Solitary by nature, Dixit spent much of his time as a boy with his own thoughts. His poor health also limited opportunities for making playmates. By the age of six, he had been on deathbed several times and survived each time, receiving medical treatment from his kaka, Dr. Sidhi Mani Dixit. Whenever he became ill and stayed in bed or rested, he enjoyed watching the view from his bedroom window–the trees, blue sky dotted with white clouds, the flowers in the garden, and birds flying. He found that he could relate to nature’s beauty, it moved him, and in these moments, he recalls, he was at peace with himself.

Madan Mani’s favorite past-time as a child was reading. His eldest kaka, Ram Mani Dixit, was an established scholar of Nepalese literature and had a small home library. Since Dixit’s mother grew up in India, she was also educated; she enjoyed reading Hindi novels. She would send a family friend, a learned pundit of the Nepali language, to get books for her from the library. After his mother finished reading them, Dixit would also get to read them. It was because of his mother’s influence that Dixit started reading and learning the Ramayana sloka by rote. The seventy-seven year old novelist remembers: “There was a time when I was thirteen when I was determined to read Balmiki Ramayana twenty-two times. The family pundit told me that if one read Balmiki Ramayana twenty-two times, one would achieve shruti dhar, shruti meaning to hear and dhar meaning to perceive things, and, by doing so, would be able to remember whatever was said. With this notion, I was taken up by the idea of achieving shruti dhar; I read the religious scripture only seventeen times, however, otherwise I would remember everything I will be saying during this conversation!”

Madan Mani’s father and grandfather held diplomatic positions during the rule of the Ranas. His great grandfather bought a house in Gairidhara where all of them lived together. “We lived a privileged lifestyle. We had eleven cows, a horse, and twenty-two house helpers–a typical upper middle-class Brahmin family living in Kathmandu. Slavery was abolished in Nepal in 1924 and, after that, for some reason our family could not make immediate arrangements for the servants. Since my grandfather was an important officer in the time of the Ranas, he was under scrutiny. After discussing the matter with his sons, his last resort was to tell the servants to make their own decisions: those who wanted could leave and those who did not could stay back and work for our family. I think half of them stayed on and the rest went their own ways.

“An interesting aspect of that period was that the practice of drinking tea. It was not common in Nepal. I am not sure whether the Rana officers drank it or not. Tea was introduced to our family in 1928 after my kancha (youngest) kaka returned home from studies in Calcutta; he had tasted tea during his stay in the Indian city. Usually on Saturdays, or at intervals of 10 to 12 days, our family members would get together and drink tea. I think a shop located below Dharahara tower started to make and sell tea first; before this there were no tea stalls. As you know, today tea has become popular among Nepali families.

“In 1929, my kancha kaka got permission to order a radio set from Calcutta. For at that time listening to a radio was quite a treat. The model had a receiver and speaker and the funny thing is that we just managed to tune in, heard three words spoken in English, and the radio stopped working. There were six radios of the same model in Kathmandu owned by people closely associated with Chandra Shumshere Rana, the then shree teen maharaja.

“Newspapers were non-existent except for the Gorkhapatra, which at that time was a weekly paper. Since two of my kakas, Yagya Mani Dixit and Nagendra Mani Dixit, were foreign policy advisor and officer working for Chandra Shumshere Rana, they had to read English papers. They would receive the Statesman twice a week from Calcutta via the British Embassy in Lainchour where the Ranas had Nepal’s post office.”

The good times for young Dixit, however, did not last. When he was six years old, his grandfather distributed the family wealth among his sons, after which Dixit’s father took his family to a house in Hadi Gaon. Just about that time, Chandra Shumshere passed away and Bhim Shumshere took over as shree teen maharaja.

“The following 33 months, while Bhim Shumshere was in power, were most difficult for my father. Because of the problems between Chandra Shumshere and Bhim Shumshere’s families, our family was also viewed with suspicion. Three attempts were made to confiscate my father’s property and wealth, and my father had to go to prison. Although I was very young, I felt responsible because I was the eldest son.

“I had two sisters. When one of them was one-and-a-half years old, she found some sugar coated tablets and ate them. We took her to my grandfather’s house, but she expired as we reached the door of his house. Another terrible experience I recall during my childhood was the earthquake of 1934. The earthquake occurred around 2 o’ clock in the afternoon and was measured at more than eight on the Richter scale. More than 8,000 people died in the Kathmandu Valley alone and people had to live in tents put up at Tudikhel. We were living in Hadi Gaon at this time and the wall of the northwestern side of our house cracked. My mother didn’t realize that an earthquake had come and, as soon as I pulled her out of the house, tiles dropped from the roof. Our vegetable garden was damaged. For two months, we did not have the courage to go upstairs and lived outside the house. Coincidentally, just one day before the earthquake, my mother had explained to my sisters and myself what an earthquake was and what we had to do if one came.”

