“Who am I?” questioned the essay in its title and answered it on the very first line. This essay by Sudha Tripathi in the third chapter of the 9th grade nepali book remained so ingrained in the back of my mind that recently, I searched for it, only to find it in recitation and photos of the text book. Nevertheless, re-reading it felt like visiting an old friend, perhaps even that past version of me who was so excited to read it after the first line “Ma ta chor hun ni.” The line shattered all of what I assumed the essay to be about with its title while the rest of the essay moulded my way of perceiving literature.
The essay is a story-ic explanation of why the author is a thief. She addresses the readers directly in every alternate statement, engaging us into the writing as though we were having a conversation as she goes through elaborate details about what she steals from everything and everyone around her. In one paragraph, she talks about flowers in gardens, about the absurdity of a short unsatisfactory life of flowers (and us); about clouds, the sadness they bear sometimes drowning others in; about hills, their resilience, and animals’ variety of nature. In another, she talks about people, her parents from whom she stole parental nature; kids, their innocent whimsy; and literary figures, from whom she stole emotions of literature.
All in all, she closes the essay by accusing the readers of now stealing some things from the essay itself which I found so clever (still do to this day). Even when I wasn’t writing at that point in my life, when I was only observing my surroundings, taking in information to store them somewhere in my mind, this essay gave meaning to the thievery and made it make sense. When I did start writing, I would always circle my thoughts back to the lines in the essay that better described the instances. Whether it be a lonely tree, stories heard from strangers, or emotions of my own dear ones, I was stealing like the author did, pouring into what (or who) I found safe.
What she also focused on was people’s emotions which in my case has always been Sadness. It is the easiest yet such a burdensome notion, to see people, to feel exactly the hurt they feel and not have a means to perceive its extent. Here’s where the essay directed a path for me to pour into. So the line “You are also a thief for indulging yourself in items of thievery i.e. her writings” in the essay amuses me now when I realize that I stole from her the very thing that she stole from other compositions before her.
And like any other accomplice would, I still follow her guide that is this essay and although not in as filtered a way as her, I am practising the art of snatching and storing the stories, at times, my own emotions, making heaps of them wherever possible.