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Embracing the digital
JUL 30 -
In Irish villages, bards were chosen to tell stories to villagers who keenly wait and listen. Likewise, in the Red Indian tribes like the Laguna Pueblo, people spontaneously weave stories and tell each other. In India and Nepal, religious leaders tell stories; Hindus still practise storytelling by organising events like Purans and Mahapurans where large crowds gather to listen to the stories told by priests. This oral tradition is not archaic, but still a living and vibrant practice. This is because reading stories and listening to them are two different experiences; they give different impressions. Leslie Marmon Silko, a Pueblo Indian writer, has explained the same essence of storytelling in an interview, “Every time a story is told, and this is one of the beauties of the oral tradition, each telling is a new and unique story, even if it’s repeated word for word by the same teller sitting in the same chair.”
In this era characterised by cutting-edge technology, everything under the sun is being digitalised; the practice of storytelling cannot remain an exception. Now stories, novels and poems are available in MP3 and MP4 formats that people can listen on their iPods, mobile phones, laptops or CD/DVD players. Nepal’s literary world is reviving its oral tradition by orienting itself with this trend of digitalising literary works. Books like Atmabritanta (B.P. Koirala), Seto Bagh (Diamod Susmher Rana) and other poetry anthologies have already been transformed into audio CDs. Following in the same footstep, Anmolmani Poudel has produced an audiobook titled Nilima ra Gadha Adhyaro, an anthology of five stories selected from his book published a year ago with the same title.
Though the stories in this audiobook are connected with science in one way or other, they are not purely science fiction. The tales, mostly told by a first person narrator, connect science and real life while questioning the achievements of science. Poudel’s stories, like Test-tube Baby ra Meri Premika, are a far cry from contemporary lifestyles, but they are not completely surreal or impossible. Putting tanks of sperm and ova for sale in the marketplace or installing laboratories to produce test-tube babies is seemingly unusual. But, this idea heralds the world that might have little or no strand of nature. In the backdrop of this exotic plot, the plea to save the serenity and originality of nature reticently hangs. His characters send emails and chats with friends, but at the same time, they become nostalgic about old post offices and the hand-written letters of their beloveds. Moreover, Poudel’s characters are almost all ‘netizens’ (people who use internet), but they are still deluged by the fervor of Nietzsche, Spinoza and Descartes in their minds. They try to understand their lives and the world in the light of the ideas propounded by these philosophers from days gone by. The characters appear uncomfortable with their present, post-modern world; they long for natural piety-love that is pious-and believe that modern scientific inventions have brought it to an end.
The stories, in the audio format, sound more like philosophical discourses which lay-readers might find difficult. The writer’s philosophical contemplation over life, love and modernity are sprawled and are described more in language than in action, which might hinder the expressiveness of the stories. Poudel has taken a risk by basing his stories on the grounds of Western philosophical thinking because a scholarly reader well-versed in Western intellectual history might find them below par. Indeed, some of his characters uncomfortably speak philosophical dialogues and there are instances where they very lightly as well as sarcastically speak about philosophers. But, the narration accompanied by selected musical notes helps highlight the essence of the stories.
Achyut Ghimire, a radio anchor, has rendered his voice to the five stories of Poudel. Ghimire runs a popular radio show, Shruti Sambeg, on the Ujyaalo FM network where he reads Nepali stories and novels to his listeners. His expertise in reading stories with the appropriate voice modulation has been praised by listeners. The audio book, produced in a collaborative effort of the writer and and the radio technician can be of great help to the visually impaired. And as per a note in the CD, any visually impaired person interested in hearing the story will get the audio book free of cost. That’s a decent announcement, indeed.
The success of this first audiobook of Nepali short stories, Nilima ra Gadhaa Adhyaro, can be an impetus for other short story writers to explore digital storytelling.
Posted on: 2010-07-31 09:15
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