Three poets and a wall

By Padma P Devkota

Literary texts are often recreations of previous texts. There is no harm in this. The Mahabharata contains a sketchy story of Shakuntala, which many poets including Kalidas, Lekhanath, and Devkota have turned into plays and epics of their own. Given the same story, each artist turns it into something uniquely wonderful and pleasing for the readers of his generation and the ones to come.

Themes are often more universally common than stories. Older themes of love, beauty, morality, faith, and so on have blended with the more recent issues of gender, race, colour, and a host of others that find a direct relevance to modern life. Old theme or new, three poets have written about a wall in such a way as to raise questions about sources. The first is Robert Frost’s "Mending Wall" (1914). The second is Vasu Sashi’s "After Constructing a Wall." And the third is Kali Prasad Rijal’s "Wall." I believe that is the chronological order.

For Frost, the wall is not really necessary "[t]here where it is" because

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines,

His neighbour replies, "Good fences make good neighbours." There is no real answer to the question asked by the poetic persona: "Why do they make good neighbours?"

The neighbour’s statement about the fence is a very often quoted line of Frost’s poetry. It is possible that both Vasu Shashi and Kali Prasad Rijal were familiar with Frost’s poem. Their poems seem to provide a sort of answer to the question "Why"? Both Shashi and Rijal weigh the pros and cons of dividing a neighbourhood and the world with walls. The similarity of the opening lines raise other questions about sources of poetic texts:

After constructing a wall

Many things remain outside

(Shashi)

It’s true I accept

after building up a wall

many things can lie outside

(Rijal)

The conclusions too are not really different. Shashi considers the wall an "Undesirous [unwanted] necessity." Rijal has a close paraphrase of Frost’s poem with one addition:

but it also makes it ultimately possible

for those who cannot get along

to live together

The difference between the three poems justifies their individual existence. The reader just flows along with the poetic persona’s ruminations in Frost’s poem without feeling that it justifies the existence of a wall. The narrative leads to a dialogue with a neighbour, and this dramatic technique succeeds because the powerful, central message of the poem in voiced by the neighbour.

Both Shashi’s and Rijal’s poems are more argumentative. While Shashi is more paradoxical and less accessible, Rijal is more syllogistic but simpler. Shashi plays more with language than Rijal who
wants to be understood. In the English version, either the translator or the poet is to blame for the lack of clarity in Shashi’s lines:

However, the city streets today

Which are useless for children,

And the necessity of men who need

To distance themselves from others,

No matter how much I regret,

These walls I still construct!

Since I translated both Shashi and Rijal into English, I here speak for the translator. Were I to improve on this translation, I would have used the term "Given that" for "However" although the literal translation of parantu (a Hindi usage) is "but" or "however."

Given that the city streets today

are useless for children

and that there is a greater need for men

to distance themselves even more from other men,

no matter how much I regret a wall

I will still build it.

This would have improved the Nepali version in its translated form. However, due to rather strange circumstances, I did not get a chance to refine my translation of poems in Contemporary Nepali Poetry.

To return to the poets, Shashi is not categorical about the usefulness of the wall: "Perhaps the wall is a must." In an ambivalent tone, he moves to the central paradox:

In this age it is likely that

We construct walls to eliminate

The necessity of wall.

Rijal has already made up his mind. By constructing the wall, he says, one might lose part of the scenery and freedom too. Yet, one gains privacy and autonomy inside a home. Although the wall separates us from the rest of humanity, it allows us to live with those we normally would not be able to get along with. Each typical stanza of his poem supplies a positive and a negative argument for building or demolishing a wall.

By pulling down the wall

anyone can own the world

but after pulling down the wall

someone can also lose

a small home

Dr Keshav Upadhyay, introducing ajaka nepali kabita (original Nepali of Contemporary Nepali Poetry), writes that Vasu Shashi and Kali Prasad Rijal among others belong to a group of new progressive poets who compose more under the tension of feelings than of thought. In the two poems I have discussed, the above statement seems to apply more to Shashi than to Rijal. If Dr Upadhyay is right, these poems, especially Rijal’s, are not representative of the two poets. Chances are that Frost’s "Good fences make good neighbours" directly or indirectly inspired both these poems.

