Friday, September 2nd, 2011
For having skinned the five spirits
by driving a nail into the sky
another into the patala
and soaking the hide in the seven seas you
deserve those sun and moon gods
as sandals for your feet!
In hunger
or in humiliation
head bowed
you stitch
your skin into shoes
Grandfather!
I dream
that this world
should turn into a strap
and kiss
your big toe.
My translation of Dr. Yendluri Sudhakar's kotta kala from 'kaitunakala danDem', a collection of Madiga poetry.
Friday, August 19th, 2011
It's not just milk
but crores of sins are white too
only, adulterated by a few tears
Glass-eyed swans
tell me about the color of tears, not the portion of water
you're the angels
who slipped off a tipsy heaven
reveling in the waters, you must have slurped the oceans
tell me about the taste of tears
in god's deep embrace
you must have perspired a little
tell me about the scent of tears
I, like the dark cloud
could rain down a flood
on how tears feel
It's not just jasmines
hand-gloves are white too
only, stained by a little blood
Having washed your hands, emperors
before you crown me with thorns
show me a thimbleful of dark blood
you are the serpent kings of the primeval jungle
you must have bitten the dust, where man got hurt
tell me about the taste of the blood that spilled
when you caressed the warrior's back as a whip
the sandalwood trees must have swooned
tell me about the scent of blood
Having ascended the cross
like a throne, I, on the other hand
when asked about the blood
will guide your fingers through the holes in my palms
Not just the seven colors
the four varnas mixed are white too
only, darkened by a little fifthness
Raised by the crumbs of angarajya to a finer varna, O arch sudras
tell me about the color of power
from God's feet to his shoulders
you've climbed, oppressors
manu's dharma in your moneypurses
hoarded, of course,
tell me about the taste of power
In the scum-laden lake
what springs forth doesn't reflect your face
tell me about the scent of power
I, who you have never considered human
if asked about the feel of power
shall unpeel its skin, to illustrate.
My translation of Satish Chandar's Telugu poem 'Lost Angels'
Saturday, July 9th, 2011
My land's not mine, they said,
I became a revolutionary
My body's not mine, they said,
I became a feminist
My village is not mine, they said,
I became a Dalitist
My nation is not mine, they said,
I became a minorityist
My region is not mine, they said,
I became a separatist
Finally,
I am not even human, they said,
Step away
I've become a human bomb.
My attempt to translate Satish Chandar's Telugu poem 'yuga spruha' (''yuga spRha'). It can be found in his collection of poetry, 'aadiparvam', published in 2008. You can also read the original Telugu poem at Satish Chandar's blog here.
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
If you were not there..
Those who stitched chappals
would never even have ascended the steps of parliament
Janeu-wearing universities
wouldn't have trembled while grudgingly giving us some space,
Buckets filled with excreta
would never have descended from our head
a Narayanan would never have been crowned president
For this sovereign, democratic republic
you effortlessly wrote a constitution
and as adroitly gave it a direction,
but like no one noticing
the elephant standing in the drawing room
some blind elements still don't seem to have understood you:
as glibly as if he was chanting 'India Shining',
look, how a villain declared
that cows are more sacred
than the lives of Dalits in Gohana..
Look, how in this great civilized nation,
where in Khairlanji
even Priyanka's corpse was raped,
citizens have become so uncivilized!
Like the Pharaohs of Egypt
supervising, personally, the building of the pyramids
look, how this nation,
speeding ahead with shopping malls and express highways
has risen to the racist status
of overseeing the rape of a Dalit woman every half-hour
and the murder of a Dalit every three days!
Like the sulking wife who refused food
because she wasn't gifted a sari, when a half-naked fakir
went on an indefinite fast
to oppose separate electorates for Dalits
you consoled him with orange juice,
but how cleverly you managed to tell the whole country
that what he had drunk was the blood of millions of lower jatis…
Like he had isolated Subhas Chandra Bose
he tried to drive you away from our hearts,
but what did the khaddar old man know
about how you flowed in our veins like good blood
like the perennial rivers flowing across the country,
about how you had built a nest in every Dalit's heart!
Don't understand why people of this country,
who so eagerly try to find out
why we lost in a cricket match
or when certain Bollywood stars are getting married,
don't wish to know why the Dalits of Nagpur got angry…
The same TV anchors who shut their mouths tight
when crazed goons supervised the burning of Bombay
because Meena Thackeray's statue had been desecrated,
complain loudly that
the Dalits' self-respect movement
over Khairlanji
was unruly…
Why are those who can't distinguish between Lal Salaam and Jai Bhim,
the Janeu skeins wearing Dalit garments,
posing as bearers of the Dalit rath
and cycling around Dalit wadas..
You also know
that just as a warning sign bearing skull and bones stops no one
this war is not going to end with Buddhism;
You might have become the first citizen of Cuba
if you had undertaken this struggle there
In Phillipines
your movement might have inspired many more people's revolts..!
Even in South Africa,
in the race for human rights,
Mandela might probably have trailed behind you..!
Sigh.. you were born in our land..
how could you have bagged the peace prize..
Isn't it because you're a Dalit
that an earthworm called Arun Shourie
can spit venom at you like a serpent..
Ambedkaranna!
Now when I look at your statue
standing upright in the Dalitwada
I see a Dalit Messiah
who gathers the lost sheep
Or as the simhaswapnam
who haunts them
and turns their sacrificial buffaloes and sheep into tigers and lions;
Or you look like you're issuing directions,
like the baptised Christian,
to journey from freedom to freedom
Your index finger seems
like a compass that shows us the way
like a double barreled gun
like an assurance
that we can sleep peacefully
Like Macaulay
who caned brahminical education into discipline
you seem like
you're slapping the grocery-store religion into restraint
Breathing into our ears
the message that education is a weapon
you seem to tell us: it's the Dalit era that shall follow the Christian era.
My effort to translate the Telugu poem 'nuvvE lEkapOtE' by Tullimalli Wilson Sudhakar (from his collection of poetry 'daLita vyAkaraNam').
The Shared Mirror gratefully remembers Babasaheb Ambedkar on his 120th birth anniversary. Also very happy that our 101th post, at the end of the first year of our exciting journey of self-discovery, pays such a fitting tribute to Babasaheb. Jai Bhim to all!
* simhaswapnam: 'lit. the elephant's dream of his mortal foe the lion' (C.P.Brown's Telugu-English dictionary).
Saturday, February 26th, 2011
Dr.Yendluri Sudhakar, poet, professor and researcher (and also a translator:: some of his translations, of Urdu poetry into Telugu, can be read here), travelled to the United States of America in 2002, on the invitation of a Telugu association (ATA). The collection of poems 'ATA janikAnche', a journal of sorts in verse, carries his impressions from the trip. The short but eloquent poems have no titles, only numbers signifying their place in the collection. Here are my efforts to translate a few of them:
108
Who
cleaned cotton in
this sky?
Who
wove
this sky-sari?
Who
placed
those cloud-pots there?
Who
washed
this moonlight-scarf so white?
Who
made those two ear-rings,
one for each ear,
for the sky-maiden?
109
Listen,
if you think I'm not being sarcastic:
There are among us too
those who nurse prejudices about colour
They gather like ants
around white gur
But as soon as they see blacks
they run away
like bugs in the sun..
What is the difference
between the wadas here
and the ghettoes there..
106
When I walk in Chicago
Martin Luther King's
word flames' roar
rings constantly in my ears
like a slogan
Moses!
If he split the Red Sea
Martin Luther King
created a black ocean
out of scaterred waves
He still reverberates
in race supremacists' hearts
as a blacker slogan
74
In Pittsburgh
Venkanna* appeared
Without a visa
Babas
Babis
Have their own lobbies
In every home
Spiritual hobbies
However hard I searched
Wherever I looked
I couldn't see my Yellamma+
I didn't meet my Maisamma
* Venkanna: refers to the deity Venkateshwara, or Balaji, of Tirupati.
+Yellamma, Maisamma: popular Dalitbahujan deities, village goddesses.
Friday, February 25th, 2011
The man
who sulked with land
stuck his head
into the sky
The pesticide that couldn't kill
the pest
swallowed the man
A lifeless
form
is putting the furrow
to sleep
The hut
with the broken supporting pole
Mother, children
like palmyra leaves in a storm
Like hunger
has many
causes
Deaths
have many, many
needs
Those (aatma)hatyas
touch thirty
tens
The hand that fed
is searching for the morsel
The sweat
that flowed in the field
is drying on the grave
A headless body
attached to its neck
a tree that had shed
its leaves
The overflowing tears
became questions
that walked
The kind-hearted
leaders say
it is
the cotton farmer's
fault
Unable
to offer a gulp of water
they offer advice:
wet your throat
with pesticide
or
liquor.
My translation of G.V.Ratnakar's Telugu poem 'tella bangAram' (from his collection of poetry 'maTTi palaka'). Written in 1998, the poet was responding to the suicides of cotton farmers.
