www.kalimpong.info

(Follow this link for a previous story on Prajwal Parajuly posted in Nov 2010.
-Admin )

The Times of India
Sep 25, 2011, 10.56AM IST

LONDON: Prajwal Parajuly, a 27-year-old student at the University of Oxford from Gangtok, Sikkim, India, created quite a furore in the publishing world of London this week by being signed by the Steig Larson trilogy publisher Quercus Books in a respectable five-figure pound advance. With the signing, Mr. Parajuly becomes the youngest author at Quercus.

Already touted as the next big thing in South Asian fiction by various publications of the Indian sub-continent, Prajwal’s The Gurkha’s Daughter: Stories clinched him the deal in a two-book signing, proving that talent — irrespective of the market for short-story collections — doesn’t go unrecognized. This will be the first time a book on fiction has been written about Nepali-speaking people without the contents restricting themselves to Nepal.

“Yes, the stories are based all over — Sikkim, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Nepal, Bhutan, New York,” Prajwal said. “Nepali-speaking people don’t live in Nepal alone. Those in the Diaspora, too, have amazing stories that needed to be written.”

Prajwal was represented by Susan Yearwood at the Susan Yearwood Literary Agency in London.

The Gurkha’s Daughter: Stories encapsulates various aspects of lives of Nepali-speaking people from troubled Gurkha pensioners to Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees living in a state of statelessness for more than two decades, and Diversity Visa winners struggling in New York to a retired Nepali-speaking Indian woman contemplating a premarital affair, these tales take us into fascinating worlds of a people who are oscillating from one identity crisis to another.

Prajwal, the first Indian to be selected into the University of Oxford’s highly selective Creative Writing Master’s, worked as an advertising executive at “The Village Voice” in New York before embarking on writing his book. He has been the editor in chief of “detours: an explorer’s guide to the midwest”, a national award-winning travel magazine based on Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, in the United States.

Source: www.porternash.co.uk

————
www.kalimpong.info

telegraphindia.com
VIVEK CHHETRI

Darjeeling, Aug. 7: Rabindranath Tagore was the bonding factor at the Mall today where the podium is usually used to settle political scores.

This time, there was no belligerent leaders trying to prove a point or hurling barbs at opponents. Instead, Tagore’s songs were rendered in Nepali, Tamil and English during a two-hour celebration of the 150th birth anniversary of the bard, which was organised jointly by North Bengal Vision, the department of information and culture and the Darjeeling municipality.

Hira Rasaily, a well-known singer in Darjeeling, rendered a Rabindrasangeet in Nepali in first such effort in the hills in recent times.

Se din du jone dulachilu bone had been translated into Nepali by Rasaily herself. Dancers from the Bengali community performed to other songs that Rasaily sang.

To many, the performance was a pointer to how a minuscule Bengali community has been able to preserve their tradition and culture in the hills. “Till the early 1980s, the population of the community stood at 10,000. Today, we have around 150-odd families living in perfect harmony with the other communities of the region,” said Sanjay Biswas, one of the main organisers of the event.

Biswas, along with Suresh Gurung, a writer in Darjeeling, released his book — Chakhlagdo Kura (Interesting anecdotes) — written in Nepali. “This is my 26th book about Darjeeling,” said Biswas.

This was not all. Swati Banerjee, a Rabindrasangeet exponent from Chennai, also mesmerised the crowd by rendering Tagore’s songs in Tamil, English and Bengali. Her musicians, however, were all from Darjeeling and part of Rasaily’s troupe. “The musicians were amazing and I would like to thank them for their cooperation,” said Banerjee.

Om Narayan Gupta, a well-known literary figure from the hills, recited a poem in Hindi on Gurudev — Mahakavi ki jay jaykar.

