भ्वाइस खबर
Token Number 172
Tomnath Uprety
Before the Outpatient Department counter opens,
clutching Token Number 172 in hand,
a pair of weary eyes keeps staring
at pale images sketched upon the vast canvas of waiting.
The flowerpots that adorn the hospital corridors
seem to welcome everyone with gentle smiles;
yet the patients, wandering in search of a fragment of happiness,
stand wilted beneath the relentless sorrow of disease.
Human beings, moving in ant-like processions,
enter one room after another.
From the Intensive Care Unit,
half-extinguished breaths murmur intermittently,
like the mournful song of a solitary bird in the dusk.
The cries born of accidents
race across the walls of the ventilator ward.
Tears tattooed with blood
cling to scattered shoes and slippers,
lying abandoned in every direction.
Having yielded all they possessed,
the blood bags appear to be fasting in emptiness.
Having surrendered every drop of liquid,
the saline bottles seem afflicted
by a desolation of thirst themselves.
Inside the restricted laboratory,
specimen containers gather urine and stool with solemn purpose.
Needles hidden within sterile packets
wait eagerly to draw blood.
An ageing microscope, fortified by chemistry,
continues to claim the power
to uncover the concealed signatures of disease.
The gloves that once guarded fingers
and stitched together wounded scalps and torn flesh
now lie crumpled and discarded in a dustbin.
The masks that once sheltered lungs and protected lives
have themselves become contaminated,
covered with layers of dust and fatigue.
The hospital’s digital account system
displays an unending catalogue of fees.
Green bed sheets invite exhausted bodies to rest.
Wheelchairs pledge to carry the burden of suffering.
Medicine wrappers long to sacrifice themselves
for the healing of human bodies.
Meanwhile, the calendar quietly continues
to place one day upon another.
Dear Token Number 172,
Even the breath that accompanies us at birth
must one day depart.
How, then, can one place absolute trust
in an oxygen cylinder?
Apply the balm of compassion.
Offer the healing touch of consolation.
Write a prescription
for recovery, dignity, and hope.
And I
for the one I cherish
shall offer the romantic eloquence of my lips,
shall reveal the graceful Kathak dance of my eyelids,
and to help them forget their pain,
I shall make my chest
a pillow of comfort and refuge.
Source Note:
The poem “Token Number 172” is taken from the Nepali poetry collection Aago Kharani Jandaina by Umesh Luitel.
(This poem transforms a hospital from a mere medical institution into a profound metaphor for human existence. Through vivid imagery, personification and poignant symbolism, it explores suffering, mortality, compassion, and love. Token Number 172 becomes not simply a patient’s number, but a universal emblem of humanity waiting between hope and uncertainty, life and death, despair and healing.)
भ्वाइस खबर
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