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THE HILLS ARE EMPTY (Satis Shroff)
Where have all the young folk gone?
The men are in foreign armies
Serving strange masters.
The servile, pretty women
Have been enticed to India's brothels
And you ask me:
"Where have all the young folk gone?"
They went to survive
The coldness that has swept the land
The drought, famine
Poverty, nepotism and feudalism
And the curse that goes
Under the name of afno manchey'
And chakari.
Glossary:
afno manchey: one's own clan or own people in a set-up
chakari: service done in a feudal heirarchy system (Speicheleckerei) to attain personal gains
___________________________________________________________________
BACK TO THE VILLAGE (Satis Shroff)
Go back to the village
And order and a decree
With the blessing of the palace
To send the rural people home
And urbanised spectators to rural Nepal
Villagers who fled from the poverty
And the barrenness of their homes/wombs.
___________________________________________________________________
THE VIDEO-DOCTOR (Satis Shroff)
"I'll go to the video-doctor
He'll find out what's wrong with me.
And prescribe a foreign cure
Or give me an imported cure
A medicine that's stronger than
The herbs of the traditional shaman.
Yes,the video-doctor examines my belly
He applies a white, cold paste
On my ailing belly.
Turns on and off fascinating switches
And fumbles like Dr. Frankenstein
Above his prostrate creature,
With instructions and signs that are alien.
Red, green, yellow lights blink
The screen flimmers, curves appear
Am I that? Is that my belly? Honestly?
A broad, hazy conical contour that
Appears and disappears.
What has the foreign-trained shaman seen?
I saw numbers and shades
Did he see more?
Can he tell more?
Can he find a cure?
Does he see spirits, boksas and boksis
Bhut and pret that I don't?
Or other spirits that don't exist?
Will the cold metal on my belly
Perhaps explode?
Will I get an electro-shock?
Had I but listened to Maila Tamang
And gone to the jhakri, dhami or bijuwa
I could have saved the precious rupees
And got away with a rooster,
Instead of being told to turn
To the right, left, on my belly and back
With my body exposed
And a nurse, a woman sneering at me
Oh, what a shame for my male pride.
I'll never go there again.
___________________________________________________________________
THE ROSE VENDOR (Satis Shroff)
He comes with his apologetic Asian face
A swarthy man selling roses
In cafes, taverns, pubs and eating-places
In the evenings
When the shops have closed in Germany.
He comes when you're discussing politics
He comes when you're wooing your date
He comes with his roses
In Chinese, Greek and Italian restaurants
Between bites of Peking duck, gyros and lasagne.
He thrusts his bunch of red, mauve roses
Looks at your eyes and hers.
You look away
Or you say, "Nein Danke".
Scared to look into his brown eyes
Eyes that almost plead to you
To buy his roses.
Wet eyes that remind you
Of Fifi, your poodle.
The rose vendor doesn't utter a word
Does he have a tongue?
Or is our tongue too difficult?
Can't he speak pidgin, this asylant?
What brings him to our land?
He isn't allowed to work
He's probably not anerkannt.
He's intimidated, not integrated.
He can only sell roses
In cafes, taverns and pubs.
"It's good so, otherwise
He'll take my job", says a German.
It doesn't bother him to do odd jobs
Washing dishes, folding napkins
Pouring out drinks and fruit cocktails.
He doesn't mind being a portier in a hotel,
Carrying other people's bags
And pleased to get a tip.
It doesn't bother him
To work in the wards:
Psychiatric, neurological or surgical
Helping disabled German patients
Carrying their urine-bottles, pans and pills.
It doesn't bother him one bit
To work in factories that produce:
Chocolates, furniture and microchips.
To inhale poisonous gases and work
With lethal, carcinogenic chemicals.
To do what they ask
For it's again the epoch,
Of inflation and recession,
Of broken contracts, lost jobs,
Split and patchwork families.
Of people suddenly grown envious,
Wary, jealous and fierce.
The basic instinct in the Germans
Breaks through.
The rich, good German shows an ugly face.
Who's to blame for this economic mess?
The sly politicians?