Rasaily was also awarded the Rabindra Puraskar by the organisers. “I believe this is an honour for the entire hills and the Gorkha community,” she told the audience. Later, Rasaily said she had been regularly practising Rabindrasangeet and attending classes in Calcutta.
————
www.kalimpong.info

This interview of Dr. HB Chettri by Prabin Moktan was published in the May 2011 issue of “Talk Sikkim”. Below are some excerpts. The entire interview (.pdf) can be found at this link

Media secretary, spokesman and most likely the new GJMM MLA from Kalimpong, Dr. Harka Bahadur Chettri is the intellectual face of the GL2 movement. Prabin Moktan, fellow alumnus of FLATFILE, the literary journal from Kalimpong, met up with Dr. Chettri and spoke to him on a variety of issues

Media secretary, spokesman and most likely the new GJMM MLA from Kalimpong, Dr. Harka Bahadur Chettri is the intellectual face of the GL2 movement. Prabin Moktan, fellow alumnus of FLATFILE, the literary journal from Kalimpong, met up with Dr. Chettri and spoke to him on a variety of issues:

Keeping political rhetoric aside, do you think there is any merit or honesty in Ghising’s pronouncements that GL is not possible given the current reality of the Indian body politic and that the hills are better off with the sixth schedule status, which at least has a constitutional guarantee? How is the alternative that your party envisages more viable, better?

Well so far Ghising is concerned I should not be so rude on him, but judging by his track record he is better explained or better described as a political joker and nothing above that. The Sixth Schedule chapter was closed immediately after the 13th Lok Sabha was dissolved. In the third tripartite GK Pillai the present home secretary categorically said that the issue of the Sixth Schedule is shelved. That was the statement of the
Government of India, he had the mandate of the GOI. Now Sixth Schedule is meant for a specific region for a specific category of people. It has never traveled this side of the Brahmaputra. In our case it was like giving unequal treatment to equal kind of people. There are other anomalies there. I am not going into those details. But so far as the question of constitutional guarantee is concerned, it is just to mislead the layman. Even the interim which was a temporary setup had legislative power and until and unless you have constitutional guarantee where do you derive your legislative power from? So compared to the 45 departments in the 6th schedule, the interim had 84 departments with power to create jobs , with power to appoint, which was not there in the 6th schedule. And the most dangerous thing in the Sixth Schedule was the leader would have been chosen either by succession or by nomination. There was no question of you know, democratically electing the leader. So how can a civilized society accept that kind of formulation where your democratic right goes for a six?

Do you think the demand for GL has a sell-by date? Or will it forever remain an emotional issue that political parties will cash in? Between identity and livelihood which do you think will the people ultimately choose, especially in case of prolonged attrition?

I agree with you. And what is identity after all? How does this question arise…you know…why people support the cause of identity? There are a number of factors which contribute towards creating an identity. What Morcha is trying to do is, during the 11th round of talks we tried to include everything that a State controls in the interim. We tried to snap every tie that this region had with the State. The only contact was the governor. Otherwise the financial freedom, the administrative powers, the legislative power, everything, lock stock and barrel we managed to get. And remember that this was only the interim…our aim was. ..that when we settle for the final thing it should be one step above what was agreed in the interim. Also the home minister, minister of state for home, our MP himself, they were unanimous in the idea that the Union Government must contemplate on a Union Territory status for the hills. So to begin with this interim thing was not a bad thing after all. The Morcha’s effort was to create a boundary separate from Bengal and in a sense a boundary creates identity. Regarding this boundary, we have made the GOI agree to send a joint verification team to verify Gorkha majority areas in the Terai and Doars. There is a precedent for that – 95 Bodo majority villages in Assam have been included in the Bodo Territorial Council. Even Mamta Banerjee recently in an interview talked about Greater Darjeeling to include Doars and Terai. The sixth schedule that Ghising is harping on would have put a seal on the boundary issue and Siliguri and Doars would have been excluded. We are forcing a rethink on the territory and that I think is a victory of the Morcha.

by Wangchuk Basi
Friday, April 8, 2011

It is time. India’s long awaited second independence movement has begun. The Kalimpong Citizen’s Rights Forum and civil society has joined the movement. I am including a resolution we passed on the 7th April, which was followed by a procession in town to voice our support. Copies of the resolution were faxed to the PM, President, Home Minister, Governor, and campaign headquarters of Anna Hazare. Raise your heads, stand tall, you have nothing to lose but your shackles and say…”it is enough”

A meeting of the Kalimpong Citizen’s Rights Forum was convened at The Ramkrishna Rangamanch on Thursday the 7th of April , 2011. The meeting was conducted in the presence of the President, Executive members of the forum, office bearers and members of NGOs and civil society.