Dixit received much of his formal education at Banaras. He passed his school examinations from a private school. One day, during a Hindi class, his teacher gave him a poetry assignment. Dixit was asked to write and bring a poem to class. “I wanted to write a good poem and copied some lines from an original poem. When my teacher found out what I had done, he scolded me and made me stand on a bench in front of the whole classroom. Since then, I have never felt like writing poetry.”

Talking about the educational opportunities at that time, he says, “Until 1944, students in Nepal had to go to Bihar University, India, to sit for their School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations. It was only after 1945 or 1946 that students could give their SLC exams in Kathmandu. I think that until 1957 Tri Chandra College was the only educational institution for intermediate level studies; most Nepalese went to India for higher education.

“During school, I was always behind in my studies because I found it difficult to follow the lessons. I was a slow learner, the number of graduates in Kathmandu in 1946 was twenty-nine and, out of them, eight were from my family. When I received my master’s degree in Indian philosophy and religion, I graduated with 26 students. In 1950, the literate population in Nepal was between 2 to 2.5 per cent. So you can imagine what the country’s state of education was like back then.”

Madan Mani was married in 1939. He had turned seventeen; his wife was thirteen years old. He says, “One-and-a-half years after our marriage, I began to talk to her and only then realized what a ‘wife’ meant. During her visits to her family’s house, I used to write letters to her. Afterwards I found out that she had kept and collected all of them.

“About this time, I had developed a hobby–photography–and bought a camera. Even today, I still have an interest in the subject. For almost six years, I managed to support my wife and family through photography assignments. I think during that period, I earned Rs. 12,000 to Rs. 15,000.

“One day my niece and her friend, Sudha, came to our house. They lived in Biratnagar and had come on a visit. Knowing that I took photographs professionally, my niece asked me to take theirs. I complied and asked them to sit on a chair before my camera. When I asked both of them to smile, Sudha replied that she never felt like smiling. I did not like her response and told her that unless she smiled, I would not take her photograph. She then said that if that was the case, she did not need to have her photograph taken. The next time they visited, I made her feel relaxed. Even though she didn’t smile, her face on the photograph had a kind of luminescence and contentment. Some time later my niece wrote to me from Biratnagar saying that Sudha had committed suicide. When I went over to her house, I was told that they had found her dead with a most peaceful expression on her face. The reason why she committed suicide was maybe because her lover had rejected her. I wrote my first story about this experience and called it ‘Aakhiri Muskan’, the last smile.”

Besides his interest in photography, Dixit was also a keen chess player and quite good at the game. In July 1939 his father sent him to Banaras during the holidays to stay and keep his grandfather company. An avid chess player, Dixit’s grandfather had hired a person at Rs. 100 a month to play chess with him. Nearing 80, he had rarely lost a game in his entire diplomatic career. Dixit remembers: “I started to play chess with my grandfather. After a couple of games, I saw what his moves were like and identified his weaknesses as well. Soon my grandfather started losing and became quite serious. But he still wanted me to keep on playing with him. I could not lose dishonestly because when I tried it once, my grandfather found out. I was in a terrible dilemma; I could neither refuse to play chess with him nor stop winning. Because of this, I attempted to commit suicide. The third time one of my cousins pulled me out of a lake behind the house. In 1961, while I was staying undercover during the Panchayat regime, I wrote a story ‘Kasle Jityo, Kasle Haryo?’ (Who won and who lost?) In my story, I wanted to show that although I had lost confidence playing chess with my grandfather, later on in life I was able to overcome my fear and live life fully again.”

After Dixit discontinued his Ph.D. research in Banaras, he worked as the headmaster of a high school in Birgunj. But due to differences in working policies with the then director of education, Mrigendra Shumshere Rana, he resigned. “Since I was a child, I have adhered to my principles. I don’t like the concept of chakadi, servitude. Since I was too stubborn and could not abide by Mrigendra Shumshere’s administrative policies, we did not get along. I think that during my stay in Banaras, when I used to listen to the speeches of freedom fighters before India’s independence, I became attracted to the idea of democracy and democratization. I felt that the only kind of respect that mattered to me was self-respect.

“Once while I was headmaster in Birgunj, I was asked to organize an event to celebrate the birthday of then prime minister, Mohan Shumshere Rana. I wrote a play called ‘Dasatwa Mochan’ (freedom from slavery) in which I described an incident during Chandra Shumshere’s rule. One day while he was making a public appearance before a huge crowd, he stood on the balcony of Singha Durbar. A woman between the age of 25 and 26 shouted out, ‘Duhai, maharaj!’ On asking her why she had called out, the woman replied, ‘Maharaj, first of all, my husband was sold. After that, my daughter was sold and now my young son is about to be sold. My family members have been separated and my family life disrupted. Now where will I go and stay?’ After hearing this, Chandra Shumshere talked to his advisors and decided that slavery had to end in Nepal. Since I was a civil servant I had to receive permission to stage my play. I sent my script to Kathmandu, but due to reasons unknown it was not used. The authorities in Birgunj said that they had lost the original copy as well.”

