The Sherpas Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

The Sherpas,
Sherpas,
Who are the Sherpas,
How the word,
What does it mean
Taking me to?

How their faith,
Clothing,
Language, dialect,
Ancestry,
Lineage,
Heredity?

How their traditional architecture,
House-building,
Gompas, prayer halls
Attached to villages or houses,
Schools of Tibetan Buddhism,
The Nagangyur school, the Kagyu school,
The Sakya school, the Gelug school,
With theSherpas adhering to the first!

Apart from
Believing in the deity of Shanakara
In Mount Makalu,
Mount Everest as
Chomolungma
The Goddess Mother of the world.

The Sherpas
The mountain climbers,
Trekkers
Are an indigenous people
Of the mountainous region
So closer to Nepal, Sikkim,
Tibet, Burma,
China, Bhutan.

For the Sherpas,
The erstwhile nomadic
Of the mountainous region
But settled now,
Mountaineering is but a passion,
A livelihood,
Adhering to Tibetan Buddhism
As established by Guru Rinpoche,
Padmasambhava
From the northeast India
Which but we have forgotten
They remember it up to Tibet.

Many Sherpas believe it
In Mount Everest
Lives the Buddhist goddess,
Miyolangsangma,
Who respect and love the mountains
Which are but not rocks,
But deities,
Very often telling of the presence
Of spirits, deities and gods
Into the caves, mountain ranges.