Nepali version of Catharsis

One should not think that I am making fun of the ancient Greek tragedy and their sensitive audiences. My point is to show how comically - certainly unknowingly - Nepali [break] politicians ask us to behave like the audiences of the Greek plays.



Let me first simplify the idea and then complicate it as the writers and critics of the tragic plays generally do to some extent. Complexity at times is necessary, otherwise I do not understand ideas. Here is a simple question at first: What if you hit yourself many times over the head with a hammer because it feels really good when you stop? This has been the sadistic act we all are experiencing in contemporary Nepal. The time will come when you will feel good because, after all, when you stop hitting yourself with a mallet it feels really good. We are amidst the process of hitting ourselves and one day will come when we will be over with the pain of being hit. Such a self-suffering tendency can also be linked with the philosophical idea of the grand narrative too, but I will come to this concept by the end of my write up. As I promised, let me complicate the idea of hitting in relation to Greek tragic plays.



The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that the audience is not horrified by seeing the events in a tragic play. Such events rather arouse passion, arouse pity and fear among the audience. It is because the audience does not experience the same horrible things which the characters experience but he watches from a distance. That means you as an audience feel pity for the tragic characters but do not feel their pain. Such an experience arouses emotion and passion by which the audience learns and purifies itself. In the language of drama, the experience is called catharsis, an experience of purifying yourself by watching a tragic play.



In sum, the situations in the play arouse passion and tension in you in order to control those passions: hitting yourself with a hammer because once when you stop (control), it feels good, you become happy, and you learn about pleasure, pain, and ways of the world. This is the simpler if not the simplistic understanding of catharsis. That means go through intended trouble and learn: it is the modern version of catharsis. It also is the Nepali politicians’ version of catharsis.



This how Nepalis have to go though conflict, pity, problems and then only they can learn. Nepali politicians have learnt such ideas very well, it seems. They constantly ask us to go through various sorts of pain, hitting over the head, and then stopping hitting and feeling good. Unless you do not go through suffering, you do not get happiness.



We are in the midst of hitting ourselves, by hammers of unlawfulness, price rise, poverty, humiliation, hate, anger, and what not. Once the drama of such miseries ends, we purify ourselves and become a nation of happy peoples. So let us accept what these politicians have planned to give us as a vernacular version of catharsis.

If you do not experience pain, you do not learn what happiness is. One of the ideas of grand narrative is similar to such notions of life. Grand narrative is a mode of writing and thinking which demands from you some phases of suffering before the final happiness.



The hero of a grand narrative comes to us on the brow of a hill which is better than Tundikhel because he can see all the peoples from the top. He then addresses the public in a grand rhetoric. He promises to take us to a golden city across the hills, plains, and rivers of suffering. We walk behind him, he keeps on encouraging us, many of us fall sick and die; he keeps on promising about the city of happiness. The city never comes but we all walk because the desire to reach to the golden city is very much there. The wish to learn from suffering is very much in our collective psyche. The hero and the modern brand of such a hero are all around us in the present time who keep on promising.



Buddha was also that hero giving sermon from under a tree. Marx summoned us with his pen. Gandhi wanted to take us with his folk lathi (stick). They were the heroes of the grand narrative. I would never say that they are the failed heroes because I respect them.



I read similarity with catharsis and the grand narrative. They both are the sadistic versions of “hitting your head” story. I do not disagree with such a motion of hitting, but I certainly ask a question. How much do you have to hit on your head? How many times, how many years? And when will we learn about pleasures after self inflicted pains of hitting? In fact it is foolish to ask such questions because our leaders constantly indicate that suffering is inevitable. Be sufferers and be Nepali!



orungupto@gmail.com

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