Lake

In dreams, I circle a page. It is lapis, lapping, with arms of water. I wake up on a November morning and write:

Each time I speak, I speak with this thing marking me as a speaker. This I. This I speaking here, writing here, working toward something, something. This is the I that I have harnessed and hardened on the page. There were many before this; there are many beyond here. The former I that I meet at the water is blue. She is pooling into a history I can't grasp. Somewhere along the way, I broke out of her. At each page, its waves, she's there.

Somewhere along the way: a Maoist movement, a civil war, a migration, Grandparents waiting, a wide gash of time.

In his book Motherless Tongues, Vicente Rafael explores the tenuous relationship between language and the postcolonial migratory subject. He writes," I express myself, as Octavio Paz says, only by breaking with myself. My identity comes not from being the same but from differing, drifting, and detouring, always intermediate and interconnected: always addressing, addressed by, and becoming, in turn, a you."2

Each I of mine is also a you; each you is an I. The hard line between the two dissolves at each utterance. I am speaking to you — at the mouth of the lake — I am speaking to you, you are speaking to me, I am you, you are me — an I lingering, lingering.

Creek

Water interrupts lines. Breaks below their shape and opens the ground, the page, the hard hard thing. I let water flow between the images, the words, the you and the I. I let water widen the gaps.

River (i)

When the Treaty of Sugauli was ratified in 1816 between Gajrarj Mishra — the royal priest to the Shah Dynasty — and the British East India Company, Nepal ceded significant portions of land. Significant portions of land violently conquered by the Shah Dynasty were then violently taken over by the British East India Company. I read:

At first glance, the treaty stands careless to the movement of water and of people. Small, condensed, the language stiff and wooden; there is little room for that which has preceded the treaty, that which has moved and lived before it, that which has moved to live. But I want something that seeps.

~

I want something that seeps: something about the slippage in the spelling, the falling of seemingly unfaltering language. The original treaty has been missing since 2019.4 I read transcriptions and traversals instead. Is there seepage in this — in the lapses and apertures? The water crashing against the word — is this an erosion?

~

Susta is a disputed territory along the border of Nepal and India. When the Treaty of Sugauli was signed, Susta was on the right side of the Gandaki River; the river's shifting course means that it is now on the left.5 The irony of wanting to contain something that disrupts the very idea of containment is laid bare here.

Pool

Much of Ali's work holds its own breaking. A yearning, a seeking, a routing back to his home Kashmir through and on the page. He later echoes Mandelstam's line in his own poem "A Pastoral": "We shall meet again, in Srinagar."7

We shall meet again. I am trying to route back, by learning. By which I mean, I am trying to pool into a history I can't grasp. I am trying to meet you, my former I. I am trying to sink into the archive, the stories, the scraps; stepping into water and getting lost, becoming porous, stepping into an overwhelm. Its shape a wide open whirl; everything swims here — here, here: the page.

For Ali, you is the container of yearning. The thing toward which he reaches. Writing about  Majnoon and Laila, he explains:

When Majnoon cries, "Beloved/ you are not here," he is addressing a lost love, a revolution.9 But what happens when he gets to the other side? What happens when Laila can't hold his ideal, either as lover or revolutionary? Has his commitment to his search, his seeking, eclipsed the subject of his search — has his love eclipsed his beloved? His is, as Ali would say, a "longing so flawed."10

Mine is a longing so flawed; I — this I, this seeking, routing, searching I — holds its own breaking. Its constant reach toward fullness, a constant break. I flip through my own poems and read:

We shall meet again, we shall meet again. We must visit one day, we must visit one day. We may never meet again, we may never visit. To promise that which cannot quite be promised, if only to satiate a longing. This is heartbreak as craft. An I's own longing — an I here having bloomed into a we.

Sea

I read that etymologically revolution can be traced back to the old French revolucion, the revolving and turning of celestial bodies.11 The slow turn, slow yearn of things. I think of one pulling the other — the moon pulling the sea; the word pulling the letter, the people pulling the people: revolution.

~

In 1990, Nepal's Jana Andolan (literally "the People's Movement") abolished the absolute monarchy rule, known as the Panchayat system, which had outlawed political parties for three decades. The Congress Party, in collaboration with Communist groups, entered into negotiations with the then-king Birendra.12 The strained political relationship between the Congress Party and the different Communist factions played out during, and long after, the negotiations. At various points, they disputed  over the complete abolition of the monarchy, the secularity of the state, the recognition of minority and suppressed languages and people, and over water resources.13 But on April 8, 1990, an announcement aired across televisions, explaining that "partyless" would no longer appear in the constitution. People took to the streets to celebrate.14

The photo above has been considered "iconic" of the Jana Andolan. Durga Thapa, who was 22 at the time, sprang up into the air to declare "Long Live Democracy" the morning after Birendra's announcement. The photo was captured by Min Bajracharya, who was 18 at the time. This was an anomaly in the mainstream political photography landscape in Kathmandu. Devoid of major party figures, the photograph became a symbol of the people's movement: a relief, release — however short-lived — from an oppressive system, and the list of dead that trailed past the moment of Birendra's announcement.15 I read:

~

In the midst of injustice, Majnoon calls to Laila, "it is a strange spring / rivers lined with skeletons."17 Water seeping into bodies, sweeping them away. What remains is a hollow map to what once was. When Grandfather passed, we kept his ashes for a year before releasing them into a large pool of blue. We watched his remains line each wave, until they sunk into themselves.

