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…To hell with poetry, with memories, &nbsp;
with my mother’s food- maybe not my mother’s biryani-&nbsp;
To hell the memory of turning nineteen&nbsp;
in quarantine. To hell with waiting. To hell
with this poem. To hell with how long.
(<a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-115260978/359-cooking-by-mukahang-limbu">Mukahang Limbu</a>)
Your friend sends you half a poem by <a href="https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poets/mukahang-limbu/" target="_blank">Mukahang Limbu</a>, with a note at the bottom: Found this gem online and thought to share with you. You go back and read it a couple more times, the way you do with poetry that reaches into you to touch certain chords and you instantly know you’ve found a place to go to.&nbsp;
But home can also be just a memory and you find out why as you read When I first came from Nepal by Limbu:
Missing the feeling of home&nbsp;
I smell the iron rust
of the Municipal Gardens.
The sour tang of home still sits&nbsp;
on the tip of my tongue&nbsp;
like the zest of sweet citrus fizzing.
There are nights when you turn to poetry for reprieve. The world closes in upon you sometimes and sometimes pushes you away, leaving you on the fringes, staring at the inner circle, where you feel you do not belong.
You discuss the imposter syndrome with your friend. What can one really do to become authentic in a world that constantly tests? Often, there is only so much to do. Perhaps it is to be and to live as you are and bare yourself to the core, even between strangers.
<a href="https://www.voicedairy.com/spoken-word">Deepa Bohora</a> beams at the sight of you, asks you your name and smiles as though you are not a stranger but an old friend. She instantly engages with you in conversation about her childhood, about her struggle with Lupus.
“It is poetry that salvaged me. And Yukta Didi, who showed me that I could also write poetry,” she says of Yukta Bajracharya, poet and writer.
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As you navigate a busy street in Patan together, Bohora tells you about her father’s work in India and about a fan that was her friend when she was a child. And there is that poem she narrates, about this fan. The fan.
The fan is her friend. But in her poem, she becomes a friend to the fan. The fan goes on to tell us the story of the little girl with Lupus, strung in her own metaphor of healing. The device, which has been sitting in her house for years, gathering dust, warped with spider web, becomes a symbol of her own yearning to recover.
When the fan is repaired and once again starts spinning off cool air, Bohora writes a second installment about its restoration. And as the fan rises from its ashes to become a device of use again, what we really see is Bohora’s recovery.&nbsp;
“I write poetry because I like to tell stories. There are so many stories in me and in the people around me. That’s why I write poetry,” says Bohora. But poetry comes to her like a song, like the humming of the fan on a hot summer’s day in Surkhet, so she becomes the little girl again, who runs around her village telling everyone the fan has been fixed.
That healing she finds in poetry is shared experience for many. “They say we are all poets at least once in our lives. And that is when the heart breaks,” says Saras Chari. He says he started writing poetry as a form of expression away from a childhood scarred by bullies.
“First it was that, and then at some point, I realised that I had some talent, but as I grew older, I realised it was my only talent. And so I write to see where I fit in this society and to talk about issues that are misinterpreted,” says Chari.
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When a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/peaceful-physically-distanced-protests/" target="_blank">series of anti-government protests</a> were staged in Kathmandu in 2020, Chari noticed how at each one of those events, the public was pitted against the government security personnel. “They’re not our foes. They’re one of us. Their families are one of us. But when they’re out there, defending the line, they become the ones who stand against us. And in that, they’re oppressed by the government, while being tasked at oppressing us,” says Chari.
And so his poem, Pyadha, traverses the minds of traffic police, police and soldiers:
Those toes locked inside boots bleed, too,
They get sucked on by leeches and
They yearn for the feel of the grass…
(translated from Pyadha)
&nbsp;“Look at how many ways poetry has been used in history,” Chari says. “Poetry was taught to us by pundits to propagate religions. Poetry was used to teach, but also to control. It has also been the medium for expressing love, just as much as it has been used to stir rebellion. Poetry is powerful,” says Chari.
Anand Vijay Gurung, who sits in the audience as Chari performs his verse on stage says that poetry serves its own purpose. “Or wait, why must it even serve a purpose? That’s a difficult question to answer. If a piece of poetry inspired you to feel more intensely, it has served its purpose,” says Gurung, who likes to think of poetry as a word game. And so in his poem, We Are All Migrants, he writes:
…to navigate their way in a world and find
The elusive perfect nest
etched in their mental maps.
“Poetry is pretty much everyone’s game,” says Chari. Like Deepa Bohora, he too found a community in <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Review-from-the-page-to-the-stage,593" target="_blank">the Word Warriors</a>, a spoken word poetry group. And while Gurung calls writing a lonely task, Slam poets like Bohora and Chari have formed their own circles where poets come together to write and perform.
