of everything and anything that concerns me

This world:
where miles are milimeters
and colors fade into black and white
and dialogues are both real and imaginary.
I see colors among crowds of beige and grey
and stop to look at the sunlight streaming
through golden half dead leaves.
I take a moment to smile
or adorn this joyous body,
so precious so valuable,
expected to slave away
for deferred gratification
I allow the wind to caress me,
and drops of rain to touch this long untouched skin
I stop to listen tot these heartbeats
that cry out, “live!” through their gentle
rhythms, “thump, thump” 
Little tunes play in my head
to celebrate each moment
and I mumble to myself
sweet nothings that mean everything
Pain falls in the fuzzy boundary of real/unreal
and happiness is so easy to conjure.
No one enters and I don’t walk out.
I live bounded in my own bubble.

Dear poker faced woman,
I dislike you immensely.
Mainly because you are
disgustingly conservative,
arrogantly judgmental
and insensitive to variation.
 I don’t see why 
you don’t understand
that it is perfectly possible for me to be myself.
You don’t need to judge me
I’ll just write another poem and shrug you off.
Call you a poker faced woman
 and relax my muscles.
By the way, 
Why don’t you read me three pages of Durkheim
and make me a sandwich while we discuss
Robert Boyle and the scientific rationality
how I can present my argument in an essay 
without sounding too much like myself 

By the way,
The law of diminishing returns states
that if you keep adding inputs to production,
the marginal product declines,
thats what the curve is about.
Thomas Malthus was a genius.
A dead economist with new ideas.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter…
what does knowledge mean anyway
when you reduce it to number
when the vast creative passion,
powerful and potent with energy 
gets bounded by a digit or two. 

Thats when I run to poetry
the visions in my head flow
to this white digital space
and the energy is released.
I exhale a long string of anger,
I forgive you for your small mindedness. 

Aja je sukai hos, basera lekchhu ani Nepalimai lekhchhu bhanera sabai kaam saam chodera lekhna basya chhu. Kati lekhna sakinchha tha chaina, herum, tara lekchhu. unicode maa kekhau ki jasto la thyo pheri , hyaa jhanjaht bhanthane. Yeso lekhdai garda ke sochna aayo bhane, colloquial arthat bolai ko Nepali maa i lekhdai chhu, kei farak pareko chaina… sabai hisab le sudhaa Nepali maa lekha khojyo bhane ta lekhna ni man lagdaina hola… SLC ko lagi lekhya jasto…haha…

Tada bhaye pachhi ghar ko yaad aaunu swabhawik ho, tara aajkaal yaad kam aaeko jasto lagna thalya chha, bani parey jasto chha… ramrai ho… yeso sochchu, gharaimaa bhako bhaye pani tyaha dherai basna man lagdaina thyo hola. Ma sadhai dekhi ko atmanivar huna chanane maanche, kasai ko bandhan pani man pardaina… kunai din eklai sano tino kaam garera baschhu… eklopan pani sarhai ramailo lagchha. Maanche haru sanga chitai birakta lagna thalchha. Sabai tyestai ho jasto lagchha, biwasta le garda aru maanche ko saath khojne. Maanchelai sabai pugne bhaye kasai ko jarurat nai pardaina thyo. mero kothaa ma sangai basne saathi samalingi ho. u sadhaiko aafni premika sanga byasta rahanchhe, aajkaal ta jhan kotaa maa sutna pani aaudina… aafu tyeti sarhai arko byakti sanga samaya bitaune bhayera hola, malai hermit arthat jogi bhanera bolauchhe. Tyeso bhanda dukha pattakai lagdaina, jhan khusi lagchha. Meera pani ta jogin nai thiyin. mero pani aafnai kisim ko bhakti chha jasto lagcha. ahile thamyaunai sakeko ta chaina tara mero pani euta lagan chha kei prati, kunai karan.

