But as he, the native of Parwatapur in Chitwan Valley looks back, his family has played a vital role in instilling literary vigor from his childhood.[break]
“My mother used to recite lines from [Madhav Prasad Ghimire’s] “Gauri” while she tucked us to bed. She knew the whole book by heart, and that used to touch me very deeply,” says the young novelist.
His father’s hobby of reading novels by Parijat and Diamond Shumsher Rana had also made a strong impact on him since his younger days.
He reminisces about his high schooldays when he used to write endless stories in his notebooks and lend them only to his close friends for reading.
“Though the stories and novels written in those times were very clichéd, one of my best friends was so impressed by my writing that he had announced that someday I would win the Madan Puraskar,” he says.
“Seto Dharti” is Neupane’s second published novel. His first work was “Paniko Gham,” a fiction published in 2006 which was awarded the Padma Shree Sahitya Samman in 2009.
Now that he has been awarded one of the highest literary awards of Nepal, the thirty-five-years-old writer says that while he was writing the novel, he had no thoughts about any award but had hoped that it would have impacts and win the hearts of readers.
The Week’s Asmita Manandhar met Neupane to talk about the novelist’s perspectives on his work and his further journey in literature. Here are some excerpts:
What’s your state of mind while you write? What’s your biggest concern?
When I started writing, my works weren’t very impressive. After I finished school, I read many books by Bishweshowr Prasad Koirala which investigated into the social norms and many issues in between. Then I realized that I needed to study more of the society. However, the traditional saying, “Literature is the mirror of the society” wasn’t my cup of tea. I believed that writing about the ongoing happenings of the society weren’t enough. It was necessary for me to know about the deep labyrinths that are generally obscured when we look at the society.
But it wasn’t the subject that was the main concern for me. It was style. There are many social stories but every writer has his own style of telling and retelling the story. It took me a longer time to discover my style. Therefore, even though I had started writing from a very early age, it took me a while to come up with my published work.
How did you discover your style of writing?
When I know my characters, I mix them up with my experiences and that’s how I discover my style. In terms of colors, if a character has the characteristics of blue, and my experience is yellow, then when these two entities are mixed, a different color arises, and that’s what I look for while I’m writing.
Many readers and even veteran writers appreciated my style, and that was a big boost for me to write further.
How did you come up with the compelling tale about the child widow in “Seto Dharti”?
When I look at the Nepali literary scenes, the stories about old people aren’t that abundant. So, in my mind, I had this scheme of writing about them. And the breakthrough came after I visited Devghat in Chitwan in 2010.
There I met a very old woman who was rendered a widow when she was still a girl. After observing her life in a small ashram at that place and a few conversations with her, I somehow knew that I had to write the stories of Nepali child widows. I was aware of the issues of child widows since I was 10 but it was then that I decided that this story had to be told.
However, when I wrote a rough draft of the story, I felt that if I were to write this story, I would have to be more elaborate. Just passing through the story would be like limiting oneself and also limiting other writers who would like to pick this issue up. Therefore, I decided to do more research and come up with a story that has had never been told in Nepali literature.
How long did it take to complete the novel?
After I had that encounter with the old woman in Devghat, I decided to live in the same vicinity to better know my characters. So, in April 2011, I went back to the place for a month to live among them, study their lives and to know their hardships.
Then I took a three-month break and went to Humla. After I came back from the trip, I finished the novel in a month. The other three months were spent in editing the novel.
On the whole, it took me seven months to finish the novel since I started writing it. I even gave up my teaching profession and committed all my time to write the novel.
What are your future projects?
I’ve already written 18 chapters of a new novel. It’s essentially a teenage novel and I really hope it’ll come out nicely. Also, after being awarded the Madan Puraskar, I have the responsibility to write books as good as “Seto Dharti,” if not better.
What’s your advice for young writers?
I don’t think I’m in a position to advise any writers. Many factors work, and differently, for individual writers. But from my own experiences, I’ve realized that I just can’t shut myself in a room and think of a topic and start writing. I need to go where my characters live, know them inside out, and then write about them.
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