Chari and his friends Prakash Zimba, Rupesh Bhattarai and Shuvangi Khadka perform together under the name, <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Finstagram.com%2Fkavindrapur%3Figshid%3D16dc04x37mx12%26fbclid%3DIwAR0ODA8yTZBhHrFb4mDQXWyuTGANf04wl47UtkeeXhUMfXYrbaqfhdMyG2A&amp;h=AT2gylLtbTPg2QgDfSfe3jOP_z3o2IwdJ-yQvnn-hAhN4_ue4tA2asN8zbjw06-pJ9a8kCnD1cSi8qxEOy3QoDxQJJ1s4uPHlW8nn8UO2pq9D-n4CrO61UUIryNapDw0LA1iB8Q0pxA" target="_blank">Kavindrapur</a>, in memory of the &nbsp;forgotten poets that frequented a sattal rest house next to Kastamandap, during the reign of Pratap Malla.
The king was the patron of the poets. And there in a rest house in the heart of old Kathmandu, the streets would reverberate with verses as poets wove a mesh with their words. It is this memory that has been created into a legacy by the young poets, even as they struggle with other challenges of being poet.
“Poet, but paid” is painted in white on the black tee shirt Chari wears. “We get invited to events, often to perform or to judge, but no one cares to pay for our time or expression. Poetry is not respected,” Chari expresses his frustration.
And his sentiment is seconded by Gurung: “Nepali society respects writers and poets but there is no support system to serve that vocation. There is no reward monetarily and often, poets pay for their own books to be published.”
Gurung’s anthology of poetry, Dandelion Snow was published in 2020, and most of the people who bought his books have been friends. Poetry books are published with the expectancy of a prolonged shelf-life, he says.
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And yet that does not deter the courage of Bohora, who hopes someday to pull together a book of her poems. “That’s the dream, I’ve been carrying. Someday, I’d like to do a book of my own,” she says. “My words have done what my father’s sweat hasn’t.”
When the likes of Rupi Kaur and Nayyira Waheed stormed Instagram’s little boxes with their anecdotes, poetry appeared to have found a new platform for revival. While it has also given birth to debates about what really is poetry, then, if it can be dashed off in incomplete sentences and expressions.
“At least it’s helped other poets see, that it is possible to sell,” says Gurung.
In Kathmandu, a surge in performance poetry was seen in the last decade with Word Warriors performing at different events, raising pertinent personal and political questions, while also creating space for young writers to form their own groups.
But poetry has also been used to challenge. In the recent anti-government protests, the crowd cheered as Sapna Sanjeevani recited: Ab hum Sita Nai Banbo, refusing to the submission that Sita had to adhere to. And it is a sentiment that resonates with many women writers of the decade.
My country cries over&nbsp;
burnt flags,
borders,
the birth lore of gods,
not the bodies of desecrated dead girls;
My country says I am a Goddess.&nbsp;
Neha Rayamajhi's a poem published in <a href="https://lalitmag.com/my-country-loves-me/">LaLit magazine</a> is steeped in sadness and anger. There is sarcasm. There is mostly protest in her words:
My country asks me&nbsp;
for my father’s name.
Men who are dead,
or have become ghosts
they own me more than the women who birth me:
My country asks me to love this motherland.
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“Writing poetry is creating something beautiful out of sometimes messy and ugly emotions. It also means clamining and reclaiming power from those experiences,” says Rayamajhi.
Her words are representative of the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/everyday-as-if-it-is-womens-day/" target="_blank">new generation of Nepali women</a>, who dare to question traditions passed down to them and laws that threaten to bind them. The refrain carries the irony of the idea of motherland while being force to disrespect mothers, who are allowed to birth children but never allowed to be citizens.
But to not be citizens is not limited to being <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-waits-for-an-unequal-citizenship-law/" target="_blank">unable to pass down your identity to your children</a>. It can sometimes be tangled in memories of who we were and who we have become.
Away in Oxford, Mukahang Limbu’s life unfolds to his audience on his Instagram stories as he cooks meals with fellow students and lives the life that has the semblance of a typical university life. But this award winning poet recreates the idea of home in his posts through foods as much as he does in unfinished, dangling sentences.
Away from home, we often discover ourselves more closely. Home, then becomes an idea. Home can be the taste of a vegan ice-cream made from cashew milk in Manhattan, sometimes. But home can also be fried-rice eaten on repeat when you live far away from home.&nbsp;
Home can also be friends who do not ask you questions, just as home can be a tandoori sandwich eaten during a conversation with strangers you have just begun to trust.
And so these lines by <a href="https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/poem/when-i-first-came-from-nepal/">Limbu resonate</a> with so many of us:
I know now 
In this place, where I did not know, the things I did not know embrace me in ways 
I didn’t know.

