Slugs have gone extinct from my garden,
I no longer see them.
They would have healed your broken bones,
People say. Put them inside a banana
And swallow them whole, they say.


One woman tells me of a Newar mother
Who would fry up the slugs
 and feed it to her tubercular daughter
who lived in the dank and the damp
of Ason’s secretive courtyards. Solicitous,
loving. Telling her daughter only: “I brought you fish.”
And the daughter in turn would urge her:
“Eat, eat, eat the fish, do.”
The mother insisted: “No, you must eat them.”
Finally the young woman recovered,
And became fat and strong. And lived to learn
That she had been eating slugs all along.


I fed my mother those black slugs
when she broke her hips--
Perhaps three kilogrammes, my butcher tells me.
You can find them in Shivapuri
 during the monsoon. I can get them,
I have some afanta who can find them for you,
Free of cost. The slugs don’t cost anything.


We used to spear them on sticks, and roast them
 Over the fire when we lived in the mountains,
Another man from the Karnali says, when I ask him
If he’s heard of people in his village eating slugs.
The slugs are very powerful medicine.
We never got sick for the whole year
 after those roasted chiplay.


So many people have been healed,
It seems, of tuberculosis and broken bones
From the slimes of the those ancient creatures.
No miraculous gods here, no faith healers,
Just the simple humble slug.


But no trails of slime on my stone pathway,
No black bodies glistening on my leaves to tell me
The slugs still remain on this planet.
Perhaps they were driven away by the heat
Of asphalt and concrete, perhaps by shrill horns
Of motorcycles. Perhaps simply weary
of the way humans are destroying trees and plants.
The slugs are gone, taking their medicine with them,

perhaps forever, at least from my garden.