This is a Country of Hearsay and Rumour A country where music competition judges are deaf people sporting earphones, and where poetry arbiters have souls in the process of petrifaction, where wooden legs win races and where security rifle blades are held up by broken plastered hands, a place where doko after doko kharpan after kharpan truck after truck of souls are decked before roadways and verandahs, where those who become political leaders sell and buy souls like stock agency shares, where the champions of the youth bear corrugated wrinkles on their foreheads, where the �wash and wear crease� of respectability of even the worst reprobate never crinkles, where even the most debased whore�s face of synthetic skin never wrinkles, where agriculture fairs display seeds that promise double yields while spreading news of drought and famine, where in the place of Bagmati and Bishnumati rivers beer and whisky now trickle, and where Pashupati and Swayambhu are used not to get a taste of sacred offerings but for a taste of Adam and Eve�s forbidden fruit in the surrounding jungles and forests, where sugar factories produce not sugar but alcohol, where free mothers birth not sons but lahureys, where great poets die before their time still unable to pay off debts, where a poet insane with his country�s anxiety must seek refuge in another country�s hospital, and where the sole daughter of the goddess Saraswati withers in her youth for lack of medical attention, where guides remind tourists of Nepal�s contribution to foreign lands and on holidays ask for the contribution of their foreign cameras, where young people undergo army training singing songs of Nalapani and Kangada fortresses Donning a khukuri along with coat and tie, renting my heart wide open I feel I must speak to this country, O fellow countrymen O national poets O honorable leaders If you want you can label me someone who hates or betrays his country but this country is mine as much as yours, even if we were to divide it equally my small hut would stand on one of its ten million pieces, my funeral pyre would stand on one of its countless river banks This is the feel that compels me to say that gives me courage to say: this is a country of hearsay and rumour If one were to unearth the foundation of each house here only hearsay and rumour would be found heaped there That�s why this is a country of hearsay and rumour This is a country standing on hearsay and rumour This is a country founded on hearsay and rumour This is a country of hearsay and rumour