MOONLIGHT ALSO BURNS
- By Rajya Laxmi Rana
(Circa 1968 AD)
Dew drops like embers of fire
Mind is alighted with fiery maelstrom
Between countless stars
Dim lighted quarter waning smiling moon
Moonlight also burns.
(Poems section)
Who likely is that?
Vast dreamlike state of the sky
Has reached that level with the flight
This two winged flight of my thoughts
Coming right in the middle and trying to cut it,
Who likely is that?
With vast affection laden love
Against this ups and downs of life
More disturbances causing in my sweetheart
Continuously oppressing, you try to smile
Who likely is that?
The Simal trees dispersing its cotton fluff like clouds in the air
In the emotive explosion of floating aims
Pushing more and more in the aimless direction
In the silence making it disappear
Who like is that?
In the silent of the eventless night
Smashing that silence by violence
Including the dream world
Causing so much disturbances
Who likely is that?
Badly damaged rhythm’s of my sweetheart
More and more making it darkly excited
Already in the drowning of the dark clouds
Trying to push me in the dark holes
Who likely is that?
My mother was ten years younger than my father was. I was born in 1955, and my mum or mami told me she was 20, when I was born. My father was an alcoholic psychotic. When not drunk he was just like his namesake Hindu God Shiva in the incarnation of being Lord of the animals or Pashupati. In other words, he was very easy to please, and people knew his weakness and that was his love of alcohol. They could bribe him with alcohol and get whatever he had under his power in all aspect of his life. When drunk he was like Dr. Jekyll the sadist and masochist. Therefore, my poor dear mother was facing this man with a split personality like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in such a young age. This is mine interpretation and translation of my late mother’s poem that I care to share with you all!
She came from a sheltered family with tremendous love and her parents never bashed her. At most, Malla grandma had the habit of pouring cold water on any hot heads. Everything was known about my father dear. He was likened to that of ‘Hitler’ by his own mother, a Thakuri ‘dola’ or a groomed woman by Chandra Shamsher’s family and arranged in marriage to my late grandfather. She henpecked all around with malevolent firestorm. My father’s younger brother is just not like him and can never say no to anyone. I fear that my father’s psychosis of alcohol was passed down genetically. This was when Chandra Shamsher used my grandfather’s father as a hostage after he sent Maharaja Dev Shamsher into exile after taking power in the early 1900s.
When great grandfather was a hostage, Chandra Shamsher provided him with plenty of women and wine. He died at the early age of 30s and living behind many children, wives and concubines behind in poverty and love. Dev Shamsher was very rich as he had inherited two times, and Chandra Shamsher took possession of all the great jewels that Maharaja Jung Bahadur had looted at Lucknow from the Muslim Nawab, while assisting the British in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1850s.
I feel my father acquired that alcoholic gene and perverse narcissistic and borderline personality disorder from the coldness of his mother, a control transplant of Chandra Shamsher. This poem ‘Who is that?’ disturbingly echoes in my mind when I was 13 and it was 1968. It was just about the era when Kathmandu was going to be swamped by the ‘jet age’ ‘Hippie mania’ ‘free love’ ‘youth of Nepal dropping out’ and much more. The Chinese were almost finishing the road from Kathmandu to Tibet border and the Indian’s had already finished road from Kathmandu to the Indian border. My father was generous and was organizing picnics and outings for my mum’s youngest brother. So alcohol, Beatle’s songs, rumba, cha cha and all those stuff was a rage mixing youth, fun and frolick. I used to get waken in the silent night of Kathmandu with someone of the rage party smashing bottles of alcohol or violent incidents occurring between themselves and so on.
I can imagine what my poor mother was going through and I am reflecting her moods and silent sufferings amidst this rising scene of western influence that my Sudarshan Mama (my youngest maternal uncle) with his friends from St. Joseph’s College aka North point in Darjeeling were doing. After all, my mum was the hostess and she had to put up with all the emotional and physical mess. My beloved and youngest maternal uncle with another bright and rising uncle (Prabhakar S.J.B. Rana) and another relative were killed in a car accident related with alcohol in kilometer 33 of the new Chinese built Kodari highway. My maternal uncle had been married only few years and left a baby daughter Shrijana and just born son Niraj. He was just finishing his Masters degree. Uncle Prabhakar was selected as a military attaché to Russia and the other relative was selected for an officer’s training with the Royal Nepalese Army.
I can imagine the loss my mother must have felt at the loss of her youngest brother. She had witnessed in her childhood deaths of few elder brothers and sisters; as Nepal had very high infant mortality rate before 1950s, when no motorable roads existed and the Kingdom was closed to foreigners by the Rana clans controlled by Chandra Shamsher’s eldest son.
Under these tensions that my mother’s oppression grew and she stopped writing any poems, songs and short stories and much more. She knew how she was being burned alive by ‘Moon’ related residue or the ghost of Chandra Shamsher (Chandra means moon in Nepalese). All those who came out in moonlight were alcoholic lunatics, as luna means moon. However, her oppression related lunatic suffering as she calls Joon means in Sanskrit the feminine aspect of the very moon. So why was this female moonlight burning the feminine desires and aspirations of my dear beloved late mother? I ask you to journey with me to fathom her tensions beyond the dark clouds that shadowed the smiling waning and waxing moon as a paradox of her life or that could be our lives too. This is the celebration of her life.
Beloved Is Likely Waiting
In the rising dawn of silent nature’s realm
With the lilac colour of the crack of dawn
Taking the pulse of my sweetheart’s breaking point
Beloved is likely waiting.
In the wavy wavelength of impulses of desires
Like the flow of the sea waves to the shores
This life’s boat is rowing towards shelter of the safe haven
Beloved is likely waiting.
In the mourning silence of the new dawn
With the hopeful, deem waiting
Taking it with the rising painful waves
Beloved is likely waiting.
