Devkota’s "The Lunatic" : A revolution within

By Basanta Lohani

Devkota’s monologue, "The Lunatic," is an exposure of the prevailing social contradictions of the time. The poet has juxtaposed the lunatic plane onto normal social realities in a way that expresses defiance against the ruling elites for their monstrous exploitation of the common people. The dichotomous relationship he so skilfully contrives between the normal and the lunatic plane serves him well to challenge the feudal establishment. Bal Krishna Sama has rightly commented that Devkota was born thrice, once with Munamadan, a second time with Shakuntal, and a third time with "The Lunatic."

In general, the burden of early literary work is basically theological. One obvious reason for that may be to identity human beings as the creation of God. I do not intend to go any further in this direction other than mentioning that this genuine human endeavour to understand oneself degenerated into the hands of some people in the banalities of priesthood, and the philosophical aspect of religion gave way to ceremonial regimentation forming structures of exploitation. The is how religion was used to sustain a social psyche where the ruling class could exploit the ruled as an accepted form of social and political life. As human awareness increased, literary works began to challenge this phenomenon. The French Revolution is a case in point. It is a watershed in the history of the world because it was a revolt against the clergy- sustained hierarchical exploitation. Thinkers, philosophers and poets took the lead in building opinion that culminated in that revolution. In this process, poets have transcended to a different plane forming yet another process of enlightenment. And, I consider Devkota does this in the persona of the lunatic and heralds the shift in Nepali literature from devotionalism to modernism.

This poem flows all along in a gradient made of confession and thus picks up the momentum so subtly that one hardly notices the process of enlightenment that the poet has been going through. This is the first poem written in a confessional mode in Nepali literature. The tremendous strength of the poem lies in the poet’s assertion that he is a lunatic and rises to the higher regions while explaining the more real than the real world. While climbing on to each successively higher region, the poet experiences layers of emotion like anger, romanticism, rebellion, all leading him closer and closer to a stage of enlightenment as he replicates the steps of Siddhartha on his way to Buddhahood. The poet’s autobiographical experiences by a miraculous poetic process transcend the human limitations of the flesh and trace the voyage to Nirvana. As the poet says, "Buddha, the enlightened one touched me in the depths."

Devkota’s tirades ooze out from an unconscious mind to defy what individuals always become conscious about. "The Lunatic" with its profuse symbolic implications and metaphors defies the existing social psyche. This psyche inhibits change but gets sustained because of the nourishment it secures from the pseudo intellectuals, pretenders and reactionaries through their supportive opinion building exercises where they can thrive as economic parasites. It is here that the poet disparages with devastating effect the self appointed guardians of virtues and righteous behaviour, a feudal continuity of a highly authoritarian pattern of thought and practice.

The first stanza contains merely two lines to bifurcate the human plane into the lunatic and the normal dimensions so that the poet can camouflage himself for a hard-hitting frontal attack on the wide disparities of an accepted social order. To this end, the poet has created a lunatic who remains blissful in his own world that is free from all inhibitions, man- made barriers, hypocrisies, greed, worldly wisdom. Devkota’s poetic craftsmanship achieves magnificence when the lunatic introduces his lunacy to his normal friend in unequivocal naivete.

Surely, my friend, insane am I

Such is my plight.

Here, the lunatic is fully aware of his lunacy as much as he is aware of his normal friend’s expediency and practical wisdom.

From the second stanza onwards, the poet moves on to building up the kingdom of his lunatic who is completely divorced from the normal realities but is fully aware when it comes to relating himself to his normal friend.

In the moonlight,

While the enchantress of heaven is

smiling unto me.

They exfoliating, mollifying,

Glistening and palpitating,

Rise before my eyes like tongueless

things insane,

Like flowers,

A variety of moonbirds,

I commune with them as they do with

me,

In this process, he experiences various facets of life. This very awareness of life with its wings fluttering towards infinite wilderness through pain and ecstasy is not in conformity with the prevailing behavioural rhythm and, thus, a threat to the established social values.

Shocked by the first streak of frost

on a fair lady’s tresses,

For a length of three days my sockets

filled and rolled.

For the Buddha, the enlightened one,

touched me in the depths,

And they called me one distraught.

When I danced to the bursting notes

of the harbinger of the spring,

They called me one gone crazy.

