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Friday, November 8, 2024

Exploring  Banira Giri’s Poetic Beauty

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Ram Dayal Rakesh

First of all, allow me to throw some light on the concept of beauty. What is beauty? Alexander Baumgartner (1714-1762), a  famous German philosopher, coined the very word “ Aesthetics” which means sense  perception. It is the philosophy of beauty or of art or of life. Aesthetics, since Baumgartner’s time, has been defined as’ the study of the beauty in nature and art, to its character, of its conditions, and of its conformity of law.

Ram Dayal Rakesh

Another scholar has defined beauty as follows: “There is nowhere in the world both as beautiful and as ugly, as hopeful and as hopeless.” (Roxane Gay: An Untamed)

So it is clear that the concept of beauty differs from  person to person and country to country. In this context to explore the concept of beauty of a poet   may not be acceptable to all.

Banira Giri was a famous poet, a noted novelist and an ever shining star in the sky of Nepalese language and literature. She was the singer of human glory and beauty in her poetic works. Her valuable  poetic contributions are the testimony of   her popularity. She was well known poet in South  Asia. She has been  included  in the South Asian Literary Recording Project( Library of Congress New Delhi Office).Some of her poems have been published in the famous  South Asian magazine named Lotus. Her poetic fame was not limited to the boundary of South Asian  countries only but she was popular and famous as a poet in USSR, UK, Japan and other countries.  She was invited to attend the Afro-Asian Pacific Conference in Russia. She was an acknowledged and acclaimed poet of beauty and integrity and everlasting love.

he was born on April 11, 1946 in Kurseong near Darjeeling in West Bengal and became the first Nepali  writer of wide spread popularity. She was multi -talented   wordsmith  who published many monumental works such as Karagar (a sequel  novel) Mero Abiskar (poetry collection), Shabdatit Shantnu to name a few. She became the first Nepali woman to be awarded a Ph-d from T.U. She was also the first woman writer to  win the Sajha Award for her poetic fiction Shabdatit Shantnu. In 1997 she was invited by the Japan Foundation Association for awarding the prestigious Takeshu Kaiko Memorial award for one person- poetry reciting in three major cities of Japan. Her  some selected poems have been included in several anthologies in Hindi, Urdu, English. Japanese and other prominent languages. Her several  poems have been published in different literary magazines in India translated by this scribe such as Dinman, Saptahik Hindustan, Dharmjug weeklies and Kadmbani monthly. I have also translated her selected 25 poems into Hindi .   The manuscript was with her.  But it has become a  Herculean task for me to find out the manuscript now. Her other eight published works are  available in the Library of Congress. Among them are Jivana Thaymaru and Mero Aaviskar, Nirbandh, From the Other End, Rokanele  Aakar Dina Sakdain, Jungle Jungle, Parbatko Arko Nam Parbati.

She was also very prominent name   in prose writing. She has written  some best pieces of essays which are rememberable but her poems are very powerful. They are always inspiring and encouraging to the readers. She was the creator of her own poetic style .”Style is the man’ saying is quite appropriate in her poetic diction. Her poems  carry cultural values and societal norms all the time and  everywhere which are rare in Nepalese poetry. She has imbibed a lot of cross-cultural  influences and also has adopted new images and imageries. Nagendra Sharma has rightly and aptly   grasped the originality of Banira Giri’s poems. I would like to quote here his remarks:

“Banira Giri is, however the most voluble woman poetess who has a grasp of the feminine sensibilities and expresses them with a finesse that is as rare as it is novel. Her satires are subtle, too. Jiwan Thaymaru (1977) and Auta Auta Jiundo Jang Bahadur (One Live Jung Bahadur) are better known works. Kathmandu is, to her-


A sizable epic
Filled with interesting stories, sweet and sour,
This darling Kathmandu
Auspicious ritual-song of high-sounding speeches
From the leaders,
A chorus of people’s wants and deprivations
Comedy of salary enhancement
Tragedy of spiraling inflation
A perennial struggle for kerosene and sugar
That appear now and disappear again
What is not there, here ?


(Nagendra Sharma. Nepalese Literature in A Nutshell. His Majesty’s Government, Ministry of Communications, Department of Information, P.57.)

She was immense lover of Nature. She  observed  beauty in every object of Nature because it is the store house of beauty ‘A thing of beauty is joy forever ‘ is true to the letter in her context .She was expert in this  skill of exploring beauty. She knows the poetic craft to express this concept of beauty. Let me quote some of her lines to support it:

“The sky—
Having just finished washing
Strongly the body of the sea
With showers from my vessels after vessels
The sea
Is yawning ready for  sleep
Covering herself completely
With a shawl tinged with the color of ash.

(Nepalese Literature: P. 28 Tr. Madhav Lal Karmacharya).

Her first poem entitled’ Mero Sathi bhanchha (my friend says) in  the historical Nepali magazine Diyo in 2020 B.S. Her poetic journey continued till she   suffered the painful  pangs and sorrow of Alzheimer and at last her tragic death by Covid  -19 and cardiac arrest. She was fond of her poetic diction  which she practiced in her masterpiece  Sabdatit Shantanu. She has tried her level best to show how cultural values are imbedded in  life. She has very vividly explained her poetic mind in these lovely lines:

“Poetry is my first love. It is my most personal urge. If someone wanted to punish me, forbidding me to write would be a far greater punishment than sending me to jail.  The spirit that drives my poetry emerged from hearing my mother recite Sanskrit and Nepali shlokas in morning puja. Directly or indirectly she prepared the ground for my poetic consciousness- whatever creative powers I have first sprouted in my earliest childhood. I can also say that the earthly and spiritually beauty of Nepal- its wide and varied landscape and views, its heights and depths, shaped my poetry. Most of my poems express love for this country, my life and its surroundings.”

In her  culturally enriched famous poem  ‘Pashugayatri’ she repents to see the dirty Bagmati flowing day and night carrying dirt and dust thrown by so called civilized and cultured denizens of cosmopolitan capital Kathmandu. She weeps bitterly to see the sad and bad condition of the Bagmati. Once  the  beautiful Bagmati was pure,  blissful and bountiful but today she has turned into Dhalmati. Let me quote some of the lines of the poem “Pashugayatri”:

In this holy land of Pashupati,
Completely helpless, bereft and naked,
Pitiful Bagmati — stagnant within
Only scars of memory —
The rush of her waters, an encrusted scab
Through the dry banks of her chest
(she) whispers the Pashugayatri mantra.
And she is shocked
“Ay, ai, Men are men after all,
Though they make the Bagmati a River -of- Sand.”

(Trans. Wayne Amtzis in Narendra Raj Prasai’s Banira Giri P.104)

Giri was busy with her autobiography  writing  before  she left for her heavenly abode. Her untimely death is a great loss to Nepalese language and literature.

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