Unfinished

Because some connections are precious enough to hold, even within uncertainty. 

Ghantaghar, the anchor of my soul, is being rebuilt. The road to Devkota Museum, still traversing through the gallis in Maitidevi where I would peek at every week returning from my appointments. The constellations, always moving, and a little hope of witnessing the Milky Way still tagging along with me. The moon, fresh off of its permanence from the new moon night, still going on, one phase at a time. "Dagbatti" by Bhim Nidhi Tiwari echoing in my ears as I embrace a stranger's nothingness. Devkota's Veshya watches me from over a परमानन्द flavored airy Kathmandu, and the words of his, I continue to borrow: म दिन्न अंशदान ए ! म सिंगुलै चढाउँछु ! I'll give it all. If I don't, I don't know who I am anymore. A point on a vector space, I am nothing but a logical manifestation of singular identity drawing waves and functions and trying to trace their continuity. But I don't know what the continuity of it looks like, after all, I cannot reduce life to mere linear algebra; this isn't a function I can check differentiability of to know whether or not it is continuous.


And well, in all I give, there are little specks of colorful dust, a disguise to my predicament, because I cannot be an art, or an artist for the matter. How can you understand the abyss unless you house it anyway? There is something unfinished about it. The monkeys whose love stories unfold in the park nearby home, the coldness my skin felt from the rain droplets that snuck in past a raincoat, the immature talks which ended in laughter, the conversations with people miles away from me who are still asking questions on my behalf, the story of timeless and countless Karunas who wanted to dress the way I did, the ease in asking the comrade names of past combatants with a childish curiosity and somehow smiling at the end of it, being a महिला सर at a prison in Karnali because that is what they thought I fit as, learning that the language I speak comes with its own variants to marginalize communities, having the air hostess scold me for trying to peek at the cockpit, children at Mugu, children at Jumla and children at Dhanusha somehow living the same reality of survival, trying coffee from different parts of Nepal with brewing methods that taste like flavors of freedom, meeting the writers I admired my whole life and conversing with them about terrorism, marginalized writing, investigative journalism, and the essence of fiction in informative storytelling – all of these experiences which range from jeep rides with strangers to bike rides with people I admire wholeheartedly, from fighting over songs with my brother to play on our journey to the walks me and my friend took only to be drenched entirely in the rain, how can any of these experiences ever be complete? Holding on has never been this easy, because my friend calls me in the evening for a cup of tea and I don't have to resort to nostalgia to feel that. Holding on has never been this easy because I make plans and take suggestions from people thrice my age without any hesitation because they see their own little daughter in me. Holding on has never been this easy because drafts of everything I have ever written and everything I am yet to write source themselves from experiences of girls laughing in the street, poems by strangers on a night, an event by myself on Kamalpokhari on Devkota's birthday, imaginations that profess themselves watching bent branches and nude trees, words that refute their existence during academic writings pouring over my desolation the moment I see a child smile. Oh how could I ever list it all!  How could these experiences ever be finished? How could any of these ever be finished while I still exist? How can they, when I am a mosaic of these and will continue to be so till the end of time?


सारंगी रुन्छ सायद एउटा धुनको विलासितामा,

बारम्बार रुन्छ, 

अनि बग्छ आवेगमा आएको परिकल्पनासरि,

बगिरहन्छ आकांक्षा बोकी 

सपनाको सगरमा।  

म त्यही सारंगीको बिडम्बना हुँ, 

मेरा सपना किम्बदन्ती बनी नबिलाउन् भन्ने आशा 

के ठूलो आशा हो र?


And for the someones along the way whose words and feelings are etched into my heart and will hold them sincerely as I watch Venus, or the moons of Jupiter and the blurry picture of Saturn once again someday, perhaps, I will think of melancholy. Melancholy, saudade, a longing, a yearning, for stories that are unfinished. You tell me, isn't melancholy for this unfinished open ending a beautiful feeling? 

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