Quest (Poem)

From: Frosty Breath in the Wilderness
by Padma Devkota

Part IV: "Quest"
3.

Teacher:

What a glorious morning this is.
Students, earth has not anything to show
more fair than this mighty heart
of a growing civilization.

First Student:

What civilization, Sir?

Teacher:

        Waking up
is the finest moment of life.
Once awake, human intellect
cuts through ignorance like a knife
and serves the main dish of values
that build up civilizations.

Second Student:

Is value a dish, Sir?

Teacher:

        Values
and priorities are the basis
of systems that must function well
to maintain civilization.
When we watch the sunrise, we see
that nature too obeys all rules
to maintain her holy practice
of eternal regeneration.

First Student:

Is not nature uncivilized?

Teacher:

Only those who break rules do not
promote civilization.
Those who break rules and upturn values
create their own demonic worlds.

Second Student:

And which is better, Sir?

Teacher:

        Better?
That I do not know. But the best
is to follow the morning sun
like a lover, to yearn for it
throughout the night, to take delight
in its presence and to say,
"Sun, may you teach me to wake up
each morning, to brighten others
like you brighten all, and to shed
the light of life upon this world."

First Student:

Sir, what is "the light of life"?

Teacher:

It is not smashing peoples' shins
or quartering off all their limbs,
nor even hurting them with words.
The light of life shines best where we
care for each other's happiness
and tread with sensitive steps the ground
where people's hearts are strewn around,
for hearts are living, hearts are quick
to softest brush of voice and tone.
Of course, we need this crowd on earth;
"Beyond all this, the wish to be alone."

Faction (Poem)

From: Frosty Breath in the Wilderness
by Padma Devkota

"Faction"
2.

Old Sage:

Aum! May the Goddess Vak grant tongues to you all!
Now listen to the gospel of the Sky.
We are all in essence one. What flows down
from the source is not changed by the nature
of the terrain that encloses it. Aum!

Pupils:

Aum! We are all in essence one. Aum!

Old Sage:

Aum! We, the children of Nature, are fed
by father Infinite Space who loves us.
What love begets must not kick with anger.
Rebellion is a slow suicide.
Submit to ancestral wisdom. Aum!

Pupils:

Aum! We submit to ancestral wisdom. Aum!

Old Sage:

Aum! Upon the altar of Earth, like butter
the clouds melt with the fire of the Sun
to create heat, which is life. Without heat
there can be no life. Pour butter into
the holy pit each morning to appease
Agni, the fire that sustains life. Aum!

Pupils:

Aum! Without heat there can be no life. Aum!

Old Sage:

Aum! Upon the altar of life, shed actions
that melt like pure butter without residue
of greed, or lust, or desire. Appease
the Creator with pure devotion
to Him through nature and through gods. Aum!

Pupils:

Aum! We shall not desire nor lust. Aum!

Old Sage:

Aum! Listen to the gospel of the Sky.
It is a sea of individual minds.
The drop that refuses to lose itself
in the water of the palm shall dry dead.
Mingling with the rest it shall survive. Aum!

Pupils:

Aum! We shall merge like drops with other pools. Aum!

Old Sage:

Blessings upon you all! May Goddess Vak,
too, bless you with learning.
Dismiss. Now go
and leave me to my solitude where I
may with closed eyes read the gospel of the Sky.

Congratulations in Retrospect

Padma Devkota

Congratulations in Retrospect!

    Immediately after the then Rector of Tribhuvan University Professor Dr. Mahendra Prasad Singh announced on TV the twenty percent internal assessment marks policy I congratulated him in advance in The Kathmandu Post of November 26, 2005. Once again, I take this opportunity to congratulate him in retrospect for his pragmatically successful policy. TU has indeed succeeded in diluting the academic strength of private colleges, too.
    Since it is time for colleges to submit the twenty percent internal assessment marks to the examination section at Balkhu, private colleges are obviously worried about their students’ grades. They have only the Central Department of English (CDE) at Kirtipur to look up to as a model. CDE, however, has remained as blunt as ever to the requirements of academic culture. Unable to function in any other way, it has conducted a test for its registered crowd and has decided upon a specific policy of grading: everyone will be given marks between twelve and eighteen out of twenty for the internal assessment. This means that any student who has signed the exam attendance sheet will receive nothing below twelve out of twenty, which is 60%. What a luxury for fortunate students who don’t have to write a single word to receive a first division mark! And, of course, students need not be all present for the test at the same time. Anyone who misses the test will be given a chance to appear for it on demand. 
    And, if they do write something, they will receive a maximum of eighteen out of twenty, which is 90%. A real distinction! No one is going to get anything more than this despite their extra brilliance. And, examiners don’t have to be too careful in reading and grading student papers (which is generally not their habit anyway) because the marks students receive are determined less on the basis of academic performance than on the basis of a collusion between the Head of the Department, a few senior teachers and the representatives of the students themselves. These people sit down together and decide which student gets what.
    Against this practice, private colleges are helpless. Throughout the year, teachers have properly monitored the academic performance of their students. Grades received for each class or home assignment are meaningful. And, students have written real research papers! Most of them have attended classes regularly unlike many of their counterparts in TU colleges. They have participated in class discussions, raised intelligent questions, and made serious attempts to learn. Even during long periods of time when TU campuses were shut down for political and other reasons, students of private colleges were attending classes and their teachers were constantly challenging them to excel themselves.
Given this reality, do students of private colleges deserve anything less than what their counterparts at CDE receive? Examination marks are academic signifiers, not gift parcels. If teachers of private campuses go by the rules of TU (that CDE itself does not follow), distinction is a mark of excellence. The five slots into which TU examinees of the Masters Level may fall are: Fail (0-39), Third Division (40-49), Second Division (50-59), First Division (60-74), and Distinction (75 and above). However, Tribhuvan University, and specially CDE, has made it their noble practice of offering marks as gifts to students out of love for the poor non-metropolitans (this democratically includes the metropolitans!) who have not had a chance to go to good private schools in their poverty-ridden villages. This is how the teaching faculty of CDE broke into three factions in the recent past: a group of teachers who artfully professed love for their students and slandered other colleagues as teachers who did not love their students even as a third group of teachers lost their voice out of fear of having to speak up.
Ironically, teachers who were not supposed to have loved their students were academically more demanding than those who loved their students. This resulted in the student-loving faction attempting to slander the non-student-loving teachers in various ways. One of the strategies was to befriend students and fill their ears against the academically more demanding colleagues. What is a greater crime than when a scholar colleague leaves the examination room after the thesis viva-voce of a student is over and, out of holy love for the student, tells him or her outside the examination hall that, although s/he wanted to give the student eighty-five percent, so-and-so objected to such high marks and gave him only seventy-two. And, what authority does this colleague assume to announce TU examination marks to the student before the Examination Board does so?
I explained the transparency of the policy of the Rector’s Office in my article of November 26, 2005: “since TU is unable to uplift its academic face, why not use the cosmetics of marks! And this too against the backdrop of competitions with younger universities that have a different grading system that marks down from one hundred rather than up from zero. After all, marks don't really have to stand for academic achievement; they may stand for various levels of ignorance or even for the intensity of ‘love’ the teachers profess for their students.” Today, it is clear that private colleges, too, are expected to play the “loving teachers” for the sake of justifying the malpractice of the central departments of Tribhuvan University. They too have been forced to say: “We will give first division marks to anyone who was present at the internal assessment exam even if that student has written nothing on the answer paper. We will not give anything over 90% to anyone.”
I am sure teachers are happy because they do not have to read any answer papers to give first division or distinction marks to students. And students are happy because they don’t have to write anything sensible to obtain first division or distinction marks. This is the present reality of our oldest university.
I must congratulate the Rector’s Office of Tribhuvan University for such a wonderful decision, which has led to the happiness of the majority.
Sarve bhavantu shukhina… May everyone (unconcerned for the morrow) be happy!

