Sarup Stories: Chasing Rainbow inside Inflicted Trauma
By HB Bhandari Prabhat
Baltimore, USA
The literature sticks out life in various perspective and colors. The conflict between hope and frustration becomes its interior life. A poet writes and articulates in images whereas a medium of expression for storywriter is characterization. In every genre of literature, the story of vexation and agony are integrated in either way. The tactile sensation and perception starts from a certain points and is very much akin with time and history. Kamala Sarup, a Nepali emerging short storywriter fights against the present bedlam, anarchy and meaningless war going on in her homeland and outside. Her approach towards the interior life and heart of characters, which is conveyed with authenticity, poignancy in an unforgettable way, makes these stories extraordinary stories of throbbing and suffering, illuminating and elegant.
Stories in this collection are marching towards freedom. Characters exploited are socially insecure and hopeless due to the gloomy days and nights. These characters are simple; all the same, their tales are filled with the most intrigued complexities of a wounded world. They keep on suffering for no reason. The only cause of their suffering is the relationship with negative instincts prompted in humankind. The passion of mind is either squeezed or falls apart abruptly due to the death of the nearest and dearest one. The love, which is in the process, ends abruptly. It is not same love visualized by John Keats on a ‘Greek vessel’ with the help of still and ever fresh art in an Ode to Grecian Urn. It is unfinished, will remain unwritten and has no expectation of being accomplished. A lot of hurt prevails in her pages, the narration is genteel.
The story ‘Dear I Love you’ has a deep sense of dreams and desires with the permanent theme of love. It is the story where the female character desires to be one with Shanta Bahadur. Against her thinking her hero, Shanta Bahadur, died in war. Finally, her feelings and entire promises made for love are 'shattered'. These innocent characters want to make a friendship with contentment but are compelled to live in dark of dreary night. The background and setting of the stories is a turbulent war. These painfully honest stories of Patali, Sitamaya and many others’ are stories of present Nepal that belong to the woman, the lover, the beloved and everyone. In the present Sarupian way of story telling, what readers are spellbound and gaze at is how a relationship begins, grows and ends. As readers try to ponder on further development of plot, either blood shedding or murdering subsists. Characters know how to love but next to nothing about its permanency. The story 'My Life and Only Life' is the story of intangible dream. The passion of the 'she' character has fragmented when there seems to be a chasm between her husband of mind and husband of life. The female character compares her love with the moon in the beginning. Her life of passionate intensity, chromatic purity and absolute fascination changes to a wasteland in a spilt second after acknowledging her husband as multi -bed husband. Her emotions are excruciated by his deception and, thus, the narrator hurls questions in Chekhovian ways: ‘Let’s keep our love continuously without marriage, ‘he proposed to me every night and tried to enjoy my youthful love. I felt content in pain and offered myself, as there was no alternative. 'Do you know? I spent the last night with a girl. I found your image in her face and kissed her face several times. The embellishment of art of story telling ends in perfection "I am determined that he can't be my husband. I am watching his departure in hesitation. I am watching through the window as mad in the sense of waiting his arrival. Would he take my physical love offered so lightly? The unstable thinking has made me filthy and unfit to control the drop of tears". The constituents of stories seem as though they might result in perfect poem of high sensitivity. Mostly, these stories consist of the suffering of the female characters. The authorial voice is dominant in most of her stories. The reunion with China Kumar after 30 years is almost perfect example of a platonic love. The beautification of beloved with 'the rhododendron on the right plait' and ' tears rolling down through cheeks’ are refreshingly candid symbols. In addition, her root has been exploited as creative forces of writing in this book. Sarup’s stories, therefore, encompasses Nepalese tradition and its simplicities. Some of her stories are crushed with theme of diasporas. The major characters longs for root and felicity. The villain is impoverishment and war. In the story ‘Immigrant,’ the fact is revealed through Birkha Bahadur’s lamentation: "He spoke to himself, 'how unlucky I am. In ten years period of Lahur, what I earned? I could not even repair the leaking roof of house. I failed to do any good work. I spent the valuable period of my life uselessly’'. He remembered his friends of childhood, his teachers at school and the places where he used to play. Now, he can realize that he has spent the ten years period of his life uselessly.
