Sixty-sixth page of ‘Blue Mimosa’

"For the first time in my life" said well-known Nepali poet Bimal Nibha at Kavi Kuna, the Poets’ Corner of New Road. "First time I feel sorry for not having made a mistake in my life."

Everyone laughed. I was alluding to an issue of ‘Granta’, in which British novelist Julian Barnes discusses Cambridge Professor Christopher Rick’s lecture on "Mistakes in Literature and whether they Matter". Barne begins with the sentence, "Let me tell you why I hate critics." And moves ahead to describe case of a myopic critic who lambastes Flaubert for first giving brown eyes to Emma Bovary, then some pages on giving her deep brown eyes and again on another occasion giving blue eyes to the same character. Barne opines that lay readers have an advantage over professional critics— they are not cursed with memory of what they teach and consequently do not develop a patronizing tone towards literature. The lay readers can immerse themselves without getting distracted by petty inconsistencies like that Flaubert’s heroine’s rainbow colored eyes.

World literature is riddled with such mistakes. In "Lord of the Flies" in the famous scene where Piggy’s spectacles are used for the rediscovery of fire, William Golding has his optic all wrong, completely back to front. Being short sighted, Piggy’s prescribed specks could not have been used to make the rays of the sun converge. In another example, Yevtushenko makes awful errors about American nightingales in one of his poems. And Pushkin was quite wrong about the sort of Military dress worn at the balls. John Wain was incorrect about the pilot who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima. Nabakov was surprisingly wrong about the phonetics of the name Lolita. The list can go on and on, bringing in the name of Coleridge, Yeats and Browning.

Barne discusses at length Tennyson’s example of "Charge of Light Bridge where poet wrote;" Into the valley of Death/Rode the six hundred". But the fact remains that Tennyson had first written, "Into the valley of Death/Rode the five hundred" and later as the newspaper reports came from Crimea and official figure was revised upwards, a few days later the ‘five hundred’ became "six hundred".

To Barne putting six hundred seventy five instead of six hundred is not a problem. But shakiness of Golding’s optics must be definitely put down as an error. But does it really matter? Prof. Ricks’ argument is if factual side of literature becomes unreliable then ploys such as irony and fantasy becomes much harder to see. In Golding’s case only oculists, opticians and Professors of English, believes Barne, world notice and it hardly matters. Such an error is like blowing up a small bomb with a controlled explosion. It is a trivial offense and would not set fire to other parts of the novel. Such an error merely shows a lack of specific technical knowledge on writer’s part. This is an external mistake and sin is forgivable. But ‘Madam Bovary’s case has to be understood as an internal mistake. It can only be put down to incompetence, and to sloppy literary habits.

Now Nepali literature is no exception so far as such errors, internal or external, are concerned. From Adikavi Bhanu Bhakta Acharya who gave wrong names to Lord Rama’s younger brothers’ wives in his ‘Ramayana’ and made comments like "Women shouldn’t laugh, prostitutes do," to Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Bal Krishna Sama and Bhim Nidhi Tiwari the reader can come across numerous examples of such errors. In Bhim Nidhi Tiwari’s "Shilanyas" the main character has three sons but as the drama progresses one of the sons is forgotten and never mentioned till the end. In Bal Krishna Sama’s Mutu Ko Vyatha, the heroine nostalgically recalls playing with the hero on a swing beneath a raspberry tree (Aishalu ko Rukh). Being a Kathmanduite Bal Krishna Sama never cared to check the size of the tree. Again, at another occasion a character recalls eating juicy mangoes of remote Himalayan district, Jumla. In Mahakavi Devkota’s case Madan coming back from Lhasa does not fall sick from cholera as Devkota wrongly imagines but he suffers from altitude sickness as Prof. Murari P Regmi pointed out few years ago. There can be no cholera at such a height. Nepali linguist Madhav Pokhrel refers to an occasion in Mahakavi Devkota’s epic ‘Shakuntala’ where the heroine in leisure time is shown reciting bhajans (hymns) of Lord Krishna who chronologically appears on the scene of the scriptures much later. Krishna takes birth several generations later and in way can he be part of Shakuntala’s memory. Poet Krishna Bhakta Shrestha himself confesses of having incorrectly employed the Festival of "Luto Falne", the ritual of getting rid of scabies and other skin diseases, on Maghe Sankranti, instead of Saune Sankrante, the first day of the month of Shrawan in Nepali Calendar.