From: The Kathmandu Post Thursday, December 21, 2006

Congratulations in Advance

Congratulations in Advance!
Padma Devkota

    Our impatience to share joys with our loved ones almost always gushes uncontrollably forth prior to the event or the occasion that is supposed to cause such joys, thereby inverting the causal universe on its head. At such moments, we live in Alice's Wonderland where characters bleed before the needle pricks them, where fallacies of causal relationships overtake our rationality and render us into a bundle of emotions. Long before the wedding day, we offer our felicitations to the bride or the groom. We extend our best wishes to those who are about to venture into a new space of adventure. We wish a very Happy New Year to each other before the old year is out or a very Happy Vijaya Dashami before the festival is in. Our longing for such moments of joy circulates torrentially in our veins to reduce our competence of expression to a mere utterance of joy.
    After listening to the Rector of Tribhuvan University on TV, I am so overwhelmed with excitement that I must congratulate him for his recent announcement of the twenty percent internal assessment marks policy. According to this policy, TU will allow campuses to conduct an internal assessment worth twenty percent out of a centralised one hundred percent at all academic levels if they want to do so, but will immediately and compulsorily implement this policy at the degree level with the help of the subject teacher. This mark of trust by the TU academic head in the competence of all its teachers is a dawn of civilization on campus for it certainly offers academic respect to all who deserve it. I, for one, would have appreciated it even more had subject teachers been trusted to handle not just the twenty percent but the whole one hundred percent of the examination marks. This would have been of greater advantage to both the students and the academic policy makers of the university.
    I say so because the policy of the Rector's Office is transparent: since TU is unable to uplift its academic face, why not use the cosmetics of marks! And this too against the backdrop of competitions with younger universities that have a different grading system that marks down from one hundred rather than up from zero. After all, marks don't really have to stand for academic achievement; they may stand for various levels of ignorance or even for the intensity of "love" the teachers profess for their students.
    And, how does this policy work?  If Dharahara does not grow taller after whitewashing and renovation, it will at least look more presentable. That is the effect of cosmetics. That is why the burden of whitewashing TU academics has been partly decentralised to naïve teachers whose seats (if they have any) are bound to be set on fire (if they are just that lucky!) by demands for twenty out of twenty in the internal assessment marks. Any refusal to comply will surely be met with threats and abuses or even actual violence. This is a prediction, not an assumption.
    History has told sadder tales than this. The hasty, failed experiment of the mid-seventies points a warning index at this new policy. During a politically more stable and better disciplined decade, the internal assessment system collapsed because TU could not offer any means of resisting student pressure upon teachers to give them twenty out of twenty for the internal assessment. Students threatened resisting teachers with knives and muscles, with threats and abuses, even as the university forgave them all like Christ on the cross. How does TU expect its teachers to resist the pressure of students who have adopted violence and incendiary techniques to score better marks today? 
    I do not believe that the Rector's Office expects teachers to resist such pressures, except at the theoretical level. It cannot, because it has already confessed to me that it cannot offer work with dignity to its academic staff. So, it has fallen into the rut of accepting the incapacity of individuals (including medical doctors) to change the ugly reality of the university's diseased system. Because this much is clear, I have attempted a calculation of the present pass marks for the degree level examination. On paper, it is forty percent. In practice, it is approximately five marks out of eighty, which is 6.25%.
How does this happen? First, since any exam (theses, for instance) handled individually by the subject teacher is not normally scored below ninety percent for obvious reasons that I have discussed in earlier articles, I discount the possibility of any student receiving anything below eighteen out of twenty in the internal assessment marks. This already brings the Master's level pass marks down to twenty to twenty-two percent. Second, the university has a tradition of offering a five percent grace marks to students for any exam. This brings the pass marks down to fifteen to seventeen percent. And, finally, the trend in some departments is to give students an additional ten to fifteen percent grace marks on their own discretion. Let us suppose that the five percent grace offered by the university is included in this range. Even then, this will bring the pass marks for the degree level examinations down to something between five to twelve percent. This pass percentage descends even lower at the hands of teachers who "love" their students. If one may obtain a Master's degree by scoring even twenty percent, who wouldn't?
The private student will certainly lose twenty percent of the total score simply by not registering as a regular student. Since attendance, like pass marks, has a double face by TU standards, it is academically suicidal to remain a private student. Therefore, my suggestions in "Admissions Open" (KTM Post Nov 12, 2005) stand even stronger than before.
The only question that nags me is this: Why does TU not switch over form its present marking system to a grading system instead of using cosmetics to uplift its face? It is daylight clear to the whole world that students who received a mere fifty percent five years ago were better products than students who receive sixty percent today. If the university continues merely whitewashing its face, there will soon come a time when employers and other universities of the world will reject its products as being academically underqualified. TU alone cannot define academics. It has to comply with the academic standard set by many other universities of the world if it wants to carry any conviction at all. Any refusal to do so is anti-nationalistic.
Contrary to the requirements of academic promotion, the Rector's Office has decided what it has decided: to whitewash its academic face even if that means to fall from the academic standard. The cosmetic effect has already brightened the faces of the policy makers and the students of TU. Students obviously understand only marks. The Rector also seems to understand only his term in office, which has to pass smoothly and without any untoward event. Even as I foresee the consequences of this decision, I must congratulate the policy makers in advance for the whitewash that has uplifted the academic face of TU, for the better scores that students will inevitably receive in the next exam as a testimony to their academic ability, and for the garlanding and honours the Rector may receive for his presumably innovative idea.

From: The Kathmandu Post Saturday, November 26, 2005

The Gem of Union (Poem)

X. The Gem of Union
From: A Flame for a Moth by Padma Devkota

The king retrieved the gem of union
and asked Urvasi why she had not said
a word about his child, to which the nymph
replied, “Lord Indra gave me leave to come
to you with special instruction that I
return to heaven the day you beheld
the face of your child. So I hid him well
in a proper ashram to be raised up
with love and care. And, king, now that you have
seen the face of your son, I have to leave!”

Fierce lightning struck from darkest clouds, a storm
brewed in the heart of King Pururava
tearing leaves of sweet, happy days ahead
and strewing them upon the sinking floor.
He stood astounded by this new knowledge
of strangest fate that with a single stroke
had stolen his lover and bestowed a child.
He reeled with anxiety and concern,
turned pale with feeling of a vice-like grip
inside his chest which he held with both hands
and uttered a single denial, “No!”
As if a royal order were not enough,
but needs be repeated as a request,
“No!” he said. “This cannot be! Do not go!”
And, regaining strength, he called upon love
to weigh the propriety of action
taken in conformity with a command:
“Can you profess me love and leave me thus
because a king commands? Love is our king!
This Supreme King of Love commands that we
always remain in each other’s embrace.
O, how can you, Urvasi, ever forget
this higher command and leave me alone?
Day is not day without the sun and moon,
chariots don’t run on a single wheel,
no streams of tear would deck the face of earth
should vapours not be lifted up by air,
no moth will flutter around a dead flame,
nor flame flicker towards an absent moth,
the two in copulative energy
sustain the living beauty of this world.
Go not, Urvasi! Leave me not alone!”

“I’m not of this world, my love, I obey
a different set of laws in heaven made.
I cannot disobey Indra, although
I wish I could not disobey you too.
Thus bound by superior laws, I fly
to heaven on heavy wings and submit
myself to what must be. You do the same.
You have a whole kingdom to regulate,
busy yourself in the people’s affairs
so that you have no time to think of us.”
With these words the nymph, ready to depart,
paused a while because the king grasped her hand
like a drowning man grasps a floating straw
and said, “These are cruel words, Urvasi!
Not a language of love! If you leave me
to my lonely fate, ...” The king looked around
and ordered his minister to prepare
for the coronation of the new king,
his just found son, for he would forsake all
and wander in the wilderness abroad
like a madman seeking to catch a dream. 

Pearly beads rolled down the quivering cheeks
and summoned pearly beads in angel eyes
that felt a strange mortal link: soul to soul
and flesh to flesh. Parting like the tearing
of wedded souls oozed painful tears and sobs
on both sides of the mortal wound. The nymph,
still attempting to clutch the finger tips
of the king, still rose higher in the air.
The king, still attempting to draw her down
with finger tips yet in contact with her,
felt himself sinking in the underworld.
She met his pleading upward gaze with eyes
that wished themselves blind for seeing a man
so miserable that his gloom perhaps
would now render heaven forever dark.
Thus did they tarry for a brief moment
and were like a painted canvas, which each
of them desired would never fade.

The Hero and the Nymph (Poem)

V The Hero and the Nymph From: A Flame for a Moth by Padma Devkota

“The court awaits your pleasure,” a bowed head
addressed the king. “Grave matters of the state
need to be addressed, my Lord! Will you come?”
the solemn Minister voiced his concern,
which His Majesty did not seem to hear,
but lost in painful reveries of love
he sighed his soul out like a rooted tree.

“O Urvashi!” he cried, “How can I live
alone in this palace without my love?
It's like an empty hole dug in the ground,
cold and dark and stifling that suffocates
the life breath out of me. Designed to kill,
infested with unctuous fools who like ants
swarm around their great honey-trickling lord
and smile their disgust with an envious heart,
rich in pompous vanity, envious
of power and wealth, stratified in rank,
it knows not serene peace nor harmony
of genuine soul to soul relation, which
embracing all embraces greatest bliss.
No, it is not such flattering company
but genuine friendship that thrives on love
most strongly nourishes our life with joy.
And I, quite close to such a joyous life
in the company of my honest queen,
having found greater joy in Urvashi,
am torn like a river by a boulder
that will not yield an easy path to joy,
so that divided into two currents
it must gush beyond this dark obstacle
to seek wholeness of a divided self.
Yet, the unequal currents of water
on either side of the obstructing rock
gush with different force towards the bend
in their life's journey, intoning a truth
spelled out clearly in the book of nature.
Thus am I torn, but why should I dispel
a greater joy with one of lesser kind?
Why should I so unlike the river be
and force a greater volume to one side
than it can lend an easy passage to
and let the other thirsty bed go dry?
This would be madness! And if mad I am,
I owe no obligation to the world
and seek no favour from it. Instead, I
enchanted by unearthly beauty will
here meditate upon a form that holds
the single key to my sad existence
in the frosty winter of her absence
that colours all I do. O Urvashi!
Commander of my heart! When will you come
to spouse me by the singing riverside?”

