His house is a simple three-storied building. As you enter his room with books stacked up all around, and a table with every stationery item imaginable set neatly alongside each other, the Master is seen buried in a book with his back turned to the door. His granddaughter informs him of his first visitors for the day, and Basanta Kumar Sharma Nepal, the teacher turns his gaze and welcomes them with a big bright smile, “Oh come in, come in, please.”
Now 88 years old, with his snow-white beard, Nepal has retired from his teaching profession. With his lifelong dedication to teaching and learning, he has published some 63 books – novels, plays, poetry anthologies, translations, dictionaries, and many more. Upstairs, his numerous awards and certificates of honor – from Madan Puraskar to Suprabal Gorkha Dakshin Bahu and a lot more – decorate all the four walls of the room.
“I was kind of a rebel, so I had left home with no parental property, and all my income was from teaching,” he reflects on his past, and continues, “I would set off at five in the morning to teach in schools and colleges, and after several tuitions, get home around ten in the night.”
This busy schedule, nonetheless, kept him content and happy as he could provide a comfortable life to his family and give his best as a teacher to his students.
“Those who work hard never have to be unsuccessful,” he shares. As to how he managed time for his family, he explains abruptly, “Hatterika! There was plenty of family time as well. During the two-month annual vacation from colleges, one month would be for family and the other was for travels.”
It was during these travels around the country that he collected different Nepali words in his diary. After 28 years of traveling, he had 42 notebooks stacked up amongst his huge collections of books.
“Once my son donated whole racks of books from my personal collection to the local library and almost gave away all the notes in my room as well,” he shares and tells us how he was quite disappointed, “But you can’t keep that many books, you know; they invite all sorts of pests. So while we were clearing up, we came across the diaries and I decided it was time to bring them to use.”
From the very next day, he started compiling words and meanings for a Nepali dictionary along with his sons. But his sons had their own businesses to take care of, and eventually he persisted along, alone. After 13 years of hard work, he finally completed the dictionary – “Nepali Shabda Sagar”. It contained some 140,000 words, surpassing the Nepali dictionary available then which containedjust 55,000 words.
But that was just a beginning. Nepal has now more than 14 volumes of dictionary under his credit, including in Nepali-English, Nepali-Sanskrit, Nepali-Newar (Nepal Bhasha) and more.
“Compiling a dictionary isn’t a fun job,” he shares with a sigh, “It takes a lot of brainwork, and you have to train yourself to toil under strict routines. It’s almost like sitting in for meditation with absolute focus.”
Besides dictionaries and books, each day for him is full with many well wishers and
students visiting him. Nepal also seems to be a favorite raconteur of yarns as he chuckles and says, “My students, their children and even grandchildren visit me
and request me to tell them stories of our times. It’s funny how the real incidents of our times seem like distant stories to them.”
And Nepal has plenty of stories to tell – of how he had gotten a Brahmin boy and a Newar girl married when inter-caste marriage was a huge taboo, of writing love poems for his love-struck friends, of his Bishwabandhu Club, and how the lane he now lives in came to be known as the Masterko Galli.
What will be next? Only time and the thesaurus man know.
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