In the cool marching towards the level headed peak
Seeking the dim fire mind
Behold…
Beloved is likely waiting.
In the painful heart’s massive wound
In the already tired imagined thoughts
Burning only the bright light of far away memory
Beloved is likely waiting.
In the deep sleep of remembrance
Doing the traveling of the dream worlds
With the hope of meeting someone sweet
Beloved is likely waiting.
Taking that life raft ashore
Seeking and searching that shelter of life
Dried up sweetheart’s deep desire to meet
Beloved is likely waiting.
Blowing the bugle of this dream of life
Calling for the pain of past to rise more
Gentle sea waves with dreams moving to the shore
Beloved is likely waiting.
In the imagined community of this universe
Making the garland of hope
Looking below with dim smile
Beloved is likely waiting.
Much Affection
With much affection
Beloved! You, me, and another destiny
You have just shown me that road.
Half-conscious full unconscious
More than me was that affection
That glass of wine was near you.
More than me forever
You always followed her
That is why you have parted my present
For her you have remembered as your future
You have loved her afar more than me.
In that, I did not have any loss,
Instead of being a living corpse and crawl
I had begun a search for another life
With that vast affection for you
It has taken the side of my violence,
However, I have to live much longer
Beloved! Your violence
With your cruelty has not yet killed me.
That vast affection has –
For life it has been stable and taught me to be alive
It has also taught you to be alive.
This is my dedicated sacrifice
For your unconscious movements
Too faraway it has pushed you.
Therefore, beloved! From now, that is wine
Do not think as an empire of honey
For my onerous breathless settlement
For my known life path
Consider a traveler, follow me wherever
In this path with mine footsteps.
I remember my sweet mum in 1968 trying to save my violent and alcoholic father with all the wits she had. Such punishment she had to undergo from a blind drunk and these two poems show the levels of her trauma in that young age. Her father had sacrificed her as a bad omen to him as the first infant survivor, and she was not a healthy child. My mum told me how her nanny nursed her to life. She survived the predictions of the superstition mongering Hindu Astrologers. Her father had to sacrifice her to a well-known drunk Rana, so that my mother’s younger siblings could marry more wealthy Ranas. It was the strategy for creating a precedent. Whatever, the tensions were that my mum tried to hide the beating of my father.
Sooner than later, my mum’s nanny reported to Malla grandpa and grandma about her sufferings. They did nothing about it and my mother had nowhere to go. There was no women’s shelter so that she could cut away loose with me and my siblings under her arms. Her younger sister was far away in another faraway land, her younger brothers could not do anything to save her from such violence.
I can imagine that she was lonely as my father drank and was useless to her in love with too much alcohol in his system. My late father dear constantly cheated my mother. He was always sleeping with other maidens and women, and that was more to cause my mother to be desolate as a truly dedicated wife for the first decade of her young married life. It seemed that my father was spending on backyard abortions of the maidens whenever they were pregnant. All these too much information really caused me to be angry against my father.
My mother no wonder considered herself a living corpse and just crawling with so much burden in her mind. That is what a comatose husband for her, and a father for us he was drinking excessively day in day out at all cost. He would be more violent to anyone who tries to stop him and for his drinks. He accused my mother of dishonesty when he came out of his wine filled body a wee bit sober, and made us all confused. Perhaps that is why I went to hate my mother so much as well like my late father. My mother did not leave him in time and that was against the moral fiber of a Hindu woman. She was to leave him when he dies and that she should had burned with him in his funeral pyre called Sutee. Then she would be called the Goddess of funeral pyre. Perhaps that is why I vehemently refused to burn them both as a loyal eldest son in theirs deaths some twenty-five years apart. I have given all the possessions that my father and mother had made in theirs’ lives as their property to my younger brother. I refuse to accept anything from them, as they also burned me beyond theirs’ grave. Forget the sun, moon and stars that burn as it is the course of Mother Nature, and after we die, it is perhaps we all becomes stardust.
CHANGES
From ages and ages on the other side of the riverbank
Lying that is me, like a waiting corpse
Hugging that situation is mine
With the lifeless mental movements
I am getting consolation with this involvement.
Hopes of mine that do not depart,
For my wishes and thoughts
The ripples of the sea have already washed it.
With the unsealing and unfeeling mortal wounds
With the self changes around
It is burying me.
With the long-long moments of waiting
It is causing me in gaining confidence in remainining buried alive
If ever, my dreams are ever going get achieved
I shall perhaps run with it like a symbol of a statue.
Moreover, that I am the suppressed with all the footsteps
I will definitely be in the high pedestal of respectful position.
- In the Nepalese era 5/8/2025 or circa 1968 AD -
MOONLIGHT ALSO BURNS
At the mourning silent of the dark night
When I am tossing and turning around.
Like white cotton fluffs my tortuous thoughts flies in the dark clouds-
With rising momentous moments to reach near the Himalayan high peaks
With the waves and waves of desolate cloudy thoughts
It goes to fly here and there and nowhere.
She has no personal directions,
Neither has she had any stability of support
Far away in that afar direction
Only with the mourning howling of the stray dogs
Suddenly breaking of my deep wounded sleep
With the desolate beats of my sweetheart
The story of my enmeshed life that has already spun
My whole world starts to shake like an earthquake.
Dew drops also like embers of fire
Mind is alighted with fiery maelstrom
Between countless stars
Dim lighted quarter waning smiling moon
Moonlight also burns.
Nepal era 17/8/2025 or circa 1968 AD
It was 1968, and there were many changes happening in my mum’s life. She had with the help of our generous maternal uncle Sardindu Malla and maternal aunt Rama Malla achieved her seed money for a dream home for the first time at Maharaj Ganj. My father’s Royal Nepalese Army salary was a pittance and that she also went to work at Mahendra Adarasha School located at Thapathali as a Nepalese teacher. With her salary as a supplement, we just could afford school and little bits and pieces of life. Time to time Maternal grandma used to help around and this was frowned upon by my Rana grandma as being shame to her household and my mum used to receive the hatred filled cold.