Similarly,’ A Letter from Abroad' protrudes past memoir, present reflection and cantonment. The innate sense of unfulfilled desire is pretty much envisioned. In this collection, things fall apart and characters struggles. The pang of separation leads to alienation. Many characters distracted by war such as Patali, swing aimless similarly as in Franz Kafka’s ‘A Hunger Artist’, where an artist earns his living by fasting in carnival. The contemporary Nepal and time in which Kafka’s produced his great works in the setting of first World War, has very much immediacy. Presenting such tormented and mentally dissatisfied characters Sarup satirizes the present socio economic condition of Nepal and the absurdity of humdrum existence. Moreover, the power of existential crisis in Sarup stories reminds us of Russian Short Story writer Nikolai Gogal. The situation evinced by Kamala Sarup is completely chaotic and absurd ikon as in ‘The Overcoat’ by Gogal.
He universalizes the synopsis of futile world making black holes in deem pattern of AKakievich’s life who is left hopeless and died when somebody snatch his only identity in the deceptive overcoat. With the same intensity, Sarup speaks the mind of Ram Prasad in ‘The Daughter of Ram Prasad’ who laments at the death of his 16 years old daughter: “He thought of the condition of his family and home. Actually, he was mortally pained and could not analyze the present at all. Therefore, he fell over the dead body of his daughter and went on crying nonstop.”
In addition, Stories like Meghawoti Patel bear the theme of Epiphany as in James Joyce’s stories. In ‘Araby’ a boy character who is in love gets sudden sense of radiance in a spilt second having seen the gloomy situation at Araby Bazzar. In the same vein, Navin Kumar obtains the same type of knowledge and it becomes a nightmare to his previous decision of abnegating family after the sudden disappearance of Meghabati Patel. Her social conflict is very much similar as depicted by Chinese American writer Amy Tan in her short story ‘Two Kinds’. It records the struggle that a family undergoes in their cross cultural upbringing. The conflict is shown via symbolic representation of Nikan and her mother. Sitamaya’s elopement with Hari Sir in Sarup’s Story ‘’Elopement’ bear very much proximity with revolutionary sense of thinking. ‘So, I want to stand on my own foot’ and of Nikan words ‘I am my own person’ explore new interest, aspiration and identity of life.
Sarup’s stories which are narrated from a woman’s perspective portray a picture of woman with gentility, freshness, smoothness and delicacy as in John Steinbeck’s ‘The Chrysanthemums’. An old man is defeated when Elisa, the protagonist, grows chrysanthemums by her own effort. Many male characters in this collection of short stories feel shame in the presence of innocent love of Bharati, Sapu and many others. The essence of her story and the meaning of her message are based on realism. Her realism and revolution seen in the story ‘Debacle’ are very much emblematic in content. The daughter’s answer to the expectation of parents to get married to the man of their choice indicating their unhappy picture hanged on wall bears a great irony:
“I don't obey her but stay inside and slowly start to point my mother at the picture of my father hanging on the wall. Mother goes on staring at me without winking her eyes.”
Sarup’s philosophical characters’ movement of global peace is very much loud and clear. The conundrum situation in Middle East is projected with deep sense of loss and agony:
“We sat down by the radio and switched it on slowly. The news broadcast was going over the radio and indicated that the most serious problem of Middle East today is terrorism and war. War and terrorism are increasing everyday. It has been extremely difficult to stop the situation. I was really overwhelmed with grief"
Her characters, however, are not so bold enough to fight against their hurdles and time. For example, in the story 'My Life and My Love' Rita, a girl who was sold in brothel in Bombay and got AIDS is compelled to confront own trafficker with self humiliation: “When I hear what the man without name told me I felt that I was sinking where I stood. I am frightened. I am choked. No law is made in my country for a man who sold me. I move away from the place. I don't even like to look back. I don't know where I am going now but I am quite determined that now I won't go to a brothel”
These stories oversee, initiate and reassure the story of pain with various theme. The interior power that propels the plot of these stories is compassion. And, its anti force is war. She portrays her characters as peaceful, lifelike and flawless. Love can bind hearts; hearts can pave the way for peace. On the contrary, what is attained is frustration and pandemonium. In return, she creates a space and tries to be happy. However, her space does not work and turns barren and naked in front of merciless gun. Characters are in the process of formation but not able to live life.