“And the people,” complained the Minister,
“shall I tell them that King Pururava
once true and just and loving and beloved
has drawn the curtains of the Golden Age
over his self, which now is blind to all
but what possesses him demonically
with its power of fatal seduction?
Shall I tell them that you love them no more
because another claim upon your heart
is so potent that you, forgetting all,
permit yourself from duty thus to fall?”

“Go, Minister, ascertain that the state
does not miss me. Perform your duty well.
See that the systems of the state run smooth,
lubricate the rust, replace broken cogs,
and, should you need more vision, come to me.
I have a personal need of solitude,
which you should learn to respect. Go hence
and let me dream a while of heaven’s gate
that swings a thousand times to release
its greatest beauty for a dreamer’s ease.”
So spoke the king and with his dreamy eyes
he sought the vision of his fevered heart
within the farthest reaches of the sky.

The Minister his concern expressed again:
“Your noble Majesty! Half-witted love!
You seek to own the moon whose lunar charm
has cast a spell upon the woodcock, you!
O, wake up to the smell of earth and trees
that surround you. Urvashi is a dream.
She is a fantasy beyond your grasp.
The queen at your disposal should outweigh
a million dreams of fairies on their wings
and since all kings are husband to the state
they should firmly grasp more relevant things.”

To which the king replied as if from far:
“Urvashi is the poem of my heart.
She is the lunar gleam with argent touch
that embalms the world in joyful repose,
she is the vision that creates the throb
of a devoted heart, she is the joy
of the woodcock, she is the cynosure
of heaven and earth, the only being
that can dispel the gloom both here and there
the light of heaven and earth is Urvashi!
Is there a beauty resides in oceans' depths?
In its snaky dazzles of broad daylight?
In snow-capped peaks of primordial dawn?
Or moon-blanched heights that open mysteries
of poppy-drugged fields to vague yearning hearts?
She is a decanted drop of beauty,
of fulfilling love, of true harmony.
Go Minister, see to the state's affairs,
rimeless hearts should not roam the gardens here.
So, leave me in peace to warm my hoarfrost
with sweetest reveries of happy days.”

How Heads Are Replaced

Padma Devkota

How Heads Are Replaced

I discovered from The Himalayan Times August 4, 2004 that I had been replaced by Professor Chandra Prakash Sharma as the Head of the Central Department of English, TU, Kirtipur. I should have been the first to receive this information from the concerned TU authorities, not the press. What code of conduct is the TU acting under that its Professor and Head should discover such related information through the press?
    Contrary to the uninformed report in The Himalayan Times about the time and reason for my "resignation," I had actually protested in writing to the Vice-Chancellor of TU on Wednesday June 23, 2004 (Ashad 9, 2061) against the despicable conduct of the vice-president of the Free Students Union at Kirtipur. As I was working at my desk that day, he entered the office, abused me like a slave, and ordered me to enroll a student immediately. When I refused to do so, he threatened to thrash me up and to kill me. He threatened me that if I did not enroll the student "within five minutes," he would lock me up inside the office and burn me up. This is what I protested against. I still believe that no one should act on campus like this person did. The authorities should see to it that they do not.
    Before this incident, on January 1, 2004 (Poush 17, 2060) I had actually resigned from my job as a teacher at TU because of an even worse misconduct by the same person. As I was conducting the entrance exam, he openly abused me and other teachers of the department, forcibly took the exam copies from the room and later returned to the office to abuse us further. Our plea with the authorities to punish the culprit was unheard. I returned to the office only because the member-secretary of the central students union along with four or five other members came to my residence to apologize for the misconduct of this student leader. They promised me that this would not happen again.
    This time, on June 24, 2004 (Ashad 10, 2060), all the teachers of the department wrote a letter to the Vice-Chancellor of TU asking him to punish the culprit. They even refused to take classes. The Rector met these teachers in his office and told them that my "resignation" would never be approved and requested them to go and teach. He did not mention anything about taking action against the culprit. The Free Students Union, Kirtipur, published a statement to the effect that this conduct of their vice-president was a misdemeanour, and that such a thing would not happen again. Because of such assurances, I too returned to my duty as the Head of the Department.
    Now, I am actually on sick leave for a month starting July 26, 2004 (Shrawan 11, 2061). I had personally appointed Professor Chandra Prakash Sharma, with his consent, as Acting Head of the Central Department of English before going on a sick leave. I do not understand why the TU authorities such as the VC and the Rector are in such a hurry to replace me at a time when I am sick at home and to appoint a person who is already acting as head of the department. Could they not have waited until the day I returned to work? What norms of minimal courtesy and decent behaviour may we infer from this? 
    Finally, a word about the exams. When the Nepali daily Kantipur of Monday, August 2, 2004 reported that out of nearly 800 students only 28 of them had passed the exam, I rang up the Controller of Examinations to request him to officially refute this false statistics and to inform the public by publishing the correct one. He told me that he would include this request as an agenda of the board meeting that would be held in the afternoon that day. I did not understand why a meeting had to decide whether or not to flash the pass/fail percentage of an exam when the results were already out. On August 4, 2004, I called him up again to ask why nothing had been done. The meeting decided not to publish the statistics, he told me. Can any reasonable person explain to me why a board meeting of the Controller of Examinations should decide not to inform the public of the true statistics of an examination after the results are out?
The statistics that I have obtained from the Office of the Controller of Examinations shows that the pass percentage of English MA First Year was 10.47% in Vickram Sambat 2057; 17.87% in 2058; 26.41% in 2059; and 35.3% in 2060. Please confirm this with the Office of the Controller of Examinations, Balkhu, because I am not the authority behind this closed examination system.
    I feel that the authorities have used my protest as a carte blanche to victimize me. They have intentionally used it to their convenience by linking it up with the exam results. Otherwise, why did they wait for so long to decide? They will probably use my letter of resignation from the job itself, which I submitted much earlier, as a carte blanche whenever the opportunity presents itself. Do they have a right to do so? Is it not such people who should resign from their posts? And, was it really necessary for my friend Professor Chandra Prakash Sharma to accept this "new honour" without consulting me on this matter?


August 4, 2004

The Birth of Urvashi (Poem)

 II. The Birth of Urvashi
from: A Flame for a Moth by Padma Devkota

And to Spring he spoke: “A higher law commands!
Awake to full power! Tone and contrast
all shades and colours! Rise, O, soft and slow!
Breathe gently so the young shoots do not start
with winter fear of termination dreams,
breathe life into the very stones that sleep
blanketed by green, wet moss in slumber deep!
Shine with a celestial lustre bright
to freshen up the enveloping air,
let it resound with sylvan orchestra
chirruping, chirping, twittering delights!
Let gurgles, murmurs, tumbling cataracts
drown the whisper of ripples over rocks
lovingly caressed by sparkling water,
let banks be quenched and earth so water-drunk
exhale her high spirit in aroma sweet!
Wear your verdure enhanced by coloured blooms,
allow a myriad shapes and textures fine
to express the soul of superb beauty,
distil your essence into a daisy—
and, here, give it to me!” So saying, he
culled a white daisy soft and fresh as snow
with double stellate petals from a glow
of golden cushion, like the morning sun
cuddled by doting Himalayan peaks.

And this he laid upon his loving lap
whence like the flower's breath a translucent
mist of beauty unfurled to shape and form—
such shape as seduces with sensuous joy,
such form as fills the heart with devout bliss,
a shape to possess and a form to hold
in highest reverence of holy dread,
a shape to touch, a form to meditate,
an eyeful being and a soulful nymph!

She gasped and inhaled Narayana's breath,
and opened slow the calyx of her eye,
and, as with life's initial breath her breasts
heaved like the swelling sea beneath the moon,
a lunar peace descended on her joy
of discovery of this genuine love
whom she held with filial reverence.
“Rise!” he said. She rose. She took two steps back.
She stood with folded palms and reverence.
She bowed and thrice around him humbly walked
and awaited his command, which he spoke:
“Blessed daughter! Commander of all hearts!
You, the progeny of my rich vision,
shall now with grace and charm allure the world
with art and nature mingled into one
divine seductress of Indra's heaven.
Let the king of heaven forget the sage
in lonely penance and not dare disturb
serene contemplation of higher truths
as he, magnetized by your dance and song,
delights in sensual pleasures and the vine
that yields the soma for his tingling nerves.
Dance, Urvashi, in heaven's court. Go, dance!
For with this spring is born a new romance!”

Journey to Kashi (Poem)

Extract from: Harishchandra, "4. Journey to Kashi"

Padma Devkota

The autumn sun that fell behind the trees
glowed like an ember, splintered into rays
that shot not towards the earth but away
and far into a mellow sky that turned
red like the tearful eyes of a lover
lost to hopes of any reunion.
The further they went, darker grew the town
they left behind in the evening gloam,
fawns on their haunches sat and brooded long
as they chewed the remaining grass which they
dangled from their mouth, sparrows did not sport,
canaries were silent in their cages
and smoke did not rise from roofs, not this night !
The golden ocean of rich paddy field
stirred by a cooling vesper wind surged up
with hopes of winning Harishchandra's heart
and subsided to saddest dejection,
then seemed to wave and call the travellers
back to where their sorry journey begun.
The forest darkened, darkened fields and plains,
the road-side river mumbled, grumbled on,
sharp grit and pebbles bit into the sole
of their soft feet as if to slow their march
if not to stop them from their dark exile.

