<figure><img width="4032" height="3024" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111144/63721cce9c7e80680e0bd4aejpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Photo: SOFILA VAIDYA</figcaption></figure>Felicity Volk is Australia’s ambassador to Nepal, but many may not know that she is also a novelist. Long before joining Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Volk had grown up with writer parents who sparked an interest for writing from her early years. “They were the voices in my childhood ear that called my own words into being and initiated me into the infinite possibility of imagination,” recalls Volk. When she was seven, her parents spent a year travelling through Europe in a Bedford campervan with the family. They made stops at galleries, and in one Volk remembers seeing the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/schools-of-the-air/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Schools of the Air</a>, Felicity Volk The young girl was struck by the way one canvas could carry so many stories, and everywhere in a Bruegel frame was an unfolding world, interconnected, but also complete in itself, a visual novel of sorts. “The stories I want to tell have a similar ambition,” adds Volk, who went on to study English literature at the University of Queensland while continuing to write short stories and poetry. Next, she set off to Canberra to begin her diplomatic career and before long, she was consumed with the demands of her new job that left little time for anything else. It was only after postings in Bangladesh and Laos, and the birth of her daughters that Volk rediscovered writing. A screenplay led to short stories, to novellas, to two novels, Lightning (2013) and Desire Lines (2020). Read more: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepals-women-envoys-make-a-mark/">Nepal's women envoys make a mark</a>, Pratistha Rijal “The juggle of my two professional lives is hard, but the compulsion to write is elemental,” Volk explains. “I write, as American writer Joan Didion so eloquently described it, ‘to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear’.” Extensive travel as a diplomat has allowed the author in Volk to explore what it is like to be an outsider in someone else’s land and even a stranger in one’s own life. Grief, identity, alienation and connection are common themes in Volk’s novels and so is the question whether we are responsible for our circumstances, or if fate is pre-determined. She often brings in her personal experience in her work, of loss, betrayal and pain, compassion, towards self and others. As ambassador, Volk is so busy that the most she can manage to keep her writing muscle exercised is the occasional poem. This week, for example, she was in Lumbini to attend a cricket match paying tribute to legendary Australian bowler Shane Warne. Volk was appointed ambassador to Nepal during the pandemic, which has largely shaped her tenure. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/her-excellencies/">Her Excellencies</a>, Sanghamitra Subba “Covid-19 made for a very stop-start experience of settling into my role as ambassador and getting to know Nepal,” she says. “The opportunities that are now available, to travel to remote parts of the country, to connect, to discover what people look like unmasked, to explore Kathmandu, are even more precious as a result.” Australia itself has reopened its borders. Nepal has resumed sending its students down under and is expected to reach the pre-pandemic peak of 50,000 a year soon. Nepali students account for 8% of total international pupils in Australian universities. Over 200,000 Nepalis are settled in Australia. It has been 62 years since the two countries established diplomatic relations and during that time, Australia has supported Nepal through some of its best success stories, including its community forestry program credited for doubling the country’s forest cover in just two decades. In recent times, Australian aid and support have been primarily for subnational governance, gender equality including women’s political participation, climate resilience and Covid recovery. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-alchemy-of-angst/">The Alchemy of Angst</a>, Elif ShafakWe ask Felicity Volk if her travels in Nepal have inspired her to write another novel. One is indeed underway, even though the manuscript is languishing. In the meantime, she is also gathering information for a story set in Nepal woven with its magic and mysticism.At 56, Volk is in her 33rd year as a diplomat. Before coming to Nepal as an ambassador, she had been here several times as a tourist and last year, her daughters visited Nepal for the first time.Says Volk: “I loved exploring Nepal with the girls, seeing the country through their first-time eyes, but most of all, I relished sitting by a fire in my residence with them, eating, drinking and playing cards. That was when my house in Kathmandu became a home.”  <img width="384" height="500" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111144/63721cd19c7e80680e0bd4afjpeg.jpg" alt="">Read more: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/for-children-about-children/">For children, about children</a>, Ashish Dhakal

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Australia’s writing diplomat

