THE AGONY OF WAR (Satis Shroff)
Once upon a time there was a seventeen year old boy
Who lived in the Polish city of Danzig.
He was ordered to join the Waffen-SS,
Hitler’s elite division.
Oh, what an honour for a seventeen year old,
Almost a privilege to join the Waffen-SS.
The boy said, “Wir wurden von früh bis spät
Geschliffen und sollten
Zur Sau gemacht werden.”
A Russian grenade shrapnel brought his role
In the war to an abrupt end.
That was on April 20, 1945.
In the same evening,
He was brought to Meissen,
Where he came to know about his Vaterland’s defeat.
The war was lost long ago.
He realised how an ordinary soldier
Became helpless after being used as a tool in the war,
Following orders that didn’t demand heroism
In the brutal reality of war.
It was a streak of luck,
And his inability to ride a bicycle,
That saved his skin
At the Russian-held village of Niederlausitz.
His comrades rode the bicycle,
And he was obliged to give them fire-support
With a maschine-gun.
His seven comrades and the officer
Were slain by the Russians.
The only survivor was a boy
Of seventeen.
He abandoned his light maschine-gun,
And left the house of the bicycle-seller,
Through the backyard garden
With its creaky gate.
What were the chances in the days of the Third Reich
For a 17 year old boy named Günter Grass
To understand the world?
The BBC was a feindliche radio,
And Goebbels’ propaganda maschinery
Was in full swing.
There was no time to reflect in those days.
Fürcht und Elend im Dritten Reich,
Wrote Bertold Brecht later.
Why did he wait till he was almost eighty?
Why did he torment his soul all these years?
Why didn’t he tell the bitter truth,
About his tragi-comical role in the war
With the Waffen-SS?
He was a Hitlerjunge,
A young Nazi.
Faithful till the end.
A boy who was seduced by the Waffen-SS.
His excuse:
„Ich habe mich verführen lassen.“
The reality of the war brought
Endless death and suffering.
He felt the fear in his bones,
His eyes were opened at last.
Günter Grass is a figure,
You think you know well.
Yet he’s aloof
And you hardly know him,
This literary titan.
He breathes literature
And political engagement.
In his new book:
Beim Häuten der Zwiebeln
He confides he has lived from page to page,
And from book to book.
Is he a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
Doctor Faustus and Mephistopheles,
In the same breast?
Grass belongs to us,
For he has spent the time with us.
It was his personal weakness
Not to tell earlier.
He’s a playwright, director and actor
Of his own creativeness,
And tells his own tale.
His characters Oskar and Mahlke weren’t holy Joes.
It was his way of indirectly showing
What went inside him.
Ach, his true confession took time.
It was like peeling an onion with tears,
One layer after the other.
Better late than never.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
THE CHARMS OF SPOKEN ENGLISH (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)
Whether you hear Radio Nepal, the BBC, CNN or the Voice of America, there’s no such thing as ‘correct spoken English’. There is no standard as such, even though the Queen’s English is regarded as a measuring yard. As George Bernard Shaw said, ‘No two British subjects speak exactly alike.’ Whether you have a Cambridge, Oxford, Cockney, provincial or colonial dialect is immaterial. You don’t have to be shamed of it. A Freiburger Badische slant is just as good as a Texan drawl.
Being understood is the point. You try to express, not impress. You speak presentably. There are naturally circles wherein your choice of words should stamp you as a cultivated person as distinguished from an ignorant one. That is where either one puts one’s best foot forward and throws in all the rules of rhetoric and the performing arts and makes a show of it, or perhaps makes a fool out of oneself. But that’s another matter.
It all depends upon whether you’re from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the British Commonwealth or some other Anglo-American area. Or even Kathmandu or Timbuktu. Take these two German friends of mine, Moni and Yogi Rudolph, who visited Nepal sometime ago. Moni’s an English teacher who now works in a bookstore in Kenzingen, whereas Yogi is a trained-geologist. When they came in contact with Nepalese people in the countryside during their Jomsom trek or even in Kathmandu, Moni put on her best accent with the result that the people didn’t understand her at all. Yogi, however, with no English background, spoke Ginglish (German-English) with the verb always at the end of the sentence, in a slow soft-spoken manner and always managed to get his message across.
And that’s the point. You have to adapt yourself every time to the person you’re speaking with, not only in your choice of words and expressions, but also pronunciations. With an academician you could afford to adopt an elaborate style, letting your fantasy run, dashing out warmed-up idiomatic and current expressions and bombastic words with a bit of Latin and French thrown in. But when you’re talking to a simple, honest-to-God farmer or Sherpa along the trail, you have to switch into a simple, restricted language, without jargon. And yet there are people who go through life without having understood this simple rule.
