Ego
Somewhere far from source and resource
A black river flows
Twisting and turning all along the thoracic cavity
To join the brimming artery
The ego in full spate
And if at times
It chokes in its course
Forecasting a fiasco
The ego as tough as toad
Croak to continuity
And then the faith of me and mine
Will tumble down one day
Into that river of rancor
To the secret tune
Of an absent self
Yet, we’re in the dupe of
An ego so convincing
So exact as the sleazy politician
Endlessly making bogus promises
Whilst there’s nothing at all
An inevitable chameleon
Is what we really are
To be egoless
As ego whispers to us
Is to lose all
All benefits of love, romance,
Bossiness or nosiness
It is exactly to be
Reduced to a remnant of a cup of tea
And then true benefits of love emerge
To fill hearts with the harmony of sacred energy
A Himalayan girl
Even in a huff
A Himalayan girl hums
No noisy or eerie expression emerge
From the screen of the channel of peace
The acidity of her arteries, but mingles
In the thick of music up here
And her heart full of hurls heard
Only in the lyrics of her song
Such is the will of the Lord
Such is the echo of the place she grew up
Such is the soul of a Himalayan girl
Full thirty winters
I’m alive on your lap, O Khangchendzonga
Alive with your inspiration
I learnt all of love, beauty and mercy
All of climbs and falls, toils and sweats
From you, O saviour of my clan
And still, the path to loud words untraced
The footprints of yaks, lead me only to musings
I muse over the showers in the forest
I hear the green birds sing
I smell the ripe corns as I travel with Teesta
I perceive the whispers of the wind
Even the clashes of clouds and the far-off bawl of farmers
Even then, I know not the path to loud words
Such is the will of the Lord
Such is the echo of the place she grew up
Such is the soul of a Himalayan girl
…When caught in a traffic jam
The taxi-ridden streets of Gangtok
Lie numb and dumb
The drivers’ focus condense into frost
As new cops voluntarily shrug
Sound together with stroke and straight as scythe
The whistle as hard as the siren
Pierces into the ears of the deaf
Their eyes rove into the blue book
Others just flash past
In retort to this rapport
Cops give a rap
In a town redolent of love and trust,
Under the roasting sun that reflect
The eyes of the looted
Yet, men love the racy description
Of a Gangtok taxi driver
And even if a ragamuffin
They listen to the raillery of so good a raconteur
Once trapped in a traffic jam.
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A journalist and a poet, Yishey Doma was born in Martam in the east district of Sikkim. Her published works include the highly acclaimed coffee table book Sikkim: The Hidden Fruitful Valley and other books like Legends of the Lepchas: Folktales from Sikkim and Sikkim: A Traveller's Companion. Her work has also been anthologized in Strangers Notes and Other Essays. She is a recipient of the first North-East Poetry Award (Guwahati, 2007) from the Poetry Society of India. Yishey lives in Gangtok and works as a copy editor for the Sikkim Express.
