This is unfortunately, not the first time that the Nepali mainstream media has reported that there are just two, three or four Nepali writers in English. It is still customary to pick two names—Samrat Upadhyay and Manjushree Thapa—and stop there when it comes to reporting on the issue. Of course, it is easier to report on Nepali writing in English when you claim to only have two or three writers. Additionally, we have acquired this weird notion from somewhere that only fiction writers are writers, particularly with regard to Nepali writing in English. At the least, most media reporting gives that impression.

A storied history

The fact, however, is that Nepali poetry in English is much richer than Nepali fiction in English. I’ve made this argument before too (The Kathmandu Post, September 9, 2007). So, it’s become urgent that we open up our minds, do some research and look beyond Upadhyay and Thapa, instead of quoting the same one or two people in each report. But for now, I’m more concerned about Thapa’s willful assertion.

I wonder whether Thapa would include even Laxmi Prasad Devkota on her list of three or four Nepali writers in English. Devkota started writing in English as early as the 1940s or early 50s. He wrote excellent pieces. His Shakuntal—many people have a misconception that this is a translation of his Nepali Shakuntala—is taught at the Tribhuvan University’s Central Department of English. His sonnets have been collected and published as a book. He wrote them long before many of us, including Thapa, were born.

In the late sixties, Mani Dixit stated writing and gave us some novels, including Red Temple. His collection of nonsense verses, a kind of limerick, is the only one of its kind in Nepali writing in English, a really entertaining read. In the seventies, three poets—Abhi Subedi, Peter J Karthak and Ramesh Shrestha—published some poetry, and even though two of them stepped out of the scene, Subedi continued to write English poems. I hope Thapa has at least seen Subedi’s Chasing Dreams at Mandala Books, or elsewhere.

Similarly, Padma Devkota has published not only poetry books, like Dawn Cycle and Other Poems and Frosty Breath in the Wilderness, but also a collection of essays, A Pond of Swans and Other Ess-ays and an excellent collection of short stories, Madness of a Sort. Then there is Basanta Lohani’s Void; Hriseekesh Upadhyay’s In Love of America and Other Poems; Ammaraj Joshi’s A Night’s Drama; DB Gurung’s Sleepwalk, Breaking Twilight and others; Prakashmani Dahal’s recently published Hues from the Horizon; Keshar Lal’s poetry; and Laxmidevi Rajbhandari’s not one, not two, but many poetry collections. Additionally, there are Durga Prasad Bhandari, Mohan Prasad Lohani and Shreedhar Lohani, who have published excellent poetry. The fact that they are university professors can’t discount the fact that they’re also writing and publishing excellent poems.

The writers of now

Coming to more recent writing by younger writers, there is Smriti Jaiswal and Prateebha Tuladhar’s Flights of Fantasy; Sushma Joshi’s End of the World; Rabi Thapa’s Nothing to Declare; Prakash Subedi’s Stars and Fireflies; Gopi Sapkota’s A Suicide Note (his poems are also taught at the university); Arati Dahal’s A Rose of My Mamma; Richa Bhattarai’s Fifteen and Three Quarters; the Archana Thapa-edited collection of essays, Telling a Tale; Haris Adhikari’s Flowing with a River; and, if I may add, this author’s own Kathmandu Saga and Other Poems and Epic Teashop. Writers like Keshab Sigdel, Bal Bahadur Thapa, Mahesh Poudel, and Hem R Kafle also keep writing enthusiastically in English, and I must emphasise here that this is just a partial list.

What’s more, there are organisations that regularly hold literary meetings, seminars and even writing retreats.

The Society of Nepali Writers in English, which I had the privilege of leading for over six years, is an excellent example. The Society has been publishing a literary magazine, Of Nepalese Clay, for more than thirteen years now—twenty issues published so far, with almost all of the contents by Nepali writers writing in English. It’s certainly unfair to close your eyes to the genuine efforts of all those people and claim that there are only three or four English writers in Nepal.   

Comprehensive and consolidated

Sure, not all English writing done in Nepal is great. Not all writers are published by Penguin and such. Not all the books and writers I’ve mentioned

here deserve equal attention. But that’s not the issue; no literary corpus, in any language, is comprised of only great pieces. Thapa has achieved certain recognition; she has probably helped make Nepali writing known to the

world more than many others, which is great. We are proud of her. But that shouldn’t encourage her to claim that there are just three or four writers of English in Nepal.

Nepali writing in English begins with Devkota, and, I repeat, it has a history. It didn’t start with Thapa or Upadhyay, as some people tend to believe. And there are many writers currently working from various fronts. So what we need now is to write a comprehensive history, whatever it is, and tie up all our efforts, including those of Thapa, with that history. That will make us rich and that will make us look rich.

Aryal is a PhD candidate in creative writing (fiction) and composition at the University of Missouri, Columbia