THE VIDEO-DOCTOR (Satis Shroff)
"I'll go to the video-doctor
He'll find out what's wrong with me.
And prescribe a foreign cure
Or give me an imported cure
A medicine that's stronger than
The herbs of the traditional shaman.
Yes,the video-doctor examines my belly
He applies a white, cold paste
On my ailing belly.
Turns on and off fascinating switches
And fumbles like Dr. Frankenstein
Above his prostrate creature,
With instructions and signs that are alien.
Red, green, yellow lights blink
The screen flimmers, curves appear
Am I that? Is that my belly? Honestly?
A broad, hazy conical contour that
Appears and disappears.
What has the foreign-trained shaman seen?
I saw numbers and shades
Did he see more?
Can he tell more?
Can he find a cure?
Does he see spirits, boksas and boksis
Bhut and pret that I don't?
Or other spirits that don't exist?
Will the cold metal on my belly
Perhaps explode?
Will I get an electro-shock?
Had I but listened to Maila Tamang
And gone to the jhakri, dhami or bijuwa
I could have saved the precious rupees
And got away with a rooster,
Instead of being told to turn
To the right, left, on my belly and back
With my body exposed
And a nurse, a woman sneering at me
Oh, what a shame for my male pride.
I'll never go there again.
___________________________________________________________________
A SMALL PARADISE (Satis Shroff)
A walk with Elena in a pram
Along the Wildtal (the Wild Valley) path,
I hear the chirping of birds
In the trees and dense foliage on the wayside.
Elena leans out, only to throw herself back on her pram.
Suddenly a clearing and you see
Two ranges of the Black Forest mountains,
Behind the conifer silhouette.
Two white butterflies frolic and fly by.
Elene, who’s not even two, exclaims, ‘Da-da- da!’
As she points to them full of glee.
We go past the pastures and discover
A small Hexenhaus (witch’s house)and a row
Of Herrenhäüser (mansions).
There’s shade from the morning sun.
A noise along the tracks below
Increases in crescendo.
The world has caught up with us.
A sleek, snow-white ICE-train dashes by and breaks my reverie.
___________________________________________________________________
At the German Doctor’s (Satis Shroff)
My small daughter Elena’s middle-ear is inflamed
So I go to our German child-doctor.
He examines her and curses her left ear,
Which is read and causes pain, even after thirteen antibiotic cures.
“By the way, what do you say about the massacre in your kingdom?”
I tell him it’s incredible, a crown prince who killed the King and Queen,
His brother and sister and then himself,
In a fit of rage and helplessness”.
The bald, bespectacled German doctor went on,
‘My little daughter quipped today at breakfast,
“the King must have lied when he said to his people
The automatic gun went off and shot them all.”
Strange things happen in the Kingdom of Nepal.
-------------------------------------------
The Summer Heat (August 2003) (Satis Shroff)
Forests are burning in Canada, Portugal and Brandenburg-Germany
There’s danger of fire even in the Black Forest
With this scenario in the background,
Our children Julian and Elena and a Kindergarden friend Sarah
Are playing: teasing, jumping, running and singing in the garden,
Having a rollicking time in their inflated swimming-pool
Under the shade of two plum trees
No Kindergarden and no school, for it’s the summer holidays.
The summer heat is with us.
The fair town of Zäringen-Freiburg and the entire Schwarzwald
Seems to have slid to the tropics.
Car drivers of all makes barking at each other
To turn off their car stereo music and ghetto blasters, and barbeques
For fear of a flame that might spark off a wild fire.
A thick set bearded in casual wear, spectacles on his nose,
A grin countenance came, leaned on our house wall and said,
“I can’t bear the noise of you children playing in your garden.’
Six pair of eyes looked up at him
Not understanding what the neighbour had against them.
Herr Hermann lived two houses away.
‘I’m retired since two months
And I want to enjoy my days reading philosophic texts
Or listening to classical music
But I get the jitters when I hear the you shouting and screaming.
Our immediate neighbour is a one-eyed roofer,
With a heart for big dogs, cats and children.
He told us, ‘When I first came to Zäringen
It was a dead area and silent like a graveyard.
I’m so glad that people are buying houses or building them.
It’s filling with life.’
He has bought the house next to ours
And renovates it around the clock,
Not even bothering about the afternoon rest hours from 1 to 3 pm.
