Nawalparasi-based poet Dipak Soti presented himself in a new avatar on Wednesday. During a poetry recital, organised in commemoration of Aadikavi Bhanubhakta Acharya, Soti recited poems not about love or nature but pollution—a recital that took the audience by surprise. 

Soti started off with a poem called Harabhara Kawasoti, a satirical verse about how the city of Kawasoti, owing to the lack of dumping site nearby, is turning into a city filled with garbage. 

“The duty of an artist is not only to romanticise but also to shed light on the problems plaguing the society,” poet Soti said, “In that vein, this recital aims to pressurise the stakeholders to make Kawasoti beautiful again.”

The event then as a whole turned its focus towards the growing pollution in the city and accompanying poet Soti in verse were a dozen of litterateurs from the region. Another artist Sanjaya Bhattarai satirised the city’s current status with a muktak; while some other artists also brought forth the problems of roads, drinking water and employment.

“It has been more than two years that the garbage from Kawasoti has not been cleared,” informed journalist Tirtha Raj Bhusal. “A variety of campaigns were launched in the past, all of them resulted in little. Now, with this creative campaign, we hope the voices of the people with reach to the stakeholders,” he said.