This is how his stories would end, with his address. With the little peach garden in italics, that would burst thousand fold in my mind, every time I would think of writer Ramesh Bikal.
I always had this image of him, in those square reading glasses, quietly musing for his stories, while wind left a heap of peach blossoms in his window pane. And secretly in my mind, I would drink their waft.
So, three years ago, when a newspaper assigned me to interview him, I was so elated that I couldn’t quiet sober up the whole day. I called him at his home, and asked for an appointment. He had that mellow androgynous voice that left an aftertaste of certain feminine softness.
He asked me if I knew where he lived. I smiled before I replied.
The dusty road from Jorpati, from where I took turn to his house, betrayed all possibility of encountering any greenery, at any closer length, let alone the peach garden. It was a listless walk of around fifteen minutes when I reached the little brown gate, big enough to let two people pass through it at a time. I was ushered to his bedroom, filled with that cool, acetone like smell of ink and turpentine.
“Come in, come in,” he said welcoming me. “I’m translating Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.”
Nine months later, when I would hear the news of his death during a coffee break in my office, I was grieved with the loss of more than just a writer. He was a dreamer.
Ramesh Bikal was born as Rameshwor Prasad Chalise, in 1928 at Arubari, Kathmandu. During his 81 year old life as an author, he had received several awards, including the prestigious Madan Puraskar for Naya Sadakko Geet. His writings reflected the strong social and political consciousness and he succeeded in aptly sketching the prevalent social evils. Like Abhi Subedi says, Bikal travelled, “through the twilight zones of city and village consciousness, political commitments and freethinking.”
‘I’ve graduated from a serious writer to a playful person. I enjoy writing juvenile literature, which sees the world with infinite awe.’
Bikal was greatly inspired by Karl Marx. As he would later reveal to me, Bikal and his fellow writer Bhupi Sherchan were also actively involved in politics for a while and were arrested. He, however, did not associate with political organization and used his writing only as a means to express himself.
“Politics is like the story of Frankenstein, you see,” I recall him say. “A country invests its talent to produce, what would turn out to be a monstrous nightmare.”
Sherchan, who shared his leftist thoughts and pro-proletariat inclination despite his rich, wealthy and capitalist background in the Thakali region of Marpha and Thak Khola and Tukche, had influenced Bikal greatly. Together, they sought answers for the existential angst that took the sixties by storm.
In this strange world you shouldn´t say that exists, and this doesn´t...Leave it be.
As Bikal writes in one of stories, Bare Tree (now translated by Manjushree Thapa), he came to a conclusion that, the world was only as worrisome as you allow it to be.
“I’ve graduated from a serious writer to a more playful, more optimistic person. I enjoy writing the light juvenile literature, which sees the world with infinite awe.” As he said this, I remember, the sea of crowfeet that unfolded from his eyes and floated all over his face like banyan roots, spread luxuriously to break into that beautiful smile. Bikal never passed his seventh grade. After much insistence from his father, he, however, took private tuition and passed SLC in Second division. His grandmother, a substitute for a mother, whom he never got to see, remained his greatest literary influence.
“Each time I write stories, I strive to get the same integrity my granny had. Of course, I haven´t succeeded, but it is this hope that pushes me over and again like the undaunted Sisyphus."
As we are celebrating his third death anniversary this week I was rereading his famous story Madhu Malati ko katha, which he had confessed, came partly from his own unrequited love for their maid’s daughter as a toddler. The story, which he considered as one of his finest pieces, was a catharsis of deep embedded memories of his grandmother and the maid’s daughter, whose name he wouldn’t reveal.
As he motioned me towards his gallery, I stole a quick glance into the window pane by his bedroom for peach blossoms. There were none. Instead, there stood a tiny turpentine bottle, which engulfed the room in acidic wafts.
Writer, who gave some finest books to Nepali literature like Naya Sadakko Geet (2019 BS), Eutobudo Violin Ashabariko Dhunma (2025 BS), Abiral Bagdacha Indravati and Sagar Urlancha Sagar Chuna (2052 BS), Urmila Bhauju (2035 BS), to name a few, also had a great love for painting. I remember him briefly mentioning Van Gogh, before we saw his realistic portraits, painted in rich, deep hue of primary colors.
When I would hear the news of his death during a coffee break in my office, we were discussing enthusiastically how Liu Xiaobo, was rightly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. A friend of mine, who joined our conversation, told us that Ramesh Bikal had passed away. I felt a sudden numbness and those words froze in my memory forever.
Just as did that magnificent sea of salmon pink, that wouldn’t leave me, despite the fact that his quaint house at Jorpati, betrayed every promise of aarubari.
Bikal is survived by two sons and four daughters and the memory of the little peach garden in italics, that still bursts thousand fold in my mind, every time I think of him.
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