Why are good brains running away from Nepal?

By Thakur Gyawali

No doubt that in this new millennium the computer field is the fastest emerging field having broad categories like software, hardware, network solution, web design and E-commerce solution etc comprising different programming languages, hardware parts and artificial intelligence to deploy them efficiently. We also have commended and even revered many celebrities in the world who became millionaires/billionaires in no time during the last 4/5 years. Also after the massive revolution in internet technology, remote handling of work is also possible. Despite this reality, we again have to realize the fact that more than 80% computer professionals in Nepal are planning to go overseas after they are academically qualified or have gained abundant skills after difficult professional apprenticeships. Let us summarize the existing scenario about different plights that agile minds are facing in Nepal.

I would like to substantiate those regretful situations through these points:

(1) Lack of Career Opportunity

(2) No Job Security

(3) Economic Imbalance

(4) Lack of special policy/vision

(5) Government’s recklessness and encroachment

First and the foremost, after a student gets a graduate degree in computer education in Nepal, he is too optimistic about his career that he would one day be the paragon of ingenuity in his field. But the reality is that there are less than 5% jobs now in Nepal requiring such persons and the rest are working in technician positions. They cannot get jobs according to the specialization of their degree.

So most of the electronics and electrical engineers in Nepal are working in the computer field. So, they never can uplift their knowledge in those positions, rather they get deteriorated. Second, whatever jobs there are, they are more than 90% in the private sector which are never secure for any professional. They could be fired if they could not satiate their boss often over the profit-making issue. How can a person endanger his skill in those private jobs? Third and most prominent factor is most people realize that the remuneration given to the workers are a mere pittance. If we compare the savings that a person can make in the US for the same work as people do here, they are seriously disappointing for everyone. So how can people stay here as they can do every work comfortably as people are doing outside and get very nominal pay? Fourth reason everyone consents is the lack of any policy to uplift the technical sector in Nepal. There are no future plans to inaugurate new computer industries in Nepal in software and hardware. Technology Park, which was announced five years before to promote information technology in Nepal, has not been ensconced yet. Government is always simulating but never paying attention towards any efforts to promote information technology. Even the Computer Center was dissolved last year. The last one most commonly realized but less explained is the political encroachment in every sector. Opening up many colleges without primary resources and manpower is not helping to promote education, rather it is seducing the students and exploiting their minds. Also, whenever a new government forms, the top-level faculty is fired and the followers never support the previous policies and visions. Often many positions under government offices are accustomed to nepotism. Although all my analysis seems to provide a synopsis about negative consequences, I am not here to disparage the technical students who have extensive zeal for study.

I am only trying to draw the conclusion that potential minds are escaping from Nepal because of compulsion. The knowledge we acquire has high demand in the world. We should try hard to eschew those difficulties. Lets even now hope that there will be more multinational companies, resolute government policies and job security in future to arrest all Nepalese minds in their homeland and place Nepal on the map of global technological map.

Nepal Bandh and economic woes

By Subash Atreya

The term "Nepal Bandh" now seems to be the most active part of the vocabulary for everybody. From a schoolboy to a high government official, all of them certainly have this term encrypted permanently inside the mind. The term has been powerful enough to penetrate right through the brains of busy individuals and reside there forever to remind them of the theory of uncertainty throughout their stay in Nepal. The imagery described above seems quite hypothetical to an ordinary scanner of this article, but actually it indeed depicts the reality.

It is obvious from recent experience that Nepal Bandh has become a periodical phenomenon, which, like a pendulum, works under some laws that govern its occurrence, and fix its time period. Sometimes it is the Student Union and other times they are the unbeatable Maoists who work out the propitious day for a Nepal Bandh and amazingly, these people are such venerated pundits that no one dares to question their decision. People plan their next day and later when they hear of a Nepal Bandh program, they simply change their schedule. What an easy way out of Nepal Bandhs. Also, some people are happy on walking to their offices because they no longer have to waste the highly priced petrol for their vehicles.

