Which Tana Sharma?

A belligerent critic. A one-time Marxist thinker. A Freudian novelist. And an aggressive essayist.
That was Tana Sharma of the sixties.
Now he is a father of two. He is a travel writer; a translator; a hungry student of world literature; a poet; a flexible critic; a lyricist and an essayist.
This is Taranath Sharma of 1996.
“To make ends meet I have to translate whether I like it or not, especially since I’m not engaged in any other money making job,” says Taranath Sharma.
Sharma started his literary career with a criticism piece in Shathi, a literary magazine published from Darjeeling in 1951. He has come a long way now earning a name of himself in the field of Nepali literature.
Influenced by Marxist philosophy during his early years, Sharma was unsparingly harsh in his literary works. This was reflected in his reviews of other works.
One of Sharma’s works in the genre include Ghotlaiyaharu, a collection of critical reviews. Paschimka kehi Mahan Sahityakarharu is another of his workwhich is based on a few eminent men of letters of the west. His other works include a critical survey of Nepali literature in the collection of criticisms named Bhanubhaktadekhi Tesro Ayasamma, Sama ra Sama ka kriti on the works of Balkrishna Sama and a full work on history of Nepali literature as Nepali Sahitya ko Itihas.
Sharma has considerably softened his tones in other works.
“In his early years, I was bursting with enthusiasm. I wanted to write what I felt. My early criticism lacks aesthetic sense as it was the outpour of my feeling. But it is not so with my current criticism,” says Sharma.
During his stay in Banaras as a student, Sharma, along with Bal Krishna Pokharel, had started a Jharrovadi andolan, a literary movement.
The influence of this movement ca be seen in his collection like Namaste(Salutation, 1961), Jamarkaharu(Attempts, 1968) and Jeevan Chhal(The Wave of life, 1973). In these essays, he appears to be a progressive writer. He is candid and courageous in putting forth his view. But the movement he had started is no longer in existence.
“After studying linguistics, I came to a conclusion that Nepali language has to borrow words from other languages, that is, if they are necessary. But its use should be in the appropriate place,” he says.
He believes that after the compilation of Nepali-English dictionary by R.L. Turner in 1930, more than forty thousands news works have been coined in Nepali language.
Born in 1934 in eastern region of Nepal, Taranath Sharma completed his education upto intermediate in Darjeeling. Some of his teachers include Parasmani Pradhan, Surya Bikram Gyawali and Dharnidhar Sharma. This sharp and witty writer in the meantime got close to Parasmani Pradhan who published Bharati. Similarly, late Rup Narayan Sinha, Shiva Kumar Rai, Indra Sundas of Darjeeling and Leknath, Devkota and Sama influenced him greatly in his literary life.
Early novels of Taranath Sharma revolve around a particular area. He draws the regularity of violence in the lives of the people of the Sunkosi area in Ojhel Parad (Black Out, 1966). Centred around the story of a Gurung youth, Sharma’s another novel Mero Katha (My Story, 1967) talks about the life of the Tibeto Burman Gurung tribe in geographical setting of Kaski and its neigbourhood. Suli is about the urban life of middle class Nepali in Kathmandu. The book tries to analyze woman’s psychology and character. Although written in 1973, its theme is still relevant in the present day context. Jhajhalko (Back flashes, 1988) and Nepal Dekhi Americasamma(From Nepal to America, 1992) have broken his earlier tradition. In these novels, characters travel outside the country too.
In 1970, Sharma received the prestigious Madan Puruskar for his much acclaimed travelogue Belaittira Baralinda (Rambling in and around Britain). Written in his youthful zeal, the book is perhaps the first in travel writing which attracted a great number of readers. Sharma’s romanticism is reflected in this book.
Patal Pravas(A stay in the USA, 1985) is about his nearly a decade long stay in the USA. Sharma says that his later books are more mature in style and theme than the earlier ones.
Another dimension of Taranath Sharma is his ability to write English equally well. This is seen in many of his writing and translations.
Columns of Fire, a collection of articles in English is now in the offing. Lyrical Poems by Chadani Shah, Naso(short stories of Guru Prasad Mainali) and Sumnima( a novel by BP Koirala) are a few books he has translated from Nepali to English.
A Phd holder in linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, Taranath Sharma has taught linguistics, Nepali culture and literature in Nepal and abroad. Mahendra Mala, a Nepali text book for secondary school is a product of Taranath Sharma. For this painstaking job of editing books for students, he had received a special prize from the Ministry of Education.
Until recently, Taranath Sharma was still in the editing business. For two years he served The Rising Nepal as its Chief Editor.
“Like in India, Nepali writers in English also should try to use popular Nepali words in English writing. But one has to be careful about grammatical structure. Adopted Nepali words should be used carefully so as to convey its actual sense to the readers,” Sharma says.
Taranath Sharma is a name that has frequently been immersed into the whirlpool of controversy because of his scathing criticism. Now, he says, he doesn’t want to involve himself in any controversy because “it is really hard for a Nepali to digest a healthy criticism.”