Khajura, 21 April
Sahityapost English Executive Editor Mahesh Paudyal was awarded with cash and citation at Khajura during the two-day Khajura Literature Festival organized by Khajura Academy. Paudyal was conferred the Khajura Pragya Award in recognition of his more than two-decade long contribution to literary criticism. In the same event, writer Shahiram Karki was honored for his contribution to Nepali poetry, especially epic while writer Ishwari Prasad Rijal and singer and cultural activist Ishwar Gurung were awarded for their contribution to research and culture respectively. The awards were conferred at the inaugural session of Khajura Literary Festival on 19 April, organized under the chairmanship of Khajura Academy’s Vice Chancellor Dr. Indra Bahadur Bhandari. The event was graced by the Chairperson of Khajura Municipality Dambar Bahadur BK ‘Toofan’ as the Chief Guest.
Kalpana Poudel Jigyasu, a member of the Khajura Academy welcomed the guests while its Vice-Chancellor delivered the introductory speech. He shed light on the Academy’s past and ongoing activities and foregrounded the rationale of the current literature festival. Speaking as the Chief Guest, Chairman of the Municipality Mr. Dambar Bahadur BK said, his rural municipality was always ready to encourage and promote literary and cultural activities. He also urged writers to draw attention of the government to obscure areas and help it direct its policies and programmes in that direction.
The inauguration was followed by editor Paudyal’s key-note address on the theoretical aspects of contemporary Nepali Literature. In the address, Paudyal argued that a nation changes the tropes of its dominant theoretical and philosophical thinking in every one to two decades, and Nepal is not an exception. He said, the latest decades have been those of renewed focus on marginal issues, attempting to foreground the voices of the silenced communities and sections, eclipsed earlier by centralized governance, dominated by few powerful people. He credited latest political changes and the approaches of decentralization, and partially the idea of postmodernism as the causative factors behind such paradigm shift in the structure of Nepal’s feelings. Senior writers Dr. Hari Prasad Timalsina and Kamal Mani Devkota commented on Paudyal’s keynote, while another senior writer Sanat Regmi complemented him for the relevant speech, urging him also to acknowledge the proliferation of artificial intelligence in the later decade to influence the nation’s pattern of thinking.
The keynote address was followed by recitation of poems, ghazals and other literary creations. Writers from several districts, including Ilam, Chitwan, Dang, Dailekh, Surkhet, Bardiya, Jumla, Banke, Kailali and Kanchanpur recited their creations.
One of the key attractions of the event was the declaration of Khajura Pratibha. Rekha Thapa, a student of Shri Shukra High School bagged the title, beating her fellow contenders with her stunning performance in four genres: poetry, extempore speech, singing and dancing. She was honored with the title, together with a cash prize of 15 thousand rupees and a citation.
The two-day festival ended with the adoption of a five-point ‘Khajura Declaration’, asserting commitments to identify more talents from inside the Rural Municipality and bringing them to limelight, identifying writers, artists, cultural activists and researchers from inside and outside Khajura and awarding them, encouraging literary creations and their publication, prioritizing more research, and lifting Khajura’s literary and cultural treasure to national and international forums.
The entire event was moderated by the festivals’ coordinator, writer and literary activist Mani Aryal.
