Essayist's Deep Dive Into Social Reality

The essay is considered the youngest genre in Nepali literature. The modern Nepali essay began with the publication of essays by Balkrishna Sama and Laxmi Prasad Devkota in Sarada in 1991 B.S. Shankar Lamichhane gave new impetus to this genre when he published his experimental essay in Ruprekha in 2017 B.S. His stream of consciousness style also marked the third stage of the Nepali essay that has been further nurtured by Krishnachandra Singh Pradhan, Durga Bhandari, Uttam Kunwar, Abhi Subedi, Sharada Sharma and Krishna Dharabasi. Yubaraj Nayaghare has been following their footsteps but he has carved his own distinctive place, with his original style and linguistic flair. 

A winner of the prestigious Madan Puraskar, Nayaghare has excelled in subjective essays that reflect the author's personal feelings, impressions and ideas. They offer a unique perspective on the situation through the essayist's subjective lens and emotional expression. With 19 essays to his credit, Nayaghare has already achieved his milestone in this genre. In his essays, he directly interacts with society. Aagoko Biu is his latest anthology of 26 essays. In it, he minutely dissects diverse subjects and shows his serious concerns about the anomalies infesting society.

Nayaghare has used every day conversational language. Instead of writing all the essays in a subjective style, had Nayaghare written a few pieces in the objective style, we would have seen variation in his essays and it would have presented him as a more versatile writer.  His essays depart from traditional essays, embracing subjectivity, irony, intertextuality and social critique, which are defining characteristics of postmodernist writing.

Like the postmodernist essayists Dharabashi, Govinda Raj Bhattarai, Nayan Raj Pandey, Sanjeev Upreti, Nayaghare breaks away from the classical writers and experiments with both form and content of essays, which are more relatable and compel us to question our existing reality. Nayaghare’s writing is creative yet analytical, fragmented yet deeply human, and reflects the complexities of a postmodern world in both theme, structure and content. Like several young essayists, like Nayan Raj Subba, Sabin Priyadarshi, Anup Baral, Nayaghare’s essays are a blend of personal experiences with social critique. Introspective exploration of complexities of human life becomes the subject of most of his essays in this collection.

In the essay ‘Chalda Chaldai Jiwan Dhulo’, he shows individual’s relentless struggles in life, while in ‘Buwako Goji’, which literally translates to ‘Father’s Pocket’ shows how the father struggles to support his children. ‘Father keeping seemingly insignificant receipts carefully in pocket shows how a father’s life ends struggling to fulfill family’s necessities, which is similar to the lives of many fathers in our society. Likewise, ‘Aryaghatma Gadhi Hernu Hudaina’ meditates on death. In this essay, he shows how transient life is and how it can come to an abrupt end at any time. All his essays are the portrait of human life, the contemporary socio-economic milieu and innate human emotions.  

‘Athakit Thuk,’ which translates to ‘relentless spitting,’ in English, is a truly engaging essay in this collection. The writer satirises the spitting habit of Nepalis in this essay. While mocking this habit of spitting everywhere, he draws on the instances of how he found people spitting everywhere.  He shows that even the federal parliament and Tribhuwan University are not spared from this habit of people spitting everywhere. He shows how our habit of spitting everywhere, including public buses and tourist sites, attests to our poor civic sense, for which we are often ridiculed abroad. 

He also ridicules the caste system prevalent in our society by recounting the moment when his mother removes her blouse while performing the ‘shradddha’ ritual. This ability of ridiculing the human habit and the social evils, which too are in a way products of human traits, is striking. Readers will thoroughly enjoy this particular essay, filled with humorous notes.

Nayaghare asserts he mostly writes of characters and subjects that are off the radar of the community, but those make a difference in the workings of society. He certainly has written about topics that are often ignored or overlooked by society. In an interview published in The Kathmandu Post, he says, “Read the components of society: economics, culture, politics, and technology. And then you have to write, of course - write a lot. You have to develop the skill of telling much more with much fewer words.” However, this assertion does not apply in this collection; no doubt he has a vast knowledge of socio-political issues, but his writing is far from concise, at least in this collection.

When reading the essays of an acclaimed writer, it’s natural for readers to bring their biases and expectations. As the reader response theory of Louis Tyson asserts, the meaning of the text is not fixed within the text but is produced through the interaction between the reader and the text itself. When a writer’s reputation overshadows the text, readers often approach the text with a certain predisposition, anticipating depth, brilliance, or literary innovation. It can both shape and distort the interpretation of the text. 

In my case, before reading the essays, I had very high expectations, but when I found the style of writing each essay similar to another, as a reader, I had a sense of discontent as I craved for change. I expected something very thought-provoking, something that would be canonical that would be adapted by textbooks or something like that. 

The essays have a similar style, so the readers anticipating depth, innovation or uniqueness can be disappointed by an analogous and conversant style. 

(Adhikari is a journalist at this daily.)