Or the dumb, lobbyless aliens?
The asylum-seekers from the Third World
Or the Aussiedler from behind the Iron Curtain?
The Aussiedler are ethnic Germans
The aliens are not.
Shall we throw bricks into Turkish shops?
And smear swastikas on Jewish graves?
Shall we burn books and works of art again?
And put on brown shirts?
A start has already made.
In Rostock, Hoyerswerda and Mölln.
Some even deny the Holocaust as a lie.
The drums are beating now and then.
The old Reichsflags are seen
In the streets and stadions
And no longer in the attic.
Bomber jackets, baseball bats
Springerstiefel and skinheads
Belong to the Zeitgeist.
A new brown subculture is growing,
Thanks to the electronic media,
Warns the federal Verfassungsschutz.
Conservative, pure, aryan to the core
Skinheaded, blue-eyed,
Arrogant and nationalistic
Is that the neo-German of the year 2000?
Quo vadis European Union?
The ecu, the multiethnicity?
A united Europe, one big world?
Where's the integration that was spoken of?
Where's the tolerance?
Where is the Miteinander?
Gone down the gutter?
--------------------
A SMALL PARADISE (Satis Shroff)
A walk with Elena in a pram
Along the Wildtal (the Wild Valley) path,
I hear the chirping of birds
In the trees and dense foliage on the wayside.
Elena leans out, only to throw herself back on her pram.
Suddenly a clearing and you see
Two ranges of the Black Forest mountains,
Behind the conifer silhouette.
Two white butterflies frolic and fly by.
Elene, who’s not even two, exclaims, ‘Da-da- da!’
As she points to them full of glee.
We go past the pastures and discover
A small Hexenhaus (witch’s house)and a row
Of Herrenhäüser (mansions).
There’s shade from the morning sun.
A noise along the tracks below
Increases in crescendo.
The world has caught up with us.
A sleek, snow-white ICE-train dashes by and breaks my reverie.
___________________________________________________________________
At the German Doctor’s (Satis Shroff)
My small daughter Elena’s middle-ear is inflamed
So I go to our German child-doctor.
He examines her and curses her left ear,
Which is read and causes pain, even after thirteen antibiotic cures.
“By the way, what do you say about the massacre in your kingdom?”
I tell him it’s incredible, a crown prince who killed the King and Queen,
His brother and sister and then himself,
In a fit of rage and helplessness”.
The bald, bespectacled German doctor went on,
‘My little daughter quipped today at breakfast,
“the King must have lied when he said to his people
The automatic gun went off and shot them all.”
Strange things happen in the Kingdom of Nepal.
******
The Summer Heat (August 2003) (Satis Shroff)
Forests are burning in Canada, Portugal and Brandenburg-Germany
There’s danger of fire even in the Black Forest
With this scenario in the background,
Our children Julian and Elena and a Kindergarden friend Sarah
Are playing: teasing, jumping, running and singing in the garden,
Having a rollicking time in their inflated swimming-pool
Under the shade of two plum trees
No Kindergarden and no school, for it’s the summer holidays.
The summer heat is with us.
The fair town of Zäringen-Freiburg and the entire Schwarzwald
Seems to have slid to the tropics.
Car drivers of all makes barking at each other
To turn off their car stereo music and ghetto blasters, and barbeques
For fear of a flame that might spark off a wild fire.
A thick set bearded in casual wear, spectacles on his nose,
A grin countenance came, leaned on our house wall and said,
“I can’t bear the noise of you children playing in your garden.’
Six pair of eyes looked up at him
Not understanding what the neighbour had against them.
Herr Hermann lived two houses away.
‘I’m retired since two months
And I want to enjoy my days reading philosophic texts
Or listening to classical music
But I get the jitters when I hear the you shouting and screaming.
Our immediate neighbour is a one-eyed roofer,
With a heart for big dogs, cats and children.
He told us, ‘When I first came to Zäringen
It was a dead area and silent like a graveyard.
I’m so glad that people are buying houses or building them.
It’s filling with life.’
He has bought the house next to ours
And renovates it around the clock,
Not even bothering about the afternoon rest hours from 1 to 3 pm.