Because of this, several Nepal Bandhs have visited us during these past days. Already five Nepal Bandhs have been called during last month and more have already sent their forerunner to keep us prepared. What surprises me the most is the easiness to call a Nepal Bandh. All you have to do is to give out the news in the newspapers and other media and the whole of Nepal is Bandh as wished. Also, it is equally easy to call it off. No wonder, how easily two days of Nepal Bandh were called off on November 16th and 17th? Due to this easiness, sequels of Nepal Bandhs have begin to pour upon us like the monsoon rain and this, as said earlier, seems to be welcomed by everyone who sit contented behind their doors locked.

However, that does not end the issue here. Nepal Bandh, which in its literal sense means the deactivation of all economic activities in Nepal, has its waves reaching far beyond the life of an individual to the Nepalese economy as a whole. Let us first examine the most prominent economic sector severely hampered by these sequels of Nepal Bandhs, which is none other than the tourism industry. The tourists will have nothing to do but simply waste one out of the fifteen days that their tourist visa gives them to enjoy in Nepal. It is really annoying see their bewildered countenance everywhere from the airport to the hotels in town. These tourists who come to Nepal for leisure contribute a substantial amount to our national income.

In one day, the tourists are estimated to spend around seventy thousand to four lakhs depending on the season and the number of active tourists present in the country. So one day of Nepal Bandh means this amount gone directly to the drain. This was the direct impact and its incidences are even worse.

Once these tourists taste the flavour of Nepal Bandh, they certainly leave Nepal promising themselves never to come back with a hope of enjoying their vacation and also they do their sincere duty of warning their friends, who are thinking of climbing Mount Everest, of the possible dangers in Nepal.

Second comes the transportation industry. Except air flights, all road transportation services are required to stop their services under the ‘Act’ of Nepal Bandh. Apart from the inconvenience caused by it to an individual, it has also interfered directly with the earnings of this industry and so reduced the national income on yet another front. In fact, none of the industries in Nepal can actually avert the obstacles presented by Nepal Bandhs and are therefore very vulnerable to the damage caused by it.

The feeble Nepalese economy, which is even unable to provide employment to all the citizens, has seriously been jeopardized by this phenomenon. The coming of economic activity to a halt means slack in production, which in turn leads directly to the loss of millions of rupees. For an ordinary shopkeeper in New Road, a day of Nepal Bandh means a loss of about five thousand rupees on an average. There are several such merchants severely victimized by Nepal Bandh inside as well as outside the valley.

Under these circumstances, the people who are already trapped under the vicious circle of poverty are the ones who are injured the most by Nepal Bandh as even single days’ earning counts a lot to them. Nepalese economy, which has already been impaired by unwarranted political influences, is certainly being pushed towards its downfall by these frequent attacks of Nepal Bandh. Slowing down of the process of production will definitely make us pay in some way or the other. These Nepal Bandhs are dragging the existence of the exacerbating Nepalese economy under the shadow of doubt.

Therefore, it is imperative that this sequel of Nepal Bandh stops for our economy to survive and move towards its development. It is high time that all of the Nepalese realize the dangers associated with our economy and act accordingly to take the precautionary measures and ensure its safety and advancement instead of sitting in their homes with their eyes shut. The support from the public for such an activity as Nepal Bandh should immediately be stopped. Though the government may not be efficient in all aspects and not be able to work to the expectations of its citizens, it must be understood by every citizen that running such campaign is not the proper solution to the problems in hand. Due to it, the government is further enfeebled and therefore it further diminishes the capability of the government to work according to the demands of its citizens.

Every citizen needs to realize that the Bandh campaign does not help the country in any way and so should help the government to make Nepal free from such activities perilous to our economy. Therefore, an activity such as Nepal bandh is not a weapon to protest with, but a dangerous bug that causes our economy to break apart and fall into pieces.