A remarkable poetic voyage

By D B Gurung

The gullies of my eyes greening your field/Let this crop of pain ripen/this harvest ripening from wounds... Then and there, witness of this cruel intimacy/drop of virgin blood spread on the gravel of the crossroads/like an unclaimed corpse.../coming & going time & again/those stains return to me/my memory of you.../Violation! /But these days/your every stroke/a mere touch/and as for myself/I’ve become/the oven that contains the flame/the bush that raises up thorns/the sheath that holds the blade/fangs for the cobra’s deadly poison.../But it is surely so, violator.../tearing your ears, listen/your armoury will be emptied - I will not/ (Wound pg. 30-32). This undaunted speaker affirms as victim, sending it reverberating far and deep into the realm of our heart - a message in three-folds primarily of "injury", "acclimatization" and "overcoming", which is a new awakening. Excellence comes from overcoming difficulties. A physical injury heals but not the psychological trauma inflicted from such a heinous act as "rape". The one who greens his fields with the gullies of the innocent eyes and celebrates harvest from the wound of the victim - is more than a violator. But he exhausts, she doesn’t. The wounded speaker here can be assumed to be an invented persona. Beyond the periphery of this heart-rending piece, one can easily presume that "earth" as the personification of "woman", the mother of all creation, and everything has to fall upon her finally. She is always a winner ultimately. This is the voice of Banira Giri, one of the most talked-about but less estimated names in the literary firmament of Nepal. Just as Plath asserts, "Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air" (Lady Lazarus), Banira chews men like chewing gum.

Banira Giri has accomplished in penning down difficult matters clearly and fearlessly, and with a distinction that is outspoken and feminine - not resorting to tortured deformity in thoughts and expression, in the design of a fine poetic fabric. "Modernist experiments," wrote Suzanne Clark, "with language have an especially problematic relationship to women’s writing which is experimental" Banira breaks the old barriers and rearranges them in a new order and marks out a nascent literary school of intense descriptive poetry, which often opens up more than one avenues for us to explore. It might simply be called the logic of "metamorphosis of realities." Her tendency to move from the conventional women’s writing as well as the feministic politics, and the reworking of relationship between time and space, and the connection between the time of poetic revolution and the place of the woman - are manifested in her works. Over and again, she brings out anatomy of woman’s soul, revealing herself, and proffers us with some primal and veiled vigour, and almost wild eroticism. This poetess offers us the possibility of an artistic experimentation which surpasses the limits of gendered identity, which can say things that could not be spelled out otherwise. Whether or not a literary revolution of this kind may be powerful enough to bring about a larger change in literary culture remains an uncovered question.

Wound is one of the spermatozoa of From the Lake, Love, Banira’s recently released work, and there are over twenty more pieces to mull over. The fact that should be taken in seriously is that she is not only a poet of "woman" and "home", but also of "men", whom she loves and equally hates and blames. Giri laments: ...in this holy land of Pashupati/there lies completely helpless, bereft and naked/pitiful Bagmati.../Men are men after all/though they throw a flood of filth.../For men who have their human rights.../disheartened while trying to bid farewell to Pashupati/the whips of sand/chase her/the whips of sand/drive her out/ (Pashugayatri pg. 34-35). The whole depiction of lady Bagmati is marvellously drawn: completely helpless, bereft and naked, ridden with filth and sand. Okay, that’s true, but who are the polluters, is it men (I mean only the male species of the Homo sapiens) or men in general (males and females both)? The reading would have been smoother had the rendering read either "people" or "human" rather than "men". It is always "men" (both male and female) to destroy the nature. Now an anticipating nostalgic speaker broods over the apple of her eye: How handsome he is!.../The heat of his embrace still lingers/in my arms, on my lap.../The kisses we’ve exchanged/in our affection/could not be counted/by any mathematician on earth... /If someday he should return... (He is in the Prime of Youth pg. 66-68). Well, but they are not lover’s kisses or of mom’s and son’s. It is a suspense thriller; the dichotomy lingers on, catching your breath until you reach the tip of the tail. But, wait a minute! Don’t we smell some trite vestige of Rimal’s well-known poem Aamako Sapana (Mother’s Dream) rammed in this piece? Surely, we do. The metaphorical essence of "son" could be "democracy", who knows? Although we frequently hear echoes that pull reminiscences of Plath and Whitman and at times of Paz in Banira Giri’s poetry, but then we see her closing in with her own soundtract.