A foreign student from India at the local Freiburger Goethe Institute once asked an American girl: ‘Vat is the medium auf instrukshun in yer kuntry?’ The baffled American student’s eyebrows shot up like a pair of boomerangs and her mouth opened. She hadn’t understood a word. One must admit that it does take quite sometime before you can train your ears to a new accent or a new dialect. The Indian student had asked: ‘What-is-the-medium-of-instruction-in-your-country?’. It must have sounded like a sack of potatoes being unloaded on a wooden floor. The student meant to say, ‘In which language do you teach in the USA?’ Some features of English as spoken in the Indian subcontinent are: ‘Arre baba, he be God. Or Vat-are-you-doing? Salman Rushdie’s writings are replete with such gems. Most travellers to the subcontinent are confronted with the question: ‘Where-you-come-from?’ Two tired, blonde women from Sweden I met at Tiger Hill in Darjeeling complained that they were not in Asia as ambassadors, but merely as tourists, and wanted to enjoy the sights and not be pestered by scores of people asking them:’ Vich-kuntry-you-are-from?’
India has over 50 million jobless people, in comparison to Germany which has 4.5 million, and the frustration in applying for government jobs goes thus: ‘Indian gorment, no good gorment. Apply, apply , no reply. British gorment, goode gorment. Morning apply, evening reply’.
When I listened to Elvis Presley singing ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog’ which is a case of double negation, my aunty Mrs. Dong who was a teacher with King Edward’s Own Gurkha Rifles would say, “Eh pagla! Don’t listen to such American songs. You’ll spoil your English’’.
In Germany for instance, the people in Baden have a totally different accent and dialect than those coming from Bavaria or even from Schwabenland. As a foreigner you tend to understand the conversation only in snatches. The Badener pronounces the word ‘sympathy’ as though it were ‘symbady’. Which incidentally reminds me of some of my Newari college friends in Kathmandu who have problems with the word ‘that’, which is pronounced ‘dat’, (der = there, hot = what, iz = is). Newari is a language with monosyllables and is spoken in the Kathmandu valley.
It makes the language colourful though, and one can only say: vive la difference! Patience and goodwill helps. Or as the Germans say: one has to speaks with one’s hands and feet. And gesticulate a lot.
Just as English is taught in Nepalese schools by teachers who have no real contact with England or America or the Anglo-American way of life, there are also teachers in Germany who teach their pupils German-English, with the result that a lot of students have inhibitions about speaking a foreign language, scared that one might make slips. As though to err wasn’t human at all. One must admit that the chances that a German teacher may go to England or the USA to widen his English-horizon is bigger than that of a teacher in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal. As a result one learns only idioms and expressions that are passed along the grapevine.
However, it is remarkable to note that a good many English words have come to stay in the Nepalese conversation, if not Nepalese literature. Words like: habituated, hobby, compulsory, cinema, TV, entrance-exam, syllabus, boring, restricted and disturb. The list increases with the passage of time.
Recently, one was with some people from London and Liverpool at a cocktail party and one said one came from Nepal. It was amusing to hear, “Oh, Nepaul?’’ The red-haired woman had been fed on Kipling, I suppose, with all those nautch-girls, snake-charmers, sepoys and wallahs.
Names are always distorted by foreigners. And so are most words. During my visit to Ilam in eastern Nepal in 1995, a bus driver used English words with a nonchalance that was really disarming. Words like ‘birik’(brakes), ‘esteering’ (steering-wheel), ‘turuck’(truck), and his companion who cleaned the car was a ‘kilinder’. On the other hand, my German grandma who watches spy-thrillers in TV is fond of James Bond whom she calls ‘Rogger Mooray,’ because the last letter is always pronounced in the German language and not silent.
Have you heard a Frenchman speak English? I used to know a young man named Pascal originally from Paris but I met him in Neufchateau, and he had the habit of beginning his sentences with: ‘I preferrr...’ in that funny, elaborated way. When one heard that, one thought the Nepalese school-kids who do the School Leaving Certificate exams are much better off with their knowledge of English as a second language. It’s just that we pronounce the words with a Nepalese flair.
Spoken English does have its charming side. You can made it a game to find out the origin of the speaker, for despite the much cultivated attempt to speak a foreign language, you can at most times discern the rough geographical origin of the person talking. And that makes it all the more amusing.
------------------------------------------------------
Satis Shroff is a writer living in Freiburg (Germany)
------------------------------------------------------
Reader's response:
Dear Satis,
Interesting!
As a Scot - I speak 'English' English in my working day - but at home we speak Lallans - a lowland version of the Aberdonian 'Doric'... Now, some may argue they are merely dialects... but many Scots would beg to differ!
Robert Burns' poetry is written in Auld Scots, which was the Lallans of his day. For most who cannot understand his written words, it must obviously BE a foreign language!
Ishbel R. commented Mrz 2,2007
----------------------------------------------------
Whether you hear Radio Nepal, the BBC, CNN or the Voice of America, there’s no such thing as ‘correct spoken English’. There is no standard as such, even though the Queen’s English is regarded as a measuring yard. As George Bernard Shaw said, ‘No two British subjects speak exactly alike.’ Whether you have a Cambridge, Oxford, Cockney, provincial or colonial dialect is immaterial. You don’t have to be shamed of it. A Freiburger Badische slant is just as good as a Texan drawl.
Being understood is the point. You try to express, not impress. You speak presentably. There are naturally circles wherein your choice of words should stamp you as a cultivated person as distinguished from an ignorant one. That is where either one puts one’s best foot forward and throws in all the rules of rhetoric and the performing arts and makes a show of it, or perhaps makes a fool out of oneself. But that’s another matter.