Banira Giri in ‘Jeevan: Thayamaru’ makes a female persona asking a male character to touch her throat’s Rudra Ghanti (which a teacher/translator puts as Adam’s Apple.) Now this is what Prof. Ricks means when he talks of unreliability of the factual side of literature. In Nepali society, women are generally looked down upon by some as "beings without a Rudra Ghanti", meaning unreliable and flippant. Now is Banira Giri using Rudra Ghanti as an assertion of a woman’s place in society or is she unaware of the cultural implications of the word? If she had this in mind, why didn’t she object to my translation of the same poem where I used the word throat only. Isn’t other translator’s use of the word Adam’s apple erroneous, because of the Biblical associations. Should he have used Eve’s larynx instead? This confusion between truth and reality can lead to a serious miscomprehension of the text, and the fire can spread to the rest of the text.

Mistakes of Bhanu Bhakta regarding interchanging Lord Rama’s brothers’ wives, or errors of Sama, Tiwari or Krishna Bhakta Shrestha are trivial offense and do not jeopardize the entire ethos of their works. Devkota’s use of cholera instead of altitude sickness is of similar type. But could his reference to Lord Krishna in Shakuntala’s memory be taken as sloppiness of literary habits. Or is it incompetence? Is it a controlled explosion in a room of the epic or does it do harm to the genius myth of the Mahakavi? I personally think no way it stops us from appreciating the beauty of his works.

But then there is another phenomenon we are unaware of. Only recently I have been told that sixty-sixth page of Parijat’s famous novel ‘Shirish Ko Fool’ (Blue Mimosa) has not been printed for last many years. To confirm the news I visited Sajha Prakashan and met my old friend and former editor of ‘Garima’, Mr Shankar Thapaliya who acknowledged the loss and showed the third edition in which sixty-sixth page existed. Mr Thapaliya, himself a short story writer, looked very concerned and promised to carry the page into the next, this time twelfth, edition of the Book. The last page of the book is very crucial; it refers to Shiva Raj’s resolve of not committing suicide and last line of the page is central to Parijat’s much talked about nihilism. "I shall be living in a meaningless world and from now on I shall always accept that I am living in a Maha Sunya, a Void. ‘Blue Mimosa’ is most popular Nepali book and amazingly no one except that of a avid reader from Narayanghat, Uday Adhikary, noticed the fact that a page has been missing for many years. He phoned me from Narayanghat last week and I could hardly believe him. Blue Mimosa is being studied as textbook in several colleges and universities. Very clearly it show how careless and flippant our literary criticism is towards the text of Nepali literature. Bimal Nibha jokingly said he was sorry for not having made a mistake in his works. But I feel this is the mistake we all have made, the mistake of not carefully preserving the rare pages of the rarest books of our little known literatures.

Looks deceive

< By Shikshya Pandey <

Appearances are mostly quite deceiving that can make each hunch muddy. So today I no more prefer outlook to elegance.

 This is so amazing that someone so close to our heart could deceive us in such a way that the very imagination thrills our heart. And, same happened in my life. I had never encountered such a person who seems very good and innocent but in reality is a lurking serpent under our sleeves.

Well! This begins with the losing of my mathematics exercise book last October just before our exams. Later, after a month when finally the exams were over, I discovered it. And to my utmost surprise it was found under the mattress of my closest friend. But we all realised whose LOOKS DO DECIEVE.

Even today, it’s hard for me to believe that some people do really possess a destructive mind and embody an attitude to harm others without any specific reason. I am still surprised and stunned about the happening that is directly related to me and my friends. Last October ought to be remembered. This made me realise that one should not go for others’ appearance. Mattress the exercise book was found was not guilty and circumstances proved that she was tricked for the blame. That too, with complete dexterity and such a clean hand that I couldn’t blame anyone for this mischief. This incident had really broken my roommate’s heart and though not guilty she felt embarrassed and we all remained unstable for quite a long time. Our concentration to study was disturbed and that was what the culprit may have wanted. I was trying hard to forget everything. But one day when I came to know about the culprit, I was shocked and couldn’t believe my ears when some of my friends accused a girl on whom I trusted a lot. In fact I admired her a lot and we had been good friends ever since we were in the same hostel. They had suspected her on the basis of various repeated activities that she had committed before. The accused girl tried to divert my mind claiming that someone else was responsible for the deed. But then we gathered and compiled the proofs and put it in front of her. And she confessed her vice without much defence and shamelessly. It was in December last year, and it took us about three hours to get her confession.