A poem, said Wallace Stevens once, is "an answering look": "...With its attentive eyes/A hatching that stared and demanded an answering look." That "answering look" may take multiple forms: sometimes it is a look back at the landscape, or into your own self; sometimes a look back at a moment of history, past or present, or even future. Some writers like Hart Crane and Robert Lowell look back at their autobiography in their poetry. Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Alice Walker look into the discrimination and hardship, faced by their people, and who discovered indigenous American poetry in black vernacular to go up against whites’ supremacy and dominance. Seamus Heaney digs his potatoes out of his native Irish soil. Although Banira Giri swings from one theme to another, on the whole, the corpus of her poetry invokes subjectivity, instantly recognizable to the feministic consciousness, which bears much contemporary sensibility. She often looks back into the issues on woman’s predicament, which is the commanding theme in her poetry. She infers openly and blatantly, and warns: Naked/Unhindered without fear/Woman stands at the crossroads/in her pure primordial form/A crowd of blind men/are eager/to discover the nature of woman.../Woman is a waterfall, woman is the Ganges/flowing from the head of Shiva.../Woman is not just a vile hole/She is also Lake Baikal, Lake Ural/ She is also Gosainkunda/Lake Manasarovar (Woman pg. 26-27). True, not just a "vile hole": but a hole of enigma, pain and oblivion. Certainly, woman is not to be underestimated, she can swallow any man down into the depth of her mysterious waters - if, in case, the swimmer is novice. This is Giri’s gratification.

Probably , only a very few or almost none can read the signature of time. But Giri does: Time/leaves its signature/in glittering dewdrops on the grasses/scratches its mark on the soft leaves.../ Handing out to life and the world/Appointments, reappointments/Memoes of termination/Time is the engineer of great parikarma... (The signature of Time pg. 75-76). Yes, Time is both alpha and omega. It acts like a despot, invincible and eternal, in transforming the entire creation of the universe, seemingly being both kind and unkind. The last and the longest poem in this assortment testifies the poetess’ maturity and her psychological self-experimentation. She dismantles loneliness and shows us some of the rare prospects of her discovery: ...Loneliness/will surely choose a place.../will surely draw one shape or another.../This loneliness/will set itself/beyond reach of plea, disputation and trial../will surely launch one or another journey../Perhaps the himal knows/the contentment of melting/the romance of flowing/the enjoyment of splashing.../the bliss of onion.../Embracing you.../I’m walking sand dunes along with me/erasing with the dust of my feet/the wavy designs cut into the back of the Sahara.../He is a person/He raises the flag of being human (My Discovery pg. 81-125). There is nothing glorious than to be human beings, perhaps the "genuine human." But there is not an easy process to attain this humanness: one has to use a means of earnest self- revaluation - listening to the echoes of loneliness and enriching your mind with the elixir of liberation without knowing it by knowing all, thus descending down to a point of zero, which is nothing, yet everything. In one word "self-revelation". The matriarch of all this is "will". The will to redefine the value of relationship and mutuality between "he" and "she", which will lead to the discovery of human ruins on and on, and which itself becomes the priceless monuments. My Discovery transcends beyond the poetess and poetry.

In translation, the judgement and choice fall in the wisdom and caliber of a translator, probably more than that of the artist. I believe, most of them have made the mark in this collection. Amtzis hits double. His introductory essay reads fascinatingly more ruminative than some poems - is itself a triumph.

To be precise, Banira Giri fathoms deep, not only into the hearts of women but of humanity as a whole. She gathers human foiles and foibles, mixing them with myths and mythologies and by presenting us in the form of a fine bouquet of poems with Nepali fragrance. Her poetry seizes the reader by its immediate stunning power. Sometimes, she is frighteningly surrealistic, at other times, she is a stream of clarity. I certainly wouldn’t claim that her poetry is excellent, but I’m least hesitant to insist that as a tormented truth-teller, she breaks even with Plath or Angelou. In the course of her poetic voyage, now and then, she sails farther than Ulysses, dragging us together to show us her discovery and treasure that finally address the unseen wound festering in all of us.

