BOOK REVIEW: Where water marches in line

Dinesh Adhikari’s poetry collection, ‘Pani Ko Parade,’ immediately creates a sense of unease with its title, juxtaposing the natural flow of water with the rigid order of a parade. This inherent discomfort, the book argues, is precisely what makes it worth reading for those seeking more than simple lyrical comfort.

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Water is supposed to flow. It slips through fingers, softens stone, floods fields, carries memory, and disappears before anyone can command it. But a parade is about order. It is about discipline, display, obedience, and control.

The collection refuses to soothe, instead confronting readers with persistent questions: What happens when time advances but people remain stagnant? How does power, when too comfortable, affect society? When does private grief mirror public failure? Adhikari posits that poetry's function in an absurd world is to witness, disturb, and refuse to look away.

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If you are searching for a poetry collection that offers comfort in a neat, lyrical way, then ‘Pani Ko Parade’ is not for you. It is not trying to soothe the reader. If anything, it does the opposite.

Adhikari masterfully navigates between the personal and the political. Poems often begin with intimate subjects like memory, family, or personal feelings, but they invariably expand to encompass broader societal and national anxieties. A personal wound becomes a social one, and domestic imagery reflects national unease. This is a key strength, highlighting Adhikari’s understanding that in a nation shaped by politics, individual despair is rarely solely personal.

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What happens when time keeps moving but people remain trapped? What happens when power becomes too comfortable with itself? What happens when private grief begins to look painfully similar to public failure?

Through poems like ‘Astitwa,’ ‘Satta,’ and ‘Yojana,’ Adhikari revisits the tension between the individual's desire for meaning and dignity and the harshness of surrounding systems. He portrays individuals seeking light and tenderness, only to encounter power, bureaucracy, and silence. Suffering is not treated as mere decoration; instead, the poems are alert, questioning the beneficiaries and perpetrators of pain and the expectation for ordinary people to endure with grace. The political voice is evident, particularly in poems like ‘Jawaf Deu America!,’ which demands accountability with an earned anger that pushes Nepali poetry beyond its usual boundaries.

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Adhikari’s answer seems to be this: poetry must witness. It must disturb. It must refuse to look away.