<figure><img width="1674" height="1183" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be05c9c7e80680e083decjpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Lain Singh Bangdel paints a portrait of Balkrishna Sama in 1975. Photos: AGAINST THE CURRENT</figcaption></figure>On 15 September, a UK-based art promotion site <a href="https://www.mutualart.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.mutualart.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE3SpprZpTpefc5k_Hh2j2r_Bj_CQ">MutualArt</a> sent an auction notification to its over 500,000 members. For sale was a rare <a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Portrait-of-a-woman/C49A79DE6005AF77" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Portrait-of-a-woman/C49A79DE6005AF77&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHf4cYX4xtCiZ-LCNgRJCxi9eagqQ">1955 watercolour painting of a woman</a>, and it bore the signature of Nepal’s foremost artist, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=10689#.X6YzQvMzbIU">Lain Singh Bangdel</a>. Within two days of the announcement, the painting was bought for £100, and that price understandably left Nepal’s artist community, connoisseurs of Nepali art and Bangdel's own family members disappointed.  “The 100 pound auction price is extremely low for someone of Bangdel’s stature,” stated <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/sangeeta-thapa-siddhartha-art-gallery,1999" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/sangeeta-thapa-siddhartha-art-gallery,1999&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG0Y5AFU_KZiOpfahtSFiGUyvzn0A">Sangeeta Thapa</a>, art curator and director of Siddhartha Art Gallery. “Nepali artists and their artwork are finally getting the momentum they deserve, but this is dismal.” Thapa is a lifelong admirer of Bangdel’s work, and says she owes a lot to “Lainji” to launch her own career in art. She worked with Bangdel’s daugher, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/On-the-way-up/complete-projects-of-Dina-Bangdel,977" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/On-the-way-up/complete-projects-of-Dina-Bangdel,977&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGN6hVbf3QAml5WljY2V0fa8OItlQ">Dina, in promoting Nepali art in the international arena</a>. Dina’s sudden death left a deep void in the country’s art scene,  Thapa says, and Nepal will probably never have a better father-daughter duo than of the Bangdels.   <figure><img width="575" height="506" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be05f9c7e80680e083dedjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The auction in September was organised by the UK-based <a href="https://www.burstowandhewett.co.uk/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.burstowandhewett.co.uk/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHo7PvTRCwnTcPrJ8G6XcDcQ-EVGQ">Burstow &amp; Hewett </a>via <a href="https://www.burstowandhewett.co.uk/sales/fine-art/pisep20/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.burstowandhewett.co.uk/sales/fine-art/pisep20/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH7rEVbHOY9c8O-eY4MYdBEIaVz9w">The Abbey Auction Gallery</a>, and the watercolour portrait was <a href="https://www.burstowandhewett.co.uk/Lot/?sale=PISEP20&amp;lot=1063&amp;id=173473&amp;fl=1" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.burstowandhewett.co.uk/Lot/?sale%3DPISEP20%26lot%3D1063%26id%3D173473%26fl%3D1&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNED8QGiR_Cc1dpZYGasp2TRYUAt3Q">under the lot #1063</a>. But this is not the only Bangdel painting that has been sold abroad at such a low price: three other abstracts were sold via a Canadian auction house, <a href="http://westbridge-fineart.com/site/past_auctions_artist.php?artistID=2434" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://westbridge-fineart.com/site/past_auctions_artist.php?artistID%3D2434&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFjfdJ_50ObljctOQ5i5PVeoV52uA">Westbridge Fine Art Auction House</a>, in 2016 and 2017, each at less than 700 Canadian dollars.  “In places like Canada, we can assume people haven't heard enough about Bangdel and that could be what determined the price,” says art crime professor Erin L Thompson at the City University of New York.  <figure><img width="2247" height="1780" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be0619c7e80680e083deejpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Dina’s husband Bibhakar Shakya is also saddened to see the latest auction price: “Most of the paintings are in our collection at home, and my father-in-law never really sold paintings, he mostly gifted them in the later years of his life.” Shakya has been keeping Lain Singh Bangdel’s legacy alive with their son Deven, cataloguing the collection of 300 to 350 of his father-in-law’s paintings at their home in Sanepa. He also plans to publish the English translation of Bangdel’s book Langada Ko Sathi, and find a permanent gallery for the paintings. “It was Dina’s dream to carry on in her father’s footstep, it is my responsibility to pick things up from where she left,” says Shakya, who says Bangdel could write as beautifully as he painted.  <figure><img width="2020" height="1538" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be0649c7e80680e083defjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Lain Singh Bangdel was born to Ranglal Rai in 1919 near Darjeeling. As a child, he would paint everywhere, even on the walls of his home and street with images of gods and goddesses. Ranglal worked at a tea estate, and one day came home with a small collection of postcards given to him by his British employer. Bangdel was only eight then, but the images of various Impressionists and post-Impressionist artists, Corot, Millet, Monet, Manet and Turner were etched in his young mind. More than the others, Bangdel said later it was the French painter Corot whose work ‘captured his soul’ and inspired him to pursue his passion. <figure><img width="1649" height="1171" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be0689c7e80680e083df0jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>It was only in high school that Bangdel came to realise that he wanted to be an artist. In 1939, he joined Calcutta Arts College. Calcutta was where that he met Indian filmmaker <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006249/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006249/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHNpaQ9mmB5ZQwZo_Mfl-lUXZmj_Q">Satyajit Ray</a>, and the two became lifelong friends.  <figure><img width="2896" height="2172" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be06b9c7e80680e083df1jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>In 1952, Bangdel enrolled at the French National Art School in Paris. Part of the cost was defrayed in a strange way. Bangdel had painted a portrait of <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=5358#.X6UZz_MzbIV" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D5358%23.X6UZz_MzbIV&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEG3zMlfDX5XNzjDsUEoGIseToh8w">Balkrishna Sama</a> and it impressed <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=9501#.X6UaAvMzbIU" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D9501%23.X6UaAvMzbIU&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFrENWu78o6z5FCWgw9aUOc4ufOqw">General Keshar Shumsher Rana</a> so much that he sent over Rs5,000, quite a hefty sum in those days. In Paris, Bangdel was introduced to the works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and he was deeply influenced by their style. But he felt the tug of home, and was taken by Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s Muna Madan which impacted on his paintings and writings. Bangdel later used the epic as a theme for his most famous impressionistic works.  In later years, Bangdel went on to receive many national and international awards, including the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Order of the Crown of Italy (Commendatore) for his contribution to the study of Nepal’s early history and art. In 1987, Bangdel was awarded the honorary Knight Commander of the Victorian Order by Queen Elizabeth II. <figure><img width="1895" height="2110" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be06e9c7e80680e083df2jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=5250#.X6VWdC8RoWp" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D5250%23.X6VWdC8RoWp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHcf_62OVWo_-TUZkYijYXSL3krjA">Bangdel died in October 2002</a> in Lalitpur at age 83. Two decades have passed, and many young Nepalis have never heard of him. His son-in-law Shakya wants to change this. “It is due to Lain Singh Bangdel that Nepal’s modern and contemporary art started being noticed internationally, and we have to keep his works alive,” he says.Lain Singh Bandgel was not just a painter, he was also an established writer, art historian and to a select few, a passionate art teacher. His daughter <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=730#.X6QrN_MzbIU" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D730%23.X6QrN_MzbIU&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG4e2MptePoy33qjAEsq7WCx5Aqsg">Dina Bangdel </a>carried forward his legacy until her own untimely death in 2017. After Paris, Bangdel travelled to London in 1957 where he received a letter from his friend B P Koirala to return to Nepal. Koirala went on to become Nepal’s first democratically elected prime minister, but within a year was removed in a coup by King Mahendra in 1960. It was then Mahendra who convinced Bangdel and his wife Manu to return from Europe to Nepal. <figure><img width="1663" height="1128" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be0729c7e80680e083df3jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>In 1961 after moving to Kathmandu, Bangdel got a job at the Royal Nepal Academy and eventually became its vice-chancellor. He later went on to become the founding general-secretary of Nepal Art Council and the New Art Circle, where he taught 15 talented new artists for free. Bangdel also wrote three Nepali-language novels between 1948 to 1951, Muluk Bahira, Maitighar and Langada Ko Sathi. They were tales of struggle and hardship of families in the mountains. Bangdel’s eyes saw the world: he lived through wars and revolutions, he saw pain, angst and misery all around him, and he transferred them to canvas and text.In later years, Bangdel went on to become an art historian and was an activist lobbying for the return of Nepal’s stolen religious objects. He wrote Early Sculptures of Nepal (1982), 2500 years of Nepali Art (1987), and Inventory of Stone Sculptures of the Kathmandu Valley (1995). However, his most important book, and one that is still as relevant today as when it was written in 1989, is <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=7311#.X6UZPfMzbIU" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D7311%23.X6UZPfMzbIU&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH5Yk-MQGvHmA-5UneCXMyxiOpucg">Stolen