Faces
Buddhisagar Blues
We are sitting on the floor of a newly rented office space for the theatre group Paathsala on a lazy afternoon. There is little noise, except for a distant hammering of construction nearby. Rays of sunlight are saying their orange goodbyes. The conversation turns to Karnali Blues, the recently published debut novel by the young writer, Buddhisagar Chapain. We talk about it like we had lived that story growing up. We laugh at the little incidents the characters went through. “…And Mandire, what about Mandire, huh? Haha…”And we all laugh with our own thoughts, sighing on the fate of the memorable Mandire.
***
We meet at a certain restaurant in Jamal and sit in the backspace where I hadn’t guessed a seating area existed. He’s wearing a casual shirt, jeans and a pair of pointy black shoes. He sits back with a calm demeanor, like a man satisfied with the general things in his life.
“I’d like to do a profile and blend in a review of the book with it,” I say.
“Oh, I used to do a similar thing (profiles) when I was in Naya Patrika,” he replies.
(Later when I checked to see what kind of writing he had done in the past, I came across his own profile done by another writer in the same newspaper, describing his struggles and perhaps triumph as a new poet in the literary circles of Kathmandu. He had just won the 2060 BS national poetry festival, when many had been very skeptic about it).
The childhood of Buddhisagar Chapain (or simply Buddhisagar as he puts it, in his articles and the recently published book) is quite similar to that of the young protagonist of his debut novel Karnali Blues. Born in 2038 BS in Kailali (Far Western region of Nepal), his childhood, similar to that of Brishbahadur of the novel, consisted of migrating from the village of Matarey to the bazaar town Katasey, from where the family moved to the hills of Kalikot. The experiences gained from all of this traveling and the people he had come across makes up the many wonderful, and some unforgettable incidents and characters presented in the novel. When I ask him just how much of the novel is autobiographical, he says, “It’s 50-50, some characters are whom I met during my life, some are a blend of many I have come across. The father-son relationship in the novel is true to my own life.” But, perhaps there has been too much of assertion about how this novel is autobiographical and hence must have been “easy to write.”“You can tell about a journey in a way that makes people want to read it and in a way that isn’t really interesting as well. The subject of this novel is universal, every father loves his son…I suppose it depends on how you look at things that makes your writing original. Sometimes people are surprised when they find out I have a brother. “But he isn’t in the novel!” they say. Well, it’s fiction.” (laughs).
I wonder how his journey into the literary world, so to speak, had started and ask what his early readings were. As he answered, I realize that although we are about eight years apart in age and born and raised in about exactly the opposite parts of Nepal, we had the same books that had given us our very first flights of imaginative fancy: the Nagaraj comics.
“I used to read a lot of Nagaraj and other comics that came in from India, when I was kid,” he says “in fact I had so many in my collection I started to lend them out as a library would and even got some pocket money out of it”. Then it seems, his interest moved on to mystery detective novels that came in series, finishing one book in about three to four hours.
“I’d even written two mystery novels when I was little, maybe at 6th or 7th standard. One was called…Something Murder and the other something else. I knew of Ratna Pustak Bhandar as publishers back then so I got their number and called them. I couldn’t get through, what I was trying to say. So I wrote a letter to them, saying I wanted to publish my books. I got a reply, from them, an official reply, saying, they didn’t publish books anymore, but would inform me if and when they did,” he says with a smile. “Do you still have them?” “Oh, no, well you know, “he leans a bit forward in his seat and tells me," a mystery detective novel is bound to have some sex scenes, so my father probably saw that and threw them away.”
His present literary influences make up a short list of writers like Haruki Murakami, Paulo Coelho, Pearl S. Buck, Arundhati Roy and prominently, the Indian author Nirmal Verma. “In his (Verma’s) works…he grasps very little things and thin layers and details them well. That I really like. I’ve always liked detailing and feel that fiction needs it.” It probably explains the almost perfected and sometimes excruciating details he puts in his book. Every movement is captured, like the shots in the realist cinemas of the 60s. The readers have the pleasure of constructing and realizing the layers hidden beneath the incidents that take place throughout the book. “If I have to tell you it’s raining outside, I would describe how a cold breeze seeps in from under the door, and tell you in the way you can see or feel it.” And it probably helps him that he is primarily a poet. “In poetry you can write 40 lines just on the feet of a woman from the hills, how her heel is cracked, how much she might have walked and so on.” He says he wrote the novel because he felt he couldn’t describe Karnali and his childhood in a poem. In retrospect, it does feel like the novel is spilled out in dry and astute prose of a long, modern poem.