Surely, the most important people around her from my father’s side were cold and callous. However, I could not say that for my father’s younger brother and sister. They loved her for her generosity. She had tremendous affection for them as well. In fact, my poor old henpecked grandfather cared for her in his own ways, he used to drop by out of his wife’s sight and spies (to borrow money for his sweet tooth). He was to me a character like Laurel, full of mischief and he collected characters and clowns around him to amuse his only daughter. He was generous to many Shivite Hindu holy men and they used to surround him for food and shelter and enraged Rana grandma. Rana grandma had devotion for Ram and Sita with lots of pompous ceremonies. Yes, my cousin Sangeeta mentioned these days of her memories about our ancestral home in Thapathali.
She used to visit us from next door from her ancestral home with her nanny and see the antics of my dog Nicky and a parrot that was awesome and a gift from my mum’s nanny already old and shriveled faraway in the plains of Hetauda. My ancestral home was full of music. My dad’s only sister was excellent in playing Sitar and many well-known classical musicians of India and Nepal came to visit her. My grandfather was an accomplished Karnataka Indian classical music aficionado. In fact, Sangeeta’s grandpa was more accomplished in traditional Hindu and Western classical music (eg. he could read and write music for Piano and loved his sonatas of Bach, Beethoven and much more). Sangeeta’s aunty Bina was involved in Radio Nepal’s daily English news and was always involved in organizing some drama or some events at important venues. Then we lived side by side in neighborly atmosphere with lots of extended families around. I had my dad’s nephew and nieces who were equally accomplished musicians and involved in Radio Nepal. Many important songwriter, lyricists and singers of fame were coming and going.
In this hive of arts, songs and drama alas my poor dear mother was truly lonely for love arising alcohol problem of my father, and no one could lend her support and there just was no structure in this closed Hindu conservative society. However, all knew how much my mother suffered. Then, they all knew that my violent father would avenge any one who supported my mother.
At that stage my father was a Battalion Commander and was a Lieutenant Colonel and based around Kathmandu, valley. He was away and my mum was lonely. We got visits from uncle Prabhakar just before his death that he was around my mother. He had lost his mum as a small child. He considered my mother as his own mother. He always contributed her at times of her needs of financial owes. Like that, my youngest maternal uncle was also generous and always helped my mum. I mean both would die soon in a car accident, but they were strong pillar of support to my mum. This young maternal uncle always hung around my mum with his friends from Darjeeling. One of them was Tom Cris, and is now a well known Interior Decorator and married to an Australian. Others went to be very successful in theirs’ own chosen fields and they always had high regards to my mum just like theirs’ own big sister.
I guess my young maternal uncle was also being burned with his own worries, and King Mahendra has commanded him not to see the future queen of Nepal, the late Aishwarya and he was going around to Sunkoshi riverbank to drown his sorrows a lot. I was lucky that he did not take me with him when he died. Just few weeks before I had been with him in his jeep. He loved a corner of the Sunkoshi river valley to drink alcohol served by young girl and she may have resembled his lost love. Always, the moonlight and its ray in this river of gold looked so awesomely romantic. Yes, that night my uncles died, my mum also was another car for a picnic. They never turned up for that picnic.
Few days later, some leopard hunters found the dead corpses of our dear relatives hundreds of feet down the gorge, after the Hillman Hunter car had fallen below on the other side of the river gorge. All were pretty badly smashed up in theirs’ mortal wounds in one of the first and horrific car accident. Rumour was rife that my uncle was involved in drunken car race with another distant relative, who worked in the Central Bank of Nepal in a high position. This Thapa relative was seen with few European girls and for show off the car race ensued, and car race, alcohol and rock falls and mists probably contributed death.
I can imagine all the tension that my mother was taking and I am able to identify all the symbols and images of her momentous movements of her suffering in agony, loss of romance, youth, normality and support.
When Will Be That Dream Become A Reality
This sky, this earth,
As it is as it was.
Mentally silent father sky
Everywhere fertility has laden green mother earth.
But, my mental thoughts
Are just rising,
Just like the waves of angry sea.
Ferociously arising painful thoughts of torrential rain
Like the unfreezing cold hurricane
They are falling off like in the form of my teardrops.
When the clouds clear off father sky
I become normal I become fresh
The rains make the mother earth luscious
The scale of law she smiles.
However, my mind is always full of dark
Clouds hanging and making me cluster phobic
There is never any ending for them.
In the explosion of my deep memories
There is always a hurricane gale force blowing.
When the clouds clear off, father sky seems to be smiling
After the tearful raindrops, mother earth seems to be enjoying
When will be mine divinely Dreams become a reality?
Nepal era 17/8/2025 or circa 2025 AD
Those days in Thapathali the place of my birth and sweet childhood home. Sangeeta used to visit us, when she was around from Shri Lanka. If she remembers my mums Pakodas in artistic forms then, so sweetly it was true that she made them in most delicious manner. My mum also had trained to be a home science teacher and she knew all the Indian traditional recipes that a good homemaker always needed to know.
My mum was truly a good homemaker. She loved to do gardening and was natural green finger and everything she touched grew in abundance. I remember her cooking potato and bamboo shoot curry and it was our favorite. In her mother’s household, there were many people cooking plentiful of food for more than two dozen every day. After all, it was the household of a big landowner. There was all the cuisine that Nepal and India knew being prepared in all year around for my maternal grandma who was very pious and many guests would come to those many and never ending summer and winter sun and moon festivals.
My siblings and Sangeeta’s siblings would remember those glorious childhood days of never-ending summer and winter festivals. No wonder, now Sangeeta is so good in organizing festivities and special events. She calls it her Infinity International and rightfully so.
