I think I have mentioned it already, don’t know where and when though, that work and fun come hand in hand for me. Work is fun and fun is work. Even when I am in stress, while writing stories, I try to enjoy. I feel like man you love this job, don’t you? If you love, why be overwhelmed by the pressure. Don’t buckle down under pressure. Be cool, think hot and decide and do accordingly. When deadline is approaching and you have finished only two (out of possible 5 paragraphs story), you feel the pressure. When you have to edit another story (sometime a badly written one) after finishing writing yours, you feel the heat. But to be calm in such moment is what a reporter needs to do. This much of lecture for the time being. I was about to talk about fun in the job.
Tomorrow, I will be going to Chitwan National Park (Sauraha) to report an event: Elephant race. Isn’t that exciting? I wanted to write more about the event here but I don’t have the paper now and I am not that bright to remember all the stuffs that I read a week ago. But there are some things that you hardly forget. I was in Sauraha years ago (1998) and the only thing I remember is sitting atop an elephant and roaming around the jungle. Rhinos were hanging around. Past several weeks have been disappointing as I have been reading news of rhinos being killed one after another.
So the elephant race must be exciting. I will have to file stories for my newspaper so evenings will not be all fun (though I might say that writing news is also fun!) This is one such special situation reporters find themselves in. They enjoy the game (any game like football or cricket) like all other spectators in the stadium. When the game is over, other spectators go home (or bars) talking about the match. They enjoy. But reporters go to office to work. For reporters, work begins at the same time when others start celebrating! To being a reporter is a kind of celebration in itself! (Afno job ko prasansha ta garnai paryo ni! What’s harm is praising your own job!)
So I will be celebrating my job and enjoying the Hatti Daud (elephant race) in Sauraha. Just remembered, its Christmas time. Timing is not bad too!
On Books By the way, I had said in this blog that I would be writing my impression of the book that I was reading last week: Kafka on the Shore. That was a good read though occasionally that gave me the impression that I was reading a work of pornography. Some of the scenes were graphic but at times the writer discusses on philosophical and world issues that makes the not just another pulp fiction.
From today, I have starting reading “The Story of a Nobody” by Anton Chekhov. This is my second attempt to read the book. A few months ago, I read the book up to somewhere in the middle and stopped turning pages. Not that it’s dull but just felt like not continuing with reading it. This time it’s slightly different. I have started enjoying it. First few pages are full of great lines. Here I quote a few of them:
“I wanted peace of mind, health, good air, a full stomach. I was becoming a dreamer and, like a dreamer, did not know what it actually was that I needed. At times I wanted to retreat to a monastery, sit there for days on end by a window and gaze at the trees and fields; at other times I imagined myself buying a few acres of land and living like a country squire; at other I swore to myself that I would take up academic work and without fail become a professor at some provincial university.”
Exactly my sentiment. I have decided to take this book along with me in Chitwan trip. I hope to find time to read most of the pages if not all.
By the way, here is yet another line from the book:
“Tell me what you read, they say, and I will tell you who you are. That may be so, but to judge anything about Orlov from the books he read is absolutely impossible. It was just a mishmash.”
I have no comment on this.
Dinesh Wagle on Nepali Society 