Neelam's "Yogamaya": A Revisionary Rejoinder to Flawed History
Mahesh Paudyal Neelam Karki Niharika's novel Yogamaya wins Madan Puraskar for the year 2074. The book was published by Sangri-la Books. Congratulations! What is Yogamaya all about? Yogamaya has its heavy bearing on history. History is slowly slipping off the hands of the official historians, and is fast passing into the hands of the new historicists, who are better adept with historicization of fiction and fictionalisation of history. This bottom-up approach to history is bringing newer facts to limelight, and is subverting the erstwhile power-driven political allegory under the camouflage of history. This new approach to history has been instrumental in empowering two categories of people: the women, and the ethnic subalterns. Neelam Karki Niharika’s latest fictional work Yogmaya is one of such feats that takes conventional history headlong. The work follows the author’s overwhelmingly successful feministic feats Arki Aaimai and Chiraharan . Un...