I love organizing special events and festivals too. I have done a course of this. The formula for a good festival or special event is the power of organization, coordination, control, planning, leading, motivation, which are all management functions. Thus, all the elements of functions like financing, marketing, human resources, production and much more need to be well though of well in advance. I know that for festival of arts or festival of ideas, it is based on vision, mission, objectives, strategies, tactics and operations.
I hope that one day my dream to create a festival of sky and earth in remembrance of my mother will truly make her imaginations to be a reality one day someday.
You Do Not Come
I have my own settlement
Full of ever green, and it is a blissful world
In that to cause any instability
You do not even dream coming.
In one-one kernel of united moment
My mental temple stands
In that being like an earthquake-
You do not even dream coming.
In the heights of this whispering windy summit
With the moving-moving and shaky voice
In many talking in tongue added sounds
You do not even dream coming.
Far afar from the distant memory
In the forgotten memory’s snap shots
By painting rainbow like vivid colors
You do not even dream coming.
- 17/8/2025 Nepali era or circa 1968 AD -
Daily Do Not Ask
I need very much
Your drunken eye’s explosion laden expressions
Inside my eyes, make it sit down
Forever taps of my flowing teardrops,
Daily do not ask, what do you want?
With your half baked troubles
I will give you my half-baked burning pains,
Your troubles with my burning pains mixing
We will remain together in this lifetime
Daily do not ask, what do you want?
I need the smoke of your burning funeral pyre
When in that burning pyre my soul has
Searched you in that dense smoke of death
I shall take you before the Almighty God,
Then you may say
‘What have you done this for?’
Before Almighty God, I will say-
Please Lord before you this
Why have you made one soul with two lives?
Being tied in the religion
By knowingly for my love
I have broken it,
The forever you may say,
‘What have you done this for?’
This will be ‘his’ decision
Religion is for humankind, and love is for the Gods
In the religion seeking death world
You have lost all the bets of dice
In the Godly world, loss is his, and win is yours
Now on daily please do not ask
What do you want?
I was very worried reading about Charmine Clift and her breaking relationship with Johnston. Many article pointed to the fact that her husband significantly contributed Clift’s suicide. I am tracing the same type of tendency in my mother from 1968. I do not know what type of poems or short stories or songs she wrote for infant Radio Nepal before my birth. I am confident that she was not as desolate as she was getting bug down with her domestic chores.
I was suddenly taken aback by the words of my dear uncle Himalaya, who has in the first starting few pages invites all to take taste sample of my mother’s creativity. This uncle is really a great human being as cool, calm and collected like the great Himalayas. His success all over as a UNO diplomat and in his retirement as founding father of the Himalaya Bank and many other social ventures are source of inspirations to many Nepalese afar. He also lost his mother young, and was reared and nurtured by his nanny a colorful Newar lady (called Roshan or by us Taata Aama) with craggy old, and weathered face and lots of oral history of Nepal. I will reveal her observations later. Uncle Himalaya pays tribute to my mother just like his own mother. The words he expresses are sensitive, affectionate, multi-linguistic personality and full of literary talents who took shelter in its safe haven.
Uncle Himalaya observes that my mum wrote these poems, songs and short story in her first decade of married life. In this phase, the expressions are full of life’s excitement like fleeting of the time, about the beauty of nature, and bliss of life. Then after that as her conjugal life and family life became burdensome with responsibilities she felt suppressed and her pain started to flow in her poems in the form of injustice, exploitation, pain, depression laden difficulties. The soft and teary expressions are in affective flow of presentation that we all can taste now.
His assistance and guidance in this project has been significant with his equally supportive and generous family. I am eternally indebted to them all.
If my mother is symbol of tragedy then Himalaya uncle’s consort or my aunt is the symbol of comedy. Her life is never boring with many projects and activities around until perpetuity. She has created many landmarks around Kathmandu like her art deco ‘Rocket House’ and much more. She is spontaneously bubbly and effervescent in her personality. She is not like my late mother but poles apart, and they looked uncannily close in appearance. She fell in love and got Himalaya and great catch that was unheard of in Kathmandu about the early 1950s Nepal. She was always a trendsetter and the lucky one, and the apple of her parent’s eyes. I will talk more about her later.
Yes, about Taata Aama and she used to come down before my late mum. She felt lonely as uncle Himalaya and family were overseas with UNO postings. She was a great joy and my late mum made her talk about her life and times in the household of the Dev Shamsher family. The most important piece de resistance was her song about Maharaja Jung Bahadur’s tusker elephant running amok. She used to sing “Raja ko Haati phutecha rati, pugecha Bagmati!” This was her error of Nepali as she was a Newar and could not express “chutecha” like Chinese not being able to express ‘R’ with ‘L’. the song that she meant was that the translation: “The King’s elephant broke (exploded) loose in the night, and reached Bagmati river”. Her expression instead of broke got heard by us like exploded and that was the basis of our laughter and delight having her around. She treated us like her own children as she missed uncle Himalaya and his family very much. She used to cook special Newari dishes, and my mum really loved those goodies prepared by her loving craggy and wind swept face and hands of many years old. I used to ask her age and she used to express in her unique way like “I am 20 years times 7 plus 5”. As I was young and heard her to be 20 times 7 plus 5, she almost collapsed with fright as she felt suddenly being 145 years old lady luck. We all burst with great laugh and felt worried for her. That was my sweet childhood with simple fun, food and frolic under my lovely mum.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Depressive Life
Come towards the crack of lilac dawn
Today take a bizarre oath
This is our mutual date
Consider this date between us being the last
Because, this last date it is the death of our love.
In the afar rosy horizon
Look at the hiding bright sun,
The black gloomy clouds are casting over
Making earth mother very depressed.
Because, depression is started to begun in this life.
Teardrops! Do Not Rain Like This
Hello my dear pal in silence!
If you ever have any sympathy for me
I welcome you, I will claim you to be mine
Only in silence, in the early crack of lilac dawn
However, before everyone tear drops!
