Starting Young
When the rays of the morning sun
Make their entry through the window
Like the heat of fever,
I quietly rise from my bed.
Vapour-like from the damp clothes
Left to dry in the sun,
Then I am lost away from home
Through the entire day
Like a sin forgotten after a drinking bout.
With night I return home,
Like regrets that follow
After the intoxication is spent.
Aah this is how I am spending my life
Like the ravings of a man in delirium.
(Manis Nabhuinya Ko Jiudagi, Bhupi Sherchan)
The above is a bad translation of the poem Manis Nabhae Ko Zindagi (Life Without a Person) by the famous poet Bhupi Sherchan. However, if you thought translation was the only tragedy inflicted upon the art, think again. The greater travesty is that it finds entry into a Nepali primer meant for students of Class VI. Although there is no fixed poetry syllabus for middle classes (it is only at the high school level that the different boards prescribe the stories and poems to be studied), common sense should have dictated that children study only material within their reach.
But since the worthies in high places do not care to understand this, we are left with a ham-handed approach toward enforcing Nepali poetry as illustrative of how such policies have affected not just the quality of literary output, but also the non-availability of quality children’s literature in Nepali. Equally telling is the ineffectuality of the various bodies entrusted with marketing this good that we call Nepali literature.
It has been my observation that readership of Nepali fiction, especially poetry, has been steadily dwindling over the years. There was a time when parochial interests would have made it a patriotic thing to read Nepali books. But now, having matured as a community, and with the Nepali language having received the sort of constitutional and literary recognition it long sought, that sentimentality has worn off. Today, books need to stand on the merits of what they contain.
In today’s market, Nepali books jostle for shelf space with world literature. As with any other commodity in the bazaar demanding attention, Nepali books too must submit to the pushes and pulls of market forces. While the book publishing industry differs from other industries in many ways, it is not above the laws of economics. In any transaction, supply follows demand. So when you supply books, you must first understand the demand—not necessarily for that particular book, but for books per se.
Publishers are not fools to offer six-figure advances to people like Hari Kunzru and Vikram Seth. The book publishing industry, like any other, has its arsenal of advertising and publicity campaigns to drive demand for the commodity it sells. Even in the intellectually sophisticated community of English readership, publishers releasing books by first-time authors resort to all sorts of gimmicks to give their products the visibility that justifies the investment.
Of course, it would be wistful to believe Nepali publishing operates at that level of corporatisation. Nevertheless, given the almost primitive attitudes towards producing and selling Nepali books, it is even more necessary to bring a certain professionalism into managing our book-selling enterprise. There are many areas where work needs to be done. Lokam Bhatta may have initiated the revolution in Nepali printing, but the good pundit would be surprised to find how little the enterprise has changed since his first forays into selling Nepali books at Varanasi. Apart from computerising the typesetting aspect, other things remain constant.
Book publishing should perhaps take a cue from how cassette producers have packaged their products. Nepali cassettes—especially of pop music—are attractive to look at. The art reveals how in tune these designers are with global trends, giving Nepali music a facelift that translates into rupees in the long run. Content aside, packaging matters.
Some may argue that Narayan Gopal’s cassettes still sell despite their insipid cover designs. But that is untenable, because Narayan Gopal operates at the level of genius, like Devkota, whose books need not be sold on the strength of their covers. For the rest, however, the lack of professionalism is appalling. IB Rai’s first play is a decisive literary event, but look at the production values of Pahelo Din and you will find it galling that the greatest of the Hills should be inflicted with such indignity in terms of cover design, paper quality, and binding.
In English literature, the creative aspect of producing books goes back centuries. No wonder some old editions are categorised as works of art, valued as much for their design as their content. They fetch high prices at auctions. Artists like Aubrey Beardsley, who illustrated the works of Oscar Wilde, are as well known for their drawings as Wilde was for his plays. Such attention shows how necessary it was felt to impart books with an aestheticism beyond the written word.
To conclude, let us return to where we started. I am not aware of any indigenous research undertaken to understand how the Nepali syllabus became canonised. Why, for example, are certain authors studied at the exclusion of others? What is the rationale for prescribing some works and omitting others? Is there some formula that decides the relative proportion of Indian writers and those from Nepal in a given syllabus?
These are questions for future scholars. For now, we may at least seek to understand the objective behind teaching Nepali literature at the primary level. Is it to initiate an interest in the exciting world of Nepali books and authors—or mere tokenism? If it is the former, then it is sad we are not making the most of this opportunity.
As we have already discussed, for Nepali publishing to go beyond the requirements of examining boards and create a viable market that attracts private players—and thus breed better writers who will write because it is commercially attractive—we need to start early. And what better place than the classroom? Surely even in the worst-case scenario, enough material could be harvested to give young readers, encountering Nepali literature for the first time, an imaginative beginning that stirs in them a lasting interest and love for Nepali books.