A Letter from My Writer Persona

Dear Maldai

I dwell inside you but consider it appropriate to call you daai. I admit that I took form within you only when you learned to scribble and realized that what you heard oldies recite through books emerged through human hands. Do you recall the days when you chanced to get hold of a dot pen and went on scribbling lines rampantly wherever you could spot an even surface for that pen to glide through with imperceptible marks? It must have been those childish antics in the eyes of your kinsfolk and for yourself a newfound joy of being able to imitate baa. But I too saw the birth of myself there, the nascent writer crawling through palms, elbows, knees, thighs, leaves, barks, planks, slates, and whatnot.

I took birth and sought expression time and again. Your donkey years of schooling, higher education, job, family building, status gaining, and duty performing kept me alive. You did give me a lot of space, though at times I may have felt malnourished. The disappearance of poems you wrote during your school days owing to shiftings appeared almost to sacrifice the poor baby inside you. But you kept it breathing and nourished it massively after the political change of 1990. Remember the parody “Panche he Panche”? How that had gone viral within a week? If it were the days like today, you and I would gain overnight and indelible fame for this and other numbers we crafted. I felt I had stood up firm and gained full utterance in public.

You mainly gave me a place in lyrics and poems. When you began to realize the romantic yet penury-struck youngster within you, the best catharsis you could ever imagine was through me. You can call those years the most expressive years of your life, no matter how down-to-earth your languages were. If you had continued that spirit, you would probably have risen high in three genres—poetry, lyrics, and music—with singing the key marker of your identity as a creative fellow.

Maldai, you must treasure the journals you wrote since the beginning of 1999. How many are there stacked lovingly here or there in your racks? I can feel my metamorphosis in those pages. Yet, look how you are composing these lines—not you of those days. Just check the earliest pages of this journal to know how shabby your handwriting has turned into now. I remember that you wanted to make handwriting as beautiful as your heart and as pure as your thoughts. Not that your heart and thoughts are malnourished and polluted now, but that your hands are ever hurried and restless to close the page for an indefinite time. These pages here testify to your desire not to give up, though your schedules are likely to dump this journal for ages.

You teach writing. This makes me happy and excited that I have never been ignored. When you speak, you speak me. When you give examples, you project me. When someone inquires who you are, you bear my persona and shape your expressions. The best dimensions you adhere to include uniqueness, novelty, and referentiality. However small the expressions born out of the intent of defamiliarization, you inscribe them on your devices and post them on social networks. These days, I live more on Facebook than in notebooks. And I live in small lines emblematic of your peek into the seriously mundane and mundanely serious things around. Thus, I have no courage to blame you for passivity and neglect. I have reasons, though.

On the bleaker side, I feel pity on you when I behold half a dozen book-ready drafts waiting for accomplishments. What of the complete collection of Nepali poems, another collection of English poems, and a compilation of essays in Nepali? I am sure the ramblings after Midlife Montage still make a thick volume. Your research publications on rhetorics qualify for such a handbook for the readers of rhetorical studies. Do you realize the assignments you crafted for the recently earned Master in Higher Education will still be another publication? While you continue amassing lines such as these out of the fear of atrophy, you must also ensure preventing your useful creations from atrophying due to neglect.

You recently started writing two thoughtful pieces. The first, the usual ‘Priya Raghuji’ epistle, is likely to receive critical acclaim if you complete it early and email it to Raghuji for posting on his favorite site. The reflections on the general apathy towards public education and the nation at large, and your perennial advocacy for the upgrade of Nepali society will certainly disappoint some of your friends and relatives, let alone the readers from the mass. But I am willing to face the tirades, if any, while admiration would not flatter you. I feel I am still undernourished because your engagements with books are so sporadic these days. Your second thoughtful craft is the elaboration of “seven questions that shaped my life.” I am wondering when it will see the sunlight. Based on the outline you have left, I sense that you are waiting to let me emerge as the most mature and intellectually communicative being.

Maldai, you are sometimes reasonably adamant about giving me only selective public appearances. I don’t know how many folks buy the idea, but you are a staunch believer in knowledge- and wisdom-worthy craft. You have shunned the mechanical production of mediocre or even below-average pieces of writing. You do not want me to be shopped amongst tabloids on the plea of counts. But while you adhere to genuine intellectual authorship, you must also take heed of the need for frequency in which professors of your stature should publish. Do not succumb to mediocrity, both in thoughts and crafts. Give your readers what you and I are best to produce. But do not either keep me busy in private and leave me barely noticed in public.

You appear more occupied with your frequently inhibiting health than with the perennially inviting writing career. You know that, by fate or by faith, you have come to the proximity of an emerging knowledge hub of Kathmandu. You can now establish yourself with a firmer foothold at the intellectual foundation of Kathmandu University. I claim that you KU folks must now look outward beyond the academic walls of career progression and disciplinary recognition. Those who made marks in the country’s ideascape from your institution may count on fingers. Even if you cannot raise your stature beyond the walls of KU, you must not ignore the prospect of nurturing authors from among the scholars you mentor. And do not ignore your boys. The older is a creator of his own merits at par with the demands of his discipline, architecture. The younger has a gem of a writer germinating within. He is your reader and an emulator. Make him read and write, and make sure to read and write him.

Maldai, I want to be featured more in your self-imposed writing mandates. Start that feat with your undergraduate students soon. “Small People Small Tales” and “Three Good Questions to My Tutor” will still be relevant to young students, while “Challenge Thy Tutor in a Style” and “Review, Response, Reflection” will work best with the Masters and MPhil folks. Finally, I am already hopeful about your chance of completing the exploration of canons in the one-slide stories you crafted for the MELOW conference in February 2020. We must resume the project.

More later hai. I will keep poking you.

YWP