| Username |
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| ashu |
Posted
on 19-Feb-03 07:57 PM
Samrat, Manjushree and English writing in Nepali
By Aruna Kandel
“Samrat looks all set to continue packaging Nepalis as solely governed by their libidinal drives, with Manjushree patting him on the back.”
It is a matter of great significance that of late we have writers with Nepali background writing in English. Representing a tiny section of Nepali demographic terrain that has chosen to globalise, writers like Samrat Upadhyay and Manjushree Thapa speak to an English-reading audience to make their identity as well as fortunes. Even as they write to cater to the taste of western readers, their writing is fluid, engaging and has secured them a mostly warm response from Western reviewers.
In addition to translating some Nepali works into English, Manjushree has attempted a cultural intervention through her debut novel The Tutor of History. Samrat has a collection of stories and his first novel The Guru of Love just launched in the US.
However, the way these authors have started to conduct themselves in public has been of some concern—from the view they seem to hold about their own place in the republic of letters to marketing of Nepalis (especially women) in their works to their Western audience.
As a woman I am uncomfortable with Samrat’s representation of Nepali women, who, in his stories, are no more than sex objects. Nor can I understand Manjushree’s (in spite of her courageous feminist voice in other write-ups) uncritical enthusiasm about him (“I rely on the muse of hard work”, #128). Samrat’s misogyny is packaged in his artistically sophisticated methods.
His women are sometimes made awesomely divine as Goma in The Guru of Love or just sexually available as in his story “The Good Shopkeeper”, only to gratify the male (Samrat’s own) desire for sexual transgression and adultery.
One may say they are only characters, but look at what Samrat himself says in his chat: “Goma shows the complexity with which women must negotiate their existence in our culture.”
What does Samrat want? Just a perpetuation of that condition through his narrative? And how many women today would want or do what Goma does: ask her husband to bring in his mistress? What is Samrat asking us Nepali women to do? How much water does his sweeping generalisation of Nepali women hold? I can’t understand how Manjushree, who manages to let her widowed character love a man again in her Tutor of History, appreciates Samrat’s patriarchal, Freudian fabulations.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 19-Feb-03 07:58 PM
When Manjushree once said she wanted to stop writing for the Nepali literature column in Nepali Times because she did not get enough feedback, I was sad. But now I understand the latent message after reading her question to Samrat in her writerly chat.
She asks him to comment on a rumour, “word has it that . . . some professors at the Tribhuvan University English department have discouraged academic discussion of your writing.” I only remember a large number of the now implicated faculty talk enthusiastically about his and Manjushree’s works on several occasions, and my taking exception to victimisation of females in Samrat’s imperial stories.
Perhaps it is Manjushree’s chagrin more than Samrat’s that her novel is not taught at Tribhuvan University. Wouldn’t it help to remember that, standardised canons aside, no such sponsorship is essential to any writer’s repute?
Manjushree and Samrat must also renegotiate their selves and the identities they are projecting through critical debates and writings. Of course, they are free to write what they want to, but it won’t do them any good by objecting to discussions on their representation of Nepal (and we Nepali hapless lot) by Nepali readers.
The question of representation is not an anachronistic subject as Samrat thinks. Surf the net or shuffle through any current journal in literary or cultural studies and you will be astonished by how much of the discussion on representation of gender, race, ethnicity, class, nation, and various power structures in literary/cultural artifacts informs the research. If Samrat is projecting himself as a Nepali, he need not forget the decency of mutuality.
If Samrat and Manjushree want our support, where is the reciprocity? Moreover, why does Samrat, a diehard fan of post-colonialist theories, not want to recall Gayatri Spivak’s idea of an author as a limited sample (of her culture, etc) and Homi Bhabha’s concept of a culture’s location? Can an author escape that trap?
Or are these authors displaying their cultural situatedness by hanging on to corrupt and vanishing cultures like polygamy (as in The Guru of Love) or unethical, irresponsible sexual adventures, to provide the West with yet another exotic version of Nepal in the name of “deconstructing” her earlier misrepresentation?
