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| Joys that Sprouted with Letters by Jhamak Ghimire |
Full Lesson
Before you Read
- Have you heard of Helen Keller? Who was she?
- Are you familiar with the name of Jhamak Ghimire? What is she noted for?
- What is your knowledge about Cerebral Palsy?
- From what angle are they comparable?
I remember now that at the time I first learnt to write the letters of the alphabet, I could not share the joy with anyone. I had, nevertheless, mastered the art of scrawling letters even if it was on the bare earth and had learnt to pronounce them although only within my mind. The first day I had been able to scribble the first letter of the consonant क (Ka), I had sprayed a cloud of dust in the air out of sheer happiness because I had broken innumerable twigs time and again in order to learn writing this letter and I bruised the tender skin rubbing against the soil. Moreover, my toes bled when I practiced writing by dipping them on the dew drops collected on the bowl. If ever there lay any reason behind it, it was only to recognize the letters and to learn how to write them. When this lesson was learnt, I myself raised dust and sprayed it on my body. Besides, with an intention to allow other people also see that I had mastered the art of writing, I had drawn a large-sized क (Ka) on the earth for everyone to see. But there was no question of anyone looking at it; instead some of them stepped on that letter and erased it. In other words, my first letter क (Ka) was wiped out of existence even without anyone seeing it, alas!
But to a person whose life and existence itself had been as good as erased, tolerating one insult and injury after another seemingly gets ingrained in the mind as a matter of habit: I was also one of such persons. There was none whom I could share my joys, nor there was anyone to share my sorrows. That day, when the letter that I had joyfully scrawled was stepped over with shoes, my heart was badly torn to pieces. I expressed that feeling of distress by screaming, because the resulting pain was unbearable to me. That scream was perhaps an expression of resentment against those who had stepped over it. But my screams were not taken in that light by other people. They said that I had screamed as a result of hunger or thirst, my goodness! That period of my life is quite adventuresome. I have never revealed this to anyone so far. I am revealing this to you for the first time today.
It's true, there was none with whom to share my joys of learning the first letter of alphabet. I had shared that joy with this inert earth - I had celebrated the moment by spraying the dust all around; covering my own body with dust.
It was quite difficult for me, unlike others, to write beautifully as on a piece of paper. It's true, I was surrounded by thorns, I had to write another letter pushing them apart. That too on the bare ground. The second letter I scribbled was ऊ (oo - he, she, that), I was excited this time too. This time I shed tears in excitement, but I wiped them out so that they could not see them. The third letter I scribbled on the mud was a व (wa).
As I could not even maintain the balance of my body properly, scrawling letters of the alphabet was an ordeal in itself. My toes would tremble. I somehow wrote the first letter. After that took me a very long time to scribble all the letters. But no matter how long it may have taken, I would be patient. Those days it was an uphill task for me even to communicate my feelings with others. So much that I did not even have either words or signals by which I could tell people I was hungry - I started merely to open my mouth widely to express my hunger and people would comprehend that I was hungry. When I felt thirsty, I used to point to water-vessel and people would understand what I meant. Likewise, at times of nature's call, I would point towards my private parts. These were the few signs or hint-call it a formula or a medium-by means of which I could communicate with my people. Had I been deprived of even such signs or symbols, can you imagine how it would have been possible for me to live?
That's why perhaps, people say, "Where there is life, there is also the art of survival." This maxim proved to be true in my case as well. After all, I had somehow to preserve my life and I had to demand the basic necessities of life, as I had also, like all others, been born with a mouth to feed and a belly to be filled with from the moment I had been born out of my mother's womb. I had somehow to learn how to satiate my hunger and how to quench my thirst, besides also learning the manner by means of which I could evacuate the system's waste materials. I had to learn all this and I did. These limited signs and symbols greatly helped me somehow or the other to carry on life. My relatives could not afford to keep a watch over me the whole day. They would help and assist me in passing urine or evacuating faeces while they were around; but when no one was there, I used to somehow pull down the pyjamas with my feet, crawl myself some distance away from house, and would manage to complete the exercise. We had no toilets at the time. Not only was this case with our house; most houses in the village were no different either. The elders would move towards some streams or rivulets and hide themselves behind a tree or a bush; on our part, we children would make do by squatting on the sides or a slope of the kitchen-garden.