Do not rain like this like this.
In your hearth, I find peace,
Because, the weighty burden of my mind is lessened.
However, I have regularly tremendous confusion
Because there should be, no complaints expressed
That is why – teardrops!
Do not rain like this like this.
Making the rhythm of my heart upset
Within the afar boundaries of the fuzzy memories
Making it bright, exhibiting the change in mental state
Before everyone monsoon’s torrential rain
Please teardrops.
Do not rain like this like this.
The underdeveloped portions of my thoughts
Take flight in my dreams, near everyone’s silence
Melting-melting you attempt to drop.
If you are interested about my existence
Please teardrops.
Do not rain like this like this.
No matter how much torture, slaps of pain inclusive
No matter what the weighty pain being I will carry
I have decided to bear it out in silence,
Therefore to disturb my lessons, to drift my aims afar
Please- teardrops!
Do not rain like this like this.
In the silent night, when I am afar from noise
Being far I wait you with trepidations,
No wonder that is why you try to runaway afar from me
That is why I say, my mind’s countless pain shatters into many pieces
Please my dear sweet teardrops!
Do not rain like this like this.
Before everyone trying to attempt in flowing hey tear drops!
Please tell me, what is the purpose of your existence?
Nevertheless, in my tearful cry everyone laughs, there is rejection
Your loss is everyone’s gain,
That is why I request you – teardrops!
Do not rain like this like this.
There is no known date when these two poems were written by my late mum. She was going into severe depression from her own alcoholism too. She never drank prior to marrying my father. She became alcoholic slowly through habit association with my father. It is known fact that alcohol contributes to more depression and in the most advanced state psychotic state. I am afraid to pronounce that in much later periods of her life she was well-known depressive alcoholic and psychotic. I just could not bear to live with her. By 1970s, she had never-ending episodes of suicidal ideation and attempted to take her own life by taking barbiturates and other prescribed drugs. I think that she was hospitalized in the Royal Nepal Army hospital in one of the epistles, and this was in early 1970s, I met Sunil Thapa near the entrance of the hospital. He was a good friend of my younger brother Sunil. I had seen him in St. Xaviers’ Boarding School when we were tots. I could not communicate with him then arising the traumatic experience that my mum had caused me. No wonder he considered me an arrogant. That was the way things were. Much later Sunil Thapa did fall in love with Sangeeta and my younger brother facilitated theirs’ romance.
All these violent and turbulent times caused many negative impacts in our lives. I dropped out of college and ran- away from home with the “Hippies” far out, to drop off, cool down and find a strategic direction for my life. I do not know, and I did not care for my family from 1975 early onset. I traveled the length and breadth of our beautiful Motherland Nepal. I knew Mountain Travels founder Colonel Jimmy Robert and Major Cheney, who had hired our Maharaj Ganj house for theirs’ office and residence. They were legends in high altitude mountain climbing and trekking. I was given an opportunity to go to Mt. Makalu base camp as a language interpreter for Johnathan Wright a young freelance photographer for American National Geography. It was mind opening journey of almost one and half months walking. After that, I was given another opportunity to work for The Save the Children Fund (UK) projects all over Nepal, India and Bangladesh. I saw my country and walked in its surface from its length to its breadth high and low. I saw the tremendous suffering of the people, and that I did identify with my mother being related to ‘having’ things and doing things in hedonic lifestyle. With the common people, they suffered not ‘having’ essential things. On balance, I can say that any suffering is no good and now I symbolize any suffering to that of my mother and of our Motherland.
By 1975, it was coronation of late King Birendra and my late father had been posted back to the Kathmandu valley from Nepal Ganj. He was appointed as Master General of Ordinance. He saw the total modernization of the Army and the logistics of security for the coronation. The “Hippie era” was ending. There was the Khampa uprising in Mustang, and the lunatic clan of Chandra Shamsher, who had money, had bribed the Chief of Army to go into action against the Khampa militia leader Guy Wangdi. That was supposed to have been my father’s command it was taken away from him by this younger lunatic member of the “Moon” Rana clan after paying a bribe of Rupees 50,000. Later, after the pressure from China, that Wangdi was in flight to get inside India and the Army under the lunatic “Moon” clan butchered him. He was given the highest military valor for this and went later on to become the life bodyguard of late King Birendra. He was also named in the murdered investigation of former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. This man also was well known as a raider of temples and selling its antiquities just like the youngest brother of late King Birendra. I would not be surprised if they were also not involved in drug trade. The irony was that the eldest son of this “Moon” clan soldier committed suicide in London in a haze of drug and sordid homosexual scandal. What a way to end a life of a great dog lover?
Teardrops
Oh! My teardrops do not like this rain
As you flow from the Himalayas sliding seawards.
When you flow who will watch
Laughter did not come.
When you rain who will welcome thee with open palms
They will all disappear afar.
When you laugh, they will burst in laughter
The sun will shine brightly.
When you are tearful, the moon hides
Inside the veil, that is the dark billowing clouds.
You winked, the lady with the scale smiled
She is going to follow you.
Aftermath your torrential teardrops on the other bank
There will be the destruction of the world with flood.
In laughter with us all laughing
The creation will dance.
Interval
I remember my self with the past memories
With you for the future dependency of safe shelter
How much in my past memories that is dimming
I hid you in that dim memories laden labyrinth.
To runaway with this solitary life
Battling with countless struggles
Currently sinking down with the present’s sinkhole
With struggles I have fallen.
With a momentous opening in that sinkhole
Like an affectionate one who provides that safe shelter
With that umbrella providing shade from you
It has provided me the basis of safe shelter.
For me that dot of my fading memories
No matter how afar it keeps on distancing
It has also flown out sky high that I do not know
Then you have disappeared in the future.