Elsewhere, Ali writes, "in each new body I would drown Kashmir."18 In each encounter of love, sex, desire, he seeks a watery concurrence — pulling home into his lover's body, meeting his lover through the body of home.

~

The strained political relationship between the Congress Party and the different Communist factions played out during, and long after, the negotiations.19

Boats at the dock

Like Ali, I am wrestling with my yous.

Although he is long gone, I think often of L., a former lover. Something about our writing out love as we experienced it. A strange act of ego. But also, an act of building each other out. He became my you; I his. We placed each other directly in front of each other, words treading the lines we'd drawn. On the back of an envelope, I wrote down:

~

Like Ali, I am trying to route back through and on the page. I read erratically, water widening the gaps between words, paragraphs:

Surface

As a child, I would order the items at Grandfather's desk. Watch, telephone, notepad, pens, old photographs. It was important to catalogue, then lay out flat, all that he kept on this surface. It was also important to correct the photographs: colouring in hair, faded out blues. I was working toward something, something.

Reflection

In entering L.'s desire, I entered into his you. A naming / renaming. The intimacy within. I will see you; you will see me. I will name you; you will name me. We will do this until we break. Then only one of us will carry on.

After Grandfather passed, he also became a you. Suddenly, an open void needing to be filled. Frantically, filling it out with language. I will see you, now that you are no longer here. I would like to see you, though you are no longer here. My you, my love, an absence beating against open water. If once you, Grandfather, were an image of what I left behind (crossing borders, crossing borders), now you, Grandfather, are an image of what is indefinitely gone. Even when I sense your light over a sparrow wing, a sparrow beak. Especially when I sense your light: an unsparing break.

River (ii)

Trying to learn, I begin by thinking back to Grandfather; he would tell me stories each night.  I learned the names of places from him: Banaras, Dharan, Bihar.

~

The shifts and winds of the Gandaki — its reasons — fall behind in the conversation.              

The voice and movement of the locals in Susta also fall behind. The 265 families that make up Susta contend that "they are part of Ward 4 of Triveni Susta panchayat in Nawalparasi district of Nepal."

Khan is a vice-principal at Shri Janta Dalit Primary School; his is the only school with a sign that states "Nawalparasi, Nepal."24

~

Grandfather moved from here to there, to another here, to another there. Each had its own placeness, own nameness. He laid out a map through his stories, drawing lines between one here and one there. What became here and what became there seemed to depend on which side of the line he stood on.

~

The border contentions in Susta are augmented during monsoons. Monsoons bleed into floods. Amidst high and incessant rain, the Gandaki expands, and erodes farmland.25

Many need to cross the river: to go to school, to get to markets, to buy eggs.26

Once the canal is closed, the water hardens; getting to the other side toughens.

~

Grandfather liked places lined with eruption. I was advised to visit: Newcastle, Biratnagar, Sikkim. Feeling history rise was important to him. Feeling ghosts rise in the night air, and letting them eat what they pleased. He gathered at the edge of his plate a few grains. He gathered in the afternoon three photographs — his mother, father, grandmother. I have only ever touched their frames.

Stream

In "The Glass Essay," Anne Carson writes,

This is true for any kind of loss, not only of a lover. But it's not quite a videotape. It's the streaming of something heavy and essential below everything that is currently heavy and essential. It's the stream that can erupt and open anytime. It's water.

Everytime I reach below, I come out with everything that came before this. This moment of writing, this moment of walking to the desk and working toward something, something. Which is perhaps why Ali yearns to pull home into his lover's body. If the past washes up against everything, he may as well harness it himself.

Basin

I once used to reach below to belong. But belonging is tenuous. Belonging means origins; origins calcify and become borders. Tracing the fallacies of origins in Canada, Dionne Brand writes,

I am not interested in containment, cages. I want to think beyond solid blocks of ideas.

Belonging, etymologically, has roots in Old English langian; some say it is related to the root of long.31 Long can be traced back to longen "to yearn after, grieve for," which, in its literal sense, means "to grow long, lengthen."32 I can lengthen below the surface, lengthen over a map, but the reach means meeting again the face of tenuousness, its eyes drained. Or thinning over paper, then laying still.