My soiled private parts used to be cleaned by the house-elders; on other occasions, I used to pull out some leaves or grasses with my toes and rub them hard on the affected parts. In that manner I also learnt to wipe out my faeces, but my elders would never let me do it myself as, according to them, I soiled all my undergarments in the process - and they used to clean them once again. These are my reminiscences of a time when I was around eight or nine years old.
Times of joy and delight happen to occur but rarely in one's life; likewise, the times of my life's delight and happiness are hard to come by. I have already mentioned the joys I had experienced when I managed to write the first letter of the alphabet in life. I never received a word of praise nor a word of encouragement as I accomplished it. But, as I threw dust in the air to express my joy, I have frequently been scolded by my mother. Disobeying her made her thrash me too. But nothing could disrupt those moments of joy - neither scolding nor thrashing. I celebrated that moment by blowing soil powder all around; from that very space I shed tears of great joy! Ooh, I learnt that, there are times when no one joins you when your life takes a pleasant turn, nor is there anyone to console and fondle you at times of pain and suffering. I would also wish there was someone to share my joys and fondle my hair with love when I was successful; and, when I would be pained and sad, I wished some tapped my shoulders with affectionate hands and encourage me by saying, "Oh, you dumb girl, must you be so dejected and downcast in life?" But who was there to soothe me with such words? I had been a girl discarded and shunned by everybody. Although, on my face, people seemed to display sympathy by uttering words like, "Poor thing. How pitiable!" and the like; but inwardly they would want me to die early—a reaction I could gather by their unspoken behavior towards me.
At present I remember them. Having lost the battle of life, they are living a helpless life. They treated me the way that they had learnt. I no more look at them with revenge. I have looked at the world with love I can see today, their wrong beliefs and thoughts are drifting in the air like any waste material from the satellite. New thoughts are waging war in their mind. I am quite sympathetic towards them from the very core of my heart. At present I am filled with a love for that aspect of life that had become a thorn and pierced me, scratched my young and delicate heart with its claws. And I experienced that has my conscience not been thus pierced by thorns, I would not perhaps have experienced the feeling of a soothing coolness. That's the reason why I love the thorns as much I love the flowers and I am equally fond of my life's moments, be they of pleasure or pain. I plucked up the delights that had blossomed with letters of the alphabet and I did also pluck the pains, sufferings and miseries as well; in other words, I kissed moments of infinite happiness along with the flowers of the letters.
The first word I had scribbled happened to be कलम (kalam = pen) as because I had been in a dire need of a pen and of which I had been deprived. It had been some kind of ambition with me to avail of one. I had also been immensely happy at having been able to attain the success of composing a word. This time, however, I did not celebrate my success by throwing a cloud of dust around, but by guffawing aloud. But even when I laughed thus, nobody showed any keenness to find out why this girl had behaved in that manner. I went on composing many words one after another. I happened to create a novel path along with that. It appeared that time also flows, drop by drop, along with life. I sought and searched the value of being a human with the help of those drops of time.
