| ashu |
Posted
on 16-Apr-01 01:50 AM
What follows is from an old issue of the Nepali Times newspaper.
This was written by: Peter J. Karthak, a Nepali writer
from Darjeeling who now lives and works in Kathmandu.
I found this interesting enough to be shared with all you friends
here. Thanks to Salil Subedi at Nepali Times for forwarding
this.
Enjoy!!
oohi
ashu
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Once upon a time, 44 years ago, I was in love with Banira Giri, for three agonising years. It was love at first sight on the wet Chowrasta maidan in Darjeeling.
I was 14 and in grade seven in 1957. I was one of the youngest students of Turnbull High School. We’d just been promoted from our half-pants kattu juvenility to the status of full khaki trousers.
The fateful occasion was Bhanu Jayanti, the annual grand celebrations dedicated to the Nepali Chaucer, Baje, which took place every year sometime in the rainy month of June.
Our venerable teachers, Indra Bahadur Rai and Ishwar Ballabh, in their many avatars as teachers, leaders and writers, chaperoned us and choreographed our assemblage at the spacious Chowrasta ground to enjoy the spectacle and participate in the celebrations.
The other Nepali-curriculum schools of Darjeeling also joined in, their long and disciplined queues just like ours.
The programme began with choruses, solo songs and speeches steeped in Bhanu lore. Then a young and excruciatingly beautiful young woman climbed suavely up to the stone podium and stood by the statue of Adi Kavi Bhanu Bhakta Acharya, watched over by another statue, a full-figure image of Dhir Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana.
This poetess was Banira Giri. Word spread through us infatuated lot that she was from Kurseong, that little town between the plains of Siliguri and the high hills of Darjeeling. That Kurseong possessed many beautiful women was well known to us.
But a diva in real flesh and blood from there was standing in front of us that day. Clad in a red sari, with painted lips and impeccably styled hair, Banira stole our hearts that day and drove us crazy.
Came 1958, eighth grade and another Bhanu Jayanti. Off we went to Chowrasta again. Banira was there again, this time in a pink sari, with painted lips, her hair down her red cheeks. She recited her poems and then went away again, leaving us heartbroken. The Bhanu Jayanti of 1959 found us in ninth grade. Banira came, wrapped in a shiny blue sari with a white blouse, painted lips and a fashionable hair-do. She recited her poems and went away, leaving us terribly forlorn.
1960. We had graduated from school and had gone to college. There were other beautiful Baniras there to take care of. But that was not the end of the original Banira Giri. Her visage and memories lingered with me. Whenever I drove by Kurseong, I thought of her. Whenever I was in Kurseong with my musical ensemble, I looked for Banira in the audience. But she was nowhere. This was such a one-sided quest, an unrequited romance where all I got was a rain-cheque. My love had disappeared.
It was only last year that I first saw Banira Giri face to face. We have met only four times so far, and have talked on the telephone five times. So much for romance!
But before the 40-year hiatus I thought about some things: How come Darjeeling’s female “artistes” were all so intelligent and beautiful in those days? I didn’t care then, nor knew, about Banira’s poetry, her feelings and emotions, styles and stylistics, nuances, images and verisimilitudes. I just wondered: How can such brains, wisdom, beauty and guts come together in the same person?
There were many brilliant beauties in the Darjeeling of those days. Dev Kumari Thapa wrote enticingly and was beautiful. Lakki Devi Sundas, was another ravishing writer. Lila Ghising was a mesmerising and stunning dancer. Shanti Thatal was a captivating bombshell who drove everyone crazy with her artistic and technical singing. Lhamu Lama, another heartbreaker sang wonderfully. The list is rather long.
But Banira Giri was the first poet who brought the true sounds of Nepali verse libre to my ears. Another point of note is that Banira has been writing poems—apart from writing in other genres, too—since the 1950s. The finest cuts of the two gems—her verse libre and long years of poetry—have found place in a recently translated anthology, From The Lake, Love.
What I find unique is the participation of many nationalities in the translation of Banira’s various poems originally written in Nepali over the years. There is Wayne Amtzis, a long-time American resident in Nepal who has translated and edited the anthology. Other toilers are Michael Hutt and Ann Hunkins. Then there is Manjushree Thapa, an important Nepali writer, translator and critic.
Many of Banira Giri’s poems, translated and included in From The Lake, Love, have had also received international recognition and appreciation. India’s Dinman, Pratibha India, Debonair, Indian Express, Telegraph, and Kavita Asia, Japan’s Shinchu, France’s La Mer, Pakistan’s Dawn, Alam-E-Niswan, Akhbare Khawatin, and Himalayan Voices of California and South Asian Literature of New York, USA have all published Banira’s poems.
Reason enough for all of us to take interest in the collection of poems, From The Lake, Love. As for me, I have given up the ghost of romancing Banira Giri, and turned my attention to reading her Nepali poems translated painstakingly and with such dedication by an international crew interested in Nepali poetry as espoused and developed by Banira Giri for nearly five decades.
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