He begins: “I grew up in a strict, traditional Brahmin family in Bhojpur (a district in eastern Nepal) where womenfolk were not allowed to study. Despite their lack of education, my mother, sisters, and sisters-in-laws were the ones to teach me nursery rhymes and songs and tell me stories. My mother especially had a great influence on me. She sang a lot of sanginis to me–sometimes elated, sometimes melancholy–she drew me into her world. Together we would go to Taksar, Bhojpur Bazaars and other places in the evenings and enjoy watching song and dance performances in giti nataks. Impressed with what I saw, I also wrote a script. Looking back on that period, I feel that women have contributed greatly to Nepal’s literature–orally–and if their stories were published as a collection, their literary skills could possibly outshine those of men.  

“However, being born a Brahmin, my mother discouraged me from learning jhyaure, folk or modern songs. As long as I stuck to singing religious hymns she was content. But since I was really keen on music, I wrote lyrics or listened to modern songs without her knowledge. I wrote a series of poems on birds in lyrical form as well. I sang a lot, my brother Basudev played the flute, and, sometimes, my cousin brother Indra Prasad sang Dharma Raj Thapa’s songs–we were a happy group. Thus, I started off writing giti kabitas, lyrical poems, and went on to creating gadhya poetry.”  

As a child, Manjul roamed around Bhojpur with his friend Sailendra Sakar. They sat nearby a sacred burial ground imagining spirits to voice their thoughts in their poems. From the hilly slopes, they saw terraced farmlands, forests, birds, fields filled with shining water, the sky, clouds, the sunset, and sunrise. For hours they would sit in a trance, senseless with euphoria, enraptured by their surroundings.  

So engaged was Manjul in creating poetry that he became absent-minded, sometimes not responding to people’s questions or looking vaguely at them. Once in a while, Manjul would accidentally bump into a passerby. He says in amusement, “A villager informed my mother that I was behaving strangely and could have possibly gone mad. Alarmed my mother thought it unwise for me to continue writing poetry because just about this time talk was spreading about Nepal’s Great Poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s visit to a mental home in Ranchi, India. She was worried that I would end up with a similar fate. My brother Basudev, however, who had recently returned from Calcutta after studying and had become a big fan of Rabindranath Tagore said, ‘If someone in my household desires to be a Tagore then I see no reason why we should refuse the person the opportunity.’ Turning to me he said, ‘You write as much as you want, I will fully support you.’  

“During high school, while I was in class seven, poetry competitions were organized for students. The most exciting part of the competition for me was that the winner received an exercise book. (In those days, stationery was a rarity in Bhojpur as in many remote places in Nepal.) Once my brother brought home some poetry publications of Ananda Dev Bhatta and I read Now, The Mountain Speaks. I found the poem That Day inspiring and wrote That Night which placed me first in a poetry competition. My mother doted on me whenever I brought home exercise books! My school teachers were enthusiastic about my poems and the chairman of the school’s working committee bestowed upon me a title, bal kavi, the child poet. Thus, it was in this conducive environment that I bloomed as a poet.”  

Manjul found a second home in Dharan, where he studied commerce. [Those days studying science or commerce was popular because one could get well paid jobs afterwards.] It was here that Manjul explored his poetic skills, gaining popularity among young and old poets alike. (He became acquainted with established poets such as Kedar Nath Byathit, B.A. Krishna, Ananda Dev Bhatta, Jagadish Nepali, Govinda Bhatta, and many others.) During this period, around the early 1960s, huge gatherings took place on open grounds (something similar to today’s amsabha, political meetings in Tudikhel), where poets recited poetry or took part in competitions. Manjul was staying with his brother, who worked in Dharan, and, on one occasion, his brother’s friend, Laxmi Prasad Nepal, suggested that Manjul write a poem for a poetry competition. Manjul recalls: “During the competition, I stood listening in awe to all the beautiful poems being recited and wondered how I could compete with such serious contenders. When the announcement of the winner was made, I was flabbergasted. My poetry was selected as the best.  

“I became good friends with talented poets like Naresh Shakya, Krishna Pakhrin, and Benu Acharya. Krishna Pakhrin is dead now. We enjoyed attending these poetry gatherings together. I feel that the kind of mental relationship I shared with senior poets, colleagues, and acquaintances in Dharan helped me to move ahead with my poetry. A time came when I started to regard Dharan as my hometown and when people asked me where I was from, I automatically said, ‘Dharan.’ Although Bhojpur tapped my creative energy, it was Dharan that exhausted it.”  

Because Manjul spent so much of his time in literary activities in Dharan, he could not perform well in his Intermediate of Commerce exams, which he had to take in Kathmandu. The then Head of the Commerce Department of Mahendra College (now Mahendra Campus), Dharan, N.D. Pandey, who was like an elder brother to Manjul, rebuked him, “You write and read poetry and at the same time study commerce, how can that be?” He then took Manjul to the university and changed his faculty to that of humanities. In 1967, Manjul passed his Intermediate in Arts exams. He was twenty years old.

Since Manjul had to come to Kathmandu to give his IA exams, compulsory for all students in those days, he began to become familiar with the capital city. During one of his visits to Kathmandu, Manjul was encouraged by an old family friend, Krishna Joshi, to participate in a poetry gosthi at the Royal Nepal Academy. He attended the function with another poet, Parashu Pradhan, also from Bhojpur. Parashu Pradhan’s poetry recital created much warmth in the audience. When Manjul recited his poem, Mother, I touch you, the audience was captivated by the new poet from Bhojpur. After the gosthi, the Gorkhapatra, a national daily, gave a raving review of Manjul’s poem.  