The house deliberated on the ongoing campaign by Mr Ana Hazare to bring to the fore the issue of corruption in our country. The meeting began by accepting that today we are ranked among the most corrupt countries on the face of the planet. The gravity of the situation can no longer be understated as it threatens our very existence as a civilized and developed country. Every facet of our lives has been undermined, our laws subverted and our constitution has become a mockery.

The house was unanimous in supporting Mr Ana Hazare’s campaign and the people’s demand that the Lokpal bill as suggested by Mr Ana Hazare and civil society is passed without delay, and that the nation is restored to it’s people. We demand also that those in position of power , be they in the political realm or administration be made accountable to the people. The privatization of public office must stop immediately, and legislative and administrative mechanisms put into place so that the culture of corruption with impunity is brought to an end. These are diseases that today puts our country into far graver danger than any other foreign or domestic threat, either real or imagined.

While supporting Mr Ana Hazare’s campaign , the house also supported the motion unanimously that our support does not in any way endorse any political party which may express similar views. This is a citizen’s movement and our contention is that political parties are all complicit in bringing our nation to this perilous state.

Jai Hind

————
www.kalimpong.info

Found an essay on Tharchin Babu & the Mirror Press by a Columbia Univ scholar, Paul G. Hackett, hidden in the dusty virtual shelves of the Columbia University Library. The pdf is available at this link.

See Dr Sonam Wangyal’s article on Tharchin babu here, and a picture of Tharchin Babu & the current state of the Tibet Mirror Press here.

I am copying the entire essay below (for reasons of posterity, in case the pdf becomes unavailable.)

Kalimpong, Gergan Dorje Tharchin, and his Mirror newspaper
Paul G. Hackett

Like Tashkent a thousand years earlier, Kalimpong of the twentieth century was one of those cultural junctures — the meeting place of age-old civilizations and a crossing over point between radically different worlds. Below and to the south lay the jungles and lowlands of British India and most prominently of all, Calcutta, where hillstations such as Kalimpong met their commercial port, where the whole population of India — Lepchas, Nepalis, Bengalis, British, Chinese, Malaysians and a whole host of traders, missionaries, soldiers and bureaucrats — daily swarmed over each other in pursuit of their lofty and not-so-lofty goals. Above and to the north lay the mountain ranges of Tibet, a kingdom like no other, perched atop the high Himalayas, a monastic haven far above the mundane world below, a place that six million people called “home”; from the narrow valleys of Ladakh and Guge near Kaśmir in the west, to the wide open plains of Amdo and the Chang-tang on the border of China to the east, Tibet was an ethereal, 1.2 million square kilometer land-mass whose natural borders were visible from space. Kalimpong was where these two worlds met.

Called “Da-ling Kote” by the local Bhutias after the old fort on the 4,000 ft. ridge line, for most of its pre-history, Kalimpong was little more than the stockade (“pong”) of a Bhutanese minister (“Kalön”). It was only with the annexation of the area by the British in the late-19th century with the hopes of opening trade routes did the small village formed around the ruins of the old fort begin to grow. In the wake of the 1904 Younghusband invasion of Tibet, Kalimpong took on greater significance as trading post as the wool trade shifted markets from the administrative capital of the region, Darjeeling, to its new economic capital, Kalimpong, being slightly closer the Tibetan passes of Jelep-la and Nathu-la, with easy transport south to Calcutta for shipping to the textile mills of England and eventually, America.

Though still in many aspects a trading post and missionary enclave, by the early twentieth century Kalimpong had much to offer a Tibetophile. Most notably, Kalimpong was home to the only Tibetan language newspaper in the world, The Mirror or “Me-long,” as it was known in Tibetan. It was also home to the newspaper’s editor and the de factocenter of the Tibetan ex-patriot community in Kalimpong, Dorje Tharchin, known affectionately to all and sundry as Tharchin Babu.

Tharchin was a unique man. Born in 1890 in the village of Pu (spu) in the Khunu region of Spiti (spi ti), Tharchin was the son of one of only a handful of Moravian Christian converts in the western Tibetan borderlands of Spiti, and had spent the early years of his life in Khunu being educated in missionary schools (taught in a mixture of Tibetan and Urdu). With the death of his parents in the early years of the century, Tharchin finally left his village at the age of twenty. During the years that followed, Tharchin earned money as a common laborer spending his time between Delhi and the British “summer capital” of Simla at the mouth of the Kulu valley, and by the late 1910’s Tharchin was fully ensconced in his identity as a Christian and could often be found preaching in one of the cities’ local bazaars.

