Dashain makes me a little sad.
It starts with nostalgia and ends
in an abyss that offers no understanding.
It is the change of season;
the fluttering kites
that do not quite reason.
We could tie our phone with the thread and
launch it instead.
Dashain makes me a little sad.
It might be the loss of power
crisp new clothes would otherwise have had.
Rituals become arcane-
it’s the passing of time.
Is it time to make a new one?
Dashain was a rhythm
that would beat once a year;
now it beats all the time or none at all.
There is more money on the boat
more to win and more to lose.
But the void of meaning,
remains as stabbing as a
child’s accidentally torn shoe.
Dashain was a destination
one that we’d race to reach;
but when the end morphs into other things
what remains are outlines
whose figures have somehow vanished from the page.
Dashain makes me a little sad.
Maybe all it does is remind –
in the deepest corners of our lives
no ritual can touch us,
no person accessible;
no word sayable.
Dashain will make me a little sad
with each passing year.
On the last day of Dashain, the 15th day, we’d receive the invitation to gather at my grandparents’ house. Visiting relatives and eating is the ritual of the festival.
Every year, on the last day of the festival, I would climb up to the highest terrace on my grandparents’ house to watch the kites dancing in the skies one last time.
The kites would vanish, leaving no trace. The holidays would end, school would reopen; assignments yet to be done. I would stand there, my eyes savoring the sky as time sweeps by.
Nothing reminds me of the passing time, the leaping time, and the morphing time more than Dashain.
(Cover art: Digital art on Dashain by Alfa.)
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