LUST FOR LIFE

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Lust for life
English Transaltion: MB Pradhan

Sandhya Regmi with renowned writer, poet & translator MB Pradhan

 

MB Pradhan reciting Sandhya's translated poem, July 2012

 

 

Wearisome trudge our life though
In years galore,
Dying---a difficult song to sing
When lust for life appears
Insatiably intense.

Blossomed for long as rhododrendon
Radiating light all around,
Fell head over heels in love umpteen times
To my heart's content;
Bloomed in luxuriance on boughs;
Yet relinguishing beauty and charm tormenting
When lust for life appears
Insatiably intense.

Glided like rainwater creating drains
Bled deep in heart and flowed
Gurgled like a cascading waterfall
Alas I so agonising to go dry
When lust for life appears
Insatiably intense.

Cool and comforting the shade
On undulating hills and dales,
In recollections people wonder how
Love grows fonder ..
In turning love immortal
Immolating inner self excruciating
When lust for life appears
Insatiably intense.

Eyes full of hopes dreams replete with gleams,
Drops of diamonds roll down the cheeks
Dampening the spirits,
Hiding the flood of tears in eyes
With aching heart,.
Smile an inconceivable phenomenon
When lust for life appears
Insatiably intense.

Awesome is the spectacle when
Rainbow splashes vermillion on
Mt Himalaya's forehead,
To see hills and valleys dotted,
With kith and kin for generation
Is pleasing indeed.
But you and I to depart
leaving them behind is painful
When lust for life appears
Insatiably intense.

An immortal composition will I dare
Even if death at me stares,
Scatter life giving pollen from above
And descend even if I have to.
Gurgle far down the hills and plains
Even if I go dry,
And glow like fireflies and perish
In flames if I have to.



A PEDANTIC POET AND HIS POEMS

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A Pedantic Poet and His Poems

English Transaltion: MB Pradhan

MB Pradhan reciting Sandhya's translated poem, July 2012

Sandhya Regmi with MB Pradhan

If poetry is the billowy waves

That surge in your mind
Filled with violent emotions
Utterly it failed why
to cleanse the muck and filth of the shore.
Liberate society from shackles
Of unfairness and incongruities.
If poetry is the unrelenting
violent outburst of emotions,
It flunked why to untie
the knots of agony and affliction
Or let fly caged-in peacocks
Of sense and sensibilities.
If poetry is the blazing inferno
Of you restless soul,
Why it failed to illuminate
Your mind from encircling gloom.
If it is the facile sentiment
A product fine of your higher intellect
Why it failed again to bring about
A revolutionary change.
It poetry is the life-force
Why it succeeded never
To bestow life and light
To our natural predilections
Crushed under untold
Deadening predicaments.

Your poetic creations
Sometimes I feel and wonder
Is an incredible bundle
Of downright lies,
A figment of your unseasoned imagination
A rare dramatic demonstration
Of ostentation and conceit;
An artful display
Of crocodile tears
A demagogue's frivolous speech
Of fake assurances,
In social networking who indulges.
Is a trafficker in tears and sighs
Of the lowly and the lost.

Hail Poet !
The need of the hour
Towards your society
Is your intimacy and commitment.
Where can I look for realism
Pulsating with life in your poem
Providing directions loud and clear,
A pleasant admixture
Of experience and understanding
A lively emergence of art and skill
An exaltation of labour and resolve
A glorification of sacrifice and dedication
An excavation of hisory
In layers
A quest for newer truth.

If your poetic creation fails

To stir the minds and intellect
Of teeming millions
Arouse their sense and susceptibilities
Their inward eye in slumber
Sharpen the sense
Of everything that is beautiful,
Inflame their zeal and passion
In quest of newer meaning
Of life and enlightenment,
Soon you will rest assured
hear the death-knell
Of your journey's end
And of your poetry.

Of physical seductiveness
Of womenfolks you have composed
Poems long enough and Sang
Sensuous songs of love and lust;
The world of beauty and wisdom
Make no mistake,
Lies deep within.
Look never with your outward eye
Watch with your keen eye
Of delicate sensibilities
And dwell at length at
The infinite beauty of inner self;
Hallow the dignity of womenfolks
And prolifically write on heroics
Of our great valiants.