While climbing up to magnificent poetic heights befitting the stature of a great poet, Devkota compares the normal world to that of the lunatic’s world, alluring those struggling for the status quo to the blissful world of the insane. The poet has used this lunatic persona in yet another poem where he discloses his identity to a beautiful prostitute as one "into the higher region gone astray" so as to make her understand the reality of her real world and profession. This persona in the poetry "To a Beautiful Prostitute" though has a different contextual thrust and the poet it uses only at the end to unravel the mystery of the volte face in his behaviour. So this lunatic persona is the poet’s poetic genius primarily used in a crusade for putting across a forceful message.

To you a rose is but a rose,

It embodies Helen and Padmini for

me.

You are strong prose,

But I am liquid poetry.

You freeze, I melt,

You decant when I go muddy.

When I am muddled, you are clear.

And just the other way about.

You have a world of solids,

Mine is one of vapour

Yours is thick and mine is thin.

You take a stone for hard reality,

I seek to catch a dream,

The poet is all out in his pervasive defiance challenging all those who were lording it over society for their enjoyment of authority, wealth, women and wine. He becomes mad at their pretentious behaviour. He, thus, calls the king a pauper and denounces Alexander, the Great and the so-called hermit as a cowardly escapist.

I have called the Nawab’s wine all

blood.

And the courtesans all corpses.

And the king a pauper.

I have denounced Alexander the

Great.

And I have deprecated the so-called

high-souled ones.

The poet’s greatness transcends further when he glorifies someone that society perceives as a nonentity. Here the poet seems to steal the happiness of being in the state of social oblivion.

And the insignificant individual I

have raised,

Up an ascending arch of praises,

Into the seventh heaven.

A slight digression here would be useful for a better understanding of the poetic craftsmanship.

Purely from a well -defined legal boundary, lunacy is related to competence, a state of the individual when he is incapable of exercising free will to enter into a contractual relationship. In a feudal setting, the very human existence embodies a social contract to live in conformity with the will of those in authority. It, thus, becomes a vehicle for augmenting the welfare of those few at the cost of many. This mechanism is loaded in such a way that the social psyche is conditioned to approve it as the right and normal way. This is where Rousseau came in to challenge the divine right, precipitating into the French Revolution. The lunatic outbursts emerging out from a purely transcending psychological plane, in such settings, could be a manifestation of defiance. The effect may not be seen immediately. In the beginning, it may just carve a non-noticeable niche in the social psyche but such muddy outpouring can produce enough ripples in people’s consciousness to arrive at a changing social equilibrium over a period of time.

The poet in his beautiful exercise of comic hyperbole has, by the end, built a storehouse of energy, lunatic energy, in lambasting the bizarre setting of corruption, greed, callousness and betrayal.

The child of the tempest!

I am the wild eruption of a volcano

insane!

Terror personified!

Lunatic energy is that layer of human emotion that is capable of transformation into higher energy of a very powerful human expression. It is so because the strength of suppressing this energy ebbs away as the mind gets rid of its obsession with an accepted, imposed or evolved social order of exploitation. Where political leaders channelled this collective emotion for the collective good, countries have progressed and have seen greater welfare than where it is primarily used for increasing the welfare of the political leadership that cannot extend much beyond itself. This is the human history of tension, continuous revolt, upheavals, wars and ceaseless challenges finding its way into feudal communities, regimentation, fascism, dictatorship, guided democracy, mutilated democracy and liberal democracy depending upon time, constellation of forces and structural peculiarities of a country or region involved.

Primarily, "The Lunatic" is a revolt against Nepal’s post upheaval setting of the 1950s: the uneasy transition, the mockery of democracy, the extent of human degeneration in the name of upholding new values and righteousness, misinformation by leaders and newspapers alike, ruthless exploitation of people’s rights and economic plunder. In totality, a "functional anarchy."

Look at the strumpet-tongues

advancing of shameless leadership!

At the breaking of the backbones of

the people’s rights!

When the sparrow-headed bold

prints of black lies on the papers,

Challenge the hero in me called

Reason,

With conspiracy false,

Then redden hot my cheeks, my

friend,

And their colour is up.

when the unsophisticated folk quaff

off black poison with their ears

Taking it for ambrosia,

And that before my eyes, my friend,

Then every hair rises on end,

Like the serpent-tresses of the

Gorgons,

All this seems to make the poet mad while carrying on in a disoriented type of sensibility. The situation then seems to be similar to what we are experiencing now in a changed endemic social crisis precipitated by a mutilated democracy harbouring greed, corruption and betrayal. This poem perhaps accentuates the political revolution within the poet himself for far-reaching social changes. The political change of 1951 was decapitated to uphold the dignity and the aspirations it carried.