He stops working neither on weekdays nor on religious and state holidays.
He hates silence and gets nervous when he doesn’t work.
At that very moment you could hear him working with his electric drill.
I asked Herr Hermann, ‘Can you hear this noise day in and day out? We do.’
“I don’t hear it, but I hear the children’s noise.
I can’t concentrate when I read or listen to the music.
It penetrates my ears.
Strange ears that don’t register noises
Created by cars, vans, trucks, taxis that pass by all day and night,
Created by his own garden appliances,
Created by his other neighbour who works like a horse on his 300 year house,
Created by how own beer parties deep into the night
And the blood curdling barks of the neighbour’s big black dogs,
That Julian my 5 year son fondly calls:
“The Howls of the Baskerville hounds” after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book.
Sarah, who’s mother is a state-attorney, remarked:
‘We also make a lot of noise in our garden,
But no one has complained.
Children are allowed to have fun and scream and shout when they play.’
Julian couldn’t resist the temptation of adding:
‘Herr Hermann, didn’t you scream and shout when you were a child?
Or have you forgotten it?’
Herr Hermann was speechless and left.
It just wasn’t his day.
Perhaps it was the 40 degrees outside.
___________________________________________________________________
On Painting a Winter Landscape (Satis Shroff)
I’ll paint a picture in acryl,
Of a winter landscape.
Not the Alps, but the Himalayas.
The eternal snows in the mountains
Are silvery and white.
The sky is azure, like on a holiday card,
With fluffy clouds above.
It’s a winter scene,
But you don’t feel the cold.
And you don’t freeze at daytime.
Yet when it becomes dark,
We Nepalis feel in our marrows the cold Himalayan wind,
Howling down the valleys and spurs.
Theirs is no central heating.
Neither gas nor electro-heating.
There are no plugs in the Himalayan huts,
Except along the well-beaten trekking trails.
There’s a tree in the landscape.
A black, naked tree
With branches like hands
In suspended animation.
A black crow crows aloud
And a shaman listens to it. It’s a mute language.
The shaman understands the crow
Does the crow follow the shaman?
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A NEPAL TALK (Satis Shroff)
A German school teacher invites me
To talk about Nepal
And to introduce a traditional dish to her German class.
The teacher, a lady in her forties,
Likes it multicultural.
She asks her pupils with foreign parents
To greet the class in outlandish tongues.
The bicultural children comply,
And the class learns to say:
‘Good morning, Bon Soir, Namaste,
In English, French and Nepali.
A class full of curious children await me.
We make momos and little hands help in turn.
In the audio-visual room the slide projector has no bulb.
An Italian Hausmeister turns up with a new one
And voila! Our adventure can begin.
I show them colour transparencies
Of Nepal, my homeland.
Temples, streets and school-children and ethnic Nepalis
From Kathmandu Valley and the hills.
Living Goddesses, potters, farmers, sadhus and priests,
Overdressed and underdressed Nepalis.
Rhinos, tigers and elephants in the subtropical flatlands.
King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and the Royal Gurkha Guards.
After the slides we return
To the classroom to try out the momos.
The German kids relish the Nepali Maultaschen.
I tell them a story about the yeti.
Meanwhile, Frau Wolf gathers money for the ski afternoon.
Our Nepal theme is over,
What remains are the queries,
Of the innocent, well-fed and well-off children of Freiburg:
Why did you come to Germany?
Have you climbed the Everest?
What does the Yeti look like?
Is the King of Nepal rich?
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OUT OF GERMANY (Satis Shroff)
Germany is our home, our Heimat
A land with Christian occidental norms and values.
A land with a culture and tradition
Rich in values, diversity and a hoary past.
Even in this social welfare state,
The poor are getting relatively poorer.
We’re embraced the euro,
And everything is expensive.
The old Deutsche Mark is out,
Though a lot of older Germans
Have problems with the conversions.
It reminds me of the time,
When Nepal went metric according to a royal decree.
The government did, but the older generation of Nepalis didn’t.
They still cling to the manas and pathis.
