Jayant Sharma
The page is a mirror,
and he writes to see himself—
not the man, but the myth,
the name carved in gold on spines.
He is Kafka,
buried in doubt,
his words a trial he cannot escape.
He is Plath,
his bell jar a trophy case,
his breath a prize he could not keep.
He is Hemingway,
chasing lions and applause,
only to find the echo of his gun.
He is Dickinson,
his poems tucked in drawers,
his voice a secret the world stole too late.
He is Solzhenitsyn,
his truth a gulag,
his voice a whisper in Siberia’s snow.
He is Forugh Farrokhzad,
his verses a rebellion,
his voice a flame they tried to drown.
He is Tolstoy,
rejecting his own fame,
fleeing to die in a train station,
a saint without a shrine.
He is Pamuk,
his words a bridge between worlds,
yet his country called him a traitor.
Now, he sits in the marketplace,
a writer of algorithms,
his words tailored for clicks,
his soul sold for likes.
He is a hashtag,
a trending topic,
a brand.
His books are billboards,
his prose a product,
his pain a pitch.
Awards gather dust,
like unread books on shelves.
Applause fades,
like ink on yellowed pages.
He wonders if the words were ever his,
or just the echo of a crowd
he never truly knew.
In the end,
the pen is a scalpel,
and he cuts himself open
to find nothing but hollow praise.
The truth is this:
to write for the world
is to forget the soul.
And the soul,
like a forgotten stanza,
whispers:
Why did you trade me
for a standing ovation?
(Jayant Sharma is a writer, editor, and literary translator specialising in Nepali-English translations. He has translated over a dozen notable works, including Beyond Borders, Whispers in the Mountain, Rose’s Odyssey, Unsung Heroes, In the Battle of Kirtipur, Guerrilla Girl, Gurkha War Poems, and Children Stories from Nepal, among others. As the editor of SATHI, a Kathmandu-based English literary magazine, he has actively promoted Nepali literature through translations. He is also the founder of translateNepal, an initiative aimed at bringing Nepali literature to a global audience. Jayant runs the blog Anuvaad, dedicated to translating Nepali literary works into English, and is currently working on several important translation volumes. He is also the author of To Whom It May Concern, a poetry collection published in Australia. He can be accessed through jayant.catchme@gmail.com )