It all depends upon whether you’re from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the British Commonwealth or some other Anglo-American area. Or even Kathmandu or Timbuktu. Take these two German friends of mine, Moni and Yogi Rudolph, who visited Nepal sometime ago. Moni’s an English teacher who now works in a bookstore in Kenzingen, whereas Yogi is a trained-geologist. When they came in contact with Nepalese people in the countryside during their Jomsom trek or even in Kathmandu, Moni put on her best accent with the result that the people didn’t understand her at all. Yogi, however, with no English background, spoke Ginglish (German-English) with the verb always at the end of the sentence, in a slow soft-spoken manner and always managed to get his message across.
And that’s the point. You have to adapt yourself every time to the person you’re speaking with, not only in your choice of words and expressions, but also pronunciations. With an academician you could afford to adopt an elaborate style, letting your fantasy run, dashing out warmed-up idiomatic and current expressions and bombastic words with a bit of Latin and French thrown in. But when you’re talking to a simple, honest-to-God farmer or Sherpa along the trail, you have to switch into a simple, restricted language, without jargon. And yet there are people who go through life without having understood this simple rule.
A foreign student from India at the local Freiburger Goethe Institute once asked an American girl: ‘Vat is the medium auf instrukshun in yer kuntry?’ The baffled American student’s eyebrows shot up like a pair of boomerangs and her mouth opened. She hadn’t understood a word. One must admit that it does take quite sometime before you can train your ears to a new accent or a new dialect. The Indian student had asked: ‘What-is-the-medium-of-instruction-in-your-country?’. It must have sounded like a sack of potatoes being unloaded on a wooden floor. The student meant to say, ‘In which language do you teach in the USA?’ Some features of English as spoken in the Indian subcontinent are: ‘Arre baba, he be God. Or Vat-are-you-doing? Salman Rushdie’s writings are replete with such gems. Most travellers to the subcontinent are confronted with the question: ‘Where-you-come-from?’ Two tired, blonde women from Sweden I met at Tiger Hill in Darjeeling complained that they were not in Asia as ambassadors, but merely as tourists, and wanted to enjoy the sights and not be pestered by scores of people asking them:’ Vich-kuntry-you-are-from?’
India has over 50 million jobless people, in comparison to Germany which has 4.5 million, and the frustration in applying for government jobs goes thus: ‘Indian gorment, no good gorment. Apply, apply , no reply. British gorment, goode gorment. Morning apply, evening reply’.
When I listened to Elvis Presley singing ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog’ which is a case of double negation, my aunty Mrs. Dong who was a teacher with King Edward’s Own Gurkha Rifles would say, “Eh pagla! Don’t listen to such American songs. You’ll spoil your English’’.
In Germany for instance, the people in Baden have a totally different accent and dialect than those coming from Bavaria or even from Schwabenland. As a foreigner you tend to understand the conversation only in snatches. The Badener pronounces the word ‘sympathy’ as though it were ‘symbady’. Which incidentally reminds me of some of my Newari college friends in Kathmandu who have problems with the word ‘that’, which is pronounced ‘dat’, (der = there, hot = what, iz = is). Newari is a language with monosyllables and is spoken in the Kathmandu valley.
It makes the language colourful though, and one can only say: vive la difference! Patience and goodwill helps. Or as the Germans say: one has to speaks with one’s hands and feet. And gesticulate a lot.
Just as English is taught in Nepalese schools by teachers who have no real contact with England or America or the Anglo-American way of life, there are also teachers in Germany who teach their pupils German-English, with the result that a lot of students have inhibitions about speaking a foreign language, scared that one might make slips. As though to err wasn’t human at all. One must admit that the chances that a German teacher may go to England or the USA to widen his English-horizon is bigger than that of a teacher in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal. As a result one learns only idioms and expressions that are passed along the grapevine.
However, it is remarkable to note that a good many English words have come to stay in the Nepalese conversation, if not Nepalese literature. Words like: habituated, hobby, compulsory, cinema, TV, entrance-exam, syllabus, boring, restricted and disturb. The list increases with the passage of time.
Recently, one was with some people from London and Liverpool at a cocktail party and one said one came from Nepal. It was amusing to hear, “Oh, Nepaul?’’ The red-haired woman had been fed on Kipling, I suppose, with all those nautch-girls, snake-charmers, sepoys and wallahs.
Names are always distorted by foreigners. And so are most words. During my visit to Ilam in eastern Nepal in 1995, a bus driver used English words with a nonchalance that was really disarming. Words like ‘birik’(brakes), ‘esteering’ (steering-wheel), ‘turuck’(truck), and his companion who cleaned the car was a ‘kilinder’. On the other hand, my German grandma who watches spy-thrillers in TV is fond of James Bond whom she calls ‘Rogger Mooray,’ because the last letter is always pronounced in the German language and not silent.
Have you heard a Frenchman speak English? I used to know a young man named Pascal originally from Paris but I met him in Neufchateau, and he had the habit of beginning his sentences with: ‘I preferrr...’ in that funny, elaborated way. When one heard that, one thought the Nepalese school-kids who do the School Leaving Certificate exams are much better off with their knowledge of English as a second language. It’s just that we pronounce the words with a Nepalese flair.