Sahina Shrestha

Pratibha Tuladhar

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Young Nepali poets in search of poetic license

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b793c9c7e80680e0646efjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="5616" height="3744"/><figcaption>Pragati Rai. All Photos: MONIKA DEUPALA</figcaption></figure>As a child, Pragati Rai was called fattyauri, someone who would not stop talking. “I did not like that when a daughter was born in family, they would say, ‘Oh great, a bottle of whisky is born,’” she says to me when we meet in her home in Thecho. “I knew from very early on that these things didn’t sit right with me, that I had to speak about them somehow.”Born in 1977, Pragati grew up in Khotang along with a younger sister and four brothers. Although she is widely known for her first novel, Lekhak Ki Swasni (The Writer’s Wife, 2014), Pragati burst into the Nepali literary scene with a slim collection of powerful poems called Badi Bigyapti (Baadi Press Release, 2009), written after she had witnessed naked Badi women protest outside Singha Durbar demanding their right to citizenship in 2007. In the titular poem, Pragati writes:My name is nakedMy people are nakedWhere I stand, therethe ground is seen as naked, todayI have been made into a promiscuous woman, sir!I cannot cover my shame withthe sari of democracyPeering into the empty vessel that is your assurance, I cannot wait for the road to freedomListen to the word of someone who has been made naked for generations, or–Listen to the dangerous decision of this disgusting name:If you do not want to make me like you, sirI most certainly will make you like me. https://youtu.be/owxitV1LRp8Last year, she published her second novel, Birseko Mrityu (Forgotten Death, 2019), and Pragati has just completed writing her third novel, Thakra (Stake), which is forthcoming later this year.In this month’s Lightroom Conversation, Pragati and I talk about the process of building a novel, how to tell women’s stories to reluctant audiences, the importance of humour in writing, and why it is necessary for women to write their own stories and be their own writers.Pragati Rai: It’s like making a child swallow medicine. The medicine is bitter, so you will have to put some sugar in it. You have to trick that child into consuming something they never wanted in the first place, but that we all know is very good for them. That is how I wrote Lekhak Ki Swasni. At first, I was writing this novel called Saya, and it was just a long stiff lecture on ‘women’s issues’, and how men and the state ought to behave. I guarantee you that no one wants to read a novel like that, least of all, men.Muna Gurung: So you made it sugary.Yes, with Lekhak Ki Swasni, readers think they are reading a story about a writer and his family drama, but what they do not realise is that they have gone through an entire book and in the process, they have actually read and closely experienced the pain of being the wife of a writer. Lekhak Ki Swasni was actually a short story I wrote while waiting for my husband to come home for dinner. He said he was on his way but hours went by and he never showed up.He is also a writer? Yes, he is an established and award-winning writer. But we live separately now. He is with someone else. People keep thinking that the novel is about our life together but it is not.How did you meet? I was fourteen and my friend took me to his house. His village was just over the hill from mine. He was in ninth grade and deeply heartbroken. The girl he had fallen in love with had just been married off to some lahure. My husband was inconsolable and spiraling into depression. His family thought this was the best time to find him a wife. My friend was his mother’s niece and she had apparently told my mother-in-law about me and how I like to write poems. My mother-in-law explained to me that theirs was a family of writers and if I ever wanted to get into writing, they had all the connections. She also said I could venture into music, education, art… I agreed to marry her son, and  so I stayed put.You stayed there that night and never went back home?Pretty much. I slept in my mother-in-law’s room for a long time and then after a while she sent me to sleep with my husband. He and I barely talked. I was enrolled in 8th grade then and a month into the academic year, I was pregnant, so I stopped going to school. My ama sent for me, but I did not go back home.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b793f9c7e80680e0646f0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="5616" height="3744"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Did you know this big step you had just taken?I had absolutely no clue. I just thought that I had secured my future of being a writer, or doing something in this one life I have. But nobody told me about children. Up until I had my first child, I didn’t fully understand what was going on with my body.It must have been terrifying. It is hard to be afraid of what you don’t know. But you know, my aama, I guess was far-sighted. After my second son was born, she told me that a day will come when I will become very unattractive to my husband because he would be much more educated than me, an 8th grade drop-out. She told me to come home right away so that I could go back to school, I was 18 then. I took my sons and went home to my mother. After SLC, I went to Kathmandu where my husband was already beginning to establish himself as a writer.Read also: <a href="http://Nibha Shah: Nepali poetry’s mansara" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nibha Shah: Nepali poetry's mansara</a>, Muna GurungYou said in an interview elsewhere that many people would not know who Pragati Rai is, but that they would know Lekhak Ki Swasni. It is ironic now knowing that your husband also writes.   