A Poem Worth Remembering

Early years in USA, I used to write too many emails to cousins, friends and families. Soon sentences got shorter, family and relatives got bitter because they thought I was giving them some attitude.

But my amusement days were gone; things lost the natural factors of surprise and enthusiasm. Today I had a major wrap up cleaning ceremony through my old stuffs. While cleaning up, I saw few emails and letters that I wrote to one of my cousin....Excerpts goes like this:

A bottle of Pepsi cost $1.5 here, people say ‘hi’, ‘hello’, and ‘thank you’ without reasons, and they call hand holding 'gay'....

It was June 2005, Waverly, Iowa. It was after rain and I was outside the dorm watching birds and squirrel settle back afterwards, in their homes. I had left home few weeks back too, trying to settle in US. It was a new beginning. To philosophize, I would say, every second is a beginning of a new thing. Everything, old or new is a beginning of some kind. Present is past's future. That summarizes everything. Everything is afresh. Everything is new and energy. We get lost in the sense of time. Our senses play tricks. These tricks are pretty powerful and almost impossible to be conscious about at most times.

May 2005, my cousin Sudarsan Dai and I were sitting by the balcony and enjoying our super.

"Now you really won't be here at the end of this summer huh?' he said.

"It looks like it" I said. 

He was partly happy, partly disappointed. He was worried about his 2nd and 3rd year, English and Nepali Paper. 

'I wish you well, success and good health and write to me, write like we talk every day here and every night. Keep writing. Keep reading. And send me when you write something, we will publish your books" he said.

I was scared, nervous and extremely excited to have finally got my Visa after the Embassy people gave me hard time. I can still feel the heartbeat of those days. A sense of begging, and of struggle and of dreams. I remember the day that I walk from the Embassy to my home, barefoot, mid-summer; there was traffic strike that day. We walked and talked until home. We were tired and pitied our cursed destiny to be born in a poor country which ran by the grace of Americans and Indians. When home, I remember the high pitch yelling of two little neighbor kids, a brother and a sister. The brother was little but mischievous, and the sister would beat him to weeping. And their mother would scold them both. But when those kids saw us in our balcony, from their balcony, they would be embarrassed and hide quickly. 

Our tenant Pradip and Shambu, both from Chaudhari caste, would be intimidated when we call them fisherman or jackal killer or Chaudhari's sons. It was just stereotypical jokes we made for fun, nothing racial. My cousin always told Shambu that one day, when he becomes the prime minister, he would appoint Shambhu his driver, a high paid one. And Shambhu mostly shrugged off but he could not totally negate the possibility of Sudarshan dai being Prime Minister one day, so Shambhu would be careful talking to him. 

Shambhu and Padip, I heard are in Arab somewhere. I do not know how those quarreling kids grew up, probably in college, still fighting. Same night, my cousin and I were talking at night, listening to some FM. Some literature program...

Natikaji had died same day. The DJ of the FM said “I tried to contact Fatteman to comment on Natikaji's death but he already slept." In Nepali his exact words were ‘Natikajiko barema sodhna maile Fatteman lai phone gareko thiye, uha sutisaknu bhayechha...” The DJ had bad presentation style and choice of words... amateur, unprofessional, kind of funny.

My Cousin said- 'Oh Pity! Fatteman thought his best friend died so he drank some wine and slept in melancholy.' 

I kept laughing for a while. I remember the exact words although we were almost asleep ourselves. Many years have passed but the memory is fresh. The summer memory in Nepal... I have lost significant years, but I am new and fresh and something inside me has never become old, never got tired, and never became sad. Yeah 7-8 years is a long time, I reckon. I missed a lot of things; lost time, lost appetite to be righteous, and no surprise-- lost hair growing interest, thanks to balding head. I quit some dreams, I made some unnecessary friends and I broke relationship with some best of friends. I have lost most of my identity but my essence is same, fresh, anew, innocent, eager, awaiting, moving, accepting, flowing in the time's direction, yet just living in the present worldly, mostly depressingly, in unnecessary struggles, unfavorable and unpleasant exchanges, in deep contradiction to my own beliefs and against my own soul’s true voice, in silence, and sometimes in indifference towards the ‘Dream Prospects’ I had of USA and of my life itself. 

A poem I send him in 2005, when UNICODE didn’t exist and I had to type it all English font. I could not publish a book but heard from same cousin today that my father got his book publish and released. Well, I think he got motivation from me, though he will probably deny it. He used to ready my diaries poems and stories, that I mostly hide under my bed at home and he enjoyed it. I was shy.