Greeting the New Millennium

By Raju Chitrakar

Hundred and One Poems for New Millennium is the latest work of Laxmi Devi Rajbhandari’s twelve anthologies of poems, six in English and six in Nepali. In the work, the poetess expresses her love for God, peace, love, truth, and indignation towards inhumanity. She indicates the need of spiritual values for human happiness.

Poetry comes to Rajbhandari not from her hard labour but as a natural flow. This could be the reason of her publication of six anthology of poems within three years of time. In the poem, "My life a Drawing", the poetess says that her life is drowned "By the brush of intuition" (20). Similarly, in the poem, "I Write", Rajbhandari says that she will write about

The soft rustling of leaves
Of autumn
The sweet smelling fragrance
Of hope, peace and bliss of spring
I will write about
Indignation of unfairness (8-13)

In the anthology, she has certainly written about these.

Rajbhandari starts her anthology by paying her respect to God for his providing life to human beings. Her five poems are devoted to the themes of God. To her, all gods are one. She sees Kali or Durga in Mary. In the poem, "The Same Grace", she writes,

So I bow down to all
Perceiving
A refraction of
The same light (46-49)

She reveals that she does not know what exactly God is. However, she thinks that the state of total renunciation is the state of godliness. She ends the anthology by asking God to let her rest in peace.

In fact, the whole anthology is devoted to express her love for peace. The title itself carries this feeling. In the very first greeting poem, "Happy New Millennium", the poetess appeals the readers:

Please let us pray it will
Bring fresh divine blooms
Of peace throughout the universe
Let the embers of sparks of terror
Be extinguished and snubbed
On the closing door of 1999 (27-32)

The poetess says that she will forget everything when there is peace. Therefore, she asks peace to secure her by keeping her in its lap whereby she "...would not feel/ The world’s slap" (Peace 12-13).

Rajbhandari blames the carelessness to the necessity of peace on the materialistic philosophy of "Selfish Vision." In the poem, "Of Paper Effigies", she asks selfish people a bitter question and reveals their secret:

Where is your own face
O double faced one
Where is your reliant home
Behind the rustle of money
You hide
And chide the wisdom (73-78)

Human ethic says that innocent and incapable people should be equally treated as so -called clever or civilized ones. On the contrary, Rajbhandari sees the downfall of such people as they are "exploited and neglected." She says that if they are given equal opportunity, they will bloom like flowers, and hence we should help them bloom. She does not believe in fate. Therefore, she is against monks and fakirs who lead their uncreative lives only by begging. She says that they have "...no initiation/ No realization/ No destination" (Such a Plight 7-9).

All disorders of the world are caused mainly by men’s fear or worry. However, in Rajbhandari’s view, there is no necessity to worry. It is because she takes human life in "wholeness", not in part. In the poem "The Same Grace", she writes,

The thirst and hunger
The happiness and sorrow
I feel isn’t it the same
That you feel
Why differentiate
Between you and me
Only the garb and intonation varies
Innately we are the petals
Of the same flower that exudes
The fragrance of love
That I and all crave (20-31)

For the poetess, life is just a happening. In the poem, "A moth into a Light", she compares truth with light and human life with moth, which "Dissolves into/ Light itself" (12-13). What she means to say is that since human life is as transitory as that of a moth, there is no necessity to worry and fight with another fellow partner.

For Laxmi Devi Rajbhandari, love is the only way to peace. In her view, where there is love, there is light, which ‘...penetrates/ The soul’ (Love its Clue 7-8). For her, human body is only a medium to express it. Since love is a clue to understand the soul, she has "given up all/ To see the golden hue" (In Love’s Name 3-4). She compares "The home/ Without love" with "The hearth without/ The fire" (Meaninglessness 4-7).

