– Nira Sharma
Translated by Mahesh Paudyal
Enough have I read
The tales of my mother’s woes
But never did I read the oblique lines of plight
Meandering over my father’s palms
Poets have written prodigally
Eulogies about their mothers
Have crooned songs and melodies in praise for them
Those who called their mothers ‘the earth’, however
Seldom called their fathers ‘the sky’
Which, always, back-grounded Father
Father never stood idle like a tree
That stands straight
On one edge of the farm;
He never sat still like the resting mound
Built somewhere the wayward pass
Instead, he burnt himself bit by bit
To wipe darkness off our lives
And plied like a monorail to harvest joy for us
He kept rushing all his life, incessantly
Without sighing even once a sigh of exhaustion
This is why, a mountain of loneliness
Surges high from Father’s heart
At the moment, listless life lies supine
In front of Father
His directionless life glares
From its deep Kumbhakarna-like sleep
But then, father is gathering leftovers of joy
On the base of his eyelashes
After sleep has been forsaken from his eyes
Filled by tears to their brims
Like beads of water on arum leaves
Father’s voice shrinks even as he speaks
I instantly infer: his throat is smothered
Yet, with all his woes subdued
He smiles, seemingly happy
I can instantly tell the fake smile
It’s not my father’s original mirth.
Flowers, listless with lost hues
Have blossomed all over my father’s face
There is nowhere a shred of contentment
On his wrinkled cheeks that appear like curved graphs
On his head bald with fallen hair
The scorching sun of responsibility
Pecks from daybreak to the end of dusk
Somewhere inside his mind
Mountains of worry, of both past and future
Loom all the time
Father stands atop the same mountain
And acts to have won the entire world
And distributes among us
Joys that have been borrowed
But the truth is, every single second
Father opts to lose every stake
For me, for you and for all of us
Father is that loser
That always chooses to lose
Solely for his progenies



यसलाई जीवित राख्नकोलागि तपाइँको
आर्थिक सहयोग महत्वपूर्ण हुन्छ ।