In the cosmos of creation
Of poems overflowing
With vigour and vitality,
Accumulation enough is observed
Of stuff and nonsense
Of pride and vanity
Of perversity and obsceinity.
Oh! great composer of verses
Create a piece of poetry
Of idealism and dedication.
You merely used so far
hands and ink in earnestness
Outpoure your heart and scribble
with drops of your blood,

Give a clarion call and awake
Those in deep slumber with power
Of intuition and commisseration .
Bring those divided in unison
As a revolutionary forerunner
Of wisdom and understanding.

With intense feeling you write
As Laxmi Prasad Devkota of yesterday
And Dinesh Adhikari of today

In the rhythm of cascading waterfalls
your verse will sing and dance
In constant flow;
Permeating our mind and soul
with natural charm and
Unfeigned reflections.
Lasting glory and triumph of yours
Will touch the pinnacle of Sagarmatha,
Observing your immortality
In the eyes of your offsprings.
Realisation dawns you are alive
Very much in tour verses
Living an indelible imprint
On the pages of history.

You merely used hand and ink in earnestness
You outpour now with
Drops of your blood.




 

ODE TO A TREE

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Ode to a tree

English Transaltion: MB Pradhan

MB Pradhan reciting Sandhya's translated poem, July 2012

Sandhya Regmi with MB Pradhan

Exposed to the tempest from time immemorial
But not beaten,
Battling against lightning thunder
Down the ages;
But not lost
Smitten by blistering rains
For centuries together,
But not shaken,
Shorn of all its beauty in winter
Yet reborn in grandeur in spring,
Spreading fragrance and freshness,
To earth under the azure sky;
Forever smiling even providing shelter
To criminals raising arms for slaughter.
Standing upright as an oak tree
On the mountains,
Smiling as a ‘Christmas Tree’
In its abode of snows
Dancing as a ‘Pine Tree’ smeared
With sands all over,
In the grueling heat of the sun
You flap your wings constantly,
To provide pleasant whiff of air.
Inhales himself the dust and smoke
To bring lively breeze
And refreshing greenery in abundance.
Suffering from pangs of dislocation
The nectar bearing coconut tree
Still stands a hero as always.

 
To you he has always provided
Has taken nothing from you ever,
The people annihilated
By spate of river and floods
Depleted by earthquakes
And lost their hearth and home,
Shattered by all destroying fire
And failing to receive any succour,
From society and state
He has sustained them
As an affectionate mother
A lap full of tenderness
A cloak to naked body
And an embrace of friendship.
Enkindled himself to provide
Warmth and kindly light
Blessed you with food, shelter and cloth;
For every throb of your heart
Be proffered
Reassuring faith and hope
Service to humanity
Is synonymous to tree.

Terraces dotted with verdant trees
Boughs laden with mellowed fruits
Plates overflowing
Gorgeous sights, nature's bounty
Flowers - its riot of colours
And the nectar flows
Bent on rescuing our earth from global warming
Liberate from green house gas,
Common people aided greatly
Shunted our monsters of Environmental pollution
Served as a sentinel to your home.

 
To debar such elements
Show their ugly heads
Takes infinite pride to observe
Lies low sometimes in humility
Unfolds in untrammelled freedom
Is in tune with chirping birds,
At the first flush of dawn,
Singing with cooing winds
Whistling in ecstasy at twilight
Disguised himself as peach tree
Of dazzling brilliance in full bloom
Like pomegranate tree
That charms and transforms
Your courtyard into
A gateway to heaven.

 
He has preserved the civilization
You wanted to demolish
He has safeguarded your culture
That you paid no heed to,
Turned himself into
A museum classifying
Creatures and plant life.
It carries history on its back
Granting Buddha.
The ambassador of peace a platform
For serene meditation and wisdom.

