Jhamak Ghimire
Though you can boast of a hundred thousand offspring
I have only one father.
Baba! Have you forgotten me amid the hordes of your offspring?
I am your disable child.
Have you forgotten your sleepless communion with my mother?
How could you embrace a new ray rising from wrong times?
I am the avenging apparition of a wrong time;
an unwanted offspring—
added to the hordes of your offspring;
a mere child that broke through its mother’s stained womb;
a renegade one.
Baba! I entreat you to listen more:
Though you can boast of a hundred thousand children
the union of your blood with mom’s runs in my veins.
Questions of silent union arise from a cacophony.
Half-formed by you, fully shaped by my mother
am I the child of the street?
Why did you leave me damaged at a corner of the street?
Why did you fill my mind with gunpowder?
Its transformation will leave your society and you poisoned.
Baba, my last question:
why are you siring a renegade child like me
who lighted your funeral pyre
before you died,
who has mourned your death
before your demise,
shattering pebbles?
Baba! Why are you still siring
a renegade child like me?
(Trans: Bishnu Ghimire)
[Jhamak Ghimire (b.1980) is a Nepali writer. Though born with cerebral palsy, she overcame most of her physical and mental disabilities, and started writing with pen held between her toes quite early. She has written columns for various national dailies, including the Kantipur Sankalpa, Aafnai Chita Agni Shikhatir, Manchhe Bhitraka Yoddaharu and Quaati are her poetry works. Awasan Pachhiko Aagaman is another of her major works work. Her most acclaimed work is her autobiography Jiwan Kada Ki Phool which awarded Madan Puraskar in 2010. She lives in Dhankuta.]