Debaki Timalsina
Comrade, greetings!
Are you okay?
This is Comrade Samikshya speaking.
Hope you recognized me;
I am a pro-people artist.
When you were seen
Walking up the hill through our village
Raising slogans of the great revolution
A great storm ransacked the village
When we, with guras trucked on our shawls
Paraded on the slopes of Khajilung
That was when I was associating myself
With the dream of a free society
Decked in my ambitious eyes
Committed to the deliverance of a class
That faced exploitation for ages.
I was just taking
To the tender wings of youth
That moment
I was caught in a red trap!
I am one of those combatants
Who plunged into the battle with you
Drinking deadly flames
Carrying a bag of gunpowder
And making the gun the custodian of my life
I nurtured the dreams to erect
Tall stacks of joy
To quickly transform myself
And help others
While I was young
Everyone in the village belittled me
Saying, I had a face like a cleft broom
Or like a cucumber slice
When I sat down to read, they said
I would become a good teacher
If I saw anyone incurring an injury
I would gather moss from the walls or herbs from the wild
To make a paste and treat the wound
At this, people would say
I would become a doctor.
But when you came and took me away…
You said I had to wake up; I rose with my voice
Said we should get united; I took up a flag
Said we should rise; I took up my pen
Said we should burn; I became a torch
Said we need to burst; I exploded as a bullet
Said we should fall; I fell as an injured combatant
I fulfilled all these obligations
And marched into the battlefield
Carrying with me
The blossoms of trust and hope
You said, a day won’t break unless hundreds of stars fall
I lost hundreds of my co-combatants
You said, we can win only by registering a loss
I got defeated many times to make you win
You said we can spread light by burning ourselves
I became and wick and kept burning
I molded myself
Following each of your directions
And stayed to fit almost everywhere
But today,
You chose to rejoice with the lizards
Who await at the banks, afraid of the tumultuous flood
You became the traveler of an aimless journey
And stood against your own history
As someone absconding form the revolutionary camp
Letting the birds of your own nest fly;
Erecting a swing of your own musings
And giving commands to a static time
You have erected a twin-tower
That befits none but you
Considering the narrow horizons of your dreams
These days,
I cannot sleep,
As I am repeatedly crushed by the same thought
I didn’t know how war made a demon of a human being
When the treatises of hunger tease
From the top the belfries of the republic where they stand
I wake up
When landslide ransacks the valleys of life!
Alas, the revolution I fought for
Could not accommodate myself at the end of the day.
Note: I had expressed myself this way on 20 Asoj 2065 when I didn’t have even fifty to hundred rupees to buy a toy of my daughter’s choice on the occasion of her birthday.
[The poet is a former Maoist combatant.]
