Hem Raj Khatiwada
Prof. Sanjeev Uprety is one of the prominent writers in Nepali literary firmament. He is a witty observer of socio-politico-ethical events of our country. His books Ghanchakkar (novel), Siddhantaka Kuraharu (theory), Hamsa (novel), and The Different Cultivation of Maize (play) are worth reading, and all of these books have left a new footprint among readers all over the country. Most significantly, the readers all along get new ideas from his literary creative.
The Different Cultivation of Maize is an English play penned by Prof. Sanjeev Uprety. Through it, the playwright gets us to re-visit the social, cultural, and political situations of our country. It is a satirical play. Although Uprety rewrote on title of Krishna Lal Adhikari’s Cultivation of Maize, his text is all different. Inquisitiveness remained, that is: was Adhikari going to talk of a simple maize farm, or create a political satire against the rule of Rana? The answer always caused a controversy. But Uprety in The Different Cultivation of Maize satirizes the so-called belief system that has helped people in authority take benefits from the deprived and down-trodden. Principally, he has pinpointed some problems in this play, such as authorial freedom of speech, gender discrimination, third gender issue, class division, women’s backwardness, and compulsion of muscle drain, the readers’ freedom of interpretation, the glamorous life of clean and laundered people, and many others. In Nepali politics from history to present, the power always bid to do different cultivation over the powerless citizens. The power always forced the powerless to see a beautiful dream, but finally gave them a cob without corn. For this reason, the playwright has ironically denigrated the ulterior political motives of power-centered people in the play.
The Author is a protagonist character in this play. He has been prosecuted as a culprit in court. Different people ask him a barrage of questions from the witness box. As a defendant, he asks if an author doesn’t have any freedom of speech in this country. Plus he strongly asserts that he is a FREE citizen of this country. His idea is vivid that what he has written is in fact The Different Cultivation of Maize, not that Cultivation of Maize. His writing is not a replica of another text because times keep on changing and so do people. So the Author is suggesting that the readers not think out revision of stories as a criminal act. The Author doesn’t get a narrow escape to safeguard his thoughts. Many characters made him lay on the pyre in the long run. The Shadow of Roland Barthes, too, says that the author dies a symbolic death. Then the author scolds the Shadow saying ‘maybe this is not a man but Monsanto, the agrochemical company whose product did incalculable damage to local crops. Imported hybrid Monsanto seeds have invaded Nepal like modern colonizers, destroying local seeds.’
Another issue Namita Kumari intensifies in this play is gender discrimination. She goes against the stereotypical belief that men are active and women are passive in sexual matters. Having accused the Author of gender discrimination, Namita tells Lawyer 1 to show the law that dictates women to be passive during the sexual act. From her opinions, it is meant that entire womankind is not weak. Here on the contrary, the male character Lawyer 1 answered Namita in an insulting tone – that is ‘he doesn’t mind being at the bottom if she desires to be more active. If she were on the top and he … at the bottom…’
Heera Dulal is anxious for the third gender’s rights in the society. The Author, Dulal realizes, only valorized the cultivation of heterosexuals in the play, and objects to his perspectives. By the same token, we can point out a class division in the country from Arjun Singh’s charge upon the Author. The charge is the Author wants poor people to eat dhindo, while recommending butter fried corn dishes for the rich.
I am feeling so sad now why girls like Anuradha, the Author’s sister in Nepal cannot identify the boys’ snares. Why is Anuradha so gullible in life? Isn’t she to be alert in time if a lout is bidding to sell her at a Mumbai brothel? Similarly, Radha, the Author’s wife is feeling insecure at home after everyone has left her. Females’ problems are mushrooming in the play due to their backwardness. Ramesh has also migrated abroad from the same house. He said that much better it is to herd camels in Saudi, or to take up a dishwashing job in Malaysia, at least a guy can make some money. From this sort of notion, it looks like the youths of Nepal have been becoming victims of muscle drain for few years, and the plight of poor family members in Nepal is on the same wavelength.
Roland Barthes years ago wrote the famous essay “The Death of the Author”. In that essay, he said the author meets a symbolic death. When author dies, the reader is born. By the same logic, according to Roland Barthes I too will be reborn as a reader after the accomplishment of this review. In this regard, readers become entirely free to interpret authors’ literary works in what way they like. This play also buttresses the readers’ freedom of interpreting literary works.
The playwright has displayed the glamor and power of clean and laundered people in this play. They spend a cozy and luxurious life in the society. They always other subalterns, for example the officer and Judge shows power in the play saying ‘Like water, my form, shape and face, too, keeps on changing. No one can comprehend me. I adopt new names, faces and forms, in every era, in every epoch of history.’ But the badly castigated author from different characters is made to burn on the pyre.
The daughter of the Author, Ramita venerates her father’s words “If you don’t write, history will be forgotten” and then she spent a long time to write ‘The Different Cultivation of Maize’. Well, she remembers her father’s promise for always. Her father was going to buy the star spangled frock for her but his desire remained incomplete. In this sense I guess the playwright could have told us human life at times ends in incompletion. In this play, many ideological traps encircle the readers’ mind. Thus, interpretations of this play become all different from one person to another.
Finally, I happened to admire the beautiful flow of writer’s emotions in this play. Some Nepali words are finely used here. For non-Nepali English readers, the words have been translated in glossary. The linguistic aspects I found in this play are better, but the plot baffles the readers somewhere. Dear readers, it is one of the must-read plays in literary domain.
