Beginning of My Writing Career

Suman Bhattarai

14 September 2018, Nepal

           I was born in the year of Maoist initiation to revolt against the system of government (1995). After 7/8 years, still there was the movement going on and I had been growing my intellectual senses. As the rebels would come and go they would leave some books and while their stay, sing some revolutionary communist songs. I wasn’t influenced much but, I don’t hesitate to say, it obviously had certain impact on me. The books they left used to be found under the pillow or bed or on the ceiling beams of our wooden house. I didn’t dare to read those books at the very moment but I would love to compile them in the bookshelf. Later on, no doubt, I read some of them which grabbed my interest. One of the finest books they left and I read was Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.

           Whatever I remember now is I started living my literary environment since my childhood. The ‘Morning Loris’ sung by my mother while rotating the ‘Jaanto’ are the most memorable ones. I think I was 4 years old, since then my father began narrating me the folktales that were, off course, childish and were for the children’s mental development and would give moral lessons. In between the transition of going to bed and falling asleep, my dad used to narrate me the stories often; and sometimes he would recite poems as well as songs he would sing in a low but sweet voice that would evaporate the positive vibes on my mind. Happily I would fall asleep after then. This was in a sense duty of my dad I had given because I was such a persistent guy that wouldn’t sleep until he would be opportune to listen to those stories.

           I was more intimate to my mom than my dad but still she could not be able to tell me stories because she, most of the times, would be busy doing household activities and chores. In the evening before sleep, she would prepare dinner for us all. We were seven children altogether and it was really a big family. She had the burden to feed the cattle too. So, since she woke up till bed, she would respire the breath of busy times.

            I suppose the very first story my dad narrated for me was the mischievous activities of Lord Krishna when he was a child, but not the pervert acts of him he did later when he was turning to frisky youth that I read when I was grown up. “Story of Shishir Bashanta” was the most painful story I heard on my bed. I could never imagine my life without mother since then. Further, Muna Madan in a narrative form he presented that also touched my soul with pain, grief and compelling guilt which I myself read later maybe more than five times.

“Story of Madhu Malati”, many other fairytales, stories like “Tortoise and Rabbit”, comic and also diplomatic stories of Akbar and Birbal, “Rope of Ashes”, “How Much Land a Man Needs” and such stories I heard when I was too young and those stories were all narrated by my dad after we would go to bed.

Ramayana, Maha Bharata, Bhagabata Geeta and several times I heard and read Swosthani. Those religious texts were so very nicely knitted and the acts within the lines were such a mesmerising that I used to be dazzled and puzzled. Our culture is even such a rich culture where we get to hear ‘slokes’, slogans, songs and religious stories that tell the story of Gods and Goddesses and that inspires us to live our life as such or accordingly.

Before I completed my school, I had read around fifty novels and some anthologies of poems. I had been addicted to listen to radio. Many poems, stories, and songs I heard were from radio. One of many radio programs was “Shruti-Sambeg” that I stayed tuning when I was in plus-two level. Achyut Ghimire’s voice and the novels and stories he presented were more that heart touching. The school and college courses were also designed in such way that would encourage one to read literary texts. As a student of literature, I suppose I have read around half a thousand books or more now. And the most significant thing is that writing career comes adjoining to reading one. When we read other’s text, we are inspired to write.

And the most  funny and interesting thing I suppose you are going to hear is I started writing love-poems when I fell in love that was one-sided, no doubt, in class 9 and I think most of you also wrote such poems at least once in your life. Some of you may have kept on writing and some stopped that is the different matter.

As I would read, a mysterious voice would evaporate inside me. That suffocation, that fear and that enthusiasm to rehearse those characters in read texts might be the ones that pushed me to write. At the beginning, I wrote essays as it used to be compulsory for us to write and submit them to our teachers in school-level. Gradually, the trend of writing poems I adapted as my brother and also my dad were habitual in it. As influenced by the stories and novels I read and the sequence of events in them, I started imagining similar kinds of stories that are existed in society and I wrote them. The poems, short stories, lyrical poems (Ghajals), and the life-narrative I often create. Some of the ghajals and also some short stories of mine have been recited and read from the radio programs respectively. And still I am writing which I don’t think I will stop but I will be reading and writing more and more often in coming days.

14 September 2018, Nepal            I was born in the year of Maoist initiation to revolt against the system of government (1995). After 7/8 years, still there was the movement going on and I had been growing my intellectual senses. As the rebels would come and go they would leave some books and while their …Continue readingBeginning of My Writing Career