Miscellaneous
Banking on literature
Hiranya Kumari Pathak, 73, spent 28 years of her life in the banking industry but that didn’t stop her pursuing her passion for writing.Hiranya Kumari Pathak, 73, spent 28 years of her life in the banking industry but that didn’t stop her pursuing her passion for writing. While she wrote several poems and short stories as a banker, her career as a writer only truly began once she had writer. Today, Pathak is a social worker, a writer and a key member of Gunjan, an organisation that focuses on supporting women in literature. She also runs Nariswar, a trimonthly women’s magazine and has till date penned four story collections, seven children’s books, three biographies and a poetry collection. In this conversation with the Post’s Abijeet Pant, Pathak talks about her literary works and the impact they have made on her readers. Excerpts:
You were raised in Varanasi, where you also did your schooling from a Hindi-medium school. What impact did it have on your language base and how did it affect your literary voice?
In 1945, the government of Nepal sent my father to Banaras Hindu University (BHU) to work as a professor of Nepali language. We lived there for 12 years, until his demise. Despite living there for so long, my language base remained intact probably because my father was a master of the Nepali language. Hindi didn’t have such a huge impact on me. In fact, when I first started writing at 17, my choice of language was also Nepali.
Your latest collection of stories, Agni Daha, was launched earlier this month. How has its reception been?
Literature is the reflection of society, which is why I believe we have to write about contemporary issues. Agni Daha taps into the issues of youth unemployment and migration in Nepal. It talks of youth who throw their lives at home
away to make meager earnings to barely get through life abroad. In my visits to various countries, I have met so many Nepalis who are struggling, and my latest work is a collection of 21 such stories that echo this very problem.
You have edited and published three biographies that are based on the lives of almost forgotten veteran writers of Nepal. What inspired you to take up the job and what was the process of writing those books?
All the three biographies that I have worked on are based on personalities whose stories need to be told—Goma, a contemporary of Siddhicharan Shrestha; litterateur Ramman Trisit; and my father, professor Totra Raj Pandey. It is difficult to remember a person or their work when they are unaccounted for. It is important to commemorate contributions of people who have played a role in defining our history in one way or another, and that’s what biographies are for.
While writing these biographies, I invested a lot of time and energy in research. Historical research is important because when the work based on it is published, it acts as a source of knowledge for the future generation. You cannot write history on the basis of imagination. You need to get the facts right or else it changes the whole course of how something or someone is perceived. To write the biographies, I visited as many libraries as possible, but I also reached out to my subject’s family and friends. I also delved into each of their literary works. For example, I was writing about my father after nearly 60 years of his death and I had no leads to begin with. Luckily, I got hold of an old photograph of his students studying at the then BHU in the ‘50s. Some students had already passed away, some had migrated abroad, and some had long forgotten about their teacher. But somehow, I managed to gather quality information that helped me publish the book which sheds light on my father’s contribution as one of Nepal’s leading writers and professors.
You have many literary works to your name, among which are seven children’s books. Do you think children these days can relate to your works?
I know for a fact that youngsters these days don’t care so much about Nepali literature. Every parent dreams of enrolling their child into a prime English-medium school. Children are increasingly encouraged to excel at the English language. They are encouraged to read, write and even speak in English. As a result, not many students like
Nepali as a subject. The generation of children at whom ourworks are targeted rarely look at our books. I do sometimes wonder if we should continue writing. However, it’s not just the children that should be blamed. A clear lack of responsibility on the government’s end can be seen as well.
What other works do you have in the pipeline?
I have been working on short stories lately. Readers these days are getting busier by the day and their attention span is getting shorter by the minute. I think short stories are a genre has probably the most impact, and that is what I will be working on.