Sundar Shireesh
Clapping-clapping, hey, hey!
Uncle comes riding a horse
Aunty comes on a litter
Brings the sweet conical ice-cream
How tasty this milky-meal!
Clapping-clapping, hey, hey!
Miss,
I can’t sing this song
Don’t insist on,
Rather make me a cock,
Make me stand on a single leg on the bench,
Hit with the thin stick making weal on my hand.
Miss,
When I try to sing this song, my vocal stops,
I feel giddy like the spinning earth,
I envision a house-like house without any roof in my eyes,
I envision the face of my relative made lean and thin by poverty,
And envision the sieve-like life perforated by infinite scarcity.
Miss,
Why do you teach us
This fake song?
My maternal uncle
Incessantly carrying the load like a donkey,
Never finding the bower of life,
Flowing the current of sweat heavily,
And even after seeing him walking up the marshy field
How can I hurt that sorrowful heart?
How can I sing the song of insult?
Uttering ‘uncle comes riding a horse’
This fake song,
The song of the rich, of the mansion.
My maternal aunt
With her lean and thin body remains busy round-the-clock
Carrying the load heavier than herself
Keeps walking around the clock,
Fallen down swooning from time to time
I also have seen
Did she ever got an opportunity to be carried on a palanquin?
It is hard for her to support even her own vital air
Then how can she bring ‘sweets’ for us?
I don’t sing, miss,
The fake song,
The song of the satiated.
Miss,
I don’t want to undergo
The scarcity, trouble and oppression like my ancestors
Rather I want to live being a man-like man
This is why have I come to this sacred temple of knowledge.
Miss,
You can teach instead-
What should be done to be free from being the ploughman
Generation by generation for a long time living at the home of the merchant?
With the medicine working in the circus, the sister adds the longevity of mother
What should be done to fetch her to this school?
And what should be done to survive being a man-like man?
Rather tell:
Who erected this discriminating wall between the poor and the rich?
Why can’t the debt of the money-lender be paid off for many generations?
Why is it ever dark in our lives?
You rather make me sing—
The song of our own grief
The poem of tears, the tune of pain.
But miss,
Don’t make me sing this song
Don’t insist on
Rather make me a cock,
Make me stand on a single leg on the bench,
Hit with the thin stick making weal on my hand.
Happily can I accept these tortures
But can’t sing
This fake song.
[Shireesh is a Nepali poet from Chautara, Sindhupalchok, Nepal. He is also a journalist, working at the capacity of a reporter at New Business Age, and edits an online portal Globalpatee. He is also a graphic designer and an artist.]