Rabindra Raja Shahi
I am going to talk of such a national academician who is well-known among the literati in Nepal, arguably among the English readers. It is Dr. Vishnu Singh Rai who is a Professor Emeritus of English from Tribhuvan University and a prolific writer in English and Nepali alike. A native English writer he is definitely not, yet the way he writes in English appears quite effortless and natural, free flowing and freewheeling. Lucid, arresting and eloquent! Consistency in standard quality. His writings are timeless and immortal- no qualm I have in this point.
His autobiographical memoir “Three months In Austria”, and the poem “Corona Says” bear testament to his masterly command over English language. Actually, Mr. Rai very dexterously and skillfully handles human emotions, sensitivity and mood in a way that is peculiar only to Mr. Rai himself.
There is no unnecessary philosophical clap-trap, nor any jot of writerly snobbishness, nor even maudlin whimpering or nor angry outburst. His writings are straight from the heart expressions with its inherent capacity to touch the heart strings of his readers. In his essays, Mr. Rai comes up with a new style of writing –Japanes Hibun wherein after each paragraph a Hiku is composed. In Nepalese literature, we call it Champu. His travelogue “Three Months In Austria” is remarkable in every way- linguistically, thematically and aesthetically.
The book “Martyr and Other stories” consists of nineteen stories as fictions. Incredibly easy to understand because of its simple sentence structures and common vocabulary items, and with unity and clarity in the flow of its content delivery that is interesting and convincing, delighting and enlightening at once- the anthology is an immense gift of creative art, recording contemporary Nepali life in its variegated colors and hues. An audacious attempt is made here to conduct the critical surgery of this fictional compendium.
“Martyrs”- pictorially offering a compendious description of the scenes of political rallies, demonstrations, skirmishes between security forces and agitators, and vociferous sloganeering- is a short story grounded on the 2063 B.S. people’s movement against the autocratic kingship in Nepal. During the heat of the revolution, Sunil and his father lost their lives for the cause of democracy, liberty, human rights, justice and equality while participating in the raucous movement, ultimately resulting in the fact that together with them, many others became unsung heroes and martyrs, and monarchy gave way to federal republic at the end. This short story after which the book has been named is through and through a political saga of people’s struggle for freedom and democracy, a ravishingly crafted iconic story, a timeless fictional piece!
His short story “Little Island of Happiness” is a love story of a rich, elite class couple Mina and Mohan along with a sub-plot of a poor couple Lila and Mine. The theme of the story is happiness in small things between husband and wife whose conjugal life may be filled with fights and quarrels, ups and downs, sometimes even for no apparent reason. The story seems to suggest, quarrel between spouses is no more than a fire on a straw, in that this fight and debate, accusations and counter-accusations to each other inject and polish their love further, thus making their married life beautiful and pleasing, happy and peaceful.
The short stories “The Weight of a Gun” and “Justice”, set in the background of a bloodbath terror that raged on for a whole decade in Nepal are realistic stories about horror, abduction, threat, and merciless killing perpetrated by both the State and revolutionary forces. In both the short stories, main characters are found whether by accidence or by coincidence to be men with a soft spot in the heart. Both feel a nausea welling up in the pit of their stomachs at the scenes of victims undergoing excruciating torture first and finally getting shot down to death. They both realize the value of humanity and spurn the belief that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, creating their own version of law even if it means the bloodshed. And, they seek out to transform themselves to Buddhahood in the slaughter house. Using guns in order to force people to accept your side is bad and can not be justified whether you do it or the parties do it.
The short story “Bund” demonstrates how a road blockade- absence of rule and order- made life quite miserable, especially to those bus-passengers left stranded in the mid-way through their journey. This kind of terror ruled an entire decade till the commencement of the new millennium in Nepal. This story is crammed full of descriptive style as it goes on making a live-like commentaries on the sight of a perfect chaos that occurs because of road closure staged by an anonymous political outfit. The writer- throughout the whole story- sharply attacks the wanton trend of going on a road shutdown in order to put pressure on the concerned authorities to have their demand fulfilled even for the minor of the minor cases.
Authored from feministic perspective and bordering between an essay and a short story, the tale unravels the five sets of womenfolk from different backgrounds with their own jeremiads to tell- all in a bid to project the overall mood of downbeat status of Nepalese women in general. Through an NGO worker, Brahmin lady that is the mouthpiece of the writer, he evinces his desire for being a crusader against women’s marginalization, by overcoming the constricting dilemmas of prefixed definitions and gendered behavioral norms and by speaking out against the male-dominated, patriarchal world that denies women freedom and liberty to govern their own lives and to celebrate their own destiny.
Both the short stories “Teacher” and “Professor Parajuli”, even though they have different settings and situations, carry on with identical theme and message that an honest teacher or any person for the matter may have his day ultimately. The society has not yet lost out on regard, respect and reverence for a teacher and teaching is still a pure and pious job in the eyes of many. Teachers still command and enjoy a good deal of public veneration even in the wake of their retirement from the job- this is the benefit of being a teacher though financially not in decent status in any way.
The short story “Punte’s Problem” draws on socio-educational realities, showing how we are careless about our children, how they are most ignored at home, and how schooling system terrorizes them through homework punishment, etc. We are not teaching them properly, just leaving them all alone to do or die; obviously many fail and take wrong paths and destructive means. So, the story is founded and grounded on child psychology in toto.It is undoubtedly a story of psycho-realism.
