Rupmati had to wait for almost thirty four years to have an equally affable housewife but made up of entirely opposite mettle. She is Indra Maya, who is the main Tin Ghumti (The Tin Ghumti (The Three Road bends, 1968) by Bishewhwar Prasad Koirala. Indra Maya Surpasses all other female characters in Nepali fiction with her assertive power and independent spirit. She herself selects husband in spite of her parents' opposition, she leaves her husband and begins to live with another man on her own free decisions. Koirala by giving Indra Maya complete freedom of choice has opened up new possibilities in Nepali fiction. Without any hullabaloo the novelist has asserted woman's liberty in its positive vein. Not only in Tin Ghumti, Koirala continues his experiment with the theme of woman's liberty in his Sumnima (1970) and Modiain (1979). Both Sumnima and Modiain draw their inspiration from ancient times for the novelist's exposition of his cultural interpretations. Unlike Indra Maya Modiain is an ordinary housewife but her massive figure is both awesome and agonizing. It is awesome because it reminds the reader of the great Mahabharat War and agonizing because she is the ravaged remnant of the immense loss of life in the war. Koirala sees no justification for the killing of ordinary foot soldiers in the war. He voices his strong disagreement with the message of the Geeta which encourages to fight. What would the simple soldiers achieve even if the war was won? The novelist delivers his truly human message through Modiain asking young boys to strive for becoming good rather than great. Modiain is essentially a philosophical challenge to the belligerent doctrine of the Geeta along with a psychological illumination of ordinary people's inherent abhorrence to war. In this grand design the female character of Modiain looms large in the boyish memory of the author. Sumnima, however, is symbol of true Nepalese culture. It probes into the hoary past bringing into focus the role of the Kiranti heritage in shaping the all-embracing humanistic Nepalese approach to life. Sumnima, the grand Mother Figure of the Kiranti people, is pitted against Som Data, a Brahmin emaciated due to hard penance and physical negligence. Though married, Som Datta has no taste of natural conjugal life as he is taught to renounce all physical pleasures as evil. Consequently he is dull, morose and devoid of any interest in the actual world around him. Sumnima is vibrant with life. Her physical charm, her belief in the enjoyment of the material world and her feeling of responsibility for the here and the now overwhelm Som Datta in a rare moment of ecstasy. The fusion of Sumnima and Som Datta in a rapturous physical contact explains the unbreakable union of the Kiranti and the Aryan cultures in every modern Nepalese from top to toe. Sumnima, thus, is the common Matriarch of modern Nepalese nation urging us to love the body, its beauty and the actual physical distance rather than hover in the spiritual flights of fancy and pedantic nothingness. Sumnima, in actuality, is the Nepalese representation of humanism.

Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala's autobiographical style has a flavor of its own particuarly in his Narendra Dai (Older Brother Narendra, 1970) and Hitler and the Jews. In Narendra Dai Gauri, a legally wedded with, coming from nobility is contrasted with Munariya, a young woman of common family ties, on the backdrop of the turbulent Koshi river struggling to won the love of Narendra, a man tortured by fast changing loyalties and situations. Gauri is a good homemaker proficient in dealing with her family members, relatives and neighbors but not as seductively attractive as Munariya to her husband Narendra. both the female competitors are reduced to shambles at the end as is their male partner in life due to unavoidable social and economic circumstances as well as the cruel onslaught of of time. In Hitler and the Jews, however, Koirala experiments on the theme of the holocaust unleashed by Adolph Hitler during the Second World War against the innocent people of Jewish origin. The author retells the heart-breaking story as he visits the scène of the heinous incident years later, but his description of the massacre is so vivid that you feel everything happened just before your eyes.

Koirala's hatred for war on the one hand and love of peace on the other can be found in many of his short stories and particularly in his novels Modiain and Hitler and the Jews. The same approach is present in Daulat Bikram Bista's Chapaieka Anuhar (The Emaciated Faces, 1973) where two Germans and a Nepalese are brought together in the jungles of Africa in the background of the Second World War. Although the German couple belongs to Hitler's side and the Nepalese soldier to the Allied side, all the three are bound together by human instinct to save themselves from starvation and death. If they had met in normal conditions of war, one side would certainly destroy the other, but in a situation away form war and from human contact they stick to life together. What the author wants to drive home into our mind in essence is all humans love life, want peace and are guided with an inherent quality of mutual cooperation and interdependence. It is war which cruelly splits them.

Bista in his other novels goes deeper into the incongruities of modern Nepalese life with a sincere aim of bringing harmony and fellow feeling. Armed with a profound psychological insight into the workings of his characters he weaves his novels in a simple narrative style. Whether in his Ek Paluwa Anekaun Yam (A Sprout in Many Seasons, 1969), Bigrieko Bato (The Ruined Path, 1976), Thakeko Akash (The Tired Sky, 1977) or Bok ra Bhittaharu (Hunger and the Walls, 1981) Bista repeatedly searches for his individual identity in the modern social system denuded of all good qualities. An eternal quest of individual freedom is what makes his novels worth reading.

Novels in Nepli can be studied according to their central theme. On child psychology Sarpa Damsha (The Snakebite, 1968) by Tarini Prasad Koirala (1922-1974) surpasses all others. Like his older brother Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, he was also imprisoned without trial and his Sarpa Damsha was created inside the Panchayat dungeon. A good writer of short stories Tarini Prasad Koirala Produced his single novel as a rare gem of Nepali literature. The whole novel is based on a simple incident of a snakebite. In a tropical Terai village a young boy while playing with his sister is fond of inserting in arm into mouse holes in the ground. It may be apparently to keep his arm cool from the outside heat of the sun and instinctively to exhibit his superior ego, he puts his hand inside holes found for him by his innocent sister. But unfortunately he is bitten by a cobra coiling inside. The death that follows is at once shocking and extremely pathetic. Seen from the angle of adults it has sexual connotations which help interpret many complexes of our life.

