Could you be wrong about the night
while dreaming of the day

There’s something pretty big about the small things

You are bigoted you,
with your biases, blindly
you walk along, spitting your opinions
liberally, with conviction, with your
“Oh, you have no idea how right I am” smile.

And here I sit, with my ideas naive
of what being fair means, stumbling along
my own acts of kindness pricking me,
tripping me, self doubts hounding me,
with worries creasing my face, with my
“Oh, am I doing the right thing?” grimace.

And yet, look at the both us,
differences not making much of a difference
with the odds in your favor actually
your louder words, and louder actions
travelling farther,
heard better, repeated much often.

And my own insecurity left in the back, smirked at, tsk tsk
“Look at that naive idiot,
sad that he doesn’t know
how things
are actually done around here.”

I miss the touch of morning sun
Making silhouettes of us
Way back when we had our paradise

writ on stone engraved
is an ode entitled loss
but nay the nameless poet
has but scratched out the words
and only left the title for us to read
for loss is not something for you to read
but only to feel

When all you want
Is to disappear

O my love
fickle as a feather floating on a warm winter spring
destroying all my notions, while there I am
thinking love would be a fiery burning thing
roasting all my insides amid a cacophonous din

O my love
fickle as feather floating on a cold summer river
pushing me through the motions, while there I am
thinking love would be a hell sent deliverer
pushing my teeth into the sand, telling me to pull the trigger


but o honey
i’ve seen love, seen it up close
the cage it holds
and the bars they glow
softly beckon they do to you so


o my love
i’ve seen love, and i believe i’ve seen enough
just a killer come to take its due
for each heart its traps renew
softly beckoning
into your soul it will hew its mark anew

tonight i remember you
fondly, gently
as the wind subsides
and the stars they shine
tonight i remember you
quietly, mildly

tonight i remember you
and the moon shines
and clouds line
across this starry night sky
tonight i remember you
tenderly, o so tenderly

Without hollow metaphors to hide behind I’ve got a choice to make
Conquer my fears, my demons, or let them take me away
And I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said through your last breath
and I think that I finally understand
Its okay to be scared

A piece of sunshine enters the staff room, in the form of a girl wearing a bright yellow dress with the most dazzling smile on her face. My co-fellow jumps up and exclaims thank god you’re here. I find out that she walked two hours under this baking noon day’s sun for advice on her UWC’s scholarship application form.  Before I have time to process this, my co-fellow Sajan and Karishma (as she’s indeed a miracle as her name suggests) enter a spare classroom to start working on her first draft of the form. It’s the 11th today and the deadline is on the 15th. Typical, I know.

I enter the spare classroom to find the both of them engrossed in the form’s personal essay section. Sajan suggests I go through the rest. Reflecting on what I know now, I am half tempted to say I shouldn’t have entered the classroom at all, nor read her form. But I did, and here I am now, writing this down, for myself and for others.

Her statements are simple, and point out the stark truths in her life without any fanfare. Some might be familiar to you, someone who has inklings of how a rural community school’s girl student lives her life. But then, there are these other events, narrated with a painfully understated tone in her even paced Nepali handwriting, events that shaped her past, events better left unsaid here.

There are deaths and hands in the dark, broken promises litter her past, the toiling and sweat of parents and elder sisters hold her and tear her apart at the same time. There are hopes and dreams sparked by childlike innocence and curiosity, and the same hopes and dreams dying short and long deaths under situations outside of her control. The southern Lalitpur’s relentless and unforgiving sun bakes the very dust under her slippered feet that have walked countless miles to and fro the school, her one chance at shining and maybe, just maybe, a small step upwards towards something better.

She unconsciously wrings her hands and smiles painfully if you focus on her too much while conversing. Her voice is small and made even more illegible with the mask she’s wearing. One could immediately make assumptions based on this fact alone. But shining through the dark are other events, again narrated with the same bland understated tone. Cups won on football matches, spelling bees, STEAM competitions. Demonstration of leadership, street drama performances that critique her society and push them to be better.

We talk about the form and ways she could make it better, increase her chance of a fully paid college study experience abroad. I try my damnedest to make her feel at ease, after all she’s meeting me for the first time while Sajan has been her mentor, teacher and friend for more than a year now. Her smile changes with each of my silly jokes, and opens up more till we’re chatting like old friends. Then we attack the strict structure of UWC’s form, it’s rude whys about why she should be the one who deserves the scholarship, multiple bullet point lists that demand a complete picture of her academic life and leadership potential.

For what reason did I join the fellowship if not for this? I breeze through the form, dredge up all my experience of handling application forms at my previous job, and point out how exactly she’ll be able to please the multiple tiers of examiners who’ll go through her form with a critical and unemotional eye. Almost an hour passes and then we’re done. The first round of feedback for the first draft is done. A two hour walk home knocks at the door and she declines offers of tea or lunch with us, lest it gets too dark.

We walk a bit o’way together and I watch Sajan and her recount fun memories of her Grade 10 days. Selfies are taken, promises are made to implement the feedback as soon as possible and return to school tomorrow. Final goodbye waved,  the long dusty road that snakes it’s way out of Gimdee swallows her and the bright yellow dress.