I was always known as my husband, the writer’s wife. Even when I wrote a good poem, my name hardly came forth. They all thought he wrote my poems for me. Or if I spoke at an event, he would receive a call at home from one of his ‘boys’, who would say to him: Oh,  Pragati spoke well today. You’ve done a good job schooling her. And the worst was this one time when I saw a short review of Badi Bigyapti in a national daily, and I was surprised to see they had quoted me when I did not remember being interviewed. Later, my husband tells me that the newspaper had called and he had spoken to them.That is terrible. I was furious.How else was it like to be one of the two writers in a marriage?Maybe people think that writer couples spend their days writing together in some blissful reverie. None of that is true! (Laughs). If two people in a family are in the same field, there is bound to be some sort of competition, it is only natural. I would share an idea with my husband and find that a part of it has somehow made it into his book, and vice versa. Some days I would want him to listen to my stories, but he would be busy trying to share his with me. Writers are obsessive people. But you know, when you are with a writer, you can say something using minimal words and trust that the other is able to extract, elaborate and expand as needed. Writers are also more open than other kinds of people, I think. When we separated, my husband told me honestly about his lover. Plus, this was not the first time he had strayed in our marriage. I always knew about his affairs because he would tell me, or write about them. Many male readers have also asked me why I did not make the writer husband character in my first novel a politician, or someone with another profession -- but my husband never once questioned that decision. I appreciated his openness.Maybe it is also because you tell the entire story with so much humour. I laughed out loud in so many of the scenes. I think humour can be one of the hardest things to write.My baba was a comedy man. For instance, when we did not listen to our ama, she would scream at us: Must I repeat the same thing to you twelve and twenty-seven times before you begin to listen? And our baba would step in and say, Your poor mother who does not know math is now having to put together twelve and then twenty-seven—that is half of her day gone right there!  We would laugh and then go do whatever she wanted us to do. I realised early on that humour can make difficult situations a little easier. So in making my first novel, I spent a lot of time carefully weighing out the serious scenes against the humourous ones and deciding where and how to place them so that my readers would follow along and do what I want them to do. (Laughs).<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b79439c7e80680e0646f1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1620" height="1080"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Who are your readers?I write for our parents’ generation, my generation and those who will come after me. People from my grandparents’ generation, I do not even try. Their  thinking is set in stone. I wrote for women, but I quickly realised that the problem is that not enough women read. So what is the point of writing for women when our audience is clearly male? Women in Nepal have written for decades but the reason we still struggle to be heard and seen is because we are writing for women, which makes it easier for male readers to snooze. If we write for men in the manner that pleases them, then our stories become heavily edited, and ultimately incomplete.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/featured-videos/bimala-tumkhewa-putting-kinema-on-the-map-of-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bimala Tumkhewa: Putting kinema on the map of Nepal</a>, Muna GurungWhat about stories about women that men have written?I feel like exactly how my character Numa feels about the way her husband writes. Numa is not a writer, but she finds that her husband, Sushant’s words lack something. Women must write their own stories, men can try, but it will be incomplete. For instance, I remember reading Abhi Subedi’s powerful article once where he writes about replacing the concept and language of  maiti ghar with that of afno ghar. It is a beautiful idea because why must we call our husband’s home our home, or afno ghar, and the place and family we were born into and grew up in and around our maiti? But what Subedi never brings up in the article is the importance then, on a policy level, for women to be able to claim that space as indeed, afno ghar. Where is it in our law? What kinds of property rights does a daughter have in her father’s home? Changing a word is a good start, but it is not the end of a larger problem.I also found the way you write about Numa’s desire as a sexual being very refreshing. I love that she lifts lines out of her husband’s unpublished book and sends it to Prabhakar in a flirty text. You don’t always beat around the bush with some lofty metaphor, you write clearly and unapologetically. (Smiles). I wanted my readers to know that women, too, have desires. I especially wanted my male readers to know that they are always replaceable in a woman’s life. Many of my male friends who have read the novel do not like the character of Prabhakar. I think they see themselves as the husband character and Prabhakar as Numa’s boyfriend, and therefore a threat. The novel I just finished, Thakra, is actually a sequel to Lekhak Ki Swasni, so we will follow the same characters in a different future. My male readers urged me to get rid of Prabhakar in the third novel. But I assure you, he is going nowhere. In fact, there is a scene where Numa is told by her father-in-law that since she cannot give them a grandson, that it only makes sense for her husband to remarry. Numa is hurt by this and she gets drunk with Prabhakar one evening. Some readers, I know, are not going to like that. (Laughs).