Yaha basna ta khaasai man chaina tara jiwan maa ke huncha thaha chaina. dherai choti sapana maa Hetauda dekhey… dosro patak ko hetauda visit maa jati free ra nischintit ma thiye sayad zindagi maa pheri huna garhai parla. kunai bandhan thiyena malai badhne, kaam maa hideki eeuti nidar yuwati. Sarhai mohani lagayeko thiyo hetauda le.. ghar banayera basnai man lagne gari… kunai din jaanchu pheri, ustai hudaina tara samjhanaharu farkinchan ani khusi hune bahana milchha… sayad sabai kura haru bata free huda euta aimai ekdum khusi huna sakchin…Ghumi phiri mahila adhikar ko kura maa pugchhu. Syayd feminism le malai chahine bhanda badi nai influence gareko cha. Tara yo aswikar garna milne kura hoina… a woman is happiest when she feels free from any bondage and feels one with nature…yaha pani kahile kahi tyestai azadi ko anibhav hunchha… kunai rok tok chaina… khayo sutyo, padhyo, lekhna man lageko bela lekhyo … bistarai mausam pariwartan bhairkheko tyesto anubhav garyo. lau euti dhokaa maa aayi ma gaye… thank you mero mayalu blog… mero kura sunidine eutaa matra patra… muaahhhhh… haha diary lekhya jasto…

“Other parties [Nepali Congress and CPN-UML] could not understand the spirit of consensus. They are not serious as we are [for the political consensus to end the deadlock].” ~ Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Moist leader

I don’t know if I have the right to talk about Nepal. Somehow, the geographical detachment makes me feel that I have been exiled from my rights to do so. It is a common Nepali-abroad-angst. I was looking at the News. For a liberal woman educated at a militantly liberal, liberal arts college, the whole idea of the Maoism seems bullshit. Sorry for the language. But I’ve been doing Marx and Weber ever since I started classes here and we know how outdated they are. Even the Chinese I go to school here say, “President Mao was a strong and remarkable man but his ideas are too old and of course China is a free market now”. What is wrong with us?

Why don’t my people and sometimes I myself don’t understand that we have been fooled and take advantage of by some elite power mongers who are using a very outdated ideology to surp power into their hands. It needs a true Charismatic leader not some unremarkable, disgusting, whimsical men who think they can fool everyone to bring change. I hate the way they misconstrue the idea of social change and development. Its embarassing to mention Nepal in my sociology class. It’s painful to be termed as a failed state. Its not like the state is a failure because it doesn’t have the mechanisms that it require to function but only because the maoists are not happy. Seriously, ****  the leaders. They have no right to make us embarassed of ourselves. They have no right to go around depicting the country as a “failed state”. Why should we have  the combatants have a million rupees each when we have roads to build, schools to fund and tangible changes to make.

I think of the school with the floor splitting apart, I think of the young dalit schoolboy in Dailekh who is constantly fighting the necessity to go abroad for money and I think of vandalized buses in Hetauda. My generation can do nothing but weep in our words and our art. We are fighting against the identity of of failed citizens that the west we look up to brands upon. We think of our heritage and our culture and when there’s so little to look to we get alienated. We don’t know what to think or feel. We can’t take the troubles of the west of our own because for us problems are basic. Problems are still to do with food, clothes and shelter. Its difficult for us to grasp the idea that “mood swing among teenagers” is a social problem. Most students abraod don’t study the arts, humanities and the social sciences because our means of expression and analysis of society is tinted by our gruesome history. We’ve been silenced by terror and regressed by history forced to move backwards. I have to sit and listen quietly to a snobby white girl in my CST class say, “We from the civilized world I think are higher up in the evolutionary ladder because atleast we don’t have to struggle over basic questions of basic necessities, a good legal system or governance”… how am I to respond to that except with passive, inexpressible, angst and disappointment. No body wants to return home. To return home and to create change would be the biggest idealism and the biggest foolishness.

Here come the brand of escapists. They forego identity and self and become these global beings marked only by their consumption pattern. I was talking to a young man who wants a green card. He has no sense of cultural heritage, identity and a collective suffering of what it means be of a certain generation of a certain socio political context. He just finished school from a “liberal arts college” and is working and basically wants an “ipod”. Such people scare me. They make me question of how the rest of us can follow through and give a positive outcome to our sufferings when we are fractioned by people as such. They don’t support or recognize that sharp angst and pain that hurts us so badly. People think idealism wears off easily, it doesn’t.

