Badaldevi Chamling
Owning a home is my childhood dream.
The piece of land to set up the foundation was elsewhere
Joist, roof beam were in trees
I waged some coins
And sketched her image on the paper of the property I purchased.
Much has been researched about a home
Like the wind that conceals its whistles on billions of tree leaves
Hundreds of documentaries have been cast;
Like sunrays that perform live in trillion mustard seeds
It’s ambiguous
The home deals with more of untold complexities than the earth
Where macrocosm dwells.
What remains undone at my home?
Finery, creation, privacy, value and norms
I carved a dream
And let the transmuted dream materialize
Wrapped in fear; mounted on the clumps of clouds
I let the eyes catch a rosy-day rising from the lowland
And rolled into the boudoir to lit the lamp!
Earth and shelter
Life and morsel
May they pair as nap and pillow, I presumed.
The heart-rending pain I had in her suffering;
Shockingly,
I dripped down into her unfulfilled wish
Collapsed as landslide
Entangled in a nightmare
When the page she scribbled on was about to flame
I moistened the page, the way the Dudhkoshi drenches dry terraces.
Moony dew drops,
Midnight songs,
May they tune together, I opined so.
None has to precede the firstborn norms
I enlarged the patio
Ought to bring some sentiments full of basket of my soul-mates
From the village across the horizon
To brew winter in clusters
To bear summer in bunches
I went crossing the river through the vine
and so did I in return
A family-female who hardly occasions to traverse
Has an unmatched bar
Staying with no breath is rather safe
Transparency is a must as well, so I glassed my chest;
Shades in rain
Hands in crisis
May they be witnesses for me, I assumed so.
A pint of soil smeared on the porch-floor
I drop on my forehead now
It appears not in happy face to me
What I left remained undone to her
My home bears no resemblance with me.
My citizenship has to posit my mother’s aside
The home tricks me to marginalize,
It’s not a coincidence;
It is a conspiracy equally strong as the creation.
[Badaldevi Chamling is a poet based in Itahari, Nepal. She is author of two anthologies of poems: Pathegar and Virya Jameen. She is a teacher by profession.]