An old poem here now in fresh reckoning…. I wrote it, my cousin printed his email and translated in Nepali. I saw it today and thought- Oh okay, I knew that feeling. It will always be the same. I will never forget.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/bharat-mani/a-poem-worth-remembering/10151397863278782

8/25/2012

Irving Texas

Sleeplessness, Movies and Stories

I am sleepless that is why I am writing. I enjoy it. As simple as that. No grand design, no dreams, no agenda. This is what I do, and I do when I like. It is addictive. It is not serious for now but in future, may be when I really want, and when it really matters and has value, I have plenty of manuscripts. Novels, stories, poems, essays… When something will be written, it will be serious, it will be the day. For now, it is just ‘works in progress. It is my own writing’s self-potency check, just an unprofessional one. It is like English 101 scratch, something different that it has is- its rough like a never ploughed land, no editions, no readers, no propagandas, no peer reviews, no paraphrasings, no stupid rules, no political correctness, no fear of priests, no obligation to fulfill parent’s dreams, no intention to hurt fundamentalists, no hidden ambitions. It is just me. I am it. I am writing myself.

The Olympic is over. I don’t care for it anyway. There are some funny games. Few games are ridiculous. And believe it or not, in years to come, we will find out that most of the athlete there were involved were on steroid, or got some hip injection or some other drugs. Nevertheless Olympics is a sporting event alright. Greek can have some odd sense in having fun sometime but they became the foremost scientist to create such an entertaining event. They did this to please their God Zeus. Later many countries joined and now it is an international event. Peoples’ emotion run high. And America is now proud that it stands on top of the medal table, also winning women gold in soccer. Only for national pride and medal tally, but not anything else would be Americans that interested in soccer otherwise.

The hailstorm ruined my Sunday soccer fun. Watched a lot of movies this weekend although I was busy reading some stuff. I have loved some of the movies and sometime even a movie can influence person’s life. Not that it has done mine, but I enjoyed watching movies. In 90s I watched each and every Hindi movie that was made. Soon I started getting annoyed. Those days are gone, and I don’t have that much patience and time anymore. English movies are usually short and to the point. It is direct. Back in 90s I remember Hindi movies were very cautious in showing skin, or kisses on screen. People would burn the cinema hall if they see any ‘heroine’ lip-locking any ‘hero’. It was a big deal. People idolize these idiots inasmuch as that they would copy their hairstyle, clothes, speeches etc. They even made statue, they worship the celebrities. General public touch their dirty feet, still now.

Sex was taboo in movies. If they had to show two lovers kiss, they would come close and some sunflower would appear in front of the camera and cover the kissing couple up. Film director could not show skin or sex or anything for that matter. In each and every movie, there would be a ‘RAPE SCENE’ where a villain would rape a protagonist’s beloved sister. The audience would get glimpse of some chest, thighs, and funny screams of the actresses. People enjoyed and craved for it. For many Indian public, Mithun was the best actor ever. Mostly Indian but sometimes a Madhesi Nepali would rent some old time Mithun movies and feels content, when in the movie; he takes revenge of his sister’s rape and kills all the antagonists. Indian court never gave justices in these movies. This was story in each and every movies made at that time, believe it or not. Slight changes but those were the themes. But now Indian cinemas have changed. They show everything; sometime they are worse than Hollywood movies. I bet many Nepalese have seen the poster of ‘Raat ki Rani’, ‘Pyasi Jawani’ in some dark street, ‘bad hoods’ and some open cities in Bhaktapur and Kathmandu. I really wondered what they were.  It was probably the most skin showing movies of that time, I am not sure. It definitely looked tempting and curious for teen agers and old perverts who would pay lots of money to watch someone get raped in a movie. It was underground business as far as I remember.

With the emergence of disco restaurants, cabin bars etc. sex came out of its taboo status. I have no idea how Nepalese film are nowadays. They had terrible actors, bad acting, worse directors, child raping producers, and no good stories. I have no idea as I have stopped seeing any Nepalese and Indian movies at all. Sometimes one or two movies were made that made some impression on me. Sometime a novel is converted to a movie by a literature loving guy. I watch it. I want to see those movies more often. My reading is often eased by the movies, from visual and audial displays on screen. On the other hand, the imagination when reading a book is so addictive and ecstatic that sometime a movie based on a novel can completely destroy it. I have become lazy and sometime I listen to audio books so that I don’t have to read, mostly when I am tired. Although I appreciate the technology and efficiency, listening audio book is not as amazing intelligently experience-wise. Reading, revising, stopping, and reading again the lines and paragraphs of the books, the actual prints where you turn over the page and remember of another character in another book is not as smooth in audio books. Again audio book readers don’t read as fast in places as I read and don’t skip anything as I do if I am scanning. I do not much enjoy the audio books. I like movies sometime based on novel but then again all movies based on novel are not that good. Just for the sake of it, I watched ‘Old Man and The Sea’ and ‘Animal Farm’ recently to freshen up memories. They are not as good when you read and develop a connection. I am more a reader than a listener of a reader.