Most of characters realize their mistake though it is belated for correction as projected in tragedies by William Shakespeare. Broadly speaking, there is no poetic justice in Sarup’s stories. They are destined to suffer in silence. Sarup's poems are very gentle. What troubled her character over and over is the disintegration and hallucination created by the trauma of war and social injustice. These stories present the themes of existential cultural, mythical, feminist, psychological and war theme. And it is really a great read. Reading these stories by Sarup, a sound reader can imagine her as Joyce - like appetite in writing that imbeds her poetess of imaginative composure along with picaresque narrator of ups and downs of earth and time. This book is living history of psychological trauma of Nepalese living in this epoch. She vows for the global justice where Peace has become the hardest and greatest hope for many lives and more importantly for Nepalese. Sarup this collection of short story, in a nutshell, is chasing rainbow inside inflicted trauma.
Social discrimination
The moon and Journey with phoniex
that makes these stories movable.
Characters faces possibilities
Kamala Sarup a natural born storyteller of countryside,.
Above all,
Unflinching exploration of natural born storyteller.
A character faces possibilities. A lot of hurt in her pages- great gentleness.
The narrator is very sensitive and articulate spoke person for peace and fraternity:
Which is why so many Nepalese are compelled to work in foreign land.
The characters are driven by sexual passion however, their desires are not fulfilled. Characters fall in love totally. They forget their self. When they realize their self is separated from fear. They are not only dazzled but speechless. The silent is not sometime the silence felt in Shakuntala.
A lot of respect to culture. Comes with new perspective. Gets new feeling idealistic love. She sometimes comments fasts and movers her point early than needed makes in actuality.
There is always room for improvement to be immortal through writing though.
By HB Bhandari Prabhat
Baltimore, USA
The literature sticks out life in various perspective and colors. The conflict between hope and frustration becomes its interior life. A poet writes and articulates in images whereas a medium of expression for storywriter is characterization. In every genre of literature, the story of vexation and agony are integrated in either way. The tactile sensation and perception starts from a certain points and is very much akin with time and history. Kamala Sarup, a Nepali emerging short storywriter fights against the present bedlam, anarchy and meaningless war going on in her homeland and outside. Her approach towards the interior life and heart of characters, which is conveyed with authenticity, poignancy in an unforgettable way, makes these stories extraordinary stories of throbbing and suffering, illuminating and elegant.
Stories in this collection are marching towards freedom. Characters exploited are socially insecure and hopeless due to the gloomy days and nights. These characters are simple; all the same, their tales are filled with the most intrigued complexities of a wounded world. They keep on suffering for no reason. The only cause of their suffering is the relationship with negative instincts prompted in humankind. The passion of mind is either squeezed or falls apart abruptly due to the death of the nearest and dearest one. The love, which is in the process, ends abruptly. It is not same love visualized by John Keats on a ‘Greek vessel’ with the help of still and ever fresh art in an Ode to Grecian Urn. It is unfinished, will remain unwritten and has no expectation of being accomplished. A lot of hurt prevails in her pages, the narration is genteel.
