Durga Lal Shrestha

Durga Lal Shrestha was born in 1935 in Nhyakatol, in the old centre of Kathmandu, into a lower middle class Newar family. His mother was Asha Moti Shrestha and his father Ganesh Lal Shrestha. Sources differ slightly on the year: Wikipedia gives July 1935 (1992 in the Bikram Sambat calendar), while the Kathmandu Post dated his birth to Nepal Sambat 1057. His ancestral home was in Thamel.

He was educated at Padmodaya Secondary School. Street theatre was common in Kathmandu's neighbourhoods when he was a boy, and he often recalled with pride that he wrote, directed and acted in a play in Nepal Bhasa when he was only 11. That experience began a literary life that lasted more than seventy years.

Shrestha began writing around 1949. His first published poem, Dui Thopa (Two Drops), appeared in Suskera magazine in 1952, and an early poem, Santwana, was published in Dharmodaya magazine. He first entered literature through plays, and although he became best known as a poet and lyricist he also wrote essays and translations. The essayist Ramesh Kaji Sthapit said his pen perhaps ran even faster for plays than for poems.

His first book, Chiniyamha Kisicha, a collection of children's poems published in 1965, became one of the best selling books in Nepal Bhasa. Later collections included Taibhaba (1966), Pija and Chiniya Champa (1967), Kulikasa (1967), Salachhyonya Bela (1969), Ji Swayambhu Twath (1986), Yaka Phalecha (1987), Inquilabya Palasa (1991), Machabakhancha (1995) and Santaya Kusa (2001). A selection in English translation, A Pick of Durga Lal Shrestha's Poems, appeared in 2000.

His work was closely bound up with the fight for his mother tongue. After Radio Nepal stopped broadcasting news in Nepal Bhasa in 1965, literary gatherings were held across the Kathmandu Valley for about a year in protest at the state's one language policy, and Shrestha took an active part. His song Jhee Masini (We Are Not Dead Yet) is regarded as one of the most powerful songs of the Nepal Bhasa movement. He also wrote songs for the film Balidan, about the popular uprising against the Panchayat system, and the soundtrack for the Nepal Bhasa film Rajamati. He was a founding member of Nepal Bhasa Manka Khala, an organisation working for the language and the cultural rights of the Newar community.

In Nepali, his song Phool ko Aankha Ma, Phoolai Sansar, composed by Nhyu Bajracharya and sung by Ani Choying Drolma on the album Moments of Bliss, for which he wrote all the lyrics, reached listeners far beyond Nepal. He wrote Sayathari Baja Eutai Taal, a song about Nepal's diversity, for Hari Bansha Acharya's film 15 Gatey, and wrote songs for the singer Shweta Punjali, including her debut album Udaan.

His honours included the Narottamdas-Indira Award, the Abhiyan Award, the Noor-Ganga Award, the Rashtriya Balsahitya Award, the JAA Best Playwright Medal (1991) and the Harihar Shastri-Savitri Devi Literary Award (2006). He was made an honorary member of the Nepal Academy in 1995, received the title of Janakavi from the Nepal Bhasha Parishad in 2003, and was awarded the Jagadamba Shree Puraskar in 2010 for enriching Nepalese literature with melodious songs, poems and children's literature in Nepal Bhasa and Nepali over six decades.

Shrestha married Purna Devi Shrestha in 2013 in the Bikram Sambat calendar, around 1956 or 1957. In his later years he lived at the home of his son, Suman, in Budhanilkantha. He was also known for his neat handwriting, which became so closely associated with him that a typeface was later named after him.

Durga Lal Shrestha died at his son's home in Budhanilkantha, Kathmandu, on the night of Sunday 16 August 2026. He had been ill for some years, and Onlinekhabar reported that his health had been poor for about five years. No specific cause of death was made public. Nepali media, including the Kathmandu Post, Kantipur, Ratopati and Onlinekhabar, reported his age as 93, while the July 1935 birth date given by Wikipedia would make him 91.

The death was announced by the writer and film critic Prakash Sayami. Krishna Sundar Malla, chancellor of the Nepal Bhasa Academy and a close associate, called it a major loss to Nepal Bhasa literature and said that he was born to write. Because family members had to travel from abroad, the public tribute was held on Tuesday 18 August, when his body was placed at the Nepal Bhasa Manka Khala building in Bijeshwari before a funeral procession and cremation at Karnadeep.

Shrestha is remembered as the people's poet because he wrote about love, compassion, hope and social injustice in words that ordinary readers and listeners could understand and sing. His poems and songs were central to the movement for Nepal Bhasa in the 1960s and after, and his children's verse introduced generations of Newar children to reading in their own language. Songs such as Phool ko Aankha Ma, Phoolai Sansar have travelled far beyond Nepal through recordings and translations, and the typeface named after his handwriting keeps a small, personal trace of him in everyday use.