Born in an educated but traditional Mathema family of Om Bahal in Kathmandu in 1948, she now lives in Chhauni, an upscale address, and loves to dress to impress. [break]She is a granddaughter of a Bada Kaji of the royal court, and her father was a minister in post-Rana governments. She bears her aristocratic lineage with panache.
Padmavati says that she developed interest in literature when she was still in school but took up writing due to a startling encounter in Gorkha Bazaar, a small township west of Nepal where she was a development worker. A young man was telling another at a teashop within her earshot: “Aimaipani manchhe hun? Aimai ta pashusarah!” (Are women human beings? Women are like animals!) After sometime, a workingwoman brought the same man to her and begged, “Madam, this good-for-nothing fellow is my brother. He just eats, drinks and loiters all day long. He’s a burden I have to bear with my little earning. Please give him a job and a chance to become a human being.” Her creative instincts were awakened by the prosaic justice of a woman trying to turn an animal of a man into human being.
She has used the incident for an eponymous story, later translated into English as “Is woman a human being?” and incorporated in a volume she has edited, Beyond the Frontiers: Women Writing from Nepal (Gunjan, Kathmandu, 2006). The collection also includes her famous story, Silent Submission, in which she depicts an intense desire of motherhood in a woman past her prime that leads her into seducing her maidservant’s teenage son.
Padmavati’s stories have been collected in four volumes – Kathadi (Rambhakta Mathe, Kathmandu, BS 2038), Kathayam (Sahityik Patrakar Sangh, Kathmandu, BS 2039), Kathakar Padmavati Singh (Aakalp Prakashan, Biratnagar, BS 2044), and Padmavatika Kathaharu (published by the author herself, Kathmandu, 2057) – and two of her novels, Samanantar Aakash (Sajha, Kathmandu, BS 2062), and Maun Swikriti (Ratna Pushtak, Kathmandu, BS 2064). Samananatar Aakash got her the prestigious Sajha Puraskar (Award). She has also been recipient of the Ratnashri Subarna Padak, Mainali Katha Purushkar, and Rastriya Pratibha Puraskar.
Padmavati prefers to call herself a realist rather than a feminist. But she has a reputation of advancing the agenda of equal rights for women in subtle ways through her stories. Her characters pass through rebelliousness, reflections, compromises, and accommodation to become better persons in pursuit of more fulfilling life. In an introspective chapter from Bichalit Man, the protagonist reflects with a touch of sadness, but without remorse:
“The wife who doesn’t want to stay under the control of her husband, someone who wishes to build a distinctive identity in society by making her own lifestyle choices – she ceases to be a wife in the eyes of her husband. She ends up being a competitor. … … Since he is a man, he has always prevailed. Now, it is my turn to triumph. I am losing, and winning at the same time. He wants to see me merely as wife. But I tend to see myself as a person.”
Critics make snide remarks behind her back that she is a litterateur from the leisure class.But she has so much energy that she prods on with organising women writers and promoting others’ works, too, with enthusiasm. Moreover, Padmavati is forthright enough to admit, “I have no tale of personal suffering, only empathy for the pains of fellow beings.” Pretentiousness falls by the wayside when a writer boldly accepts her privileges and then moves out of it to explore life with honesty and integrity. The result: her stories may not always be exceptional, but they are invariably interesting.
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