The Evolution of Nepali Fiction  by Taranath Sharma

Novel

Girish Ballabh Joshi and his contemporary Sada Shiva Sharma Adhikari are two names that stand our as the forerunners of the Nepali novel. Although Joshi's Bir Charitra was written before the close of the Nineteenth Century and its first part was published in 1903, all the four parts of the novel could be brought out together sixty two years later in 1965 only. It is true that it appeared late for the general readers, yet its manuscript passed from hand to hand in the Rana palaces. It became quite popular particularly among the Rana women. This popularity can be attributed to its attractive story full of sensational anecdotes of magical enchantments and flights of fancy. Despite its fantasies, 'Bir Charita' presents distinct flashes of the autocratic Rana rulers riding roughshod over the innocent Nepalese people. It is this contemporaneity that has made Bir Charitra a memorable novel. Adhikari, on the other hand, published several of his long tales which are rather the Puranas retold in a simpler and unsophisticated language lacking originality and verve.

The first successful novelist on a purely social theme was Rudra Raj Pande (1900-1987) whose Rupmati (1934) with three subsequent novels has vividly brought our the life of the Brahmins in Kathmandu during the first half of this century. Rupmati, an ideal character of Nepalese womanhood, stands formidable against all kinds of antagonism she has to face as a housewife. On the one hand is her mother-in-law who is the very embodiment of oppression with a mouth that functions as a never-ending torrent of vituperation and on the other a roguish brother-in-law who lays blame on her for the wrongs he commits. Sandwiched between these two instruments of torture she had to serve and please her husband who was himself torn between two loyalties - the traditional belief that he has to submit himself totally and unequivocally to the dictates of his parent and the free thinking that he has cultivated through the modern Western style of education. Rupmati is revealing study of an orthodox Nepalese family going through a process of transformation because of the impact of Western liberal ideas.

Rupmati is significant not only as the first Nepali novel to deal with social content but it also server as a model on which the later novelists fashioned their female characters. They, however, created women who consciously strove for emancipation. In Manjuri (959) by Daulat Bikram Bista we have a young widow who revolts against conservatism and remarries a man of her choice. In so doing she invites a double-edged wrath of the society during the ruthless Rana regime. As a widow she was not morally permitted to remarry and as a Brahmin she went against the Rana law that forbade her to choose a man below her caste as her spouse. It was only after the Revolution of 1951 that shackles of casteism began to snap gradually. Hridaya Chandra Singh Pradhan went a little further in his enthusiasm to free women from the bondage of orthodox Hindu customs by creating a female character who delivers fiery speeches on women's liberty in his Swasnimanchhe (1954) published after the fall of the Ranas. To make the point all the more impressive the novelist chooses his main character from a socially degraded and despised group of whores. His approach is too idealistic and far-fetched, and yet it is meant to be an answer t the submissive Hindu housewife like Rupmati. But Swasnimanchhe remains far behind in its impact on the Nepalese readers in comparison to Manjuri the success of which inspired Bista to write a number of social realistic novels.

Govinda Bahadur Gothale and Vijaya Malla were also encouraged by Rupmati, for Gothale delineated a married woman in his Pallo Gharko Jhyal (The Window in the House in Front, 1959) in which Misri, its main character, develops extra-marital liking looking at a young man through her window for several days and elopes with him ultimately. Gothale tries to explode the myth that Nepalese women remain firm and loyal towards their husbands despite their husbands' inability to sexually and emotionally satisfy them. Gothale's younger brother Vijaya Malla has so far given two novels Anuradha (1961) and Kumari Shobha (1982) both completely dominated by their main female characters. Anuradha is a textbook presentation of Freudian complexes forcibly crammed down the throat of Anuradha, a psychopathic woman. It is extremely rare, if not downright impossible, to come across a woman like Anuradha who spits out Freudian analyses every time, or a man like Komal Man who is a masochist for the pleasure of the author. Vijaya Malla is very fond of making very unusual experiments. One of such is found in his short story entitled 'Kalo Chashma' (The Dark Sunglasses) which describes a sexually dull and impotent man who even at the discovery of his wife in bed with a young neighbor is able to control his jealousy by putting on sunglasses and secretly enjoying at their extramarital fun. In Kumari Shobha, however, he touched for the first time in Nepali a cultural theme which is unique in every way. 'Kumari', which literally means a virgin, is a girl selected by the Shakyas of Kathmandu to sit on a special throne as a Living Goddess. She has to have extreme beauty and no physical defects to be so chosen, but she can reign as the Living Goddess only up to the period she comes of age, or until she menstruates. After that she is replaced by another girl and the former Kumari has a painful life to lead, because there is a superstition that any man who marries her will meet with his death soon. The discarded Kumari's natural sexual urges, her pangs of wasted youth, the alienation due to social taboos mercilessly imposed on her and the many temporary suitors who break their promises as soon as they are told of the superstition could have made the novel a masterpiece of literature, but Malla was not able to wield the theme successfully and his Kumari Shobha remains a monotonously drab account with no  fictional appeal.

Despite the failure of Vijaya Malla and a little success of Gothale in presenting the Nepalese women in their proper perspective there was no dearth of other novelists who successfully brought out their female characters in convincingly attractive manner. Bhikshu in his Suntali has delineated a woman in her sexual charm as well as well as female complexes arising out of social maladjustment. Lila Dhwaj Thapa in his Mana (1958) depicts a blossoming young woman who has to run away to save herself from sexuality immoral males and females. Eka Deshki Maharani (The Queen of a Certain Country, 1969) by Keshav Raj Pindali (1920) presents a charming daughter of a Rana ruler in Nepal wedded to an Indian prince who is given to womanizing and drinks. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth and living in sheer luxury her loss of youth in monotonous languishing is quite interesting. Whether the innocent women like Thapa's Mana and Malla's Kumari, or the rebellious women like Bista's Manjari and Pradhan's Swasnimanchhe they are all created as a natural influence of their antecedent Rupmati. Gothale's Misri and Bhikshu's Suntali are psychoanalytically delineated female characters who remind us of Sakambari in Shirishko Phul (The Shirish Flower**, 1965) by Parijat. Sakambari, however, represents absurdity and barrenness as opposed to the female characters of other Nepali novelists. Although Parijat imposes her interpretation of the Buddhist philosophy of complete void (nihilism?) on Sakambari and makes the woman most repulsive and farthest from reality, she had begun a new trend in the Nepali novel with her captivating prose. The next novel entitled Mahattahin (The non-significant, 1968) was far more absurd and sterile and less popular, but Parijat was overnight found completely metamorphosed into an interpreter of the decadent philosophy of Marxism in literature which made her produce cheap propaganda writings one after another curtailing her own essential literary merit.

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** Tej Ratna Kansakar has translated this novel into English and given the title of Blue Mimosa.

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