[Haribol Acharya]

Laxmi Prasad Devkota was a great writer but did not live longer. In a short span of his life he wrote massively, leaving no domains of literature untouched, from epics to essays, to poems, to novels, to dramas. He knew so many languages, Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi, Begali, English, French, Nepali being his birth language. He could even compose poems in these language. I have read epics and their biographies. Devkota was a genius for he could write an epic, very complicated and sized epic just in a week. There was an example, something highly commendable in this case. Some one challenged him about his talents for poetry. There was a bet and he completed a big epic just in 8 days and they were in perfect rhymes and meters. He did not write, but simply narrated in his speech and someone wrote. He spoke in perfect, beautiful unflawed rhymes all day from dawn to dust and in eight days the epic was completed. The port died young with no rewards in life. He was, and is still considering the number and quality of his books matchless.

On the contrary, Samrat Updadhyaya, I speak with due respect, got acclaimed in the west. His book entitled Arresting God in Katmandu earned him fortunes. He succeeded just because he wrote in English. I do not underrate him. He is fabulous. He wrote several books and his recent book entitled the Royal Ghosts sold very satisfactorily.

From this example all I want to say is Nepal is not short of any other international or repute writers and the problem is they are not translated into English. I myself want to take up the project of translation but the problem is nobody chooses to fund the project in Nepal