This City is Mine
written by: Suman Pokhrel
The forty-year-long city, to me at the time, stretched across the span of my life, had become part of my being, dancing and twirling through the myriad layers of my mind and the countless rooms of my heart. Both the visible and invisible facets of the city, woven through the four bygone decades, had made me smile in solitude at times and shed tears at others.
During such a time, the city itself posed a question: ‘Whose city is this?’ There must have been countless respondents, but when it reached me, something had to be crafted, incorporating even un-lived experiences and unfelt emotions, in the form of poetry. The theme of the poem was already on the surface, but the poem itself had yet to become visible. The aim was not to write the poem that naturally emerged from its core, but to summon a poem that had not yet been fully prepared to exist. An infinite space, within a certain boundary available for emotions to swirl, had to be decorated by filling it as much as possible with poetry. It was not possible to bring the entire experiences and emotions of forty years into a single poem, yet one had to be crafted with that very ambition.
Countless images of a city, gazed upon and absorbed by an individual since he was a toddler who roamed its streets almost naked, until he matured into a forty-year-old man, were swirling within my memory.
I do not know whether a statue, standing in the city square for forty years and recognized by countless eyes, would feel as if it had arrived somewhere else. How many birds that come at dusk to shelter themselves within its embrace, the tree standing by the roadside for forty years remembers, I do not know either. Nor do I know the footsteps of how many pairs of shoes the road, which has slept in the same place for forty years, never forgets, or how many pairs of eyes the blackboard glued to the classroom wall for forty years never remembers.
The scent of the cereal porridge served at Bal Mandir kindergarten, the taste of sweets from Anantaram Ba’s shop, the fragrance of the colors that painted the walls of the seminar hall at the zonal administration office for the first time, the bottle filled with dairy milk that arrived at the doorstep of our home every morning in exchange for ninety paisa, the fear of the bomb that exploded at Hospital Chowk, the commotion around the Birendra Shabha Ghriha theatre hall during the play “Ani Deurali Runchha,” the floundering of fish on Binayak’s fishing hook, the vigor on our asylumed grandfather’s face as he reached home again, crossing the Nepal–India border in hiding from everyone, and the hand that reached the hospital on the evening of Laxmi Puja day after being burned by a firecracker— all have vanished, despite my presence right here, like the face of the unseen girl who once pinched me with her sharp nails in a crowded night of Krishna Jhula festival.
The Huckleberry Finn that resided inside me and kept roaming had also vanished without letting me know. The continuous game of various characters entering me and escaping with time, making me one and then another, had not allowed me to settle firmly.
The disappearance of Bazar Adda Chowk and the arrival of Traffic Chowk in its place; the auto rickshaws departing from the corner of Bazar Adda Chowk carrying money and returning with goods from the southern border; the tubular Aarathun bus, holding extreme heat inside its crowded body and supplying it to the city of Dharan; the Bus Stand migrating from Himalaya Road, reaching another place with multiple halts in between; and Malaya Road and Bank Road losing their identity while slumbering right in their respective locations— all startled me as they drifted into my memories, leaving me to wonder whether the city still existed in its old place or had moved somewhere else.
However, the fragrance of henna that had escaped from the hair of girl classmates was still perfuming the ambience of the libraries, streets, and coffee shops of the city. The memories that extended beyond once reaching the classroom, laboratories, and gardens of the college had been scattered here and there on the sidewalks of the city. And even after relocating to another place, Shankar’s Tea Stall still served the same taste to its visitors.
Among the boys of college days, many had become mere emails, who, at this time, had started to gaze from the walls of social media, becoming images. Prakash, Bijay, and Keshav, who resided right in this city, had also become six months or a year apart. Some were consumed by jobs, some were taken by businesses, and some were swallowed by marriage alone.
The city was constantly changing its physical and aesthetic appearances. Old houses were turning into ruins, while crowds of new houses were expanding in the fields. Children in schools established in buildings constructed by destroying mango tree gardens were trying to recognize the mango trees by seeing their pictures in textbooks. Some mothers, who had once breastfed their children while simultaneously planting rice, were now busy running their fingers over the fluff of cotton to make batti, gazing into the distance from the veranda of the old-age home built on the same site.
Doctors had started treating patients visiting government hospitals as if they were less than human. Some people had started acting as if they would read out loud the bills for their treatment at private nursing homes in the center of the city if they got the chance, so that others could know they were no longer as poor as they used to be If someone wanted to meet teachers from government schools, it was as if they had to visit the homes of political workers to find them busy discussing political exchanges rather than the education of children. The common wounds of the nation, like the revolutionary hands that had carried it forward with pride, only to be tied up after completing the revolution, and state authorities trapped in the clutches of mischief and mafia, remained persistent in this city as well.
People were in a relentless race. They ran, forsaking survival, abandoning the very essence of life, their footsteps erasing the whispers of yesterday. The city exhaled its soul into dust, losing dignity, shedding the sanctity of its word, the boundaries of its faith. I wandered among these currents of consciousness and ambition, searching for myself in the maze of striving, wondering whether I, too, was being sculpted into something more beautiful or decaying under the illusion of transformation. Amidst the throngs of shifting consciousness and goals, a situation to search for myself was unfolding, and a question of whether the city was still mine began to weigh heavily upon me.
People imprisoning themselves in the drape of dazzling attires and acting outside as if they were living a better life than before; people trying to flee from their former selves, speaking loudly and performing desperately to hide their inferiority complex; and people who had entered the city after failing to find survival in their place; all were rehearsing to appear authentic, oscillating through the shifting canvases and collages of the city. I was getting confused, wondering if I too was lost amid them and had to search for myself. It was becoming difficult to determine whether my presence had nourished the city or contributed to its decay.
The city was following a routine of stirring every morning, teeming with people devoured by politics and people consuming politics, people shouldering responsibility and people escaping from responsibility, people raising their heads with honesty and people shouting loudly to hide their dishonesty; and by evening, it was sinking into slumber, exhausted and weary from its own chaos. I walked for the first time on the dust of this city and lived with its pulse, its identity woven into mine.
Flawed or fading, whatever it was, it was mine. I took the city and answered: ‘This City is Mine.’
- This City is Mine - July 11, 2026
- Interview Q&A II With Suman Pokhrel - June 19, 2025
- Pranay Yog - May 18, 2025
