Alternative Voice

by KESHAB SIGDEL As my daughter rides on my back along the Dhobikhola,   like a victorious emperor she asks me everything that crosses her mind. The only difference I discern is that the emperor could   measure his authority with his questions. My daughter strives to give me a higher status than that of the emperor, as if her father were the wisest and the most powerful man in the world, as if her father possessed answers to   all the questions she could think of. What else then?   Like a princess on a jaunt, she makes a sedan chair   on her father’s shoulders and showers him with questions. While crossing the bridge over the Dhobikhola she asks, “Baba, why do we have this bridge here?”   “We need a bridge to go across the stream, my daughter,”   I reply. The answer doesn’t satisfy her. The Dhobikhola suffocates in piles of rubbish thrown into it. A man in rags continues sifting through the garbage for plastic bags and...

by KESHAB SIGDEL My daughter is learning numbers. She is learning the names of the months and days. She wants to do things on her own— Like her father, like her mother. And we keep saying, “Not now dear, you are too small for it.” Now she has a wish— a wish to grow And not to be a child anymore; Because she wants to do things on her own, Like her father, like her mother. And, on her third birthday, she tells me: ‘Baba, when I will no more be a child?’ To her, this asking is important. It’s about a sense of freedom, A sense of the self. Teenage would mark her first transition. For me, it is just counting of a few more years. I add ten more years to her present age. My daughter will be excitedly counting these more years For they mean ten more birthday cakes, And ten more birthday gifts, Before she finally arrives at it. Oh, this transition is scary. She will be thirteen. She will be assertive. She will try to live on her own—...

by KESHAB SIGDEL The ground beneath the feet shakes Windowpanes swing with dooming creaks And where I live soon turns into a dancing house Before I connect any of these episodes of a                  rallying terror! Is it the life we love? Is it the death we fear? Sorry, it’s not the time to contemplate; But I see my dear ones run even when I am here Lovers, friends, parents and everyone who can They run and jump, and stroll and creep To make a sense of their being Through the last long breath they inhale.  I am stranded here in the crumbles of the razed house I’m no more a lover or a friend, but a sufferer. Sanity is a word of mockery — Vanity is not yet thought of — It doesn't matter if I want to go to them Or if they want to come to me in a new incarnation With a rescue plan, with cheer groups around, And the flashes and the annoying selfie-shutters.   Thanks God, I got to see the...