Laxmi Prasad Devkota in English

‘Romans might not feel so proud of their Caesar.’

That is a sentence from Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s essay describing King Mahendra’s 1956 crowning ceremony in his book, Coronation Day in Kathmandu and Other Essays.

Devkota is honoured as Nepal’s Great Poet (महाकवि) and mostly wrote essays, epics and poetry in Nepali language. His English was elaborate, effusive, and followed the grandiose style of the day.

‘I felt that if this delicate golden thread snapped, a long trail of woes and confusions would ensue,’ he wrote in fulsome praise of the monarchy. Devkota died of lung cancer three years after Mahendra’s coronation.

The book has 27 other essays in English on various subjects and they range from tirades, odes, satires, to experiments of the imagination where Devkota invents a situation to make a point. His writings are characterised by an unrelenting barrage of metaphor.

‘But it is his type that have on the strength of mustard leaves, maize pulp or nettle lifted our nation into military glory!’ gushes Devkota about the miserable yet enduring lives of ‘The Wood Cutters of Nepal’. Although he was appointed Minister of Education in 1957, Devkota himself was used to hard times -- he writes about ducking creditors and how 12 pay days in a year are all he lives for.

Devkota had a deep understanding of and love for Nepal, yet he is brutal in his criticism. ‘The Electric Bulb’ was written out of deep frustration about a feeble light bulb so dim he could not work at night.

These lines could be written about contemporary Nepal: ‘Dependence is a national virtue, with a verbal swagger about age-long independence. As a nation we have no vision and no attempt at self-sufficiency. We have no contribution to an advancing globe.’

He makes similar acidic observations about Indians: ‘The Benarasi is a true gentleman or political scoundrel whose god is pelf and creed. He intellectualises goondaism till it becomes a fine social art.’

Devkota understands the importance of tradition, pointing out how religious rituals bring with them discipline and exercise. Yet, in ‘The Joint Family and the Mother-in-Law,’ he describes how it is untenable for the whole clan to live under the same roof. Mother and wife fight for attention from the husband or son and play nasty tricks of jealousy on each other.

In ‘A Dream in Politics’ Devkota conjures up himself dreaming that his wife has become a powerful politician. He then details how a candidate might start out with the best intentions, but would eventually see how impossibly corrupt it all was and resort to greed and unkept promises.

Devkota’s literary achievements would have been great no matter what language he had been born into. The essays provide intimate details of his life as a writer, father, husband, and political adviser. They also are historical accounts of Nepal and Kathmandu at the time, and what stands out is how much Hinduism and the caste system seem to be a part of everyday life.

In ‘Pleasure in Humiliation’ Devkota details his cash-poor student days when he had to borrow textbooks from friends because he could not afford his own. He tutored English six hours a day to get by. He struggles in science subjects, but seems to have an aptitude and memory for the English language.

In one exam, after only two days of study, Devkota scores 75%, while his Rana classmates score much less. He tutors his classmates and is once summoned by a grandfather who complains about his higher scores in English. But he is vindicated when another tutor verifies his marks.

There are parts of essays that are so dense and verbose that they are hard to read. In ‘Against Literature’ Devkota tries to make the point that a lot of contemporary writing had become insincere and removed from original experience.

“If the beat of our heart must be rendered artificial or unnatural by the very intrusion of special attention upon its function, we may reasonably ask whether literature which is its expression as an over-conscious business may not be an abnormal expression in mechanical terms of the spiritual life of man, so often felt as the elusive quality of inner emotion harped upon with such frequency by the masters of the literary trade.’

See what I mean? All he is trying to say is that one should write how one feels, not how you think you should feel.

The book was reprinted recently by FinePrint, and we do not know if the typos and mistakes in grammar were in the original. Nevertheless: a good way to be introduced to Nepal’s greatest poet via the English language.