Spoken English does have its charming side. You can made it a game to find out the origin of the speaker, for despite the much cultivated attempt to speak a foreign language, you can at most times discern the rough geographical origin of the person talking. And that makes it all the more amusing.
------------------------------------------------------
Satis Shroff is a writer living in Freiburg (Germany)
------------------------------------------------------
Reader's response:
Dear Satis,
Interesting!
As a Scot - I speak 'English' English in my working day - but at home we speak Lallans - a lowland version of the Aberdonian 'Doric'... Now, some may argue they are merely dialects... but many Scots would beg to differ!
Robert Burns' poetry is written in Auld Scots, which was the Lallans of his day. For most who cannot understand his written words, it must obviously BE a foreign language!
Ishbel R. commented Mrz 2,2007
----------------------------------------------------
Development and Destruction (Satis Shroff)
My Nepal, what has become of you?
Your features have changed with time.
The innocent face of the Kumari
Has changed to the blood-thirsty countenance
Of Kal Bhairab,
From development to destruction,
From bikas to binas.
You’re no longer the same
There’s insurrection and turmoil
Against the government and the police.
Your sons and daughters are at war,
With the Gurkhas again.
Maobadis with revolutionary flair,
With ideologies from across the Tibetan Plateau and Peru.
Ideologies that have been discredited elsewhere,
Flourish in the Himalayas.
Demanding a revolutionary-tax
From tourists and Nepalese
With brazen, bloody attacks
Fighting for their own rights
And the rights of the bewildered common man.
Well-trained government troops at the orders
Of politicians safe in Kathmandu.
Leaders who despise talks and compromises,
Flex their tongues and muscles,
And let the imported automatic salves speak their deaths.
Ill-armed guerrillas against well-armed Royal Gurkhas
In the foothills of the Himalayas.
******
Child Soldiers
Nepali children have no chance,
But to take sides
To take to arms not knowing the reason
Against whom and why.
The child-soldier gets orders from grown-ups
And the hapless souls open fire.
Hukum is order,
The child-soldier cannot reason why.
Shedding precious human blood,
For causes they both hold high.
Ach, this massacre in the shadow of the Himalayas.
*****
Not in Nepal
Nepalis look out of their ornate windows,
In the west, east, north and south Nepal
And think:
How long will this krieg go on?
How much do we have to suffer?
How many money-lenders, businessmen, civil servants,
Policemen and gurkhas do the Maobadis want to kill
Or be killed?
How many men, women, boys and girls have to be mortally injured
Till Kal Bhairab is pacified by the Sleeping Vishnu?
How many towns and villages in the seventy five districts
Do the Maobadis want to free from capitalism?
When the missionaries close their schools,
Must the Hindus and Buddhists shut their temples and shrines?
Shall atheism be the order of the day?
Not in Nepal.
*****
A THOUSAND DEATHS (Satis Shroff)
It breaks my heart, as I hear over the radio:
Nepal’s not safe for visitors.
Visitors who leave their money behind,
In the pockets of travel agencies, rug dealers,
Currency and drug dealers,
And hordes of ill-paid honest Sherpas
And Tamang and other ethnic porters.
Sweat beads trickling from their sun-burnt faces,
In the dizzy heights of the Dolpo, Annapurna ranges
And the Khumbu glaciers.
Eking out a living and facing the treacherous
Icy crevasses, snow-outs, precipices
And a thousand deaths.
No roads, no schools,
Beyond the beaten trekking paths
Live the poorer families of Nepal.
Sans drinking water,
Sans hospitals,
Where aids and children’s work prevail.
*****
Lichhavis, Thakuris and Mallas have made you eternal
Mana Deva inscribed his title on the pillar of Changu,
After great victories over neighbouring states.
Amshu Verma was a warrior and mastered the Lichavi Code.
He gave his daughter in marriage
To Srong Bean Sgam Po,
The ruler of Tibet,
Who also married a Chinese princess.
Jayastathi Malla introduced the system of the caste,
A system based on family occupation,
That became rigid with the tide of time.
Yaksha Malla the ruler of Kathmandu Valley,
Divided it into Kathmandu, Patan and Bhadgaon
For his three sons.
Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha,
Brought you together,
A melting pot of ethnic diversities.
With Gorkha conquests that cost the motherland
Thousands of ears, noses and Nepalese blood.
The Ranas usurped the royal throne
And put a prime minister after the other for 104 years.
104 years of a country in poverty and medieval existence.
It was King Tribhuvan’s proclamation and the blood of the Nepalese,
Who fought against the Gorkhas under the command of the Ranas,
That ended the Rana autocracy.
His son King Mahendra held the septre
When Nepal entered the UNO.
The multiparty system along with the Congress party was banned.
We chuckled about Kaphley’s compulsory History book.
Then came thirty years of Panchayat promises of a Hindu rule
With a system based on the five village elders,
Like the proverbial five fingers in one’s hand,
That are not alike and yet function in harmony.
The Panchayat government was an old system,
Packed and sold as a new and traditional one.
A system is just as good as the people who run it.
And Nepal didn’t run.