The story ‘Dear I Love you’ has a deep sense of dreams and desires with the permanent theme of love. It is the story where the female character desires to be one with Shanta Bahadur. Against her thinking her hero, Shanta Bahadur, died in war. Finally, her feelings and entire promises made for love are 'shattered'. These innocent characters want to make a friendship with contentment but are compelled to live in dark of dreary night. The background and setting of the stories is a turbulent war. These painfully honest stories of Patali, Sitamaya and many others’ are stories of present Nepal that belong to the woman, the lover, the beloved and everyone. In the present Sarupian way of story telling, what readers are spellbound and gaze at is how a relationship begins, grows and ends. As readers try to ponder on further development of plot, either blood shedding or murdering subsists. Characters know how to love but next to nothing about its permanency. The story 'My Life and Only Life' is the story of intangible dream. The passion of the 'she' character has fragmented when there seems to be a chasm between her husband of mind and husband of life. The female character compares her love with the moon in the beginning. Her life of passionate intensity, chromatic purity and absolute fascination changes to a wasteland in a spilt second after acknowledging her husband as multi -bed husband. Her emotions are excruciated by his deception and, thus, the narrator hurls questions in Chekhovian ways: ‘Let’s keep our love continuously without marriage, ‘he proposed to me every night and tried to enjoy my youthful love. I felt content in pain and offered myself, as there was no alternative. 'Do you know? I spent the last night with a girl. I found your image in her face and kissed her face several times. The embellishment of art of story telling ends in perfection "I am determined that he can't be my husband. I am watching his departure in hesitation. I am watching through the window as mad in the sense of waiting his arrival. Would he take my physical love offered so lightly? The unstable thinking has made me filthy and unfit to control the drop of tears". The constituents of stories seem as though they might result in perfect poem of high sensitivity. Mostly, these stories consist of the suffering of the female characters. The authorial voice is dominant in most of her stories. The reunion with China Kumar after 30 years is almost perfect example of a platonic love. The beautification of beloved with 'the rhododendron on the right plait' and ' tears rolling down through cheeks’ are refreshingly candid symbols. In addition, her root has been exploited as creative forces of writing in this book. Sarup’s stories, therefore, encompasses Nepalese tradition and its simplicities. Some of her stories are crushed with theme of diasporas. The major characters longs for root and felicity. The villain is impoverishment and war. In the story ‘Immigrant,’ the fact is revealed through Birkha Bahadur’s lamentation: "He spoke to himself, 'how unlucky I am. In ten years period of Lahur, what I earned? I could not even repair the leaking roof of house. I failed to do any good work. I spent the valuable period of my life uselessly’'. He remembered his friends of childhood, his teachers at school and the places where he used to play. Now, he can realize that he has spent the ten years period of his life uselessly.
Similarly,’ A Letter from Abroad' protrudes past memoir, present reflection and cantonment. The innate sense of unfulfilled desire is pretty much envisioned. In this collection, things fall apart and characters struggles. The pang of separation leads to alienation. Many characters distracted by war such as Patali, swing aimless similarly as in Franz Kafka’s ‘A Hunger Artist’, where an artist earns his living by fasting in carnival. The contemporary Nepal and time in which Kafka’s produced his great works in the setting of first World War, has very much immediacy. Presenting such tormented and mentally dissatisfied characters Sarup satirizes the present socio economic condition of Nepal and the absurdity of humdrum existence. Moreover, the power of existential crisis in Sarup stories reminds us of Russian Short Story writer Nikolai Gogal. The situation evinced by Kamala Sarup is completely chaotic and absurd ikon as in ‘The Overcoat’ by Gogal.
He universalizes the synopsis of futile world making black holes in deem pattern of AKakievich’s life who is left hopeless and died when somebody snatch his only identity in the deceptive overcoat. With the same intensity, Sarup speaks the mind of Ram Prasad in ‘The Daughter of Ram Prasad’ who laments at the death of his 16 years old daughter: “He thought of the condition of his family and home. Actually, he was mortally pained and could not analyze the present at all. Therefore, he fell over the dead body of his daughter and went on crying nonstop.”
In addition, Stories like Meghawoti Patel bear the theme of Epiphany as in James Joyce’s stories. In ‘Araby’ a boy character who is in love gets sudden sense of radiance in a spilt second having seen the gloomy situation at Araby Bazzar. In the same vein, Navin Kumar obtains the same type of knowledge and it becomes a nightmare to his previous decision of abnegating family after the sudden disappearance of Meghabati Patel. Her social conflict is very much similar as depicted by Chinese American writer Amy Tan in her short story ‘Two Kinds’. It records the struggle that a family undergoes in their cross cultural upbringing. The conflict is shown via symbolic representation of Nikan and her mother. Sitamaya’s elopement with Hari Sir in Sarup’s Story ‘’Elopement’ bear very much proximity with revolutionary sense of thinking. ‘So, I want to stand on my own foot’ and of Nikan words ‘I am my own person’ explore new interest, aspiration and identity of life.