Madan Mani started to produce seriously in 1954. He wrote a story on his first son and another on his second son. Both stories were lost. He feels that he was able to prepare himself for his writing career through the time he spent reading. From 1958 to 1960, he edited for Hal Khabar, a weekly paper. He also worked on his own paper, Samichya.

In 1960, he was part of a parliamentary delegation to the Soviet Union. He represented the journalism sector of Nepal. From Russia, they went on to Poland and visited one of the concentration camps of World War II. They were horrified to see the conditions in which millions of Jewish prisoners had been killed. Thinking back on the visit, Dixit says, “After our visit, we talked and discussed war and its implications. Soldiers got killed during battles and people staying at home died when bombed. We felt very disturbed knowing that civilians had died in the gas chambers. I wrote a story, the ‘Gas Chamber’, in which I wanted to explore the reasons why these innocent people had to die.

“From this effort, I realized that I could write non-fiction stories not only from my past experience, but also from history. As long as I could study the social environment and base my imagination on it, I knew I could write stories unrelated to my life. I feel that this kind of skill comes after five to seven years in the writing field. In the beginning, I used to write about the personal experiences I had had from the time I was nine or ten years old. (I had always written stories based on my childhood). Sometimes, when I feel an idea isn’t working, I stopped writing the story altogether. There have been many times when I have discontinued writing a story because I felt it lacked potential. After 10 to 15 years, I looked at some of my stories again and completed them. Still I wasn’t satisfied with the results and rewrote them.

“I believe that the most important aspect of story writing is not the style one writes in, but the feelings one is able to convey. One should be able to create an atmosphere suited to the period. It is like hearing, understanding, and following the heartbeat of the people. Classics like War and Peace and Gone with the Wind exemplify my point. Their literary contents reflect a society and culture of different time periods. I think a writer should be able to do this. “In my first novel Madhabi, I covered North Indian society–from the Punjab to Bengal–of the Vedic period (about 10th century B.C.). The two main characters in the book are Madhabi and Galav. Since I had been reading and studying the Vedic period for over two decades, I was able to develop different ideas. Also, my educational background is deeply rooted in Sanskrit, so this helped me to create the society. After Madhabi, I wrote Tridevi. My third novel was Meri Nilima.

“Another aspect of good writing is careful characterization. S/he should write sensitively and with a balanced view of the positive and negative qualities of human beings. I believe that a bad man cannot always be critically rejected. I once read a poem about a hangman who worked for a jail in New York. No one knew what he did for a living. One evening after returning from work, he sat down to dinner with his family. His little daughter asked him if he had done a good day’s work. The question shook him because  he had hanged six men on that same day. He wondered whether his daughter had found out about his work, but realized that she had asked the question unknowingly. Touched by her innocence, he took her on to his lap and kissed her. From this story, I understand that a man who has legally killed six men in one day can have compassion. He can still be a father. We can’t always judge a man/woman’s character by his/her weaknesses. I think s/he should be given more credit for what s/he can feel as a father, mother, son, daughter, lover.”

Reflecting on his political and administrative career, Madan Mani is indifferent. “All my life I have been studying and writing, this is a path that I have always followed. I grew up in one of the strongest families in Kathmandu. Today my sole property is this house I live in. I spent my money on my political party’s activities and a not-for-profit paper. Money was always an important issue.

“I worked for thirty-three years for the Nepal Communist Party. I was vice-chancellor of the Royal Nepal Academy from 1994 to 1999. During that period, whenever I expressed my wish to do something for the academy, I was criticized. I think that the problem at that time was this huge communication gap between my colleagues and myself. I also feel that my moral values were not appreciated. One day, during the time I was still vice-chancellor, one of the members came to me and suggested that both of us should add a stipend of Rs. 3,000 each to our salary. I replied that, as it was, we were already receiving Rs. 6,000 to 7,000 a month and did not see any reason to increase our salaries. Besides, it would mean violating the academy’s constitution. He claimed that he was suffering from a back problem and needed the extra money. Nine months later, I found out that he had released some money for himself. This disappointed me a great deal.

“During my tenure, I thought of carrying out a socio-linguistic survey of Nepal. The Royal Nepal Academy was in its 42nd year and I felt that it would be a good idea to organize a national seminar at the academy. But my plans were not received positively. I think the only positive thing about the whole period was that I was in a secure frame of mind. I wrote and published four books. Other than this, I think I wasted five years of my life at the academy.”

In 1982, Madan Mani Dixit received the Madan Puruskar. He comments: “The Madan Puruskar is named after Chandra Shumshere’s youngest son, Madan Shumshere, whose wife Princess Jagadamba established the prize after her husband’s death. In the beginning it was awarded four times a year, but nowadays it is given only once a year to a published book. At the time I received a cash prize of Rs. 25,000; today the amount has increased to Rs. 100,000.

"Although we are categorized as a developing country by the international communtiy and receive foreign aid for development purposes, I take pride in knowing that despite our recessive economic status, we are as a country culturally rich and, in the worse and best times, have continued oir literary endeavors".