That’s tradition .
Is Nepal going with the times?
___________________________________________________________________
MY NIGHTMARE (Satis Shroff)
I dream of a land far away.
A land where a king rules his realm,
A land where there are still peasants without rights,
Who plough the fields that don’t belong to them.
A land where the children have to work,
And have no time for daydreams,
Where girls cut grass and sling heavy baskets on their backs.
Tiny feet treading up the steep path.
A land where the father cuts wood from sunrise till sunset,
And brings home a few rupees.
A land where the innocent children stretch their right hands,
And are rewarded with dollars.
A land where a woman gathers white, red, yellow and crimson
tablets and pills,
From the altruistic world tourists who come her way.
Most aren’t doctors or nurses,
But they distribute the pills,
With no second thoughts about the side-effects.
The Nepali woman possesses an arsenal,
Of potent pharmaceuticals.
She can’t read the finely printed instructions,
For they are in German, French, English, Czech,
Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Spanish.
What does she care, the hieroglyphs are always there.
Black alphabets appear like an Asiatic buffalo to her.
‘Kala akshar, bhaisi barabar,’ says the Nepali woman,
For she can neither read nor write.
The very thought of her giving the bright pills and tablets
To another ill Nepali child or mother,
Torments my soul.
How ghastly this thoughtless world
Of educated trekkers, who give medical alms and play
The macabre role of physicians,
In the amphitheatre of the Himalayas.
Glossary:
kala: Schwarz
akshar: Buchstaben, Schrift
bhaisi: asiatische Büffel
barabar: gleich, vergleichbar mit
___________________________________________________________________
WHEN THE SOUL LEAVES (Satis Shroff)
Like Shakespeare said, 'All the world's a stage'
And we've played many different roles in our lives
In various places and scenarios.
As we grow old and ripe, our knowledge of the world grows.
We hold what we cannot see, smell, taste and touch in our memories.
We only have to walk down memory lane
To find the countless faces, places, sights and sounds that we have stored,
To be recalled and retrieved through association
In conversations with others
Or when we contemplate alone.
Why should elderly people be scared of social terror and aging?
Aging is a biological phenomenon.
We should be glad that we have lived useful lives,
Filled with good experiences.
The wonderful children that we have created,
The very gems of our genes,
Each so individual in their personalities.
The house we lived in and filled
With love, laughter, songs and music.
The parents and grand-parents, friends and relatives
We have had the time to share with.
But we should be able to assert our exit from this earthly existence
In the manner that we desire,
And not leave it in the hands
Of an intensive life-extension unit.
Let us dwell on common experiences and encounters
That we can take with us,
When the massless soul leaves the body
And races with the speed of light
Towards space and becomes unified
With the ever expanding, timeless cosmos.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Street Where I Live (Satis Shroff)
The street where I live with my family is called the Pochgasse.
The Pochgasse lies to the north of Freiburg, in Zähringen.
There’s a castle ruin in Zähringen, which is a tourist attraction.
In the early days they used to dig for silver ores below the castle.
The ores that were dug were brought to the 'Poche',
Where they separated the silver from the ore
By melting them at high temperatures in the charcoal-kilns.
Our house is fondly remembered as ‘the milk shop of family Wichmann.’
People used to tell us often,
'Gel, ihr wohnt da, wo früher die Wichmanns gewohnt haben?'
Frau Sanders, who lives at the charcoal-street, said to me,
'I went there often to buy milk.'
I tried to imagine our house with cows, big milk-cans and haystacks.
At the moment it smells of smoked-fish.
The adjacent barn has been rented to a German,
Who wears his spectacles on the tip of his nose,
He lisps and tells stories of the old times in Zähringen.
He smokes trout from the Black Forest thrice a year.
I think he sells them, otherwise he wouldn't smoke so many fishes.
He always hands me a freshly smoked trout
Wrapped on a piece of German newspaper.
I thank him and hand him a bottle of Weissherbst from our cellar.
My one-eyed neighbour Herr Huber and I relish the trouts.
He drives an old, broken-down car and has two big, black Rottweiler dogs.