It is very desolate to reflect the isolated emotive state of my mum around 1968 as father was away in the service of Army. My brother and I were in boarding school called St. Josephs as it had been for me since 1960s. I rebelled and failed against the examination in my original school called St. Xavier’s arising being continuously molested by the founding Jesuit priest. I could not tell this for a long time and I from then did not trust anyone and blamed father and mother for it, they did not know about it and the only reason my father wanted me in boarding was that he was very jealous about me near my mum. It was also his inert autocratic power to oppress others around him. My mother had to send me to boarding school and she did not like it and still could not do anything about it. My youngest sister was being cared by Malla maternal grandparents under the superstitious Hindu astrology that my sister was born under the wrongs time and would cause death to my father. She was not to see him for twelve years. In reality my father and mother could not afford us all three in the Army salary of his. My mother had to go teaching as a Nepalese teacher in a local school.
In her free time, she had to attend as a dutiful daughter in law to the needs of my paternal grandparents. My father’s younger brother and sister looked after her well. She also learnt to play Sitar from my auntie and she was very good and now is a member of the Nepalese Academy. Well-known player of India like Ravi Shanker and other Bengali Gharana (traditional schools) mentored her. She did her playing time to time in Radio Nepal and All India Radio. Many well-known musicians, lyricist and singers of all types used to visit our ancestral mansion. The extended family household was always bursting with music until late nights and it was such that my mum was desolate and lonely. I wonder if she did not like the Rana household or she was a depressive by birth. Then again, she told me that she never wanted to marry and wanted to study medicine. She was forced into marriage to better the fate of the Mallas. My mum’s best friend Prabha Basnet never married and went to be famous as an academic in women’s education in Nepal. She would encourage my mum to write poems in the num de plume of Sapana or Dream. Another regular visitor was the famous Janardhan Sama, who was a major artist of Radio Nepal. He took the picture of my mum in the front cover of this book.
Janardhan Sama was the son of the well-known Nepalese literature Bal Krishna Sama, he came to take solace from his father. He hated his father for not having been educated in English. Yet this family was very much talented from poetry, sculpture, photography to paintings. I have great feeling for him and he was such a powdered person. He was very shy in nature and amazed me with all his stories from the Sanskrit old civilization. Yet he was happy for me that I was getting English education that he dearly loved to have and read poems of Shelly, Keating, and Byron and so on. My mum and this distant got along and they understood each other through theirs’ artistic temperament. My mum used to be very happy to see him in her isolated and miserable existence that was a prison for the living. Poor Janardhan uncle died young through the cancer of stemming from alcohol and cigarettes. I remember my mum telling me her tutor the well-known and major poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota also died with cancer arising cigarettes. I wonder about smoking and poets in relation to cancer and deaths so young to this day all over the world.
Struggle
In search of silence within silence
Like I have been invisible in my silence
Mine imagination’s fluffs also
Fly up and up skyward to reach it.
Heavenly hopes appear in wave like ripples
As if it has spread afar from its surface
Mine mental chariot’s wheels also
Roll and goes to places afar to be bugged down.
In the autumn’s leafless small forest
As seen like that in the blazing fire front
My example’s flashes also
Unable to reach in its aims
Right in the middle has gone out like death.
Spread in the vast ocean
Like the sweet vines wave in the breeze
My serious thought lines
Gets wiped off like the soda fizz coming up.
Solitary
In the autumn’s leafless tree branch
Daily arrives my mental bird
To sit in that branch ruminating.
Neither has it any spirit to continue
Nor does it have any strength to peck any food,
Only it has the desire to wait out for the arrival of spring
That way it will have its creative dream realized
It is in search of that reality.
It is tolerating the cold frost almost frozen
In the nakedness of the leaves I am also
Trying my best to go naked
Without giving any consideration to my existence
It is ruminating day by day.
Getting away from the maddening crowd
My solitary life seeks
Like this to be spent in solitary meditation.
Female sensitivities
Long before the Stone Age
In the golden age of matriarchy
Female and men, men and female, worshipping no need for any births
Men just sat gazing at females
Finding the female were just different then theirs’ own image
Female had heart, but lacking any attractiveness
Men had desires, without any magnetism
The cycle of creation did not roll.
Through time slowly a desire seed became planted in one’s heart
In another, the passion was taking the root.
The time for the desire and passion to come together was nearing
In her heart wordless emotions were just springing,
In mental signs, wordless emotions
Face wrinkles caused the exchange of her passion and desires with his.
The woman with the scale smiled
The thunder of monsoon, air is electrified with the dance of procreation,
Women and men become fearful
To seek protection for survival sought refuse in the stone caves.
In the eyes of men electric flashes shone to dominate,
In the eyes of women to be dominated by men appeared.
In both men and women, this was the first sense of experience
Both of them had appeared in this road
With much affection men cuddled
Nature reciprocated spontaneously.
After some time…
With the hard survival battle of humanity that humans saw
Juts like in his image another human creature
In front crying with small hands
For any search of words is just moving,
Humans cried ‘cycle of creation.’
Thank the mothers that are all females
The goddess of fertility and humanity
The starter of creation
The guardian of families
Female the vast and endless flow for the source of affection
The provider of humanity
In hugs and kisses the one who provides eternal bliss.
Men that is full of blood, meat and bones in structure
Women that is also full of blood, meat and bones in structure
Inside both of them is the beating of the rhythmic heart
That seeks equality treatment in movement
With just one need for desire, with just one want of passion
Through immemorial passage of time contact between them continues
However, the female is dependent
Men are independent.
Men who hold up the scale of justice
Instead of distributing equality and fairness
He is just like a greedy monkey that just does not allow balance.
Because he is sitting to provide justice
He is just providing justice,
Through the support of black veil like in black magic
By taking, much affection and giving less affection back to her.
By taking all from her passion he burns her all in one fire of passion,
After his wishes has been fulfilled she is just abandoned
She is suppressed and tossed in a pile of garbage heap
The heart of her passion is becomes less with movement,
Men have become her suckers and she is far to live in isolation.