Yet on they trod on weary legs as night
soon met them in the wilderness alone.
Although the argent moon with fullness shrunk
by a quarter perhaps still illumined
their coiling path, although the stars too shone
with brilliance in the vast nocturnal sky,
they stumbled, staggered, struggled, slipped and strode
with hopes to find a human dwelling near
where they could share the comfort of a porch.
But there were no huts or cottages near,
no village or hermit's abode, just vast
wilderness where roamed hungry, stealthy cats
and tigers that sought the sorry prey.
There was but little else to do but walk
against the squeaking flesh and melting bone,
so they plodded on until they arrived
at a road-side shelter errected by
a thoughtful merchant for the pilgrim's rest
by day a cooling spot, by night a nest.

There, thanking God, three tired travellers
found a dark, warm corner wherein to rest.
'Twas one small room, a ten by eight perhaps,
and another couple lay huddled where
the wind was less likely to wander free.
Without disturbing those who slumbered there
these lay upon the cold but safer floor,
nor wanted more for weary flesh was quick
to welcome healthy sleep, a blessing great;
but when early birds chirrupped in their nests,
when like a sleepless lover's eyes the sun
rose red through trees over the vast plain
that breathed a thick layer of vapour white,
the travellers were already up and out.
Harishchandra, having bathed himself
at the water-spout of well-carvèd rock,
said his morning prayers with folded palms,
sighted Adhitya through netted fingers
and wished joy and peace to all the world.
He then addressed his fellow sojourners
at the shelter and inquired of them
their source, their destination and their name.

"We come from distant northern hills that rise
like devoted aspirants that look up
to the highest snowy peak that supports
the whole blue dome like a central pillar
of exquisitely variegated earth.
Long have we travelled, covered distance great
and are thankful that we have almost reached
Ayodhya's gate, where Harishchandra rules.
Truthful king of generous soul, kind heart,
whose immense fame has travelled all the way
e'en to us, draws us now to him. We go
to seek his charity and find a home
in his industrious country where we
intend to make a living better than
at home where we were living less than man."

Transformation (Poem)

Transformation

The curse of night over
like a rock that breathes again
and feels the surge of sensation old as life
stretching her cramped limbs and cowered curves
to fill the void that is not the consciousness
with rich splendour of softest form
dawn springs to life over the animated peaks
now crowned with glory all their own
in bluish distance deep and rich
replete with passion and with bubbling life
forcing a recognition of her charms
as she parades through cup-like valleys
that receive her like red, sparkling wine.

June 9, 2000

Merging of East and West : Role of writers

Padma P Devkota

Merging of East and West : Role of writers

      To Carthage then I came
      Burning burning burning burning
      O Lord Thou pluckest me out
      O Lord Thou Pluckest burning
         - T S Eliot, "The Waste Land"
   Binary oppositions have persisted in various forms in human thought. East and West is one example of such a division which has proved to be more politically than culturally useful in the past. This division is too broad and too general to give an accurate picture of the various national cultures that are involved within each category. On the one hand, the East means not only Nepal but also India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, China, Japan and many other nations which are culturally diverse in themselves. The West, on the other hand, represents commercially affluent, socially homogenized, technologically advanced, and politically powerful. As a result, each nation of the East is pitted one at a time against the West which continuously provides the criteria by which eastern ideological and material advancement is measured. This partly explains the cultural impact of the West on the East.
   Nevertheless, this broad categorization has also proved useful to describe two major attitudes -- the materialistic and the spiritual -- towards the world as a perceived reality, which in turn reflects the nature of the perceiver. That the West is materialistic apparently means that it is commercial, competitive, clear, questing and concise. That the East is spiritual apparently means that it is religious, muddled, abstract, and inflated with myth and magic. Yet, such notions can only be quite erroneous as they are partly the result of body of Oriental literature which has its corresponding reflection in the Dick Whittingtonian reveries of the eastern aspirant to fabulous wealth, freedom and fame in the West. Whatever else the East and the West might mean, all meaning are true and false at the same time since impermanence is the only truth we all share with conviction.
   A vision of impermanence lies at the core of all Hindu philosophy and lifestyles. Reality eludes perception because it is a flux. Eyes see a stream of things they cannot properly define. Ears perceive a sequence that they attempt to interpret. Thought tries to capture the essence of this flux in a medium whose fundamental categories are themselves constantly changing. Categorical values fade away against a cosmic illusion, a lila, where consciousness can only discover itself as a part of the Brahman or the ultimate reality. Categories such as the East and the West have no place in the overall traditional Hindu consciousness.
   Yet, we too have felt the impact of such provisional categories as part of the modernizing process in the twentieth century Nepal. Starting in 1951 when the country opened up to foreign influences and tourism, lifestyles and patterns of thought have changed drastically. Cultural osmosis has taken place with a natural effectiveness, not always in the desired direction, under the influence of politico-economic factors. Tourism has become at once a major source of national income and a major influence upon national cultural conduct. The resulting change has largely accommodated Western values within the Hindu lifestyle. Yet it has also rejected the Hindu lifestyle as demoded and uncritically accepted Western influences as the arrowhead of modernisation which is conspicuously outrageous to the eastern "civiligentia"-- a mass of intellectuals who prefer not to be cut off from the roots of cultural inheritance.
   Eastern voices have always reacted strongly to cultural imperialism by claiming that aggression against culture can be as grave as a war crime. The world of the mid-century was filled with fear and distrust as a result of the war. This called for a mutual understanding among nations as well as peace and coexistence. Some way had to be discovered to save the rich cultural heritage of the people of Asia. One solution was to dispel distrust and suspicion through cultural exchanges. War had to be denounced by all peace-lovers. Imperialistic attitudes too had to be condemned. Rabindranath Tagore not only condemned Japanese imperialism on China as "a gregarious demand for exclusive enjoyment of all the good things on earth" but also wrote later on in life about war in these words:
      The poisoned war-snakes are spitting fire
      Prayers for peace shall be of no avail,
      That is why, on the eve of my life
      I call upon all to stand up,
      Prepare,
      And fight back the demon of war.
   Peace and human rights have ever since become major concerns not only for politicians but for all conscious writers of the East and West.
   Related to human rights are other concerns about race, religion, colour, sex, and so on. The feminist movement has strongly criticized the binary thought process and demanded a hearing in the name of human equality. Marxism, Freudianism, existentialism and many other attitudes to the world have contributed to the formation of a post-modernistic mind in the West. Although Nepalese writers uphold and cherish Freud, Marx, Sartre and others, post-modernism still feels like an empty space in Nepal.
   This is probably not an illogical phenomenon. Modernism in the West is a reaction to the nineteenth century culture and values. Culturally different, Nepal cannot be modern in the same sense that the West is modern. Modernism in Nepal has meant an influx of western ideologies and commercial products rather than a qualified search for national identity. To the Nepali, modernity has meant an unconservative stance as a progressive or a neoteric in terms of the amount of western influences that can be individually imbibed. This is of course a negative definition of Nepalese modernism. A more positive definition must consider a corresponding evolution and modification of recent values as opposed to, say, those that dominated the pre-Devkotian age.
   A very important contribution of the greatest modern Nepali poet, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, was to prove to the post-modern West -- or at least to that section of it which was willing to listen to him -- that what is marginal is modern as well. Writing from the periphery of the periphery of the world, Devkota speaks with a powerfully modern voice-- modern in the Western and the Nepalese sense of the world. To bring the Nepalese classical tradition to its height, to blow the bugles of modernity in national literature, and to be acclaimed as modern writer by western critics at the same time is a task of no small calibre. His vision is holistic, unbiased, yet nationalistic.
   In the body of his literary works, Devkota also sought a meeting point between the East and West. In the myths of these two factions of the world, he found a common dream. Yet, dreams are but vapours of a painful reality -- vapours that arise when conscious efforts to alleviate the pains subside. Similar dreams arise from similar problems. Similar problems bring people together. Seeking a solution to the problems of the modern waste land, T S Eliot, for instance, discovered that wise men of both the East and West, St Augustine and Lord Buddha, have prescribed similar remedies to the general ailment. The conscious writers’ job is not only to identify problems but to propose solutions too. This probably also explains Devkota's and the Romantics' penchant toward a painful Promethian consciousness. It is only through such awareness of a painful reality that dreams precede actions. As writers of the East and the West have constantly reminded us, together we can hope to conquer the evils of the world. Apart, we will only begin to dislike each other.
   Looking forward to the twenty-first century, therefore, we can assert that it is very important for writers of the world to be conscious of the yet painful reality of human inefficiency in creating peace and prosperity for all. Prophet, educator, clown or saviour, the writer must accept a social function first and then only take aesthetic naps in his or her ivory tower at intervals. He or she must learn to communicate, to create undeceiving words. His or her moral courage to speak up against all political attempts to suppress the writer's voice anywhere in the world must remain exemplary of a quest for newer horizons. Frontiers and restrictions must yield. Even age-long tradition and soul-deep culture must yield if such yieldings will create a better world to live in. The merger between the East and the West must first occur in the writer’s vision of a united world, which will then gradually materialize in times to come.

Can the English Teacher Speak?

Padma Devkota

Can the English Teacher Speak?

