Dance of bejeweled snakes

By YUYUTSU R D SHARMA

It is the silence. Words can only ask the wrong question at the wrong time.
For silence is the only evidence left behind, strange solace for mankind.

(Jayanta Mahapatra)

On the Third Parents Day of Don Bosco School, there was nothing, I felt, that I could speak. Speechless, I stood before proud guardians of little angels. On seeing tiny little kids perform, sing songs of welcome, of an ant struggling to pull the load of a crumb of bread, or of a child waiting in the dark for his mother to come, scared of the black cat, my eyes grew moist. A thousand daffodils danced before my eyes. Of course, child is the father of man, I reiterated.

In the heat of this volatile moment could I unleash a string of complaints, as some of the Guardians would have wished me to? Someone on the stage read a Note from Dr. Tara Nath Sharma, who at the movement is in the United States. His Note very vividly evoked the question of roots. There has to be a fusion of Western Education and Eastern wisdom, it said. A school has to be a combination of a Pathshala, a Gurukul and Cyber Center. We need Buddha and Bill Gates, both of them in one I could add. And to the Minister what could I say– for the Minister for Education Rabindra Nath Khanal proudly disclosed the fact that he’s a humble disciple of Dr. Taranath Sharma and an ardent reader of my words and works. And to kind faces of teachers and friends, especially Kapil Regmi Pushpa Regmi, Vishnu Sapkota and others all I could do was to compliment then by saying just this: "Our children are in right hands".

I also told them what world famous South African poet Dennis Brutus has told me a few years ago at New Delhi World Book Fair: "I would love to stay more in the Subcontinent, and travel but I am afraid I have to be back home on Monday". And on asking if there was a emergency, he answered, "On Monday I have a class to take, my students would be waiting...."

Basic humility and modesty seem to be the hallmark of the best poets the world over.

That’s what poetry teaches us, to be humble, caring and kind. The majority of poets can’t boast of their merits, beat their own drums aloud or join the bandwagon of celebrities. They can’t pronounce shrill slogans, loud declarations and like snooty critics or bejeweled snakes can’t deliver seemingly profound and intricate discourses on obscurant theories, Post-modernism and Deconstruction.

How can I forget what years ago internationally acclaimed Indian English Poet Jayanta Mahapatra wrote in response to my request to come to Jaipur to release my second book of poems, Hunger of our Huddled Huts (1986). "Of course I would love to come", wrote Jayanta Da in his neatly written letter "Yuyutsu, how long shall I keep living for myself alone."

We fixed the release date and came to know Jayanta would be flying from Delhi. In fact, we issued a Press Release and early in the morning rushed to Airport to receive him. We waited for an hour or so, and since none of us had seen him in person, we had to come back home, without him.

We reached home and found a note from Jayanta waiting for us. My tall, longhaired Punjabi landlady seemed exultant. "Your guest came in such a ‘Lambi’ car. He’s staying at the Five Star Man Singh Palace".

Later we came to know that Oriyan Chief Minister’s son remained Jayanta’s childhood buddy. Jayanta had missed his flight because his friend had offered a free ride.

Next morning Jayanta had moved over to our little apartment and we took to the streets, and Thadis, tea stall joints outside the Rajasthan University to introduce him to our literary circle. The release was the day after.

Jayanta Mahapatra is possibly the best known and most widely published Indian poet in the world. Winner of several American and Indian Awards, including Jacob Glastein Award of Chicago’s famous Poetry magazine and Sahitya Academy, Jayanta in the eighties emerged as an icon for poets all over the world. It’s important to notice that Jayanta taught Physics till he was forty and started writing in his late forties. He began his creative career at stage when generally poets think they have written the best they could. The way Jayanta emerged on the world’s literary scene came as surprise to most of the Indian poets. I first read his poetry in the Hudson Review in the USIS center then located at New Road. Those days any magazine you picked up — be it Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review, New Letters, New York Quarterly, Times Literary Supplement or the Illustrated Weekly of India, it had Jayanta Mahapatra in it. And amazing fact remained that Jayanta had not even once moved out of his small town Cuttack in Orissa.

We edited his book in the Nirala Series at a time when none of the multinationals had arrived or made their impact on the literary scene. Penguin India, Picador India, Harper’s Collins, Eastern Wily are the phenomena of the Nineties. I think with their emergence on the literary scene Poetry has been sidelined. None of the leading publishers at the moment is publishing or promoting poetry. Even Jayanta Da and Keki N Daruwallah have started publishing fiction. Keki N Daruwallah is working on a novel, he told me recently. "Poetry doesn’t sell" Jayanta had written to us as he had sent his manuscript of poems on Punjab’s communal crisis and Bhopal’s Gas tragedy, which later we published, as Dispossessed Nests: The 1984 Poems. But enigmatically Jayanta’s poetry sells; in a year’s time we could sell all the copies we published:-

Somewhere a dance of bejeweled

snakes

blinds two impoverished eyes,
somewhere the iron bars uselessly

shake the earth for the man who’s been too long in prison.