Sarup’s stories which are narrated from a woman’s perspective portray a picture of woman with gentility, freshness, smoothness and delicacy as in John Steinbeck’s ‘The Chrysanthemums’. An old man is defeated when Elisa, the protagonist, grows chrysanthemums by her own effort. Many male characters in this collection of short stories feel shame in the presence of innocent love of Bharati, Sapu and many others. The essence of her story and the meaning of her message are based on realism. Her realism and revolution seen in the story ‘Debacle’ are very much emblematic in content. The daughter’s answer to the expectation of parents to get married to the man of their choice indicating their unhappy picture hanged on wall bears a great irony:
“I don't obey her but stay inside and slowly start to point my mother at the picture of my father hanging on the wall. Mother goes on staring at me without winking her eyes.”
Sarup’s philosophical characters’ movement of global peace is very much loud and clear. The conundrum situation in Middle East is projected with deep sense of loss and agony:
“We sat down by the radio and switched it on slowly. The news broadcast was going over the radio and indicated that the most serious problem of Middle East today is terrorism and war. War and terrorism are increasing everyday. It has been extremely difficult to stop the situation. I was really overwhelmed with grief"
Her characters, however, are not so bold enough to fight against their hurdles and time. For example, in the story 'My Life and My Love' Rita, a girl who was sold in brothel in Bombay and got AIDS is compelled to confront own trafficker with self humiliation: “When I hear what the man without name told me I felt that I was sinking where I stood. I am frightened. I am choked. No law is made in my country for a man who sold me. I move away from the place. I don't even like to look back. I don't know where I am going now but I am quite determined that now I won't go to a brothel”
These stories oversee, initiate and reassure the story of pain with various theme. The interior power that propels the plot of these stories is compassion. And, its anti force is war. She portrays her characters as peaceful, lifelike and flawless. Love can bind hearts; hearts can pave the way for peace. On the contrary, what is attained is frustration and pandemonium. In return, she creates a space and tries to be happy. However, her space does not work and turns barren and naked in front of merciless gun. Characters are in the process of formation but not able to live life.
Most of characters realize their mistake though it is belated for correction as projected in tragedies by William Shakespeare. Broadly speaking, there is no poetic justice in Sarup’s stories. They are destined to suffer in silence. Sarup's poems are very gentle. What troubled her character over and over is the disintegration and hallucination created by the trauma of war and social injustice. These stories present the themes of existential cultural, mythical, feminist, psychological and war theme. And it is really a great read. Reading these stories by Sarup, a sound reader can imagine her as Joyce - like appetite in writing that imbeds her poetess of imaginative composure along with picaresque narrator of ups and downs of earth and time. This book is living history of psychological trauma of Nepalese living in this epoch. She vows for the global justice where Peace has become the hardest and greatest hope for many lives and more importantly for Nepalese. Sarup this collection of short story, in a nutshell, is chasing rainbow inside inflicted trauma.
Social discrimination
The moon and Journey with phoniex
that makes these stories movable.
Characters faces possibilities
Kamala Sarup a natural born storyteller of countryside,.
Above all,
Unflinching exploration of natural born storyteller.
A character faces possibilities. A lot of hurt in her pages- great gentleness.
The narrator is very sensitive and articulate spoke person for peace and fraternity:
Which is why so many Nepalese are compelled to work in foreign land.
The characters are driven by sexual passion however, their desires are not fulfilled. Characters fall in love totally. They forget their self. When they realize their self is separated from fear. They are not only dazzled but speechless. The silent is not sometime the silence felt in Shakuntala.
A lot of respect to culture. Comes with new perspective. Gets new feeling idealistic love. She sometimes comments fasts and movers her point early than needed makes in actuality.
There is always room for improvement to be immortal through writing though.