 I couldn’t believe that someone so close to my heart with such a cute and innocent appearance can play with my feelings in such a way that today I can’t tolerate the sight of her. I neither had any conflict with her nor was there any rivalry or jealousy between us. Still I was her victim just for her appetite to harm others. Even today, I don’t hate her by appearance but I hate the way she thinks and possesses a conspiring instinct to harm others for no revenge and no reason. I am full of hatred for her malicious thinking, views and feelings.

So, I would like to conclude that it is not wise to make any opinion just by one’s appearance as it is like a diamond which catches our sight at once but if our tongue has the desire of tasting it, then instantly death will beckon us.

Caring for society

< By VINOD ADHIKARY <

Ahuman life is born to be selfish. You might not find any justifi-cations against this statement, but only in some exceptional cases it might not hold true for that some out of millions out there may be for others. Although it is true that all human beings are in one way or another unique, because they differ in perception, and if only perception of two different physical bodies were similar then what we would be seeing today would be all different, a civilized society or even the worst.

Selfishness is needless to search for, but it is difficult to find people who live for others, and the society addresses them by "social helper". By Social help I mean that help which does not have any personal benefit. If a person seeks personal benefit in the name of social help then I don’t doubt for it being a selfish task. When I think about existence of a social helper, my brother Dinesh strikes my mind.

It had been long my brother and I went out for shopping and today was the day, my brother and I went out for shopping at the New Roads, to get a backpack. I took my brother to a backpack stall which I often visited for getting one for myself, because these school bags didn’t really last long because of the loads of books we had to carry. I already had a variety tried, and there still existed one which could grab my eye on it. So this was the reason why I took my brother there. He looked at it but didn’t seem to pay much of attention, but started scanning for each of the other backpacks hung there, and I was there asking the price for the backpack of my choice. The vendor replied me with a six many hundreds. But I didn’t have that much of money, so I just nodded with a very pitiful face. I didn’t know that my brother was actually paying attention towards my eyes on that bag. I couldn’t believe that he asked the vendor to pack it. But I was surprised and happy as well when my brother handed me the bag saying "It’s yours, keep it". Well, I thanked him. We then went to other stores and looked for more Rucksacks but couldn’t really find the one of my brother’s choice. It was about noon and my brother had already started saying he was hungry. I replied saying, "Let’s find a restaurant, where we could eat."

"Okay then we’re out of here", he replied.

The shop was closed, I guess not opened yet. But there was a four-wheel shop right before where I wished to take my brother. My brother pointed to the shop and said lets go there and have a hot dog each. I agreed. We both headed for hot dog eateries, and asked the man at the counter to make us two hot, hot-dogs. He handed me the first one that he got made so soon but I handed it to my brother who was already dying of hunger. I can’t imagine how hungry he got by even just a couple of hours after our morning meal. He grabbed the hot dog and put the half of it into his mouth. I smiled pitifully. Suddenly, out of nowhere stood a man beside us, who looked like an average Nepali. He pointed at the buff sausages and asked if he could get it for the money he had in his hands, and that was only a half of what it cost. The vendor said, "No, you need more of that". The man damned silently, but he couldn’t get his eyes off my brother’s palm that held the spicy hot dog and the ketchup he had on them. My brother pointing at the man asked, "You want to have one?" symbolically. The man happily nodded "Yes". So my brother asked the vendor to get him one too. I just realized in myself that if I were at his place then I wouldn’t have done whatever my brother did, because I haven’t been able to earn a single rupee by myself, and spending twenty five rupees to a stranger is out of point. I asked him what he was doing, but my brother handed me the other hotdog that was just made. I handed it to the man and he enjoyed it. "One more" I asked the vendor. He replied, "Sorry no more hotdogs, we only have burgers", I was hungry as well so I accepted them too. Later on after I had gone half way through the burger, I handed them to my brother and asked him to have them because I knew he was hungrier than me. He took them, started chewing them and swallowing them. After we were done through our "Lunch", the man came to us smiling and asked my brother something that I couldn’t get by just moving his hands here and there. I figured that the man was deaf. He couldn’t speak as well. I felt sorry for him. He never stopped smiling and probably thanked my brother in his own way. After my brother completed his conversation with the man, we took off. On our way for a Ruck-Shack my brother explained how great it felt in giving. He also told me that he was on some sort of social service work, and also that he had donated some thousands to a group of poor beggars. He says that after his Masters he will get involved in some social service work somewhere in a poor country. I’m very grateful of having such a kind and a caring brother. Helping poor should be in mind of every single human in our planet, mostly a poor country like ours.