Next morning we escorted Jayanta to Rajasthan University Senate Hall to release my book Hunger. To everyone’s surprise, Jayanta Da had nothing very dramatic or spectacular to say about the book he released or about poetry in general.

Jayanta is a man of few words. Several University teachers and research scholars were present there. They had come to listen to India’s best known Indian English poet and some of them were doing their doctoral dissertations on his works.

Jayanta spoke in a low voice, murmur of a distant brook, "Something is always happening in Yuyutsu’s poetry", he began, "Something like a burning concern for truth. For this, we owe Yuyutsu much." He spoke hardly five to six lines, then recited two of the poems from the Hunger and a few of his own.

It might have been a frustrating experience from information hungry theorists who sat on the edge of the chairs holding their moth-eaten text books, notepads and obdurate pens. But I think four or five lines that Jayanta Da uttered were a rewarding experience. And more rewarding was the fact that he had come all the way from Cuttack, Orissa, to read two of my poems and to release Hunger of our Huddled Huts:

Waterfalls squirm
with their quality of patience,
of timelessness
Here
I do not know
What I am looking for.

(Dispossessed Nests. p. 20)

Rosa Koirala A truly great person

By Niranjan Koirala 

There are two types of great people. One that is aware of their greatness and the other that are oblivious of it. My aunt Rosa , wife of the late Tarini Koirala, the celebrated Nepali literary figure, belonged to the latter category. We affectionately called her Mua. She did not touch the lives of innumerable people as many great people do, but the few people whose lives she touched she touched deeply. I was one of them. When I got the news of her passing away early this morning, I did not react with shock or profound sadness as one is wont to do when someone who touches your life so deeply is no more. I received it with a calmness that I really did not understand but seemed quite natural. All I wanted to know was whether she had experienced pain during her last moment. She had not. I silently thanked God for it. That seemed like how it should have been.

I truly got to know her from close during the politically disturbed times of the 60s.

Then King had dissolved the parliament and all the major political figures of the country had been put in prison. Among them was her husband Tarini, along with almost all adult members of her family- male and female. Mua was the only one who was free. It was she who took the responsibility of looking after them during their six-year prison term. She did it quietly and resolutely. Day in and day out. Without complaints. The family members were in three different jails. B.P. in Sundarijal, her husband and Girija in Nakkhu and her sister-in-law Nona and others in the women’s’ section of the central jail. For six years Mua was the lifeline of these people with the outside world. It was her job to carry food, books, newspapers and other necessary items of survival in prison. And she also coded political messages that were sent through her. There were various ways of sending these messages. One required the painstaking task of dotting appropriate words in a thick book. You had to go through the whole book very carefully to get the whole message.

I still remember Mua going through thick books late at night trying to decode messages that were sent to her from prison for onward transmission to the Nepali Congress party’s headquarters in Calcutta. There were other tricks too that Mua taught me. One involved writing with a matchstick dipped in lemon juice. It was invisible. You had to put the paper over candlelight to make the words visible again! Rain or shine, she did not miss one appointment date with her relatives in prison. I was staying with her in Bhosikotole during those days and accompanied her on many of those visits to prison.

Often times, I would get weary and made excuses of illness or college work to avoid the repetitive and uninteresting task of going to prison. On many such occasions Mua would be left alone to carry provisions to prison. She had to take the bus to Jawalakhel and then walk for about a mile to Nakkhu jail to meet her family members. I would feel guilty but just could not do it. Not Mua. She never missed a day. One day I asked her why she never got sick. She told me she had no time to get sick. She had work to do. That was about 40 years ago. Last week I was told she was sick. She did not disturb anyone. She was brought to a hospital in Kathmandu where she passed away peacefully. That’s a great person to me.

Horror of Holi

By GANESH KHANIYA 

Holi, the festival of colour, is all set to embrace all and sundry in its festive colour. This festival is believed to add vigour to a mundane life. According to the Hindu mythology, the advent of Holi festival is associated with many events. Be it the celebration of the burning of Holika or the death of Putana or any other myth, it celebrates the triumph of good over the evil.

Coming to these days, Holi has completely lost its natural fragrance. Ironically, evil factors are gaining ground today. Throwing water-filled balloons at unsuspecting passers-by is a wretched practice. Understandably, in this parched city where clean drinking water is scarce, the unruly revelers use filthy water to fill the balloons. To add to the woes, adulterated colours are used.

Young women are mostly at the receiving end of such horrible acts. They are so terrified that they don’t dare to venture out of their homes even weeks before Holi. Some of them are bound to remain within home even if that means missing their important works outside. Wayward revelers are running amok like an untamed bull. Seeking momentary pleasure by inflicting pain on others is nothing but sadism.

