A Leaf In A Begging Bowl Modern Nepali Story

RAMESH VIKAL is one of the most esteemed modern writers of Nepal. He was born in 1927 in the village of Arubari, in northeastern Kathmandu valley He has authored three novels Sunauli, Abiral Bagcha Indrawati, and Sagar Urlanchha Sagarmatha Chhuna, and seven short story collections Birano Deshma, Naya Sadakko Geet, Aja Pheri Arko Tanna Pherincha, Euta Budho Violin Ashabariko Dhunma: Urmila Bhauju, Shav Salik ra Sahasra Buddha, and Haraeka Kathaharu. Jailed repeatedly for his political beliefs, Vikal became, in 1951, the first writer to receive the prestigious Madan Puraskar prize for a collection of short stories. In the course of his writing career he has also authored the travel books Saat Surya Ek Fanko (Translated as In Search of Shangrila) and Nilgiriko Chhayama, along with the children's books Bikram ra Naulo Graha, Tehra Ramaila Kathaharu; Hiunde Chuttima; Kehi Murkhaharuka Kathaharu; Agenako Dilma; and Ekais Ramaila Kathaharu. Vikal received the Mahendra Pragya award in 1981 and the Gorkha Dakshin Bahu award in 1997, and was appointed from 1995 to 1999 as an Academician at the Royal Nepal Academy. He continues to write stories and essays at his home in Arubari.

Manjushree Thapa, giving reason for her choice of Ramesh Vikal's short stories for translation into English, says that Vikal's stories give her access to the domain of social Nepali fiction; there is "confluence of Marxist aesthetics and Hindu ethics" in his stories and they give representation to the subaltern otherwise neglected in Nepali stories. In other words, the question of political representation is well addressed in Vikal's stories. And she confesses that she is "feminist translating" these stories where "the working of gendered agency" tend to give a shape to the linguistic representation. The stories that she is referring to are those that interestingly show a society in a state of transition without changing the basic structural pattern of the male- centric hegemony. The tensions involved in the social transition are textualised in the stories of Ramesh Vikal and his contemporaries. The translator's focus from what she says in the introduction thus appear to be those domains that have become the interest of discussions in literary criticism today, especially after the concepts of hegemony, subaltern and "gendered agency" became the influencing factors in literary discourses.

Interestingly, Thapa puts her finger on some of the main tenets of Ramesh Vikal's writings. The tenets that are interpreted by critics are as diverse as those mentioned by Thapa, namely, Vikal is considered as a neo-Marxist writer and a fellow traveller, for which reason he was elected Chairman of the Pragatsil or progressive writers' union. But as is the case with other so-called Marxist writers, the difference between what may be represented as neutral and Marxist positions is tenuous. Vikal's Marxist position itself is a text that is represented according to the time and context lived by the reader. Vikal is not a propagandist, nor one who has a so-called mission to fulfil with a messianic zeal. His art is very subtle and his characters, as Thapa rightly says, are drawn from the subaltern groups. Any writer in Nepal who draws characters from the village community and the people on the fringe in the metropolis is giving representation to the subaltern in his or her stories. Vikal does precisely.

When Vikal wrote the stories that Thapa has culled from various collections, Nepal was in a state of transition. Vikal's most famous story collection Nayansadakko Geet or the "Song of New Road" that Thapa has included in this collection made a big literary news when it was published almost the same year the democratic government was dissolved in the Royal take-over in 2017 BS, and next year Vikal was awarded the prestigious Nepali prize Madan Puraskar for the same stories.

The long Panchayat reign was a period of transitions, confusions, experimentation, openings, educational experimentation and fiasco, foreign aid racketeering and political centralisation. A Panchayat hegemony-a so-called norm of civil and cultural behaviour, unity, nationalism and an electoral practice, got neutralised. Interestingly, the hegemony was so deeply entrenched that even after the restoration of democracy the same norms have continued to dominate the psyche. The writers responded to the situation in a number of ways. Their response to the hegemony was one of subversion that they showed through experimentation of a modernist nature in poetry and fiction, and also by writing on the topics addressed by the polity.'

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