Sonnet
Yadu Raj Baral
Michigan, USA
In fact, I am habituated to write sonnets. I think nature has trained me to make word-dance in the rhythm of sonnets, be the dance a happy or sad one. When the page of my heart opens, the nib of my pen floats endlessly. I started writing sonnets thinking that my heart’s pen would help the nib to sprinkle ‘happy ink’ but I have not seen any one of my sonnets being favored by this ink.
I struggle to live and the past and the future are outdated in the lexicon of my heart. But, as I sit to write sonnets or turn on the sonnet-filled diaries placed in one of the corners of my room, a love story of a foreign warrior and a rich interior girl comes fresh in my memory. And, I don’t know what made me write up this sonnet.
The foreign warrior had come to Nepal to enjoy a yearlong holiday leaving behind his mother. He felt bored after enough amusement and to get rid of his boredom and earn money for his journey back, he started working as a private school teacher in the heart of a big town. During his on and off period, the warrior wrote sundry sonnets on his motherland and love.
One day, it so happened that one of his love sonnets had attracted an interior girl. He didn’t care who she was and went unnoticed during their encounters. His heart being totally cultured to free his motherland from a possible invasion, he didn’t have time to think for her. As a committed warrior, his heart was rather filled with patriotic feelings and remembered who he was and his duty towards his motherland. When thoughts of love and his own future world tilled him deep down in his solitude, he overpowered them expressing in the form of sonnets. ‘ My duty is of higher value than to have an exterior love partner’ he thought.
As he was lost in his sonnets one day, a sealed envelope reached his room. He blindly opened it and surprised later that it was a love proposal from the same girl. ‘How easily this interior lass can propose me for love,’ he wondered. ‘Moreover the society rejects any foreigner to marry the interior girls.’ he thought this would never prove conclusive. ‘No!’ He at once remembered his mother, who had advised him with tearful eyes during his departure as saying:
‘You will see a lot beyond your assumptions. Keep yourself away from the things, which will be not yours there. Young you are still and an outlandish warrior. A heap of native responsibilities are on a wait for you. Who knows you may need to clamber and journey may follow spikes upon untrodden path. Life somewhere appears arduous and somewhere tetchy. Two empty hands of a warrior are worthier than the hands armed with the weapons of exterior obloquy.’
Although, nature assisted him the entry of spring in his heart, he ignored her proposal at first. By that time, he had already written many sonnets describing her as his ‘dream fairy’ that presented herself before her dreamer in a life of reality. His heart in gradual process could not keep him in peace as though he were spelled by her love. The words of his mother and her unfelt love started a mutiny tearing his strong heart into shreds. The contradictory conflict when mounted its summit, he pacified himself and felt a change in his heart. Love of a girl proved powerful against his determined heart indeed. Before he responded to her proposal, he grew insane in her love and the fountain of sonnets resulted not less than you can imagine.
After he had accepted and replied, the rush of love letters between them knew no limit. The girl from time to time appeared before him in those attires and facial expressions that best fascinated him. They defined love as the transparent mixture of two souls either alive or dead. The sweet-love talks rushed to and fro amidst any interval. It became a curse for both to remain alone in absence of the other. They embellished their tryst with juicy promises and exchanged their love names. The girl bent low at her lord’s feet and embraced by him grew sensitive insanely. The boy promised her to take her to his native country where his mother would be ready to accept her. They saw the future days and declared to be an instance of ideal love.
No sooner than they had departed from the tryst one evening, his native friend handed him the letter. It read ‘war broke out, report immediately.’ Unpleasant situation engrossed him in. He decided to propose her parents but she denied. War was his dignity and the girl his inseparable heart piece. His settled heart was once more gripped in an untold invasion. The girl disclosed him that they would elope the following evening. There was inner pinch of injustice in him. ‘Is foreigner not a human who has right to love abroad?’ A question dashed him bitterly.
As they were half way on board home, the police kidnapped them and brought them back to her hometown and locked them in the separate cells. Before her kin and kith and the ‘vile baton’ the next morning, the girl fed the boy with an empty spoon and off went with them giving not a single glance at him. The warrior was accused and the court declared him life sentence. Writing sad-inked sonnets, he is still waiting for her to free him. He asks, ‘Is justice wills of a stronger individual?’