Who is Afraid of Prakash Kobid?
In the 1920s, when Indian Nepali writing was still in the cradle of commercial viability, a particular genre enjoyed remarkable market success. These were the shringar rasa verses—risqué, abounding in innuendo and mildly erotic imagery of soldierly craving. They told of mercenaries’ love lives and their lovers’ tantrums, and were a hit among the literate and semi-literate readership of the time.
But there was also a group of litterateurs who rued the lack of interest in serious literature. Much of this disdain found expression in the journals of that time—publications that mixed journalism with a sense of social mission, addressing the cultural, economic, and educational status of Darjeeling and beyond. These journals became the precursors of the more politically charged agendas that would be raised in the future.
The Nepali public sphere in India, and the role of journals in fostering such objectives, has been studied in the theses of Rhoderick Chalmers, School of Oriental and African Studies, London. His seminal work offers a window into the creation of Nepali print communities, providing insights not only into the social roles of literature but also into the literary merits of that era’s works. He examines the markets they catered to and why some publications were sustainable while others withered without readership. His research opens up important areas for future scholars to explore.
One remarkable fact that stands out—and is pertinent to readership everywhere—is that a major percentage of literature is bought and read by a lowbrow audience. Even in the sophisticated literary environment of the United States, the inclusion of popular horror writer Stephen King into what some call the literary hall of fame, and the controversy it raised, speaks volumes about the unease with which the literati regard paperback “hacks.”
In Nepali, therefore, it is no surprise that in the democracy of readership, the most widely read works are those produced by the so-called “peddlers of pedestrian prose.” By democracy of readership, I mean the works people actually bought because they wanted to read them—not because they were religious obligations (like the Ramayana), or because they were on an examination syllabus. In the 1970s, for example, the commercial success of Prakash Kobid, Prakash Rana, Dil Subba, Bhagirath Rawat, and Subhas (you know who) testifies to the fact that there once existed a voluntary community of Nepali readers who bought novels simply to enjoy them and then bought the next one.
Prakash Kobid, from Bhutia Busty in Darjeeling, made a living—or at least substantially supplemented his teacher’s income—by writing. Remarkably, there was once a time when it was possible to pay the bills through writing alone. Forces as diverse as the Americanisation of local youth, the influence of Hindi movies, and other cultural shifts may have conspired to create the decline of popular Nepali fiction. Literature had functioned as a subset of entertainment, and that appetite has waned.
But there is also another substantive explanation for the decline: the pull of “literariness” that, ironically, killed much of the art. Many writers gave in to the lure of highbrow recognition. The result was literary output that lacked staying power. Too often, those with little more than the audacity to print books and sell them turned out to be sentimental individuals preoccupied with literary pretensions they could not fulfill. Unlike Prakash Kobid, who was unpretentious and simple in his craft, the present lot often write as though they are Nobel Prize contenders. The result is unreadable prose, weighed down by the need to appear “serious.”
There has been a downward slide in the quality of literary output, even as the rise of Nepali university education has provided us with critics trained in both Western and indigenous traditions. These critics can measure and evaluate works with sophistication, but the creative writing itself often does not live up to those standards. The result is a hapless situation: works that do not cater to the masses, yet do not appeal to the higher literary echelon either.
IB Rai has, however, always been a beacon of hope. He exposed the hills to world-class literary trends and pushed boundaries. Yet his preoccupations, at times, proved elitist and divorced from the concerns of readers. It is no wonder that the famous Parijat once called him a “reactionary fascist” in an interview. Recently, a muted chorus of critics has noted that (i) IB Rai can be abstruse, (ii) he is not doing anything particularly new, and (iii) his ease with English allows him to transpose global trends into Nepali without many readers even realising it. Whatever the merits of these critiques, one feels that in IB’s hurry to theorise, we lost the writer who once gave us enduring works like Rat Bahri Hoiri Chalyo and Euta Din Ko Samanyata.
He may have grown in stature as a critic, but at least for now he has lost what Indian Nepali literature most desperately needs: readers. So acute is the crisis that, at the risk of oversimplifying, I would argue that what we most need today are more Prakash Kobids—writers who can win back readers who will actually buy and read Nepali books. Scholars like IB Rai can always be showcased, but they write for an elite audience already lured away by the likes of Barthes. To bring back readers, we need storytellers who can engage them.
I recall what IB Rai himself once said in an interview with the Gangtok weekly NOW: “The Tesro Aayam movement derived itself from Einstein’s theory of relativity.” At first this sounded like little more than name-dropping. The editor defended him, saying perhaps something had been lost in translation, or cut in editing. Later, when I reconsidered the statement, I realised what he may have meant: that Tesro Aayam sought to present reality the way physics presents the universe—as existing independently of the observer. Reality, like the laws of physics, has the same form throughout, irrespective of who observes it. In that sense, Tesro Aayam was an attempt to create a mode of writing that could convey experience in its totality, free of external embellishment.
But this brings us to another analogy from physics: Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which holds that we cannot, even with the best instruments, pinpoint actuality with precision. And so we return to Prakash Kobid.