Now my father began to teach my sister the lessons of क, का, कि, कि… that is lessons of inserting different vowel markers to a consonant. She began to repeat (pronounce) the same by pointing at the words with her finger. I too sat close by her, looked at the letters (or words), pronounced mentally and scribbled them on the floor. As she repeated innumerable times, I could easily pitch it up. While practicing writing, she did many times until many pages of her exercise book were exhausted. As mentioned earlier, the pages of the exercise books torn and thrown by my younger sister had always come handy and useful to me. When nobody was in the house at a daytime, I used to pull and drag myself to the spot where the wasted pages lay, collect them together and go through the letters of the alphabet written on them repeatedly, to my heart's content. Burnt-out cinders and coals would also be thrown at places where it was easy for me to find them. I had now started writing on the rocks with those cinders. Writing letters thus had become my entire daytime routine till my parents and siblings returned home. The moment I would sense that someone was approaching home, I would hurriedly spray mud on what I had written with the toes and would wipe them out by rubbing them with the feet. I would also hide those exercise books in nooks and crannies where it was not easy to locate. And thus everything lay unsuspectingly usual when they came. Writing with the cinders was usually a taboo as it was believed that such a practice would invite loans and children doing so used to be rebuked. My parents were particularly against it. But, I used to write or scrawl freely and unhindered behind their backs - for I had attained a kind of mastery over the art of writing. This is how I learned to write letters. Obviously your mind be curious to know about this mystery so I revealed it to you today.
How desperately a person, who is denied the medium of communicating his or her feelings with others, somehow tries to find a way out - you can imagine yourself. I was the same person deprived of a medium. But I was a human being, not an animal. Even if I had been deprived of many other attributes, I at least had a brain that was capable of thinking and imagining, a pair of ears that was capable of hearing. And, even if a bit blurred, my eyes could see and observe things, while, at the same time, at least a little ability to move my toes had been left with me. There were only few things that I could make use of. The rest were all useless, dysfunctional. Yes, with that little I had, I could somehow manage to build a bridge that could help me establish a link with the outside world. I can never forget those precious moments where from I had started filling the pages of my life with golden hues. Of course, there have also been chapters of life which, when turned, render me benumbed and delighted at the same time. For instance, how pleasant and exciting were the moments when I had somehow scrawled letters with the help of a twig on a bare earth or with a piece of coal on the rocks? What a pleasant page of life it was! But alas! Nobody tried to open and read it then. On the other hand, when people would see me scrawling on the earth, they would make such disparaging and disheartening comments as: "What's the use of her learning?"- or something to that effect.
How peculiar are the ways and traditions of Nepalese? Leave aside the question of bestowing love and affection on the meek and the dumb; our people have a mindset that regards all the latter as virtually sub-human weaklings. If most of our people possess a diseased outlook such as this, how was I to receive a different kind of treatment from them? But, despite the fact that I had received no better treatment at all, I did not deviate even a bit from the path I had determined to pursue.
Those pathways were not smooth. They went uphill and downhill, or were lined with the turns and twists, filled with intractable boulders and rocks, or were full of thorns. To try to step over them and proceed ahead was by no means easy. These were not gravelled roads levelled with the help of excavators, bulldozer and the labourers and which could be black-topped easily. It was the thorny, rough road, I had stepped on it time and again and my life has traversed along it time and again. As I walked along that pathway, I had to brave frequent wounds and injuries and was pricked by many a thorn. Despite all this, however, I still love that pathway and I have still been pursuing the same all along. Not that it has now been more smoothened and painless. An ability to read and write the letters of the alphabet had of course made things more convenient. That was the joy imparted by the letters - a joy that had filled the heart with pleasure and bliss.
by Jhamak Ghimire in A Flower in the Midst of Thorn
Key Points and Highlights
- Jhamak Ghimire:
- Born as physically crippled in Dhankuta in 1980.
- Honored with Madan Puraskar, Nepal's highest award in the literary field for her novel "Jivan Kanda Ki Phool" in 2011.
- Like Helen Keller…
- Learned to write with three toes of her left foot; they are the only organs under her full control.
- A self taught lady, who never went to school. She taught herself to write by listening and looking, while her sister studying.
- Her prize winning book - "Jivan Kanda Ki Phool" (a flower in the midst of thorns) is about her struggle to learn reading and writing. It is also about her joys of
- writing the letter क "ka", the first letter of Devnagari alphabet, in which Nepali is written.
