2. About the Author
Samrat Upadhyay
Samrat upadhyay is a Nepalese writer who writes in English, born and
raised in Kathmandu, he moved to United States at the age of twenty one. He
was the first Nepali author writing in English in the west. His work has
appeared in “The Best American Short Stories” and the “The Best of Fiction
Workshop”
Now he is the professor of creative writing as well as director of
Graduates studies at Indiana University. His books portray the current
situations in Nepal, which he views through the lens of contemporary
American fiction.
The book
“Arresting God in Kathmandu”
The book is a collection of nine short stories which are psychologically
rich, astonishingly acute, ironical and all these short stories have compassion
and wit included in them, the important aspect in each story is the expression
of love with cyclic nature of love and its passion, each story discuss about
desires and societal fear that leads to transgression brutality and joy.
The story describe the mortality tales, it takes of the way social norms
and family pressures shape lives, as far as the stories are concerned we come
to know that Upadhyaya is funny and ionic, the best example for this is a line
from one of the short stories ‘so many things are happening in the world,
government falling, people dying of cholera and other diseases, wild animals
3. roaming in the city and all the you can come up with is tea’, where he express
the views towards the society and then the peoples attitude towards them.
The title
The title of the book ‘Arresting God in Kathmandu’ has got some
relevance with the short stories being described in the book. The stories
explore the meaning of nature of desire & spirituality in the changing society,
and record the echoes of modernization throughout love and family. In this
stories he discuss about husbands and wives who are bound together by
arranged marriages but sometimes drives elsewhere by an intense desire for
connection and transcendence, which is sometimes difficult for people to
understand but he could make his reader realize that the world has changed
a lot. And he makes the reader to think how much he or she is like the
modern world described in the short stories.
The title “arresting god in Kathmandu” refers to the city where gods
are omnipresent where privacy is elusive and family defines identity, these
men and women find themselves at the mercy of their desire but at the will
of their society. As the title there is nothing specific about God or spirituality
in the book but as it is read it relates us towards a supreme power inside the
human which make him do many things which cannot be accepted by the
society sometimes.
The Short Stories
The nine short stories are ‘The Good Shopkeeper’, describes about an
affair between a henpecked husband who recently lost his middle class job
and a plump servant girl from village, but his subject is the escapism of love.,
‘The cooking poet’, short story which describe about a relationship between
a teacher and a student., ‘The World’, where the theme is arranged
4. marriage., the other short stories are ‘The Room NextDoor’, ‘DeepakMisra’s
Secretary’., ‘The Limping Bride’., ‘During the Festival’.,’ The Man With Long
Hair’., ‘A Great Man’s House’., each story descried here is deeply related with
the society and its impact on the people.
Conclusion
The narrative style and fascinating characterization with pre use
description by Samrat Upadhyay makes the whole book into a single theme,
where every story seem to happen in the neighborhood of Kathmandu itself
at the roads, the culture, the society, everything remain the same in each
story. The narrative style of the book makes it interesting for the reader to
read the book.