Accepting a job at the Ghoom Mission School outside of Darjeeling, Tharchin taught Tibetan and Hindi at a Christian school belonging to the Scandanavian Alliance Mission. By 1917, Tharchin had managed to secure a Government scholarship to attend school and so relocated himself to Kalimpong to enter into the “Teacher Training” program being operated by the Scottish Union Mission. Having recently published two small Tibetan language primers, a Tibetan Primer with Simple Rules of Correct Spelling and The Tibetan Second Book, his knowledge of Tibetan brought him to the notice of W.S. Sutherland, a missionary who had spent the better part of forty years in the area of Kalimpong running a combination orphanage and missionary school, who quickly put Tharchin to work teaching Tibetan to a mixture of Bhutia and Tibetan boys in the orphanage. (more…)

Shiva Kumar Rai’s “Tibbatko Hullaak-path”, translated from the Nepali original by Pema Wangchuk Dorjee.

This seems to be the only post/story on the website so far, but I hope to see more such translations of our literary heritage.

Here’s an excerpt (I like the Onomatopoeiac chirling ghontyang):

This story is not of the present times, it’s from before Independence; from a time when trade between Tibet and India used to move from Bengal’s northern border town, Kalimpong. Those were the days of the British; China had not yet been able to swallow Tibet. Kalimpong had developed into the focal point of the Indo-Tibet trade. The town used to receive bales of wool and rolls of carpets from Tibet and send up pulses, rice, salt, and cooking oil, in fact, all essential commodities, to Tibet. The mule trains moving out of Kalimpong would pass through Sikkim’s Rangpo, Gnathang and pass into Tibet’s Chumbi valley to reach Lhasa. When the caravans moved, the chirling-chirling, ghontyang-ghontyang of bells chained around the necks of the mules would float to distant dales, across ridges and hills. This story is from the time when, with one of these mule trains, Kuley arrived at the Sikkim-Tibet border town of Gnathang.

That’s right, his name was “Kuley” indeed. Everyone called him Kuley. But that is not how things began. The name given to him by the Bahun was Kul Bahadur Thami, but the Nepalese end up using only the quick and the short variations. Take for example what happens when the government, with the intention that the people may walk comfortably, cuts reliable, winding and wide roads; the Nepalese however steal shortcuts and where the journey would have taken two hours, they are already walking through in one hour! They would have already fashioned a chor-baato and broken down travel-time by half before anyone notices. A Chor-Baato is not called so because thieves – chors – use it, but because the road itself has stolen time. Kuley was a victim of this, very Nepali habit. As far as the Bahun was concerned, he had drawn out a Dhalaut, checked the date and time of birth, and the child having been born under the sign of Taurus, the Bull, had written down Kul Bahadur Thami as the name in his birth charts. But Kuley’s own father played dirty with him…. “What’s this Kul Bahadur Thami… a short Kuley will do the job just as well”. And so it was Kuley for the mother, Kuley for the elder sister, the neighbours and soon he was Kuley for everyone.

Read the entire story at the Writing Sikkim blog.

————
www.kalimpong.info

kalimpong calling: A SEASON FOR SCAMS

Inimitable Kalimpong writer Mr. Prabin Moktan has a take on Kalimpong’s history of susceptibility to hucksters and scammers.

Kalimpong has long been the happy hunting ground of fraudsters hoping to make a quick buck. These mainly prey on two typically middle class vulnerabilities- greed and ignorance. A scam that is relatively fresh in memory is what local hacks call the Subham scam. A company suddenly sprang up out of nowhere and promised to make available all manner of goods- from electronics to clothing- at half of the Siliguri price. A few brave folks with excess liquidity tested the waters and to their surprise found that the promises were being kept. A 10K TV was actually being sold for 5K. And no these weren’t stolen goods. They came with bills and warranties. The news spread like wildfire and before long the store was packed with ‘customers’ booking their goodies against an ‘ advance payment’. Naysayers who questioned the credibility of that business model and tried to warn those whom they wished well were dismissed as being unduly alarmists – after all wasn’t the proof of the pudding in its eating?

