The opening lines of the “Bhyagutasangai Ufrandai Aayeka Khushiharu” (Happiness that jumped in with a frog) best explains “Champaran Blues,” a recently published essay collection by Roshan Sherchan. For the record, this is Sherchan’s fourth book and the second essay collection after “Death of Brains” (2002).
The author has picked up events in his life, some as small as buying a cheap plastic frog for his daughter, and woven it into an essay with a connotation to bigger facts and feelings that actually make an essay. The mastery of the author lies in the skill by which he can connect to the real-life event and into thought-provoking expressions that leaves the readers pondering on the issues he has raised.
An example is “Hajar Mujha, Eutai Akash” (Thousand folds, one sky), which is clearly the best essay in the collection. It is woven in the author’s experiences and feelings while bringing his grandmother to the city from a remote village. It not only recounts his experience but also the stories he had heard to have happened along with lives in remote Nepal. Laced with facts and feelings, and while contrasting village life with urbanity, the essay has unforgettable insights into the difficulties of migration.When the author hires a porter to carry his grandmother to the city – an unknown terrain for the woman who had enjoyed familiarity with and hospitality in her village and neighborhoods – the travelogue reminds one of an old moral story of a grandmother and a doko (wicker basket). Though the author may not have thought of this, it feels, while reading it, like taking a grandmother away from her native place to an unknown city; and it is somewhat equivalent to taking an old mother to death, as described in the old folktale.
But along with that, the essay also tells about the difficulties of immigrant families in fulfilling their responsibilities to their parents. And the writer’s family does the best possible things in their capacity.
Some of essays are more of poetic expressions – the author having also published two poetry anthologies previously – and are based on the author’s own interests in literary writing and music. In fact, the essay that gives the title to the book, “Champaran Blues” is constructed within the songs that the people of Champaran, a rural area in Bihar, India, sang and which relate to their poverty.
There are also essays on his reflections on a few classic Nepali novels, such as “Modi Aain” by BP Koirala, and “Blue Mimosa” by Parijat, as well as on pieces by other writers.
Another essay worth mentioning is “Maobadi Chhayamuni Jindagika Dobharu” (Life’s footsteps under the shadows of the Maoists). It recollects Sherchan’s experiences as an employee confronting the Maoists during the height of the conflict. He recollects how the Maoists made it all difficult for him to work that forced him to resign as were many others, and thinks negatively about the future and leaves the readers wondering about the shadow of the fears that had engulfed them, and the outcome of the prices we all paid.
If Aldous Huxley’s definition is considered, the essays in “Champaran Blues” are “personal and autobiographic” where Sherchan has used “fragments of reflective autobiography to look at the world through the keyhole on anecdotes and descriptions.”
Almost in a nostalgic fashion, Sherchan has written a “collection of readable and thought-provoking essays” – as noted by the popular writer and columnist Khagendra Sangraula.
Although “Champaran Blues” is not an extraordinary collection of essays, it is worth reading for at least two reasons: First, it is an easy reading and flows almost like a story; and secondly, the issues raised by the author are worth pondering on.
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