In goodtime mother Sita is thrown alive in the funeral pyre of Suttee
In bad times, she brings ill repute to the family and a medal of whore is given to her
Just like the dirt inside the eyes has been removed by him
The wife is everything and he has captured complete service under one roof.
The many duties of the woman remains
After all the devotion and self-sacrifice she has made for him
Yet her duty under the religion remains unfulfilled.
Humanity’s road walking male
Has fallen down with shame and still rises
He has no want to support in his shortcomings of the senses for her
That is why his rhythm of the heart is beating slowly.
Male, is the reason
Female sensibilities are mixed with emotional teardrops
His footstep has crushed her with laughter and smiles moving ahead.
Like anywhere, anywhere like
He can use her
In his hands are the situations
Female has the reins.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
I am connecting with my late mother’s theme of “solitariness, struggle and female sensibilities”. I guess I have to admit my own life looking at what my father did to my mother was not a good lesson for me. However, I have to show also compassion for my poor and inadequate father as why he was like that Lord of the animals (one minute instant love and next minute instant violence laden destruction like Lord Shiva, the Hindu God of creation and destruction). It is probably that he never got any love from his own cold spy mother for the Chandra Shamsher clan, and who henpecked my late grandfather to death. Grandfather used to take solace in Hindu holy men and smoking dope as an escape from his hellish life. He was also making for extra income selling morphine to his auntie married to the father of the late Queen Aishwarya, who was gunned down by late drug addicted, alcoholic and gun happy Crown Prince Dipendra in 2001. When King Birendra died the institution of monarchy died with him, and that was good for the people of Nepal’s development for the coming modernity and chaos.
I am actually learning from my late mother what are the desires and sensibilities of womanhood. It is better late then never. I have had lots of encounters with Australian and other females and I have remained dysfunctional in this department. I have my own inner demons arising sexual molestation by the late Father Moran, founder of my primary education in Nepal being St. Xavier’s, an American Irish Jesuit educational institute. Father Moran was brought to Nepal from remote and backward Indian city of Patna by General Mrigendra Shamsher Rana a grandson of Chandra Shamsher, who was in the late 1940’s the education minister. All the Chandra clans (burning moon clan) were anglophiles. My great great grandfather Dev Shamsher wanted to get rid of the British out of India, and had sent students to Japan for modernizing blue print of Nepal. This was not acceptable to British and his tuberculosis ridden younger brother Chandra. Thus, Dev was sent in exile first to eastern Nepal as a governor and later to Dehradun, India.
I have found out that Father Moran was so much of a pedophile that even the Bishop of Patna wanted to get rid of him, Nepal as the last frontier in the mountains was an ideal location for father Moran’s missionary practices on young boys. I am not sure about the sexual tendencies of General Mrigendra, that he liked Father Moran very much. I know some of the family members of General Mrigendra clan are well known having married in Indian Royal clans with bi-sexual tendencies.
I am well aware that my mother’s solitary life amidst the dark and gloomy Thapathali ancestral palace we had started to crumble in 1970s. Ex-King Gyanendra’s uncle purchased that property. We moved to Maharaja Ganj very next door to the abodes of ex-King Gyanendra and Devyani Rana’s abode. Her father and my late father shared the same first names of Pashupati. There used to be lots of confusion over posts and bills. Devyani’s father also comes from the Chandra clan, and is married to one of the wealthiest principalities Gwalior. Thus, the diplomats called Devyani’s father “Rich Pashupati” and my father a military man “Poor Pashupati”. I saw Dipendra and Devyani grow as little tots. Dipendra used to go to the primary school run by Gouri KC a pioneering Radio and TV personality with Rita Raj Gurung (married my good friend Shyam of the Nanglo Pub fame). Gouri KC was the offsider to Sangeeta Thapa’s and mine Auntie Bina Rana. Those two always were organizing some artistic events, and now that spirit is alive and well through Sangeeta Thapa. I almost fell in love with one of Gouri’s daughters, as they were so charming. Instead, I fell for an Australian and could not keep it up arising my own inner demons.
I am just amazed how much love my mother had for all things big and small. There she was in such isolation and agony as she did not get the full love of my father, and she still lived to love others in life. In her death, all remembered her and her collections of few remaining poems, songs and short stories have come alive by everyone chipping in financially, emotionally and much more. I have come to learn belatedly that sometimes-solitary existence is not a bad thing as it provides a person to reflect and change for the good. I am reflecting in her life and my own interpretations of things that were around her at the time these poems, songs and stories were written in 1968.
I know my mum’s youngest brother was in love with Aishwarya and he could not marry her as Queen Mother Ratna already chose her. I also know from my late mother as everyone confided in her that late King Birendra was selected to marry one time Devyani’s mother. To make things more complicated Devyani’s father was selected to marry late King Birendra’s eldest sister. Queen Ratna vetoed that Devyani’s mother could not marry late King Birendra as she was an offspring from a concubine of Khadga Shamsher, who along with Chandra Shamsher had plotted in the murder of the second Rana Prime Minister, Rana Uddip Kunwar Rana at the same Narayanhiti Royal Palace in the late 1800s. Devyani’s father did not like late King Birendra’s daughter based on her hairy Indian appearance. Then fate has it that late King Birendra was also matched up to marry my youngest maternal uncle’s wife and this did not occur for various reasons. It is known that late King Birendra kept a concubine and called late Queen Aishwarya a “dirty moonlight” that is she was not clean moonlight and her family name was Chanda meaning moonlight.
