Beyond countryhood
Throughout my life, I've always had a strong attachment to things Indian. When I was a young boy, I loved travelling from Kathmandu through Uttar Pradesh, through towns with names such as Gonda and Bahraich and Nanpara, in order to reach Nepalgunj in western Nepal, where my father was stationed. I devoured novels by Gulshan Nanda and Amrita Pritam. As I grew older, my obsession with Hindi films began. Much to the delight of my lady relatives, I frequently acted out Rajesh Khanna singing "Mere sapnonki rani" from Aradhana, and wooing Sharmila Tagore. I knew by heart all of Kishore Kumar's songs from the plethora of movies of the 1970s whose names began with an 'A' – Aradhana, Andaz, Anand, Amar Prem, Anurag, Anurodh. In my early teens, I ran away from home to Calcutta and Delhi for an entire month, just so I could watch Hindi movies all day long. Later, I spent a whole year in Bombay, skipping classes at Narsi Monji College, to place myself before the big screens of the Eros and Regal cinemas. Needless to say, my spoken Hindi was not only good but immaculate; and given my dark complexion, I easily passed off as an Indian no matter where I travelled in the country.
Later, when I migrated to America and my interest in writing began, once more it was my neighbours to the south whose literary outpourings shaped the direction of my own fiction. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's insider-outsider observations of India helped me to realise that there was much to be written about the small daily affairs of the people of our region. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children demonstrated to me the vastness of the landscape of Southasia. I read voraciously the works of R K Narayan, Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry and Anita Desai. Now, after having published three books of my own, I still seek out work by authors from the Subcontinent. I read them with an acute sense of awareness that these are my contemporaries – that I, a Nepali by birth and a US resident by choice, also belonged to another group, one whose literary interests and concerns I shared with a passion that transcended any narrow sense of national identity that might have come with being a Nepali.
If my previous statement sounds unpatriotic to some, so be it. I am openly contemptuous of patriotism of the ra! ra! type, the kind that makes otherwise reasonable people riot when, say, a celebrity says something mildly derogatory about one's country. Perhaps my contempt is a reaction to the forced nationalism of the days of the so-called 'partyless' Panchayat system, when the king's aspirational maxims – touting sovereignty, national loyalty, crown-worship, and a vague 'Nepalipan' – bombarded us on the state-run Radio Nepal and Gorkhapatra, as well as on city billboards. That the 'Nepal' being shoved down our throats at that time was fabricated has been amply proven by the massive political upheavals the country has faced over the last couple of decades, starting with the 1990 pro-democracy movement, through the traumatic Maoist insurgency, and now with the utter and humiliating dissolution of monarchy.
New boundaries
My self-identity spills across the border not only due to my literary interests, but also because of blood. My sister fell in love with and married a Bengali when they were studying together at Calcutta Medical College. This is one of the most romantic stories that I know, more authentic and heart-warming than all of the Rajesh Khanna-Sharmila Tagore combos that captured my imagination as a young boy. Little wonder, then, that I have never identified, even remotely, with the very strong anti-Indian sentiment that runs among many Nepalis. Over the years, I have found my countrymen and -women badmouthing Indians in all type of places – in cafeterias, on Internet chat sites, even at momo gatherings in Chicago and Boston.
I'm not even speaking about the understandable resentment of the denizens of a landlocked country towards the government of a big neighbour that enjoys flexing its muscle every now and then. Rather, I'm talking about the people-to-people loathing that makes even educated Nepalis curse the 'dhotis' for every ill, real and imagined. In the company of such epithets, I feel – ridiculously, I admit – like declaring that my brother-in-law is a nicer and smarter guy than many Nepalis I know. I want to say that I feel more affection and love for my two nephews, with their distinctly Bengali faces, than I do for those people in my own country whom I do not know. Blood is thicker than countryhood, I have learned over the years. I love visiting my sister's house in Chinsurah, near Calcutta, and waking up in the morning to the cool winds from the Ganga. I cannot eat enough Bengali sweets, especially sondesh and misti doi; I relish mimicking my nephews when their tongues unleash rapid-fire Bengali. I love negotiating the crowded bazaars of New Market and College Street.
Interestingly, "not Nepali enough" is an accusation I've frequently heard about my own fiction from critics in Kathmandu. I don't mind. Ossified notions of what it means to be a Nepali are the last things my country needs right now. I consider myself fortunate that my borders began to loosen at an early age, even before I left Nepal for America in the mid-1980s. Now, I'm facing a new expansion of my mental territory. My daughter, born in Ohio but resembling in more ways than I care to admit, has begun to call herself an American. I'm beginning to wonder how many borders I have yet to cross.
~ Samrat Upadhyay is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Indiana University, Bloomington.