The age-old chakary experienced a revival,
Feudalism with its countless spies and yes-men,
Middle-men who held out their hands
For bribes, perks and amenities.
Poverty, caste-system with its divisions and conflicts,
Discrimination, injustice, bad governance
Became the nature of the day.
A big chasm appeared between the haves-and-have-nots.
The social inequality, frustrated expectations of the poor
Led to a search for an alternative pole.
The farmers were ignored, the forests and land confiscated,
Corruption and inefficiency became the rule of the day.
Even His Majesty’s servants went so far as to say:
Raja ko kam, kahiley jahla gham.
The birthplace of Buddha
And the Land of Pashupati,
A land which King Birendra declared a Zone of Peace,
Through signatures of the world’s leaders
Is at war today.
Bush’s government paid 24 million dollars for development aid,
Another 14 million dollars for insurgency relevant spendings
5,000 M-16 rifles from the USA
5,500 maschine guns from Belgium.
Guns that are aimed at Nepali men, women and children,
In the mountains of Nepal.
Alas, under the shade of the Himalayas,
This corner of the world has become volatile again.
*****
GUNS INSTEAD BOOKS (Satis Shroff)
My academic friends have changes sides,
From Mandalay to Congress
From Congress to the Maobadis.
The students from Dolpo and Silgadi.
Dolpo, unforgettable through Peter Mathiessen
In his quest for his inner self,
And his friend George Schaller’s search
For the snow leopard.
The students wrote Marxist verses and acquired volumes
From the embassies in Kathmandu:
Kim Il Sung’s writings, Mao’s red booklet,
Marx’s Das Kapital and Lenin’s works,
And defended socialist ideas
At His Majesty’s Central Hostel in Tahachal.
I see their earnest faces, with guns in their arms,
Instead of books,
Boisterous and ready
To fight to the end
For a cause they cherish
In their frustrated and fiery hearts.
But aren’t these sons of Nepal
Misguided and blinded,
By the seemingly victories of socialism?
Even Gorbachov pleaded for Peristroika,
And Putin admires capitalist Germany,
Its culture and commerce.
Look at the old Soviet Union,
And other East Bloc nations.
They have all swapped sides
And are EU and Nato members.
*****
Time Stands Still in Nepal
Globalisation has changed the world fast,
In Nepal time stands still.
The blind beggar at the New Road gate sings:
Lata ko desh ma, gaddha tantheri.
In a land where the tongue-tied live,
The deaf desire to rule.
Oh my Nepal, quo vadis?
The only way to peace and harmony is
By laying aside the arms.
Can Nepal afford to be the bastion
Of a movement and a government
That rides rough-shod over the lives
And rights of fellow Nepalis?
Can’t we learn from the lessons of Afghanistan, Romania,
Poland, East Germany and Iraq?
The Maobadis will be given a chance at the polls,
Like all other democratic parties.
For the Maobadis are Bahuns and Chettris,
Be they Prachanda or Baburam Bhattrai,
Leaders who’d prefer a republican rule
To monarchy in Nepal.
*****
HOPE IN THE HIMALAYAS (Satis Shroff)
What better chance for a constitutional monarch,
A re-incarnated Vishnu,
Who now holds
Spiritual and temporal powers
In the shadow of the Himalayas?
Hush, an unholy alliance made the rounds,
The political parties and the Maoists are united
They rattle their sabres no more
Under Vishnu’s bed of serpents.
Narad brings us good news.
We don’t have to shiver together in angst.
There is hope in the Himalayas.
Hope of a separation of powers,
Hope of free elections,
Hope of fair trials before impartial tribunals,
Hope of amnesty.
We’ll do what Nepalese normally do:
Wait and drink Ilam tea,
And watch the scenario unfurl,
In the shadow of the Himalayas.
___________________________________
About the Author
Satis Shroff is a writer based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Sciences in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize for 1998.
Writing experience: Satis Shroff has written two language books on the Nepalese language for DSE (Deutsche Stiftung für Entwicklungsdienst) & Horlemannverlag. He has written three feature articles in the Munich-based Nelles Verlag’s ‘Nepal’ on the Himalayan Kingdom’s Gurkhas, sacred mountains and Nepalese symbols and on Hinduism in ‘Nepal: Myths & Realities (Book Faith India) and his poem ‘Mental Molotovs’ was published in epd-Entwicklungsdienst (Frankfurt). He has written articles in The Rising Nepal, The Christian Science Monitor, the Independent, the Fryburger, Swatantra Biswa (USIS publication, Himal Asia, 3Journal Freiburg. More articles, poems and reviews in www.yahoo & www.google under: satis shroff.
Satis Shroff writes with intelligence, wit and grace. (Bruce Dobler, Senior Fulbright Professor in Creative Writing, University of Iowa/
Pittsburgh).
My Nepal, what has become of you?
Your features have changed with time.
The innocent face of the Kumari
Has changed to the blood-thirsty countenance
Of Kal Bhairab,
From development to destruction,
From bikas to binas.
You’re no longer the same
There’s insurrection and turmoil
Against the government and the police.
Your sons and daughters are at war,
With the Gurkhas again.
Maobadis with revolutionary flair,
With ideologies from across the Tibetan Plateau and Peru.
