Writing Nepal has become a biennial event for literature lovers and writers, as evidenced by the number of enquiries La.Lit receives every year. Ten years since the contest was first held, avid readers patiently wait for stories to appear online and in La.Lit volumes. It was a pleasure then, to hear Samrat Upadhyay, author of Arresting God in Kathmandu and the judge for the Writing Nepal short story contest, state, ‘This year the submissions were the strongest overall in the history of Writing Nepal.’

With 106 submissions this year (the highest we received was 175 submissions in 2021), we know that Nepali writers working in English have been running marathons with their imaginations. Upadhyay shared that the quality of writing was high, and the stories reflected a diversity of concerns and aesthetics. At the award ceremony hosted by Malpi Institute, Baluwatar, on December 21, Upadhyay also listed the five markers of a good story. 

‘First the language has to be truthful. It has to be nuanced. It can be aggressive, or it can be gentle, but it has to be honest. Second, the story needs to have a heart, and I don’t mean sentimentality or a melodrama. I mean a core that’s meaningful and speaks directly to the reader. Third, the characters have to be interesting, engaging. We need to be interested in their lives. They need to be complex, reflecting the complexity of human existence. Fourth, a story needs to be dynamic, on the move. Things need to happen. A character sitting in a room ruminating or philosophizing doesn’t make good fiction. Finally, in a good story the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You can have all of the above, yet still the story can lack substance. The story has to say something meaningful that can lead to insights about the human condition.’

The writers present in the audience listened keenly to Upadhyay’s advice. This year, we had twelve shortlisted stories and an additional ten made the list of honorable mentions, the highest of any year. 

With that, he invited the shortlisted writers to read out excerpts from their stories to the crowd of young and old gathered under the warm, December sun. You can view the readings here. The readings, along with Upadhyay’s short introduction to each one, evoked curiosity about the stories. The audience then braced for the announcement of the winners. 

Unwritten Letters by Dia Yonzon won third prize. Upadhyay said, ‘In Unwritten Letters a transgender person debates whether they ought to reveal their true identity to their lover and thereby risk rejection. While the actual letter doesn’t get written, the reader is treated to an intimate portrait of a love that we hope will defy all odds. A beautiful and beautifully written story. Let me also add that there was a brevity to this—how it managed to accomplish so much in mere six pages—that I thought spoke very well about the focused quality of the story.’

“A scale that shows you the weight of the secrets a person is carrying!” As the spilled lights from the day curtain bounce off our naked skin, we play our favorite game of imagining absurd inventions. With that idea of yours, I admit defeat. You smile, beamingly.

Till you Remember to Forget me by Lalahang won second prize. Upadhyay shared, ‘Till you Remember to Forget me (a great title!) is a dystopian story set around Singha Durbar and Teku. A cyborg is assigned to work as a helper to a butcher, which leads to some interesting consequences, and instances of true awakening. The story is super dark and utterly hypnotic. For an English-language story, it also is bold in how liberally it uses Nepali. I was blown away by this story. It’s a dense story, hard to get in at first, but once you are in, it’s mesmerizing. One of the hardest things to do in a non-realist story is to make your futuristic or fantastic world convincing. The biggest challenge here was to make Apekshya, the cyborg, turn into a sentient being, one who is able to think, and feel for the animals in pain, and to yearn, and I thought the author did that with consummate skill. The butchering scenes were fantastic.’

Last evening, the city had closed down early due to an incoming storm. Light drizzle rode upon the winds of Teku, the trees shivered and the people crawled under rain covers, the shutters closed as the city drowned into the evening. However, the tinted glasses of grey corporate buildings stayed erect like eyeless faces turning their backs to sprawled narrow gallis full of shanty colonies of slate roof and mud, comprising the banks of the Bisnumati River.

Sharad Duwal’s Kumari Galli is now a Cul-de-sac won first prize. Upadhyay shared, ‘This wonderful story is told from the point of view of a young boy who is discovering that the vibrant community where he lives contains some pretty tantalizing secrets. The story’s sense of community is strong, and there were moments when I was thrown back to my own childhood neighborhood in Lainchour, where everybody was in everybody’s business. The narrator of this story was an utterly charming and observant boy who made me chuckle throughout the narrative. The humor here is top notch, the prose is impeccable. There is an arc and a coherence in this narrative, and a beautiful musicality that made it enjoyable even during repeated readings.’

The first strains of the harmonium would permeate the morning quiet while we still lay in bed. First some diatonic trips along an octave, then Rajamati followed by Fulko aakhaa maa – the squeeze-and-release of the instrument producing soulful nasal keening halfway between a lowing and a whine. It sounded diffuse and far-away from our homes: only the lower end coming through, insistent and enveloping. Every morning without fail – until the day it stopped.

Our special thanks to Malpi Institute for hosting the Writing Nepal Award Ceremony, and for arranging a touching musical and dance performance to start off the program and setting a joyful mood. The program and the venue gave the new writers an opportunity to get to know each other and to partake in a camaraderie that will hopefully parallel their writing careers. 

As always, we thank Samrat Upadhyay and Indiana University for supporting new writers and encouraging them to share their stories. 

Congratulations to all the winners! We thank all the writers, all 106 of them, for partaking in this literary affair. 

La.Lit will be publishing the winning stories online in 2024.