[Ashesh Malla (b. 1954, Dhankuta) is a poet and dramatist of high repute. Associate Professor of Nepali Literature at Tribhuwan University, he is the founder of Sarwanam Theater, a performance cum training center in Kathmandu. Mr. Malla has written, performed, and directed several plays, and has won many prestigious awards like Sajha Purashkar, Musyachu Puraskar, Moti Award, and Jalarika Award for his contribution in the field of Nepali literature and theatre. He is the pioneer of street theatre in Nepal. His fame as a writer rests on his books, about 25 in number, including those of poetry, plays, and fiction. Presented here is an edited excerpt of his conversation with Mahesh Paudyal for The Gorkha Times.]
Your backgrounds in the rural hinterlands of Dhankuta do not appear to be fertile grounds for a theater artist and activist to evolve. Dhankuta, instead, is a citadel of Nepali folk music and poetry. There indeed are very few, especially from your days, who made Nepali theater their career and passion. What made you stand out and choose the theater?
In the hills of Dhankuta where I grew up there used to be carnivals and ritual performances. For me, Bhadaure Jatra, a summer carnival, was of special thrill, when people moved in groups from street to street, singing, dancing and staging short plays. Preparations for the same would start months before. I used to secretly watch my seniors make their preparations. These plays, done either on high-raised stages, or on court yards of houses, were of great fascination for me. Thought I was passionate about partaking in those plays, I was never picked. So one fine day, I gathered some friends of my age, and decided to prepare a play of our own. I was a third or fourth grader then, not more than ten to twelve years old. For the play, I caricatured one Purna Shrestha, also called Purna Lata, a man in my locality, who limped as he walked. We performed the play for many days. I must admit: it was a huge success, and my family and society started recognizing me as an actor. Since then I haven’t stopped. My family, however, was quite unhappy, seeing me inclined towards an ‘unproductive’ art.
Whatever you just said indicates that it was a primitive theater you started from. Journey from such make-shift theaters to permanent, proscenium theaters was, understandably, not very easy. How did it all happen?
A few months after our maiden performance in the village, Dayaram Shrestha ‘Sambhav’ directed one of Bijay Malla’s plays, and took be onboard his crew. That, for me, was like my formal induction to the Nepali theater. Many plays followed this, taking place occasionally and I used to be a child actor in most of them. Our theaters, however, we still temporary ones, which entailed a lot of labor to erect. I can remember by seniors bringing curtains and other things from Calcutta (now Kolkata), and artists painting patterns with colors to produce scenes we needed, including those of palaces, forests and rooms on small canvases, and held them in place with rolling strings. Nripendra Malla, my own grandfather, was engaged as an artist. Even the police and the army, occasionally, staged their own plays. My exposure to all such big plays gave me the idea how bigger theaters would work. A permanent theater, however, was still a far cry. It was much later, when I came and settled down in Kathmandu that I had the privilege to perform on a permanent theater.
You have publicly told many times that your theatrical journey was not smooth. The lack of infrastructure is understandable. But, you were also crushed many times by the establishment for doing plays it didn’t like. Would you please recall some of those moments when you confronted the establishment and faced its reproach?
Inspired by many organizations working in my village, I had a urge to start an organization of our own because the existing organizations seldom gave us any break in their programs. So, at my initiation, we founded a children’s club—Bal Sudhar Sangh—and started organizing poetry and quiz competitions, dances and theatrical performances. A few months later, I was summoned by the Chief District Officer to answer for the ‘illegal’ act of establishing an organization. My family, especially my mother was alarmed, because during the heydays of the Panchayat, the establishment used to summon my grandfather, Gajendra Bahadur Pradhananga, for so-called ‘anti-national’ activities. I didn’t know founding an organization was illegal. When the CDO asked me to shut it down, I had no answer. Before long, the sign-board of our organization was smashed. The case was mentioned even before the then Prime Minister Kirtinidhi Bista, who visited Dhankuta shortly afterward. He also named my action illegal. I had no option but to shut down my organization. My voice was brutally smothered.
Since then, a sense of rebellion entered my consciousness. I have always spoken my mind in opposition to such unwarranted oppressions. These feelings have heavily informed the plays I wrote and performed later.
Your plays have continued to reproduce that rebellion. But with age, the subject of your rebellion changed: from a child’s emotional dissent to a citizen’s conscious denouncement of undemocratic state behavior and violation of citizen rights. How did you come to handle such political subjects in your later plays?
I told you about the incident that exposed the cruel face of the establishment in front of my juvenile eyes. My feelings were further soured as I grew up and noticed many evils in the government. Those were the days when criticizing the government was a far cry, except on special occasions like the Gaijatra. My father Khagendra Pradhanaga, also a novelist, often came to Kathmandu. He bought for me several issue of Gaijatra journal, published once in a year, with open criticism of the state. When I read them, I learnt that even ministers could be criticized. Following this, I and my friends Rajendra and Nirajan Pradhananga, prepared a hand-written magazine on foolscap sheets, criticizing the CDO and local leaders and pasted their copies at many locations. Before long, we were cracked down, deeming the action unlawful according to Muluki Ain.
After passing out high school from my village, I started attending a college some half an hour walk from home. The path went past a jail. One morning, I saw a horrible incident in the jail from the outside walls: the police was dragging two men on the ground in an inhuman way. Later I learned, they were accused of Okhaldhunga Incident launched by Congress, and were Ram and Laxman, who were later killed. This particular incident tore me down, and the face of the state started occurring to me as something heinous. I grew more and more rebellious, and my plays gave voice to all my dissent.
