Stories all around us!

I was reading stories this week, especially focusing on those written by some teenage girls for the collection Telling a Tale. I then had an opportunity to listen to Manjushree Thapa at IACER (a higher education college) in New Baneshwor. The latter is an established writer and the former are the aspiring ones who have expressed their views of the everyday world in beautiful forms and contents. I took interest in reading the younger writers from the collection because I wanted to know their worlds of fact and fiction, their world which is so difficult to know if they do not allow us to know.

I feel that these modest ones are like the selfish giant (read the symbolism of enclosure): They do not like the grown up trespassers to come into their garden except when they write. The gate of the garden is open and this is a rare opportunity to inter into their world and beliefs. I would not have passed by! I thank the editor for opening the iron-gate.

Manjushree says there are stories all around us. She does not only see multiple events and people to weave them in her stories and fictions, but she looks at the world and tries to read them as a sensible critic. When you compare such sentiments by a renowned writer, you get jolts of cosmic stature in the creative representation of many Nepali writers, especially writing in Nepali (sorry for not naming them). They love to present themes of heroic proportions, declarative tones, and all encompassing forms. Many of the writers want to write nothing less than an epic. Hence, everything falls apart: The work neither becomes epical nor even mock epical. Then comes the critical collapse: Once nothing is achieved, their works become postmodernist (they claim by closing their visionary eyes!).

I appreciate those writers who have knowledge of the world with critical faculty of mind. A creative writer is a critic too: A critic in the sense that one is aware of multiple things.

One has the access to the vocabulary of the academia, one has observing mind, one is discrete in representing the world, one speaks philosophically, and one has the sense of proportion. Rather than praising Manjushree after listening to her many times, my point of argument is about the arrogance shown by many Nepali creative writers of present tradition. They should listen to such a writer, especially the processes of her creative mind.

I may not like all her stories and a writer is not exceptional in all her narratives. I may not like some of her stories because I may belong to the tradition of Balzacian tales. I like those of Manjushree which have narrative twists and surprises. But such perspectives of a reader like me do not make her an ordinary writer.

For me she is a good writer not merely because she is an establish writer and writes beautiful stories for the readers. She is a good writer because she is a good critic too. When you listen to such a writer, you come to understand that she is aware of multiple things ranging from conceptualizing themes and characters with theoretical perspectives to sheer creative imagination. I have listened to her many times and have always liked her creative and critical ideas.

Manjushree says there are stories all around us. She does not only see multiple events and people to weave them in her stories and fictions, but she looks at the world and tries to read them as a sensible critic.

Many Nepali writers lack such integrity, confidence, philosophical awareness and theoretical insights. I have difficulty when such writers ask me to write reviews and speak on book launching programs. Most of the writers are verbosely grand narrative and do not like to sound simple. The sky is their limit and everyone aspires to be great in stature by being postmodernist in modernist sense -- the utter confusion of critical paradigm -- for their writerly identity.

This is where the young writers come into the fore. The writers I was reading are from Archana Thapa’s edited Telling a Tale. They are true to what they feel, to what they experience, and that is why they are very readable. They are refined creative minds. My fear is about them desiring the grand narrative tradition of Nepali creative writing. The grownups would not but the younger ones would listen to what a writer like Manjushree says, her ideas and opinions that she expresses with aesthetic flare.

Primarily, the clarity of thought and the methods of presentation are what matters the most. The young writers in Archana’s collection carry the simplicity I am talking about, and the fear is the forced plunging into grand narratives with the universal declarative sentences and stanzas. Many Nepali writers are writing such gargantuan expressions without context, without aesthetic flare, without reading the traditions of their past and present minds. The foolhardiness is writing wrong sentences and declaring that they are being postmodernists.

Thus Abha, Shristi, Snigdha, Sunaina, Swasti, to name a few, beautifully allowed the readers to delve into their perspectival space and time. Reading them was a joy. You understand Manjushree when she says that the stories are all around us.

orungupto@gmail.com