- Thesis Statements:
- “Joys that Sprouted with Letters“ an extract from Madan Purskar winning autobiographical writings 'Jiban Kanda Ki Phool' (A flower in the midst of Thorns) of Jhamak Ghimire highlights the struggles and hardships that she encountered while learning letters and words as well as boundless happiness that sprouted with developing of her ability to read and write.
- She loved the thorny pathways with wounds and injuries as her joys were sprouted from such discarded and painful life.
- Joys that Sprouted with Letters: Highlights
- The extract begins with her mix feeling of pleasure and pain during her mastery over the art of scrawling letters.
- She was so happy when she was able to scribble her first letter क "ka". She had celebrated the moment by spraying the all around; covering her body with dust. But she couldn't share with anyone.
- She had a great trouble to learn that letters. So, she had a desire to attract the attention of other towards that achievement but she never received a word of praise and encouragement.
- She would feel heart broken when the letter was erased by other without any notice. She would be so furious.
- She learnt other letters too herself, but no one was noticing her learning and practice.
- Not only in learning the letters, but also in other daily personal activities, she learnt to support herself.
- On the one hand she was learning, reading and writing herself, and she had started to feel joys in life. On the other, her relatives and neighbors including her family members were wishing for her sooner death.
- However, she had no sense of revenge towards them, she found them ignorant of her ability. She never hated them as they did her.
- She learnt to accept both thrones and flowers in life.
- Her happiness was boundless when she was able to write her first word, "कलम", but other people were still unaware of her ability to learn reading and writing. At this time she didn't celebrate by throwing a cloud of dust around but by guffawing a loud.
- Slowly and gradually, she learnt writing/ reading of many other letters and words while listening and seeing her father teaching to her sister.
- She had mastered the whole art of writing before it was known to others.
- Despite her physical disabilities, she was able to prove her mental ability. She was able to establish a link with outside world with the help of the letters.
- Joys that Sprouted with Letters: Highlights
- She severely criticizes the society which insults to the wounds of the disables instead of showing love and affection towards them.
- She paved her own way with strong determination and a great struggle.
- "Where is there is life, there is also the art of survival.
EXERCISES
A. Use the following words /expressions in your own sentences:
- sprouted
- a cloud of dust
- existence
- seemingly
- unbearable
- satiate
- resentment
- excitement
- scribbled
- maintain
- maxim
- evacuating
- affected parts
- sufferings
- shunned
- affectionate
- exhausted
- taboo
- obviously
- benumbed
- bliss
B. Answer the following questions:
1. How has the narrator expressed her joys of the moments when she succeeded in writing first alphabet in the Nepali language?
2. How did Jhamak Ghimire resent at the people stepping over her writing with shoes?
3. Explain how far is the proverb, "Where there is Life, there is also the art of survival" relevant in the life of Jhamak Ghimire.
4. Why does the narrator say that her life was a thorny rough road and she had to bear frequent wounds and injuries?
5. What would Jhamak do with the waste pages of her sister's exercise books?
C. Beyond the text:
1. Imagine yourself as Jhamak Ghimire and write your feelings when the external world failed to understand you.
2. Write an exhaustive essay on the theme that mental power, if exploited fully-well can bring about miracles.
D. Assignments:
1. Write an essay comparing Jhamak with Helen Keller.
2. Read any chapter of the book 'A Flower in the Midst of Thorns' by Jhamak and write what is failing in modern education. Have we done anything for the so-called disabled people?
Credit: Interdisciplinary Readings, TU Syllabus; Resham Dumre, WMC, Syangja (Key Highlights) (alert-success)
Reference Materials
- Full Audio Book of Jivan Kanda Ki Full 'In Nepali': (getButton) #text=(View on YouTube) #icon=(link) #color=(#2339bd)
- Documentary Video of Jhamak Ghimire:
