A day prior to Madan Puruskar, recipient Radha Paudel shares on Khalangaama Hamala. Indian Embassy and B.P. Koirala India-Nepal Foundation organized 21st edition of Conversations at Nepal-Bharat Library.

In this edition of Conversations, Radha Paudel, recipient of the prestigious Madan Puruskar Award of 2014 shared on her award winning book - Khalangaama Hamala.

This edition of Conversations was moderated by journalist/critic Basanta Basnet.

During an hour long interaction, Paudel shared how she never imagined that her recollection of the insurgency; the attack in Khalangaa in Jumla by the then Maoists would one day receive Madan Puruskar.

She shared, “I never thought Khalangaama Hamala would earn Madan Puruskar. I am extremely thankful to my readers for empathizing with the book and also the jury member of the coveted award for acknowledging the effort I have put to pen Khalangaama Hamala.

Paudel elaborated how as a medical practitioner she never thought about writing a book but was always moved by the stories of common people and wanted to contribute whatever best she could to the society.

She explained, “I always found books as a respite to my isolation and I used to connect the stories in them to our day to day society. I was fortunate that my parents encouraged me to study in that era of society when women were supposed to look after only the culinary business. I started my working as a medical nurse from my teenage and I was already earning enough to support my family and in addition to help people in need.”

Paudel enunciated further how the two years she lived in Khalangaa in Jumla during the insurgency changed the way she looked at the society.

“After that incident; the attack in Khalangaa, I was deeply moved. There were human corpses around, bloodshed and people badly injured. For me as a nurse, it did not matter to me who were those people, which political party were they affiliated to and what were their motives. All that was in my mind was they needed me, each of them. I was so deeply moved by this incident that I wrote down Khalangaama Hamala in just a few days, right after the incident,” she added and said that the state of Jumla still remains bizarre with the state turning indifferent to the problems it faces day-to-day.

Paudel concluded, “I cannot promise if I will continue my writing in future or not. More precisely, I don’t want to write with the feeling that I have to write. I will write again if things, people or incidents will move me deeply.