When I see the tiger pouncing upon

the innocent deer,

Or the big fish after the smaller ones,

Then even into my corroded bones,

my friend,

The terrible strength of the soul of

Dadhichi—the sage,

Enters and seeks utterance.

The form of human alienation that the poet is able to manifest through lyrical interludes is superb and, as such, underscores the political undercurrent of his thinking. He celebrates Rousseau’s ‘ Common Man’ like perhaps in continuity with the Age of Enlightenment profusely reflected in the 18th century literary extravaganza.

To him, every human being is equal. And, the moment man refuses to recognize a human being as a human being, then the anger in him builds up massive pressure to form a lunatic energy devastating given realities into an unknown realm. To this end, the poet uses abundantly the time-honoured metaphors and classical allusions.

When man regards a man as no man,

Then gnash my teeth and grind my

jaws, set with the two and thirty teeth,

Like Bhimsen’s teeth, the terror-

striking hero’s,

And then,

Rolling round my fury-red-headed

eyeballs,

With an inscrutable sweep,

I look at this inhuman human world

Like a tongue of fire.

The lyrical output increases with successive increase in the intensity of this emotion and reaches a point when the poet is almost violently tearing apart what exists for a new social order.

My breath swells into a storm,

Distorted is my face,

My brain is in a blaze, Like a wild

conflagration.

I am infuriated like a forest fire,

Frenzied, my friend,

The dichotomous relationship that the poet has established between the lunatic and the normal for the purpose of total defiance seems to be something like conscious and unconscious classification of the same mind where the conscious mind works as a two-way transmission of the emotional thrust finally launched through the unconscious mind. The massive energy needed to level up disparities can be had only when a collective emotion changes into lunatic energy for the specific purpose of launching the upthrust, disarming human rationality bordering onto timidity. A battle is won only when you first win it inside you.

The conflagration, thus, would reduce the existing citadel of exploitation by the few against the welfare of many into rubble so that a robust infrastructure of a new social order could be built. But he shows no intention to go further in an effort of theorizing the process and the type of change involved like the way Karl Marx did. True to a great poet, he limits himself to the lunatic energy which, in itself, is a revolution. This is more so because the poet rejects the tradition, both social in terms of setting and classical in terms of writing, and, thus, derives his spontaneity emanating from romanticism to express the deep emotions of a rebellious outcast, who has the clear eyed vision to see life steadily and whole.

(Based on a paper presented at the 13th Annual Conference of Literary Association of Nepal held recently in Kathmandu)

Role of HIV/NGOs and micro finance in early coping

By Bishal Bhakta Kasu

Having caused havoc in Africa, the distribution of the HIV/AIDS infection is shifting toward Asia, especially to South Asia and Asia pacific region a the fastest rate. Over the last few years, almost every country of this region has reported cases of HIV and AIDS. Nepal too has not been spared and is already handicapped with the diseases. The National Centre for AIDS and STD Control (NCASC), Teku, has reported that the number of HIV positive people has risen up to 1,703. Out of the total, 415 have already developed AIDS and 140 deaths have been recorded. Among the infected, most are from the economically productive age group. But informal sources, working in this sector believes that the recorded data is the just the tip of the iceberg. They claim that between 30000-40000 Nepalese are now living with HIV.

Nepal is very vulnerable as it has all the ingredients necessary for the spread of the virus. In addition, the prevalence of poverty provides a fertile breeding ground for the spread of HIV. Many people migrate within and outside the country for employment. They often do not have access to information and early treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Women and children in the poor communities are particularly vulnerable. In the Nepalese context, they have little power to resist involvement in commercial sex because of their poor socio-economic status. The high incidence of girl-trafficking in some parts of the country and the return of the girls further compound the situation. The increasing number of Drug Users, particularly the Injectable Drug Users (IDU) and the high HIV prevalence among the IDUs, is another serious threat to our society.

Impact of HIV/AIDS: The impact of HIV/AIDS is beyond our imagination. It directly affects individuals who contract HIV but ultimately their households and community will be also severely affected by the disease. The individual will suffer with AIDS related illnesses and finally, death. Its consequences are exponential. It erodes the resources of immediate and extended families as they try to cover multiple hospital trips and medical expenses. This could compel them to sell productive assets such as land, domestic animals, equipments or fixed capital from their business. Ultimately, it seriously hits the household safety net.