He calls them Zeus and Apollo.
They're nice and always leashed.
At noon, when Herr Huber is away, and they have hunger,
You hear blood-curdling howls reminiscent of the hound of Baskerville.
When I sit and read a book on the terrace,
Frau Keller greets me with a friendly 'Hallochen!' from the street.
She has short, silvery hair and has a warm smile across her face.
She's an ethnic German from Romania.
I like her soft-spoken East Bloc accent.
Her friendliness is disarming even though she has a lot of pain.
Then there are two Frau Maiers, a thin and an obese one.
The obese one is fighting a losing battle with her breath and varicose veins.
One can plainly see that she has a tough time
Walking up the steep and narrow Pochgasse.
Bur her pain-filled countenance disappears,
When she emits a courageous smile and greets me.
It's like watching the sun breaking
Through the sky on a clouded, winter morning day.
The thin Frau Maier wears spectacles and is over 70,
Likes to chat about the weather and the day's headlines.
She certainly is going strong.
In the afternoon I hear soft piano melodies,
When my son Julian does his music exercises.
The tones of the piano mingle with bird-cries,
And suddenly one hears the loud noise of a lorry,
Transporting either furniture or building materials,
Up and down the Pochgasse.
A lot of expensive villas are under construction.
'Ach, Zähringen isn't what it was previously ' says Herr Flamm,
Who lives four houses down the street.
Herr Flamm knows Zähringen,
For he and his grandparents were born here.
The entire Music Choir Zäringia, where he's a member,
Has aging problems.
The choir sings only the old traditional songs.
Broadway songs, rap, hip-hop, gospels aren't traditional enough.
The German youth just keep away.
The Zähringer, as people living in Zähringen are wont to be called,
Are an active folk when it comes to organising things.
Every autumn there's a Hock around the St. Blasius church,
A get together, with Blasmusik, children's cries of joy,
The smell of waffeln, noodle soup, roasted pork, sausages,
Fried potatoes and pizza lies in the air.
The ancestors of the people in Zähringer were charcoal-burners,
Who lived behind the castle.
One day the coal-burner discovered melted silver under his oven.
In those days there used to live a king, who'd fled to Kaisersstuhl.
He lived with his family in poverty.
The coal-burner went and gave the silver he'd found to the king.
The king was so impressed that he gave his daughter in marriage to the coal-burner,
As well as the land surrounding Freiburg.
The king named him the Duke (Herzog) von Zähringen.
The Zähringer duke founded Freiburg and other castles.
Sometimes, we send our children to Herr Laule, the grocer.
The children like doing errands to Herrr Laule,
For he never forgets to reward them with candies.
The bespectacled Frau Laule, is stout and kind and they come from Waldkirch.
Hope they'll run the shop for years to come.
The children get a slice of Lyoner as a treat at the butcher Sumser's shop.
My daughter Natasha loves Lyoner.
There's a tunnel at the end of the Pochgasse.
The cars drive below and the ICE and Swiss trains above.
Young and elderly Germans come by and ask only one question:
„Wo, bitte, geht’s zum Zähringerburg?“
Where's the road to the Zähringen castle-ruins?
The castle was built in 1091 by Herzog Bertold V.
It was destroyed by war and fire.
What has remained is an 18 meter high tower,
With a commanding view of Freiburg.
Glossary:
Gasse: small lane
Köhler: charcoal-burner
Köhlerei: charcoal works
Weissherbst: a German wine
Burg: castle
Meiler: charcoal-kiln
Blaskapelle: brass-band
spanferkel: porkling
----------------------
THE GARDEN (Satis Shroff)
I sat in the garden
With Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure on my lap,
And saw a small butterfly
With dark spots on its frail wings,
Violet patterns on its tail.
It was Aglais utricae
Flattering lightly
Between the marigolds
And chrysanthemums.
The Potentilla nepalensis
Was growing well
Under the shade of the rhododendrons.
The great pumpkin was spreading
Its leafy tentacles everywhere.
The tomatoes were fighting for light
Hiding beneath its gigantic green leaves.
