SAFF AND SHUKRA

It’s been hectic, this week for all Nepalese. Despite all our hopes to see Nepal in SAFF’s final, we couldn’t make it to final. Rohit Chand’s failed to put the ball into the back of the net, not once! but twice. There wasn’t a single Nepali who didn’t spank his/her palm like hammer on the forehead. We couldn’t care less about the pain caused by the blow on the forehead; rather the missed penalty shots nearly caused everybody a heart ache. I was dumbfounded. I wonder my reflex would still be the same, had Nepal lost like that in FIFA world cup’s final.

There were so many scams, rumors and abhorrent decisions and dealings associated with the tournament. There were tickets sold in black market, some policemen were allegedly captured in cameras dealing with the black merchants (some posts on facebook said they themselves were involved in the business)   , and a very disgusting move of hiking ticket’s price by very responsible ANFA. I personally hated it; they tagged the price so high that I had to miss out the game which would have been my third consecutive match as a spectator in the Rangasaala (Nepali word for Stadium). I met a friend of mine day before the match, he is taking referee courses provided by ANFA who disapproved of price hike too and added, ‘I want Nepal to lose since ANFA couldn’t care less about the poor people and students who are crazy about Nepali football’. He should have said that in a rage of some kind but that somehow was true. If we believe there are positive vibrations associated to every success, then those furious people talking against their beloved football team might have impaired the success we are yet to taste. This makes Rohit Chand and Afgan goalie look less villain and piles up blame towards ANFA. I don’t mean disrespect to Rohit Chand , he had been truly amazing all through the tournament. 

Once my birth details (China in Nepali) were scrutinized by a psychic, he said that I had troubles with planet Shukra (Venus). The symptom he told that got me convinced was, I will do things closer to good yet I will struggle with the final outcome. I wonder if the birth details of Nepali players were provided to the psychic he would have told same about the team too? The game had the similar verdict though, I reckon. We lost to a good side, I would not have liked had we lost to Indian side. The best team won the Cup, Bravo! Afghanistan. There might be so many critical approaches to the match we lost. The experts might have their own say like, Rohit chand wasn’t the best option to take the shot. Strikers always know where to fire the right shots. They might say, Raju tamang the best shot taker should not have been substituted for the management should have expect something uncertain like that in the match. For me, Nepal stood second only that defeat we tasted should have been the final.

It’s not just the football team who is enduring the troubles with Shukra; it’s the government, it’s the people, it’s all the processes that our country is going through. The first constituent assembly’s (CA) election held was closer to historically remarkable event and it backfired date for another CA’s election. Before that, Nepali Congress led by B.P Koirala fought for CA’s election and they were compromised to regular election. Then the infant democratic process was murdered by a tyrant at birth. They strike again, got the democratic process back and the second infant who just started to crawl was killed by Maoist’s war. The People voted Maoist for they did want to put an end to years long of violence and destructions. Peace finally manifested as a cloud of smoke; just losing its concentration to a thin and sustainable atmosphere, then the former rebels break into fractions. One of the hard fractions terrorizes again and threatens to blow the cloud of smoke away. On the other pages of country’s progresses, the government’s decision to expand roads was yet another historically bold move but it left Kathmandu valley with fog of dirt and dust. I sense the dirt should not be troubling me for a few days because my eyes are so wet after the defeat that it washes the dirt away.

I SAY I AM 22

I say I am 22. It’s been some time I am doing that. I turned 23 on 29^th October ,2012. And I realized it some moments ago. A friend of mine said he did the same himself. I have this strange union with this number ‘23’. Ever since, David Beckham went to play for Real Madrid and had this number on his back, I got addicted to this umber. It’s like I am married to this number, only it sounds crazy. Then Beckham went to play elsewhere and that number got retained in my memory.

I have an idea about, why I didn’t want to shift ahead of ‘22’? Twenty three sounds hell more of a responsibility than just a number that signals age in this regard.  ‘23’ means, get all your shit together and hunt for a job. It is time to scrutinize the newspaper, find a job that will rip all your heart out and still pay less. It means, I cuff my hands to the second hand on the clock and make up to it’s pace. It’s about time; I give up my classy sleeping routine and wake up on alarms. It means people start talking about your wage, compare it to the random rich people and make you feel like shit.  It’s time to get all shitty. So, I don’t want to turn ‘23’.

A random website on numerology, explaining the significance of ‘22’ says that it is a very special number in Numerology. It was said ‘master’ number by Pythagorous. It is very auspicious for the creative phenomena and somehow it has something to do with lunar waves as well. It has a presence of higher moon energy number ‘20’ and its lower form number ‘2’. It is very powerful due to strong lunar waves. Somewhere in the middle of this line‘ But most human being of this age have no greater magnetic field around them to utilize this powerful energy into constructive actions.’  I sensed melancholy, a tragedy of our generation. A perceptible number of young folks of my age in my town think they are cool. They have this false impression because they own a bike, it is well modified and the helmet is costly too. Their phones and all the accessories they possess have -‘i’-as an initial alphabet. They have weird sense of dressing and strange Korean names as a sobriquet. Girls on the other hand own a scooter and look prettier even with the weird dressing sense. Girls have gone crazily preoccupied with Korean dramas and are attracted to those Korean dressed Nepalese. These guys are living happily ever after and I am the only one that finds it tragic.

I found it more tragic when I remembered from this talk show with Miss Nepal 2013, Miss Ishani Shrestha not being able to recognize Pushpa Basnet. She was asked to say out the names of the people on the photographs shown to her and she didn’t know Puspha Basnet. I don’t know if this talk show made a headline next day, but I felt sorry for her. She could speak very good English though and she would enunciate this word ‘like’ all the time. Young hearts of Kathmandu, RJs, DJs, VJs and the kind of people you meet on the parties, everybody says ‘like’. Some with excellent use of English language, rest with a fine mixture of mother tongue. ‘like yesto huncha ni, like k tyo hunchani’ , I hear this all the time.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg became the youngest ever billionaire at the age of 23. In 22^nd year of his life, he must have had a greater magnetic field around him to utilize this powerful energy into constructive actions. He is definitely the coolest guy world has ever known. He created facebook that almost every people having an internet access are an account holder of. He is a different tale, a success story from United States. This story might not be equivalent to any other stories in our country. But, he is a result of talking ideas instead of bikes and phones. When heads talk more about innovation, creativity and passion than helmets and mobile accessories billionaire like Zuckerberg is likely to be born in our country too. If focus on ‘like’ in a sentence is channeled to likes in poetry, novels , science, dramas ,reading newspapers or at least watching news on TV, Miss Nepal would not have hard time figuring out who Pushpa Basnet was.  If someone asks me, how old I am? I am still going to reply, ‘22’. I want to utilize this powerful energy into constructive actions too and contemplate the changes in me.

A drift of sense

Helping is a word. Well, everything I am writing here are words too. By the time you will be reading this sentence, you will have thought more than once of the word ‘Help’ than any of the above words.  I mean, it cannot be dealt with just once. When you help someone, someone’s got to help you back and when you are helped by someone you are bound to do the same. So, help is always stronger when it is working on both hands. I am not saying anything we don’t know but something we have not realized. And things can work out only when you are willing to help. But again, somewhere inside we are little selfish. When we need help we try reaching our desperate measures and when it’s the payback time we often hesitate. Some more than others and some people never.  So at the end of the day everybody is a little selfish, no one can deny that. Sometimes people are selfish because they cling on to truth all their lives and leave everything behind them. Nelson Mandela did 27 years in prison without thinking what his family might be going thorough as he says in his autobiography. We have our own excuses too but are those honest causes? Well, time will tell and it will be just about now. We will only get what we give in the first place.