Images of Nepal</a> which documented 300 missing religious objects from Kathmandu. Most of them are still missing. <figure><img width="1653" height="949" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be0759c7e80680e083df4jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Bangdel built the home in Sanepa with his wife Manu Kumari Thapa, a nurse, who figures prominently in his biography, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Against-Current-Bangdel-Historian-Portraits/dp/9745240524" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Against-Current-Bangdel-Historian-Portraits/dp/9745240524&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604809161009000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEKKvPhdTxzG6gPTPEjJ4svNAbh3Q">Against the Current: Life of Lain Singh Bangdel</a>. In the book, Bangdel narrates his beautiful love story with Manu and her undying support for all his work. She went on to become a matron in Prasuti Griha, and is now in her mid-90s, still living in the home she built with her husband in Sanepa.  Dina was the sunshine of Lain Singh and Manu’s life. An only child, she was her father’s confidante in the later part of career as an art historian, and shared the same passion for Nepal’s heritage and their preservation. Dina Bangdel and Bandana Thapa were childhood friends, and they used to walk school from home together during which Dina would share extraordinary stories of her adventures with her father, of going to various heritage sites and taking pictures. “I remember Dina’s excitement when she narrated her father’s work to document stolen idols and we could all feel her passion even when young,” Bandana Thapa recalls.  <figure><img width="640" height="959" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be0789c7e80680e083df5jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Dina’s death left a lot of her work to preserve her father’s legacy incomplete. But Lain Singh Bangdel lives on through the brush strokes of his students, some of whom have now become accomplished artists themselves.Abstract painter Jeevan Rajopadhayay studied under Bangdel till the year he died, and has only fond memories of a gentle and patient teacher. “If it wasn’t for Bangdel Sir, maybe I would never have been an artist in the first place,” he said. Rajopadhayay was also shocked by how little his teacher’s painting fetched in an European auction. He said: “Even in the nineties, Bangdel’s paintings were selling for at least Rs500,000 in Japan’s Fukushima Museum. He is the father of Nepal’s modern art. We need to value his work more.” <figure><img width="2264" height="1766" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be07c9c7e80680e083df6jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Excerpts from Against the Current: The Life of Lain Singh Bangdel:Bangdel’s life:Lain Singh changed his name from Rai to Bangdel in 1939, and as Lain Singh Bangdel he eventually became an able interpreter of Nepal’s economic and intellectual Diaspora, with its poverty and personal sorrows in villages existing side by side with the comparatively rich and inspiring intellectuals of towns. The socio-cultural traditions that the youthful Lain Singh grew up among profoundly flavored his life, guiding his scholarly development throughout a distinguished and multi-faceted career. B P Koirala's letter to Lain Singh Bangdel: <img width="640" height="683" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be07f9c7e80680e083df7jpeg.jpg" alt="">Meeting Satyajit Ray for the first time:The table where Lain sat belonged to someone named Ray who was away from the office for a few days, he was told. 'One morning near the end of my first week at about 10 o'clock, a tall and imposing man I'd never seen walked in and came directly to my desk. He spoke to me in Bengali: 'Arrey, kokhon eley?' (Hello, when did you arrive?) It was Ray's typical greeting on first meeting someone, a hallmark of his personality. Then he said, 'This is my table. Are you sitting here?'Lain did not know what to say. He had not been introduced. Then the stranger asked somebody, 'Why don't you provide another place for this gentleman?' Only then did Ganguli come over and introduce the stranger as Satyajit Ray whom he addressed familiarly as 'Manik Babu'.Space for Lain was arranged right next to Ray and in time they got to know each other, who each was, their interests and so forth. They were immediately attracted to one another, as fellow artists and inspired young intellectuals.  <img width="500" height="680" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181116/636be0829c7e80680e083df8jpeg.jpg" alt="">Against the Current: The Life of Lain Singh Bangdel Writer, Painter and Art Historian of Nepal by Don Messerschmidt with Dina BangdelOrchid Press, 21 July 2006258 pagesRead also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=730#.X6YzRfMzbIU">Dina, the daughter Bangdel</a>, Dhruba Simkhada<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=11342#.X6Yz7PMzbIU">Return of the gods</a>, Sujata Tuladhar<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=10689#.X6Yz6PMzbIU">Lain's legacy</a>, Sraddha Basnyat

Lain Singh Bangdel’s legacy lives on

<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