As a well-wisher of these authors, I’m worried by their present trend of squandering energy in reader-bashing and exoticising Nepali in Freudian terms. Samrat looks all set to continue packaging Nepalis as solely governed by their libidinal drives (as if there are no other contexts and conditions), and especially women as sex objects, with Manjushree patting him on the back.
This will preclude a more rigorous cultural work in the interest of transforming the reality that Manjushree in her novel only begins to identify. I’m not trying to start a quarrel, but good friends should not refrain from healthy criticism.
(Aruna Kandel did her MA in geography from Tribhuvan University, where she was also a student of English.)
http://www.nepalnews.com.np/ntimes/issue132/feedback.htm
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| surya |
Posted
on 19-Feb-03 10:28 PM
Wish as we may as readers, critics and social activists, we can not dictate what a writer writes and how s/he responds to the world around. There is no monolithic "Nepali Culture" to speak of and to critique a writer's choice in telling a particular story (be it centered around a cultural phenomenon that is thankfully in decline… i.e. polygamy), seems to me rather feeble.
Kadel's claim that Samrat and Manjushree seem to be bashing Nepalis readers aside (I have no knowledge of or any interest in that issue even if it were true), saying these writers are "squandering energy.... in ...exoticising Nepali in Freudian terms" is minimizing the great work they have done so far.
Kadel writes, "Samrat looks all set to continue packaging Nepalis as solely governed by their libidinal drives (as if there are no other contexts and conditions), and especially women as sex objects, with Manjushree patting him on the back."
This to me aptly shows this particular critic's own limitations. Whatever my particular discomfort were about the fate of women in Samrat's stories (from the street vendor in The Good Shopkeeper, Deepak Mishra's secretary, to the Limping Bride to that young girl who married that lato in one story) and the way these characters are treated by their male counterparts, to insist that Samrat should have written these women's stories any other way, seems not only unreasonable, but revisionist. (Not to say anything about creative hastachep!)
The condition of women maybe changing in Nepal, but the reality is that in most Nepali women's experience they are still at the bottom of the cultural and social totem pole. Not having read Samrat's latest book, I cannot respond to his treatment of characters in that particular book. However, the premise of the story (how Goma respons to the situation she finds herself in) is wholly believable not only because I have witnessed something very similar in real life. Kadel asks what does Samrat want and what is he telling Nepal women. I say nothing. He is just telling a really compelling story. Goma's story, like any other character's in any other book written by any other writer from whatever culture, is just a story on one particular life! Would Kadel dare ask what Alice Walker or Toni Morrison's messages are to Black women who suffer, sacrifice and survive oppressed by their Black male counterparts and the white characters in their books? I think not.
Regardless, not all work of art, whatever the medium, have to be about engaging in "rigorous cultural work in the interest of transforming the reality." Actually, I have found that artists who set out to do that are stumped by the narrow parameters set by those ambitions and the result is often just propaganda or simply bad art.
Going back to her charge that Samrat "looks all set to continue packaging Nepalis as solely governed by their libidinal drives." Again Kandel minimizes Samrat's realism and instead seems to want some pat feminist revisionist rendering of the stories. She overlooks the very important role that sex/libido play in how men exercise their rights and privileges in our culture and how women experience oppression and how sex can be a tool for resistances.
(she says "Samrat's imperial stories" at one point… what was that about?)
Maybe I have not kept close enough tabs on how these two writers have responded to critiques of their work by Nepalis, but Kandel's talk about reciprocity and mutuality from these writers to Nepali readers and critics ring hollow.
Interesting article though.
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| suva chintak |
Posted
on 19-Feb-03 11:02 PM
surya bro, always on the mark!
I liked your critique of the critique...a good omen that Nepal too is turning into a hypercritique society!
Since you have already pointed out some of the problems in Kandel's kanda, I will bring up a few other points that Kandel sister got right:
1. I think, in my tandoor humility, rather embarassing for both Upadhaya and Manju to gripe in public about their books not being put into TU syllabus. Come on, that is simply not done here in the US, and both those people have stayed here long enough.
