My ‘Grey Stories’ and Authorial Confessions

Mahesh Paudyal

Aparichit Anuhar (2078) is my third collection of stories for adults, after Anamik Yatri (2067) and Tyaspachhi Phulena Godavari (2074). In fact, the story was always there inside me. I remember my first story “The Leave Taking,” that appeared in Manipur-based English Daily The Sanghai Express in 1994 when I was an eighth grader. This was back-to-back followed by “Life for Life,” another story that appeared in the same paper. My first Nepali story was “Chhutti,” published in the year 1999 in Sandesh, an annual magazine published by All Manipur Gorkha Student’s Union. My published works for children, including three collections of stories, six novellas and a collection of plays, a novel Tadi Kinarko Geet for young adults, and three collections of stories for adults — all meander around stories: long or short. This makes me look deeper into my authorial self; I reckon that the story has always been a part of my upbringing, and the most intimate medium of my expression. The story is very much a part of my public and private self. Even as a teacher at the university, I was constantly placed in subjects that deal with the creative literature, and my self-grooming as a storyteller continued. I still have fictions in my plans: short stories and novels. I have even finished drafting a novel, Nichu Gate, though I don’t really know when it will appear. Nichu Gate is a metaphor of terror for Nepali emigrants in Nagaland and Manipur states of India. Nichu Gate is the entry gate to Nagaland from Assam, and at this gate, no Nepali would efface slapping, torture or extortion by Naga road-guards just for being a Nepali.

As far as Aparichit Anuhar is concerned, it was published in November last year. Ever since its launch, the book has received a lot of critical observations from critics and readers, and they include both appreciative remarks and sharp, critical observations. They have sharpened my insights as a storywriter, and alerted me against some of the silliest follies that plague my writing, because of the lack of seriousness, sensitivity and care.

I have collected eighteen stories in this collection. I leave it for my esteemed readers to decide the merits and demerits of the stories: their strengths and weaknesses. In this session, I want to focus on the general schematic of the universe of my stories, and would like to invite your critical observation on it, so that I will have an idea if I can go ahead with the schematic, or I need some serious revision in the approach.

 As a storywriter, I never believed in narrativizing the ‘immediate’. By immediate, I mean the incidents that took place yesterday or today. I always believe that incidents have multiple faces. Whatever appear on the surface, and whatever the newspapers report, are half true. Incidents, that gather quick social, political or doctrinal opinions, often tend to be very transient. Very often, the truth of such incidents, established by the media, turns into ‘untruh’ with the passage of time, and a very different version of reality comes up. So I have always made it a point to distance myself from such incidents, and allow space and time to bake them, until the realty becomes revealed, at least to my authorial conscience. In order word, I wait to see if anything of universal import emerges out of the incident. If I find nothing, I allow the incident to pass by, even if it may be one that made big news.  This is the reason why immediate political or social incidents of our times do not find even the slightest mention in my stories.

Secondly, my critics have always pointed out that my stories are grey. I fully agree with their observations. The greyness of my stories, I think, is both natural and true to myself. If creative writing, to a great extent, is overt or covert confession, my stories recapitulating a grey mental atmosphere is quite expected. My upbringing in a foreign and hostile atmosphere in India, my migration and sole struggle in Kathmandu, and my life marred by illness and loss of my child, and the emptiness thereafter, has made greyness a permanent aspect of my worldview. Instead of lamenting on the entire reality, I have made it a point to translate these fault-lines into songs and stories, and this, to me, is an act of scriptotherapy. Writing has healed me, and has made me stronger.

In the grey atmosphere of my fictional world, one can find a procession of lonely and broken characters: widows, disabled individual, othered citizens, ignored children, bereaved parents, exiles, migrants and partially or fully insane characters. This population, normally overlooked by the social eye, also constitutes a huge chunk of our society, and I believe, their stories present an alternative history of our times. I always find myself comfortable with this alternative history, or micro-history, as we might use that term here.

I have tried to pick up stories from locations where people normally do not stop, but walk over, jumping. As for example, in the big revolutions, migration, and exodus, people talked about men and women, but they seldom looked at such revolutions from the position of the children. I thought, looking at Moist Conflict, or the exodus of migrants from Bhutan from the perspective of children, will certainly reveal another facet of our history. What happens if we start looking at a journey from the eyes of a co-driver (conductor), and not that of the driver, or the principal traveler? What does the world look like in that case? What happens if a visually impaired child emerges from her world and question colors? What happens if a father, who has recently lost his child, finds the face of his lost child in a crowd, but has no access to the face? What happens if a soldier, who was always passionate about warring, finds himself injured and is sent back home? What happens when a man with an ‘ugly’ face has so much of love inside his heart, but no one loves to come close to him? What happens if, in an urban location, the adults in the neighboring families do not interact, but the unruly children always run across the gates, and mix up entirely in the society? What happens if a writer, who always looks for silence and solitude, claims to write stories of the people in the society? What happens if an adult creeps into the beautiful dream world of the children and leaves it destroyed altogether?

I am a confused man as a writer. I also look at changes and revolutions. I can see that there is a layer of the society benefitted by such changes. There is another layer whitewashed, backgrounded or banished by the revolution. Both these layers have conspicuous appearance in history and literature. But, there always is a layer that is ignored by the revolution. As for example, what is revolution to a cobbler who sits by the roadside and mend shoes? His father mended them during the Panchayat days; his son during the days of the constitutional monarchy, and his grandchild during the days of the republic. What is the semiotics of his observation of history? Who can best explore this semiotics?

I don’t know what the answers to these questions are, but I know, these questions are a gateway into the other side of the moon. My stories do not offer any answer, but they certainly disturb their readers, or even infuriate them, by talking too thickly about an apparently insignificant world. The more furious my readers are, the happier I am. For, I have placed myself on the diagonally opposite node from official historians, and writing alternative history, I believe, begins with getting badly infuriated. A complacent mind, I believe, can never think of a different, anti-chronological or defiant history.

There is one more allegation my critics make. My stories are littered by too many children — unruly, defiant, recalcitrant and impertinent brutes. But I can’t help this.  My reading during the student days were heavily influenced by Tagore’s stories. Tagore, similarly, brings a population of unruly children and shocks each one of us. Later, when I got introduced to some of the stories of Bhavani Bhikshu, I was infected even more. Oscar Wilde came sometime later in my list of favorite storytellers, and all these, annealed by Chekhov’s universe of the ignored, laconic and left-out characters perhaps disturbed my mind as well. For some time, I worked for a theater, acting, and sometimes translating and dramatizing great story writers like Chekhov. I know that the time of these master story writers is over, but the story of the children is not. In every new age, the children appear with newer complexities and challenge the adult-forged civilization, moralities and social orders. In fact, the children’s world is the world we all are aspiring to achieve through our adult demeanors. I remember Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi saying once, that we all have a child inside us. As long as we allow this child to live, the love and compassion inside us will stay alive. The day our adulthood kills this child, we find the humanity inside us potently challenged, or even crushed. I am sure and certain: I shall be writing more stories, and more of such children will appear. Can’t help.