of Nepalese writers writing in English virtually have no room in this country.
"It is worth saying that major work is being done in India in many languages other
than English; yet outside India there is just about no interest in any of this work,"
cites Rushdie, "The Indo-Anglians seize all the limelight." Nobody would have
known Zola, Stendhal, Hesse, Kawabata or Marquez, had their works not been translated into
English. English language was, and is practically a most, for international recognition,
an will be for certain, in the future. Out of these purple ashes of the Nepalese past,
rises a medical doctor, who temperamentally keeps a low profile in the public - with a
literary knife. He writes in English. His professional name is Dr Hemanga Dixit, born in
1937, and those of us who have come across his book(s), know him by the name of Mani
Dixit.
Dr Selbourne, in A Doctor’s
Life: The Dairies of Hugh Selbourne M.D. 1960-63, writes politely with shafts of venom of
the lazy, the dishonest and the Jack-in-office (reflecting his own upbringing) ... the bad
bureaucrats of the National Health Service ... his delinquent colleagues who turned on
duty drunk, or whose sexual conquests ended in blackmail by a pregnant nurse ... the
lesbian hospital Sister, who unblushingly carried off a nasty business with new entrants
during their routine medical examination ... the inefficient doctors and bad diagnosis and
all that .. everything personal as witnessed. But Dr Dixit is different. He is far from
sharing all his personal matters, rather he heroically hurries to invent the unknown
making it seems truer than the truth, rigging up with marvellous metaphors to manifest the
unseen prospects of his native land, and the possible future peril that might afflict to
his country. He surveys the past and the contemporary Nepal with a deceptively easy gaze.
Dig his books deeper: it is a scrutiny of human’s foibles that seems undeviating like
a laser beam. True, his fictions are certainly not without flaws, literally lack some
essential elements a novel should be embodied with, and in some cases, one is assailed by
unexpected naivetes sticking their heads out wilting the stories. The tones of his English
switch from Nepalese and British to frighteningly American. Well, but my question is who
is impeccable? Naipaul? Bellow? Morrison? Kenzaburo Oe? Wrong. Only God is impeccable.
That’s why we worship Him. Sometimes, patches of clouds and beauty to the unwrinkled
sky.
While at high school in India,
under the sway of Western books such as Tarzan, William and Capt Biggles, Dixit tried his
hand out on a juvenile fiction, leading to the publication of Chandra & Damaru - Boys
of Nepal (1967). It is a picaresque novella, a story of two adventurous boys heading
towards Kantipur from the remote eastern mountains of Nepal. Thematically it evens off
with Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, though the delicacy of Twain’s humour
wouldn’t be surpassed. The books depicts some undocumented social milieu of
eighteenth century Nepal.
After a considerable gap,
followed The Red Temple (1977). The novel begins abruptly and ends in the same manner.
This book gives fascinating insightful glimpses of Nepal’s seventies, when the hippie
culture was under full bloom, and when Jochen got its Christian alias as "Freak
Street". Awe-inspiring snowy peaks brood in the backdrop while deep, murky lakes have
secrets to conceal. There are murders, conspiracy and bizarre sex scenes popping up in the
story - no one sleeps with the same partner twice. No one is safe in the novel - even the
protagonist dies. You are constantly called by a notion that Dixit is penning off what you
have always known, the only deference is that you’ve never thought of it before. A
remarkable breakthrough.
Recounting his book Come,
Tomorrow (1980), I have some good news - and bad. It is a well-researched book; a story
based on the four generations of a Gurkha family, covering tenure of almost seventy-five
years of the last millennium. The book paints, rather than reflects, mobile and revealing
facts about the struggle of Gurkha families, and their fates, which would inevitably
deposit them into the army barracks, the ultimate heaven of the Gurkhas. Bir Bahadur
Moktan is the most memorable character here; it is his story of struggle as a career
soldier, gems dealer in Burma and his marriage with a Burmese girl Way Shin Yi and later
with Janaki in Nepal, and ultimately a passionate effort to win back the heart of his
estranged illegitimate son, Top, a Gurkha cadet in London, whom he has never seen. A large
segment of the story is boarded up with the life of Nepalese in Burma. There are moments
of wild humour and sporadic eloquence. Dixit has done with much ambition, nevertheless,
has need of craft. The narration is deftly drawn until the tip of the tail - and finally
there you are - you have read a significant chronicle, not a novel. The accounts of the
Gurkhas’ involvement in the two great wars are laid down with magical precision; yet
the heroes have very little roles to play, and are frequently silhouetted. The crude
supremacy of
the domineering Ranas, and the inherent inferiority of the mathwali Gurkhas in the
Nepalese social hierarchy, are fairly painted.
Over the Mountains unveils a lot
of truth about poor mountains folks of Nepal. Their poverty and predicament force them to
leave their native country capping the climax, to do manual jobs as kancha or kanchi, and
to serve as "cannon fodder" for the armies of other countries, earning a
derogatory title "Bahadur". This is a story of human migration brought about
either by fate or circumstances. It’s a sad love-song to our Nepalese selves.
Having influence over
Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Dixit went into his fifth book Annapurna
Fantasy (1997), taking the vein of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels or Dafoe’s
Robinson Crusoe, set in the mystical land of Shangri-la. This is certainly a new loveable
stuff for the children, apparently with a satirical intent for the political predators. A
peculiar farrago of myth, legend and science fiction. The feats of imagination deserve
plaudits.
Conflict in the Himalayas (1997)
may rack one’s brain: because in the space of less than 140 pages, we are given not
less than half a dozen different themes and several dozens of characters; we are also
given a third eye to see and sense that the so-called tranquil kingdom of Nepal is not
always the same as perceived, but also can be a breeding ground for the international
terrorists, gun runners and drug pushers; plus we are alarmingly reminded that many
foreigners who move into Nepal with the acknowledged purpose of sightseeing or mountain
expedition, may have dangerous purposes to carry out. Something strange is going on behind
the mission of "International Everest Expedition". Something evil. Dick Seeward,
an American of Irish descent, Achmed Vezirov, a Russian Muslim and Satyam Pilai from Sri
Lanka, a staunch supporter of Tamil Eelam are among the climbers and the main players.
Ashgar Ali, a Kashmiri freedom fighter moves in with a skin-deep luck. We are in a mess in
Kathmandu, and then later up in the Himalayas. The expedition fails and escalates into a
whirlwind of violence and murders. The crux of the story is the procurement of arms from
Russia. We have some guys who support the slogans "Free Tibet" and "Free
Kashmir", and others from IRA, Tamil Eelam, to mull over. The book is dense and
disconnected. But one thing is sure; Dixit’s hair-raising suspense and startling
ironies will knock you down. It’s a technical triumph.
"The moment you praise a
book too highly," warns Henry Miller, "You awaken resistance in your
listener" - but I’ll take my chances, although the habit of pressing books for
other people is a tedious race. I must confess that some of the above titles have been my
favourites among those I’ve read by Nepalese writers, and it seems worth blowing the
trumpets.
Mani Dixit attained a victory
over the frozen sea within me.
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