I have come to observe from my late mother she knew about humanity a lot. After all, she had studied psychology and wrote in symbols depicting authority, power and control by the male over female destinies in a society full of superstitions and conservative ideas like the days of medieval Europe. It was just the opening up of modernity in Nepal as jet age was coming, free sex and love under the Beatle mania and hippy mania was invading the dopey paradise of Kathmandu of the “Mountain is Young” fame. Many historical feelings are flowing, as I am isolated from the world trying to make sense from my dead but literally alive mother. I am truly grateful for her compassion that I am reading and translating her isolation, struggle and female sensibilities. I may have failed in my marriage and first daughter Maya, who is an international fashion model of immense beauty and talent. I have found deep love in my younger daughter Nellie, who is becoming a social worker and studying international relations. She is equally beautiful and sensitive just like my late mother.
SMOKE
Widely spread fog like thick covered smoke
Higher they are rising to the sky in its free flight.
This is not the smoke from the funeral pyre
This also is not the smoke from the burning settlements,
This smoke is from the burning of my heart
Now tell me the way that I should start the foundation of my settlement
Right amidst this pile of burnt ash.
What would be the feature outline of that new settlement?
How shall I be able to start building the future there?
Starting to light the fire in from my own both hands
I have totally self sacrificed everything to it,
With every atoms of my total commitment to it
Everything I have cherished has burnt to cinders coal
How shall I create a new settlement?
The bellowing puffs of thick black smoke have taken upward flight
To wards the sky and totally cover it in pitch darkness.
I have also taken flight upwards with the smoke
Reaching the other side of the cloudy country
To create a new settlement, with permission giving citadel
I have considered as a traveler therein
I foresee my future dreams of creating of the settlement therein.
No, no, the other side of the cloud laden country
I do not have any interest,
I do not have any relationships with any dwellers therein,
I do not have any settlement,
That is only, smoke’s free flight
That is my own hallucinations, that is my own dark cloudy storm,
And, my own free flight to freedom upwards.
No dimension
Open is the door to my heart
There are no latches attached
To any tying of knots and to any bar.
Everything has been broken
Just like the strings of my mental stringed Bina
Neither there are any
Plucking low volume drone sounds of the metal stringed Bina.
No has been my fellow companion
To fulfill that dream
Alas that remains is
There is no dimension.
Last Sighting
At the lilac colour of dawn’s unclear first light
Hope’s butter lamp wick is flickering and burning alive,
In any one of the devastated thatched hut
Lying down is the unlucky fallen and trodden down geriatric.
In the borders of the dim cloud’s flickering image screen
Affection laden and contained attractive waves arise
My thoughts were in flight, in the yon blue sky
He was lying in the imaginations dim mattress.
In the new rising of the emotions
Amidst the shining and shimmering stars
With teardrops falling as an offering
With emotional roller coaster ride, she is eagerly waiting.
At someone’s footsteps made sounds
In the dark night’s shadow
With half opened eyes in the blind colony
Increasing was the moments of hopelessness.
At the last sighting highway
With her own aim’s hope
In the devastated and dirty place, there was her movement
She was cold shaking and shivering
At last, she surrenders at her loss
Without giving consideration to the worldly relations
She has moved towards her aims
This was her ‘last sighting.’
Breeze also tries to shake
With firm determination, I hold standing
In searching my aims
But, randomly rising thoughts disturb me
As if the breeze also tries to shake me.
In the silent dark night’s footpath
Someone’s silent movement I am eagerly waiting
Pushing towards that awaiting direction
As if the breeze also tries to shake me.
Soaring, rushing and running with that stream
I take its company with my rising thoughts
With that onerous deep sleep comes to a shattering end
As if the breeze also tries to shake me.
In the dim moonlight’s silent cross road
Standing straight still my silhouette
Breaking down that sensitive aims of mine
As if the breeze also tries to shake me.
It is even difficult for the sea to sail me
Even death cannot reach to meet me
To my deep memories remembrance lines
As if the breeze also tries to shake me.
From the heavenly path’s travel
With my tired psycho narrative episodes
For a momentous rest
As if the breeze also tries to shake me.
In my last dying minutes of the setting dusk
In the rising hopelessness moments
In that rushing and soaring examples of my life
As if the breeze also tries to shake me.
In what difficulties search shall I do
It is the my foundation in the sinking hole
I find myself heavy laden the heavy rock
As if the breeze also tries to shake me.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Dear mother you smoked your self to your death. You loved your smokes, and I learned from the age of 12 or 15 to steal smokes from you and enjoyed it until five years back with great difficulty I gave it up. I achieved that greatest result of my life, and hope to live a bit longer to see the smoke free life. I did not learn about your cancer and in your death, I did not burn your death funeral pyre according to the Hindi ritual. For this, I shall give all my inheritance that you desired I have to your youngest son and his son. As a Hindu, I am a failure, as I have no sons. However, I have to beautiful daughters far away from Nepal and they happily ever after live in Australia. I am happy that they never saw you alive in your misery and sadness and billowing depressive smokes.
Was it not exactly in 1968, in France many things went up in smokes after the students rioted in France. I remember soon after 1968 was over your youngest brother would be dead in a car accident and he was put in death funeral pyre leaving a young son and a young daughter. What a waste of life that he was burnt and his smoke from there in flew to the yon blue Kathmandu’s then pristine sky.
As if from the sky, new youthful experiments were to start in drop in the 1970 starting. I remember the Indian movie ‘Dum Maro Dum’ was shot at Kathmadu’s various locations. It was all about the smoking of hashish and the acid experimentation of the youths. I am remembering of the hippie era. I was just not old enough to be part of it but saw it.
I also dropped out of school and college and became truant in life like the generation of that era. I became a burden to you and yet you loved me and gave me whatever I asked from you. I am eternally grateful for that and such experiment did contribute me to eventually come to Australia. Otherwise, I would not be able to contribute to the struggle you started to preserve my father’s monstrous dynasty. At least my children are free and I do not know and would not want to know about my young brother’s children. It is my out of mind and out of sight policy. There you have it I have no dimension as you wrote, and this will be my last sighting of you. In fact, I last saw you in 1990 and promised myself that again in life or in death I will never bother to be near you again. My desires came to fruition in learning your death, and here I write.
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