But her followers seem to have caught hold of the essence of her life rather than the manners she was known for. Parijat was a free spirit and would have loved to see fundamental freedoms institutionalized in the country of her adoption through timely promulgation of a republican constitution.[break]
A legend in her lifetime and a cult figure after her death, Parijat is one of the best-known names of Nepali literature. She was born as Bishnu Kumari Waiba to father K. S. Lama and mother Amrita Moktan in Darjeeling, India. Her mother, however, died when she was very young; and her grandparents raised the sickly and lonesome child who would lament later in her life, “I don’t know what mother’s love is.” She had her early schooling in Darjeeling and then came to Kathmandu in 1954 with a cousin—a teenager in search of destination. It was in Kathmandu that she completed her formal education, getting the B. A. Degree from Padma Kanya College of Tribhuvan University in 1959.
Even though Bishnu Kumari Waiba already had another name—Chheku Dolma—given by a Lama back in Darjeeling, she started calling herself Parijat when she came to know that it was the only flower never plucked from the plant to be offered to Hindu deities. The plant’s tiny white flowers fall to the ground in the morning, which are then collected by the devout and offered to the Gods. Her choice of name tells a lot about the torments an ailing girl might have gone through in a town where everyday was a struggle for survival.
The Nineteen Fifties and early Sixties were exciting times in arts and literature of Nepal when newly educated elite in Kathmandu were engaged in learning to grow out of the shadows of Hindi publications. Ishwar Baral, foremost critic of Nepali literature, taught Parijat English. Shankar Lamichhane, well-known Nepali essayist, reviewed her manuscripts. Parijat was friends with leftist leader Nirmal Lama, who later married her sister Sukanya, and maverick politico Roop Chand Bishta of the Thaha Campaign fame. Parijat never married, and in her later years, made friends with many young poets, musicians and artistes associated with the leftwing Ralfali movement. For the dreamy-eyed youths of the Ralfalis in the early Seventies, chain-smoking, partly paralytic, otherworldly Parijat was a star.
Like most Nepali littérateurs, Parijat began with poetry. Altogether, three collections of her poems were published: Akanshya, Parijatko Kavita, and Baisalu Bartaman. Her first short story was Mailey Najanmayeko Choro. But she discovered her mettle in longer narratives. Her fictions are basically long stories, where she plays with confusions and contradictions inherent to her characters leading towards hopelessness of existence. Her most famous work “Shirishko Phool” (Sajha Prakashan, Kathmandu, Sixteenth Edition, BS 2065), for example, is an exploration of sexuality of a middle-aged former soldier and his encounter with girls flowering in the lonely house of an indifferent male character. The name of the novel comes from a line in Sanskrit poet Kalidas’s classic “Kumarsambhab”—padam sahet bhramarsya pelabam Shirishpushpam na punah patatrinah—which, says Shankar Lamichhane in the introduction of the book, captures the essence of the story.
To tide over her financial difficulties, Parijat had taken to teaching in a school at the recommendation of literary critic Kamal Mani Dixit, but her indifferent health came in the way of a regular job. After leaving the school, she lived by the pen, lovingly cared by younger sister Sukanya. She has 10 novels, four short-story collections, four volumes of essays, and three poetry books to her credit, but her primary identity remains to be that of a novelist. “Mahattahin” (Sajha Prakashan, Kathmandu, Fourth Edition, BS 2064) is her second most popular novel.
Parijat was awarded the Madan Purashkar (BS 2022) for Shirishko Phool (Translated as Blue Mimosa in English) and was recipient of several other recognitions in her lifetime. Many prizes have been established in her memory by her “progressive” acolytes for whom she stands as epitome of revolutionary nihilism: a doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake. At the later part of her life, she helped found Pragatishil Lekhak Sangh, worked with Akhil Nepal Mahila Manch, Bandi Sahayata Niyog, and Nepal Manabadhikar Sangathan. Leftist critics have called her work existentialist and progressive.
The legend of Parijat has been turned into a myth by a devout group of people who yearn as much for the memories of her lively ways as for their own loss of innocence. She is important in her own right, and even more so for the fierce loyalty she continues to generate among a section of Nepali literati.
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