FORUM (Spotlight Weekly)

Little Literatures, Great Dreams

By YUYUTSU R. D. SHARMA

Last fortnight at a poetry reading that we have at a roadside restaurant at the heart of Kathmandu every first Saturday of the month, a young journalist from a Nepali weekly asked me a rather awkward question: What do you think is the future of Nepali literature?

A silence spread at the readings. I repeated the question in the quiet spaces of my mind. The idea of little literatures and great dreams that a Yugoslav poet had lately proposed came to my mind. I wondered, could the great dreams of these little literatures ever get realized?

For the making of these little literatures has been part of the making of these little nations. Right from the times of Bhanubhakta Acharya, who wrote the Ramayana in Nepali and gave birth to the literary horizon of Nepal, to the turbulent times of Gopal Prasad Rimal who gathered his fellow poets and activists in temples and public squares to read poems/hymns of protest against despotic rulers, the poets in Nepal have meaningfully written the script of a poet's role in autocratic societies.

The vibrant tradition that Rimal initiated influenced not only his contemporaries like Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Siddhicharan Shrestha and Balkrishna Sama but also generations that followed, including Bhupi Sherchan, Parijat, Basu Shashi, Poshan Pande, Krishna Bhakta Shrestha, Shailendra Sakar, Manjul, Krishna Bhushan Bal, Bimal Nibha and even several younger poets writing today. Regardless of political differences, these poets have launched several movements like Amlekh, Boot Polish, Sadak Kavita, Movement of Discarded Communities and Ralfa, among others, that made them take active part in the socio-political set-up and culminated in the 1990 democratic upsurge establishing the present political system. Thus, Nepal's literary life has been vehemently built on the idea that poetry can "make things happen". As evident in the past, the poets who tried to join the despotic regimes or tried to raise obscurantist or quasi-western movements have been either marginalized or have stopped writing or have been dropped out from the body of Nepali literature by younger generations.

But today the scene is different. After decades of dialogue with undemocratic, despotic regimes, Nepali poetry has come to confront a bigger opponent ó the multinational market as a touchstone of its authenticity. In the first decade of the new millennium, as the debate on the impact of globalization is raging, as multinational publishers continue to bombard the minds of these writers with much orchestrated networks, the question of survival and future of these little literatures has become more intriguing than ever before. So far, each poet writing in Nepali has listened to the authenticity of his/her own voice and hoped its sheer honesty, its distinct fresh cultural colors will win the hearts of the world. Nepali literature has a long history of writing for an audience that has been won over by these writers over the centuries. But now the same voice that they have mastered after their grandpoets, the voice whose traditions go back to Sanskrit poets or oral traditions of Buddhist literature and the influence of Bhakti and Sufi poets has to adopt itself to the voice and demand of the new world order of cyberspace and success-story network of the multinational markets.

In India and elsewhere, experience shows that the classics of these little literatures didn't make much difference, even after they joined the rat race of the market. Indian classic Premchand's "Godan" and other works in English translation didn't do so well as compared to works by a novice picked up randomly by a multinational publisher. The advance royalty and the senseless media furor made such a glaring difference that great classics of the Indian subcontinent were left licking the dust of the streets and pavements of Daryaganj.

Recently a poet from Hungary at a Sahitya Academy reading mentioned that all they had known back home of Indian literature remained the Ramayana, the Bhagavad Gita, Rabindranath Tagore and Arundhati Roy. The awkward space between the Bhagavad Gita and Arundhati Roy is the space where little literatures lie languishing for their dreams to be realized, for the world to listen to their voices. Instead, come novice snobs from rich families with Western backgrounds to blame them for their shoddy editing or populist motifs. The way the voice of these little literatures has come under the shadows of multinational English blockbusters is a phenomenon to watch. What would become of the world after globalization has had its grinding march is yet to become clear. At the moment the skeptics' demi-god remains Chomsky's much flouted talk of corporate tyranny behind these big houses. Every year, the skeptics believe, an icon is built, encashed and forgotten only to discover a newer sensation, a fresher genius of the year. Milan Kundera and V. S. Naipaul's prediction that best writing will come out of the fresher societies narrated by Asian or Latin American authors is the guiding ideology. Each year, believe the skeptics, they startle us with their advance royalties, claiming the sale of millions of copies, exploiting their well-knit infrastructure ó Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri ó the list is endless.

Of course, the flood of this new writing that this icon building has triggered is welcome with the hope that out of all this turbulent commotion one day a great classic, a "War and Peace" or a "One Hundred Years of Solitude" would come. But the impact it has in belittling the little literatures is horrendous. And there is always a fear that these novice multinational first timers tuned to the demands of Western readers and ruthless copy-editing and glamour-greed might be representing/misrepresenting the little literatures they are advertised to belong to. And secondly, over the years it might get a blunt dismissal like Rushdie's who a few years ago announced that regional writing of the Indian subcontinent has not been able to produce works of enduring value and everlasting appeal.

(Yuyutsu R. D. Sharma has published three poetry collections and recently brought out a collection of Nepali poetry in English. He edits Pratik, a literary magazine).