    The very walls of the Central Department of English (CDE) ought to be tired of flame-wingèd charms called  "postcolonialism" and "postmodernism" bouncing off of them all the time. Here, no one really cares to discuss "postincendiarism," which is safely locked up in the past as if it were not at all a threatening future. But black residues of reproachful flames still stain their forgotten nooks like a closed book of history that all fear to open and to read.
    Fear is, indeed, the dominating factor. Fear of exposure of academic and administrative incompetence. Fear of publicity of a hollow hunger for cheap applause. Fear of being recognized as a neo-colonialist with powerful drives for political domination over friend and foe. Fear of being caught red-handed as possessing a potent urge to economically exploit the institution for whatever it may be worth. Fear of being discovered as a culturally erased zombie ritualistically wed to the dominion of the English classroom. And this fear is what sustains us all.
    As intellectuals, a distinct and powerful voice should have sustained us, not fear. But, have we heard English teachers speak of their condition? Have they opposed the encroachment of the non-academic inside their departments? Have they cried out unanimously against sloth, deceit, malpractice, unprofessionalism or even sheer incompetence? No. Even those that contribute columns to English dailies complacently refrain from speaking sincerely about the problems of their profession. Instead, through the simple act of toleration of just about everything they have normalised such practices with a fake postmodernist's attitude of "I will not judge." They know that to judge is also to offend.
    An intellectual cannot prioritize personal survival in a bread-earning situation over articulated judgment related to community welfare. English teachers who seek the privilege of shining in a postcolonial aura must learn to lose the self to find a powerful cultural and intellectual identity. Such identity must create itself through voice, which, whenever lacking, sounds louder than an empty drum. Squeaked columns in English dailies are often better than nothing.
    Yet, even as the cultural construct of the Nepalese intellectual as a university teacher is "underscorched" by black stains of historical flames in the department, its "academic" staff continues replacing the playback machine in the classroom. With neither originality of perception nor a penchant for personalized expression, they hope to withstand the gale of public criticism with richly arrogant but poorly composed letters to the editor of an English daily or with fallacies and ad hominems tipped with eunuch rage.
Where have years of education gone? Or is the intellectual a false cultural construct, one that, by virtue of its heterogeneity, actually dissolves into a sort of subalternly silent collective? Like a modern Midas myth, whomever Father TU grants the license to teach that person becomes a life-long intellectual. And, Father TU is powerless to unbless itself with its deep yearned, long longed golden touch.
Waiting for Hermes would be absurd. Father TU must find the antidote to academic decadence within itself. This antidote must derive out of memory of history, not intentional disjunction from it. To seek the safety of deliberate forgetfulness of history is to ward off immediate shame at the risk of greater future failures. But the system of this institution has stiffened with years of malpractice. It is sick. Tradition spreads itself across the broken limbs of the institution like a steel plate that will not allow flexibility of movement. And, its domesticated watchdogs bark out orders that it cannot disobey in the night of national politics. The loudest and the most savage voice still dictates its will to the whole system of administration. In this situation, the only weapon of intellectuals is their voice. If they cannot find it, all will be lost.
But, can the English teacher speak?
He cannot if he does not dare to open this book of history and read the "underscorched" truth singed on the walls of the department. This is too painful an act because it requires a confession of incompetence and, perhaps, even malpractice to some extent. It is easier to blame the arson on mob psychology, which spares everyone of the crime, or to loosely accuse faceless hooligans who will never be punished because they will never be caught. The English teacher cannot speak because he cannot reconcile with the reality of his unprofessional role in starting the fire. It is easier for him to swim the current rather than to buffet it.
He also knows very well that any statement that contradicts the media announcements and exhibitions of imaginary success of CDE will most probably be counteracted with silent but powerful actions—administrative or otherwise. Therefore, he will not speak because university authorities who themselves cannot speak respect a lack of sincere and honest speech as in the fawning expressions of their yes-men. Promotions will be deterred or opportunities will be snatched away. It is a general practice in our great nation to permit a public freedom of speech but to punish in secret the tongue that does not support the authority in power.
    Not only external deterrent forces freeze his speech, but very personal and political reasons also keep him dumb. He has never learnt to say the things he alone has felt, either in English or in his mother tongue. Self-expression never entered the university's curriculum for very political reasons during both Ranarchy and Panchayat Regime. And, today, alliance with political parties only steals his freedom of intelligent expression; non-alliance only stamps him as a sub-human category disposable by the machinery of the state. So, he clings on to the only voice that remains, his own in the classroom, which he looks upon as that of a university intellectual's, far above that of the madding crowd below. His individuality shines brightest there.
    But is the English teacher aware that his brightness has already paled before that of historical flames? His credibility at risk, his performance under criticism, his honesty under scrutiny, his knowledge under interrogation, his very existence under threat, what has the English teacher done to expel public doubts and private regrets? How has he improved himself since then? Let him at least speak for himself and tell the world that the responsibility of enlightening it either rests or does not rest upon him. If it does, what has he done to enlighten himself? Uncritical silence can never assure an intellectual's survival.