I return to Marx  and Weber again. The old outdated German white men whose time is so ironically the time of my country. I understand their passionate outcry against the situation of their country and their visions of change. Although Marx is the root to all the troubles of my country I don’t blame Marx for his passionate social theory. In angst of having to see struggle with material forces when they could be what they want to be. I carry the same idealism. I wish to see my people become what they want to be free from the tyranny of political evils that only want power. Weber depicts the the power struggle of my people. His wish for a charismatic leader to punctuate a history of suffering is similar to mine. His call for a strong legitimate legal system and governance for his time frame is strikingly mine for my time frame. While I do wish I could swear at the Maoists in Nepal or for that matter all the political forces in Nepal, I just wish they’d thoroughly read Marx and Weber.

It is not you,
nor another man
but he who loves me,
that I seek oneness with.
This Bhakti,
is not an illusion,
all else is.
I trust you 
and your surreal smile.
In my restless heart,
I find a moment of calm
from your memory
and your ethereal smile.
My love, free me!
for all else is a trap.
Oh beloved!
no more tricks.

For once I don’t want to theorize and add on to the trailing list of theories in the identity debate or the diaspora one. These experiences are my own, singular and subjective. Somethings just can’t be collectivized. Basically I’m a singular. Me. An entity with bits and pieces of geography, history, culture, economics, biology but an individual entity who can be singularly perceived different from the constituent bits and pieces. I am this time, now and this place here. There is an emptiness somewhere deep inside were that singular integrated bit of the entity is in its pure form only for a moment. Then it changes. It shifts. My constituent bits and pieces tend to regress to their similarities. I become in moments, South Asian, scholar, worker, woman, room mate, daughter, lover, friend. Am I ever free from identity? from a displaced diaspora when I am abroad? does home have a distinct character and do my relationships bind me to be a certain way? 
It is possible I become nothing but a soul. Like when I’m in a dreamless sleep. I’m a breathing, metabolizing creature but asleep. Still conscious, temporally and of space. What happens then at other times? Is it simple as “I think therefore I am”. What about the physical sensation? What does it mean to feel lonely or homesick or happy and positive? Do they have a physical material connotation? Is it possible just not to think or shut sensation at sensory levels? Are pleasure, pain, angst and elation simply physical or theoretical? Maybe both… I don’t know.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling above expecting the dogs to bark and a motorcycle to roar outside. Sometimes, in the dark I don’t know where I am, an unfamiliar room, unfamiliar footsteps outside the door in an unfamiliar hallway. 

Sometimes my eyes reach far beyond the horizons searching for hills and traces of mountains and strike against unfamiliar red trees and unfamiliarly only slightly curved land forms. It looks for colorful fabric and meets only dull grey, black, beige and brown. 

My nose tries to filter in the smell of dustin out of the unfamiliar sanitary clean smells. In in the chaos of unfamiliar smells of body lotions, sprays, it longs for the earthy and familiar smell of sweat and humanity. It longs for the smell of street food, festivals and familiar streets.

A familiar kohl lined almond shaped eyes, clay colored skin, long black hair takes me back to familiar places. I think of many things;

The train slowly pulls at the station at Vijayvada and the smell of Biryani wafts in along with the voice of hawkers and rushing out of passengers. 

The warm sleep wrought by warm coconut hair old, massaged into the scalp by familiar hands.

A printed long shawl you wear with familiar long shirts and trousers.

The smell of monsoon on dry earth and rice fields, mustard fields, vegetable patches, thatched roofs and hand pumps, video coaches storming across the highway, the nauseating highway food.

Familiar music with familiar rhythms and familiar rhymes…

I’m struggling with words again,
trying my best to write,
a witty topic sentence,
followed by an explanation,
backed up by evidence
and my response to the text.

But I’m still the same.
The same B3 person,
Just a year older.
Trapped in the illusion
of being better,
denying evident mediocrity,
trying to redeem myself,
again through poetry.
I’m just the same mediocre person, B3.