Speaking during the launch of There’s a Carnival Today, a translation of Indra Bahadur Rai’s magnum opus Aaja Ramita Cha, literary critic and poet Bairagi Kainla saluted the Darjeeling-based author as a “lone mountain towering over the field of Nepali literature.” 

Speaking of the author’s contribution to Nepali literature, poet Kainla hailed the author for ushering in a “paradigm shift.” 

“IB Rai was a revolutionary figure in the field of Nepali language and literature,” said Kainla, adding, “He was on a mission to provide a new way of looking at the world. He would challenge popular worldviews for their singular description of the world. ‘The quarrel between a husband and a wife is not only like paral ko aago, despite what the cliché would have you believe. It could also be like so many other things,’ he would say.” 

Kainla went on, “Rai used to say that a good sentence was like a guitar—if its strings are tuned well, it will make the perfect sound, but if it is out of tune, the same instrument can be unpleasantly chaotic.” 

There’s a Carnival Today, translated by Manjushree Thapa, was unveiled jointly by Kainla, editor of the book Anurag Basnet, critic Bishnu Poudel, and author Thapa. at Patan Museum in Lalitpur, on Friday.

The launch event also saw translator Thapa engage in conversation with scholar and critic Bishnu Sapkota. The conversation touched upon topics such as the political and social atmosphere of Rai’s novel, the aesthetics and style of the novel, and the translation process. 

During the conversation Thapa said that some aspect of the original novel was inevitably lost in the translated edition, but critic Sapkota was quick to interject that “the translation, while conveying the meaning of the original, also preserved the aesthetic beauty of Rai’s writing.” 

The event also saw the speakers, Sapkota and Thapa, read out excerpts from the original and the translated versions of the text, respectively. 

There’s a Carnival Today is the second of Rai’s works to be translated into English. Prior to this, a selection of his short stories was translated into English. One of the most prolific writers of Nepali literature, the Darjeeling based author, Rai, has won Sahitya Akademi award, one of India’s premier literary honours.

 Translator Manjushree Thapa is known for her works of fiction and non-fiction. Her 2005 book, Forget Kathmandu, which was shortlisted for the esteemed Lettre Ulysses Award, won acclaim for her incisive retelling of the royal massacre and the Maoist insurgency. 

There’s a Carnival Today is published by Speaking Tiger.