A Papilio machaon with its swallow-tail
Came from no where.
The laughter of the children,
As they swung in the garden’s two swings
Were a delight to one’s soul.
Little Florentin’s fear of bees,
Natasha’s morbid fear of spiders,
Elena’s garden gymnastics
And Julian’s delight in discovering
New insects, snails and snakes.
Holding hands we strolled in our garden.
You watered the flowers and trees,
I removed long, brown snails,
A hobby-gardener of Nepalese descent,
In a lovely house with character in Zähringen,
An Allemanic stronghold.
Once the subject of dispute
Between Austria and France,
Now a sleepy residential area of Freiburg.
---------------------------
GROW WITH LOVE (Satis Shroff)
Love yourself
Accept yourself,
For self-love and self-respect
Are the basis of joy, emotion
And spiritual well being.
Watch your feelings,
Study your thoughts
And your beliefs,
For your existence
Is unique and beautiful.
You came to the world alone
And you go back alone.
But while you breathe
You are near
To your fellow human beings,
Families, friends and strangers
As long as you are receptive.
Open yourself to lust and joy,
To the wonders of daily life and Nature.
Don’t close your door to love.
If you remain superficial,
You’ll never reach its depth.
Love is more than a feeling.
Love is also passion and devotion.
Grow with love and tenderness.
------------------------------------------
WITHOUT WORDS (Satis Shroff)
We speak with each other
A wonderful feeling overcomes me
And I’m touched to the roots of my existence.
As though it was a doubling of my existence.
It becomes a passion
To speak with each other.
Our lives filled with togetherness:
With ourselves and our children.
I discover myself in you
And you in me.
Where one is at home
In the company of the other
And vice versa.
Where you can be the way you are
Where I can be the way I am.
Our tolerance for each other is crucial
There are moments when one forgets time.
We speak to each other without words.
It’s not sung,
It’s not instrumental chords.
Just our hearts understanding each other.
In tact with each other.
Our eyes speak volumes
And a nod is enough.
---------------------------------------------
MUSIC AND MUSE (Satis Shroff)
Pillows of silk, sheets of white satin
A world of lights and colours,
Of precious spices, exotic fruits
And music.
A world of joy and merrymaking
Behind the Rana palace curtains
In Kathmandu.
I’ve learned the mystery of love
And buried my face in her lap.
Penned poems in the white heat
Of passionate moments,
Till she cried in ecstasy, ‘How wonderful.’
-------------------------------------------------
NO LAST VICTORY (Satis Shroff)
Power counts in this world
And we cannot change it.
It has always been there
Will always be there.
The titular heads change
But power remains.
Power forces a battle
A victory, triumph and rules.
Everything is useless.
What remains is only dust
And memories of our deeds
And misdeeds.
Told and written
By the bards and historians
Of this kingdom.
There is no last victory.
Someday, someone will come
And be victorious over you,
Or your sons,
Or their sons.
*****
A FORLORN LOVE (Satis Shroff)
Once upon a time, I remember,
I’d folded my hands and mumbled:
‘Namaste, Your Majesty’
In Bonn’s La Redoute Palace.
‘I greet the godliness in you,’
For that is what namaste means.
I remember chatting with King Birendra
After a glass of champaigne.
I also remember running
Over the red carpet at Echterdingen airport,
With Margot Busak behind me,
Handing the bouquet of Black Forest flowers
To Queen Ayeshwarya Devi Shah,
Wearing white long gloves
And a deep blue chiffon sari.
She was pleasantly surprised,
Smiled her sweet smile
And said, ‘Oh, thank you.’
I heard the news of King Birendra’s death
And Queen Ayeshwarya’s
Over the radio.
Shot by their son: Crown Prince Dipendra
Who went to Budanilkantha, Oxford,
Worshipped firearms and took drugs,
Dreamt of ruling his father’s kingdom
With an Indian princess,
A fairy tale.
But that was not to be.
The father, mother and son
Were licked and devoured by flames of Agni,
At the Royal cremation ghat
On the banks of the Bagmati river,
With half-naked priests
Chanting vedic mantras
And adding ghee.
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