The sun soon begins to glow and the air warms up by midday. With the temperature hitting mid-twenties in the early afternoon, the head starts looking for shade. The body doesn’t want to leave the warmth of sunlight. The tussle between head and body is hardly resolved when shadows begin to lengthen eastwards. The wind gains speed and sometimes succeeds in driving away the haze to the rim of the Valley. At dusk, the view from rooftops is worthy of gods.[break]
When the sun slides slowly into its nest beyond the horizon for the night, the Himalayan peaks glisten from the sweat of trying to pierce the azure skies stretched like an endless canopy over the green hills. The breathtaking views during autumn must have been one of the reasons so many divinities consented to live out in open grounds braving wind, sun, rain or frost for much of the year.
The night falls suddenly, like a large black shawl dropping from the heavens, to envelope the shivering Valley in its embrace. The wind slows; cold intensifies. Flickering lights in some parts of the city accentuate the darkness of other areas in the grips of load shedding. For those who can afford conveniences that only good fortune can buy—personal transport; family house with private lighting, heating, water supply and waste disposal; round-the-clock services of caretakers and caregivers; and doctors on call should the need arise—the bliss of living in the Valley can be akin to the life of divinities residing inside gilded temples attended by platoons of priests.
For ordinary mortals, however, autumn is what it means in the figurative sense of the term: Time of incipient decline. Every denizen becomes a senior citizen during this period, trying to spit out the phlegm: Coughing, sneezing and gasping for breadth, oblivious of the enchanting beauty that can be experienced just by looking up skywards. Autumn is the season of curse for those with respiratory diseases. Dusty streets, ground-hugging haze, wayward pollen let loose from drying flowers, thorny caterpillars hanging from twigs, and the powdery smell of falling leaves carry enough allergens around during the fall to make even healthy individuals sneeze.
The combination of extremes—pleasure and pain, light and darkness, heat and cold, solidity and dust, and hope and despair—inspires artistes and littérateurs to explore the complexities of human existence with sensitivity and humility. Memories of the past and visions of the future stir creative urges. The bourgeoisie, however, loves the present, and autumn is the most appropriate season for revelry.
Traditional festivals such as Dashain and Tihar are meant for celebration of life. New forms of festivities have begun to warm up and add colors to post-Tihar bleakness of late autumn and early winter in Kathmandu. Since the last few years, the city has begun to host a number of artistic events to engage the literati and the chattering classes.
Illustration: Sworup Nhasiju
Joys of stasis
A cursory look at the calendar of events in Kathmandu would suggest that the art scene of the capital city is fecund and vibrant. A closer look, however, would perhaps reveal to the discerning that most of such activities are often ritualistic in nature. Conformist aesthetics that feeds the vanity of the bourgeoisie rather than stoke passions and incite action dominate the picture. A culture of compliance, which explores the human desire to follow and obey authority, is often the defining feature of the contemporary arts and literature scene. The moment someone aims to throw a little paint at the status quo—as the bold artist Manish Harijan attempted sometime ago—he or she is banished into obscurity by the arbitrators of cultural tastes.
If activities, rather than activism, were the criteria, Kathmandu has been sizzling for over a month or so. Jazzmandu and Jazz Bazaar drew enthusiasts from faraway places. Sarah Kay held slam poetry workshops in profit-sector schools. Several generations of Nepali poets converged at Nepal Academy Hall to sing of nation and nationalism.
The Mandala Theatre at Anam Nagar hosted the Kathmandu International Theatre of currently homeless Aarohan Gurukul. The Himalayan Blues Festival attracted the cognoscenti. The Kathmandu International Art Festival covered almost the entire Valley with artful events. Ace photographers from abroad were in town displaying their works and conducting seminars. The sponsors of the Literary Jatra indefinitely postponed the celebrations, citing the looming political instability, but the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (kiMff) is to begin on schedule, regardless. If one loves art, it is just too bad that this has been a season of Baburamitis (A throat affliction that exacerbates infections of upper respiratory tracts) too!
Art activism in auditoriums, galleries, salons and palace courtyards—artivism is the term Asmina Ranjit adores—however, is a poor substitute for activism of the deeds out in the streets or at the grassroots.
Raghuvir Sahay (1929-1990), a leftwing journalist-litterateur of Hindi was in fact so pessimistic that he declared quite unambiguously, “… Where there will be too much art. / The change will not happen.” Arts and literature, it would appear, teaches its ‘audience’ to endure suffering as inevitable conditions of human existence rather than fight petty tyrannies in life and everyday injustices of the world.
In a poem of elegiac metre, appropriately titled “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973) laments as much the life of his own works as about the legacy of his idol, “You were silly like us; your gift survived it all…/ For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives/ … A way of happening, a mouth.”
Manufacturing meanings
Plato, the wisest of Greeks and a student of Socrates, took a pretty dim view of poetry. He believed that verses could corrupt the capacity of philosopher-kings to think. Proponents of martial traits such as bravery, courage, and the spirit of sacrifice have long considered arts effeminate. Arts are dismissed as the pastime of the dreamy rather than the passion of realists.
“The bourgeois is the man of good sense and enlightenment, the man of moderation, the man of peace and orderliness, the man in every way ‘respectable’, who is the mainstay of all well-ordered societies. …A little art, a little poetry, a little religion, a little scholarship, a little philosophy, all these are excellent ingredients in life, and give an air of decorous refinement to his surroundings,” observes Aurobindo, the Sage of Pondichery, adding in no uncertain terms, “Such a type may give stability to a society; it cannot reform or revolutionize it. Such a type may make the politics of a nation safe, decorous and reputable. It cannot make that nation great or free.”
Most Nepalis consider their country to be ‘great and free’ anyway, so such cautions are rightly thrown out of the window. But making sense of the surfeit of artivism is perhaps still necessary.
No creation is complete without the engagement of a dispassionate critic. In the quadrangle of art, thought, action and reflection—works of a creator, a critic, a campaigner and a thinker respectively—perhaps the role of the reviewer is what connects imagination with reality. It is the responsibility of the critic to go beyond the concerns of the creator and find its relevance for the contemporary society. Without the interpretations of an interventionist, artistes become dreamily detached and activists develop disdain for their work. Thinkers then become mentally malnourished.
The question “How much is too much art?” is a valid one with no specific and clear answer. If indeed there is too much art in Kathmandu, how come ornately ornamented ladies continue to flock to almost artless kathabachan (religious storytelling) sessions, youngsters with pierced ears boogey to the noise of Hindi
film music, and nothing higher than calendar art can be found hanging in the overstuffed drawing rooms of the rich and famous? The so-called progressive literature is often no more or less banal than aesthetical obsessions of regressive creators.
A proposition, however, is possible to forward: Art beyond the absorptive capacity of society is excessive and does more harm than good. Like every good answer, it only succeeds in posing yet another question: How to expand absorptive capacity in a hubristic society? Now, that is a question worth engaging budding critics in every field of arts and literature.
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read political analysts in Nepal.
Related story
‘House Of The Dragon’ To Get Shorter Season 2 As HBO Series Eye...
