Dearest You,

FROM ISSUE # 156 (December 2008) | IN THIS ISSUE
	REFER TO FRIEND		PRINT THIS ARTICLE

I don't have an address for this letter but that won't stop me from writing to you. I figure that if your chain of words, your vapour poems and volumes of self can stream down and meander towards me, I gather, mine will find a course to catch you too. Does it matter that I am alive and you are dead? The cynics chuckle but I know that you are more alive than the twinkling verandas of Tihar and it will take more than a case of cancer to erase you from our orb. I still see you in tea stalls wearing a smart tweed coat and sipping from the brim of a steel glass. I marvel at the marrow of your poems and wonder if I have sucked all the meaning out of it. Sometimes, I can feel it travelling from my mouth to my oesophagus, warming the cockles of my heart like a nourishing bowl of hot broth. Winter is well on its way and I am already worried about the chill in my heart and the fog that will settle around it. I wonder what kept you warm all those times when winter was hard and life even harder. When salaries weren't enough, you spun sonnets and sold them, the price of pity for a sum of sun beams but I am sure you didn't mind.

Poems are savoury things like sweetmeats and molasses; one can feel it melt and soften until your heart turns to mush. With every turning page, I read inside the brail of a bard who ached for understanding, moaned for meaning and gritted his teeth at the gutless. Sometimes you sit beside me so absolutely still that I can feel a new pair of eyes open and from hence on whatever I clap my eyes on, becomes you. The twirling smoke becomes the soft tufts of your hair, the ink leaking pen starts blotting your smile and I find you like I find my first sentence. You are in every surprising nook and corner of Kathmandu that I love and explore everyday.

Just the other day, a group of giggly girls were practising their bhailo near the entrance of a big hotel when one of them started singing for the row of taxi drivers waiting on a beck and call.

Hariyo Gobbar Le Lipeko, LAXMI PuUJA Gareko....

The taxi drivers were very pleased to hear the Tihar song from these tiny ladies and collected some money and bought them sweets and a lighter with a torch. "Just in case all the diyas of this city flicker and die,' one of the taxi driver said, handing the torch light to the girls. 'Walk in the light and you'll be home safe,' he assured. The girls said 'Thank you Baje,' and trotted happily inside the hotel, tucking their torch light inside their money bag. The girls were referring to the old taxi driver as Baje, but I could only see you grinning back at me. Saila Baje, on your birthday, marigolds and firecrackers fill up the festive air, houses twinkle with tiny lights as the whole wide world walks towards the light.

Sastanga Dandawath
Cheli.

Pooja Gurung is an actor, a television personality and a music video director.