Then one fine day the good people of Kalimpong woke up to find that Subham had vanished into thin air along with crores of advance payments.

Read the entire article here.

————
www.kalimpong.info

Our hills in its mist cloaked verdancy.. its monsoon avatar.

A slideshow by Mr. Chuck Basi.

MYREPUBLICA.com
SRADDA THAPA

As an avid reader of non-English writers who write in the English language, I’m convinced that it’s just a matter of months before the name of this 26-year-old Prajwal Parajuly will be on the tip of tongues around the world.

In fact, I daresay his name will be dropped in the same sentence as that of Prabal Gurung and Tshering Lama: as young folks who have achieved something spectacular, something unique to that of most Nepali aspirations, but something that can be appreciated by Nepalis and non-Nepalis alike.

From forcing The New York Times copy chief to acknowledge a grammatical error that passed the eyes of most readers to causing more than half a dozen literary agents at the London Book Fair “ some as far as South Africa “ to go on a scramble to sign him to getting accepted into Oxford University’s highly selective Master of Studies in Creative Writing, Parajuly has done it all.

Of course, those of us from or in the homeland will enjoy claiming him as one of ours, and how could we refrain? This Nepali-speaking Indian from Sikkim, with a father from Kalimpong and a mother from Nepal, has written a collection of short stories, chosen a literary agent “ by no means an ordinary feat for a short story collection “ and is currently picking out a publisher. The author of the tentatively titled Himalayan Sunset may still be toying with the title of his book and, yes, he’s young, but the sensitivity and experience emanating from his stories remind us of seasoned writers like Arundhati Roy and Chinua Achebe.

This will be the first time an author will have written a work of fiction in English combining both stories of Nepalis and Nepali-speaking Indians. However, even if the characters are Nepalis or Nepali-speaking Indians, the stories of traveling across oceans, migrating to new continents and searching for one’s identity will resonate with citizens around the world. After all, it’s not just middle-class girls from Kathmandu waiting for the arrival of their Green Cards, or young boys from Kalimpong delivering Chicken Tikka to tenants of apartments in Manhattan. Such tales of travel, tribulations and temptations surpass national boundaries and identities, yet they are some things citizens across the world can relate to.

Susan Yearwood, Prajwal’s UK-based literary agent, describes his writing as having a ‘strong authorial voice that is educated yet not stilted’ and adds that he reminds her of ‘Jhumpa Lahiri and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, who are world renowned for writing about people in countries we hardly hear about unless there is some kind of conflict going on.’

Yearwood is right. Nepal is experiencing a turbulent transition period and Nepali-speaking Indians are fighting for the declaration of Gorkhaland. But like the works of Lahiri and Adichie, Prajwal’s work will resonate with readers from across nations.

Parajuly has come a long way, from being the youngest columnist at The Himalayan Times, all at the age 17, to working as the editor-in-chief of the award-winning magazine, Detours: An Explorer’s Guide to the Midwest. Early last year, he quit his enviable position as advertising executive of The Village Voice, America’s flagship alternative weekly, and gave up a life of celeb-studded and red-carpet events to hit the dusty backroads of eastern Nepal and Northeast India.

Here’s an exclusive with our very own Prajwal Parajuly:

Prajwal, when you wrote this book, you quit your job at The Village Voice. What compelled you to leave a high-paying jet-lifestyle career in NYC to travel to eastern Nepal, India and Bhutan?

I was in Jackson Heights, Queens, in early September two years ago, at the much loved Himalayan Yak Restaurant. Imagine my shock and confusion when I picked a Nepali paper and took more time than I ever had to read a paragraph. It had been close to ten years since I last thought of the three different types of S’s (the letter). I was forgetting my own language. It was a sad feeling “ this realization that Nepali was gradually slithering into the background of my life. Couple that with not having written anything creatively for a long time, and you knew a book recipe had to be brewing in there somewhere (smiles).

