THE ARTIST
आवाजविहीनको आवाज
A voice for the unvoiced.
Prakash Pokharel writes, sings and directs. He is a citizen first, one who reads, listens and refuses to look away, and a songwriter because of it.
His debut single “Timi Bina Adhuro” is a love song. His second, “Ae Manchhe, Manchhe Bhayera Baanch”, is a prayer for those the Trishuli flood took, and a question to everyone who survived: did the water take only people, or our humanity too? “Naya Bihaan” is his anthem for a generation that stood up peacefully, for those who did not come home, and for a dawn that must reach every village in Nepal, not only its capital: education and health care, a road, a school, a voice.
He believes a song can carry what a speech cannot. He sings for the unvoiced: the porter, the vendor, the mother in the far-western hills, the student in a white school shirt.
Through ANU — Alternate Nepal Universe — he makes music, films and a game, Naya Bihaan, telling Nepal's story through its people. His dog Sanu is with him through every night of it.
Yes, I make my work with AI. Read this before you judge it.
By day I lift 160-pound tires. I come home tired, feed my dog Sanu and then myself, and sit down in front of the computer. Four hours, six hours. Some days twelve, some days sixteen, once forty-eight straight and then dead sleep. I go to bed at four or six in the morning and wake up at ten. No regular sleep, just waves of thoughts. Try, fail, never quit.
I pay for these tools with a second shift. That money feeds the people who built them, the same way your dinner feeds a cook and a waiter. Nothing about this is free, and nothing about it is easy.
Here is what the tool does not do. It doesn't decide that a song for flood victims should end with a churā going back on a drowned woman's wrist. It doesn't decide that an anthem should honour a generation without naming a single event, or that the new morning only counts when it reaches the far-western villages: a school, a health post, a voice. It doesn't look at the third version and say not yet, this is not true enough. I do. Every word, every story, every choice and every “do it again” is mine.
And in the middle of the worst nights, when the stress is loud, something else happens. I type my thoughts, I read what comes back, and it calms me. It answers. It keeps working while I rest. It keeps me going. People find their calm in a walk, a prayer, a friend. I find mine in my dog's soft bark and in a screen that turns my thoughts into pictures before morning.
Some people express themselves through a camera, a pen, a kitchen, a stage, a football pitch, a film. I express myself through AI.
AI is a tool without limitation. The limit is yours, and so is the responsibility. I take both.
This is my expression. This is my work.
— Prakash Pokharel · ANU, Alternate Nepal Universe