Nepalese Rupee Converter
- Dr. Govinda Raj Bhattarai
A Samadarshi image :
I have known Samadarshi kainla for almost a decade when he used to be loitering in kathmandu may be in search of some future,when the nation was all in fire. Atrocity had swallowed the people or the nation.There were slogans and agitations,sit-ins,gheraus and demonstrations everywhere.The streets of kathmandu were the replicas of battlegrounds.The common scenes in those days were strikes,lockouts,closure,deadlocks and police chasing and battering,beating them brutally, and forcing the dispersal of the crowd or arresting the activists,taking them to the custody or jail on charge of violence.The nation was in agony. The nation in pool of blood-gruesome massacre took place at the Royal palace and gory killings in the villages continued.People were harrowed and suffocated, a large number innocent people fled the country deserting their homelands everyday.
Samadarshi kainla was seen here in kathmandu,mostly with THE RANGABADIS , may be he was looking for a shelter to his life in the garden of undefined future.
Contemplating a Rangabad :
I remember he was part of the Rangabadis, a founder of of movement.The Rangabadi,literally colourists, is a group of very young and energetic poets and writers that has established itself as one of the very powerful and most promising avant-garde in nepali poetry.Their principle was founded on Rangabad,colourism.
Dead against dictatorship :
They denounce all sorts of tyranny,absolutism; so they vehemently protested dictators and dictatership-of power and politis, of race,clan,religion and whatever it is. They also put this into pratice when time was testing them in the country.They were dead against ONE because ONE symbolizes autocracy,dictatershipand tyaranny;it symbolizes confinement,imprisonment-of body or mind.
They went so deeply moved by this principle that they avoided putting the figure 1 or mentioning the word one, in their works that is books,instead they started counting pages from last number like 92 and came up to 2 in reverse.No single digit,no singularity. This symbolizes a revolution and a challenge against the establishment in a very difficult time. They are for freedom-freedom ,which is absolute and unconditional. They, Rangabadis, are dedicated and devoted to the creation of beauty and art combined with thought,intellect and all newness. Rangabad,that is a conviction based on the harmony of colour,has made itself secure,as a movement in the difficult niche of time and I am sure this will have lasting influence in nepali poetry and literature as a whole. This will continue further.
A new school emerges and diverges,deviates and again establishes itself powerfully. It tries to dismantle and disestablish the past because it believes in deconstructive process,it follows deconstructive model of evolution and revolution.Subverting the foundation of thought and pratice, that is what Derrida did,and all the postmodernists do. They are the avant-gardes, among forerunners of postmodernist trends among the young generation in nepali poetry. Dharmendra Bikram Nembang is leading them very coutiously.I take the colourists very seriously,I have hogh regard for their movement.It is high time the nepali critics turn towards this group now. Samadarshi Kainla was one of the master designers of this group among others.
When Kainla was shrouded in mystery :
I came to know of Samadarshi Kainla 's potential from a poem I came across that appeared four years ago in the Ranga Sahitya,literally Colour Literature,the news bulletin-cum journal of the group.The poem was titled Rangabhitra ma( myself within the colour) The poem,which is also included in the present anthology is a complete departure from traditon,a revolution in thought and structure,and so deep and meaningful,aesthetically very much pleasing as well.I liked that piece very much and appreciated Kainla's work and felt that a great tresure,a great potential lay within him.I even wondered-how could he write such a beautiful or say great poem at a time !
Then in a dark night,all of a sudden kainla disappeared from the darker scene of kathmandu and i knew nothing about his whereabouts-never,nobody told me,it remined a mystery.he remained shrouded in mystery. I guesed Samadarshi kainla must have returned to his homeland,the remote high hills in the eastern part of nepal.he must be digging the rough land down below his homestead with his darling or he must be tilling it with a pair of all worn-out oxen just by the side of towering cliffs,just below the banyan tree and beyond the great river. I thought he must be singing palam song or dancing with some lass of his tribe in slow motion,the whole nights,hands in hand with them to the tune of the ancient love songs.he must have spent many a nights in this way. But again I stopped imagining that way the moment I realized how horriblethe time was.it was mercilessly killing human beings and was crusing their hope to survive whether it was in the town or far flung villlages of the hills of plains.You must have read M.K.Limboo's THE FRAGILE MOUNTAIN that describes the true horror the people underwent, that is where Kainla used to live. It was a most horrible time in the pages of our hostory,people were being squeezed to death.
Or did kainla join the guerillas in the mountain and has he found the gun mighter than the pen ? I kept wondering all the time.Here, in kathmandu the Rangabadi comrades under Dharmendra Bikram Nembang participated in demostrations.burned one or two effigies everyday,got arrested and beaten up frequently,were in the police custody or lived a life unknown to the world mostly during the day,wheres they kept composing great poems by nights.These young poets have supported a lot in the struggle people fought for the restoration of democracy;they recited poems in the streets that breathed fire.In a span of five years,three young writersappeared,established as new Rangabadi poets,namely Dharmenrda Bikram Nemabang, Swargiya Swapnil smriti and chandrabir Tumbapo.Two more ,namely, Chandra yongya and prakash Bimil joined them later on and by now each of them has, to their credit,at least one book and it is an anthology of poetry.They have tried to give nepali poetry a new shape and dimension,it is all anti-traditional,anti-foundational yet substantially new. This has earned great acclaim.I know this will continue because there is a freshest of all literary movements in nepal or the nepali language.