The short story “Why did Makhan Steal the Mangoes?” deals with early education system of school rather in a negative vein. As things stand, Mr. Rai strongly despises a dictatorial teacher and the schooling system that gives a fillip to corporeal punishment as such phenomena discourage active learning of children, discourage their creativity and originality. For fear of punishment, the children say yes even when they have not understood what is being taught. They only feel bored, demotivated, sleepy and so unlearn.
The short story “I’d Rather Stay Good” giving a sensational account of the saga of a college boy’s infatuation and passionate desire to know a woman and her body is coterminous to an erotic literature. It is the only story in the entire compendium which treats in detail the inner conflict the narrator undergoes between his desires whether to stay good or bad in connection with girls. It unearths the narrator boy’s hidden, repressed and dormant sex drive and the whirlpool of his mental suffocation arising out of this libidinal lust. Sigmund Freud peeps through the story by exposing the boy’s suppressed lust. It is, therefore, a number one short story of sex psychology, unraveling the narrator’s severe psycho-sexual anxiety.
The short story “The Hole” is a fantastically amusing story in the sense that there is a problematic incident leading to the solution, but with an unanticipated twist at the end that is mind-boggling, mind-washing and cathartic to the readers. It is like a thriller, like a detective story of Arthur Conan Doyle, or like a crime story handled in police investigation bureau. It can easily rub shoulder to shoulder with another iconic short story “The Magi” by O henry when it comes to unassuming, unanticipated twist at the end of a tale in as much as in both these stories, readers come face to face with a high-voltage suspense with their bated breath.
The short story “Crazy Ramlakhan”, set in one of the villages in the Terai, focuses on the conflict between long-standing cultural tradition and change, between village life and urban life, between education and superstition, between an individual and a society, and between old convention and modernity. The characters like Ramlakhan who are modern-minded, educated and progressive decide to break away from long-held social traditions and pressures. They like to make a new world- virtually better-off, pleasantly different and dynamic. Admittedly, Ramlakhan has been presented and projected as a harbinger of change, as an agent of modern advancement, and as an epitome of educated youth!
Bureaucratic corruption and malpractice forming the theme of the short story “Promotion” has ruled the country of ours. The corrupt bureaucracy resides in the highest strata. Mr. Hari Prasad Ghimire produced as a protagonist in the story is considered to be a very successful bureaucrat, for, he climbs up the stairs of promotion quickly leaving his colleague-competitors far behind within a very limited span of time, by always greasing the palm of his bosses. He is very shrewd, wily, tactful. Through the short story “Promotion”, the readers grow disenchanted and disillusioned with how the Nepalese bureaucracy is over head and ears in corruption, commission, and rank immorality, with how Nepalese civil administration is plagued by high level corruption. It is the height of shady deals that takes place in the corridor of bureaucratic power in Nepal. Nepalese bureaucracy is horrifyingly marked and pock-marked with nepotism, favoritism, cronyism and what have you.
As for narrative structure, usually his short stories focus on one incident, have a single plot, a single setting, a small number of characters, and cover a short period of time. His art of narration employs an omniscient narrator with plot, characters and narrative point of view as the crucial elements. Mr. Rai’s characters are free and don’t move at the behest of the storyteller. Children, women, teachers, insurgents, superstitious villagers, educated men, bureaucrats former students and the like appear as characters, down-to-earth characters in his stories. They are real, life-like.
Rai’s stories are not the off-shoot of any fantasy or mysterious expressions; they are tied to the Nepalese soil and life of people here. All his short stories in some way or the other reflect the spirit of our present era in true sense of the term. Obviously, they reflect the Nepali Zeitgeist. There at the center and heart of his fictional world lies his philosophy of humanism and humanitarianism. Against radicalism and every form of vices and violence, he emphasizes on the beauty of moral virtue that is to be found in all classes of people regardless of their birth, education or background whatsoever.
Mr.Rai has presented and brought to the fore such varied realities and subject-matters in his short stories as women’s ubiquitous problem of marginalization and oppression, political conflict like the revolution, social superstitions, undermining of teaching job, bureaucratic corruption, the issue of child psychology, repressed sex drive cybercrime, cyber security and such like. His handling of English language in fact bears an immense flexibility, adaptability and vitality of English usage which are pretty amazing. English comes to him as naturally as his mother-tongue, Nepali. Mr. Rai’s this story tomb subverts the genre boundaries and instead combines both prose and poetry. In his short fictions, facts are fictionalized and the fictitious are factualized. It is in this exclusive context that the writer’s a postmodernist work to a certain extent.
As the ultimate impact of perusing his fictional pieces, it evokes – not sniggering “chhee- chhee” feeling, but eulogizing’ wah- wah’ feeling that suddenly escapes through the lips of readers without their very knowing as each of his narratives is recounted in a way and with such a virtuosity that is compelling and gripping, revealing the heart-beats of the author, his mind’s agitation and his soul’s travail. A craftsman par excellence in fiction!
(Rabindra Raja Shahi is an Associate Professor at Triyuga Janata Multiple Campus, Gaighat, Udayapur)
