“Abruptly, a furred dark glove forced itself through the darkness. Its hard blunt nail made its way into Juni’s clothes and with one sharp pull tore her only honour into two. Ghosts burst into laughter. Exactly in a human voice it commanded in the national language, ‘Abbe saala, batti bujhaa, batti bujhaa.’ And all semi-spherical yellow eyes went off. Entire house was plunged into impenetrable darkness. Horrified, Juni screamed for the second time, a huge rock from the dark cell itself fell heavily upon her. Strangling her, it tied her to the bed. She desperately fought to push the darkness aside. She was floundering like a lunatic for a little bit of light. She made every effort to tear off the thick fur and stout skin of the darkness with her teeth and finger-nails. But the darkness, now even darker, relentlessly kept descending upon her, and grabbed her completely exhausted body, and wildly tearing all the remaining obstructions the darkness, with its all brutishness, thrust itself into her furthest depth.”

This is the English translation of a paragraph from Nunko Chiya, a novel in Nepali version of Bengali original Nun Chaa by Bimal Lama. Nepali translation is accomplished by Samik Chakraborty. Isn’t it very interesting that the novel was written in Bengali by the one whose mother tongue is Nepali, and it has been translated into Nepali by the one whose mother tongue is Bengali?

In the paragraph quoted above, (English translation mine), the writer, employing the metaphor of darkness, dark fur etcetera, has so grippingly brought alive the rape scene committed by an armed raider during the period of the Gorkhaland movement in 1986 – 88. The scene created with the words in the paragraph violently stirs the reader’s sensibility. Isn’t it like a powerful symbolic scene come out of the mind of a highly creative and deft cine director? Isn’t it like a great cubistic painting?

The novel, Nunko Chiya, is undoubtedly a work of great artistry. The subtle interlacing of two strands of the story beginning a few chapters later is simply superb, outstanding. Ending of the novel exhibits even greater artistry of the writer. Only the one with great craft and aesthetic sense can create such kind of work. I wish this novel be translated into English by some competent translator and published by internationally well known publisher.