Bikash Thapa
Mother, innumerable dreams of mine
Withered before I had sown
My green thoughts,
But why?
They were blazed before reaching the cremating place.
Mother, should I enflame
This nation for once
With flames from adiya[1] of conscience?
Everyone carries the torch of war
And everyone kicks an underfed belly
Mother, did the dreams I planted
All over the door before I landed in Arabia
Germinate in our front-yard soaked by eaves run-off
Or, did teardrops falling from atop the roof
Carried them away?
Mother, together the load of dreams
Cloaked by a veil of greenery
I am dragging my feet ahead
Without a stop, incessant
And am scaling the endless stretches of sand
In Arabia.
O my land!
Even by the time I felt
The very soul of this country of sands
Why couldn’t I lay
My hand on my nation?
Why do the plains in Tarai[2]
Stay gawking, looking at the 1950 Treaty[3]?
I wonder these days —
If it’s the country that’s to be blamed
Or it’s my dreams that are faulty.
Mother, when I was learning to subdue hunger
Airing beautiful ditties like on sarangi[4] strings
Why did my belly sing a sweet song
And yet,
The contentment we had was beyond measures
And joyful was our hut with sweats
Happy was the mat of labor?
What did our dreams, after all consist of,
Save roofing the hut,
And buying a pair of simple clothes?
Wasn’t that all?
Mother! While I treaded
From place to place in the countryside
With alphabets of grass piled on a doko[5]
How many times did I sit
For the examination of life?
How many times I whistled
The song of our dreams?
Our goal to touch the moon
Consisted, after all, of a nice meal
And a pair of good clothes.
Mother! While scaling the hills of progress
How often did I descend
Into the vales of hardship
And yet
Tilling the sands the donkeys ought to plough
I am sowing dreams in the sand today!
At home are sown
The seeds of conflict every season!
For that very reason
I bedeck the desert
Taking it for my own farmland
And weather myself herding the camels.
Mother, was this my only dream:
To land on a desert with mountains?
[Bikash Thapa is a Nepali poet and lyricist presently living in the US.]
[1]votive wick-lamps in oil, lighted on religious occasions
[2]A long stretch of plain in the southern part of Nepal, extending from east to west
[3]Nepal-India Friendship Treaty, 1950
[4]A typical, stringed musical instrument of Nepal
[5]A conical hamper-like basket to carry things