Being Nepali

So what questions are you going to ask me?

The name of the thirty two million gods?

How many spoons of ghee in the rice pudding?

Whether the awning of Pashupati is gold or silver?

Did Prithvi Narayan Shah, in that story, eat rice or corn?

So what are you going to make me do?

The dance of Annapurna with me clanking the bells?

Or force me into hiding from sunlight four days every month?

And then bow my head to my fathers and grandfathers?

But they have all died and disappeared,

and I did try in time – so,

Will that be enough now?

Have I appeased you and apologized enough?

For being away too long

Have I proved to you yet?

I really am from your land.

3 Responses to Being Nepali

  1. What do you mean about the sunlight?

    • There is a tradition in some Nepali communities where, when girl hit puberty, they are confined to a room for four days and they are not allowed to see sunlight or anyone of the opposite gender.

  2. serena butler

    wise/ cream people (u might b one of them) desert their motherland for life of comfort n pleasure in abroad. how can u b oblivious to this irony n leave the onus of social reform to those disadvantaged ones. nevemind :)

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s