The Arabian Knight appeared suddenly :
After so many days and nights, when Rangabadis had established themselves as new trend-setters , Samadarshi Kainla appeared from nowhere-he told he was in the ancient land of the great Arab people toiling hard and composing poems at the same time.it was miraculous. he was completely drenched in nostalgic mood-that forced him compose great and that brought him home again and again however he was stranded there for years. Now he has come back to meet us,and is physically present before us. For us,he returned like the Arabian knight,however not the knight of the antiquity found in the legend but of the 21st century.we welcomedhim. He came with a gift for us-a manuscript titled ''Manchheko Aatmahatyako Jagga''(The Land of man's suicide).
He came with a sphinx :
Samadarshi kainla's creative art is also mysterious like sphinx for me. Half of manuscript contained poems in nepali wherea the other half was in English-like sphinx.I compared this with the time we are living-singularity has gone,our culture a mixing of many,our values no longer our own, our thought,philosophy and whatever we practice is a conglomeration of many.There is no existence of the word purity, and originality because there is no ONE.People are bilingual and bicultural, or multi-we trust in multiness and multiplicity,the whole of civilization rests in this and hybridity,so English and nepali is fine,local and global should go together,the sphinx is our guide,a symbolic guide to the postmodern situation,a symbol established in antiquity.Kainla was ambivalent.Everyone should be so.All contemporary writings have followed and focused this. Not translation,these were composed originally in two languages.I was glad to find Samadarshi kainla a truly bilingual author. I appreaciated his art of touching his fellomen through his native tongue,and of reaching the readers worldwide through English,truly a common language of contemporary globe.
How can I introduse Samadarshi Kainla now,who writes English and nepali both,to the wider world ?It is not that difficult because ,actually, poetry has the same deep structure-the tone and theme,beauty elegance and art apart from some philosophy-a permanebt value. So, I could see through these pages the art of poetry in whatever language it is. Writing in English is not new however it is only a few poets that possess such a bilingual ability.One among the young generation of poets is Samadarshi Kainla.The wider world can read now a fresh brand nepali poetry written in English.this promotes true cosmopolitanism. Samadarshi kainla's poem surprised me.He has gained mastery over the art-the art of giving expression to life and the world.
And anxiety of influence :
He invokes Bairagi kainla on the very first page of his work and compares: I am the fruit grown in the grafted Bairagi. No dobut,Bairagi kainla is one of the greatest trend-setters in nepali poetry and a host of young poets,including Samadarshi kainla regard him as a father-figure,or a proto-figure in this art.He has left a trajectory of a path all new and deviated from the common trend more than four decades ago.The younger generation is paying tribute today. That is ,they somehow rewrite him; redefine and deconstruct him. it is an age of all deconstruction and reversion.
Samadarshi kainla puts -it is like being nostalgic,about those days, or some horrilbe days that have left a trajectory in the history.For him poetry is art and there is no final edition-it is merely writing and rewriting. He rewrites time and space again and again. He quotes other trend-setters like Hangyug Agyat, also a very powerful young poet. In an effort to avoid being like the forerunners , especially Bairagi kainla ,he somehow resembles them. This psychological plane of writing ,a command unconcious ,which freud and later on Harald bloom have termed as Anxiety of influence has influenced many. Even four Rangabadis have experienced this time and again, Samadarshi kainla could never be an exception. He has carried a deep anxiety of influence too.
Not only this all six Rangabadis 's works that line up within five years are actually linked to each other;linearly, the first echoes in the second,the second echoes in the third- the third echoes is reflected in the forth. A fine tone of similarity can be traced underlying them- in termsof technique , theme, locale and philosophy.
I would like to draw an illustration: each of these works have referred to or mentioned the words ''Bheer'' cliff, and Ranga(colour) in their works but with a slight difference and connotation. Again there is a strange diversion in Dharmendra's second work titled ''Bhagawanko Aatmahatyako jagga''. How daring and bold it is ! They contemplated the death of God. Samadarshi kainla's subverts in a mood of anxiety to avoid this influence or deconstruct this . He says it is not the land of God's suicide but instead man's.
what an irony ! young poets contemplating land of man's suicide-nothing confirms with the past with the traditon.He reveals a new possibility,a new dimension. His poems are full new experiment in structure,technique ans style.It is novel in theme-he has tried to erase different values of the past and rewritten new ones-all this makes him as one of trend setters the forerunners among writers that belong to postmodern school.
Lyrically deconstructing -
Samadarshi kainla has in fact deconstructed the past through his art and innovative way of writing.One can see man committing suicide constrained by constitution or law,society and rulers. He stands for freedom which is absolute and unconditional.Now even time is singing the song of death.
Uttaradhunik sambhog,literally, POSTMODERN COPULATION is a poem of great beauty and art.The symbols he uses here and also otherwise are very fresh,original and exciting. Some poems are for the eyes;these are visual poems-both in English and nepali.Samadarshi concentrates on life,society his beloved-he wants to remake kathmandu. Sex in my contemplation and In the name of Fairy Florence are his masterpieces in English.He writes beautifully, ingenuously,drawing from the past yet his works will be a good model for future. Among others Samadarshi kainla is one of the trend setters of new poetry that inculcates in the readers the sense of freedom and beauty,experimentation and unending possibility.His experiences are great, the way he relates them to us is unique and marvelous. I suggest kainla to get the nepali poems translated in to English and vice-versa,he can also render them into other languages to present a small sample of contemporary nepali poetry that is quite innovative and newness.