Ideologies that have been discredited elsewhere,
Flourish in the Himalayas.
Demanding a revolutionary-tax
From tourists and Nepalese
With brazen, bloody attacks
Fighting for their own rights
And the rights of the bewildered common man.
Well-trained government troops at the orders
Of politicians safe in Kathmandu.
Leaders who despise talks and compromises,
Flex their tongues and muscles,
And let the imported automatic salves speak their deaths.
Ill-armed guerrillas against well-armed Royal Gurkhas
In the foothills of the Himalayas.
******
Child Soldiers
Nepali children have no chance,
But to take sides
To take to arms not knowing the reason
Against whom and why.
The child-soldier gets orders from grown-ups
And the hapless souls open fire.
Hukum is order,
The child-soldier cannot reason why.
Shedding precious human blood,
For causes they both hold high.
Ach, this massacre in the shadow of the Himalayas.
*****
Not in Nepal
Nepalis look out of their ornate windows,
In the west, east, north and south Nepal
And think:
How long will this krieg go on?
How much do we have to suffer?
How many money-lenders, businessmen, civil servants,
Policemen and gurkhas do the Maobadis want to kill
Or be killed?
How many men, women, boys and girls have to be mortally injured
Till Kal Bhairab is pacified by the Sleeping Vishnu?
How many towns and villages in the seventy five districts
Do the Maobadis want to free from capitalism?
When the missionaries close their schools,
Must the Hindus and Buddhists shut their temples and shrines?
Shall atheism be the order of the day?
Not in Nepal.
*****
A THOUSAND DEATHS (Satis Shroff)
It breaks my heart, as I hear over the radio:
Nepal’s not safe for visitors.
Visitors who leave their money behind,
In the pockets of travel agencies, rug dealers,
Currency and drug dealers,
And hordes of ill-paid honest Sherpas
And Tamang and other ethnic porters.
Sweat beads trickling from their sun-burnt faces,
In the dizzy heights of the Dolpo, Annapurna ranges
And the Khumbu glaciers.
Eking out a living and facing the treacherous
Icy crevasses, snow-outs, precipices
And a thousand deaths.
No roads, no schools,
Beyond the beaten trekking paths
Live the poorer families of Nepal.
Sans drinking water,
Sans hospitals,
Where aids and children’s work prevail.
*****
Lichhavis, Thakuris and Mallas have made you eternal
Mana Deva inscribed his title on the pillar of Changu,
After great victories over neighbouring states.
Amshu Verma was a warrior and mastered the Lichavi Code.
He gave his daughter in marriage
To Srong Bean Sgam Po,
The ruler of Tibet,
Who also married a Chinese princess.
Jayastathi Malla introduced the system of the caste,
A system based on family occupation,
That became rigid with the tide of time.
Yaksha Malla the ruler of Kathmandu Valley,
Divided it into Kathmandu, Patan and Bhadgaon
For his three sons.
Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha,
Brought you together,
A melting pot of ethnic diversities.
With Gorkha conquests that cost the motherland
Thousands of ears, noses and Nepalese blood.
The Ranas usurped the royal throne
And put a prime minister after the other for 104 years.
104 years of a country in poverty and medieval existence.
It was King Tribhuvan’s proclamation and the blood of the Nepalese,
Who fought against the Gorkhas under the command of the Ranas,
That ended the Rana autocracy.
His son King Mahendra held the septre
When Nepal entered the UNO.
The multiparty system along with the Congress party was banned.
We chuckled about Kaphley’s compulsory History book.
Then came thirty years of Panchayat promises of a Hindu rule
With a system based on the five village elders,
Like the proverbial five fingers in one’s hand,
That are not alike and yet function in harmony.
The Panchayat government was an old system,
Packed and sold as a new and traditional one.
A system is just as good as the people who run it.
And Nepal didn’t run.
The age-old chakary experienced a revival,
Feudalism with its countless spies and yes-men,
Middle-men who held out their hands
For bribes, perks and amenities.
Poverty, caste-system with its divisions and conflicts,
Discrimination, injustice, bad governance
Became the nature of the day.
A big chasm appeared between the haves-and-have-nots.
The social inequality, frustrated expectations of the poor
Led to a search for an alternative pole.
The farmers were ignored, the forests and land confiscated,
Corruption and inefficiency became the rule of the day.
Even His Majesty’s servants went so far as to say:
Raja ko kam, kahiley jahla gham.
The birthplace of Buddha
And the Land of Pashupati,
A land which King Birendra declared a Zone of Peace,
Through signatures of the world’s leaders
Is at war today.
Bush’s government paid 24 million dollars for development aid,
Another 14 million dollars for insurgency relevant spendings
5,000 M-16 rifles from the USA
5,500 maschine guns from Belgium.
Guns that are aimed at Nepali men, women and children,
In the mountains of Nepal.
Alas, under the shade of the Himalayas,
This corner of the world has become volatile again.
*****
GUNS INSTEAD BOOKS (Satis Shroff)
My academic friends have changes sides,
From Mandalay to Congress
From Congress to the Maobadis.
The students from Dolpo and Silgadi.
Dolpo, unforgettable through Peter Mathiessen
In his quest for his inner self,
And his friend George Schaller’s search
For the snow leopard.