Many schools and colleges are bound to remain closed prior to a week or so. Sometimes intoxicated Holi revelers trigger riots, too

Those were the days when people used to celebrate Holi whole-heartedly, forgetting animosity or other unpleasant things in their locality. But there is an entirely different situation nowadays. Holi is played with the sole purpose of venting out their animosity and humiliating others.

We should observe Holi but in a decent manner. We shouldn’t adulterate our rituals. Splashing the pedestrians with colored water long before the day of Holi is a gruesome practice. Such a tendency should be discouraged.

Parents, teachers and other guardians can play a crucial role in taming the unruly revelers. Security personnel should also bolster surveillance to round up the miscreants. Unless we do something to bring about positive changes, this pious occasion will become a horror. So, let’s defy the unholy practices of Holi and join hands to discourage the evil doers. Let’s keep the age-old legacy intact by celebrating it only on the day of Holi and within our own territory.

Popular deities revisited

Here’s a book which outlines popular deities, emblems and images of Nepal. That, incidentally, is the tile of the book by a dogged writer Dhruba K Deep, a popular name among cultural and tourism aficianados for several years now. The book, coming as it does from Nirala, is a worthy effort insofar as it is well edited and has all the elements of the book of the genre.

The book is an exhaustive list of popular deities in the annals of the country’s religious history. In what is expected from such efforts, it begins by evoking Lord Ganesha and outlines the importance of the elephant-headed god in a cascading style. There there is Kumara, followed by all the known and unknown gods and goddesses in the Hindu pantheon of gods and goddesses. The importance of the book lies in the fact that it delves deep into certain aspects of the presiding deities something which is not forthcoming in other books of the same genre.

(Reviewed by DL)

On the streets

By RAJNI KC 

"We must move Children to the center of the world’s agenda. We must rewrit strategies to reduce poverty so that investments in children are given priority" said, Nelson Mandela.

And yet, sadly, each day reports on child abuse, harassment, drug taking, and numerous other crimes involving children are featured in the newspapers. However these issues and reports on most occasions are purely theoretical, lacking in-depth research and forgotten after one-time reading.

Among Street Children in the Kathmandu Valley, though may be an addition to the studies already carried out, is a 60-page book that gives a reader a comprehensive picture with facts and figures. The book is an effort of Sumnima Tuladhar and Pooja Shrestha, who are currently working at CWIN, a non-governmental organisation fighting for the rights of children, along with Abinash Rai and Keshab Prasad Ghimire who were part of a Research Team. The book incorporates and mentions where relevant, earlier important studies carried
out to create an information base for further campaign strategies against glue sniffing.

The book has been compiled after detailed survey done with distribution of questionnaires, street visits, and focus group discussions with the street children, and consultation with various organizations and experts. From these consultations it was found that street children almost exclusively used the industrial glue called Dendrite for sniffing and therefore the entire book focuses on glue sniffing. The book highlights prevalence of glue sniffing, reasons why street children get into glue sniffing, its effects along with case profiles.

The first chapter gives the profile of the 118 sample, selected from the popular habitation sites for children –Jawalakhel, Pashupati Temple area, New Bus Park, Kupondol, Baneshwor and Bishnumati.

Besides distribution of children according to age, findings regarding distribution of children on the basis of contact with family, with whom did the children leave home and the reasons have been given in this chapter. As can be predicted by all, the book mentions that majority of the children work as rag pickers, collecting and selling plastic and metal scraps at the junkyards while many others depend on begging in the market or tourist places. Among several problems mentioned and faced by the children food deprivation/hunger and abuse/exploitation are the top most problems they face on the streets.

A significant difference mentioned which compels the reader to sit back and ponder are the two different categories in which the street children have been divided into: Children of the street and Children on the street. The former being children who work and live on the streets and latter being children who work on the streets and usually live with their families.

The third chapter has been completely dedicated to glue sniffing and deals with prevalence of glue sniffing, techniques used, groups with whom the children use glue, influence for using glue, reasons for use along with frequency which is indeed alarming.

An aspect where the book differs from others is the way writers have mentioned the harmful effect of sniffing on the brain and the nervous system detailing its effect on each and every part of the body. For this the writers have consulted doctors and resorted to secondary data.

With the case profile of five street children who describe their horrendous fact and pathetic situation about their self-dependent life, the writers are able to ring a bell in the heart of the reader.

The book has also dedicated an entire chapter to organizations and rehabilitation centers and mentions their contributions.

The importance of participatory approach has been understood and the stakeholders have eventually been brought on paper citing their recommendations to pave the way ahead for them. The writers too have given their six valuable recommendations and outlined further course of action not only to raise awareness on glue sniffing but also to try and curb it altogether.

A limitation of the book, which the writers themselves have realized, is the non-inclusion of street girls in their survey. Although emphasis on certain key issues may be necessary, the book has many repetitions but few inadvertent errors.

So, If you get annoyed when a street child touches your feet, adamantly cleans your vehicle or follows you begging for money I suggest you try and get hold of this informative book which will help you give to him/her something priceless, something he/she is craving for—your understanding.

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