Text: Shaleen Shah

Photos: Kaushal Adhikhari

The roads are impossibly narrow for this beast of a vehicle,” he says to himself as he maneuvers through the chaotic and dusty streets of Kalanki. He spins the steering wheel frantically, accelerating and swerving the truck around a puny, pesky red car. It has been stalling him for several minutes, ignoring the deafening honks.

“These cars move too slowly,” he thinks as he reclaims the road once more.

Driving a hefty, 40 ton vehicle on Nepali roads and highways is no easy task, and the drivers behind the wheels of these lumbering beasts will testify to that. However, every beast has a tender side and these Nepali iron horses no exception. From the front they look mean, square, and imposing. But as you move along the side towards the back, another world unfurls. A world of poetry.

What kind of poetry? Well, some  are unusually creative. Others? Lazy at best. Amid the generic “Horn OK Please” and “Don’t Touch Me”, you do find the occasional gems, “Driver life is golden life. One one turning, one one wife.” When trucks bear such Hedberg-esque one-liners, all grammmatical mistakes are excused. In fact, the poems would be incomplete without the mistakes.

Yet how do these colourful anthologies end up on our highways? Bishnu Hari Adhikari, a truck supplier and a member of the Nepal Truck Yatayat Byabashahi Sang, says, “As suppliers, we provide trucks for the drivers. As for the poetry, the drivers do it themselves. Some do it to personify their vehicles; some do it to distract drivers behind them in order to keep them from overtaking the truck.”

The next time you are driving and you find yourself cracking up at an interesting joke or mentally correcting mistakes on ridiculous statements such as “Weit for Singel”, remember, maybe the mistakes are meant to be there.