Buddhisagar became interested in poetry while in Kalikot, sending a “maximum” number of poems to the different radio stations around, which expanded his ambitions as a writer. He says that studying journalism was an excuse for him to come to Kathmandu, which he did in 2056 BS. With no family or relatives in Kathmandu to call his own, he says he had to go through with a lot of extreme struggles, as most do. “During that time I started writing articles for a newspaper called Spacetime and even earned a bit of money. Then I called home and told my parents not to send me any money as I had started to earn. Then the people at the paper changed and it wasn’t in print anymore. The People’s War had also started and the telephone facilities were disrupted and there was about no communication with my parents. Here then I had no income, no money, so much so that I had to stay without food at times. Sometimes when I had about five, seven rupees I used to buy chiura (beaten rice) with it and a friend of mine had mango pickles so that we had the pickles and the chiura. One day, I went to him quite hungry, with the chiura, but the pickle was gone (laughs). So, I asked him if he had the oil used to soak the pickles in. But that was gone too. He told me he had finished it off himself, the night earlier.”
It feels, however, that he has turned his difficult days to his advantage. He compares the struggles he experienced during the early days in the city to the money one would deposit in a bank. He could withdraw, someday, from his bank the materials to write upon. “I know a good deal about hunger now, things like where the stomach starts to hurt. Sometimes you wake up feeling full in an empty stomach. I could write all that in a poem or something, so for me, it was not exactly depressing to have that”.
“So, no regrets?”
“No, although,” he adds, “there were times when I would remember my home and think how easy it was to have my rice.”
In 2060 BS, Buddhisagar won a poetry contest in the National Poetry festival and paid off his rent with the prize money. “There were a lot of problems back then of course.
I used to ask many people about their experiences of coming to Kathmandu and many, I found, had had to remain hungry at different points of their lives. But then again, unlike many others, I came here with nobody for me, quite alone, stayed with a friend, and then soon after stayed alone. Plus, I was a poet, so. During that time, one thing used to give me strength. I had read The Good Earth. In that book when there is this huge famine in the village, the family comes to the city where they face a lot of problems. Then one day the mother says they should probably sell their daughter to which the father doesn’t agree. He says that the bad days don’t last forever and he can again rebuild the house, their lives, because they still had their land. So I thought, although sometimes it was difficult to bear, I needed that to become a writer.”
He had bouts of success in between as well, helping him perhaps to keep his hopes up for his dream, which in turn might have helped him cope up with the difficult times. He won a gazal (a form of poetry) festival in 2057 BS and so there was “no problem in getting printed.” In 2058 BS, he won another poetry contest and again, in 2060 BS despite skepticism from his friends, his confidence proved right as he won a gold medal in the poetry festival. When some of his friends and acquaintances were surprised by this he had apparently told them, “You wouldn’t run in a race to become second, you run to become first. You have to have a high aim and (referring to writing books) would you want to copy some outside book into Nepali, and get praised by unsuspecting critics or rather write an original story about Nepal? Every time I sit to write a poem, I think it’s the greatest ever written. It obviously isn’t, that’s a problem, but there should be a dream.”
When I ask Buddhisagar about the literary circles of Kathmandu, he says that getting in isn’t that hard here as it would be in the international circles. “Here the circles are small and most write for themselves with little professionalism. Most of us used to be at New Road under the Pipal tree, it has a history to it, and writers like Bhupi Sherchan used to come there. And when I used to go there I met writers there, drinking tea and talking. There I also learnt why one writes. For example, poet Upendra Shrestha used to be there, he was a greatly popular man in his time, writing a lot of poems. He would be there drinking tea and what I felt was, such a popular figure of his times, is now so unknown. So I thought why would one write poems? Some looked for money, some for fame, the celebrity. What I knew was I really enjoyed writing and I found out that a writer must write well, and he has value in his own little circle. But most importantly it’s for yourself, for your own pleasure. And poetry has its own such pleasures, and even if you are very rich, you might not be happy. It’s like therapy, like meditation. So I was quite clear about that.”
What has changed in the literary circles is that there weren’t many places to publish your work and bad works got published, Buddhisagar says, but now the good ones get to showcase their works. “I think there must be competition but not ego, but I suppose that happens in every profession. In Kathmandu, there are a few people who have been scolding me for the past seven years and I hope they remain to be the same. (laughs)”
“Scolding on your writing?”
“Well, people scold for a lot of things” he continues, “but there are circles all over the world. It doesn’t matter, you write for yourself, whether people like it or not.”