For Rajbhandari, life should be as transparent as a crystal and as complying and dutiful as a mother, "A living image of God" (To My Mother 19). She takes this as a true state, the state of being, not of becoming:

Deep understanding
A complete natural flow
Of not becoming
Not an intoxicated state
Nor an unawakened state
Just a state of being (True State 3-8)

And, in her view, one can attain such a state, as a mother does, by a complete renunciation. She says that to attain such a state of "divine light" should be the "climax" of the pilgrimage of our life.

As a female, Rajbhandai does not forget to write about her sect. In "Pathos", she presents the pathetic situation of some women who become the victims of traffickers in their effort to sustain their lives:

While having come to wave their
sorrows off
Same women fall prey
To traffickers (11-14)

In the context of Nepal, many women are trafficked by coming under the pretension of marriage. However, for the poetess, marriage is the union of two souls to unfold the heaven. In the poem "A Nepali Woman", she presents "Nepali rugged woman" to be

Open minded candid
To welcome civilization
To uplift the truth
The wisdom a shield (13-16)

Therefore, she asks men and women to walk hand in hand as "co-human", not by dominating each other.

Commenting on her diction, Prof Mohan Lohani writes, "Simplicity, clarity, sincerity, directness and spontaneity are the hallmarks of Rajbhandari’s diction" (The Kathmandu Post). In her spontaneous writing, she frequently uses the rhetorical devices of figurative language. Her poetic form, the free verse, suits to her natural flow. She writes haiku poems of two-three lines to the long non-narrative poems of few hundred lines. However, her omission of punctuation marks may make the lay readers difficult to understand her works.

Mr Nagendra S and Mr Peter J K combinely said of Rajbhandari to be the "poet of spiritual sensibility" (Sunday Post, April 30, 2000). She is certainly so. She has a wide social consciousness. Throughout her works, she tries to give life a meaning. She wants to create a sense of responsibility in people. She appears to be the poetess of human values. No doubt, she is getting established not only as the best female poetess, but also as one of the major poets of Nepal. However, if she wrote in compressed metrical form, it could help her further sharpen her writing.

To keep Nepal smiling

By Madan Lamsal

What will happen if the entire population of Nepal stopped smiling? Such may be the situation in not so distant future, if the problem of dental caries (tooth decay) continues rising at the present pace.

Though conclusive time-series data are not available as yet, dentists have been warning about the deteriorating conditions of dental hygiene in Nepal. Studies carried out at a number of locations in Nepal have indicated that the country is fast moving towards being a "high caries" country.

Caries is a tooth disease in which acid formation in the gaps between teeth first attacks the dental enamel and then causes carious lesions. Ultimately, the bacteria, breeding between the teeth, will develop dental cavities. As a result the affected tooth and sometimes a number of them have to be removed to avoid the unbearable toothache. Thus caries, if unattended at early stages, will result in tooth loss. If widespread, this will lead to a toothless society.

And indeed, this phenomenon is going to be widespread in Nepal. "Data from the WHO Global Oral Data Bank of 2000 reports the 12-year-old DMFT for Nepal as 0.9 which correlates with recent estimates", writes Dr. Robert Yee, a dental public health consultant with United Mission to Nepal (UMN). He also reports quoting a UMN survey of 2000 that DMFT of 13-year olds and 7-year olds in Tansen of Palpa was found to be 1.2 and 3.6 respectively. That means more and more of the younger generation population is suffering from dental caries.

For the rising incidence of caries in Nepal, the dentists commonly blame the growing urbanization and change in the food habits. Processed food such as biscuits, noodles, sweets and carbonated drinks are forming higher and higher share of the total daily food intake of the urban population. Such foods are directly responsible for caries. About 10% of the Nepali population is estimated to be living in urban areas and it is expected to rise to 20% in the coming census, scheduled to be held in a couple of months. In 1981, only 6% of the population was reported to be living in urban areas.

Still, to think that the problem of dental caries is limited only to the urban centres is highly misleading as the availability of such foods is rapidly expanding to the rural areas, where the population takes to these foods, associating them with the symbol of modernization.

