Peeking the refugee camps through literary windows
A former Bhutanese refugee, forced to leave Bhutan along with his family in 1992, I P Adhikari is a journalist living in Adelaide, South Australia. He started The Shangrila Sandesh in 2001 but did not work for the paper for long. In 2004 he, along with Vidhyapati Mishra, started the Association of Press Freedom Activists (APFA) Bhutan. In 2007 they started Bhutan News Service. He worked in The Rising Nepal, The Himalayan Times, Nation Weekly and Nepalnews.com while living in Nepal as a refugee.
Adhikari also taught Journalism and Development Communication for bachelor's and master's degrees in College of Journalism and Mass Communication between 2006 and 2010 in Nepal. He then moved to Australia under the resettlement program of the UNHCR for Bhutanese Refugees. In Adelaide, Australia he founded Yuba Sansar, a weekly Nepali-language radio program aired through Radio Adelaide.
I P Adhikari
Adelaide, Australia
Very recently we hosted the two most famous Nepalese comedians MaHa during their MaHa Yatra to seven Australian cities. We had the opportunity to honour these two legends and get a reflection on the humanitarian support they rendered to us when Bhutanese first arrived Nepal to settle down along the bank of Mai River.
Not only our senior community member Gauri Niroula revealed the story of their support but I had just went through the new book by Y. N Chaulagai which has a few paragraphs about MaHa’s support to the Bhutanese refugees in the initial days. It was a revelation for me that comedians not only make mockery of other but also lend hands where needs are.
Last year I had purchased another book on Bhutanese refugees Sapanako Samadhi by TU lecturer Taralal Shrestha. Shrestha had then said he would be expecting me to write review of his book. Unfortunately I was unable to do so. To be sincere, I had not read it completely. Two more books on Bhutanese refugees hit the market before I could write what I think of Shrestha’s Sapanako Samadhi.
This summer break and the heatwave across Adelaide confined me within home, outside working hours. This gave me opportunity to read many books including Sapanako Samadhi. I also read the two news books on Bhutanese refugees – Sakshi by Y N Chaulagai and Albida Beldangi by Shivalal Dahal. I thought it would be A1 if I could put words together for these three books of the same genre.
Sapanako Samadhi has wonderfully pictured the emotional, social and economic flavours of the Bhutanese refugees while living in the camps and at the onset of their travel to the western countries for resettlement. Life in camp was not easy. Many members of the younger generation sneaked into the Nepal’s labour market seeking employment opportunities. The story revolves around these torturous lives in the camp and efforts made towards honourable survival.
I felt the writer put much of his energy to explain the emotional sentiments of identity-less lives and the Buddhist philosophy on livelihood and social equality. Through Buddhist philosophy, the writer might have intended to tell readers that caste-based discrimination among the refugees is not a big issue. However, my experiences do not tell that. Caste-based discrimination and ethnic differences among the refugees have grown stronger since coming to Nepal. These practices were in much lesser scale back in Bhutan possibly due to the Buddhist dominations.
It may not be possible but Shrestha put his all energy to attach tits and bits of all refugee lives in Nepal around the main character. In many cases, the events look real but in other, the story travels into hypothetical world where Bhutanese refugees had never been.
The book has many references to the peculiar refugees lives. The story persuasively reveals the writer had travelled the camps on several occasions and had made close friendship with the locality. The Runche Chowk reminds me of the famous Dhadhali Chowk and Pothi Chowk in Beldangi II, III. Had the writer spent a few days listening to the stories and rumours at the Dhadhali Chowk to make them part of the novel, it would have made a good feature of the book.
Sakshi made my day. The language is very simple but the way story is told is very powerful. I did not go through that hardships in Maidhar but the book generated the real picture in me. I would rarely imagine I could live on those banks.
Frankly, I could not read the book continuously. I had to stop after every few pages to divert my thought elsewhere and to stop tears rolling down my cheeks. I had read over thousand of books so far but had never experienced such emotions. I could hardly counsel myself.
There is no doubt the book tells the real story – the story rarely told, the story hardly written, the history unlikely to be retold. Though evicted in the same impasse, Chaulagai had never lived that life but he sincerely internalised the hardships, deprivation, misery and misfortunes his fellow countrymen experienced.
I cannot tell it a novel; it’s a history. It’s a powerful document for our generations to learn how their ancestors survived the black days of their time. It’s a instrument for the advocates how inhuman the Bhutanese authority had been and it’s a testimony for science that many of us have challenged the death and harshness of humanity. Minute details of the events certainly captivate readers’ inner attention.
I would suggest, the book would make a wonderful document if it could be translated into English. It would be more powerful than many documents human rights groups have published thus far.
Albida Beldangi starts with the powerful story but ease out at the end. The beginning of the book is a emotional courtesy call for readers to learn the background of the Bhutanese refugee crisis. As the writer prepares himself to begin a new life in the western country, his call for motherland is powerful instruments for all of us to keep in mind not to forget where were we born and spent part of our life. It’s like a symbolic reminder for Bhutanese in exile to remember their past and dedicate to what we had intended to achieve. It is a salient feature of a call to fight against injustice.
As you turn the pages of the book, the story gets distraction. I could not find what was the fundamental theme and objective of the book. There isn’t a central theme of the book. The book has novel flavour at the beginning but later turns out to be literature review and a collection of articles. Had the writer concentrate on one form of the book – novel, literature review or a collection of his article – the product would have been more meaningful and interesting.
Other writers might call it unfair but as a reader it is fair for me to say Sakshi is the best all books written so far about Bhutanese refugees in Nepali. I had read the Sambadbata Sasaktikaran by Kundan Aryal, Saranarthi by Krishna Dharabashi or Headwind by Alice Anna Verheij but Sakshi is the best book I have read so far on Bhutanese refugees. The only other readable book I could call is Unbecoming Citizens by Michael Hutt of London University. Sapanako Samadhi has pungency of linguistic standards but the story is not all real.
I would once more stress, Sakshi is a book that deserves to be translated into English for bigger readership.