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101112/636b6fce9c7e80680e060043jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2481" height="1656"/><figcaption>Amitabha Bagchi reeives the DSC prize 2019 from Pradeep Kumar Gyawali, Minister for Foreign Affairs, at Nepal Literature Festival in Pokhara in December 2019</figcaption></figure>There is not much to add about Amitabha Bagchi’s Half  The Night Is Gone that has not already been said. The winner of this year’s <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/2019-shortlist-announced-for-dsc-prize/">DSC Prize for South Asian Literature</a>, awarded at the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepal-and-international-literature-festival/">Nepal Literature Festival in Pokhara</a> last month, the book has been readily deemed the ‘Great Indian Novel’ of our time.Bagchi sets most of his novel in Delhi, with parts in Agra and Banaras. Writing in pre-independence times, Dilli’s rich lore and the old ganga jamuni tehzeeb of North India is woven beautifully into the novel – with intercuts of a harder, less forgiving modern-day shown in letters between chapters.Bagchi carefully constructs his plot – a long winded ambitious tale that tells the story of two families and their men sprawling across generations. This story is told by the fictional, award-winning Hindi novelist, Vishwanath, who takes breaks to pen letters to his brother, his dead son’s girlfriend and his estranged wife.Goswami Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas (an Awadhi retelling of Ramayana) undercuts the novel being written within the novel, with additional Sanskrit sloka, Hindi-Urdu couplets, and Qur’anic hadith referenced throughout, each with an English translation. Bagchi’s greatest feat is the way the quoted verses always add to the narrative, never distracting or pulling a reader away. As <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/books/waiting-for-the-monkeys-return-review-of-amitabha-bagchis-half-the-night-is-gone-by-shreevatsa-nevatia/article24714584.ece">The Hindu</a> put it, this is not an ‘Indian novel in English’, it is an Indian novel.The men Vishwanath writes about are deeply flawed and violent – they beat, rape and abandon their wives (stylistically depicted as ‘claiming their conjugal rights’) and yet, somehow, they are always portrayed as layered and interesting individuals. The writing is confusing, it is unclear if the framing of women as always youthful, inherently lustful and scheming is meant to highlight the predicament of women in Indian society or if Vishwanath is just a bad writer.Whatever the motivation, it is the novel's glaring fault. It is difficult to read  Omvati (She manages to get a name – something not every female character in the novel is granted) who is molested by her father in law, and as she stabs and wounds him in a ‘… a coruscating sweep that left her quivering. She felt arousal’.Later in the novel, her husband reaches for her and Omvati throws up again and again. In response, her husband beats and bribes her and ‘takes to visiting prostitutes’. There is never an effort to depict her inner feelings and trauma – only his frustration.Bagchi is a gifted storyteller, creating varied and interesting relationships between his characters both within their families and across them. Diwanchand, the younger son of Lala Motichand, is so devoted to Tulsida Ramcharitmanas, he leaves his inheritance, wife and child to dedicate his life to the work.Makhan Lal, Lala Motichand’s illegitimate child, is a Marx-loving schoolteacher who resents his father. Vishwanath is devastated by his son’s death in a road accident, and only in his grief does he begin to try and repair his relationships. It is only the caricatures of women that leave an unfortunate stain on the novel, a book that otherwise speaks to nostalgia, of interfaith harmony and complex family dynamics.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101116/636b6fd19c7e80680e060044jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="643">Half The Night Is GoneBy Amitabha BagchiJuggernaut, New Delhi, 2018320 pages    550 INRISBN:978-9386228703

A nostalgic Hindustani novel

<figure><img width="1968" height="1312" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108181144/636a95809c7e80680e05dc10jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Harish Trivedi, Jury Chair of the DSC Prize 2019, at the Shortlist Announcement event in London</figcaption></figure>The 2019 shortlist of books for the annual DSC prize for South Asian Literature has been announced. Half the Night is Gone by Amitabh Bagchi, 99 Nights in Logar by Jamil Jan Kochai, The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay, There’s Gunpowder in the Air by Manoranjan Byapari, The City and the Sea by Raj Kamal Jha, and The Empty Room by Sadia Abbas have made it to the shortlist, from 15 books long listed.  <img width="3762" height="2700" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108181144/636a95849c7e80680e05dc11jpeg.jpg" alt="">The DSC Prize is now in its ninth year, and is one of the most prestigious international literary awards specifically focused on South Asian fiction writing. Among the six four are authors of Indian origin and one author each of Pakistani and Afghan origin. It includes 3 debut novelists including 2 women writers, as well as a work of translation of a novel originally written in Bengali.