Friday, December 30, 2005

Incurable Dilemma

Padma Devkota

Incurable Dilemma

    I was reawakened to the necessity of at least seeming to solve the problem of faith in God when my younger son told me one fine morning that he regarded me as an atheist. There can be nothing bad in being an atheist, or even a theist or a deist for that matter. However, thousands of years of racial prejudice against the unbeliever had not died in me so that the label of atheist itself felt bitter in a peculiar way. I culturally transformed the meaning of atheist from its Webster's denotation into whatever my sciolism of Hindu scriptures would permit me to buy space in the territory of believers. An atheist is a non-believer in the scriptures, in heaven and hell, in religious cult and current practices. One may be a believer in God and yet be an atheist, I convinced myself. The code and cult of religions have after all been distorted by personal needs of their keepers. I need not accept the scriptures or any of their interpretations to be binding for the perfection of my individuality. If rebellion against what does not suit my mental constitution is atheism, so be it, I told myself. What do words matter when people do not have the capacity of linking words to reality. And the reality is, I confess, I am not an atheist in the sense of being a non-believer in God.
    All that I was really doing was seeking affinity with the 18th century deists. Nevertheless, such a line of reasoning led to the necessity of explaining how one could believe in God but not in Gita. For many people like me, the answer is quite obvious: Gita is an excellent fabrication of the human imagination, God is a supreme reality. The Mahabharat is an excellent epic, really the best that the world has produced up to now, and, as such, is just another epic like Paradise Lost or Iliad in the sense that all of these are long burning golden flames of human imagination. Therefore, Christ is no more a god than Krishna is as both are extraordinary samples of the human race. By claiming this truth, I have also just disclaimed the necessity of living the codes, and cults, of any religion as if life were meant just for that. Life is much larger than any scriptural mandate. Yasudha's rope is always too short for Krishna, a symbol of life at its fullest. American transcendentalists, too, understood this truth. By rejecting Christian religious practice, they stated their faith in life as it is lived in the most enjoyable manner in the natural world. They were wiser than many religious priests who never realized that they could live their life to the fullest by living it the way they wanted to, not the way that some scriptures prescribed it to them.
Yet, many atheists and defaulters of established societies are as wise as the transcendentalists when it comes to living their own life. Certain practicing theists have a big problem in this respect. Easy preys to religious prescriptions and proscriptions, they tend to miss the dawn each morning by simply laying a greater priority on ablutions and matins. One would think that the purpose of their life was to please divinity, to glorify the Glorious. But no! The only purpose of life is to live it to the fullest. A flower that blooms in the caterpillar's dining space must admit its affinity to death. The tip of the bud is black and jagged even before the petals show off their colours. Life that is charted by scriptures is born in the caterpillar's dining space. At its best, it is painted for public show only, like a piece of handicraft whose sole raison d'être is to appease the general taste of the beholder. What more is there in this than confirmation of inability to realize oneself to the fullest? Life is as it were skimmed and reduced to the white purity of conformation to established codes of religious conduct. For the boundless mind with a greater cosmic expansion than that of the religious theist's, each different possibility of human thought, action, and speech is an icon of life—life that will expand itself in all directions given its own sweet will, like the will of water that discovers the contours of mountains and plains. Each rebellion against the established, the expected, the predicted is a contribution to creation itself.
And, indeed, the Hindu mind has understood the present act of creation. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light" is unknown past. The Bible itself should be rewritten thus: "And God says, Let the sap climb to the bud, let the calyx stir with warmth, let the sleeping petals feel that warmth, which will then awaken them to the glory and the radiance of the morning: and a new flower blossoms forth." For creation is an ongoing process, not a product, like a cake of soap from the factory for human use. And human intelligence has the function of helping maintain this process of creation. Wherever it falters and destroys, it counteracts the purpose of life and creation.
Life is continuation, death is culmination. Life is a river, death is a sea. Life needs to go on, and on, and on. If it does not, that is dissolution. The relay torch of life needs to be handed down to posterity beyond our conception of time if creation is to continue. However, for life to go on, we need to be awake and conscious of the fact that we are awake. Anything less than a full consciousness cannot supply us with the joie de vivre. The sleeper does not know this fact. Converted to an incurable faith in the reality of the dream, the sleeper will hardly understand the difference between life and death. And this is where all spiritual problems of humankind find their source. Faith in experienced reality is really rooted in ignorance. Obstinate faith in experienced reality becomes the religion of worldly people. However, its own scale of impermanence mocks our conviction of truth. Conviction, therefore, seeks the extremes. We are forced to commit the either-or fallacy by our desire to obtain heaven or to assert the self. Because we are lovers of life and refuse to admit its cessation, the self gains victory over heaven. But again, because we are lovers of life and imaginatively recreate its prolongation under different conditions, heaven lures us into its domain at the cost of a free unfurling of the self. Whichever is the truth, the only permanence we shall encounter in our whole life is the observing eye that screens and selects every detail of the vast universe with individual insight and sensibility. Yet, they tell me that this eye is itself impermanent.
With what judgment?
They see that the physically living are fewer than the physically dead. They see that earth continues revolving around the sun and reproducing seasons and seasonal varieties of warmth and cold, of forms and colours, of moods and atmosphere. They believe what they see: that the hugest bulk of clay present before their eye is more permanent than the human form. They therefore conclude that man is less true than earth! And they worship earth, and pray to her with devotional fervour. They have found their religion. For truth is eternal. The more permanent or long-lasting something is, the more worthy of worship it has to be because it is therefore closer to eternity.
They see neither that eternity lies in the present moment, nor that it lies within us rather than in what is external to our experiencing self. He who rides the present is saved. Human concerns for the immediate or distant future taxes him through routine and drudgery to a molested existence beyond repair by any civilized forces. Life itself can exist only in the present. The past is a ghost, the future is a vision. It is not by temporal duration of physical existence that eternity can be measured. It can be measured by the clarity of vision that pierces the fog of ignorance. This is what the wiser saints have told us. This is what I tend to believe in.
However, this is not what I have lived or would like to live. I live my ignorance to the call of Maya. To me, the earning of meagre bread is urgent. To me, commitment to the responsibilities I have accepted is morally binding. To me, the world is still a solid foundation on which my house is built. Flesh is all too real not to be experienced. And experienced reality is too powerful to dodge around. Maya is more like the earth's gravitational force than like the equator. Not experienced by the senses but real enough, it exists as a feeling of a particular moment, like the caress of the wind on the naked skin. Yet, ignorance is inbuilt in our system of convictions and acts as a filter of the perceived world. It creates and presents a performance, a pageant, a palpable reality that is not the ultimate reality.
The powerful immediacy of the material world is like that of a magician in action. Tricks and magic enchant us by befogging our intellect. We are passive onlookers of the show where we should have been active inquisitors of truth. And truth would have pleased us more than this magic show. For the truth is that we are ourselves the magician that has the knack of creating the fog wherein our unenlightened soul is lost. The soul is a spark of the Creator: that never understood reality that endows us with a consciousness with which we apprehend life. We need the teacher's nudge, or somebody else's for that matter, before we are capable of the fullest spiritual realization: I am Brahma, meaning, I am the creator of my illusions because Maya is my inherent property.
Once we have understood all this, arguments vaporize like morning dew. There is no more right and wrong, sin and virtue, good and evil. There is only illusion that enchants and removal of illusion that exposes the ultimate truth of all existence.
I seem to understand all this! Yet it also seems to me that I can be Brahma only to the extent that the son can be the father or the clone the original. That is why, although the reality of ignorance proves the existence of Brahma (that never understood reality), I fail to accept the equation between the father and the son to the Vedic extent. It simply does not hold. The spark and the fire are not the same in the process of burning. Only in a philosophically theorized situation can the essence of the two be reduced to the same substance. Only there the equation holds.
But—and this is a big BUT—what if the Vedic equation were another illusion I just created? What if that which I thought of as ingrained ignorance was in reality unrecognized knowledge? What if the lump of clay has actually evolved as the flower? Shall we not give credit to possibilities within contexts that yet need hairsplitting research? What if mind were a spark of matter, matter that flies through immeasurable space? Shall we not give the credit of curiosity to clay and applaud the realization of the faintest, remotest, least probable chance combination of the DNA and the RNA in some interstellar wilderness?
I was not trying to provide answers. I was trying not to reject possibilities for, by doing so, the theist and the atheist have both missed sight of one half of the universe. I have no desire to lose either half.

July 17, 2003

Admissions Open

Padma Devkota

Admissions Open!

    Human gullibility yields to subliminal invasions at all fronts except one. Study the advertisement culture on TV, on radio, on billboards and in print and you will notice how the clever businesspersons of the world manipulate your interest in certain commercial items over others. You will buy Colgate gel merely because you want to be the idiotic person admired by the beautiful girl who feels your passing whiff of breath and turns around on swirling skirts like a top to admire you (commercially of course!) with all her body and soul. You will buy wai-wai just because a girl in shorts (who probably has a knee problem) does her physiotherapy as she puts a long, ribbon-like strip of pasta into her mouth and winks and smiles at you from a dead screen. And, in real life, you will even place friendship below seduction if a girl offers an inch and nothing more of personal space for you because she likes to tease you out of your wits. However, no Eve that first fed you from the Tree of Knowledge can today lure you into buying your education from an institute that does not have a direct influence on the marks you receive because what you really want is marks, not education.
    This is what the head of the examination section of MA English has understood so well and is playing you for. The Machiavellian scheming of one who, endowed with power, nevertheless falls short of democratic, academic and moral values that may justify national welfare, has historically influenced your decision. Your gullibility has been tested and approved for the educational farce practised by the State. You qualify for admission into the degree programme offered at the Central Department of English, not because you can write a single sentence correctly in English, but because you were present at the ritual farce they call the entrance examination, which is invigilated also by numerous student party leaders who feel the need to assert their superiority (or, equality at best) over the university's practically defunct administrative competence. You need not even attend classes, which is a great motivation to join the department's programme especially if you work somewhere else or need to be stationed outside the valley throughout the major part of the academic year. You may even appear for the entrance examination by proxy, with the help of the student union, and the nation owes you entrance into the English MA programme.
    And admission is cheap! Which university in the whole wide world can vie with the basement bargain price for higher education offered by TU? Limp in one leg only on campus and they will even offer you a scholarship for the disabled. Present a minority certificate, a proof of being below the poverty line, or a testimony to political martyrdom. These find more instant economic rewards than your innate love for learning. Your interest in honest and sincere efforts at excelling yourself must ever go unnoticed because you will never rise above the average without the cunning and the craft of dishonest servitude to the pragmatist's ideals or to anthropoid idols that you worship because they fly over your head to the tune of droning neologisms. To maneuver is to succeed economically, academically.
    What more do you want? You have the additional opportunity of producing a cut-n-paste or a colluded thesis in no time and of scoring around ninety percent without any understanding of what research really means. All you need to do is to pose the attitude of an irrational hooligan if you cannot play the role of a devotee. And, you are simply lucky if you join the Central Department of English, TU, Kirtipur, because the academic chief is so intelligent that he requests class teachers of each subject there to prepare questions and to give these to him so that the same questions may appear in the next exam or be stored in the question-bank at Balkhu. How wonderful! Respective subject teachers set questions especially for students they teach at CDE, Kirtipur, while those who study the same course elsewhere in the nation depend upon mere luck and sheer individual effort to get through the exam. Why join any other TU Campus when you can easily join CDE as a registered "private" candidate with all these advantages?
    And the glory and the heights! It is only Kirtipur that really feels like Tribhuvan University, does it not? Legendary academic heroes such as Professor Dr. Abhi Subedi, Professor Chandra Prakash Sharma, Dr. Avadesh Thakur and so many others that I cannot list them all here define the eminent heights of academia. It will be a real loss to you if you miss the opportunity of learning from these eminent personalities. Why do you even think of joining a private campus? A private campus sucks your economic veins dry. It requires you to task your will to put in a lot of effort to obtain less marks than students at CDE do with unconcerned ease. It overemphasizes regular class attendance without even coding it as an unbreakable rule. It requires you to submit home tasks that, when returned to you, bleed with red ink and make you feel like crying. It is never satisfied with what you are academically at present and keeps on giving you the feeling that you are less than what you think you actually are. And, whoever has heard of these young English teachers of private campuses who have neither long creamy beards nor deep, dark wrinkles on their foreheads? What antithesis they present to the sublime heights of Kirtipur!
    I insist that you join the Central Department of English, TU, Kirtipur, if you want to study English literature. Unlike private campuses that advertise a single "Admission Open," the principal's office has advised CDE to take as many entrance tests as may be required for as many admissions as possible throughout the whole academic year. There is absolutely no chance of your not being admitted even if you apply the day before the examination. Think about it. You have the time to do so. Should you face the slightest difficulty in getting admitted into the English programme there, talk to the student union or ask a political leader of our nation to dial the phone. Your academic career is in your own hands.
    Don't you understand? Private campuses have no direct influence upon the marks you receive in the final examination. Therefore, the Central Department of English is waiting for your application at the earliest. Come any time before the final examination and become a registered student of Tribhuvan University.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Why English Literature?

Padma Devkota

Why English Literature?

