Through Faulty Glasses: a review of BP Koirala's Doshi Chasma

While browsing a friend's shelf, I came across a decrepit little book with a fading brown cover: 'Doshi Chasma' by BP Koirala. I had read BP's 'Sumnima' a long time ago and yet have a vivid recollection of having liked it, although I can hardly recall the storyline now. The inside cover of this little book said, in Nepali of course: "Doshi Chasma (sixteen psychological stories)". Published by Sajha Prakasan in 2050 B.S., this fourth edition was one out of the total 5100 copies printed, and it turned out to be a gem of a book.

I randomly chose 'Haridutt' as the first story and to put it mildly, I was captivated. A man of style among his fellow school friends, Haridutt lived in a rich man's house with his sister, and had a very eccentric dress sense:

"…if he was seen wearing dhoti and alakha today, tomorrow it would be an Englishman's clothes. He needed Kabuli Makhmalis' waistcoat and salawar and Madrasi lungi to decorate himself. The clothes looked like they were made many years ago since the coat's arm would be four ammal short of his arm's length and the pants looked like vegetable shopping bags.”

Haridutt struts about in an Englishman's suit with one hand lodged firmly in the left pocket and the other holding a walking stick. On a walk with the narrator of the story, he says, referring to the helper girl working at the narrator's house (for whom he always brings sweets and milk but never gives it to the girl himself):

"'I love Parbati.'

I was astonished.

'Now you help me', he continued.

I was scared.

'You are a friend. You should do a friend's duty. Friends are ready to give their lives. If something good were to happen to you by me flooding out my blood, I would have been ready to do it.'"

Similarly, after failing an exam and never having let Parbati know of his feelings, he explains:

"I knew I would fail…..Parbati's love didn't let me sleep or do any work. Haven't you read Laila Majnu's story? I was Majnu, how could I concentrate on studying? Be a bookworm, abstain from worldly pleasures and work for a maximum salary of forty rupees. Today's school education is worthless.”

Later, Haridutt becomes a revolutionary, and in the end, a tea businessman. When the narrator meets him at the end of the story, he says, while preparing tea in his cramped little room filled with sacks of tea: "There is no milk and sugar. I have the habit of drinking it bland. If you are to put sugar and milk in tea, what's the taste of tea? But, maybe, you can't drink without milk or sugar. Right now, I even don't have the money.”

Having attended a creative writing workshop just some time back, I realise that all of B.P.'s stories adhere to a very important rule of writing short stories: "make it about an interesting, memorable or even eccentric character.”All the characters in the collection are not only memorable, but they are also subtle depictions of social reality. Whether it is the lone widow traveling with four bums to the Madhes in search of a better future in 'Madhestira', the crazy man jailed after caught stealing money for the medication of his dying wife in 'Baulaha' or Haridutt himself, all are mysterious complex humans and very real, as well as memorable.

The sentences in the stories are so simple, to the point that not a word seems to have gone to waste. That Koirala was influenced by the writings of Anton Chekhov is quite apparent in Koirala's style. The title story 'Doshi Chasma' is very similar in theme to Chekhov's own 'Death of a Government Clerk.' Another of his influences is said to be the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud. B.P. is known as one of the very first writers to introduce psychosexual elements into Nepali literature, making him even more engrossing and realistic as a writer. In the story 'Karnel ko Ghoda', frustrated by the old age of the colonel and owing to her lack of sexual satisfaction, the nineteen year old karnelni starts to develop an infatuation for her husband's white stallion. In 'Sakhi', a married woman tells of the strange feelings she encounters for a young man who has come to rent a room in her home. These are explosive stories brimming with sexuality in almost every expression and word. And to think that these stories were written in a time when the taboo of sex must have been far greater taboo than it is now makes them even more incredible.

But, to say that many of his stories have strong sexual elements doesn't mean that lust overpowers love in all of them. 'Prem' is the story of Ramnath waiting in sweet excitement for the return of his wife from her home. Similarly, 'Hoad' describes the love of a newly married young couple, tickling and running and chasing after one another, throwing pillows in a show of paper-thin anger: "that kind of attack can only be made by a loving wife, with something as light as cotton”.

It might come as surprise to many that Koirala's stories, despite him being the great politician he was, do not reflect that side of him at all. One would assume that his stories might be dominated by themes of Rana oppression and social injustice, but that is not the case. Even when such issues do come through, they are under deep seated layers. Koirala had himself explained this aspect of his writings by saying: "I am one person in politics and a completely different one in literature. I feel the two persons within me are doing two different jobs and that they have never come into contact and also not collided. Politics has never influenced my writing." 'Doshi Chasma' is proof of this and shows that Koirala had a skill at story-telling that is pure to humans, their emotions and their social conditions.

*The quoted dialogues in the article have been translated from Nepali from the original text by the author with the best of his efforts.