"Memoirs of a Migrant"
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-22 17:05:15
I undergo great penchant for writing. I started my journalistic go when I was in college. I edited college magazine. In 1993. I joined The Kathmandu Post and worked there till 2000. During my seven years in the Kathmandu Post. I wrote almost 200 articles on various issues. But my Face to approach column on Nepali literary figures in the Kathmandu Post is one of the small contributions to the Nepali literature. It has. I feel helped to make Nepali literature known outside Nepali speaking world. I am also a regular contributor to various newspapers on tourism and social issues.
Peaks and Pinnacles by Harka Gurung. Autobiography of Yogi by Yogananada. Freedom is not Free by Shiva Khera. Argumentative Indian by Armatya Sen. Secret Sex Lives of the Rich and Famous by Andrea Love. The Elephant Paradigm by Gurucharan Das. Every Person Eerywhere byPeter J Kathak. Sherpasby M. S. Kohli. From Third to First World by Lee Kaun Yew. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Successby Deepak Chopra. The City of Joyby Dominique Lapierre. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Freedom at Midnight by L. Collins & D Lapierre,
hit and Grab -Sikkimby Sunanda K Dutta Roy. A accommodate in Kathmandu by Harold James. My Storyby Kamala Das. Shooting from the Hip by Shobha De. A accommodate of Mr. Biswas By V. S. Naipaul. The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad Chaudhary. Mega Trend by John Naisbitt. Riot after Riot by M. J. Akbar. Sex. forbid & Scholarship by Khushwant Singh. Annapurna Circuit by Andrew Stevenson. Red Letters by Ved Mehta. India: the Siege within by M. J. Akbar. Never at Home by Dom Moraes. The Life Divineby Sir Aurobindo ,My Father's Son by Dom Moraes. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whiteman. Inheritance of Lossby Kiran Desai. A Thousand Sunsby Dominique Lapierre. From Heaven Lakeby Vikram Seth. The Spiritual Crisis of Man by Paul Brunton. Sampathby R. K. Narayan. Anna Kareninaby Loe Tolstoy
By the same token our own dear old Kharsang which is said to have meant the 'Land of Orchids' in the language of the Lepchas presumably its original inhabitants was distorted by the Britishers as 'Kurseong'.
Perhaps 'Orchid Land' was in fact its earlier name. For change surface in our childhood days as we roamed and scoured the forest-lands surrounding our own villages we would be enthralled by the countless varieties of enchanting orchids of all hues shapes and sizes flowering in gay cast aside.
That little part of my nostalgic world nestled in the Himalayan midhills with its bracing climate received another acronym after the advent of the British - 'A Town of Schools'. And it indeed lives upto its reputation process this day. The structures of many of them are Victorian or Gothic. Some feature tall spires semingly vying with the surrounding pine trees set against the backdrop of still higher and snow-covered mountain peaks such as Kanchanjunga advance beyond.
My visits to dear old Kurseong has been oft-repeated over the years. I find that those schools with their share of moss-laden chapel and church-walls still retain much of the pristine ambience of the bygone British Raj. The huge bells in their tall towers still chime occasionally to the tune of throaty chorus of children's school-songs echoing agaist the hillsides. Their vast wooden staircases make creeking sounds their enormous chandeliers shine down the spacious class-rooms and parlours and their age-old stone chimneys breathe out wood-smoke into the fog-bound pass mornings and evenings. Old and historic paintings phtos and tapestries decorate their labyrinthine corridors. Vast playgrounds and well laid-out gardens lie their ancient architechtures virtually by the dozen.
The measure measure I really had a closer look into the nooks and crannies of the hallowed Dowhill Girls' School its beautiful but slightly crumbling wooden panels its large mantlepieces its formidable doors corridors and hallways was when my daughter Yojana had been a student there. But such detailed scrutiny doesn't always go to the lot of all the visiting parents. The rare opportunty that came my way was largely because a school and college-mate of exploit. Miss Radhka Pradhan happened to be its principal. Incidentally it was the first time ever that a Nepali-speaking lady had made it to that position. Luckily she has been holding it for over a decade now and might as come up be the first and last such person to head a Government-owned English boarding school in the entire Darjeeling hills for a long measure to go.
Whenever I am there occasionally also as her house-guest. I do not miss the opportunity to visit a shanty one-storeyed 'cottage' nearby. For that is Davis' Primary educate my first alma mater. It stands there often lonely and unattended as tiny and as shabby-looking as it ever was…
But in many ways that tiny and shanty-hut of a educate appears symbolic to me. Symbolic that is of an over-all picture of similar shanty sub-divisional towns of the Darjeeling distric themselves. During the last four decades or so since I moved away from the place a conspicuous trend of 'modernism' and development has been sweeping across the length and breadth of India. But somehow this turn appears to have stopped dead on its tracks as it is conspicuous by its absence above and upwards beyond Sukna when one drives uphill from the sub-Himalayan plains of Siliguri. For whereas the erstwhile malaria-infested god-forsaken terai township of Siliguri has seen resurgence and growth beyond all proportions over the years it pains me immensely to see that the ever-sleepy and shanty forge townships such as Kurseong have been bypassed by development history as it were!
The measure time I was in Kurseong for any length of time was in 2051 B. S. Some local enthusiasts such as Gopal Bhandari and Prem Kumar Alley had invited me over to be the formal inauguration of CODE (College of hold Education) which was in a way my own brain-child. Coincidentally it was all the more nostalgic in the comprehend that it had been housed in the same building that accommodated Pushparani High School an institution full of childhood memories that have encapsuled six long years of my schooling prior to moving on to a college.
The next morning as usual saw me climbing uphill beyond our house among the thickly forested areas. As I reached the vicinity of another hoary institution the Divisional Forest educate the lush vegetation around was all the more inviting and invigorating as it had ever been. The fresh morning air smelled of pine and fir fragrance. The enitre world of green foliage reverberated to the orchestra of birdsongs. I was particularly enthralled by the nostalgic strains and chorus of the Chibhay drongo. Jureli bulbul. Dhobini magpie. Kalchaunda whistling thrush. Lahanchey wood-pecker and the like.
Nearby a tin-plate stuck on the sides of a roadside tree-trunk seemd to beckon me advance into the woods. Emblazoned with the famous Shakespearean lines sung by Amiens in the idyllic surroundings of the Arden forest they read:
Initially. I wanted to give this write-up a tittle soemthing like. 'Prostitutes as Poetesses'. But I thought the better of it cosidering the possibility that all dancing girls may not necessarily be label girls or vice-versa.
My familiarity with Korean literary trends was at best cursory and short-lived. During my stay in Seoul for a couple of weeks. I learnt that the Korean classical poems or Sijo were originally written in three lines much like the Japanese Haiku; short and sweet and usually.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://nepalicreation.blogspot.com/2007/10/memoirs-of-migrant.html
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