The trajectory of exiled life- Baas dekhi punarvaas samma

Buddha Mani Dhakal
Kentucky, USA                                               

Life is regarded as a continuum of a journey. The journey never ends, even beyond the death and decay of the physical body. In this continuum, the writer finds the trajectory of his exiled life, along with other similar evictees from the country of origin- Bhutan. Here the journey is not fun-filled but forced and marginalized to shelters in refugee camps. 

For the writer, as for many of the fellow countrymen, life begins in a hillside country, unadulterated by the vices of human nature. 

The childhood is thus spent in pure innocence, ignorance of conflicts and chaos of the outside world, very affectionate to natural elements of soil, water, the monsoon rain, water springs, the cattle farm and the green fields. The intimate attachment to pristine nature in the countryside but later detachment gives a strong basis for this work of memory.  

The book is a plain narrative as seen and experienced by the author. Nevertheless, it is not his private account of events that happened in 1990 and thereafter. So, not exclusively autobiographical. Throughout the book, accounts of Bhutan’s historical milieu is amply detailed.  

These accounts are often not directly connected to the life of the author. Events that unfolded in 1990 has deeply stigmatized the identity of southern Bhutanese in general. After the exodus, the individual and collective identity of the Nepali speaking southern Bhutanese (Lhotshampa) fell into deep fissures. The author’s writing has implicitly expressed this identity crisis.  

The struggle towards acquiring conventional Sanskrit education in Benaras is the author’s personal choice. The candid details of author’s experience in that crowded old city give us a picture of how cities can be so alien to a countryside boy, and that its harsh reality engulfs the spirit of every new student vying for Sanskrit education. The hurdles that a new student faces in such a holy city is not an exaggeration- hurdles themselves form stepping stone for success. The author feels homesick, but do not want to ruin the dreams, not spoil the money doled out for the mission. The author employed his best strategy for frugal living as there was grim hope of additional money coming from a refugee camp. Life is again thrown into the uncertain rough road, and learning to tread upon is often a risky attempt. Many of the challenges, the author considers, are the divine tests thrown upon him to try and pass.

And, with the determination to fight back the challenges and pass the divine tests, the author seems to have learned to carve out a path for academic goal. So, he walked the rough road in Benaras to come out successful in achieving the academic pinnacle. The author holds a PhD in Sanskrit: his thesis, “Concepts on philosophies of an eternal path (moksha)”. 

The author has also discussed a plethora of publications and institutions regarding the status of language and literature in Bhutan. The discussion centres around the role played by traditional education of Sanskrit in pathshala established in different zones of southern Bhutan. These Sanskrit schools had obviously provided basic education, preparing for the aspiring students to travel to Benaras, Vrindaban, Haridwar and other centres of Sanskrit learning. The author follows this trend even after becoming a refugee, managing scarcely available resources for him.

Whether or not the Sanskrit pathshala in Bhutan fueled the quest for higher learning, the author lavishly credits the contribution of these schools for creating an atmosphere of love for Nepali language and literature. The publication of Nepali editions of a national newspaper and college bulletins at Sherubtse college immensely cultivated reading and writing culture in the Nepali language. The author honestly mentions these lauding the effort in promoting Nepali literature in Bhutan before 1988.

In the later years, it has continued, and growth of organizations for promoting Nepali language and literature in exile has added value to this historic initiative. However, the author’s fear of gradual disconnect in this trend is genuine. He argues, “the challenges are even more now after resettlement, as the priority for resettled folks shifted to material gain rather than keeping cultural and literary values.”

The author brings to discussion his contact with Tek Nath Rizal, the pioneer human rights leader of Bhutan, not merely in a way to associate to him, but also in the context of supporting the cause of human rights violation in Bhutan. 

Rizal was desperately garnering support for his cause- being tortured in prison for a decade, that needed justice to prevail, but his contact in India was too weak. So the author and his colleagues in Benaras developed a support system for him. This is quite relevant in the book for explaining the difficult times the whole movement in exile went through, a student and a leader facing together the harsh reality. The writer’s education and activism in the student body of Benaras have helped Rizal to write his book- Nirvasan. 

To the end of the book, the author outlines some distinct dissociative traits this community is acquiring, owing largely to the changes in lifestyle, work and education. He is not hopeful of the same close-knit society that carried values of being helpful, respectful, culturally rich and spiritually unified. The social fabric is gradually thinning out and more dissociative factors playing stronger than associative traits. It becomes evident for a small community of highlands to be lost in big cities due to the huge leap of distance and time. The author realizes this and vouches for some efforts to keep the community morales and values in place.   

In a nutshell, the book is a reminiscence of what happened to the entire community of Nepali speaking Bhutanese and how the struggle to achieve the desired goal of human rights and democracy failed. The book is a mixed bag of everything that happened thus far affecting the author’s life. 

The journey of transmigration through stages of exodus, exile, struggle for higher learning, resettlement and adjustment in the polyglot cities of the west is now over. Yet the author sees the eternal journey to continue with the intrinsic human values elucidated in the books of eastern philosophy that he studied at Benaras Hindu University.  

The book itself is not a masterpiece of literary creation, rather an expression of feelings and passions based on the real challenge of time that youths like him faced. The arrest of father, the armies hunting at night, the fear of being raped or beaten, the responsibility of farmland all add up to make the author a more matured than his age. So many things could be written out of that precarious time.

The book is not without the usual errors of an amateur writer. Words and sentences are repeating in pages, so many phrases are misplaced and redundant verb phrases are used to end all sentences. The first work of his memory and gut feelings, the author will have to spend many hours again to make this book a must-read piece.