Lil Bahadur Chettri, 93

“I do not know if I will survive till then,” Lil Bahadur Chettri said to  visitors last month in Guwahati while the city’s tightly knit Nepali-speaking community was preparing to mark the author’s 93rd birthday on 1 March. 

Chettri was frail, but his mind was sharp as he recalled to the visitors from Nepal how his classic novel बसाइँ (Basain) was first published in 1958. 

Lil Bahadur Chettri did attend his birthday on 1 March with the launch of a collection of his novels, लीलबहादुर क्षत्री उपन्यास समग्र, but the multi-award winning author died on 13 March at his home in Guwahati.

At least two generations of Nepalis know Basain almost by heart because it was a literature textbook at Tribhuvan University. Like thousands of others, Chettri’s family migrated to Assam from the mountains of eastern Nepal, and the novel was about push factors like indebtedness, poverty and discrimination that were driving Nepalis out..

The novel nearly never got printed, Chettri recalled in the recent meeting. He had sent the manuscript to Kamal Dixit in Kathmandu of Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, and after not hearing from him thought it was not good enough to be printed.

“One day, a friend from Darjeeling came to have me autograph my own book, and I did not even know it had been published,” Chettri remembered with a chuckle. 

Basain went on to become a bestseller, and has much resonance 70 years later since the push factors driving outmigration from Nepal are still the same, even as the volume of people leaving has grown. 

Chettri wrote in a preface to the first edition of Basain in 1958: 'Do Nepalis leave their homes because they wish to? Perhaps that is true for many of them, but for others it is quite a different matter. I chose the misery and mystery that lie at the root of this as the theme of Basain.’

Basain was translated into English in 2008 on the 50th anniversary of its first publication by Michael J Hutt of the School of African and Asian Studies with the title Mountains Painted with Turmeric. But in a cruel irony, Tribhuvan University a few years ago removed Basain from its list of required reading for Nepali literature students.

In the get-together with members of Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya in Guwahati last month, the author needed help to walk into his living room. Faltering in his speech at first, he grew more and more animated during the one hour meeting as he remembered fondly the respect he got whenever he visited Nepal.

Chettri lived with his son and his family, and slept in a bedroom full of books that he called “my jungle”. His daughter-in-law Kalpana was surprised how much meeting the guests from Nepal invigorated him.

“Your visit has been like medicine for him,” she said. “We hear him talking to his books at night.” When it was time to leave, Lil Bahadur Chettri walked unassisted to the door to bid the visitors from Nepal good bye.

Lil Bahadur Chettri was born on 1 March 1933 in Guwahati of Assam state in India. In 2016, he was awarded the Jagadamba Shree prize by Madan Puraskar Guthi in Nepal and got the Padma Shri from the President of India in 2021 for his contribution to literature and education. He was also a recipient of India’s Sahitya Academy Award for his book ब्रह्मपुत्रको छेउछाउ.

In his Jagadamba Shree acceptance speech nine years ago, Lil Bahadur Chettri had said: “Our ancestors left Nepal, and have been living outside for generations. But for us, our Nepali culture with its language, literature is still precious to us.”