From the mountain villages of rural Nepal comes the newly-translated Mountains Painted With Turmeric by Lil Bahadur Chettri. The novel provides readers with an honest and compassionate portrayal of village society in rural Nepal. Originally published in 1957, Mountains... has long been popular with its Nepali readership. The book follows the life of peasant farmer Dhané (meaning “wealthy one”) and his struggle to look after his wife and child and arrange the marriage of his younger sister. Dhané lives in a society where the wealthy and powerful exploit and intimidate the working poor.

As the family struggles to make ends meet, the reader is drawn into the difficulty of poverty and life in rural Nepal, where caste remains a determining factor for the future of many Nepali. Dhané loves his family dearly and worries constantly about his ability to provide for them. When Dhané cannot pay back the “big men” in his village, his family suffers yet again. Once a “stranger” arrives in the village, his family’s future will change forever.

Lil Bahadur Chettri’s writing is poetically simple and the various characters are captured with realism and sympathy. Michael J. Hutt’s careful translation retains the wit of the Nepali language and the stunning imagery of natural surroundings and music in far-eastern Nepal. Though the story may seem stereotypical to some, Mountains Painted With Turmeric is refreshingly without pretension, and its simplicity offers a beautiful read.

Hutt, professor of Nepali and Himalayan Studies at the School of African and Oriental Studies in London, has painstakingly translated Mountains Painted With Turmeric to provide English readers with an accessible and empathetic experience of Nepali culture in this new edition. At its root, the theme in this novel is of the misery and impoverishment for the people living in rural Nepal; however, the story also paints a picture of a loving family, an intimate village society, and the remote and stunning scenery of rural Nepal.

Though written half a century ago, this fable of village life in the hills of Nepal remains a story that Hutt says almost every Nepali reader knows well. In his forward, Hutt writes that this novel is an important representation of Nepali society and history found in many Nepali works of fiction, which is often ignored in favour of publications from foreign anthropologists and historians.

Mountains Painted With Turmeric allows readers to understand a little of Nepali society through a captivating and thoughtful story. Hutt’s extensive footnotes in this edition provide readers with meticulous explanation of the terms commonly used in Nepal. The agricultural cycle, important events and traditional ways of Nepali society are explained in exceptional detail.

Lil Bahadur Chettri is a Nepali who grew up and still lives in the state of Assam in northeast India. He has written two additional novels though Mountains Painted With Turmeric (original title Basain) remains his most popular. Hutt quotes Bahadur Chettri’s reasons for writing Mountains Painted With Turmeric in the foreword:

Basain might not entertain its readers, because that is not its aim. In it I have simply tried to give a picture of the villages in the hills of Nepal. Life in the hills – the joys and sorrows of the villages and the events that happen there – is the essence of Basain.

Mountains Painted With Turmeric
(2008)

by Lil Bahadur Chettri and translated by Michael J. Hutt
Columbia University Press (Footprint Books)
ISBN: 9780231143561
128pp AU$34.95