He stops working neither on weekdays nor on religious and state holidays.
He hates silence and gets nervous when he doesn’t work.
At that very moment you could hear him working with his electric drill.
I asked Herr Hermann, ‘Can you hear this noise day in and day out? We do.’
“I don’t hear it, but I hear the children’s noise.
I can’t concentrate when I read or listen to the music.
It penetrates my ears.
Strange ears that don’t register noises
Created by cars, vans, trucks, taxis that pass by all day and night,
Created by his own garden appliances,
Created by his other neighbour who works like a horse on his 300 year house,
Created by how own beer parties deep into the night
And the blood curdling barks of the neighbour’s big black dogs,
That Julian my 5 year son fondly calls:
“The Howls of the Baskerville hounds” after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book.
Sarah, who’s mother is a state-attorney, remarked:
‘We also make a lot of noise in our garden,
But no one has complained.
Children are allowed to have fun and scream and shout when they play.’
Julian couldn’t resist the temptation of adding:
‘Herr Hermann, didn’t you scream and shout when you were a child?
Or have you forgotten it?’
Herr Hermann was speechless and left.
It just wasn’t his day.
Perhaps it was the 40 degrees outside.
___________________________________________________________________
On Painting a Winter Landscape (Satis Shroff)
I’ll paint a picture in acryl,
Of a winter landscape.
Not the Alps, but the Himalayas.
The eternal snows in the mountains
Are silvery and white.
The sky is azure, like on a holiday card,
With fluffy clouds above.
It’s a winter scene,
But you don’t feel the cold.
And you don’t freeze at daytime.
Yet when it becomes dark,
We Nepalis feel in our marrows the cold Himalayan wind,
Howling down the valleys and spurs.
Theirs is no central heating.
Neither gas nor electro-heating.
There are no plugs in the Himalayan huts,
Except along the well-beaten trekking trails.
There’s a tree in the landscape.
A black, naked tree
With branches like hands
In suspended animation.
A black crow crows aloud
And a shaman listens to it. It’s a mute language.
The shaman understands the crow
Does the crow follow the shaman?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A NEPAL TALK (Satis Shroff)
A German school teacher invites me
To talk about Nepal
And to introduce a traditional dish to her German class.
The teacher, a lady in her forties,
Likes it multicultural.
She asks her pupils with foreign parents
To greet the class in outlandish tongues.
The bicultural children comply,
And the class learns to say:
‘Good morning, Bon Soir, Namaste,
In English, French and Nepali.
A class full of curious children await me.
We make momos and little hands help in turn.
In the audio-visual room the slide projector has no bulb.
An Italian Hausmeister turns up with a new one
And voila! Our adventure can begin.
I show them colour transparencies
Of Nepal, my homeland.
Temples, streets and school-children and ethnic Nepalis
From Kathmandu Valley and the hills.
Living Goddesses, potters, farmers, sadhus and priests,
Overdressed and underdressed Nepalis.
Rhinos, tigers and elephants in the subtropical flatlands.
King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya,
King Gyanendra, his consort and the smart Royal Gurkha Guards.
After the slides we return
To the classroom to try out the momos.
The German kids relish the Nepali Maultaschen.
I tell them a story about the yeti.
Meanwhile, Frau Wolf gathers money for the ski afternoon.
Our Nepal theme is over,
What remains are the queries,
Of the innocent, well-fed and well-off children of Freiburg:
Why did you come to Germany?
Have you climbed the Everest?
What does the Yeti look like?
Is the King of Nepal rich?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OUT OF GERMANY (Satis Shroff)
Germany is our home, our Heimat
A land with Christian occidental norms and values.
A land with a culture and tradition
Rich in values, diversity and a hoary past.
Even in this social welfare state,
The poor are getting relatively poorer.
We’re embraced the euro,
And everything is expensive.
The old Deutsche Mark is out,
Though a lot of older Germans
Have problems with the conversions.
It reminds me of the time,
When Nepal went metric according to a royal decree.
The government did, but the older generation of Nepalis didn’t.
They still cling to the manas and pathis.
That’s tradition .
Is Nepal going with the times?
WHEN THE SOUL LEAVES (Satis Shroff)
Like Shakespeare said, 'All the world's a stage'
And we've played many different roles in our lives
In various places and scenarios.
As we grow old and ripe, our knowledge of the world grows.