2. Secondly, I don't know why they had to get into the nasty argument belittling Laxmi Prasad Devkota's English writing. Sure, Devkota was not fed on post-colonial jargon and sensibilities, but that does not mean his writings are respectable. Besides, it is simply poor taste to do that kind of thing to a dead person.
3. I do also agree with Kandel that the said interview kind of turned into a kind of lovefest between Nepal's two celebrities...no hard questions were asked, ended up patting each other on the back. Sure they respect each other, but that does not mean you can not push a question further.
4. And why is Samrat so obsessive about sex in his writings? I asked my mastah, Sardarji. "Yaar, tumko itna bhi malum nahain he? Sex chalta hai, bahut bikta hai." I tell you this guy, like me , has been past grade eight, but he sure has a knack for business. I think the ethnic/exotic/shangrila slot that Nepal has already been allocated by the west reaps dividends if you throw in erotic as well...I call it titillating difference!
Yaar, raat bahoot ho gaya, fir milenge!
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| surya |
Posted
on 19-Feb-03 11:07 PM
Suva Chinak: Rati bho, I agree, so will read your entire post later and respond. For now just wanna tell you, its not bro! Surya will do!
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| Harris |
Posted
on 19-Feb-03 11:20 PM
Surya Kumari Didi po ho ki na?
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 12:13 AM
In my opinion, if there is a question about puttins something in syllabus, it should be according to the discretion of the professor. Samrat, being a professor himself, definitely knows that.Btw, which of Samrat's(and Manju's too?) book is being asked to put in syllabus? [Well, if no one is asking for this, my agrim sorry.]
We already pay meagerly to the professors, there is no point in trying to take away their right. I have some more sympathy for TU's professors, especially after the department was set to fire by some disgruntled, perhaps devilish too, students.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 06:52 AM
To be fair to both Samrat and Manjushree, neither of them have ever said that they want their books to be taught at TU.
Meantime, allow me to direct your attention to a piece by Abrishant Nepali
published in Kantipur Koseli (last Saturday's edition) on the need for more
debates, discussions on matters of literature.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| baadal |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 10:03 AM
Yes, we cannot dictate what a writer writes, but as readers we can critique what is written. I believe that literary criticism can be a positive process of getting people to think and question the ways in which the authors are presenting our realities. It is always helpful to get feedback because then you hear the stories you tell from another’s person’s perspectives – there is a beauty in having the luxury to do that.
In Samrat’s case and his portrayal of Nepali women, surya points out that “The condition of women maybe changing in Nepal, but the reality is that in most Nepali women's experience they are still at the bottom of the cultural and social totem pole.” So is it okay to continue portraying women just as victims? Think about this: can’t all stories/relationships in Nepal or any other place be told from at least two perspectives, of the two people involved? Somewhat along the lines of Kandel’s critique, I worry that what I think would be real women’s voices are not heard in Samrat’s novel. I don’t think it would be in anyway “revisionist” to try to hear Samrat’s stories in the women’s voices. Ramchandra (and many of us) might think that Goma is being strong by moving back to her place and insisting that he and Malati stay together. It does happen and has happened but could it not be that Goma is making a sacrifice – what woman would truly want to have their husband sleep with another woman in the next room? How does a woman explain to her children the presence of another woman in their father’s life/bedroom?
I agree to a degree with Surya about “The very important role that sex/libido play in how men exercise their rights and privileges in our culture and how women experience oppression and how sex can be a tool for resistances.” Unfortunately, sex and women’s bodies have been used as means of oppressing women. But by essentialising sex as a tool for resistance, we once again relegate women to the levels of sex objects, don’t we? There are numerous instances of Nepali women using agencies other than sex to resist the power structure present in the patriarchal society.
The Guru of Love might be just a story of the lives of three people, but as part of media it plays a role in informing and furthering social/gender roles. Samrat compared to Walker and Morrison is ironic!!! Walker and Morrison give agency to their women, not Samrat.
But then again, isn’t it very easy to term those who ask for the women’s voices and question the representations of women as objects of male fantasy as “feminists,” as if it was a dirty f-word, and put them aside.
Time for tea.