Valentine’s Day and Nepalese culture

< By TULASI BAHADUR KARKI <

What are your plans for Valentine’s Day?

· I’m having a romantic dinner with my honey.
· I’m exchanging gifts with my honey and calling it a day.
· I’m renting sad movies and eating a gallon of ice cream.
· Nothing, it’s just another day to me.

This is an excerpt of a mail I received when I opened my E-mail a few days ago. It wanted me to vote for one of the above options. It was forwarded to my address by a boy friend of mine, if a boy can have a boy friend, because I have not been fortunate enough to have a girl friend that the teenagers or the fresh adults boast of. If I understand correctly, this was sent by him either to tease me by implying, ‘Why are you still alone?’ or he himself might have felt humiliated to receive it because he too does not have any one to share this Valentine’s Day with. He was my friend from the school days and now at the late 20s he is not only a bachelor but also a real single like myself.

Please forgive me if you feel my arguments like an old man’s gossip about his already lost youthful days. But, really, there was a time in the past, not long before, when the teenager school children would hesitate even to talk to their classmates of other sex unless they were close neighbours or relatives. But the time is very strong. It changes the social milieu whether one likes it or not. These days, at least in the urban areas, we can find school children of both sexes walking around hand in hand. Does this signify that our belief and cultural standards, norms and habits are changing? Are we really being led towards more open society of the West?

I read an article published on the eve of February 14 last year, where the writer seemed very encouraged about the ‘effect of globalization’, that the timid Nepalese got chance to express their feelings on such occasions as the society ‘is being more open’. Such people may point to the instances of ‘increasing popularity’ of such occasions like the New Year’s Day or the St. Valentine’s Day or even the Christmas Day. When I visited Thamel on the eve of the new millennium, two years ago, I had also felt something like Nepalese people are also keen to receive that occasion with enthusiasm. At that time, weeks before the actual date, the pages of print media had started to be full of different news about the preparation of various renowned cities, round the globe, to greet the New Millennium. In the same run, Nepalese papers had also published many advertisements regarding offers of various star to non-star luxury and tourist standard hotels and discotheques calling people to celebrate the occasion luring them with attractive programmes. And they had got good number of visitors also.

New Year of the English calendar has approached twice after the millennium eve but there was no such significant festivity viewed on the latter occasions. The simple reason for this was the dwindling tourist arrival due to several causes such as the dreadful September 11 attack of 2001, Maoist insurgency and subsequent deployment of army in this peaceful Himalayan Kingdom and so on and so forth. This supports the arguments of some people that such ‘international’ festivals are celebrated here only targeting the tourists who often happen to be Christians.

While talking about the timidity of Nepalese people, I can claim that Nepalese culture is full of such occasions when one can express his or her gut openly. If you cross the boundary of Kathmandu valley, you may find people singing freely and whole-heartedly on different occasions for instance - dohori, rodi, bethi, mela, bazaar and many more such gatherings, which are solely the treasures of Nepali culture. Out of these, Dohori has now secured a prestigious position in the heart of Kathmanduites also. The terms sala, sali, soaltee, soaltini refer to special relationship for open love appeals, equivalent of which are rarely found in other languages and cultures. These are the ample proofs for the rich openness and intimacy that the Nepalese society is practicing from times immemorial to give vent to their sensual and emotional feelings.

People are more concerned these days, both in positive and negative sides, about the expression of the so-called love in the parks, restaurants and other public areas. Teenagers and new adults are more involved in pouring out their unrepressed inner feelings through these means, a bit in an uncanny way. It is a frenzy that can lead to many kinds of social evils, though love is never an evil in itself.

One does not need to disagree about the importance of the day, if it is just for the memory of the martyr who sacrificed his life for the sake of love, on this occasion. Banning the Valentine card exchange or any other activities as in Mumbai and Delhi last year by Shiva Sena may be an extreme measure. Equally extreme may be to highlight the occasion in the media as done by some FM radio stations of Kathmandu and even some programmes of the state-owned Nepal Television itself, because how far Nepalese people have adopted this culture can be evaluated by the low presence of common Nepalese youths in such spots where different hotels and discotheques have been offering special feasts for some years annually. It is not out of context to suggest the young enthusiasts that rather than blindly following the imported culture, it is better to think whether we can express our true feelings in our own way or not.