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/written-locally-read-globally/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Written locally, read globally</a>, Sewa Bhattarai The chair of the jury panel Harish Trivedi announced the shortlist at for the prize of US $25,000 at London School of Economics &amp; Political Science. “The shortlist that we have arrived at comprises six novels – for the good reason that the five jurors, located in five different countries, could not agree on just five novels. Two of the six novels are set partly in New Delhi, and partly in the surrounding countryside in one case, and in the other case partly on the Baltic coast. One of the novels is set in Pakistan of the 1970s, one in Kashmir, and one in Afghanistan. The sixth is set in a prison,” said Trivedi.The Prize was founded by Surina Narula and Manhad Narula in 2010, and is administered by the South Asian Literature Prize &amp; Events Trust. It received 90 eligible entries this year. This year’s international jury panel includes Harish Trivedi (Jury Chair) former Professor of English, Jeremy Tambling, former Professor of Literature, Kunda Dixit, Editor of the Nepali Times newspaper, Carmen Wickramagamage, Professor of English, and Rifat Munim, literary editor of Dhaka Tribune. This year the winner of the DSC Prize 2019 will be announced at the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/business/nepal-lit-festival/">IME Nepal Literature Festival in Pokhara</a> in Nepal on 13-16 December.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/business/nepal-lit-festival/">Nepal Lit Festival</a>

2019 shortlist announced for DSC Prize

Nibha Shah: Nepali poetry’s mansara

Anita Tuladhar: The Gardener of Small Stories

Maya Thakuri: Writing between the lines

<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101132/636a22909c7e80680e041795jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Arundhati Roy with Maati Ke Laal in her flat in Delhi. Photo: SHAHIDUL ALAM/DRIK/MAJORITY WORLD</figcaption></figure>Indian author Arundhati Roy <a href="https://pen-international.org/news/arundhati-roy-writes-to-shahidul-alam-day-of-the-imprisoned-writer-2018">wrote a letter</a> to imprisoned Bangladeshi <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/oct/15/jailed-bangladesh-photojournalist-shahidul-alam">photographer Shahidul Alam</a> on the 100th day of his incarceration on 14 November, which was also the <a href="https://pen-international.org/">PEN International</a>’s Day of the Imprisoned Writer, 2018. Alam was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/20/bangladeshi-activist-shahidul-alam-released-from-prison">released on bail</a> on 20 November, and he wrote back to Arundhati. Nepali Times brings you both letters below:  --Dear Shahidul,It’s been more than a 100 days now since they took you away. Times aren’t easy in your country or in mine, so when we first heard that unknown men had abducted you from your home, of course we feared the worst. Were you going to be ‘encountered’ (our word in India for extra-judicial murder by security forces) or killed by ‘non-state actors’? Would your body be found in an alley, or floating in some shallow pond on the outskirts of Dhaka? When your arrest was announced and you surfaced alive in a police station, our first reaction was one of sheer joy.Am I really writing to you? Perhaps not. If I were, I wouldn’t need to say very much beyond, ‘Dearest Shahidul, no matter how lonely your prison cell, know that we have our eyes on you. We are looking out for you.’Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/shahidul-alam-100th-day-in-jail/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shahidul Alam 100th day in Jail</a>If I were really writing to you I wouldn’t need to tell you how your work, your photographs and your words, has, over decades, inscribed a vivid map of humankind in our part of the world—its pain, its joy, its violence, its sorrow and desolation, its stupidity, its cruelty, its sheer, crazy complicatedness—onto our consciousness. Your work is lit up, made luminous, as much by love as it is by a probing, questioning anger born of witnessing at first hand the things that you have witnessed. Those who have imprisoned you have not remotely understood what it is that you do. We can only hope, for their sake, that someday they will.Your arrest is meant to be a warning to your fellow citizens: ‘If we can do this to Shahidul Alam, think of what we can do to the rest of you—all you nameless, faceless, ordinary people. Watch. And be afraid.’The formal charge against you is that you have criticised your country in your (alleged) Facebook posts. You have been arrested under the Section 57 of Bangladesh’s infamous Information and Communications Technology Act (ICT) which authorizes ‘the prosecution of any person who publishes, in electronic form, material that is fake and obscene; defamatory; tends to deprave and corrupt its audience; causes or may cause deterioration in law and order; prejudices the image of the state or a person; or causes or may cause hurt to religious belief’.