Pandulipi, the Best Literature of Loss

Krishna Dharabasi’s lastest book “Pandulipi” has started to hit the bookstores and has become popular and successful novel within the readers, writers and reviewers. There are certain salient features of this book that helped it to be successful. The book name Pandulipi first created rumors among Dharabasi’s readers that he was going to show or distribute the manuscript. But later, they knew that Pandulipi is not manuscript in form but his life’s manuscript that revolves around description of family life, cordial relation of a husband and a wife, the love between the family members and above all the sacrifice and dedication of wife to make his family life stable and contented.

,p>Pandulipi is the novel written in personal context dedicated completely on the demise of the wife which the author had never expected, that made him completely faltered at heart and aloof since his coworker of literary journey left on the way. Pandulipi is one of the best elegy novels that nepali literature has produced so far. Dharabasi mentions many philosophical ideas in the novel as well. In the preface, he says that our life itself is a novel. The life of a person that is connected to the time and situation makes one’s personal stories also social and realistic. No one is originator, producer or creator of literature, no one has done their work out of their ability, and everyone is fulfilling the duty of characters like in a novel.

Although the novel and narratives are personal, they are representation of the human feelings, emotions and nepali middle class family. There are many pages in the novel that melts readers’ heart and even makes someone to cry due to the actual depiction of the pathetic conditions related to health and loss of life in the personal tone.

The reference of Dharabasi’s earlier novel “Aadha Bato” is found throughout the novel. After the demise of his mother he had written Aadha Bato and says that he had reached half the way and Pandulipi became the remaining Aadha Baato.

Pandulipi is really the manuscript of Dharabasi’s life because it has dared to disclose or depict every family issue that really happened in Dharabasi’s life from his personal health problems to the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law bitter conversations and from his struggle of publishing books to his wife’s degrading health.

Pandulipi is not only Dharabasi’s life manuscript rather it is the representation of every middle class people of nepali society. There are not only lives of a husband head of family but also the lives of wife, children, writers, literary associations and different books that are associated with Dharabasi’s life. The first chapter of the novel moves around the marriage of the writer and the family life spent with Sita Ji, the writer’s beloved who would contribute helps in the writer’s every work. Some narratives makes the readers to generate laughter filled with excitement like the journey made by the author to his father-in-law’s house within their first marriage anniversary.

Then after, we can know how the author started to write Aadha Baato after the death of his mother and completed it with tides of emotion and expressed that bereavement in terms of words. As Sita Ji was the source of inspiration and encouragement for the author in the sectors of writing, we can get the message that the role of beloved in our success is always inevitable and significant.

Dharabasi has connected every sector he has joined into, in the novel from the family life to the Kanchanjunga FM and from publishing the book to the Germany tour. Hence, the book titled “Pandulipi” is suitable and appropriate due to the innocent depiction of every secret of every sector that the writer went through. The writer himself considers this novel as the second version of the famous novel Aadha Baato. Dharabasi has defined his life in Pandulipi. It gained high popularity that FM program also reads the whole book live on air making an easy access to the listeners. This also makes Dharabasi a distinctive writer from his contemporaries, a type of writer who is very reader-friendly and down-to-earth.

I have attended many book release functions. No one had made me reach the peak of emotion except that of Pandulipi. Everyone throughout the program was completely emotional and bereaved. Pandulipi is a brilliant example for the literature of loss. From feminist perspective, the author has prioritized female issues in this novel also like in his other works. Dharabasi unarguably seems to be a feminist writer while examining through the lens of feminism as his main characters are females and there are innumerable issues in support of females thus helping women to come into mainstream with their male counterparts and breaking the stereotypes of traditional gender roles.

Dharabasi also signals his happiness that there is good scope of literature in Nepal as he expressed while going on Germany tour that by writing poems they were touring foreign lands. Thus Dharabasi is an example of success and scope of nepali literature for those people who have been underscoring that nepali literature does not pay back well. Hence Pandulipi is best literature of loss, a milestone for elegy novel in Nepali literature that contains many intimate memories of writer’s personal life and ends with the tragic loss of his wife. The writer is also successful in blaming the irresponsible doctors of Nepal and showing their fault lines with evidences and experiences. I happen to remember the lyrics of late Narayan Gopal while reading Pandulipi: “Auta Manche Ko Maya le Kati….”