I cannot remember Janakavi Durga Lal Shrestha without remembering pieces of paper scribbled in his beautiful hand.The back of an envelope, a discarded scrap, even a cigarette packet — if there was an empty space on which words could be written, Durga Lal would write.
I witnessed this closely in 2001, when Pasa Puchah Guthi UK organised its first Mha Puja in Britain and Durga Lal came to London as our chief guest. I was then a young man working in a restaurant and living in the accommodation above it. During his stay, by one of those accidents of life whose significance becomes apparent only much later, Durga Lal and I shared a room. The poems he wrote during that visit would later form London Rose (London Swā), published by Pasa Puchah Guthi UK.
He became the first Newah poet I knew closely.
What struck me was how naturally writing came to him. He wrote constantly, on whatever he could find. It was my first experience of witnessing such an instinctive literary talent at close quarters. Poetry did not seem like something he sat down and decided to produce; it seemed to flow out of him. Unstoppably.
I was equally fascinated by his handwriting. His Devanagari was extraordinarily beautiful — disciplined yet flowing, almost calligraphic. I remember looking at it and wishing that I too could write like him.
At the time, I could neither understand nor speak Nepal Bhasa very well. It was part of my heritage, but not yet a language in which I could comfortably converse, let alone appreciate literature.
Durga Lal began to change that.
He did not teach me Nepal Bhasa through lessons or textbooks. He did something perhaps more consequential: he made me want to learn it.
He showed me the beauty that existed within the language. What had until then been largely an inherited identity became something I wanted to understand, speak, read and explore.
He wrote many poems during his stay in the UK and created a book called ‘London Rose’. He later called me his “London Rose” and dedicated London Rose to me. I have always treasured that association, but the greater gift was the seed he planted in me: a love for Nepal Bhasa and its literature.
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More than two decades later, even my fascination with his handwriting would come full circle.
More than a Newah poet
My memories of Durga Lal are personal, but his loss is not.
His literary home was Nepal Bhasa, the ancestral language of the Kathmandu Valley, and it remained at the heart of his extraordinary body of work. Over a literary career spanning decades, he wrote poetry, plays, essays, songs and children's literature, producing more than 50 books. His children's verse was also used in mother-tongue education.
His relationship with children deserves particular attention. As a teacher at Kanya Mandir School, he wrote songs for his pupils and learnt from their responses that simple words could carry enormous power. Those children's songs travelled beyond the classroom and became familiar across the Kathmandu Valley. Works such as Chiniyamha Kisicha became enduring parts of Nepal Bhasa children's literature.
But Durga Lal could never be contained within one language or one readership.
His work in Nepali brought him into the homes of people who may never have read a line of Nepal Bhasa literature. Phoolko Aankhama, Phoolai Sansara, sung by Ani Choying Drolma and composed by Nhyoo Bajracharya, became one of Nepal's most recognisable songs. His writing ranged from the innocence of children's verse to love, humanity, social consciousness and progressive thought.
That breadth helps explain the title by which he became known: Janakavi — the People's Poet, conferred on him by Nepal Bhasha Parishad. His contribution was also recognised with the Jagadamba Shree for enriching Nepalese literature through his writing in Nepal Bhasa and Nepali.
Yet perhaps his importance cannot adequately be measured through awards or the number of books he produced.
Durga Lal belonged to a generation for whom writing in a mother tongue such as Nepal Bhasa was also an act of cultural continuity. His life reminds us that the literature of Nepal is larger than literature written only in the Nepali language. Nepal's literary identity is also created through Nepal Bhasa and the many other languages through which its people imagine, remember and express themselves.
To recognise those literatures does not diminish a national identity. It makes that identity richer.
Durga Lal demonstrated that one could love one's mother tongue fiercely without loving Nepal any less. His roots were unmistakably Newah, but his significance could never be contained within one community.
A language must be lived
There is another reason Durga Lal's legacy matters.
We frequently speak about preserving languages such as Nepal Bhasa. But preservation alone is not enough.
A language confined to rituals, festivals and nostalgic conversations risks eventually becoming something we inherit but no longer inhabit. A living language must continue to produce poetry, songs, children's stories, theatre, scholarship, humour and new ways of describing a changing world.
A language will not survive simply because we tell the next generation that it is their heritage. We must give them reasons to fall in love with it. Durga Lal spent a lifetime providing those reasons.
The hand that can continue to write
Last year, while I was in Nepal for the launch of my book London Lakhey, I returned to something that had fascinated me since that room in London more than two decades earlier: his handwriting.
I was able to bring together a team to develop a digital font based on his distinctive hand. We called it simply Durga Lal. What had begun with my fascination with scraps of paper, envelopes and cigarette packets eventually became an attempt to preserve the handwriting itself.
For me, it was never merely a typography project.
Books preserve a writer's words, recordings his voice and photographs his image. Handwriting preserves something more intimate — the movement of the hand through which thought once became ink.
There was also an uncomfortable awareness behind the project: Durga Lal would not always be with us. Preserving his handwriting was one small way of allowing something unmistakably his to continue beyond him.
Today, after his passing, that project carries a weight I was not prepared for.
I think again of that young man in a room above a London restaurant, watching one of Nepal's great poets fill whatever piece of paper he could find. I could barely understand the language in which Durga Lal produced so much of his life's work.
Only now do I fully appreciate it.
Durga Lal spent his life leaving words behind — in books, in songs, on scraps of paper, in Nepal's literary consciousness and, perhaps most importantly, in people.
I am one of them. That is a debt I cannot repay. I can only help carry it forward.
The author is a London-based engineer who is involved in the promotion of Newah cultural heritage.