Sudarshan dai was a good listener. I often read, explained, and criticized many of my course book stories and poems, and his and sometime an odd, difficult book like ‘Thus Spake Zarathrusta’. My friend Nirmal was a good listener but he could think about stories differently too. I told him about many stories I read. Well, not everyone is Aesop but I loved the old school course book where we studied about Aesop’s fables and thought myself of being one day. The intelligence and mediocre stories, yet very popular and daily moral stories of ‘Thousand and One Nights’ or ‘Arabian Nights’ are still fresh in my mind. My favorite was ‘Fox and The Sour Grape’. Who does not know the story? Human psychology is just fox-like.

Irving Texas

8/12/2012  

Swinging With Krishna's Jhula

Been busy lately. Much on list... Few days ago wanted to write about ‘songs of songs’ but then Krishnaastami followed. Krishna has left in all Indian subcontinents in awe. He is often compared with Christ and other. A true statement rather would be all other saints, greats, gods, prophets and gurus are compared with him. He is a criterion himself.  I think the existence of such superhuman is almost impossible and it seems to me it is more a myth and story than history like everything else. Krishna, often called Lord Krishna is  a poet, warrior, king, prophet, incarnation of God, chariot driver, cowboy, lover, a ‘big brother’, husband of 1600 wives, a Yadav, big politician, diplomat, musician, tactician, evil slayer,…. And many more…you name it, he has got it.

How likely is it possible to have a man like that? He is everywhere and anywhere. He has done everything possible. He is the greatest all-rounder man has ever read about. Although he was a cow-herder 500 years ago in Brindaba, he was the knower of all truths, he declared Bhagwat Gita to human kind. Reading Gita unprejudcily makes one really wonder about truths of life. Comparatively, it is like reading thousands of ‘Sermon on the mount.’ He has the juice of everything; it is like drinking cocktail of all the sweet nectars of the world. Mostly people look into messenger than message …that what happened slowly with Krishna and such. His messages have not been followed, it is hard to follow, but it contains the deep truth our heart knows. We all know the message but he delivers, rather manifest in Gita so beautifully. I believe when, where and how the sermon was delivered is important.

People are much attracted by miracle and such. Sometime, even a craziest of Hindu does not know much about Krishna. All they know is he was a miracle performing, ‘Radha lover’ who also killed an evil guy named Kansa. All they know is he is considered one of the incarnations and he delivered Gita in the battlefield. My childhood days, I spent reading Gita and Mahabharata numerous numbers of times. My first reading is always light, actually scan. My second and third reading is usually, heavy, critical, comparative, and error searching. If more than that I read, I am immensely impressed. This books is one of my favorites. I loved this guy too. He was the best debater, anchor, diplomat, a mentor and healer. I felt ecstasy of being in Brindaban or Gokul with him and how sweet is it to swing in his memory like every Jhula Utsav my mother took me to, I enjoyed watching people swinging cradle. ‘Bhakti’ is what they call it. My mother took me few times to Ghattekula and Battisputali, where they would have just swung a baby Krishna cradle. Baby Krishna was/is probably the most loved baby in India, and his mischievous, troublesome childhood is also even praised as the greatest inspiration and moments.

I always wished I was lucky as Arjuna who heard him speak the greatest sermon of all, in middle of battlefield. I wish there was someone in such great internal struggles, where God would himself say- DO THIS and DON’T DO THIS. A friend who acts like a servant, who drives your chariot and gives the meaning to life, a friend who indeed in a friend in need, a well-wisher who not only wishes but does action, who does not only bash his sermon on the mouth but performs his duty, who is there in talk and in walk, a prophet who knows past, present and future, a miracle performer who asks to perform duty till death in favor of Dharma and not wait for reward, even of heaven, who teaches Karma for Dharma, who not only yell a line or two from Bible or Koran but actually shows it, who “becomes” it, a student who has studied about God and spirituality and not only claims he is saved because he is saved in a strange manner, either by confessing that he loved his neighbor’s wife or by proclaiming someone to be God, or by having multiple wives, a helper who would help when you are down and shows the real meaning of heaven. Really I am very wishful that someone like that existed in real life not in Brindaban or Galilee or Gokul, or in Mathura, or in Arunachal but in real. One can read Gita zillions of times still forgets the main theme of it. I would love to lead a life where there was a mentor, an advisor and not a scripture paraphrasing, hymn roting, self-proclaimed priests and religious people. I despise them heartily.

08-12-2012

Irving, Texas