We hold what we cannot see, smell, taste and touch in our memories.
We only have to walk down memory lane
To find the countless faces, places, sights and sounds that we have stored,
To be recalled and retrieved through association
In conversations with others
Or when we contemplate alone.
Why should elderly people be scared of social terror and aging?
Aging is a biological phenomenon.
We should be glad that we have lived useful lives,
Filled with good experiences.
The wonderful children that we have created,
The very gems of our genes,
Each so individual in their personalities.
The house we lived in and filled
With love, laughter, songs and music.
The parents and grand-parents, friends and relatives
We have had the time to share with.
But we should be able to assert our exit from this earthly existence
In the manner that we desire,
And not leave it in the hands
Of an intensive life-extension unit.
Let us dwell on common experiences and encounters
That we can take with us,
When the soul leaves the body
And races towards space and becomes unified
With the ever expanding, timeless cosmos.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GROW WITH LOVE (Satis Shroff)
Love yourself
Accept yourself,
For self-love and self-respect
Are the basis of joy, emotion
And spiritual well being.
Watch your feelings,
Study your thoughts
And your beliefs,
For your existence
Is unique and beautiful.
You came to the world alone
And you go back alone.
But while you breathe
You are near
To your fellow human beings,
Families, friends and strangers
As long as you are receptive.
Open yourself to lust and joy,
To the wonders of daily life and Nature.
Don’t close your door to love.
If you remain superficial,
You’ll never reach its depth.
Love is more than a feeling.
Love is also passion and devotion.
Grow with love and tenderness.
------------------------------------------
WITHOUT WORDS (Satis Shroff)
We speak with each other
A wonderful feeling overcomes me
And I’m touched to the roots of my existence.
As though it was a doubling of my existence.
It becomes a passion
To speak with each other.
Our lives filled with togetherness:
With ourselves and our children.
I discover myself in you
And you in me.
Where one is at home
In the company of the other
And vice versa.
Where you can be the way you are
Where I can be the way I am.
Our tolerance for each other is crucial
There are moments when one forgets time.
We speak to each other without words.
It’s not sung,
It’s not instrumental chords.
Just our hearts understanding each other.
In tact with each other.
Our eyes speak volumes
And a nod is enough.
---------------------------------------------
THE SEA SWELLS (Satis Shroff)
The sea shells on the sea shore
Suddenly the sea swells.
Ring the church and temple bells.
All is not well.
The sea has gone back.
Brown-burnt Tarzans and Janes
From different continents,
Wonder what’s going on.
A man from Sweden
Is immersed in his thriller under the palms.
A mother and daughter from Germany
Frolic on the white sunny beach.
Even the sea-gulls stop and listen
To the foreboding silence.
The sea swells,
Comes back
And brings an apocalyptic destruction:
Sweeping humans, huts and hotels,
Boats, billboards and debris.
Cries for help are stifled by the roaring waves.
The sea goes back.
Leaving behind lost souls,
Caught in suspended animation.
I close my eyes.
Everything dies.
Tsunami. Tsunami.
Shanti. Om shanti.
THE NEPALESE REALITY (Satis Shroff)
All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Could not put Nepal together again.
Nepalese men and women
Look out of their ornate windows,
In west, east, north and south Nepal
And think:
A decade long war between the Maoists and Royalists
Has come to an end
We have suffered so much.
So many innocent men, women, boys and girls
Have been slain by bullets,
From both sides.
Kal Bhairab seems to be pacified,
For Vishnu has crept to his bed of serpents.
He peers at the unfurling scenario:
A new interim government,
A new constitution,
More amendments.
He hisses with a sulk:
‘What can they do better than I?’
When aristocrats, chauvinists, egoists and phallocrats
Were in power,
The underprivileged castes and tribes,
Women and children,
Went always with empty hands.
A new revolution and democracy is in the land,
But have the people changed their minds?
Or are they still conscious of their caste, birth and tribe?
Of their earlier prejudices, hatred and malice
Towards the dalits, the have-nots?
Our fervent prayers have been heard.
The people are rejoicing in the streets of Kathmandu.
May there be ‘everlasting’ peace again in Nepal,
Though ‘everlasting peace’ has become inflationary.
We have no choice,
But to lay our hopes on the fragile signatures
Of two protagonists,
In the Shadow of the Himalayas.
Rejoice and take reality as it is.