The seriousness of this problem can be imagined by the fact that the present dental manpower in Nepal is insufficient to cope with this problem, especially in areas outside the Kathmandu Valley. For the country’s 24 million population, there are only 100 or so dentists. Of them, 92 work in Kathmandu Valley. Even if the dentists were available in sufficient numbers, the curative model of dental care would be unaffordable for the great majority of Nepali citizens. Only about $3 is available per person per year from government budget for health services, according to a recently published booklet by the World Bank (2001). And the figure is declining. Another World Bank publication of 1995 had put the per capita expenditure on health by HMG at $6 per annum. Moreover, almost all of this budget is used up in the treatment of infectious diseases of the respiratory and gastro-intestinal systems. That leaves almost nothing for dental care.

According to Dr Yee, about 9.43 million Nepali children between 6 to 14 years of age are suffering from caries. The cost required to treat them with the traditional amalgam restorative procedure would be more than 20 times the total expenditure on health from government, private sector and foreign donors.

This problem is further compounded by the fact that in almost every part of Nepal, the drinking water is extremely deficient in natural fluoride content, which is regarded as the element that fights dental caries. Fluoride strengthens teeth and cuts dental decay by half, say the doctors. An optimum level of fluoride in the water would have had a preventive effect by making the outer layer of tooth enamel more resistant to acid attack, repairing carious lesions that may have happened due to earlier acid attacks, and interrupting the life cycle of oral bacteria thereby reducing their ability to cause dental caries. Out of 600 places from where water samples were drawn for a recent study commissioned by UMN, therapeutic levels were found only in two places.

In a temperate climate, one milligram of fluoride per litre of drinking water is known to reduce dental caries by up to 65%.

The problem of fluoride deficiency can be theoretically tackled in a number of ways:

a) Water fluoridation: While this is a very cheap and effective way of delivering optimum levels of fluoride, this is not a practical solution at present because there are only a few centralized drinking water sources in Nepal. Fluoridation of water from every source, such as wells, springs, rivers etc. is simply impossible.

b) Salt fluoridation: While this would again be an effective way of fluoridation, it would be difficult to control and regulate.

c) Milk fluoridation: This method too is not going to be effective alternative for Nepal now because packaged milk is only accessible to a very small minority of population. This method also requires supervised distribution of milk to children and urinary fluoride monitoring, because excess fluoride also will cause fluorosis, another type of dental disease, which causes white flecking or brown staining on the teeth.

d) Toothpaste fluoridation: This has proved to be an extremely effective means of reducing dental caries worldwide. With increasing usage of toothpastes by the Nepali consumer, both urban and rural, this could be the easiest and cheapest method of reducing the level of dental decay.

Unfortunately, most toothpastes in Nepal till late have had been non-fluoridated. This was largely because fluoride has negative connotations in neighbouring India where dental fluorosis (due to higher than optimum levels of fluoride in the water) is a serious issue in parts of that country. Nepalese manufacturers have traditionally tended to follow the Indian trends, and toothpaste fluoridation also involves some additional costs. Recently, one MNC (Multi national company) manufacturer has come up with locally produced fluoridated toothpaste and the price also is substantially lower than the imported brands of fluoridated toothpaste. But the awareness about its health value is still not appreciated.

Perhaps, it is now time to give greater importance to this aspect of oral hygiene, which can at least help in raising public awareness. After all, a healthy and smiling population is a prerequisite for the overall economic development. It is more so to the tourism industry which has repeatedly come up with survey results, showing that smiling people is the main USP (unique selling proposition) of Nepali tourism!

New jurisprudence in victimology ?

By Rudra Prasad Sharma

May ten criminals be escaped, let’s not one innocent be punished". If it is the guiding principle of the present criminal justice system who is to assess the criminals who go with impunity? If the criminal justice system gives a way to the criminals to go with impunity why are we celebrating the mundane and defective criminal justice system?

These are some of the landmark questions put forth by Dr Shankar Kumar Shrestha in his Book A Step Towards Victim Justice System, Nepalese perspective. In the book, Dr Shrestha proposes a new jurisprudence in victimology against the blunderous miscarriage of our criminal justice system.

