The Dust Draws its Face on the Wind is the first collection of Nepali poetry in English. Through it, award-winning poet and translator, Rohan Chhetri introduces the poetic oeuvre of Avinash Shrestha to anglophone readers. Shrestha, widely influenced by the Assamese, Bengali, Hindi and Urdu literary cultures, French symbolism and Spanish surrealism, is a significant figure in Nepali literature. To relish the surrealist essence and original Nepali diction of Avinash Shrestha’s work that spans over three decades, one must engage with his work in its entirety. Rohan Chhetri’s rearrangement of Shrestha’s last book first establishes the same. To appreciate Shrestha’s politics, we must read his latest poems in juxtaposition with his earlier works.
In ‘Futility’, the poet exclaims, ‘The dust wants to draw its face/ on the wind/ I on you/ Neither the dust gets it right/ nor will I’ (p. 7). The poet/lover’s innate desire to derive meaning out of human existence offers the collection its title. The poem also marks all human endeavours, whether in love or amidst other contests, as futile. This is strengthened by the translator’s selection of the nature poems or existentialist poems in this collection: ‘Jungle: A Soliloquy’, ‘Metamorphosis 2’, ‘Sunhunt’, among others. ‘Fragments’ relays the poet’s ‘Day goes/ like ember in ashes’ (p. 143, ‘Transformation’). It establishes the tone of the collection as pensive–‘Like grief you are impenetrable. / Then again, like a grave you are silent’ (p. 145, ‘You’). In Shrestha’s poetic universe, human life, efforts and romantic love are all grief-laden impenetrable desires.
Avinash Shrestha is a self-aware writer, and Chhetri’s translation aptly traces the poet’s sense of self intricately woven in a political language that does not only revisit emotions evoked by certain historical events or the trauma of bearing witness to them but also hinges on retelling those historical incidents and people’s movements through poetry. Shrestha writes because ‘there is a fire inside [him]…that rages/ in the knowledge of suffering and oppression’ (p. 67, ‘My Poems’). His necessity to be ‘a bridge…fastened across the river of darkness’ transforms him into the guiding light for his community of people who ‘join the passage/ from light to light’ (p. 63, ‘If I Were’).
Shrestha’s lament on state sponsored violence intermingles with his inability to fall in love. In ‘Of Some Unidentified Village, Nayantara Barua’, violence is described sans metaphors: ‘The cities are being torched, the villages blazing’ (p. 71); ‘Homes uprooted, villages are torn’ (p. 73); ‘…they find Malati’s raped body left for dead’ (p. 73). The absence of metaphors evokes another sense of loss—the loss of poetry amidst brutality. Readers realize, Shrestha is aware of the poetry of both Faiz Ahmed Faiz (‘aur bhi dukh hain zamane mein mohabbat ke siwa’ from ‘Mujh Se Peheli Si Mohabbat’) and Sukanta Bhattacharya (‘kobita tomay aajke dilam chhuti, khudhar rajye prithibi godyomoy’ from ‘Hey Mohajibon’)—while the former mourns the impossibility of love during political turmoil, as does Shrestha, the latter renounces poetic idioms amidst hardships. Avinash Shrestha’s invocation of Faiz and Bhattacharya situates him as a people’s poet—one who is not only stirred by the sufferings of others but is also able to empathize and be one with the experiences of his community.
Shrestha documents racial violence in ‘The Blues’— ‘Dark-skinned men shouting/ to forget pain’; slaves ‘being…whipped’, losing sleep, singing the blues (p. 77). Grief seeps into the psyche of those who witness violence. So, the poet/speaker, having witnessed injustices, claims— ‘Sometimes I trespass against myself…Sometimes I consider myself/ an ancient, decrepit cosmos/ and there/ my unbearable griefs all/ like a mythical constellation/ collapse/ into black holes’ (p. 81, ‘Oh My Sun Griefs!’). By consuming the grief and miseries of those around him, the poet-speaker suffers dissociation and decrepit condition.
Shrestha’s climate activism and commentary on ecological violence is embedded in his desire to be one with nature. He writes, ‘Embracing the river I fall asleep unafraid/ & when I wake, I become the boundless sea’ (p. 9, ‘Metamorphosis’); ‘All night I crawled awake in the lifespan of a caterpillar/ In the afternoon dream I’ve transformed into a butterfly in bright air’ (p. 9, ‘Metamorphosis’). Moreover, anxiety, trauma and anguish, depicted in earlier poems, not only find release in the poet’s ruse with nature in his later works, but the poet’s ecological experiences also provide meaning to his present existence. In other words, the author attempts to make sense of his own sorrows and anxieties through his relationship with natural objects. His persona develops while he examines his ‘existence/ sifting the chaff of…[his] own loneliness’ (p. 39, ‘On Descending a Fog-Rimmed Mountain’), or through his ‘primitive desire to be a bird’ (p. 9, ‘Metamorphosis’). And it is through this personal transformative journey that the poet also tends to learn— ‘Tomorrow…God will sprout from…[him]’ (p. 9, ‘Metamorphosis’).
In the ending of the poem ‘On Descending a Fog-Rimmed Mountain’, Shrestha writes— ‘Shutting the factory of poetry/ I’m descending/ slowly towards the fog-/ shrouded village/ of my subconscious’ (p. 41). By renouncing his present human consciousness, and with it, the responsibility of manufacturing poems, the poet descends into a simpler animal existence. The bird, the horse, the caterpillar he inhabits reinforces this desire. The poet’s forsaking of human consciousness, however, comes only after he has made his readers aware of the pitfalls of deforestation. Perhaps, this is a manifestation of the guilt that must accompany anthropogenic activities. In ‘Jungle: A Soliloquy’, the poet explains— ‘With the jungle shall escape all beauty/ With the trees shall leave all form’ (p. 29). He warns us—as deforestation erodes nature’s adornments such as birds, butterflies, seasons and flowers, ‘Sorrow will loom’ (p. 29) in the human mind. This profound realization permeates into Shrestha’s gloom as well as urges him to ‘sing of the jungle’s immortality’ (p. 29).
It is only natural for a politically aware young writer to metamorphose into an environmentally conscious poet. Human activities during the Anthropocene have indelibly affected Shrestha—his dejection, desire and inability to occupy both the human and animal worlds. He tells us, ‘…the poet—neither ready to be bird/ nor fish/ neither ready to be human/ nor dirt/ Became—a sigh/ an intimation/ a cipher’ (p. 23, ‘Song of the Five Elements’). Avinash Shrestha directs our attention to the present climate crisis by employing a playful use of language and refreshing images. And Rohan Chhetri’s excellent translation offers newer meaning to Shrestha’s surrealist naturalism and humane ways of portraying fear and human desolation. Readers attuned to environmental activism, ecocriticism, and vulnerability or marginality studies would relate to Avinash Shrestha’s writing and its timely translation.
Shamayita Sen is a poet, Ph.D. scholar and literary commentator.