You came.
You came closer to me.
And it had to bloody rain so much!
I could not even find your aroma
With all the muddy odor wind had spread about.
In the odor of ash rising at every rainfall
I remembered you.
It felt good.
This time rain turned the paddy field into a barren shore.
Shifting even closer
You said,” Could I get a beedi1?”
This bloody tin roof makes such a ruckus!
How your voice was, I wonder:
Thick as a parrot’s?
Or mellifluous like a bulbul’s?
One day a flock of parrots came
I got lost in your remembrances
The maize in the fields was all gone.
One day a flock of bulbuls came
I remembered you again
It felt good.
Vegetable crops staked at the backyard were gone.
Now it seems
Had I known what your voice was exactly like
At least one thing would have been saved.
In your memory
I am going to starve for a year.
Like you had come
Stealthily came a snake, one day,
Sneaked into the cattle-shed
And killed the milking buffalo.
Like you had come
Came a mongoose one day.
I felt hopeful.
I’d thought it would kill the snake.
It left killing a grown-up chicken.
Never again has it rained as hard as upon your arrival.
The beedi you happened to touch as you pulled one out
Is still on the shirt’s pocket, un-smoked!
I know not
Why I await another such torrential rain?
For it to take this remaining life too?
Now I am wishing that you wouldn’t come
But, unless you didn’t
There shall also be no end to waiting for your not coming.
- A beedi (also spelled bidi or biri) is a thin cigarette or mini-cigar filled with tobacco flake and commonly wrapped in a Tendu (Diospyros melanoxylon) or Piliostigma racemosum leaf tied with a string or adhesive at one end. It originates from the Indian subcontinent.
(Translated from the Nepali original by Roshan Koirala)
यसलाई जीवित राख्नकोलागि तपाइँको
आर्थिक सहयोग महत्वपूर्ण हुन्छ ।