But still, one may claim that the criminal justice system is being practiced all over the world and it has no option. But Dr Shrestha has proved himself to be a pioneer of the justice system for providing an alternative judicial system: victimology.

Philosophically, justice is a book of which first and last pages have been lost and the jurists and researchers are supposed to search for the lost pages. Dr Shrestha tries to supply some of the lost pages. But, it remains to be seen as to how persuasive it will be among the readers. The rationale of Dr Shrestha in the book is touching and realistic. It is not possible to squeeze the whole theme of the book like the objective correlative, as T S Eliot could have done. Perhaps, one should borrow negative capability of John Keats for better interpretation of the book. Then, one can see pathetic fallacy, affective fallacy as well as cognitive fallacy of the society mirrored in the book. However, the book never postulates the idea what the practitioners of modern fiction could have termed it as disillusionment. Therefore, the book is, in fact, an art of Dr Shrestha. However, it is not an art for art’s sake, but an art for life’s sake.

After reading the book, it really provokes thoughts. If crime dies with a criminal, what about the victim? If law merely punishes the criminal and abandons the victim, who will give compensations ? Or at least, who is to console the victim drenched in tears and tortures? Society? No. Society can hardly provide empathy. Because, the so called poetic justice has already died with the late William Shakespeare, and what is left in the society is mere apathy.

Victim and criminal are two ingredients of a crime. There comes the court in the name of providing justice. Meanwhile, it includes state interference in the name of supporting the victim so as to make sure that the culprit will not go with impunity. This is the fundamental concept of criminal justice. But, Dr Shankar Kumar Shrestha in his book, A Step Towards Victim Justice System, Nepalese Perspective challenges the very notion that the world has been entertaining as the time honoured practice: ‘Criminal Justice System’.

The book puts forth the Victim Justice System instead of ‘Criminal Justice System’. Dr Shrestha sees the traditional criminal justice system full of follies which punishes the victim and awards the criminal in every step and thereby causing miscarriage to our criminal justice system.

When crime is committed, the state party (police and government advocate) takes over the case. It is cent per cent true that the justice is to be sought for the victim, but after the state party takes over the case, the victim vanishes from the scene. His status in the case falls just like that of a witness, to be called at the court only if deemed necessary. The court, may punish the criminal. It may make him pay fine also. But, unfortunately the fine goes to the government exchequer, not to the victim.

In the prison also, the criminal is entitled to a number of facilities and rights. But what about the victim? He gets nothing, not any compensations, nor any rights or privileges as a victim. The human rights activists make hue and cry all over the world to safeguard the interests of an accused or a criminal.

Dr Shrestha claims that punishing a criminal is generally a myth. A criminal generally has access to money, muscle and men whereby he makes his escape through the lacunae of law. First, it is very difficult to collect evidence against a criminal, especially by those who are poor and helpless. The criminal gets every chance to collect evidence, to defend himself, making his voice louder even at the cost of false evidence. Generally, the voice which is louder is heard first.

The criminals usually get fair hearings. Most important, the criminals are given the benefit of doubt. But who cares about the victim? He continues to go through a series of miseries and hardships. At the most, the criminal just goes to the jail years after the victim girl took to prostitution.

Besides, there are many laws such as Jail Act, 1963, State Cases Act, 1992, Compensation Against Torture Act, 1996. All these Acts are to look after the interest of a criminal. But alas! There are no such Acts for the interests of a victim. Further, Article 14 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1990 guarantees a number of rights for the accused . Under these laws, the accused and the convicted criminals are enjoying free lodging, fooding, security, medical treatment, and in some cases, with the education and vocational training facilities at the state’s expenses. But why shouldn’t the crime victims be awarded with such services and facilities?

Dr Shrestha states in his book that such legal and constitutional rights for an accused (criminal) emanated from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. A similar universal declaration was made for the interest of victims the "Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice System for the Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, 1985". But, it is still left to be materialized.

To sum up, it can be said that the texture of the book is made of the tears of the victims of present defective criminal justice system and it is made more persuasive by the syntactic and semantic implication and by the proper choice of diction.