Like people say, if we did all the things that we advice people about; we might actually get those things done in our life too. I have too, advised people about getting up early in the morning habit but all I do is sleep through till day. And I get those advices too. Again, we have our own excuses for not doing the things we should have done. But those excuses will only take us some far and then we are on our own. And the day we learn how to be on our own, that will be more fun than getting all drowned in our own excuses. Life is never steady, everyday is a different day. When we realize; we are actually being inflicted by different pains each day. We are happy for different reasons and sometimes for no reasons at all. We meet new people. We shake hands with new friends. We make new promises and break old. We make new commitments. We fight new wars and celebrate new victories. New heroes are born and old villains are taken down for good. All these things and more happen every single day; it kind of helps us to reach this presumption that, life is different every day. Every day is a new beginning and we can start over leaving all our past behind us any time we want. Whatever path you walked all your past life on, you can always hit a new road.

We often find ourselves in a tricky situation, we want to express things and we are short of words. We want to buy things and we are short of money or sometimes totally broke. We want to fight and we are painted coward all over our face. We want to help and we lack empathy.  We want to win and all we get to taste is a bitter defeat. Life can be this barbaric sometimes. It might knock us down to our knees and make us absolutely helpless. We look over for shoulders to rest on and we find none. We cry our eyes out and tears roll down like springs during rain. We find ourselves somewhere in the middle of crisis, identified as problematic as solving the Rubik’s cube. We know there ought to be some answers but we simply don’t find any. We keep on seeking for answers and we starve of inner peace. Happiness becomes the luxury we can’t afford. We see people around us happy, we stretch out for that happiness switch too but our hands get all dipped in despair.

To be honest, I am not sure if people feel the way I have described as in above sentences. These could only be my personal feelings, feelings only useful to help me rearrange my sadness into pathetic sentences I can write as blog. Whatever it might be, an individual feeling or a common feeling, I am too tired of holding it for eternity. I want to cut loose with these feelings and be happy. When I googled for happiness, a picture came up that said ‘Happiness is a journey…Not a destination.’ I am all set out for the tour already, hoping never have to feel that gloom again.

the path i didn't travel

I was just planning on writing something and I just happened to know my laptop had been abandoned with Microsoft word for days. So first thing first, got it installed. It’s been some time, I have not written anything concrete. Well, I had my excuses alright. Exams and busy time were my two very favorites. Now what? I have no more exams like the real ones, the night pullers. That question really bugged me and I had to think it through to come up with the real answer. I finally made a commitment to myself; I will continue writing no matter what. Already I m done with the first paragraph bragging about the whole messed up days of my time.

I have always wanted to write about the paths or directions or bearings, if that sounds fancy. I even spent some of my amateur poetry on that one. But I could never get anywhere close to the finishing line. That poem was never born as I know it. A lot of we people make choices, decisions, plans and strategies for life. If we put our thoughts together and think then we realize that we have made plenty of choices, a lot of life changing decisions and hand full of such plans that never worked out for us. A lot of people have postponed their exam preparation plans, including the one writing and the one reading this. A lot of us have denied choices we had been offered with and still playing ahead in life with regrets. A lot of people with impeccable agendas have failed to keep up with their promises. This agenda word always reminds me of the former rebels and present-day fragmented Maoist party. They would always say agendas and shit but we know how thrashed our country has become with their agendas. I don’t want to drag that depressing tale into my writing, not now when I am finally feeling good about writing.

We have our paths confirmed for this time ‘now’ and we carry our baggage from the past. Good portion of that baggage is filled with past regrets, a lot of them with resentful memories. Few of us, we still grieve over the choices we denied. Some of us might still linger in this thought, life could have been just better had it been those days again; I would do so many things right this time. I would dust off so many of my messes and try creating very little this time. But there is no going back to where we came from. Hearts have been hurt, people have cried their eyes out, children have grown into men and men got older and died. Life doesn’t give that second chance to everyone. But life is about the second chances we create to live better. Better than now, better than yesterday and better than any time in the future. We live now, we breathe oxygen now, the clock on the wall reveals this ‘present’ for us now. There is no past there is no future those are our imaginations, wild, wildest imaginations.