<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b79469c7e80680e0646f2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="5616" height="3744"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>How long did it take for you to write your last novel? Two years–I have not worked for money in those two years. I am deep in debt, so I must begin to work again now that the novel is done. It took me 7-8 years to write Lekhak Ki Swasni because I was working then at a school first as a teacher and then later in the exam department, typing up papers. I had a computer where I worked and I had created a folder for my novel, and I would steal some time everyday to write it. My colleagues soon found out and complained to my boss. He began to bring me large piles of random papers to type, just to keep me busy, I think. Every hour, he would walk in and ask if I was done. In another universe, I would have just put my head down and said, No sir, not yet. But instead, I would snap at him with Do you think I’m a photocopying machine? (Laughs). I was incorrigible. They even made me sign a sheet of paper that said, “I will not write during work again.” But the very next day, I wrote.So you finished your first novel while working there? No–later, someone deleted the folder and I lost everything. I had to write it all over again. We had a computer at home, but there was something electrifying about stealing time to write at work. When I came home, I never wanted to write. (Laughs). Just when the school was about to kick me out, I left for Korea to work with my new novel in a pen drive.When was this?2010. We were struggling financially. I felt like it would be a good idea to go abroad and make quick money. My husband wanted to join me, but his writing career was taking off and I knew that going to Korea would ruin it--all that effort for nothing. So he stayed back with our two sons, who were already in their late teens, early 20s by then. In Korea, I had to do manual labour in the agricultural sector. My roommate was a woman from Myagdi and super strong. She would work all day and be fine at night, whereas I would have all sorts of joint and muscle ache. There was a computer in our room, but she was always using it to chat with her husband. I never got a chance to sit at it. I remember complaining to Sudha Tripathi didi that I was not able to write because I didn’t have a computer. She clicked her tongue and said, Why don’t you just sit on the floor and write on a notebook with your hand? Why do you need a computer to write? I took her advice. Eventually, my employer kicked me out of work because I was spending my nights writing and he would see my light was on all night; and in the afternoon I was unable to work. For three months, I stayed back in Korea, unemployed trying to finish my novel. Everyone was scolding me. When I think about all the things I went through to write this novel…it is a lot.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepali-literatures-thulnani-toya-gurung/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Toya Gurung: Nepali literature’s Thulnani</a>, Muna Gurung<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101156/636b794a9c7e80680e0646f3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="5616" height="3744">What happened after you finished writing the book?I experienced the deepest kind of satisfaction–that I had arrived on this earth and left a small signature.A signature, that’s a powerful image. My mind keeps circling back to the naming and how common it is for women to not have proper names. Twice a year, my family sets out a feast for our ancestors, and we invite them to come and eat. My baba has a long list of their names and when he goes down the list, I notice that the men have proper names but their wives are just their names plus a ni. So, Gopal’s wife is Gopalni. How we continue to rob women of so many things, starting with their names. I say it in my poem, Rukh (Tree), how our great-grandmothers gave up their lives in the name of tradition, and when it was time for our mothers, they gave up their names, it was a price they paid to uphold their traditions, any tradition. We keep following in each others’ footsteps, one generation of women after another. We may alter things here and there, but unless we uproot that tradition, nothing will change.Lightroom Conversation is a monthly page in Nepali Times on interesting figures in Nepal’s literary scene. Muna Gurung is a writer, educator and translator based in Kathmandu.  www.munagurung.com<h2>The Basket</h2>Pragati Raitranslated by Muna GurungAfter she gets the basket,the little girl forgets everything elseShe forgets food, forgets her motherAfter she gets the basket,she forgets her mother’s lap–A mother has no right over a daughter who has left her lap.The little girl has a basket to fill,she forgets everything elseWhen she places a flower in the basket,she likes the moon better,When she replaces the flower with the moon,she likes the stars more...And even more than the stars, she begins to likethe wind, water, butterfly, cloud and what else–She has only one basket,but she has so many things to keep in itShe keeps one thing in the basket, takes it out for anotherKeeps, takes, keeps, takes, and suddenlyevening sets inThe little girl begins to cry, the basket is emptySeeing the basket as life,The little girl’s mother begins to cry with herIn the midst of trying to fulfill each desire,life remains empty.And so–In between her sobs,The mother tells the little girl:Fill the basket with one thingthe rest, keep as memories that fill your heart.

