Yuyutsu RD Sharma

Kathmandu

When my column ‘Milk Baba’s Irish disciple’ on famous Irish poet Cathal O’ Searcaigh appeared in The Himalayan Times, a woman named Ursula Sweeney wrote to me from Ireland and asked for Cathal’s address. Her father had read my piece in Kathmandu and scanned the column to her. I was travelling in India then.

It appeared strange that a stranger from Ireland through the Internet should show me my column in the remote dusty town of Rajasthan. And a poet from Nepal should give the address of an Irish poet to an Irish woman. Ursula has today become my good friend and dependable reader. In another piece on Bhaktapur, an old ailing grandma lies dying on a pavement. Millions of flies feed on the mucus of her eyes and she can’t do anything to stop them. Having read my piece the very next day the mayor of

Bhaktapur Municipality rushed to the spot and shifted the dying grandma to a nearby hospital, offering possible help. When I came to know of the event, I took it as one of the surprise boons that literary journalism can offer. That readers exist in various roles and influence your consciousness is a solid reality no writer can afford to ignore. Instead of lamenting about illiteracy and sloppy reading habits of the public of these little nations, instead of throbbing with a vain glorious dream of conquering the world with our winged words, I believe that’s what a writer here can do. To seek support, reservation or to carry ourselves, our creative agendas like begging bowls at the doors of mighty Donors or Foundations would transform a writer into a handicapped person seeking the support of crutches, a shameful, undignified act fraught with formidable risks. Best would be to win the readers with the power of your writing, or say, earn your readers at home and world over. On the dark pavement near Meen Bhawan last night I heard someone calling my name. On that dimly lit pavement I turned around to face a faintly familiar but drunken face. Out of my wayward boisterous temper that I developed during my wandering around this city for the last two decades shook his hand, “So, Friend, where have you been all these years?” I said to unveil the identity of this intruder into the dust of my evening.

“I know you,” he started challengingly, but soon mellowed and started talking about the dying grandma I referred to in the beginning. It pleased me to know that he had read a Nepali version of one of my pieces published by the Bhaktapur Municipality in its special anniversary edition though I’ve not seen it. He had found the essay interesting since it spoke of the harsh truth of a Nepali life. “Now what I don’t like is the way they introduced you,” he said. At the end, the Nepali editors had written, “Yuyutsu RD is a very emotional poet”.

“All you wrote about that grandma was very touching,” he said. I personally took it to be a compliment. “These leaders,” he hollered, “What do they know of emotions?” And he delivered a long lecture on the atrocities committed by the Communist regimes the world over and concluded, “What right do they have to call Yuyutsu RD an emotional poet?” He mispronounced my rather difficult name and referred to me in third person. Finally I consoled him for the wounds that he had received on my behalf and made an attempt to escape.

In the dark I heard him shout madly on the dark pavement — “Yuyutsu RD is not just an emotional poet!” I saw a police van stop near him and I hurried home. That a writer encounters all kinds of readers appears an interesting dimension of this harsh enterprise. Some come forward to scare you, to criticise you or congratulate you in the cafes or on phones while others keep playing from behind the curtains. A few readers phone me quite regularly; especially the day my column appears — well known, illustrious readers as well as commonplace regulars. One day when I took a Safa tempo from Ratna Park, I found the conductor, a very young boy hanging from the Tempo’s back crane his neck into the humid interior and say — “You are Poet, isn’t it? Today your article appeared in The Himalayan Times. I haven’t read it but I have bought the copy and shall read it after supper tonight.”

I was stunned, even unnerved as other passengers gave me those looks that a poet usually gets

in Nepal. I looked at the fan of Nepali money spread in his

fingers but he explained, “It’s only my part-time job. I am a student at Tri-Chandra.”

The fact that readers’ feedback runs the great machine of writing is of immense significance to me. A young teacher named Uday Adhikary phones from Hetauda almost every week, the day my column appears. If I am not available, he leaves a cryptic message - “Today’s piece was good. Or it wasn’t worth his reputation; tell him he cheated his readers.” There is a Dutch girl from

Switzerland who sends me e-mail every week - she has been to Nepal in her early teens and says she eagerly awaits each column.

In spite of all this, there are always those dark mischievous callers, readers full of malice or envy, readers who are most secretive. They often use proxy names to comment, write awful e-mails, or even plot, or manoeuvre nasty letters to editor/writer.

There are those who write directly in their own names but there are also some who create ‘Shikhandis’ (a hermaphrodite whom the Pandavas employed

as a shield in the epic The Mahabharata to battle Bhisma) to hit you hard since they don’t want to come out in the open or refuse to acknowledge your very existence. They dictate or draft malicious letters in name of these Shikhandis to challenge your very integrity as a writer.

Finally there are those who refuse to see you at all. You are the legendary “invisible man” to them. One such rich man and aspiring poet I met recently. He flatly refused the fact that he had ever heard or known that I write. “I’ve been writing,” I told him, “for quite some time now.” He consoled me — “I shall start looking for your writing from now onwards.” Interestingly after a couple of weeks at a cocktail party we bumped into each other again. After a few drinks, he initiated a heated discussion on art and literature and alluded to one of my columns that I had appeared recently. I was taken aback.

“How do you know that column?” asked I. “I read them regularly,” he said in a drunken haze. “In case you need any piece that you have missed, let me know. I’ve all of them filed in my office.”Wasn’t for such lovely liars that Bernard Shaw had to say all those things?

This writer can be reached at yuyutsurd@yahoo.com