The situation at the home front was a huge motivator, too. The Prashant Tamang [Indian Idol] victory had given the Gorkhaland movement a new impetus, and the Bhutanese refugee situation continued to nag me. There were so many stories out there that needed to be told that the world was unaware of. That’s where the serious idea to work on a book took birth. It took a few more weeks to incubate. My advertising executive job at The Village Voice was good, the money was decent, and the lifestyle it guaranteed was difficult to separate myself from. But making money and rubbing shoulders with folks whose names you enjoy dropping get old, as does steering away from having a conscience. And just like that, much to the chagrin of my parents, I quit. It was the best decision of my life, one that I haven’t regretted even in dreadful times like three weeks of perseverance yielding barely a hundred words of usable writing.

You are an English-trained student but a Nepali-speaking individual. Is this your only reason for choosing to write a story that’s distinctively ‘Nepali’ in the English language? Or were you interested in catering to an English-speaking Nepali or altogether foreign audience?

I write in English because it’s a language I’m comfortable with. I like to believe that my written Nepali isn’t too shoddy, either, and am considering, with the help of family members, translating my work into Nepali.

When I wrote my book, I didn’t have a reader in mind. I wrote the book for myself, to unleash all these stories that had been marinating inside me for sometime. The first draft of the book received interest from several Indian publishing houses and foreign literary agents, and I’ve signed with Susan Yearwood at the Susan Yearwood Literary Agency to represent my book for a variety of reasons. Because she’s primarily based in the U.K., the book might first be published there. It’ll come to South Asia soon after that.

Your childhood and hometown seem to have greatly influenced the contents of your writing “ of course, writers are to write what they know best “ but why did you choose identities and the Bhutanese experience of it being wrapped in?

I write about what’s happening around me, what’s happening to people I know. I’ve had an inchoate sense of what was happening in Bhutan, what problems third-country settlement brings with it. I’ve spent time in the refugee camps of Khudanabari in Nepal, and among refugees in Denver, USA, and also with Bhutanese people, to understand an issue that has often vilified Bhutan. What’s strange is that there’s been no real solution to the refugee problem at all and that’s pretty sad. Even if they do resettle down in Bhutan, two decades of their lives have been lost to doing nothing. It’s a heart-wrenching situation.

I’ve seen the way some people in these parts of the world have treated Muslims, so one of my stories deals with a Muslim Panwallah who’s done no wrong but still has to bear the brunt of being a minority. My stories are definitely loaded with such socio-political undertones. I try exploring caste/class/religion and identity dynamics while keeping the stories fresh and vibrant.

Stories of Bhutanese refugee aside, how much of reality do you incorporate into this collection? Are your characters, for instance, inspired or imagined?

Fiction in so many ways is inspired by reality. Most of my characters are people who’ve evolved from my own imagination, though. I concoct a character, create his or her Facebook page, decide what he or she likes, what his or her tastes in music, reading, hobbies are like. Often, I mix and match various people’s characteristics to come up with what I hope are believable and intriguing characters.

The issues are very real “ like the doctoring of H1B visas in America and the plight of DV Lottery winners “ but the people are often my own creation. A few similarities here and there are purely coincidental.

Your stories are works of fiction, but the settings are so real – from issues related to the plight of Nepali workers in the US to ethnic tensions in Gorkhaland and Nepal, to refugees being resettled. How did you arrive at these contexts and reconcile such backdrops with your stories?

As I said before, the issues described in the book are very real. Again, at the risk of sounding repetitive, I’ll say it’s easy to write about these issues when they are happening near you. I’ve noticed, for instance, in many Nepali-speaking I use the term because it’s more inclusive, it includes Nepali-speaking Indians, to households that a distance creeps in the relationship of fathers and daughters after the daughters reach puberty. To capture that in a story was the most natural thing to do.

I heard so many stories of rapes and molestations in the refugee camps of Khudanabari. If we think that domestic violence doesn’t exist in our society, we probably have been living on another planet. I’ve tried incorporating various aspects of what I see around me. Better still, I’ve tried incorporating into my stories various aspects of lives sometimes concealed.

Your characters are Nepalis and the setting relate to that of Nepalis whether they are children of Gurkha soldiers living in Kathmandu, students in the Northeast hills, or servants in New York City. How do you think non-Nepalis will be able to grasp and appreciate the Nepalipan of such stories?