Muna Gurung

Pragati Rai: Her Own Writer

Bimala Tumkhewa: Putting kinema on the map of Nepal

Usha Sherchan: Humming a tune of her own

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110815110/636a61599c7e80680e056ecbjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1162" height="638"/><figcaption>Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s 110th birth anniversary is being marked on Sunday 27 October. Photo: KAMAL DIXIT</figcaption></figure>Kalidasa’s Sanskrit masterpiece Abhijnanasakuntalam based on the story of Shakuntala in the Mahabharata was written nearly 1,500 years ago. It was first translated into English in 1789 and later into 12 European languages. But among the many translations into South Asian languages, the one that stands out is its adaptation into Nepali by Laxmi Prasad Devkota, whose 110th birth anniversary falls on Sunday, 27 October.Devkota’s Shākuntal Mahākāvya (1945) is the most accurate in retaining the original shrigara ras classical poetic style in Nepali. Experts have said Devkota’s Shākuntal is neither a translation nor an adaptation, but a ‘transcreation’.Devkota’s Shakuntal is one of the three versions he undertook -- a smaller work called Dushyanta Shakuntala Bhet and an English Shakuntala. It is extraordinary that a poet creates three distinct renditions of the same work in two languages. Devkota, who died in 1959, is also the only poet to write an English Shakuntala with a poetic structure and style totally different from Kalidasa’ dramatic form.Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=17114#.XbUEiOgzY2w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reaching America</a>, Rabi ThapaThe ancient epic has been translated into Persian, Arabic, classical Tamil, and modern translations in Urdu in both poetry and prose, and other regional Indian languages. In Nepali, there are eight other translations of Abhijnanasakuntalam besides Devkota’s three versions.Reading Devkota’s Shakuntal Mahakavya gives the sense that there is two-way communication going on between two great poets of two distinct, but related cultural and poetic traditions, separated by many centuries.Devkota and Kalidasa engage in a spiritual and poetic dialogue when they bring out the meaning of ‘re-cognition’ (abhijnana) of Shakuntala. The mystical symbolism and poetic rhythms of Kalidasa are perceptible only through suggestion (dhvani) and Devkota’s text captures this subtly but surely.Kalidasa’s epic describes Shakuntala’s birth as the abandoned daughter of the sage Vishwamitra and the celestial singer Menaka. The king of Hastinapur meets her in the forest, and leaves her with his ring to be presented when she comes to his palace. Vishwamitra is made to forget the pregnant Shakuntala, and she loses the ring enroute to the palace.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/written-locally-read-globally/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Written locally, read globally,</a> Sewa BhattaraiThe opening lines of Devkota’s Shakuntal take the reader closer to Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhavam where the erotic tension between Shiva and Parvati is the cause of celebration and creation of the world.Kalidasa’s text has multiple symbols of Shaivism which Devkota did not just recreate it Nepali, but also imbued it with the symbolism of the original epic. The closing lines of Devkota’s rendition comes a full circle with the idea of ‘kalyan’ as Shakuntala’s happiness.Even though Devkota does not recreate the dramatic form, he retains the sense and purpose of the original with his invocation to the Shiva/Shakti principle that forms the basis of the cosmos. As in Kalidasa, Devkota’s Shakuntala ceases to be a person or a character but becomes an embodiment of Shakti and her happiness is the fulfillment of the universe.Devkota’s Shakuntal Mahakavya is infused with the power of the shringara style with its various elements coming together in explosions of creativity. The long and elaborate description of the process of Menaka seducing Vishwamitra is poetically stunning in its deployment of the visual and aural sensual imagery.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110815110/636a615c9c7e80680e056eccjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="440" height="662">While in all the other translations of Kalidasa, the episode of the seduction is either obliquely referred to or assumed to be understood, it is only Devkota who focuses on both the poetic and symbolic significance of the scene.The birth of Shakuntala is seen as an extraordinary cosmic event as it is the result of the Vishwamitra’s incomplete tapas. It was Rabindranath Tagore who referred to Shakuntala’s suffering as her own attempt to gain full knowledge of love by continuing her father’s interrupted meditation.From the male to the female tapasvi, the meditation reaches its climax. While Vishwamitra was seduced by not being aware of Indra’s plan, Shakuntala’s suffering is a result of her being in the dark about Durvasa’s visit to the ashram. While Menaka abandons her child and leaves Vishwamaitra, it is Dushyanta who abandons his child (in the womb) and temporarily leaves Shakuntala. It is only in Devkota’s Nepali version that this sense of continuity and poetic symmetry become clear.Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=4100#.XbUEougzY2w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">We all make each other</a>, Manjushree ThapaDevkota’s genius lies in his careful delineation of different chhanda for each section which actually has more variety and detail than Kalidasa’s original. Devkota declares in the introduction that his intent is to bring Nepali mahakavya to a higher level of excellence, and he succeeds in doing this.Devkota’s English Shakuntala is a long poem in nine cantos with each marked with a theme: from ‘Vishwamitra: the Terror of Heaven’ to ‘Strife and Unity’. In this work, Devkota keeps his focus on Shakuntala in the manner of the Romantic theme of hero and the quest for self.Devkota is a major South Asian poet for many reasons, but it is his version of Shakuntala that testify to his genius. He actually completes Kalidasa’s masterpiece with the use of extensive meters, both classical and folk, the detailed refinement of shringara rasa, spectacular descriptions of events and subtle use of symbolism make Shakuntal Mahakavya a classic in modern times.Namrata Chaturvedi, PhD, teaches English in SRM University in Sikkim, India and is editor of a forthcoming volume of critical essays on Abhijnanasakuntalam.