The students wrote Marxist verses and acquired volumes
From the embassies in Kathmandu:
Kim Il Sung’s writings, Mao’s red booklet,
Marx’s Das Kapital and Lenin’s works,
And defended socialist ideas
At His Majesty’s Central Hostel in Tahachal.
I see their earnest faces, with guns in their arms,
Instead of books,
Boisterous and ready
To fight to the end
For a cause they cherish
In their frustrated and fiery hearts.
But aren’t these sons of Nepal
Misguided and blinded,
By the seemingly victories of socialism?
Even Gorbachov pleaded for Peristroika,
And Putin admires capitalist Germany,
Its culture and commerce.
Look at the old Soviet Union,
And other East Bloc nations.
They have all swapped sides
And are EU and Nato members.
*****
Time Stands Still in Nepal
Globalisation has changed the world fast,
In Nepal time stands still.
The blind beggar at the New Road gate sings:
Lata ko desh ma, gaddha tantheri.
In a land where the tongue-tied live,
The deaf desire to rule.
Oh my Nepal, quo vadis?
The only way to peace and harmony is
By laying aside the arms.
Can Nepal afford to be the bastion
Of a movement and a government
That rides rough-shod over the lives
And rights of fellow Nepalis?
Can’t we learn from the lessons of Afghanistan, Romania,
Poland, East Germany and Iraq?
The Maobadis will be given a chance at the polls,
Like all other democratic parties.
For the Maobadis are Bahuns and Chettris,
Be they Prachanda or Baburam Bhattrai,
Leaders who’d prefer a republican rule
To monarchy in Nepal.
*****
HOPE IN THE HIMALAYAS (Satis Shroff)
What better chance for a constitutional monarch,
A re-incarnated Vishnu,
Who now holds
Spiritual and temporal powers
In the shadow of the Himalayas?
Hush, an unholy alliance made the rounds,
The political parties and the Maoists are united
They rattle their sabres no more
Under Vishnu’s bed of serpents.
Narad brings us good news.
We don’t have to shiver together in angst.
There is hope in the Himalayas.
Hope of a separation of powers,
Hope of free elections,
Hope of fair trials before impartial tribunals,
Hope of amnesty.
We’ll do what Nepalese normally do:
Wait and drink Ilam tea,
And watch the scenario unfurl,
In the shadow of the Himalayas.
___________________________________
About the Author
Satis Shroff is a writer based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Sciences in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize for 1998.
Writing experience: Satis Shroff has written two language books on the Nepalese language for DSE (Deutsche Stiftung für Entwicklungsdienst) & Horlemannverlag. He has written three feature articles in the Munich-based Nelles Verlag’s ‘Nepal’ on the Himalayan Kingdom’s Gurkhas, sacred mountains and Nepalese symbols and on Hinduism in ‘Nepal: Myths & Realities (Book Faith India) and his poem ‘Mental Molotovs’ was published in epd-Entwicklungsdienst (Frankfurt). He has written articles in The Rising Nepal, The Christian Science Monitor, the Independent, the Fryburger, Swatantra Biswa (USIS publication, Himal Asia, 3Journal Freiburg. More articles, poems and reviews in www.yahoo & www.google under: satis shroff.
Satis Shroff writes with intelligence, wit and grace. (Bruce Dobler, Senior Fulbright Professor in Creative Writing, University of Iowa/
Pittsburgh).
THE HOLY COWS OF KATHMANDU (Satis Shroff)
Holy cow! The mayor of Kathmandu
Has done it.
Since ancient times a taboo
The free, nonchalant cows
Of Kathmandu were rounded up
In a rodeo by the Nepalese police.
Was it Nandi, Shiva's bull?
Or holy cows?
"They're cattle still",said the mayor.
"Straying cattle are not wanted".
Eighty-eight holy cows
Were auctioned
Not at Sotheby's
But in Kathmandu.
The auction yielded 64,460 rupees
Said the mayor of Kathmandu.
Cows that were a nuisance
To pedestrians and tourists at Thamel.
Cows that provided dung
And four other products:
Milk, yoghurt, butter and urine
For many a hearth.
Cows that gave urine
That the Hindus collected.
Cows that were sacred
And worshipped as the cow-mother.
Cows that were donated
And set free by Brahmins and Chettris
To set themselves free from sins.
Cows that marked the Gaijatra,
An eight-day homage to the dead.
It was a king, according to legend,
Who ordered cows to be set free
By families in mourning
In the streets of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur.
To share the bereaved pain of
The death of a beloved prince
And a sad mother and queen.
The children disguised themselves
As grotesque cows and motley figures
And danced to Nepalese music
To make the queen laugh,
And forget her tears.
Even today the bereaved
Families drive their cows
Through the streets of Kathmandu
On the day of Gaijatra:
The festival of the cows.
Despite the ecological control
On the cows of Kathmandu,
Lalitpur and Bhaktapur.
From ancient times
Kings, noblemen, pedestrians
Cyclists, pullcarts, cars,
Scooters and rickshaws,
The traffic snaked around the holy cows.
The umwelt-conscious mayor
Has made up his mind:
The cattle are obstructing the traffic
Long-haired Nepalese youth need a crew-cut
Horse-pulled carts and rickshaws must go.
