A Town without Literature

By Raja Sharma

Manak was a smithy, an extraordinary wordsmith who picked the words, evaluated them, polished them, and then arranged them in strings of many types. His words flourished like flowers, endeavouring to understand and reveal the mysteries of nature. His words consoled the afflicted hearts of the poor and infused them with new strength. He did not want any higher reward than that. He had the skill of arousing every known and, perhaps, unknown emotion. The one who read his words could not escape either of the two inevitable emotions: happiness and sorrow. A Muslim could find the voice of Azan and a Hindu could hear the sound of temple bells in his words. Manak held that words were the holiest thing in his possession; he loved his words and he never played with his words, like the politicians who manipulate the world of words to exploit the masses. He would be sad to see how some people misused words.

Manak was his pen-name; his real name was Money Ram. This name smelled of greed and selfishness, a very prosaic name. Manak, the poet, was all right. It seemed to be away from all the worldly possessions. It was actually Mani (a gem) but with the passage of time it got transformed into Money Ram.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Jul 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465740922

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

Book preview

A Town without Literature

By Raja Sharma

Copyright@2011Raja Sharma

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1: A Town without Literature

Manak was a smithy, an extraordinary wordsmith who picked the words, evaluated them, polished them, and then arranged them in strings of many types. His words flourished like flowers, endeavouring to understand and reveal the mysteries of nature. His words consoled the afflicted hearts of the poor and infused them with new strength. He did not want any higher reward than that. He had the skill of arousing every known and, perhaps, unknown emotion. The one who read his words could not escape either of the two inevitable emotions: happiness and sorrow. A Muslim could find the voice of Azan and a Hindu could hear the sound of temple bells in his words. Manak held that words were the holiest thing in his possession; he loved his words and he never played with his words, like the politicians who manipulate the world of words to exploit the masses. He would be sad to see how some people misused words.

Manak was his pen-name; his real name was Money Ram. This name smelled of greed and selfishness, a very prosaic name. Manak, the poet, was all right. It seemed to be away from all the worldly possessions. It was actually Mani (a gem) but with the passage of time it got transformed into Money Ram.

He knew very well that he was not unblemished in the eyes of his family. Since he remained lost in his world of literature, reading and writing, he often hurt the feelings of his mother, his wife, and his son. When he was fresh after his college, his mother wanted that he should be an officer, a doctor, or an engineer but he chose teaching because the poet felt quite comfortable in that profession. His mother continued to complain during her life time and one day she passed away, carrying all her miseries with her.

Manak’s wife, Sita, found her husband strange because he was not like others, and this was the cause of her never-ending plight. Being the wife of a poet was not enough to draw respect in the society. Rita’s husband, their neighbours, was an engineer and she was respected everywhere, though her husband was involved in many scandals and the cases of financial embezzlement. Then there was Sapna whose husband stood with the Minister. She was also a much sought after woman.

Manak’s son, Rajat, was also not happy with his father. His friends often made fun of him. One day, when his teacher of literature said that poets happen to be insane, he was unable to control himself. His classmates were laughing and pointing to him.

When a son begins to point the virtues and shortcomings of his father, it becomes obvious that he has come of age. Rajat began to show his resentment to his mother. His mother was happy because her son was not a child anymore. She began to think about his marriage. She planned that the day he would bring his first salary; she would find a beautiful educated girl for him to marry. Manak was an M. A. in English Literature but he composed his poems in either Hindi or Nepali language. He felt that he was not so comfortable with English because the words did not produce that ring which he could easily produce through Hindi or Nepali language. His father’s mother tongue was Hindi and his mother’s tongue was Nepali, and as a result Manak was brought up in a bilingual family. English came to him through his education. It is not as though he was not good at writing in English; he wanted to convey his voice to a vast majority of people who did not understand English language. He was not against modern English Medium Schools but he believed that a person who was not good at mother tongue could never have a command over a foreign language. Sita had sent her son to an English Medium School. His son never read the historical books, folk tales, fairy tales, and poetry, written in Hindi or Nepali language, though he could converse in both these languages. Sita did not want that her son should become a Hindi poet like his father.

The poems composed by Manak were very simple and easy to understand, for he followed William Wordsworth who said ‘Poetry should be written in a common man’s language.’ Manak used the best of the words but he stayed away from any kind of affectation. He did not believe that incomprehensible lines, however literary they might be, were in any way better than the lines which used common words and simple style.

Maybe it was due to the changing times or on account of scientific and fast education that classics mostly remain unread by the modern generation

Sita and her son, Rajat, were too timid to enter Manak’s world of words; they felt embarrassed. Manak’s poems were highly praised in the literary circle but they were never recited in his own house. There was an undeclared ban on them in the house. Since he was not rich, he could not say a word.

In the early years of their marriage, Sita had shown extreme interest in his poems and she loved listening to them when he recited his new creations, but with the passage of time, she lost her interest in them. She believed that without poetry he would be better off, with a fat bank balance and their own house, in place of the