Because irrespective of what language the characters speak, what class or caste they belong to, where in northeast India or Nepal they are from, at the end of the day, my characters aren’t very different from other people. They struggle with love, hatred, jealousy and temptation, ambition and relationships like everyone else in the world. We also, like any other race, have our idiosyncrasies, our quirks, no doubt, but non-Nepali-speaking readers should be able to identify with universal emotions. Quirks like our not being able to roll our tongues when we pronounce words like ship,international and shop for them to be sip, internasanal and sop which should delight a reader not familiar with Nepalipan. The way we chew our khaini is another one. Nepali-speaking people in foreign lands craving momos is another.

Not being able to sleep because you are desperate for momos may be quintessentially Nepali, Nepali-speaking or Tibetan, but having a hankering for foods from your homeland is a universal thing. How could non-Nepali readers not be able to grasp that?

In recent years, we in South Asia have seen a bourgeoning of Nepali writers in the English language who write for the English-speaking South Asians, but also for the wider English speaking audience. Are there other language groups you hope to attract and translate the book into? If so, which ones and why?

I went into writing this book with a closed mind. I wrote it to satisfy myself, to fulfill an important dream. As the work progressed, I became relatively more open-minded. If the book attracts readers from all over the world, then so be it. In fact, there’s nothing like it (Smiles). To be honest, it might be too early at this publishing stage to consider translations, although I’ll be lying if I said if I didn’t think of Hindi and Nepali translations.

Are you familiar with books published by Nepali and Indian writers in the English language?

I recently read a book called ‘New Nepal, New Voices,’ and I loved Sushma Joshi’s writing in it. Joshi’s was an amazing food-focused story. It was so well done. I thought Peter J. Karthak’s story was good, too. Among Indian authors, I think Arundhati Roy and Vikram Seth are brilliant. I’ve just begun reading Rohinton Mistry. He does such a great job of writing about a closeted world.

You’re currently pursuing a Masters at Oxford. How has your undergraduate education, work experience and writing helped, or hindered, the learning process at the institute?

The program is a Master of Studies in Creative Writing. I’ve just started it and it’s fabulous. I have excellent, award-winning writers for tutors and a group of likeminded individuals for fellow students. My cohorts are so talented and helpful! The kind of productivity being in such a company engenders is amazing. It’s so invigorating. You’re constantly writing, constantly thinking, and constantly being creative. Since starting school here, I’ve devoted more than a dozen back-to-back sixteen-hour days to editing sessions and writing a ninth story (Himalayan Sunset consists of nine stories. The book is 70,000-words-long). My agent, editor and I are finally satisfied with the script.

Any advice to new “ not just young! “ writers who’re interested in writing works of fiction, short stories, novels?

Writing is hard. You need dedication a lot of it. Often, you’ll sit in front of the computer for days, frustrated out of your mind because you haven’t been able to capture a father-daughter relationship effectively enough. However, if it’s what you really want to do, do it NOW because you’ll probably never do it if that sense of urgency is just not there. People have often asked me how I intend to monetize writing. My answer: I don’t care if I don’t make a penny out of it. I’ll be quick to admit that I’m not one of those people who think money is unimportant. It’s very important to me, but I don’t write to make money. I write because I’ll go crazy if I don’t. I can always make money from other avenues “ real estate, business, investments, etc. â and if it comes out of writing, sure, I’ll take it.

Finally, any other works we can watch out for?

I’ll start a novel now, an idea that makes my agent happy. I have a faint idea of what it’ll be about, but that’s all you’ll get from me now (smiles). It should be done by the end of 2012.

——-
3rd Oct 2011 – Update: Here’s an update on Prajwal Parajuly’s new publishing deal.
-Admin

————
www.kalimpong.info

The Telegraph

Mungpoo, May 9: On his 80th birthday on May 9, 1940, Rabindranath Tagore had enjoyed being wheeled around the bungalow at Mungpoo by K.B. Yonzon, a youth of 18 years then.

Seventy-years later, Yonzon, now 88, is among a handful of people who had witnessed probably the last of Tagore’s birthday celebrations before his death in August 1941.

“I was a worker of a Cinchona factory here and was assigned to take care of Gurudev during his stay. Around 300 villagers had gathered here on his 80th birthday with flowers and garlands. Gurudev had wished to be wheeled around the bungalow so that he could meet the people. I had taken him around and he was very happy,” Yonzon said at Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations here today.