Elsewhere, Brand writes, "in September, and now October, I am unpinned from all allegiances. Of course you're not. But what if I wrote like this? Unpinned."33 Indeed, what if I wrote like this? What if I wrote like this — to you? I unpledge from a civil life, I unpledge. Undo. Come with me, unearth everything that flows. Dip into this river, undo the buttons of my back. Watch me pool into the water, into water. Slip into this blue with me. Unpinned from practicality, bureaucracy, nation-state-country, the doings that lead to our undoings. Come water yourself, and into me.

Shore

If it's not belonging, then what am I searching for? Here — on the page — and elsewhere. Even in the face of origin's fallacies, there's longing. There's seeking through the knowing. Of course I'm not unpinned. Of course history keeps rising. Of course it seeps into this, here. This is a longing so flawed; it compounds into a you that keeps persisting.

With L., I was preoccupied with records. An archive of who we were. Showers against blue tiles; our quips and quirks; reaching for each other mid-sleep, coffee; more coffee; the passing back and forth of the same word, redone and reworked; the lasting press of our never-saids, or half-saids. Here I wanted my memories solid; I was resisting the watery ways in which memories move. Knowing something will end for certain often means wanting to preserve it crystalline.

Grandmother kept everything after we left Nepal. Receipts from old school uniforms, report cards, clothes that no longer fit, scraps and scraps and scraps flowing toward the shore:

Shower

If the blue stretched over your tiles (your tiles) and if the blue stretched over your eyes (your eyes) and if the blue stretched over us (us) under the stream of water and if water met your hands (your hands) as it met my body (my body) and if the mist caught onto the window and seeped into us (us), then thenthe n:

Groundwater

Water interrupts lines. Breaks below their shape and opens the ground, the page, the hard hard thing.  I can feel it — I can feel the past — streaming below. But the blue of feeling something without quite knowing what it is looms.

Writing this is, in many ways, a map of its own. I want to trace back to some form of knowing. But it seems I retain very little. I try to trace back to Grandfather. I read, and read, but it sinks someplace unreachable. Writing this feels like I'm doing something wrong. The wide gash of distance between here to there and the wide gash of time between then and now bind into a gap I am compelled to fill, though I know I can't. My learning feels insufficient — my tumid anxiety, and its quest for mastery. What I hold in my hands feels insufficient.

What I hold:

Which is perhaps why I want to write about water. I keep thinking that thinking in this way will get me somewhere. Get me to move with the gap. Get me to break the page, the lines marked on maps to indicate time and distance.

For a year now, I've carried around a book called Understanding the Maoist Movement in Nepal. My reading is inflected with half-memories, half-mirages. My colonial education would say that I am failing to be an objective student of history.  I am writing out lines that stick, scraps and words that feel as though they can rise to something, something. Then, I am putting them together:

Watertongue (i)

I want a language that seeps. I want a language that seeps.

Deluge

In dreams, I circle a page. I gather words from its water, water speaking to me:

Watertongue (ii)

I want a language that seeps. A language that lets history rise. In her book Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer writes,

To be blue
To be colour
To be page
To be its flowing water
To be I
To be you
To be and redo
To be shore
To be flood
To be history
To be rain
To be fall
To be gray
To be water, to speak back to me.

Etymologically, water can be linked to the Proto-Indo European wod-or. Linguists trace this back to the root words ap- and wed-. I read:

There are languages within which water speaks. I am trying to let water speak, I am trying to listen. In the mornings I ask: What does the water know, what does the water remember?  Beating against my skin, through the faucet, the drain. I am trying to listen to a former I — a you. A you a lump against my larynx. A you, she speaks back, refuses transcription. A you sweeping into the wind of water.

To my naive ears, apah echoes "grandfather": Greek pappa "o father," pappas "father," pappos "grandfather."38 Though not linked etymologically, I sink into this misconstrual for the rest of the day. If, for Ali, you is the container of yearning, water is mine. Or rather, water is where they all rise. You: Grandfather, home, lover, former I.

Apah

In August, I dream I am walking up the stairs. Ochre, umber, the stairs tipping toward something, something. You are there. I walk into the room; I find apah pressed into the pages of a book. Yours. When it falls open, the door toward water creaks. I walk in. Lines sunk and blue into history, the air was, a wisp a wilt. You keep count of the books you read, a shelf against paling memories. Apah keeps water alive. It keeps it so I can step in. I step in and you flow out, verdigris:

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Snigdha Koirala (@__snigdha) is a writer/poet based in London. Her work has previously appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gutter Magazine, Wildness, and others. A graduate of NYU's Center of Experimental Humanities, her research explores, amongst other things, the relationships between water, opacity, language, and affects. Her debut chapbook, Xenoglossia, is out with Wendy's Subway. 

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