He talks about the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, “He apparently felt hated by his friends and people who thought he had changed after his popularity and success. When a writer like Murakami gets that, what would happen to us Buddhisagars? Even Paulo Coelho (Brazilian lyricist and novelist) said that he was more appreciated until he got his massive success”. (Later reading an article on him in a national daily, I felt how this comment might have been relevant to his experience of success where Govinda Bartaman, a Nepali writer while praising his book indiscriminately, describes of his rise as a writer and seemingly hints on how he has come to part with old acquaintances and friends.)
It's about five o’clock now and the crowd beyond our corner has grown in proportions, people laughing and shouting, a young modern crowd speaking a curious mixture of English and Nepali, both fluent and awkward at the same time. I ask him if he has temptations for a translation and wider audience. He seems concerned with quality. “I suppose the greed is world wide. Milan Kundera wanted his material to be read by a wider audience but wasn’t satisfied with the translation of his work until it was done for the seventh time. It’s probably important in the sense of finding out if an environment exists for writers to live off by just writing.”
“Do you think that exists in Nepal?”
“Times are changing. Five years ago, a thousand copies was a high-selling feat. But nowadays 5,000 is probably that benchmark, and that suggests hope (he had told me earlier his book is going for a reprint soon after the initial 5,000 copies have sold out). However, still just living off a book is not possible I think.”
Finally, like any good interviewer I ask him about his future plans and he tells me of his looming trouble. “I wrote what I had seen and what I knew, but the challenge now is to write something new, something I haven’t experienced as closely. I want to write an even bigger journey.” I have a feeling he is talented enough to do that. It’s rare to see someone who has a strong idea about what he wants to do in his life and confident about his choices, that too undeterred with the flimsy prospects of being a writer in Nepal. I imagine his journey from Kalikot to Kathmandu, from the hungry, young poet in New Road to a writer who has just come out with a successful book, both critically and commercially. Meeting him, then feels like the success over skepticism has earned him the confidence he now seems to have. His novel, a microcosm of the Far-Western society of Nepal, presented unfalteringly as seen through the eyes of a lovable little hero (much like the Malgudi tales of R.K.Narayan) has without doubt established him as a storyteller to look out for. Whether his stories and characters will continue to grow in-depth, diversity and be a mirror for that essential “human condition,” we have yet to see.
Photography by Rishi Amatya, V.E.N.T! Magazine.
( Nov 15th 2010, 08:45 AM ) says:
A great interview with a wonderful blend with the review. It reads very poetic and we just know that we are reading about a great writer and poet from another writer and poet. Wonderful read!
( Nov 16th 2010, 06:01 AM ) says:
Really nice loved reading it like a short story.
( Nov 16th 2010, 11:34 AM ) says:
"Every time I sit to write a poem, I think it’s the greatest ever written. It obviously isn’t, that’s a problem, but there should be a dream."
:)
Brilliant. I love that kind of spirit in a writer. Buddhisagar seems like someone just oozing with passion, brave enough to dare to dream.
Great job, Aayush. Such a lovely, lovely read.
( Nov 16th 2010, 02:16 PM ) says:
I found the prose poetic. No wonder, I'd first read the writer as a poet. It's nice to see that he can write such a lengthy piece without losing the track of what he is saying, as most writers tend to do. I loved reading this.
And, yes, I am planning to read that book too. I have a hunch that his work just might be topnotch than other 'contemporary' works hyped by, quite ironically, the same paper he works in.
I applaud VENT doing a profile on him, when all his paper did was to mention that one of their scribe has written a book, an announcement that they hid between stale columns. His works just might be one of the best there is.
PS: Aayish bhai (I'm sure I'm a wee bit old than you) have you read this book called Chapamar ko chorro by a writer who is also a police officer? I think you should read that too. And another one by the lady writer who was once a rebel cadre. Tara Rai, I think her name is. After that, why not engage in one friendly discussion: tell me which work do you like best. And, oh, don't forget to include Wagle's book in the mix too. I'd love to read what you think of that.
( Nov 16th 2010, 06:00 PM ) says:
This is brilliant, aayush.
Loved reading it.
( Nov 19th 2010, 11:14 PM ) says:
i agree with ayushma
( Nov 20th 2010, 04:05 PM ) says:
hmmm... maybe i shouuld reak karnali blueze after alll... great one ayush!
( Nov 23rd 2010, 10:24 AM ) says:
"He sits back with a calm demeanor, like a man satisfied with the general things in his life"- I like how you captured his idiosyncrasies and conveyed his genuine persona. You presented him as eloquent yet reachable and human. Resplendent!
( Nov 26th 2010, 12:08 AM ) says:
You write like a dream.
Great story. great interview. want to read the book now!