    Why do you want to study English literature? Wake up from your vague and romantic dreams of roses and poetry. Wake up from your ideals of a perfect world abounding in love and beauty. The world you live in is in reality ugly and torn with violence, which you probably have come to accept as a result of habitual acquaintance with it as an everyday phenomenon. Therein lies the danger to humanity.
    When the frequency of brutal acts around us deadens our sensibility and makes us perceive the ugly as normal, we begin to thrive as sub-humans. There is no weapon, no tool, no pill, nor syrup that can regenerate our benumbed sensibility. It wilts under the blows of incessant brutality that surrounds us, it withers in the heat of violence that erupts everywhere, and it dies for lack of care like an unwatered plant.
    What a desert is to vegetation, savagery is to sensibility. Each insensitive word and action kills another heart. Each show of brutal strength wrings a tear from another eye. We long for a civilization that respects individuality. We want to live in a world where we deserve to be respected because we respect other people. We want to live in a world where we are afraid to hurt the sentiments of other human beings.
    Our longing can only be realized through action, not through certificates we carry in our bags. Our habits of mind and body have to be fashioned to respond in desirable ways dictated by the world we long to create for ourselves and for futurity. This is what education is all about. Our education fails exactly at that point where the transference of goals into action remains incomplete.
    What goal can be nobler than that of promoting a human civilization? Can anyone in a state of sanity justify violence against humanity for whatever cause it may be? Of course not! Yet, the antidote to violence, which is all around us, goes unrecognized as such like some nameless medicinal herb in our front yard. It is there only for discerning eyes.
    A study of literature opens that discerning inward eye, which recognizes the beauty of life that blooms on the meadow of human sensibility. For, a study of literature is a sharing of sensibilities across cultures. And good literature is the best expression of the best minds. What they all tell us, in essence, is to maintain human dignity by not falling into a state of savagery, to remain pro-life in our attitudes, and to uphold the religion of love.
    Peoples across cultures have responded to these human needs in pretty similar ways. Like William Wordsworth, they have lamented, "What Man has made of Man." Man has plundered, slaughtered, tortured, maimed, jived, crippled, bereaved, hurt, wounded, exploited, mocked, enslaved, and snatched the very dignity of living from other human beings. This has been the experience of millions of people living in the world today.
    And, this is what a study of good literature hopes to counteract, not through mere delight in the written word, but through a sharpening of the sensibilities of students who then will uphold civilization against savagery, preservation against destruction of life, and a spontaneous flowing out of the human heart towards other people against a selfish culture of pragmatic self-promotion. Any literature that inspires people to such noble goals rises like a peak to transcendent and transcending altitudes that are forever flushed by the warmth of love and embraced by an abundance of devotion.
    Where do such literatures exist? They are everywhere. The Vedas and the Bibles have lasted for thousands of years because they were able to capture the essence of being human even in that distant past. More modern texts have dealt with more modern problems of being or not being human. From the tribulations of existence to the difficulties of understanding our selves and the world we live in, from the awareness of the painful reality to the aspirations for romantic ideals of the human world, good literature has ever guided our hearts towards light and life.
Our individual capacities determine how much each of us is able to draw out of great works of literature. Mere quantity of ingestion, however, may not determine the correction or enhancement of our individual sensibility. Our cultivated attitudes and aspirations, our personal visions and conceptions, and even the company we keep will influence our taste for culture and sensibility.
Spatiotemporal, political or religious boundaries cannot dictate the company we keep. We befriend Africa, America, China, England, France, India, Japan, and all other nations of the world through the masterpieces of their cultural expressions. Good literature is always worth our time. The university curriculum, of course, has to limit itself to certain objectives to be achieved within a given period of time.
And, English is the medium. There is nothing wrong in this. English is a very powerful world language, which stores almost ninety percent of the world's knowledge. Its scientific and technical vocabulary is unmatched in many other important languages of the world. It has further empowered itself with recent achievements in information technology, space explorations, electronics and the like. It has become so indispensable a medium of human interaction all over the world that mere linguistic competence in English has become a matter of prestige for many people.
But, there is more to it than social prestige alone. Linguistic competence in English brings better job opportunities because it is somehow directly related to performance at work. Like a carpenter who uses a hammer to make many different kinds of furniture, a person with a command over the English language is capable of using it as a good tool in many areas. Because linguistic proficiency improves work efficiency, many employers understand and respect it. So, universities, educational institutes, banks, government offices, NGO's and INGO's, publication houses, media, and many other places willingly hire students of English literature.
While there is a strong job-market for students of English literature, there is much to learn not only in terms of mastering the basic grammar of English but of getting a distinct feel for the nuances within its expressional possibilities. There is much to share in terms of sensibilities respected by the civilized world. There is plenty to learn about our own selves and others. Cultural sharing enhances sensibility, which a course in English literature attempts to provide. Therefore, it can be expected that anyone who respects sensibilities will want to learn what the best minds have so well expressed in the English language. Isn't this enough reason for you to opt for English literature at the Master's level?

(An address delivered at Universal College, Maitidevi, to a gathering of students trying to decide upon a major. Monday, November 28, 2005.)

Glocal Harressment: The Presence of America in Nepal

Padma Devkota

    On the 16th and 17th of August 2001, I felt the presence of America Nepal in what then seemed to me two drastically different ways. On afterthought, the experiences were different in terms of rational expectations, actors and the spatio-temporal frame of action but not in terms of essence: what America means to Nepal. Here, I intend to share these two experiences along with my afterthoughts with the hope that I will stumble upon an insight into a system of relationship between a superpower and a developing nation. At this point, my assumption is that such a system of relationship influences our everyday behavior, which, in turn, determines the growth of a nation along a particular line.
    I will first narrate the two incidents separately.
    Story No. 1: On Thursday the 16th of August, 2001, one of the agenda of the Faculty Board meeting of Tribhuvan University was to discuss the syllabus of the Nepal/America Interdisciplinary Studies (N/AIS) proposed by the Central Department of English (CDE), Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur. N/AIS, a one year diploma in American Studies would help collage graduates to fulfill the academic year requirement of American Universities, to come out of disciplinary bias, to think critically, and also to be aware of recent and contemporary national and global issues among other things. With the support of the American Center, Kathmandu, CDE organized two three-week long seminars, one in 1999 and the other in 2000. A detailed report of these two seminars along with the follow-up activities of the year 1999-2000 was submitted with the proposal. A total of thirty-four participants from nine disciplines benefited from these seminar discussions. Among some very important guest participants were Prof. Paul Lauter (AS specialist, Trinity College), Prof. Shreedhar Lohani (AS specialist, Tribhuvan University), Prof. Moti Nissani (Wayne State University), and many others. A lot of homework had gone into the making of the N/AIS syllabus.
    Representing the CDE at the Faculty Board meeting, I tried to explain what American Studies was all about. However, the Dean politely suggested that this was not the place to discuss the syllabus at length. And then other senior members of the Faculty Board started commenting on the N/AIS proposal. Listening to what they had to say, I was left with the impression that none of them had actually read the proposal that was being discussed. Their objections to N/AIS diploma were centered on questions and comments raised during the discussion:
-    Who knows under whose pressure the programme is being opened?
-    Perhaps many trips to and from the US are involved in the AS programme.
-    Who knows how much (American) money is involved in it?
-    Is the programme like that of ASRC in Hyderabad? If so, we should be careful that it does not overshadow the English department itself.
-    Should TU allow people to open Chinese Studies, Indian Studies, Pakistani Studies, etc. each time somebody proposes to do so?
-    What portion of the economic burden will fall on TU if the programme is opened?
-    Is it of national use? Do we need it?
-    How will students/people benefit from it?
    The meeting authorized the standing committee of the Faculty Board to make the final decision on the N/AIS diploma proposal. Despite the dean's earlier assurance, the syllabus did not get through the Faculty Board.
    Story No. 2: On Friday, the 17th of August 2001, I gave a friend a ride to the America consulate at Panipokhari where he had a package waiting for him. We arrived outside its main entrance, a small doorway in the tall wall of the American Embassy compound. It took him less than ten seconds to get down form my scooter next to the footpath, which the American Embassy had encroached upon by driving metal poles along its edge. Almost before he had gotten off my Bajaj Chetak, a police agent came very efficiently forward waving his hand and blowing his whistle to shoo me off the road at once. I asked him if there was a parking area. He pointed to the footpath to the north of the Embassy's main gate.
    Surprised, I asked him if it would be ok to do so and, with his consent, I parked my two-wheeler there. I then returned to the shadow of the tall wall near the consulate doorway to wait for my friend.
    As I stood in the shadow of the tall wall, I noticed a small hole in it, probably a foot above the ground, from which water was leaking out and flowing over the footpath into the street. When my friend who still had not received his package joined me, I pointed this out to him. Both of us thought that this was a wrong thing for the Embassy to do. At this point, the same police agent accosted us again to tell us not to stand there. We told him that we did not find anything wrong in standing in the shade while our work was being done inside. When he insisted that we move away form there, we even told him that this was our footpath and that nobody had a right to tell us not to stand here. He, of course, did not agree. He said we should talk to his boss about that. He was only obeying orders. We asked him to call his boss or to take us to whoever it was, but he wouldn't do so either. Instead, he insisted that we sit in the open lounge just inside the narrow doorway.
    Grudgingly, we tried to comply. We did not want a brawl. Just inside the consulate doorway, there were a few narrow steps leading up to another secure, dark paned mental door. Red chairs were placed on either side of the steps along the length of the wall below the open sky. The chairs in the shade were occupied: those on the sunny side were not. People were also standing in the shadow of the southern wall, as no one wanted the hot sun full against his/her face.
    I was angry at this arrangement and asked the Nepali girl employee if they had a complaint box. There was one at the far corner of the front office on the other side of an electronic gate. I asked the girl whether I should pass through the electronic gate or go around it to get to the complaint box. She told me not to go there and reminded me that the camera eye was observing us. Enraged by this warning, I told her that I did not care who was observing me. She was obviously not used to such answers. I asked her for a piece of paper and looked around for a place to sit down, or to stand, to write my letter of complaint. She pointed to the open lounge just outside the door. Outside, there was no hard surface to write on, no table, not even a proper place to sit and write. Outside, there was no instrument to write with. Outside, with the hot sun against my face, I wrote a letter of complaint, which I was not allowed to drop into the complaint box myself. Inside, the girl took the piece of paper and showed me out of the door immediately. I don't even know what she did with the letter of complaint I wrote.
    Angry at the treatment I had received from the national muscles of an international superpower, I went to stand in the shadow of the tall wall of the embassy again, but closer to the Consulate entrance this time. Once again, a guard in a cream colored shirt came to order me to stay inside the Consulate doorway and not here on the footpath. I was tired of being pushed around. So I told him angrily that I was on Nepali soil and that his only alternative was to catch me and to turn me over to the authority whoever that was. The guard was confused. My friend's arrival with the package saved us both from further frustration. We left with questions in our mind and discontent in our heart.