They worsen sanitation
And environmental problems.
But the carpets and cars must stay.
Elephant-rides remain for the tourists
After all, we've developed
A yen for dollars, francs and marks.
Kathmandu is catching up
With the rest of the world.
Glossary:
Umwelt: German word for environment
Braahmins, Chettris: high castes in Hinduism
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What others have said about the writer:
Reviewed by Albert Hagenaars in WritersDen.com 8/17/2007 Fascinerend! Ik voel veel verwantschap met deze thematiek. Ik wil deze pagina's blijven volgen! Tot de volgende keer dus...
Reviewed by Heide Poudel in WritersDen.com 6/4/2007 Brilliant, I enjoyed your poems throughly. I can hear the underlying German and Nepali thoughts within your English language. The strictness of the German form mixed with the vividness of your Nepalese mother tongue. An interesting mix.
Nonetheless we need more authors bringing stories of Nepal to the West. Nepal is a jewel on the Earths surface, her majesty and charm should be protected, and yet exposed with dignity through words. You do your country justice and I find your bicultural understanding so unique and a marvel to read.
It's always a pleasure to read Satis Shroff's fine, well-written artistic work. I admire his strength and ability. So with that said just write on, poet. ( in WritersDen.com)
The manner in which Satis Shroff writes takes the reader right along with him. Extremely vivid and just enough and the irony of the music. Beautiful prosaic thought and astounding writing.
'Your muscles flex, the nerves flatter, the heart gallops,
As you feel how puny you are,
Among all those incessant and powerful waves.'
Satis Shroff's writing is refined – pure undistilled. (Susan Marie, www.Gather.com). ___________________________________________________________________
Holy cow! The mayor of Kathmandu
Has done it.
Since ancient times a taboo
The free, nonchalant cows
Of Kathmandu were rounded up
In a rodeo by the Nepalese police.
Was it Nandi, Shiva's bull?
Or holy cows?
"They're cattle still",said the mayor.
"Straying cattle are not wanted".
Eighty-eight holy cows
Were auctioned
Not at Sotheby's
But in Kathmandu.
The auction yielded 64,460 rupees
Said the mayor of Kathmandu.
Cows that were a nuisance
To pedestrians and tourists at Thamel.
Cows that provided dung
And four other products:
Milk, yoghurt, butter and urine
For many a hearth.
Cows that gave urine
That the Hindus collected.
Cows that were sacred
And worshipped as the cow-mother.
Cows that were donated
And set free by Brahmins and Chettris
To set themselves free from sins.
Cows that marked the Gaijatra,
An eight-day homage to the dead.
It was a king, according to legend,
Who ordered cows to be set free
By families in mourning
In the streets of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur.
To share the bereaved pain of
The death of a beloved prince
And a sad mother and queen.
The children disguised themselves
As grotesque cows and motley figures
And danced to Nepalese music
To make the queen laugh,
And forget her tears.
Even today the bereaved
Families drive their cows
Through the streets of Kathmandu
On the day of Gaijatra:
The festival of the cows.
Despite the ecological control
On the cows of Kathmandu,
Lalitpur and Bhaktapur.
From ancient times
Kings, noblemen, pedestrians
Cyclists, pullcarts, cars,
Scooters and rickshaws,
The traffic snaked around the holy cows.
The umwelt-conscious mayor
Has made up his mind:
The cattle are obstructing the traffic
Long-haired Nepalese youth need a crew-cut
Horse-pulled carts and rickshaws must go.
They worsen sanitation
And environmental problems.
But the carpets and cars must stay.
Elephant-rides remain for the tourists
After all, we've developed
A yen for dollars, francs and marks.
Kathmandu is catching up
With the rest of the world.
Glossary:
Umwelt: German word for environment
Braahmins, Chettris: high castes in Hinduism
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What others have said about the writer:
Reviewed by Albert Hagenaars in WritersDen.com 8/17/2007 Fascinerend! Ik voel veel verwantschap met deze thematiek. Ik wil deze pagina's blijven volgen! Tot de volgende keer dus...
Reviewed by Heide Poudel in WritersDen.com 6/4/2007 Brilliant, I enjoyed your poems throughly. I can hear the underlying German and Nepali thoughts within your English language. The strictness of the German form mixed with the vividness of your Nepalese mother tongue. An interesting mix.
Nonetheless we need more authors bringing stories of Nepal to the West. Nepal is a jewel on the Earths surface, her majesty and charm should be protected, and yet exposed with dignity through words. You do your country justice and I find your bicultural understanding so unique and a marvel to read.
It's always a pleasure to read Satis Shroff's fine, well-written artistic work. I admire his strength and ability. So with that said just write on, poet. ( in WritersDen.com)
The manner in which Satis Shroff writes takes the reader right along with him. Extremely vivid and just enough and the irony of the music. Beautiful prosaic thought and astounding writing.
'Your muscles flex, the nerves flatter, the heart gallops,
As you feel how puny you are,
Among all those incessant and powerful waves.'
Satis Shroff's writing is refined – pure undistilled. (Susan Marie, www.Gather.com). ___________________________________________________________________
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