Screw the tattered memories that bring a fresh onslaught of anguish! As hard as I might try to ignore, the wispy threads of recollections slither like new spun silk rebelling against the limitations of the spool. The knot of emotions, swell like a rivulet flooding its banks while I tend to my daily life. Nothing great nor significant but the collective pain of every Nepali who walks down the threads of Sajha, carrying nostalgia of a far off land, Nepal. Trapped within my daily existence is an anguish that forms around the lazy afternoons of tea drinking; children calling to the echoes of the hills; fervent trips to Manakamana and almost daily festivities of family traditions. Yes, I do dedicate this to all those who seek the Nepal that once was, at a different time and day; now only existing in the treacherous tunnels of the mind. My recollections make a potpourri of magical times conjured up by a mental enchantress who often drags me into the depths of what was, and no longer is. My home of my childhood! Pablo Neruda articulately speaks my pain: There are exiles that gnaw and others That like consuming fire. There is heartache for the murdered country That rises from below From feet and from roots And suddenly the man is suffocating, He no longer knows corn tassels, The guitar has been silenced, There is no air for that mouth He can?t live without a land, And then he falls to his knees Not onto native soil, but into death. Pablo Neruda, ?Exiles? from Cantos Ceremoniales The only deity in my mind, who personifies the tranquility of Nepal, is Buddha. He remains stubborn, clinging on to the debris of my illusive memory. It?s the reason why I paint this deity in his various serene forms. Yes, I am compulsive in my need to ?create? peace as I brainwash myself into believing that with one brushstroke I can re-create a passionate relationship, unbroken promises, intact families and a bloodless country. Yes, peace reigns supreme in democratic vacuum while the conjurers of my mind mock my futile attempts. In the cradle of my thoughts, bloom Jasmine and Parijat. They are my sensorial memory triggers. I recall the jasmine creeper that crawled tenaciously around our garden wall, only to cascade down to the ground forming a hollow cave into which I used to crawl with my precious books. The fragrant, heady perfume, slowly lulling me to blissful stupor as I daydreamed of trekking around the yeti zones; levitating into a different dimension; and finding the ever elusive Shangrila. So infectious was the jasmine?s sweetness mixed with the warm breeze of Spring that it spared no one. Even my mother, would pick a spray of flowers and hook it into my hair as well as her own. The scent was imbedded deeply into my memory as the crushed petals adorned each book I lugged around. The parijat strewn patch of dew drenched grass added another ingredient into my patchwork of sensory scrapbook. Destroy the feeble and fragmented attempts at preserving the mental picture of a out dated and out lived hometown where I am a stranger now! The neighborhood kids have grownup and gone. One is maimed by the people?s war and the others are silenced by the massacre. And still others feign ignorance-- for to speak means to know and to know means to arouse suspicion. While peace reigns supreme beneath blankets of silence, I try to exorcise the collective memory which many transport with him/her while paying for excess weight with silent tears and a knot that tightens swiftly around the heart like a noose. Dismember those bits of seductive reassurances which are patched with spit, tears and bile only to fall down in tatters every time the phone dies in my hand when I call my mother! And, yet I desperately cling to a vision which remotely matches the slowly fading spectrum of a peaceful home and a country unscathed by the ravages of the past. In peace I offer!