It is a simple narration of predicaments of a visitor in an unfamiliar land. On second reading, however, metaphors raise fascinating questions. We are all essentially visitors on this planet. Relationships are markers that give an illusion of identities. The clan can be a mountain range, a river valley, a plateau, an island, a city, or a cave clinging to the cliff. Father is Sagarmatha, the mother is Koshi, and cousins are various deities, or devils. The challenge of acquiring and establishing a distinct identity in this network is what turns some people into seekers. Success can ensure recognition, but the search of identity is a continuous process. Artistes are perhaps most identity-conscious persons. Some even go the extent of adopting pennames to differentiate themselves from their familial legacy.
Born in the illustrious Koirala family of Biratnagar, educated variously at Varanasi, Shanti Niketan and different other places abroad and married to a pillar of socio-political society in Kathmandu, it must have been extremely difficult for Bhuwan Dhungana to keep her ordinariness intact. She had read poetry, learnt classical dances, and studied law. She probably realized early that metaphors simplify complexities of life. In all her works, innovative use of symbols, similes, and metaphors transform everyday experiences into profound revelations.
In continuation of her eclectic education, Bhuwan has tried her hand at poetry, written stories, and penned reminisces with equal felicity. She possesses the sensibility of a poet, insight of a storyteller, and the wisdom of an academic, and thus deserves the description of being a literary intellectual in public life. It is perhaps natural that a writer of her kind is known more for quality of work rather than quantity of literary production.
In a story that Manjushree Thapa translated, into English, as “Symbol of Religion,” the middle-aged protagonist reflects over her childhood memories of a hand-held bell and the tradition of holding a banana in cupped hands for ceremonies of womanhood. She then concludes in sagely detachment, tinged with longing, “Today she finds that bell symbol as mysterious as she once found the cupped palms and banana. That bell symbol, that instrument which, without the touch of a woman’s vulva, cannot make a sound but just hangs there uselessly. She feels a kind of pride at the woman’s sexual organ, which, upside-down, subdues the machismo of men.” Manjushree is a novelist, and her translation captures the essence of the story in powerful English. The poetic allusions,
however, is that of the author in the original.
The economy of words at the beginning of a poem on definition startles a listener/reader into rapt attention: “In a rectangular / Small straw-mat / Searching for the map of a country / Looking for definition somewhere / Living too is an art / I am also proficient in it / And, I am living / Searching the definition of living.”
May she continue with her search, and keep giving readers glimpses of encounters with various facets of life. The American poet and novelist Stephen Dobyns says that the act of inspiration is “the sudden apprehension or grasping of metaphor.” Bhuwan’s metaphors are inspiring because they come from her moments of inspiration.
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