Nepal

19 February is known is Nepal’s national day, and is also known as Democracy Day—the day commemorates the establishment of democracy in Nepal in 1950, following the end of the Rana regime, an autocracy.

Until recently, Nepal was the only officially Hindu nation in the world—in 2006, the country was declared a secular state. On 28 December 2007, a bill was passed declaring Nepal a federal democratic republic—if the rule of the current government continues after elections in April this year, the current king, Gyanendrah Shah will be the last king of Nepal.

Initially I had a hard time finding good translations of Nepali poems—until, that is, I found the wonderful anthology Himalayan Voices: An Introductions to Modern Nepali Literature, edited and translated by Michael James Hutt. After I found this collection, which I’ve been poring over this afternoon, the difficulty then became which poem and poet to choose.

I eventually settled on the poet Lakshmīprasād Devkoṭā, who Hutt cites as the single most important poet in modern Nepali poetry. He died in 1959, so he lived to see the institution of Democracy.

The poem I’ve chosen is from a series of poems, Munā and Madan. While Hutt writes that it was minor in comparison to the work that followed it, he states that it “represented something of a watershed in the development of Nepali literature. The series is based on an old Newār folktale: this source material interests me because of its focus on an already existing, oral literary tradition. In this way that it is engaging with national identity by looking inward.


Munā Pleads with Mudan

Madan:
I have only my mother, my one lamp of good auspice,
do not desert her, do not make her an orphan,
she has endured nigh sixty winters,
let her take comfort from your moonlight face.

Muna:
Shame! For your love of your mother
could not hold you here,
not even your love for your mother!
Her hair is white and hoary with age,
her body is weak and fragile.
You go now as a merchant
to a strange and savage land,
what’s to be gained, leaving us for Lhasa?
Purses of gold
are like the dirt on your hands,
what can be done with wealth?
Better to eat only nettles and greens
with happiness in your heart.


—Lakshmīprasād Devkoṭā
translated Michael James Hutt
from Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature