Shreeom Shrestha ‘Rodan’
What is the purpose of human birth? Is it merely for living days, or is also to wait for the moment of death?
I think this is an intricate question with an easy answer.
I wonder why I sometimes I risk my own weathering by getting entangled in such a knotted question not easy to explicate.
Why am I trying to unlock an odd lock with a fitting key?
Why am I seeking a passage to reach a destination that is unattainable to me?
Why am I waiting for the envelope of a letter in response to one I am yet to write?
Entangled in a letter that won’t ever come, a destination that cannot ever be attained, a safe that cannot ever be opened, am I trying to resort to meditation that enables me to see myself? I have not been able to make myself sure about it.
Yet, the questions inside me keep poking me all the time.
Is human life nothing but an idol erected on the sand?
I know that’s not true and can never be true.
As for an idol, people have made one even by coloring water. There are idols in the fountain light, destined to last only as long as there is brightness. There also are idols made of wax that is susceptible to heat, or of hard alloys or stones that are resistant to melting. They are also made of snow or ice that melts in no time. There are people who invest a lot of time to manufacture idols that last for a short while. Why are artists rejoicing such pursuits that are ephemeral? Everyone knows: man makes idols, and it’s not the other way round. That’s why I reiterate: man is not an idol, and should never try to be one. Yet they are trying to be like that, or are trying to make such idols by any means they can.
To me, life appears complicated like a face that smiles behind the load of mysteries it carries. To me, it also sometimes appears like an act of sheltering rain itself with an umbrella, lest it should be soaked by downpour. It looks like words that have been forced onto an answer sheet in response to a question the examinee cannot answer.
My questions are those that seek my own destruction in their bid to bring devastation to others.
Why are suicide bombers becoming a necessity? What a loathsome game it is to destroy oneself merely to bring devastation to others? How cruel is an obligation to blow up oneself according to a premeditated design?
When I see the eyes of a girl whose suicide attempts failed owning to the dampening of a shell, I start studying herself. An Afghan girl, who escaped Taliban’s life attempt, spoke about such a thing on the television. The television translated her words, and showed them as subtitle. I read the words and looked into her eyes.
She was saying: “I am fourteen years old. For eight long years, I had been living as one of their captured weapons. Since my babyhood, I had been taught to believe that I was not born to live. I had been taught that Allah has sent me on earth to wipe out our enemies. They told me the same thing every day, every month, throughout the year. They taught me the same and inspired me to believe that as the only necessity on my part. They kept reiterating: My death could safeguard my religion.
She tried to look downward at times. She was rather shaken, apparently. Yet, she was saying: “They said, when I die, the more people I kill, faster will my advent into heaven be. For the past six years, no thought other than this has found any space in my brain. Thus, I had become assured that I had been born to kill myself and not to live my life.”
She told, she had been to the stipulated spot to blow herself to death, but the shell did not explode and she was spared.
“That day, I had been to the spot to die and kill others in a suicide blast happily. I had filled myself with gunpowder to blow myself up. But unfortunately, the blast did not take place, and I was spared. Only then I started understanding the worth of my life. I shall not live to kill anymore; I shall live to save lives.”
Maybe others watched that clip on the television merely with their eyes. But, by means of eyes, the deepest layers of my consciousness observed that clip. The scene entered me in the form of a tsunami. I feel I was trying to see it, coming out of the windows of my eyes, as does the early dawn.
j+This is a dishonor of my mother’s womb, where I took refuge for nine long months. It’s a dangerous game devised by people to prevent fellow human beings from being human. What sort of religion is it that assaults natural justice? What sort of society is it? What sort of war is it that forces a human to become a bomb and blow itself up, killing fellow human? What kind of obligation to consider taking this gave as dharma, even as it is trying to change the very definition of life? What is the nature of the heart of a person, who persistently blinds others’ brains, inspiring them to die merely for the sake of killing?
The world was never created to let one live.
For a life worth living, one must die.
Life befits dying.
Oneself, and not age, should invite death.
Laughter is a mockery of life.
Happiness is life’s impotence.
Love is an illusion, like life. Marriage and children are nothing but pretexts to spend time. They are sources of misery. Continuing to live is nothing but an act of sowing seeds of misery upon oneself.
These are perhaps the content in the curriculum of those who prepare suicide bombers. And perhaps they say—those who linger in the world are people who cannot measure and weigh life as it is.
Death obviously is frightening. I cannot dream as does the attractive speaker of a gathering convened to discuss death. I am devastated like a town left in ruins by a powerful earthquake. If I could, or I it was possible, I would lock there girls into a locker like the ones we have in banks.
The human begs a bowl of rice just to stay alive. There also are people who eat food left behind by others only to fill their bellies. They sell themselves every day only to keep going.
How would one feel, if there is no freedom to live life as it comes! If one doesn’t have the freedom to peep out of a frame others have locked!
Think of the hearts of devils that make others captives in a cell devoid of windows and doors! There is nothing much we can do. Though we speak, there is little we can make others understand! I know speaking does little or no good but I speak out my mind.
Look, not only with eyes but also with your hearts at those who have great commitments to living!
Those who have lost both their hands are living by dint of their skills.
Those who are devoid of eye are showing the world to others.
Those who are short of hearing are making others hear.
Some are giving their kidneys to help others live.
Look at the courage of those beset with cancer.
Look at the excitement of those whose hearts, livers and kidneys have been mutilated.
Look at the activities of AIDS patients.
If these are not enough to force your eyes to open and peel the dark layer off your mind, feel the heartbeat of the girls you want to blow up. Touch and feel the temperature of a teardrop that has been robbed of its smile. Find and see the feelings on the smiles of lips that have been pushed down a cliff.
Ruthless butchers, who live by flinging all compassion away!
How long should others die merely to let you stay alive?
How long should people live like goats that have been reared for festivals?
How long should one enjoy the right to live by killing others?
Were you conceived outside a mother’s womb? If not, how long can you stay with your eyes locked? How long can you pawn and bury your ears? How long can you thrust a mountain into your gullets? Can you ever stop your hearts from beating? How long can you make people robots? How long can you flex muscles against nature? In a game you think you have won, you have lost in reality, though you are smiling. And you shall ever continue to lose it. A game that is against future can never win. It cannot last, either.
I don’t know where rebellion starts; where satisfaction emerges. Answers may differ from person to person. There can be different justifications from the Purans, philosophy or science. No matter what they tell, each of their polemics is, to me, like a musk deer that keeps seeking its own musk, unaware that it comes out of its own navel. It’s like an old dog that enjoys the taste of its own blood oozing out of its gum that get hurt when it chews an old bone. This is how the society has been running. Same is the way people have been spending their daily lives.
My curiosity is also a trivial thing. No one expresses dissent when clouds gather in the sky and fall. No one is saddened on seeing fishes swimming in water. Who has revolted against the roosters that crow every morning? Who stays burning a torch all night merely to appear bright? Those who mediate do not revolt. Maybe they do not express their dissent either, but that can be the very reason why they go for meditation.
I try to see with my eyes, but cannot. I want to feel with hands, but in vain. I focus my ears but understand nothing. My organs have grown quite weak. Whenever a storm gushes into my chest, the pillars of my trust crumble. The colors of my faith fade. The bouts of my emotions fall. There is no computer of the mind that has not been filled with archives that have been beset by storms, floods and landslides.
This doesn’t belong to a time when I had firmly composed myself and my beliefs. How can one have a sense of defeat when victorious, and of victory when defeated? How can one spot people who move about in hiding?
There are contexts which we should allow to pass, though we are not really satisfied with them. More, the feelings of our mind may not be applicable to every context. Though it is the body we see, it is contact that actually works. The words of our friends become even more instrumental. The society is even more powerful. At such moments, even invisible flames char us, and if they do, we cannot show the wounds to anyone. It becomes like a wound that cannot be healed by any medicine.
The eyes of that girl from a distant land, whom I can see with the help of a television, have squeezed my eyes many a time. In fact, how is the voice of their heart that keeps beating inside them? What are the types of dreams they have?
What is the exercise in which they kill themselves?
How can they convert fear into conviction?
Do they know how to smile or not?
Do they ever engage in any sort of merry-making or not?
Do their dictionaries have words for happiness?
How do they celebrate their festivals?
Do they cut cakes or blow out candles on their birthdays?
Do others give them best wishes or not?
How do they receive wishes for happiness, success and long life?
The questions that have no answers keep generating other questions instead. What to talk of that destiny that compels someone to stay silent with a tsunami rocking the mind? At a time they are entranced by the mantra of suicide bombing, how frantically could their hearts be shaking time and again? If an urge for living spouts at times, how mercilessly would it be plucked off? How badly the moon wails seeing those who invoke death in opposition to nature since the day of their birth? How dejected the sun might grow and feel debased? How distasteful the rhododendron and roses might grow and go into hiding? Why shouldn’t they be distasteful, when they see the bright eyes of the girl, laden with life rendered nothing but water bubbles?
Trans: Mahesh Paudyal
[Shreeom Shrestha ‘Rodan’ is a senior poet, essayist and journalist. Former Chief Editor of the Gorkhapatra Daily, he also edited Madhupark, a premier literary monthly, for a long time. Currently, he is the Chairman of Laghukatha Samaj Nepal, an organization of the micro-story writers. His published works include poetry collections Lalita and Sargam, essay collections Sambedanaka Swarharu (co-authored), Arthaheen Arthaharu, Samayaka Sambhavanaharu and Bhanaunki Nabhanaun, travel essay collections Samudrapari–Samudrawari and Nabirsane Dinharu, micro-story collection Bhramharu and a collection of interviews, Prasangabas, besides others.