 
Pulverised and transformed
Into a paper, that allows
Imprints of poignant poems
All over,
Provides vigour and vitality
Replenished energy divine throughout
Burning himself
Produces crispy currency notes
Putting himself to grindstone
And changed into smooth pulps

Decimates himself to provide
Lifeblood to very second, minute
And hour of your life
Overflowing your cup
With nectar-divine fluid
And strewing luck on the vast expanse
Of your forehead
In the tunefold song of his leaves
Are woven the heroic story
Of untold tales of suffocation woes
He is hungry but never steals
Tormented but never complains
Cringes and moans
But never laments
Hurts anyone, never
Assaults none ever
Stands committed to
His sound principle
Trusts himself and on his deeds
In the name of religion often
You commit a sin.
In the name of religion,
For a life after death
You wage a war.
Create havoc, a mutiny.
In the name of revolution
You bring delusion
On some flimsy pretexts
You raise hue and cry.
But poor friend of ours
Gets severed, cut, slashed,
Felled, torn, crushed, slit, broken
Ripped and split asunder
Into pieces
Even he tolerates
The buffets of misfortune
Remains beneficial to you
Till the bitter end.
 
He holds you in his arms
From birth,
A friend forever.
He carries your dead body
A strong base for you to
Fall back upon;
Solemnizes your last rite
Cremates your body honourably
On the bosom of nature
Lights the last lamp of
Your journey's end.
For his infinite goodness
Ever expressed you gratitude ?
Never held your head low
In reverence before him.
Through its affectionate leaves
Fall the drops of sincere tribute
Pays homage respectfully
On your gravestone
Sacrifices its own existence
To make you live forever.
Duty bound if every individual
Plants a sapling,
Writes with indelible ink
Deep on his heart,
The greatness of a tree
Stops deforestation to protect
The health of our mother earth
Man will increase
His longevity
And earth
Will always be seen
In the prime of
Her youth.
A man's span of life
Is mere hundred years
One should know
By tormenting a tree
He increases his own misfortune
Starving and emaciating a tree
You shorten your own existence
From the wide fermament
You do not learn so much
As you do from earth
You can't learn so much
From a flower
As you do from a tree.
 
With flowers we adorned many
Expressed our love with bouquets
Now learn to share his despondency
Its distressful stories we should comprehend.
On this fertile soil
Learn to plant some seeds of creation
And express eloquently
Your deepest love from
The innermost apartment
Of your heart.
Its attributes of excellence
Learn to identify and emulate
For the enormous sin committed
Against the tree,
Learn to be penitent.
Disseminating seeds of forbearance
Like a tree
Learn the lesson of self-respect
And establish in yourself
Oh man!
The characteristic nature
Of a tree.


A LETTER TO MY MOTHERLAND NEPAL

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A Letter to my Motherland Nepal

English Transaltion: MB Pradhan

      MB Pradhan reciting Sandhya's translated poem, July 2012

  Sandhya Regmi with MB Pradhan

Into migrants metamorphosed we are
Much against our inner proclivity
In the very present transcended we are
Into mere onlookers of the past.
Our countrymen we greet thee.

Name and honour in an alien country
Seemingly a distant dream
Reaching long before,
Across the seven seas
Disembarked on the hostile shore
Commuted in Bombay with crispy notes
As awfully cheap commodities.
Before we touched the dreamland of Malaysia
Beguiled without any sympathy
By our own malefactors.
On ashore once of Mauritius
Fleeced clean by marauders
Of Indian ingenious
Landed once on the dunes of Dubai
Assaulted without compassion
By our own Indian conspirators.
Slit by blades of Iraqi terrorists
None to shade tears for us.
When toiled day and night
we as menial workers.
Once we set our feet on U.K,
As typical new recruits,
Transported forthwith to confront
The bullets of the dreaded Talibans
When fortune smiles on us
Through unerring DV though,
All our paraphernalia we dispose.
And land on the shore of USA
Only to wake up in morn startled
To find life of menial labour ahead.
And the cry comes from within
To your homeland to return
which is a mirage in the desert now.
We fall prey sometimes to
Bali's bomb explosion
Or marooned at Phuket
When hell breaks loose of Sunami.
By the time we enter the camp
Of German refugees
Burnt alive by Neo Nazis.
To Hong Kong and Singapore
We toil our weary way to begin
A new life of helpless porters.
Totally incapacitated we are
With humiliation and exertion
In Japan and Korea struggling
As servile laborers.
Wiping out the beads of perspiration
On the gulfs of Arab,
we literally crumble into pieces
And go down forever.
Events of this nature if repeat
On the sublime and holy
Land of your birth
Solemnization of your last rite
Is a certainty by your kith and kin
In a dignified way.
We die here a death
Of a beast unsung,
A disreputable dissolution indeed.

