Book reviews : Of love and betrayal

Kathmandu:

Reading a song has, perhaps, never had it this good. Normally listening to a song is better than reading. But when one goes through Bhanchiyeko Maan (Broken heart), one will feel that reading a song can also be equally pleasurable.

Subash Chandra Dhungel, a well-known lyricist whom everyone remembers for his hit numbers on the radio, has brought out a collection of his popular songs for the first time. One can feel like humming with the songs as we have been hearing them in the voices of famous singers like late singer Arun Thapa, Bhaktaraj Acharya, Gyanu Rana and Mira Rana.

Bhanchiyeko Mann — a collection of pieces of his broken hearts — has almost a hundred songs and ghazals, mostly on love, betrayal and tragedy. For the first time, reader can realise that pain can also be melodious.

He writes a letter to his beloved on the petals of a rhododendron but when she rejects him, his heart melts and starts to flow from his eyes in the form of tears. He writes with his tears. “It would have been better, if I had had a heart of stone. There would have no beautiful thoughts of her, no love and no pain.”

As Prof Dr Durga Prasad Bhandari writes, “Only a mystic can reach the state of no-mind thoughtlessness, and there will be no love or hate and no pain. Dhungel is a normal man like us, he is no mystic.”

But all the creative souls are, to some extent, a mystic; they can see what other normal souls cannot; they can feel what other normal souls cannot. As Sufi mystics call god their love, going through Bhanchiyeko Mann, one can call Dhungel a lover and a mystic. 

The Loner

KATHMANDU: It has been raining collections of songs. More and more lyricists are coming out with their song collections. And here is yet another young lyricist, Arun Tiwari, who has brought his first collection of songs Eklai Eklai (alone). 

Image Best Lyricist award-2061 winner and a representative of the present generation Tiwari feels loneliness after his beloved leaves him. He does not say why she has left him, but he has learned a lesson from the tragedy. “We were born alone, and will die alone. Then why do we need a friend in life, if we don’t find a true one.”

There are 70 beautiful and melodious songs — which are not new to us as we have been hearing them regularly — in Eklai Eklai.

Tiwari calls himself a professional lyricist, but that does not satisfy him. He thinks he deserves more. “I have published Eklai Eklai for mere satisfaction,” he says. And the collection satisfies the readers too.