Dreams of peach Blossoms (आरुका फूलका सपना)

This short poetic play is written by a well-known poet and art scholar Dr. Abhi Subedi, Who has been long associated with both the teaching and interpretation of drama and theatre. This play tries to capture the indigenous tradition of drama and music in a symbolic form through the use of the poetic language and images, and projects the complex and somber story broken with a jerk by the tourist guides who dramatize out own relationship with the cultural heritage and the mercerization of the serious ideas and icons of time and place.

 - In a setting of the Newar kings' old palace in Bhaktapur full of wood carvings, stone images and cobbled yards with dry ponds and bare trees kept alive by the indigenous traditions of the beatings of drum known as dime in Newari, a poet emerges and says, 'images scamper'. Awed by the scampering images, he begins to see stories unfold not in a linear order but across times back and forth. He describes the setting and calls upon the audience to hear the sound of water in a dry lake, rustle of leaves in bare trees and in fact, to get the feel of the times that are frozen in the artifacts and carved out stories.

In this setting an old guard who keeps the time and looks after the palace, unravels the narrative within the poet's story. Women appear in the story lines speaking of their agonies and pain. The artist, who like other artists banished or disabled after they finished making the artefacts, talk to his beloved girl. A young woman, Mayju who is about to be getting married and sent off, like the historical character Bhrikuti who was married off to a Tibetan king in the early part of the Christian era, appears to be resisting her marriage that would take her away from home. She is an archetype of all the young women who were thus married off.

Time moves back and forth, and a group of tourist guides, the custodians of the modem vibrant cultural industry in Nepal and elsewhere, who sell the indigenous heritage in icons and images, bring the entire story as if with a jerk to our own courts. The poet calls that a selling of dreams in the broad daylight in a few broke4n words. He is there interpreting the various movements of time.

The guard making one more attempt to narrate the story in a liner order after failing to put it in a form says that one freezing night he heard and saw people in their full shapes 'in the moon-blenched garden' because 'there was music/there was dance/there were hopes/ there was trance'.

The poet and the guard both say why mayju does not want to leave this 'wooden cosmos' where she grew. But the poet believes that she will go to a new place 'where she'll create mandalas/to keep the time she will span/and the places she bridges / as fountainheads of all these minds/ including ours today/ as the girl Bhrikuti did/ in the land of fleecy clouds', that is, Tibet.

The poet in an attempt to experiment with his poetry, and test the power of his art, decides to travel across time. All he needs to do is to wear the dress of the archetypal king who would have forced Mayju to get married to a far off land, and inflicted pain on the girls whose lovers would have been molested or banished so that they would not make similar works in another place, The poet after taking the avatar of a king, in his meta-poetic experiment, talks to Mayju only to find that the power of her pain, her resolution and those of all the other women, was too overwhelming for him to bear. After a short dialogue in which he speaks as the king in words like 'woman is such a creature who finds her tongue wherever she goes', returns to his self confessing that 'It's safer to write poetry/from a distance I've chosen/where it all echoes like the morning breeze'.

The final section shows Mayju leaving the land escorted by the girls. Mayju has asked these girls to stay on stones and wood there under the cover of sun because their memories were carved out by their livers, and she would go away like the river because her memories were written in words and narrated in tales. She holds the water of the pristine river Bagmati in her palms and identifies herself with her, the river. After she crosses the river leaving the lamenting girls behind, the poet arrives back in our times to the same spot in the river. Like Mayju he tries to hold some water in his palms but the water is so dirty and stinking that he throws it hack. He can not see his image into this water, hut can see out common fate in this entropy and leaves the stage after explaining culture in his terms, 'culture like the wooden cosmos/is to wait/for the myriad eyes/to fall like the gliding times/from here to eternity/on these jolts of lives in times/sp dear to my heart'.