But it is not really easy to believe this way. Believing is really a tough exercise. Even with the god, it’s not easy keeping that faith alive. We had our doubts about gods, even when we were children. We questioned to every god’s action with our parents as children. We questioned this every time why god, why me? We found it hard to believe sometimes, there is any god up there during those times of trouble. And the next moment we are happy, we yell ‘thank god’. Believing is a practice but less when it comes to god and more when god doesn’t favor you. We were parented that way. God has nothing to do except good parenting. And everything rest is evil about God. No bragging much of my atheist thoughts today. I will save it for some good time later and it’s still in progress this whole atheist thing. It takes some good practice as well. But believing is a practice that is what I m sure of now.

I have forgotten how to change paragraphs while writing something long. I lack a great deal of practice these days. The thing that I do with my random thoughts about the paths I didn’t choose is I tell it to myself, ‘well that can’t stop me from taking chances in life’. It could certainly not stop me from wanting writing this, I can tell. I know I am babbling on the fifth paragraph already. I made it to the fifth paragraph, but I guess a lot of people didn’t even bother getting here.

 We have this weird ability most of us dare to think that ‘I can make my own choices for my time and for someone my age’ and rest are simply confused. But if you still don’t believe me, you got to think of the time when you first learn to ride bicycle. Your parents won’t allow you to ride the bicycle twice your size, but you would still sneak out the house and hit the road and not think how furious your parents are back home. You would feel the cool air whispering across your ears, look at the people around you when your eyes were done focusing on the handle, when u were just procuring the confidence to show off trying to rise to the seat and leave both hands free. Not until the time you bumped on some speed breaker and lost the balance of the steel; No, you don’t realize you have made the wrong choice in the first place. But that wrong choice has given a lot of drivers. Some of us drive ambulance to deliver sick people to the hospital saving million lives. Some of us are pilots who fly like birds and deliver people home to their family to their destination. Some of us drive school bus and deliver children to jail, just kidding! Some of our parents still give their children ride to school no matter what type the vehicle is. Life is good because there is nothing called perfect. Even the bad decisions for the time being when we broke out of the house with the bicycle and got hurt have taken us somewhere in life.  Just we have to do is put all our guts together to sneak out of the angry mind, bereaved soul, hurting heart and hit some road again.

दोषी चस्मा

प्राप्तीमा केबल प्राप्ती देख्ने

प्रायसमा गल्ती देख्ने चस्मा

अन्धकरमा अन्धकर देख्ने

दियो बल्दा झस्किने चस्मा

निज को चिजमा दृस्टी भ्रम्

आफ्ना को जितमा  दृस्टी कम

पातलो फ्रेममा बाक्लो सिसा

मेरो चेतना को उत्तर

दोषी चस्मा परिवर्तनको रहर

बर्षको बृष्टी चस्मालाई सास्ती

पनिले धमिलिने संसार

शितको बक्लो हुस्सुमा

ढाकिने मेरो संसार

पातलो फ्रेममा बाक्लो सिसा

मेरो दोषी चस्मा

मेरो चेतनको उत्तर

दोषी चस्मा परिवर्तनको रहर

श्रीतीका तस्विरमा मुस्कुरएका सपना

अस्विकार्न खोज्ने दोषी चस्मा

मिल्क्याएर त्यो एक कुनामा

भाच्चेको फ्रेम र फुटेको सिसा

मेरो चेतनको परिभासीत उत्तर

विवेक मुस्कुराएको हाँसो

स्वतन्त्र चेतनको आभास

दोषी चस्मा पछिको पहिलो जुनेली साँझ्

मेरो चेतना को उत्तर

दोषी चस्मा परिवर्तनको रहर