Review of Mauli: A transnational tale of Nepali cultures and history

- Dhirendra Kumar Shah teaches English at SRM University Sikkim

The regional turn in Indian writing for the last several years has made available an array of translated fiction for readers at home and abroad. In our neck of the woods too, a proliferation of translations of Nepali fiction into English seems to be pushing the fortunes of Indian Nepali Literature towards a zeitgeist. Anurag Basnet’s Fruit of the Barren Tree (Phulange), Ajit Baral’s Songs of the Soil (Fatsung), Prawin Adhikari’s Long Night of Storm: Stories (Raat Bhari Huri Chalyo ra Aru Kathaharu) and Manjushree Thapa’s There is a Carnival Today (Aaja Ramita Chha) have all been translated by reputed national publishers, allowing these stories to be read for the first time by a wider audience. Now with the current Rachna Books publication of Badrinarayan Pradhan’s Mauli translated by Anmole Prasad, it is possible for general readers to immerse in a quintessential Nepali tale and for scholars to theorize on the gendered discourse of borders, nationalism, and homeland. Mauli is written in the tradition of Nepali writings on migration, joining the ranks of classics such as Asit Rai’s Naya Chitij ko Khoj (1981) and Lil Bahadur Chhetri’s Brahmaputra ka Chewchaw (1986).

Mauli records the achingly poignant chronicle of the eponymous protagonist from her girlhood to adulthood, from the trappings of her elite English education in Darjeeling to the reconditioning with her cultural roots in Nepal. The novel is loosely set between the period from the Tunisian Campaign of the British in 1942-43, followed by the World War, India’s Independence, the Nepali Congress Revolution against the Rana regime, and the Sino-Indian War in 1962. These epochal vicissitudes of transnational history form the backdrop to Mauli’s search for fulfilment in the pastoral Terai plains of Nepal as she confronts and conquers marital discord, loss, and widowhood. The novel is also an allegory of the postcolonial condition abounding in literal and metaphoric crossing of borders – borders of language, history, culture, and the arbitrary borders of nations.

In addition to Mauli, the cast of characters include her father Chandraman, an affluent landowning patriarch enjoying the polygamous privileges of his extended family. His elder wife lives in Ilam with her children and their wives, away from the scorching heat of Jhapa where her husband makes a fortune from his plantation estates. When Mauli comes to live with her in Ilam for a few months, she overcomes her initial reservations for her sauta’s daughter, and reorients Mauli to Nepali culture, art, language, food, and attire. In time, Mauli sloughs off her ersatz English and puts on the traits of a Nepali woman arrayed in a fariya. Then there is Bishwambhar, a rogue husband from Darjeeling who wheedles his way into a marriage of convenience with the reluctant Mauli, profiteering from the feudal lands of Mauli’s father, misappropriating government and peasant lands in Jhapa. Eventually, his illegal exploits are intercepted by the peasant uprising of the 1950s, when he fatally succumbs to an attack by one of the aggrieved peasants. Mauli’s cousin Sangita and her husband Tulsi are the happily wedlocked Communist couple, political refugees who travel around India canvassing support from Indian leaders to oust the Rana regime in Nepal. Turned a widow by the end of the novel, Mauli returns to Darjeeling in search of her missing son Pritikumar studying at Mount Hermon School, only to discover that he has enlisted in the Indian army to fight against the Chinese in the 1962 war, unable to comprehend “Nepal and Bharat are two separate independent nations”. Mauli herself is caught in the liminal space of negotiating with borders that cross her life, and she herself has crossed many boundaries and come full circle.

Badrinarayan’s deft storytelling brings to life with vivid, visceral brushstrokes the inner psychological terrain of the female protagonist, unravelling her bittersweet experiences beyond the invisible spaces of domesticity, household artefacts and tradition, lifting the veil of woman’s ‘invisibility’ in fiction. Mauli triumphs despite suffering a loveless marriage to a cruel husband who beats her and calls her a communist for siding with the peasants. In the novel, she revives traditional Nepali art and culture, staging a troupe performance of a Maruni dance with classic Madalay folk songs. She salvages Dhankumari from the ignominy of birthing an illegimate child to Bishwambhar by apportioning her with land and money to start a family with Akkharey. She restores all the land usurped by her dead husband to the rightful owners.

Badrinarayan’s idiomatic prose is fragrant with the sweet tilt of Nepali jargon, onomatopoeia, verbal tics of characters, kinship terms for names, the dazzling acoustics, and rhythmic cadences of a multi-lingual and cross-border culture, many of which are retained by the translator. Privileging readability over fidelity, Anmole Prasad’s translation succeeds in recreating the sense of the original. Mauli can be read alongside Smriti Ravindra’s debut novel titled The Woman who Climbed Trees(2023), another transnational tale of a woman caught on either side of the Indo-Nepal border.