We bow our heads to thee
Our countrymen and all
People of respectability.

Mother dear,
Emotionally distressed you become
And the cry of despair caused
A lump in your throat.
Tears gone dry from your eye ponds
Hearts ignited by flames
Of agony galore and body beleaguered
With fear and trepidation.
Such heartrending scenes
When mirror in our eyes,
We bleed profusely and
Cry our eyes red and
We cry our eyes out
We beseech thee,
Do not take it amiss
If there resides in the pupil of
Our eyes any love & affection
Mother dear, it is yours.
If there balances delicately
The reflection of someone's memory
On our eyelids intermittently
It is yours my dear..

Besmeared our hands
With your exuberant aroma,
we breathe our life through you.
Never in the house of God
your country lives and sure never
in the spreading scaffold,
But in work illumined with songs
Of praise and hymns.
In the open space and in the
Temples of your heart our country lives.
Your motherland remember
Is not an idol but honour
Is faith and not festivity
Your country is not lost
in labyrinth of aphorisms
Of religion and philosophy;
Is not lost in the bitter war
Of doctrines and dogmas.
It dwells in the enlightenment
Of clean thoughts and lofty ideals
Not in the magic wand of witchcraft
Of politics and diplomacy
But is alive in cordiality
Of wisdom and intelligence;
Not in pride & vanity
Of a conceited individual.

In conscience and understanding
Of men imbued with self-respect
A nation lives.
In attitudinal bearings it is
and not in geographical boundaries,
It is in blood that runs in veins
that
our motherland lives.

We are far far away
From them, Mother dear,
Who brought up on your tender laps
Destroyed your verdant forests
Sucked nectar from your bosom
Bur traded your rivers and rivulets,
You carried them on your back
They slit you throat open.
In the garb of a patriot,
A parliamentarian and a minister
They turned traitors
Struggling down-trodden are we,
And remained till the bitter end
Inordinately honest and loyal always.
Great souls we could never be
But much better are we but
Than your ill-bred descendants.
To build Taj and Sheesh mahal
with our honest earnings abroad
Never dawned on us, never.
Enough if we could build
A nice little cot
An embodiment of love
Embellish further with
a garden elegant and plant
A seedling that promises
An everlasting life and makes
You live for eternity.
To our countrymen and friends
We greet thee.

Like Lord Shiva's dance of demolition
The sad tidings we hear
How they plunged the country and caused
A total bloodshed, a diabolical destruction
Made us all cringe and moan.
We glance at the portraits
Of those people responsible
for throwing the country
Into the vortex of civil war
Sullied whose faces are with blood
Of their own kith and kin
On TV screen.
The despicable faces when we recall
who filled their coffers
Stealing priceless ancient idols,
Made mockery of nationalism and independence,
Of equality and such sensitive issues,
Our lungs burn in anguish.
It drives us insane when
From the fountain of anger
Juts out the hot blood
When we hear the cry
of hunger and poverty
emanating from their
parched lips.
When we hear leaders and demagogues
Awarded and honours bestowed
For their cheap utterances and slogans,
Empty speeches and fake assurances
Tinged with pretentious patriotism,
Our own countrymen
treating their brethren in distress
With moral turpitude,
Sights such heinous do
Torture us hard mentally.

When you witness the edifice collapsing
Of your hopes and aspirations,
Of your faith and curiosity right in front
Like a pack of cards,
Your heart breaks with unexpected thunder.
When we fail to present ourselves
To where you need us most
and when Mother dear,
We feel our life sometimes
devoid of any meaning
Utterly useless and not worthwhile
We feel our lives
Heading toward nothingness
Fast becoming the 'Gandiv'
The discarded bow of Arjun after
Lord Krishna deserted .