Manjul continues: “At the academy, I saw nationally acclaimed poets like Siddhicharan Shrestha, Bal Krishna Sama, Madhav Ghimire, Kedar Man Byathit, and Mohan Koirala, among others. I had only heard about them and meeting them face to face for me was a revelation. Kedar Man Byathit said, ‘I envy you, young man, I envy you,’ while Bal Krishna Sama praised my eloquence and Madhav Ghimire published my poem in the academy’s literary paper. All of them were encouraging and I basked in their affection.”  

Manjul’s entry into Kathmandu’s poetry circle was complete. He became a regular participant in the academy’s various literary programs, competitions, and symposiums. In 1967, he brought out a song book collection Saili Morilai, which was printed with the help of the academy. Gopal Prasad Rajbhandary published his novel, ChhekuDolma, in 1970. Besides his literary efforts, his newly found acquaintances were Ramesh Vikal, a novelist, Bhairab Aryal, a humorist, Rochak Ghimire, an editor of a literary magazine, and Parijat, a poetess and novelist–names to reckon with among Nepal’s contemporary literary figures.  

So far Manjul’s public life had been comfortably interesting while living in Bhojpur and Dharan, but in Kathmandu he became part of a thriving literary movement getting involved in organizations like Ralfa, the Progressive Writers’ Group, National Sociocultural Forum, and later on, PEN Nepal. At Ralfa, he was associated with artists, poets, musicians, singers, and writers alike. They were kindred spirits ignited in unison (the organization became very popular). Manjul describes the moments: “Ralfa had no meaning, it was meant to be what we thought, felt, and did. One could play music, paint, sing, or write–do whatever one wished.” Between 1968 and 1972, Manjul entered a new phase in his life. He and his friend Ramesh Shrestha spent five years travelling all over the country as troubadours. They may be, in fact, “the poet” and “the musician” to have travelled the most in Nepal. That experience has been published as a travelogue, Samjhana ka Paelaharu, by Manjul.  

Manjul received his Bachelor in Arts degree in 1973, a point at which he also started to develop political thoughts in poetry. “I was aware of friction between different parties in Dharan and Kathmandu, each would try to attract me, but I never took them seriously. It was only afterwards when we were supported by the leftist party at Ralfa that I began to feel close to them. It was their ideology concerning the poor that made me consider their way of thinking. From then on I accepted them as good friends. I enjoyed the literary content in the works of Nazim Hikmet, V. Mayakovsky, and Ai Qing. Similarly, I do not think less or more of the work of our own poets or writers because they embrace different political beliefs. I relate to what they produce not to what they idealize. I realize you have to draw a line between the arts and politics. One should create for art’s sake and practice politics for the benefit of mankind.”  

Manjul was on the executive committee board of the Progressive Writers’ Group. However, he separated himself from the group because too much friction was created among them. They were arguing most of the time and Manjul realized that his creativity would suffer in such an environment.

In 1983, Manjul’s Gayak Yatri, a collection of poems, was published by Lalima Publishers and, two years later, Ujyaloko Prasangsama carrying Manjul’s translations of Ai Quing’s poems was published. It was also the year he received his MA degree in Nepalese literature.  

His international tours to Bangladesh, India, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and, most recently, Finland, have earned him many friends. Among them are Sitakanta Mahapatra and Kuwar Narayan from India, Suntaro Tanikama from Japan, and Sirkka Selja from Finland. He feels that greatness in artists, poets, musicians, singers or writers lies in their humility. He explains; “I met the world renowned singer Mikael Wiehe once on a visit to Sweden. On my arrival, I discovered that you had to arrange for an appointment three months in advance to meet him. But after reading and learning about my program in the papers, Mikael happily invited me over. I was nervous in the beginning but when I met him in person and both of us started to talk, it was like meeting a friend after a gap of 20 years.”  

Talking about his work, Manjul wishes to search for changes within himself and his writing. He wants to experiment with his style, approach new subject matters. He says, “I am receptive to all kind of ideas. As we sit right now, I feel like writing poetry on the sky–what is the sky? There are many definitions of it. Artists, poets, philosophers, scientists, and writers have defined the sky in their own ways. How will I describe the sky is what I look forward to seeing.  

“I feel that I orient my poetry towards nature, but nature which encompasses mankind. For example, I would change the isolated atmosphere of a mountain in my poetry. I would want the mountain to be inhabited by people, their existence enlivened by song and dance. There would be music of course and everything, everyone would be spirited and colorful,” describes Manjul dreamily. “I appreciate ourselves as human beings; we have the capacity to enjoy or endure an experience, either good or bad, to a great level. My poetry features the experiences I have gone through as a human being– childhood, death (I have written 108 poems on the subject), the sunrise, visits to Chokati and Bul Village, etc.”

Manjul’s greatest critic has been Taranath Sharma, an ex-editor of The Rising Nepal. He remembers that at one point Taranath Sharma criticized his poetry for having no creative style and recommended that he read poets like Pablo Neruda, Spanish poets Federico Garcia Lorca and Antonio Muchudo, and the Greek poet C. Pcavafu. Taking Sharma’s advice seriously, Manjul started to read their works. He also feels that reading a good novel is itself a process that helps to develop one’s own imagination and writing skills.  

His latest work is a collection of poems he wrote during his trip to Finland, which he read out in a PEN Nepal meeting and Spiny Babbler poetry meet. It is a step-by-step narration of his entire stay in Finland. He says with a twinkle in his eyes, “I am a romantic at heart. To me even the smallest detail has the greatest significance. I nurture feelings that make me perceive commonplace happenings as meaningful. Like the time when I visited Finland. I rejoiced experiencing every part of the journey as though I was traveling abroad for the first time and along the way my poetry gained momentum.”