Mohan Koirala
Gaine Sainla is feeling cold deep inside
He didn’t get a chance to play on his Sarangi
So his hands are benumbed.
Without men around to abuse him
He is lonely so that his body is heated
His ears have become warm as if tied with a scarf
The bow is shrunk just like his addiction.
His Sarangi is empty just like his cerebral bones
The cerebrum being very smooth and oily
His limbs have ached the reason
Nobody has hit him with stones
Sometimes he remains singing for the reason
Why nobody regards him insane.
So, he does not beg lest it be said that he cries being hungry
With an earthen pot when he walks those
who know call him Gaine2
Even when with a Sarangi he walks, he is called a beggar
The songs’ layers filling his heart to the brim are burnt like the layers of black clay
Official letters have all been plucked by his hands
like the strings of Sarangi.
Now his lips are twitching on the tar of the road
Becoming the broken pieces of record-discs
Thrown through our ears and by our hands
In this neither hot nor cold wind blast Gaine Sainla
Is feeling cold deep inside.
His songs, the famous ones, are thundering like the laughter
of Chandra Shamsher
His songs are also like the youthful lovely girls
at the Hotel Royal
His songs are also intoxicating and jealous like the Kirat girl
who misses her beer
His songs are also hunch-backed like the Adhainis biding their time with fortitude
Songs written without pencil on paper
Songs stored and kept unlocked in the breast
But succumbing one day to these unpalatable songs
Definitely will he die at this very place in the same condition
Like a helpless criminal.
At that time like an old record-player in front of the mechanic
Will he lie one day.
Even if he lives he will live like a canister soldered by an Amateur blacksmith
So Gaine Sainla is feeling cold deep inside
Perhaps feeling cold will he pass his days till he dies.
Back home Gaine Sainla
Tries to sleep alone till midnight
Because in sleep
His dead wife comes to meet him
With her former child
Just to have a moment’s hopeless look
As if throwing a glance at the coins counted at the quadrangle of Indrachowk
The small child comes to his father’s lap bawling
For a time his hut with lovely light becomes a palace.
Sainla has always the same trouble
Separation of illusions from reality
As if he had to identify himself as sane or mad
By plucking the strings of the heart’s Sarangi alone
Which is known as songs to those who hear it.
But Gaine Sainla never called them songs
He simply brooded remembering
The fat of his heart boiled in the grease of his tears
That song he does never unite for money
That song is crammed deep inside the layers of his heart.
Simply crammed inside it is
If purpose is wanted, he is mad
If knowledge is wanted, he is the song of creation
If intellect is wanted, Gaine Sainla
Is only the wooden-vessel of ordinary men
Thus also can a man live without purpose
Surrounded by sliding cliffs on all sides
As a man he has become a metaphor.
Suddenly I’m awake, leaving foot-prints behind on the road he moves
Either forward or backward
Foot-prints that are naked and cold
Heels innocent of a dip inside the depths of shoes
From the very maternal womb.
From the bright sun through the evening, on this road
Which has no end
Has he moved leaving foot-prints behind
Why should the blind one sing
When he sees the world only as burnt out meadows
I say, and he asks me where the trees here are.
Where the shrubs which may be the green reading matter for travelers on foot
He asks me where the high and low land is which may be used by the spade interest free-
Streams, rivulets and rivers for thirst and a glass of water for my troubles
Where are those imbeciles who say
‘May everybody be happy’?
Where are those who say
‘Truth alone not falsehood’ triumphs?
- A stringed musical instrument played with a bow.
- A roving Sarangi playing musician.