The New Form of Existentialism
HB Bhandari Prabhat
Preface on Narayan Shreshta’s ‘Deceased Protrait
(English Tranlation in progress,first draft)
Aftermath of Second World War lack of conscience, compulsory struggle in absurd life, loneliness inside human being and many other existential questions get space in literature from Krikegarde, Heidegar to Sartre in Europe. The major concerns of these writers were portrayal of open, chaotic and disturbed world. According the reality to observe thing in their own movement literature and rest of the thing has to be looked according to labyrinth conscience. No one can see things and literature abruptly as proclaimed by Third Dimension, a literary theory. Therefore, the analysis of modern text has to be done according to democratic theory of literature, Labyrinth Conscience. At this juncture, The poet’s creative conscience is filled with flow of time, history and beautiful world. Series of images like dearth of the rationality, the modern man’s movement on Narayan Shrestha’s Deceased Portrait, a book of poetry collection, can be read in the form of existentialism. This is one of the representative texts in Nepali literature that came in existence with the observation of thing in itself affirmed by Greek culture. a wooden chair, melody of hope dried in the widow's eyes and many other such virgin images make the reader creative and conscious. Deceased Portrait captures the time consciousness and the feeling of happiness in the midst of agony. For entire creature poet Shrestha searches space in the begining. In despair, he gets scared and speak in satirical way in mild philosophical tone: Moonlight vanishes in this city Babble of water falls underneath Breaks shape in settlement. The city in absence of moonlight is hollow for him. Every single sculpture is speechless Skelton. However, the conscience of the poet is energetic and searches for the liberation in the midst where remembrance has to be purchased like greeting cards. He fortifies his new existential conscience to fight against horror of time positioning in clear difference between science and religion. He decorates his feelings with images just WB Yeats, English poet, did himself with the affection of Maud Gonne, Yeats’ lifelong beloved. The poet’s imagination is admirable. He imagines the entire people looking at injured flower made by time’s pressure in scattered hopes. In indefiniteness of purpose the poet's conscience feels pleasure exploring the feelings and emotions of pitiable people. In the mean time, the poet returns to his origin: The morning covered Patches of cloud Folk song of youth, corn and Bhatmas. In labyrinth conscience with new form of existentialism the poet interacts with nature: Oh wind! Oh cloud! Oh Water! It is new experimentation of existential form because the poet neither escapes from society nor utter language of excessive lamentation at the present chaos and anarchy. However, the futile feelings and the sense of nothingness have been deep rooted. With interior power, he wishes to uplift the world. He stands little bit higher in the position to create mood and somewhere seems as if he is mournful and nostalgic. The difference lays here Tennyson and Arnold just wept but in Narayan’s dirge there is power, and shows apparent portrait of world in satire just like Pope and Swift: Full sun and moon is covered With a peace of towel In every square The hurt of conspiracy Rises like mushrooms The replica of change and valor Obvious in Deceased Portrait. The poet gets injured with the things untouched by the change. The major reason of fighting with pain and agony is his sovereign feeling to make the world better place of more conscience and sensitive. In this respect too, it is written in the new form of existentialism. Moving a head the cyclic conscience speaks- butterflies are never sad to finish themselves in fire. Picking up the blade of struggle in surrogate reality, the poet tells the story of life in minimal affirmation. Indeed the shape of desert where We stand should be ended in drizzling The prior remembrance of last feast Feast and tormented dream. In this context, there is much proximity between the feeling of Narayan Shrestha and Bhupi Sherchan, a renowned Nepali poet of satire. The only difference lies in the presentation of ideas. Shresthan presents things faster where as Shrestha is little bit conceptual. In the present situation where love is arrested the poet imagines the Garden of Adam and Eve moved with democratic and global feelings in the vein of American national poet Walt Whitman: If it would not be tied with blade of grass Just like broken wine. With the shape that never can be attached In micro study the poet unites with nature at his sight of length of cloud: I saw the speed of wind Nothing was perceived I looked at the length of shapeless road The shadow of shapeless cloud. The literature has to be used to uplift life ahead. The poet feels agony in minor things and the possibilities of life within himself. In this respect, Shrestha's Deceased Portrait is one of the best books written in new form of existentialism with labyrinth conscience where the poet feels agony in minor things and searches possibilities of life in greater extent
No comments:
Post a Comment