Shailendra Sakar /(DOB-1947)/ Nepali
poet/Currently resides in USA
Works:-
· Shailendra Sakar Ka Kavita
· Sarpaharu Geet Sundainan (Poetry Collection)
· Collage, Kalpatra Ra Aru Katha (Story Collection)
· Nango taar
· Kabitaamaa America
· America,Ramayan ra aru kathaa
Honours:-
· Musyachu Puraskar
· Yug Kavi Sidhicharan Kavya Puraskar
In 1979, Sakar initiated a movement of discarded communities to protest against the cruel formalities of the ruthless Panchayat system. At this phase of his life, he came under the influence of the Hungry Generation Poets and Beats poets. In 1988, Sakar joined the Boot Polish Movement to attain the freedom of Press from the clutches of the Establishment and to restore the dignity of the writer of the street. He also edited Mantra, a literary magazine.
In 1979, Sakar published Collage (Royal Nepal Academy, Kathmandu), a collection of short stories where he experimented with the traditional narrative mode and created an anti-hero persona to depict the agony of the Nepalese social milieu, and Shailendra Sakar Ka Kavita (Sajha Prakashan, Kathmandu) a collection of poems that established Sakar as a major poet who voiced the cause of the discarded communities, altering the elite definition of poetry. In 1991, Sakar published his second collection of poems, Sarpaharu Geet Sundainan (Nirala, New Delhi) that vehemently attacked the cruelties of the party, Panchayat regime.
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Shailendra Sakar's poems have the emotional gravity and intellectual weight- as well as elegance-to make us feel by turns unstrung and incensed about the rush of time that leaves us all behind.
'Nepali Times '09jan-2003
 |
| Vidya Kamat |
Generation
Wasting green years in the college
He became wise.
He dreamt, he wrote dreams
And in the evenings at New Road
With an English newspaper under his armpit
He became a civilized man.
And in an insignificant moment of an ordinary day
Falling in ideal love like in the Hindi films
He espoused a quarrelsome, practical woman.
Striving to fulfill all the desires of his wife
From the epic battlegrounds of overtime and part time
Wan and weary
He sacrificed all his own desires.
With a downcast face and under daily criticism of his boss
Without any decision
Without any future
Without any motivation
Without any interest
He is compelled to serve his country selflessly.
In the once jealously guarded books
Of philosophy, politics and history
In thought-provoking grand bundles of newspapers
Published with announcements of new sympathies
These days
It has been easy for him and for his skillful housewife
To allow their small boy to defecate.
City-1
Below a sky dirty as a galley proof
Below a sky dirty as a galley proof
composing inverted letters on a dirty board
I am walking naked all over a city of mirrors
To read my name clearly.
The moon like an old wound scratched up with a pencil
Repeatedly attempts to hide her rough skin
Near the street light.
In the empty spaces of discarded newspapers
Sketching a traingular mirror image of my head
Vainly throughtout the night
I wander in this city.
City-2
A mad elephant is walking all over the city
He is not able to utter the name of his favourite flower
He cannot sing a piece of his favourite song
He cannot raise his eyes to the sky
He only mumbles,lifting hands tremulous with fear
He only greets
He cannot go anywhere and tell
Of what he has seen
Men shall accuse him of disturbing peace
A mad elephant is walking all over the city.
The sting of the past [atit dansh]
A song stops in the middle of singing
a reel snaps while being viewed
a failure turns back as it walks
a voice ends in the middle of speech
The ancient wary black cat
glaring at you in the dark is set to bounce
from the farsighted wall of the past
thera is a certain place to look
a corner to see oneself in
a picture album tossed away in some cup board
that keeps distracting the self
the past has a certain enclosure
yes and all around a smell
the smell of afamiliar crone-girl wife
maybe the smell of an old newspaper
or the stench of an old vest
drenched with sweat stuck to the skin
teeth clamping clown or ancient duskiness
breath moving up and down aged chests
the problem of old honour old warped glasses
old torpor old fear and blame
an aged newborn son peering into an ancient mirror.
Offcial
At a quick glance apparently a detached tree,
But in the eyes wheel
A long reel of the decorated drawing room.
There is no sum that is harder for him
Than the problem of bread and butter,
No philosophy is greater than “report”,
No religion is greater than the file,
(That is why he has kept them with great care)
No god is greater than his boss.
He has the numbers of cars, houses and telpo9nes
Of the VIPS of the country on his finger tips.
However, he has never learnt by heart
The answer to ruthless letters of clarification
Written off-hand to fulfill regulations.
Serpents won't listen to your songs
It's a defeat
a loss perfect,
you do whatever you would,
stand intact against your gods
in the middle of sunny roads of reason
to cry aloud
your notes of rebellion
or sing songs
celebrating the spouts of life eternal;
It's a game futile
It's useless,an attempt vainglorious
Your storm of poems
Would n't rouse anyone from any sleep.
Those bejewelled serpents
charmed by the music of their own breath,,
thrilled by
the fumes of their own bodies,
Wouldn't care to listen to your songs,
wouldn't love your poems.........
Epics of your Age's despair
You have been reciting incessantly
and brandishing with their fires
the delicate flowers of your identity and faith.
You have been shaping verses
out from your heart's volcanic shrieks
and in your poems you have
hungered to locate the rhythms of life eternal
and all along hummed notes
of barbaric assaults and unjust plots.
But what can we do
my hero, my protagonist,
these serpents do not
want the throbbing beats of your footsteps.
No snake in this world
would love to listen to your recitals.
You shriek,
you cry aloudand lament,
these serpents engraved
on the damp walls of the temples are deaf.
Maddened by the music of adulation
on the eternally settled days of festivity
these serpents would engulf
the newly born babies of your future
and then stand proud,protective
and intact over Lord's sleeping head.
That's why,my hero,I GRIEVE,
the serpents do not want your poems.
They do not listen to your songs.
(Translated from Nepali by Manjushree thapa)