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/shahidul-alam-photo-kathmandu-award/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shahidul Alam Photo Kathmandu award</a>, Alisha SettWhat sort of law is this, this absurd, indiscriminate, catch-all, fishing trawler type of law? What place does it have in a country that calls itself a democracy? Who has the right to decide what the correct ‘image of the state’ is, and should be? Is there only one legally approved and acceptable image of Bangladesh? Section 57 potentially criminalizes all forms of speech except blatant sycophancy. It’s an attack, not on intellectuals, but on intelligence itself. We hear that over the last five years more than 1200 journalists in Bangladesh have been charged under it, and that 400 trials are already underway.In India too, this sort of attack on our intelligence is becoming normalized. Our equivalent of Bangladesh’s ICT Act is the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act under which hundreds of people including students, activists, lawyers and academics are being arrested in wave after wave. The cases against them, like the one against you, are flimsy and ludicrous. Even the police know that they are likely to be acquitted by higher courts. But the hope is that by then, their spirits will have been broken by years in prison. The process is the punishment.Read also: <a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/freeshahidulalam/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#FreeShahidulAlam</a>So, as I write this letter to you, dear Shahidul, I am tempted to add, dear Sudha, dear Saibaba, dear Surendra, dear Shoma, dear Mahesh, dear Sudhir, dear Rona, dear Arun, dear Vernon, and also, dear Tariq, dear Aijaz, dear Aamir, dear Kopa, dear Kamla, dear Madavi, dear Maase, dear Raju, dear hundreds and hundreds of others.How is it possible for people to defend themselves against laws like these? It’s like having to prove one’s innocence before a panel of certified paranoics. Every argument only serves to magnify their paranoia and heighten their delusions.As both our countries hurtle towards general elections, we know that we can expect more arrests, more lynching, more killing, more bloggers hacked to death, more orchestrated ethnic, religious and caste conflagrations— more false-flag “terrorist” strikes, more assassinations of journalists and writers. Elections, we know, means fire in the ducts.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-death-of-democracy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The death of democracy</a>, Aditya Adhikari Your Prime Minister, who claims to be a secular democrat, has announced that she will build 500 mosques with the billion dollars the Government of Saudi Arabia has donated to Bangladesh. These mosques are supposedly meant to disseminate the ‘correct’ kind of Islam.Here in India, our rulers have dropped all pretense of the secularism and socialism that are enshrined in our constitution. In order to distract attention from the catastrophic failures of governance and deepening popular resentment, as institution after institution—our courts, universities, banks, intelligence agencies—is pushed into crisis, the ruling power, (not the Government, but its holding company, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,) is alternately cajoling and threatening the Supreme Court to pass an order clearing the decks for the construction of a giant Hindu temple on the site where the Babri Masjid once stood before it was demolished by a rampaging mob. It’s amazing how politicians’ piety peaks and troughs with election cycles.This is what we are up against, these neat definitions of the perfect nation, the perfect man, the perfect citizen, the perfect Hindu, the perfect Muslim. The postscript to this is the perfect majority and the satanic minority. The people of Europe and the Soviet Union have lived through the devastation that these sorts of ideas caused. They have suffered the matchless terror of neatness. Only recently Europe marked the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht—the event that marked the beginning of the Holocaust. There too it all began quite slowly. There too it began with elections. And there too the old murmurs have started up again.Here we’re going to witness our own scorched-earth elections in the coming days. They will use their fishing-trawler laws, they will jump at shadows to decimate the opposition.Fortunately, we are an irredeemably untidy people. And hopefully we will stand up to them in our diverse and untidy ways.Dear Shahidul, I believe the tide will turn. It will. It must. This foolish, shortsighted cruelty will give way to something kinder and more visionary. This particular malaise, this bout of ill-health that has engulfed our planet will pass.I hope to see you in Dhaka very soon.With loveArundhati <figure><img width="700" height="400" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101132/636a22929c7e80680e041796jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>Shahidul Alam is released from the prision.</figcaption></figure>Dearest Arundhati,It was a letter I read and reread long before it appeared before my eyes. It was through layers of metal bars that I strained to listen to Rahnuma’s words. At over 130 decibels, the noise made by us screaming prisoners, straining to hear and be heard, was akin to a crowded stadium or a fire siren. As she repeated her words over and over again, I faintly heard, Arundhati. Letter. It was just over a hundred days that I had been incarcerated. A hundred days since I’d slept on my own bed, fed my fish, cycled down the streets of Dhaka. A hundred days since I’d pressed my shutter as I searched for that elusive light.Those words, screamed out but barely heard was the nourishment I needed. Did you write it by hand? What was the paper like? In this digital age, you probably used a keyboard. What font had you used? What point size? And the words. Words that you so gracefully string together. I relished the imagined words. Your words. I missed words as I missed my bed, my fish and Rahnuma’s