On social themes Bhawani Bhikshu's Agat (The Oncomign,1975) describes how a noble family in the Tarai slowly disintegrates due to the inevitable and unavoidable loss of old values, in some way exactly like it happens in Narendra Dai by Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, Eka Deshki Maharni by Pindali, and Ghamka Pailaharu (Footprints in the Sun, 1978) and Yahandekhi Tyahansamma (From Here to There, 1985) by Dha Cha Gotame (1931).

On historical theme Diamond Shumsher Rana (1919) wrote Seto Bagh (The White Tiger, 1974) which became famous because of its description of Janga Bahadur Kunwar, the first Rana Prime Minister in the country. Rana had tried his hand on the theme in his Basanti (1949) two and a half decades ago, but Basanti was more romantic than historical, whereas Seto Bagh is closer to truth as well as better written with impressive characters and incidents. Seto Bagh, however, is not a truly historical novel in its detail nor is his Sat Prayas (The Noble Attempt, 1981), as is Triphat by Sundar Prasad Shah who is deft at bringing out the subtleties of the Ranas who kept the Shah ruler under their constant surveillance.

Novels steeped in local color are Bhramar (The Bumble Bee, 1936) by Rup Narayan Sinha and Muluk Bahira (Outside the Country, 1947) by Lain Singh Bangdel (1924) which set a tone with the social environment of the Darjeeling urban and rural areas. Then Basain (The Lost Homestead,1957) by Lil Bahadur Chhetri (1930), Khairini Ghat (1961) by Shankar Koirala (1930), Ojhel Parda (Blackout, 1966) by Tara Nath Sharma (1934), Ujyalo Hunu Aghi (Before the Daybreak, 1971) by Binod Prasad Dhital, Ghamka Paila Haru (Footprints in the Sun,1978) and Yahandekhi Tyahasamma (From Here to There, 1985) by Dha Cha Gotame, Aja Ramita Chha (There is a Show Today, 1964) by Indra Bahadur Rai (1930) and Alikhit (The Unwritten,1983) by Dhruba Chandra Gautam are some of the novels in the trend. Aja Ramita Chha depicts a sweeping picture of Darjeeling with extraordinary precision and poignancy specifically in charactrezation, Ujyalo Hunu Aghi is based on the rural life of the western hills, Blackout besides presenting the emotional make-up of rural young men prone to bloody fights is permeated through and through with the local color and colloquialism of the eastern hills, Ghamka Pailaharu, Yahandekhi Tyahan Samma and Alikhit reveal the mid Tarai atmosphere with a great facility, and Khairini Ghat describes the Majhis on the eastern rural setting. Although Dhruva Chandra Gautam and Shankar Koirala have written a number of novels they are far behind Dha Cha Gotame who has brought out only two novels. Gotame's novels deal with the life of the people of Birgunj and the southern rural Tarai area of more than half a century ago in a narrative style which is as vivid and remarkable as the underlying story that captivates the readers as it progresses. His characters are so delineated that they leave an indelible impression. Although on a far limited canvas Basain deals with a peasant family in the eastern hills which has to leave the motherland completely undone by the rural exploiters. Dhruva Chandra Gautam in his novels has experimented upon urban exploitation of lower middle class teachers, office workers and others but his poor grasp of language, little hold on the narrative and non-intimate understanding of the characters have led him to confusion and bewilderment in exactly the same way as his predecessor Vijaya Malla who failed sadly in his Freudian experiments in Anuradha and cultural portrayal in Kumari Shobha. It was only in Alikhit that Gautam achieved some measure of success for he attempted at something he had a hold on, that is, the life of the Tarai which he intimately knew as a boy in Alikhit he contrasts the poor and exploited life of the rural people with the young researchers who go after an archaeological site for excavation and are dumbfounded to discover the actually existing village before their eyes with hundreds of living and working people totally missing in the government population documentation. 

In Nepali Rup Narayan Sinha experimented on a beautiful style in his Bhramar with a character constantly on move. Lil Bahadur Chhetri in his Atripta (The Unquenched, 1969) and Tara Nath Sharma in his Mero Katha (My Story, 1966) and Jhajhalko (The Reminiscence, 1988) fashioned their main characters on the same tradition, but experiments do not leave an imprint behind unless they become discoveries. That's what exactly happened with Dhruba Chandra Gautam who in his novels has gone on making experiments without being able to reveal any profound discovery. His experiment began with Untyapachhi (After the Conclusion, 1967) and continued unabated in Baluwamathi (Over the Sand, 1971), Dapi (Agony Upturned, 1976) and Kattel Sarko Chotpatak (The Beathings Teacher Kattel Received, 1980). Only in Alikhit he was on the right track to discover himself, but the inexplicable hunger to create absurd situations and characters in him brought him back to the same path and his recent novels like Nimitta Nayak (The Proxy Hero) and Swargiya Hira Deviko Khoji (Search for for the Late Hira Devi) were born in utter disarray with no trace of coherence, coordination and harmony expected in modern fiction.

Bishweswar Prasad Koirala made bold experiments with human susceptibilities and created treasures out of his rich discoveries. So did Tarini Prasad Koirala with his experiment in the innocent world of children in his Sarpa Damsha. Daulat Bikram Bista with his never-tiring zeal has embarked upon the path of experiments scoring successes from his Manjari to Chapaieka Anuhar and from Bigrieka Bataharu to Thakeo Akash.

Nepali Fiction is slowly coming up.

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©Taranath Sharma, 2005