Families that must care for a HIV victim member often confront dwindling monetary resources that would otherwise be used to cover basic necessities or to invest in children’s education and social security. And when AIDS claims the lives of people, who are in their most productive years, grieving orphans and elderly must cope with the sudden loss of financial support, communities must bear the burden of caring for those left behind, and countries must rely on a diminishing pool of trained and talented workers.

Micro-finance sector in Nepal: Micro finance can improve economic status of its clients and is one of the few successful development interventions that show potential for doing so in a cost-effective manner. It helps its clients both in business as well as at the household level. On the enterprise level, access to credit enables businesses to survive crises. At the household level, it helps clients maintain or increase income, provide opportunity for savings that are secure, easy to liquidate quickly, reduce vulnerability to loss, enable to avoid irreversible coping strategies that destroy future income earning and productive capacity.

Another aspect of micro finance is related to helping families build and maintain their assets and remain economically productive. In poor households, with the capacity to carry out small income earning activities, micro finance can help smooth out their income flow, increase food security and help cover school and health expenses.

The demand for micro financial support is very high in Nepal. The Nepal Rural credit Review of 1994 showed that out of the total financial requirement of rural households for production purposes, only 10.4% was met by institutional sources (banks, businesses and micro-finance institutions) in 1991-92. And it was estimated that by 1997, institutional sources could meet 20% of the requirement. The report estimated the demand for credit at Rs 4359 million for 1996-97 and that for 2001-02 at Rs.8434 million.

The need for financial services to the poor including micro-credit, micro-savings and micro-insurance services, prompted many NGOs, HMG and Banks to offer financial services in formal and informal ways. Since the poor cannot offer any collateral for accessing loans, solidarity groups and self-help groups can help provide micro -finance service to the poor in a more efficient way.

The formal financial sector providing micro-finance services through the mandated government programmes include the Nepal Rashtra Bank, Agricultural Development Bank of Nepal, Nepal Bank Ltd, Rashtriya Banijya Bank and the regional rural development banks. It was estimated that in 1991-92 only 8 percent of the rural households borrowed from the formal institutional sources. This shows that the credit access through formal institutions is limited. Whereas the informal sector, consisting of moneylenders, Dhikutis, Dharma Bhakari and Guthis met this demand by 24.5 percent in 1991-92.

NGOs, supported by donor agencies, have released funds mainly for promotional, training and operational expenses. Some of the NGOs also mobilise revolving funds to lend the clients. Only a very few NGOs have received loan funds from commercial banks. A large number of saving and credit cooperatives, promoted by NGOs and INGOs in villages, basically rely on their own savings for their credit needs. The government and development banks support Micro Finance programmes and link the Saving Credit Organizations (SCOs) to Banks, ensuring credit flow to rural areas. In spite of these efforts, there is a great need for additional credit flow to the existing clientele and expanding the outreach to more new clients in rural Nepal. There are many banks and financial institutions, which provide capital for lending, but these are not fully explored and utilised by NGO intermediaries and saving and credit cooperatives.

Nepal’s initiative: Nepal must realize that it is time to address the problem so that we do not repeat the same story as that of other countries where AIDS has already caused a great loss of hard earned social and human capital.

The current Ninth Plan and the subsequent HIV/AIDS prevention policy developed by the government have emphasized the need for multisectoral response to minimize the socio-economic impacts of this epidemic. To address this national issue, the National Planning Commission is keen to see the concentrated and integrated efforts of all the concerned, including NGOs, private sector and donor communities.

The Ministry of Health of His Majesty’s government has prepared a strategic plan to face the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS epidemic. The gist of the national policy on AIDS and STD control is as follows:

* HMG will give high priority to HIV/AIDS prevention programme

HIV/AIDS and STD prevention activities will be conducted as a multisectoral programme

* HIV/AIDS and STD prevention activities will be implemented on the basis of decentralization at village, district and regional level

* HIV/AIDS and STD prevention activities will be implemented through both governmental and non-governmental sectors

* Prevention activities will be integrated with other programmes both in governmental and non-governmental sectors

* Prevention activities will be coordinated, followed up and evaluated regularly in both governmental and non-governmental sectors

* Safer sexual behaviour will be promoted

* Counselling and other services will be provided to people with HIV/AIDS

* Discrimination on the basis of HIV status will be discouraged.

• Results of the blood test carried out for AIDS and STD prevention programme will be kept confidential.

• District road plan