    Let us now review these two incidents in terms of what America means in Nepal. In story No. 1, the questions asked by the policy makers of the university generally reflect a certain habitual pattern of thinking conditioned by self-promotional practices in the academic arena. This habitual pattern of thinking, in turn, reflects a national character. For the Nepalese going to America is socially prestigious and economically uplifting. An America return receives undue respect in this society irrespective of his/her achievement or failure in the States. Even educationists secretly regard a Ph. D from the states as superior to one from elsewhere without further examination of the actual work that led to the degree. All this has gone into the mentality of these people who asked the first four questions cited in Story No. 1. Unfortunately, these questions had been thrown at a person who had decided not to seek permanent residence in the USA.
    Like the last two questions about the need and utility of N/AIS, which are valid and professional, 'the sixth question, too, concerning the economic burden upon the university is expected and justified. The fifth question about whether the university should allow people to open Chinese, Indian, and other studies whenever they ask for it is blatantly stupid because, given the physical and economic feasibility of such programmes, the university should continue adding as many academic options as possible and useful. However, only the first four questions concern us directly for the moment. Coming from a university veteran the fourth question pointed directly to the fact that the questioner had not studied the proposal under discussion and was pronouncing instantaneous judgment on it. This tallies with my earlier observation that nobody seemed to have studied the proposal or the report that we had submitted to the Dean's office. This is even more evident from the first three questions, which are directed at probable furtive motives of the members of the English department rather than at the need, feasibility, or validity of the programme itself. The second and third comments are in reality inquisitions on the supposed selfish motives of people who have honestly sweated to improve the university's academic programme. Question one paranoically searches for ulterior political motives and maneuvers in a genuine academic proposal right from its inception. American Studies has been under attack especially from Leftists who suspect the word "America" in American studies.
    Story No. 2 offers a rich text for the study of American presence in Nepal. I would like to highlight five significant features of this story. First, this story suggests that the more powerful a nation is the more security it seems to need. No other embassy in Kathmandu has "legally" encroached upon the space outside its precincts as the American Embassy at Panipokhari has done. In the name of security, it has encroached upon the right of Nepali citizens to use the footpath. This is in itself a minor instance of what a superpower usually does in the international field. Reinhold Niebuhr writes in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. "Nations, particularly great nations, are usually too proud to understand that their power might be a peril to other nations." Although the metal poles are not a peril in this case, the American Embassy has certainly failed to see how it invites the resentment of the Nepali people through an inordinate order and how a quest for more security than is necessary can innocuously counteract an important diplomatic mission of goodwill and friendship.
    In fact, these metal poles were much discussed in the Nepali press when they were first being placed on the footpath, presumably with the consent of the Nepali government. Like most controversial issues and problems that arise in Nepal, this issue too fizzled out without any clear resolution. The presence of these metal poles on the footpath today is a text that also testifies to the failure of the Nepalese government to protect its own property and the freedom of its own citizens.
    Second, story No. 2 is not only about physical encroachment but also about the art of ruling. All the uniformed representatives of the American Embassy I met were non-white natives. Had the confrontation been directly with the Whites, the resentment might have become more intense and the likelihood of a brawl greater. The British colonizers of India, especially Macaulay, were wise in choosing to educate a class of interpreters to rule the masses as this would both avoid a direct confrontation and allow for a stronger grip on the natives. It still seems to be a notoriously practical approach.
    In the case of the Nepali guards at the door of the Embassy a bit of training and a good pay was enough to maintain order. Nanda R Shrestha's description of the Nepali guards at Fort Durbar, which he calls "a grand symbol of western modernity" and a mini-American colony ring the right bee here:

    My understanding is that most of these guards are in fact, ex-Gorkha mercenary soldiers who had served either in the British or Indian Army. They are hired to protect this Little America from the natives. With smiles glued on their faces, they stand at the gate, dutifully saluting every white face that enters the compound. Those guards do not even bother to check their IDs because their white faces are enough to serve as an unmistakable proof that they are legitimate and that they pose no threat to both American purity and security. Here color definitely sells and defines one's character as well as humanity. And those sentries…well, they see themselves as privileged to have the opportunity to serve the Americans. Whenever they talk about their employment, their faces gleam, exuding a sense of hollow pride.

    Of course, in the name of security, America has been forced to show more muscles today than before 9 am on September 11, 2001. The Nepalese government too has tightened security outside the American embassy and elsewhere. However, under normal circumstances, a nation full of natives must not be looked upon with suspicion as if they were the same as a clandestine group of faceless terrorists against which these American embassy guards are virtually powerless anyway.
    Moreover, the tightening of security outside the American embassy in Kathmandu after the September 11 terrorist attack on the WTO twin towers has exposed another truth: the Nepali government respects its citizens rights just as much as the embassy employed guards respect our right to use our own footpath. The editorial of The Kathmandu Post of September 14, 2001, deplores this fact:
A meeting was held primarily to tighten security and prevent any untoward incident in this country. It was the first time that government felt such a need… Unfortunately, the government never took seriously the need to maintain law and order in this country…The Maoists, who moved about with arms, have looted banks, killed innocent people and crippled public administration, all because of lack of security. Yet, the government neither tightened security measures nor took such developments seriously.
    The sad reality in Nepal is that outside consulate gates, in restaurants, in government offices, and elsewhere, the Nepali citizen is always made to feel less important than a white person by Nepalis themselves. This can be partly explained by the fact that the White person has more money than the wheat-brown Nepali. In any hegemony of power, no desire can contradict self-interest. This law is functional at the levels of national policymaking, academic policy making and of proper enactment of duty as a guard at a foreign embassy's gate.
    Third, story No. 2 is also about a police agent who places higher priority on a foreign embassy's rules and regulations than on the nation's laws. That he should find it ok for me to park on the footpath but not to stand in the area restricted by the embassy speaks of a mentality that accepts the superiority of the American government over that of the Nepali government in Nepal. This case of prioritized fidelity is outrageous.
    Fourth, story No. 2 is about the mistreatment of Nepali visitors at the American consulate. This mistreatment is also invited by the Nepalese themselves who, for the sake of a visa or a green card, will suffer almost anything at the hands of those who provide it. Hot sun, rain, long queues on the footpath (sometimes starting even at 2:00 a.m.) exorbitant prices for the visa, just about anything. With personalized American dreams in their hearts, all that these visa seekers want is to go to the USA regardless of the possibility of a Dick Whittingtonian misadventure. This is America's success at the cost of an economically weaker nation.
    And fifth, story No. 2 is about neglect. The embassy should certainly do something about water running out of the small hole in its wall.
    To tautologize, the parties involved in a dominant-subordinate relationship can never be at par with each other. This is especially true when the relationship between a superpower and a developing nation is defined as a political, economic or social one. Culturally and intellectually, is the situation any different? Certainly not, especially when veteran policy makers within the university ask questions such as the first four that I've cited in Story No. 1. Our only hope is that within the Nepali academia a group of intellectuals equipped with the right tools and proper attitudes to question the existing state of affairs is beginning to form itself. The critical perception of this group, backed up by an interdisciplinary approach to national problems, will certainly help raise the consciousness of a people that has long been brainwashed by political leaders into accepting their roles as dependents of a generous world. These intellectuals no longer believe in institutionalized beggary on an international scale euphemistically called foreign aid in the name of development. They believe instead in good educational programmes and opportunities that will awaken people to the realities of national human resources and the self-sufficiency of the Nepali people for survival. Confidence must come with understanding. Understanding must come with critical habits of the mind. Critical habits of the mind must come with training as is promised by the N/AIS diploma proposal.

The Kathmandu Post July 25-26, 2002