touch. When they asked me what I needed in jail, books were on top of my list. The first lot of books came in. Mujib’s prison diaries, Schendel’s History of Bangladesh, and the book you’d given me when we last met, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. I’d been meaning to read it ever since we said goodbye in Delhi, but our lives had been taken over by the immediacy of our struggles. Now I had the time.I imagined other letters. The one Shiv Viswanathan had written when Binayak Sen had been sentenced for sedition, or the one Rahgu Rai wrote asking that I be freed. But this one was not to a prime minister. It had been written for me. To me. There are no pigeons in Keraniganj, and sparrows are perhaps too small to carry letters. As I fed them from my window, I could imagine one carrying across a tiny wad of paper, carefully tied to its feet. Paper I would unfold gently, smoothing the creases. It would have been a letter I had read before it was written.I could read your letter, not because I remember you sitting across your wooden table in your open kitchen. Not because I remember you rubbing noses with Maati Ke Laal as she interrupted our chat, insisting on not being ignored. Not because of Sanjay’s book on Kashmir, which we had opened together. My reading relied on our shared legacies, on our collective griefs, on the struggles we both face as autocrats rule our lands. You have Kashmir and we have the Chittagong Hill Tracts. You have ‘encounters’ and we have ‘crossfire’. ‘Goom’ we both share. We both live in what are called democracies, though we know we lack voice.Your book weaves complex characters, the absurdities and the beauty that is India. It finds the calm within the chaos. A moment of kindness, within the grotesque injustice. I look around me and see hijras in the high security cells in Surjamukhi. Occasionally they walk out, their bright saris, glowing amidst the drab clothes of other prisoners. They remind me of your Anjum. Of your Saddam, as I see Koutuk da feeding the cats, making his way to those pretentiously named jail buildings, Jamuna, Meghna, Korotowa and Padma, seeking out the one that might have missed its meal. As I speak to prisoners falsely charged, and left to rot in a legal system that lets people be forgotten, and the Sharbahara man Tipu Biswas, his eyes glowing with passion, insisting on justice even in jail, I am reminded of  your Musa, defiant against the odds.It was here in Keraniganj that I met Badal Farazi, wrongfully charged by Indian courts, and eventually sent to Bangladesh. Ten years in jail for a crime, the courts knew he could not have committed. My government too scared to speak against this utter wrongness of Indian justice. Too scared to upset the big brother. Keraniganj was where top terror Joseph had been. Released through a presidential pardon, whisked away in the middle of the night and sent overseas. In my case it had taken six attempts before bail had finally been granted. They had tried to block my bail just as they had tried to stop me from sleeping on a bed, or getting access to a doctor. Even after bail was granted, they had tried to prevent my release. But we triumphed in the end, and we held hands and sang songs as I left the jail gate. The case still hangs over my head and the threat of bail being withdrawn is the threat they hope will silence my tongue, my pen and my camera. But the ink in our pens still run. The keyboards still clatter.Yesterday we were in Dhakeswari Mandir. It was Taposh and Haimanti’s daughter Riddhi’s ‘mukhe bhat’, her first solid food. As they lit candles and circled the tulshi plant, I wondered if they would dig up the temple because they had heard of a mosque underneath. One more mosque to add to the 500 our prime minister has promised using Saudi money.They swore in the new cabinet yesterday ‘I will faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter according to law: That I will bear true faith and allegiance to Bangladesh: And that I will not allow my personal interest to influence the discharge of my duties as a member of Parliament.’ Given that their very means of being there was based on an election where every rule had been flouted, the constitution abused, to protect their personal interest, this oath was particularly perverse. A slap on our face with sandals, a terrible insult in South Asia. They will sit in their duty-free cars, flags waving. They, the biggest lawbreakers in the land, will sit on boards of banks and schools. They will pass the new laws. They took their oath as a mother of four was writhing in hospital, gang-raped by party faithful, for having the audacity of voting the ‘wrong’ way.But yes, Arundhati, the tide will turn, and the nameless, faceless people will rise. They will rise against the entire state machinery, now reduced to servility. They will rise as they did in ’71. They, who never clamoured for muktijoddha honours, who never claimed benefits for their children, who never wore Mujib coats in public. They, their children and their children’s children, will rise to bring back the core principles they had fought for. We will have secularism. We will have democracy. We will have social equality. We will win back this land.I’ll see you in Dhaka. A humongous hug awaits.Love,Shahidul Dhaka. 7th January 2019First published in <a href="http://www.newagebd.net/article/61212/they-will-rise-shahidul-alam-replies-to-arundhati-roy">The New Age</a>

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