.......यस कविता नाटकमा समय अनेकौं तहमा अघि बढ्छ । यसको रुप एक आयामिक र आरेखीय छैन । यो एक जटिल प्रक्रिया भएकोछ । मानिसहरू इतिहासका मिथक लिएर बाँच्छन् । तर साथै यसका तथाकथित स्वर्णिम क्षणहरूलाई विघटन पनि गर्दछन् । यसै क्रममा अनेकौं नाटकीय क्षणहरू जन्मिन्छन् । एक प्रतिभाशाली निर्देशक सुनील पोखरेलको निर्देशनमा यो नाटक प्रस्तुत हुँदा दर्शकले यसलाई जसरी मन पराए त्यो देख्दा मलाई धेरै खुशी लागेकोछ । प्रशिद्घ रङकर्मीहरूले यसमा भाग लिए । उनीहरूले सफलतापूर्वक यस नाटकको मर्मलाई प्रस्तुत गरे । आभासको संगीत, नेवार प्रस्तुति कला र लाक्षणिकता, मेरा सानै उमेरदेखिका साथी प्रशिद्घ कवि मंजुलले खेलेको कविको भूमिका, पुष्कर गुरुङ, निशा शर्मा, देशभक्त खनालजस्ता रंगकर्मीको सहभागिता, मेरा अंग्रेजी विभागका विद्यार्थी र सहयोगीहरूले शिव रिजालको निर्देशनमा अंग्रेजीमा गरेको प्रस्तुति अनि प्रशिद्घ आधुनिक कलाकार किरण मानन्धरले पहिलेका मेरा दुईवटा कविता नाटक, सजग राणाको निर्देशनमा प्रस्तुत काठमाण्डौं ओडिस्सी (१९९६) र अरुण गुप्तोको निर्देशनमा प्रस्तुत भएको रिभर्स्टेज् (१९९९) मा जस्तै यसमा पनि रङमञ्चमा गएर नाटकसंगै चित्र बनाउनु जस्ता घटनाले मैले मेरो साहित्यिक चिन्तन र सिर्जनाको नयाँ आयाम खुलेको अनुभव गरेकोछु । यसबाट मलाई लागेकोछ हामी समयसंग साथसाथै काम गरिरहेकाछौं, अनि जँ पोल सात्र्रले भने जस्तो हामी एकैसाथ सोच्छौं । .......
– अभि सुवेदी

... पूर्वाभ्यासमा मञ्जुल दाइले कविता पढ्दा हरेक दिन नयाँनयाँ अर्थहरू खुल्दै जान्थे । तिनै शब्दहरू हरेक दिन नयाँ हुन्थे,नयाँअर्थ दिन्थे र अझै जटिल हुँदै जान्थे । हिजो बुझेका कुरा आज नबुझिने भएर आउँथ्यो । हिजोभन्दा झन् फराकिलो र अत्यासलाग्दो, हो कि होइनन् जस्ता अर्थहरू लिएर आउँथे । पूर्वाभ्यासको बीचतिर एकदिन त कहाली लाग्यो, के गर्दैछौ हामी ? कसरी मञ्चन गर्ने यो कविता ? हामी रंगकमीहरू शब्दलाई अलि गौण मान्छाैँ । दृश्य र ध्वनि महत्वपूर्ण मानिन्छन् । शब्दको जादू यस पटक अनुभव भयो । दृश्य शायद शब्दबाटै जन्मिन्छ । एक दिन अभिदाइले भन्नुभयो – मञ्जुलको ख्याल गर्नुहोला । मेरो कवितालाई आफ्नै बनाइदेला नि मञ्जुल दाइ मुस्काउनु भयो मात्र । मञ्चन सकिएपछि अहिले सोच्छु –यो कसको कविता थियो ? अभिदाइको वा मञ्जुलदाइको वा हाम्रो ? कि हेर्ने दर्शकहरूको ? मलाई लाग्छ, अब यो प्रश्नको कुनै महत्व रहेन । हेर्ने हरेक दर्शकहरूले आफ्ना अनुभव र कल्पासंग मिसाएर त्यो कवितालाई आ–आफ्नो बनाइसके –मन परे पनि, नपरे पनि । कविताको मञ्चन धेरैजना मिलेर एउटा नयाँ कविता लेखेजस्तै हुँदोरहेछ । यसरी एउटा कविता नाटक भयो । नाटक कहिले कविता होला, थाहा छैन ।........
– सुनील पोखरेल