Bhanubhakta

About three generations earlier, one young man, a holy Brahaman at that, was shoved off to a Kathmandu prison on chrages of misappropiation of state funds; but the offence was not his, but that of his grandfather, who had been long dead and gone.

 

Yet, succeeding Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, ese generations like us are grateful for these ancient law givers that such a fate did come to pass for Bhanubhata, Brahman youth from Tahahun in mid west Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, , even if they wouldn't be too grateful if they were themselves in his shoes For absence of verses like these.

”Day after day i behold your face, delight without ceasing, "The evening i pass in reverly and dance, pleasure ever increasing,

The mosquitoes, the bugs and fleas, their company i keep, The fleas dance, Mosquitoes sing, and i watch sans a sleep. But this wasn't just a casual verse;more, it was part of a petition complaining to the jail authorities against conditions in the prison. No wonder, on reading the petition, the humane jail warden didn't keep Bhanubhkta there for long.

Yet this poetic propensity in Bhanubhakta wasn't known to any including himself, till quite late in his life. And were it not for a sever mental shake up the received while he was a pampered idler of youth, the poet within him would perhaps have remanined buried under his otherwise easygoing temperament.

The story of the chance accident that turned him into a poet goes somewhat like this. One day, while young Bhanubhakta was lazying it up in  a midday sista, as was his habit, near a murmuring hill rivulet, a disturbing element appeared in the person of a grass cutter who had got down  to business quite close by. The idler's first instinct at having been awakened was was to fly into a rage at the grass cutter, but he thought the better of it  and in order to while away the time, dragged himself into a reluctant chat with the old man.

"I hardly you toil very hard, old man, " he began, " What use you make of the money you so earn?"

"I hardly earn enough to make two ends meet," replied the grass cutter, " but what little  i scrape  up as my life's saving, I have been keeping aside with a view to get a well dug for my village folk,"

" Getting dug a what ?asked Bhanu, his eyebrows raised, half believing what he had heard.

" A will" repeated the old man " to meet the villagers' need for drinking water". Then he added philosphically. " Mortals as we are, we have got to go one day. The only thing that sustains after we are gone are the marks we leave behind us in the sands of time It is the works of charity that alone endure."

It was an utterly metamorphosed, it inspired, Bhanu that emerged from this otherwise casual tetea tete. For all his family erudition and relative affluence, he felt utterly belitted before the noble spirit of the simple grass cutter. He felt like cursing himself and he did so in the shape of an eight line improptu versification, Tennyson style, which concludes in the following strain.

"How come the grass cutter enlightened me this day?  I fie on this life of mine, nameless and unworthy"  

The seemingly inherent poet in  Bhanubhakta thus sparked, he embarked upo an ambitious venture to " found" a literature for his people. And a life long dedication to the cause resulted in literary creation of many hues, climaxing in the adaptation, in the "lay mans' language", of the well known epic, the Ramayan.

Prior to Bhanubhakta, the language he chose as a literary medium had all along been derisively described as  a mere spoken dialect, unworthy of scholarly attention. As such, If Bhanubhakta is reverently remembered today as a torch bearer and a trend setter, it was because he challenged the established norms of literary creation, despite heavy onslaughts from  the orthodox and powerful section who held that writing in any medium other than Snskrit, " the Devine language" wasn't worth the ink spit over it. But Bhanu stuck his ground.

Much like words worth in his later works, Bhanubhakta found noble inspiration in moral poetry. Religious bh tradition and training became from a family of priests he wrote almost entirely in defence of established religious norms. Despite this, however the simply could not help reverting to  his old, youthful and romantic self and betrayed an  occasional Khayyamik streak in him; for  instance, he went into raptures on first seeing kathmandu's Balaju garden when he was already on the wrong side of forty, thus:

"Ah, be it mine the writing delight,

A verse here, for a maiden fair and bright,

To dance in its rhythm; what else

Would i wish, when paradise i thus create"

Next only to  king Prithive Narayan Shah, the unifier of Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, into one nation, Bhanubhakta is acknowledged on all hands as the greatest single influence in shaping the Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, ese nationhood. His Ramayan, a monumental work, has remained the bible of virtually every Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, ese home for more than a hundred years now.