Overwhelmed by the love and affection of the people, Tagore had penned three poems including Janmadin during his stay here which are still preserved in the Rabindranath Museum, now housed in the bungalow.

To Pratap Singh Ghatraj, the bard in flowing white hair had appeared like a “sadhu”. “I had attended his birthday celebration in 1940 as a 10-year-old with my mother. I was awed by his appearance because he looked like a sadhu,” Ghatraj, now 80, said.

The bungalow at Mungpoo, around 40km from Siliguri, wore a festive look today with people from all quarters flocking there to celebrate the poet’s birthday. School children in colourful dresses and local people performed folk dances, recited Tagore’s poems and sang Rabindra Sangeet.

The programme was jointly organised by the district administration, information and cultural department, directorate of cinchona and other medicinal plants, the Rabindra Memorial Model Labour Welfare Centre and the local people of Mungpoo.

Tagore had visited Mungpoo four times from 1938 to 1940 because of his love for the place and special bond with Maitreyi Devi, the daughter of his friend Surendranath Dasgupta. Memoirs of his stay here were published by Maitreyi Devi in her book Mungpoote Rabindranath translated into English as Tagore by Fireside .
————
www.kalimpong.info

The Telegraph – Archives
RAJEEV RAVIDAS

Neighbour Krishna Sharma in front of Gauripur House.
Picture by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha

Kalimpong, April 16: Had Rabindranath Tagore been alive, he might have been moved to pen an elegy on the approaching death of the bungalow from where he had recited his poem, Janmodin (Birthday), live on the national radio more than 70 years ago.

Almost four weeks short of another anniversary of the recitation (that took place in 1938), it is difficult to imagine that Gauripur House on Hill Top used to be one of the favourite summer destinations of the Nobel Laureate.

The two-storied bungalow, owned by B.K. Roychowdhury of Calcutta, is on a scenic hill, near here, and is surrounded by lots of greenery.

Tagore had visited the bungalow three-four times and stayed as a guest of the Roychowdhurys.

However, the building is in need of serious repair.

Thick foliage has grown all over the house, the windows are broken, and the interiors are in a bad shape too.

Even the unmetalled approach road, which is part of the property, had seen better years. Wild growths have all but hidden most of the stretch.

“We had requested the government to take over the house and convert it into a museum on many occasions, but to no avail,” said M.K. Bhattacharya, a professor of political science at Kalimpong College.

Biswanath Paul, principal of a cooperative training centre that ran from the ground floor of the bungalow from the fifties to the late nineties, said he had approached the former chairman of the DGHC, Subash Ghisingh, with a request to acquire and preserve the building as a heritage property, but without much success.

“The bungalow can be revived as a heritage home (read hotel). It should get a good number of visitors,” Paul said over the phone from Siliguri.

There is no dearth of tourists to the place even now. It is a must-see, especially for the Bengalis.

“Tourists keep coming here frequently. Most of them go back with bitter-sweet memories of the place,” said Sangita Sharma, who lives with her husband on the first floor of the bungalow.

Her family has been the caretakers of the building for three generations now.

Sangita’s 80-year-old mother Krishna, who lives in a house just below the compound of the bungalow, recalled meeting Tagore as a child.

“I remember him as an old man with a khadal (wooden slippers). I was very young then. We were scared of going near the bungalow,” Krishna said.

Whatever could have been the reasons for little Krishna’s fear all those years ago, for people like Bhattacharya, Paul and his wife Bani, a retired professor of Sanskrit of Kalimpong College, the fear is that their efforts to preserve the place might never bear fruit.

————
www.kalimpong.info

The Telegraph

Siliguri, April 13: Children attending the 40-odd Lepcha night schools in the three hill subdivisions of Darjeeling will find a treasure trove of knowledge about their community in the second edition of the Lepcha-English Encyclopaedic Dictionary that will be introduced in the institutions soon.

The book was published in October last year.

“The first Lepcha-English dictionary was compiled by General G.B. Mainwaring, an Englishman, in 1898. However, the first dictionary compiled by an indigenous Lepcha, K.P. Tamsang, was published in 1980. The book went out of stock and we undertook the task of coming out with the second edition by adding more words about the community’s religion, flora and fauna and natural resources,” Lyangsong Tamsang Lepcha, the editor of the second edition, told The Telegraph today. (more…)