We were retreat roommates, sitting under the fan long past midnight, trying to drown out the noise of its blades with our voices and sketch the bridge of the choices we had made since the exhibition.
“It’s hard being a writer, you know,” she said, “It takes a lot of time and commitment. Finding the time to write is probably the hardest.”
A Brown University graduate who had lived overseas most of her life, Sushma had recently chosen to move to Nepal for good. “My family? They are more amused by what I’m doing and don’t know what to make of me, I think,” she said. She spoke in soft, low tones and had lots of advice for me, an aspiring writer headed to the East Coast. I hadn’t read her book then. “Tell me what you think,” she said. I nodded.It’s four months since and now I am in the East Coast reading The End of the World. The book seems to mark the beginning of an era to me, an era where English writers in Nepal are being published in the country to an audience that is receptive and critical. An era that begins to reflect on the complex and complicated history of the country and the country’s people, one that goes beyond the recycled headlines of the nation’s daily newspapers. Through fiction, The End of the World does what facts can’t do; it gives you a subjective perspective of the suffering and unending longing that the citizens share.
All of Sushma’s stories are based in Nepal and her characters are ordinary Nepalis, usually from the remote rural regions, looking for an opportunity that they think would make their life better. In its musings on the perplexity of living, it echoes the theme of The Country is Yours, a collection of contemporary Nepali literature translated by Manjushree Thapa. It returns to the theme of hunger and insecurity, the rage and struggle of the forgotten village people, of a society that is changing and yet seems to perpetuate the differences of class in myriad ways.
“Cheese” is a brilliant story, in terms of the narrative style, plot and development of characters. The title hinges in its bilingual meaning, also acknowledging the ease with which the reader is expected to navigate between English and Nepali. Even though the narrative canvasses the distance from Switzerland to Nepal, it is really about a poor, young boy, Gopi, who works as domestic help for a well-to-do family in Mahaboudha. The boy is cheated of his tiny share of Swiss cheese and grows up in eternal longing for the foreign food until he earns enough to buy a piece from Nepal Dairy. Upon attempting to savor the rich food, he discovers how sometimes hunger is sweeter than cheese itself.
Hunger is a strong theme that follows through to “Law and Order”, “The End of the World” and “The Blockade”. In the first, a policeman steals from a vegetable garden. This story begins with the protagonist Bishnu’s desire to get into the British Gurkha Army. He risks his life but is rejected for being thrown off a horseback. He’s badly hurt and lost two teeth but the Nepal Police don’t mind that. They take him in and keep him well-trained but underfed. The constant hunger eventually leads him to steal vegetables at the cost of his life and profession.
“The End of the World” is a story where the theme of hunger reverberates into celebration, a last supper kind of affair. A sadhu predicts that the world will come to an end at midnight and the country is abuzz with the news. It resounds with Bhupi Sherchan’s Hallai Hallako Desh, which we’ve seen played out in our own lifetime with bandas declared on baseless rumors.
Kanchhi, who is skeptical, gives in to the prediction as the narrator tells us “It was true this time because even the TV had announced it”! Kanchhi’s husband, Dil, brings home meat and everybody readies to eat a good, last meal. He’s not particularly nice to her and she is not particularly nice to their son. To the poor, ordinary Nepali, it is not quality time with family or forgiving enemies that seems important when the world is coming to an end. It is more about eating a good meal, eating things you could only dream about.
“A soul will fly away like a small bird. It’ll fly away when it becomes hungry and go and steal from some other people’s homes. It’s my stomach that will kill me,” says Kanchhi. When the world doesn’t come to an end, we are left with her holding her bloated stomach wondering what they’ll eat for the rest of the week.
Hunger again appears in “The Blockade”. This time, with a political edge suggesting the power Big Brother India wields in Nepal. Hasta Bahadur, who has returned from India, goes to meet Ram Bahadur Bomjan, the meditating Buddha of our times. He wants to ask Bomjan how to live without eating for months because his family in Kalikot is struggling to survive a famine. Hasta is only seventeen but he is meted out with more than seems fair in life. His attempts to meet Girija [Prasad Koirala] are futile and his three-point demand seems to go forgotten. When he reaches home, it is to the tragedy of the death of his grandmother, mother, and son. His wife has left him in search of a better life, one where she gets to eat enough to help her survive.
Most of the stories are placed in contemporary times except for “Match-Making” where time-markers such as Coca-Cola are referred to as “modern”. This story also stands out from the others in its setting, which is India, even though the characters are Nepali. Sushma cultivates an intriguing narrator for this story, a young girl who is torn between giving in to her mother’s ideas of becoming an ideal woman and wanting to defy them.
The experiments in the variety of narrators, from close-third to omniscient, give the collection of stories an interesting perspective. The only narrative strategy that seems to pull out and distance the reader is the narrator’s sudden omniscient projection into the character’s futures such as in “Cheese” and “Law and Order”. The descriptive meanderings in “Waiting for Rain” and “The Blockade” seem to cater more to non-Nepali audience and don’t appear to be necessary to the crux of the stories. However, they don’t take away from the narrative, either.
The End of the World certainly marks a new beginning and will, with hope, lead to a flourishing literary publishing industry in Nepal.
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