Those were tales of your Dhankuta days. How did you land in Kathmandu? What were the major influences in the city that shaped your career in the theater?
When I moved to Biratnagar for college education after doing my intermediate arts in the village, I became a part of the larger literary fraternity that had well-know poets like Krishna Bhushan Bal, Indira Prasai, Bishnu Bibhu Ghimire, Mahesh Prasai and Pramod Pradhan in it. They had founded an origination. Their influence on me was immediate. Back in Dhankuta during the vacations, I used my experiences in Biratnagar to direct plays, which were performed on a make-shift stage at Gokundeshwar School. Upendra Dukhi, a poet, singer, musician, director, and a national level footballer, used to be our mentor then. This was the time when I wrote a play on my own based on a family feud among brothers on land-right issues. I named the play Tuwanlolé Dhakeko Basti. Upendra Dukhi directed it; I played the lead. It was such a huge success; people came from far and wide—including from villages in Bhojpur, Chainpur, Tehrathum etc.—to watch us perform in petro-max light. The success triggered us to move out to Kathmandu to stage the play there. With a crew of 40 people, though with no money, resources and knowledge, we set out. On the way, we also performed at Dharan, Biratnagar and a few other locations and collected money. After seven or eight days, we landed in Kathmandu. Bijay Malla owned a lodge at New Road; we stayed there. Soon we approached Satyamohan Joshi, Member Secretary at Nepal Academy for help. He said yes on the condition that the income would be divided equally. With immense help from Prachanda Malla, we had a play, for me the first play in the modern setting, with recorded sounds and lights. The play was an immense success. I can never forget the fact that Bal Krishna Sama, in neatly worn daura-surwal, was a part of my audience. This was, for me, a turning point and a benchmark of my success.
And the graph has been rising upward since then! Parallel with your road to bigger audience, I think you also saw a gradual change in dramaturgical approach. What changes did you see in the very approaches of performance?
The biggest thing I noticed is the gradual shift from a traditional play to a modern play. Back in Dhankuta, we didn’t have things like background music, lighting, sound effect, etc. If we needed birds’ voice, we used to go out into the woods with a recorder and wait for hours for the birds to come and chirp so that we could record the voice and play. Things were dramatically different in Kathmandu. I was exposed to all these ‘modern’ tenets of a play, when I joined Tribhuvan University as an MA student. The Campus Chief allowed me to use the auditorium. His support has been immense. He also offered monetary help at times. I took no much time to mold my plays into ‘modern’ plays.
Yes, those old good Kirtipur days! Do you have any incident that has particularly roosted in your memory, when Kirtpur is talked about in relation with your career as a playwright and director?
There are many events rooted in Kirtipur that have become a part of my permanent memory. Of them, one particular event is of special meaning to me. One day, my hostel mate Bimal Koiral and I wrote a play on the issue of the scarcity of firewood in Kathmandu. When we started performing it, students started hooting and encouraging us. Our play vehemently criticized the government for its apathy. While we were midway with our performance, the curtain suddenly fell, and some boys came onstage and started manhandling us. We were left badly injured. The Campus Chief managed to lift us to the clinic and treat us. Those miscreants were supporters of the Panchayat, and they were unhappy with the way we flayed the government. I can never forget this incident.
Let’s talk about Sarwanam, your dream project which is a reality now. How did it come about?
Doing a play during the Panchayat days was not easy. At the slightest hint of the state’s criticism, we would be nabbed and manhandled. We therefore started feeling the need of a group effort to combat the situation and go ahead with our performance. Accordingly, we founded Sarwanam in 1981, though much earlier, we had performed my play Murdabadma Utheka Haatharu under its banner. Since then, the name has continued, and today, as you can see, Sarwanam has become a fact. We have continued our humble efforts to produce and perform plays, organize training and workshops and host literary and cultural events at our own theater building at Kalikasthan. We raised it, without taking a penny from the government as support. It is solely an emblem of public love and belief.
The story of the inception, struggle and success of Sarwanam can be inspiring to many. I have seen many theater groups in Kathmandu and elsewhere, performing on rented theaters. Sarwanam is among very few theater groups, having a theater of its own, that too in the heart of Kathmandu. Could you kindly share with us the secrets behind this landmark success?
If you look back at history, there were influential dramatists who could influence the palace or the government to manage fund and establish a theater. Bal Krishna Sama, the master playwright, was himself from the Rana family. Bijaya Malla was very close to the theater. Many playwrights again and again occupied important positions in the Academies. But none of them ever think of doing this. I was particularly pained by this fact, and thought, something at the public or individual level should start. I had in mind a cultural centre that would not only perform plays, but also accommodate other forms of art: painting, poetry and music.
Sarwanam, thereafter, became a dream project for me. In order to achieve it, I have let go several alluring offers, including the post of the Chancellor at the Nepal Academy of Music and Drama. For me, Sarwanam occurred much higher as a dream than that chair. Instead of wasting time on such chairs, I thought it much better to do something that would produce hundreds of Ashesh Mallas in the days to come. What wroth is holding a position in an Academy where party workers are handpicked?
Sarwanam is doing very well with everyone’s support and love. As many as seventeen batches have graduated from there. Playwrights, artists, singers and poets visit us every day, and make Sarwanam a lively cultural space. What is more pleasing than this? I have seen our graduates establish their own theater groups, perform both at home and abroad, and win the heart of the people. I am confident that even if I die, my graduates will make Sarwanam an ever-living phenomenon. This brings such peace to my mind, which I cannot even express in words.