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| Poonte |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 11:19 AM
I think it is also necessary to emphasize that Samrat's works are NOT research papers that are intended to study and analyze the social problems based on realities in Nepali society. His short story collection and the Guru of Love are FICTIONAL works whose mere purpose is to entertain the readers, not to indulge in the analytical aspects of Nepali society.
Hence, when I find myself entertained, and I feel like not letting go of the book until I finish it--as was the case with Guru of Love--I could care less whether it reflects the reality on the grounds or not. Nevertheless, I do think that his works do reflect the middle/upper class Nepali realities to a great extent--no matter how much we deny it, sexual mischiefs are prevalent in our society, and women are treated as sex toys by vast majority of the men.
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| khai_k_vanu |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 02:18 PM
Btw, I think if we translate Udhir Thapa's work in English, it will become sensational and will hit NY time's Best Selling list in no time. To my mind, only writers who can earn their living just by writing are these to writers: Samrat Upadhyay and Udhir Thapa. I love them both ;-)
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| sadabichar |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 02:24 PM
This time, the new Rajparishad has only 15% Brahmans..what's going on?
****************************************
King nominates 55 members to Rajparishad
King Gyanendra has added 55 members to the list of members of Rajparishad in accordance with the Constitution of Nepal, 1990. The new members of the Rajparishad are Bhagwati Das Shrestha (Ilam), Santa Bahadur Rai (Sankhuwasabha), Rajendra Bahadur Tumbahamphe (Terathum), Rajendra Bahadur Thapa (Sunsari), Kali Prasad Rizal (Morang) and Parsuram Rai (Khotang).
Likewise, Bhakta Bahadur Singh Thakuri (Udayapur), Dwarikaman Singh (Dolakha), Dal Kumari Sunwar (Ramecchap), Guru Sharan Rohit Yadav (Dhanusha), Mohammed Arif (Parsa), Sheikh Sarajul (Rautahat), Swami Ramananda Giri (Chitwan), Lila Raj Bista (Chitwan), Dawa Finjo Tamang (Rasuwa), Jeevan Lal Shrestha (Nuwakot), Madan Krishna Hada (Bhaktapur), Lehendrup Lama (Sindhupalchowk) and Bel Prasad Shrestha are the new members of the Raj Parishad.
Prajwalla Shumsher JB Rana, Damodar Shumsher JB Rana, Krishna Bhai Maharjan, Bashu Pasa, Ananda Bahadur Shrestha, Miss Sabitri Singh, Mrs Indira Shrestha, Madhav Prasad Ghimire, Shyamdas Baishnav, Hari Prasad Rimal, Khilendra Prasad Pandey, Dr. Bhisma Raj Parsai, Jogmehar Shrestha, Hari Krishna Shrestha, Hitkar Bir Singh Kanasakar and Birendra Bahadur Shaha from Kathmandu are also the new members of the Raj Parishad.
Similarly, Buddhi Raj Bajracharya of Lalitpur, Bed Raj Panta of Lamjung, Tasi Gurung of Manag, Baikuntha Bahadur Chand of Gulmi , Matiraj Bhusal of Argakhanchi, Chinta Bahadur Basnet of Pyuthan, Dr. Prem Bahadur Shahi of Dailekh, Ganga Prasad Subedi of Surkhet, Miss Narbada Sharma Khanal of Banke, Surbir Shahi of Humla, Krishna Bahadur Malla of Mugu, Dr. Dhan Bahadur Shahi of Kalikot, Dr. Narjung Shahi of Bajura, Ram Bahadur Shahi of Achham and Miss Shakti Amatya of Doti are the new members of the Raj Parishad. nepalnews.com am Feb 20
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| bewakoof |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 03:59 PM
Must be a conspiracy. I call for a Nepal Bandh to protest.
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| DISCO |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 04:01 PM
<>
Daymn!!, is that really in the book? notwithstanding what surya says (which is interesting as well), I think that surely is a freudian bahun slip run amock to me!!
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| DISCO |
Posted
on 20-Feb-03 04:03 PM
Sorry, I meant to quote, "One may say they are only characters, but look at what Samrat himself says in his chat: “Goma shows the complexity with which women must negotiate their existence in our culture.” "
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