The genius of Shakuntalā in Nepali

Nibha Shah: Nepali poetry’s mansara

Shanti Chaudhary: Poet-at-large

Bina Theeng Tamang: More than a maichyang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO3BZW81_TI&amp;feature=youtu.beEver since he established Barkatiya School in Nepalganj in 1993 on leased property, principal Maulana Ziaul Mustafa Noorani has worked relentlessly to improve the quality of instruction in his madrasa.More than 500 students attend the school from primary to Grade 10, studying all the subjects in Nepal’s education curriculum, like science, English, mathematics and social studies. But they also study Urdu and Arabic, mandatory according to Muslim culture.“I transferred from a private school to Barkatiya because I wanted to understand my religion,” says Sahin Khatun, who passed her SLC and is now teaching English at the same school. “The school also prepared me to be well-rounded in all other subjects and gave me a future.”Apart from students following the regular curriculum, Barkatiya has 80 children studying religion, who will graduate to become clerics in their communities.Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=25904&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Moving to the mainstream</a>, Chandra Kishore<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=25919&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Keeping ghazal alive in Nepalgunj</a>, Sewa Bhattarai<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108121136/636a3fd49c7e80680e04a5e9jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="1050"/><figcaption>Well rounded: Grade 6 students of Barkatiya School studying Nepali. The madrasa has all subjects of the government curriculum with additional Urdu and Arabic. Pics: Prakriti Kandel</figcaption></figure>The majority of madrasas in Nepal used to be religious institutions, but in 2004 the government started registering them as government schools and had them adopt the Nepali curriculum, while allowing them to continue religious learning.However although they are registered, madrasas do not receive the same treatment as other government schools. Barkatiya itself is short-staffed and underfunded, with only three teachers provided by the government for classes up to Grade 10.“In spite of being mainstreamed, community leaders and schools feel discriminated against because they do not get the facilities other government schools have,” explains Samim Miya Ansari of the National Muslim Commission.Despite being a school that the community considers a model, Barkatiya receives minimal funding, and the budget set aside for scholarships for needy students has to be diverted to salaries of teachers, most of whom are hired outside of the government’s quota.After the 2017 elections, which returned <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/rana-regime-restored-in-nepalganj/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dhawal Rana as mayor of Nepalganj</a>, the school for the first time got funding from the municipality — Rs700,000. However, the education budget is still centralised in Kathmandu, so local governments lack the jurisdiction and resources to allocate to schools in their municipalities.Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/class-struggle-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Class struggle</a>, Prakriti Kandel<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/lowest-common-denominator/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lowest Common Denominator</a>, Editorial<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108121136/636a3fd79c7e80680e04a5eajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="1050">This pertains not just to Nepalganj — madrasa schools across Nepal face a shortage of teachers and funding. The situation is most critical in Province 2, which has the largest Muslim population and the highest number of madrasas.Registered madrasa schools have been receiving Rs168,000 per year as government grants, which is insufficient. With that amount they have to put together their own infrastructure and run the schools with a limited teacher quota, while dealing with misappropriation of even the meagre grants. Many teachers do not receive even their minimal salaries on time and numerous madrasas now have to raise additional money from India or the Middle East.Meanwhile, government schools are allocated bigger budgets, have buildings, playgrounds and furniture, and enough resources to hire teachers.Barkatiya is relatively well managed, but most madrasa schools have little oversight and regulation. “Our madrasa schools do not have proper management committees so quality control and financial discipline is a huge problem,” admits Naim Ansari of Samaj Bikas Kendra in Mahottari. Registered madrasas in that district have official permission to conduct only Grade 1, while the other grades are unofficial, which is a reflection of the lack of oversight by government.Poor support and regulation of madrasa schools has taken a toll on the living standard of Nepal’s Muslim community. Nearly one-quarter live below the poverty line. The Human Development Index of Muslims is 0.422, which is lower than that for Dalits all over Nepal (0.434), according to the 2014 Human Development Report by the National Planning Commission and UNDP. Province 2 has half the number of out-of-school children in Nepal: one-third between the ages of 5 and 12 do not attend school. Most of them are Muslim or Dalit.Samim Miya Ansari hopes the situation will improve now that the Muslim Commission and the Ministry of Education are prioritising the quality of madrasas. (See interview).The High-Level Education Commission’s report in January, which triggered a controversy after its call to convert private to public schools, also had a section which reiterated the need to mainstream madrasa schools and called for recognising the qualifications of religious teachers.Mainstreaming of madrasa schools may have started in 2004, but it has not covered all madrasas in Nepal, mainly because of lack of commitment from the government in Kathmandu. This negligence is depriving the members of one of the country's most marginalised communities from advancing and from being treated equally with other citizens.Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/after-quantity-nepals-education-needs-quality/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After quantity, Nepal’s education needs quality</a>, Prakriti Kandel<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-science-of-learning/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Science of Learning</a>, Prakriti Kandel<h2>Upgrading madrasa schools</h2><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108121136/636a3fda9c7e80680e04a5ebjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="1050">Samim Miya Ansari, the newly-appointed chair of the National Muslim Commission, spoke to Nepali Times  this week:Nepali Times: What is the current situation of madrasas in Nepal?Samim Miya Ansari: Madrasas are educational institutions related to our culture, but ultimately they are like any other school. But they are not properly managed. Government grants are inadequate, facilities are lacking, they do not even have furniture. The Muslim community is a little disheartened that madrasa schools do not have even the minimal facilities present in government schools. I have been communicating with the government to resolve this problem.What will be your commission's role?The commission is a constitutional body working to improve the status of the Muslim community. In Province 1 and 2, we have conducted hearings in which issues regarding madrasa schools came up. I have urged the government to mainstream madrasas — we cannot ignore Urdu and Arabic subjects, but the Nepali curriculum is also extremely important for Muslim children. Madrasa schools need a proper body to monitor them, which is why a Madrasa Board is being set up under the Education Ministry.What lessons can Nepal learn from the recent terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka?What happened in Sri Lanka is very sad. But the situation in Nepal is different — all religions have lived in harmony and like one family in Nepal for a very long time. Before the 2015 Constitution was promulgated, we had nation-wide protests for the rights of Muslims, but they were all peaceful.Read also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19396#.XMrV-RQzbIU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Money, modernity and madrasas</a>, Sabir Ansari<h2>Keeping ghazal alive in Nepalganj</h2><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108121136/636a3fdd9c7e80680e04a5ecjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="1050"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Wearing a white salwar kameez that matches his short white beard, Mustafa Ahasan (at left, above) calmly sews clothes at his tailoring shop near Tribhuvan Chok, the old Muslim quarter of Nepalganj.But the 51-year-old is no ordinary tailor — behind him on the wall hangs a certificate vouching for his credential as a noted poet of Urdu ghazal and shayari, forms much admired but little understood in Nepal.Ahasan and his fellow ghazal enthusiasts keep the proper forms of Urdu poetry alive in Nepalganj through a group called Gulzar-e-adab. With 18% of its population Muslim, the influence of Islamic culture is evident everywhere in this western Tarai city bordering India.The narrow street called Eklaini has swirling Islamic curlicues over doors and terraces, even on modern concrete buildings, and the sidewalks are packed with colourful chura-pote shops selling bangles and glass beads.Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=25904&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Moving to the mainstream</a>, Chandra Kishore<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=25910&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nepali Muslims on the margins</a>, Prakriti KandelMustafa Ahasan was educated in a Nepalganj madrasa and went on to get a degree in literature from Aligarh University in India, where he also learnt Arabic, Persian and poetic metres called beher used in these languages.“There are only a handful of people in Nepal today who write Urdu poetry in beher, and half of us are here in Nepalganj,” says Ahasan. “We keep up the tradition of Motiram Bhatta, who introduced ghazal in Nepal and who was proficient in these metres.”Gulzar-e-Adab has been holding regular monthly ghazal events for the past 40 years, says 81-year-old poet Abdul Lateef Shauk (at right, above): “Our events are not just for Urdu poets; we also have recitals in Nepali, Hindi and Awadhi. They are a vibrant hub for cross-cultural exchange.”Once in a while, the group also holds all-night Mushayra events, inviting poets from across Nepal and India. But Shauk and Ahasan say they are swimming against the tide, as the interest in traditional Urdu poetry is dwindling.Ghazal scholar Ghanashyam Nyaupane is among a handful of poets writing in beher in Nepal, and agrees that these forms are not very well understood in Nepal. “There are three strands of ghazal writing in Nepal: one group creates its own metres and purists do not like it. The second group has no knowledge of metre at all and just rhyme. The third writes in classical Urdu metre, but this group is very small and getting smaller.”Sewa BhattaraiRead also:<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=2047#.XMrZRBQzbIU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nepali Muslims</a><a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/written-locally-read-globally/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Written locally, read globally</a>, Sewa Bhattarai

poetry