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
I don't know when I was born but
I was killed on this very land thousands of years ago
punarapi jananam punarapi maranam
I don't know the karma theory but
I am taking birth, again and again, in the same place where I had died
My body dissolved in this land
And became the Ganga Sindh plain
When my eyeballs melted as tears
Perennial rivers flowed across this country
When my veins spurted minerals
This land became green and showered wealth
I was Shambhuka in the Treta Yuga
Twenty two years ago, my name was Kanchikacherla Kotesu
My place of birth is Kilvenmani, Karamchedu, Neerukonda
Now Chunduru is the name that cold-blooded feudal brutality
Has tattooed on my heart with ploughshares
From now on, Chunduru is not a noun but a pronoun
Now every heart is a Chunduru, a burning tumour
I am the wound of multitudes, the multitude of wounds
For generations, an unfree individual in a free country
Having been the target
Of humiliations, atrocities, rapes and torture
I am someone raising his head for a fistful of self-respect
In this nation of casteist bigots blinded by wealth
I am someone who lives to register life itself as a protest
I am someone who dies repeatedly to live
Don't call me a victim
I am an immortal, I am an immortal, I am an immortal
I am the poison throated one
Who swallowed the famine so that the world may have wealth
I am the sunrise standing on its head
It was I who kicked the Sun on the head
To make him stand erect
I am the one stoking slogans in my flaming heart's furnace
I don't need words of sympathy or tears of pity
I'm not a victim, I'm an immortal
I am the fluttering flag of defiance
Don't shed tears for me
If you can
Bury me in the middle of the city
I'll bloom as the bamboo grove that sings the melody of life
Print my corpse as this nation's cover
I'll spread as a beautiful future into the pages of history
Invite me into your hearts
I'll become a tussle of conflagrations
And rise again and again in this land.
My attempt to translate Kalekuri Prasad's Telugu poem 'piDikeDu aatmagauravam kOsam' (from the collection of poetry 'daLita kavitvam- 2' ; originally published in another collection 'manDutunna chunDuuru').
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
Hanging from the neck of the sky's skeleton
The war moon
He has nuclear bombs all over his body
The fangs of butcherliness in his eyes
Sitting as a judge
On the giant skeleton of the Pentagon
He passes the death sentence on some nations
He doesn't know of the full moon.
Amavasya is all that's there!
My translation of the Telugu poem 'yuddha chandruDu' by Sivasagar (K.G.Satyamurthy), from the collection of poetry 'kavita 2008' published by Sahiti Mitrulu. The poet says he was inspired by Janet Aalfs' 'War Moon'.
Sunday, February 20th, 2011
Beef beef
The meat I have eaten since my cord was cut
The meat that has risen as bone of my bone
The meat that has raced as part of my blood;
When you drove me far from the village
When you found even my footprints untouchable
When you couldn't even see me as human
What stood by me
And brought me here was beef;
When you bragged, presenting your side,
Your forefathers drank ghee
Undertook many exploits and so on
It was only beef which stayed with me
Stood by my side;
When its udders were squeezed and milked
You didn't feel any pain at all
When it was stitched into a chappal you stamped underfoot and walked
You didn't feel hurt at all
When it rang as a drum at your marriage and your funeral
You didn't suffer any blows
When it sated my hunger, beef became your goddess?
My translation of the Telugu poem 'goDDu mAmsam' by Digumarthi Suresh Kumar (from the collection of Madiga poetry 'kaitunakala danDem').
Friday, February 18th, 2011
Those who say that one race
is better than another
Or one man has more merit than another
are history's surviving nazis
Good for the world
that from this junkyard of caste skeletons,
from this merit-ridden chaos
Hitler didn't borrow a single page
God
puts more wrinkles into some brains perhaps,
because from a book's cover
or a person's appearance
or from someone's colour
they can judge their worth…
They can sniff
and without sowing a seed
tell you that nothing will grow…
If we turn
the wheel of time back
we'll see who poured lead
into the senses meant to absorb learning
and exploded them like landmines!
From whose head did that wisdom grow!
We can decide everyone's worth…
Whenever we say, reservations
should become a social pact
that acknowledges past crimes,
those who smile on the outside
but in their hearts
want to shoot us down with automatic guns,
chop the country into pieces of merit–
aren't they very meritorious!
Aren't they the doctors
who cut open OBC stomachs for free!?
In their utopian melodrama
aren't even the rats in their homes white!!
They keep singing of merit
but award contracts to the highest bidders
and seats in medical colleges to big money!
Every car owner who gorges on subsidised petrol
showers the choicest abuse
on those who buy rationed kerosene
calling them a burden on the nation…
Like some whites in America
who recommend killing blacks in their wombs
to reduce crime
the IIMs, building obstructive walls of marks,
produce only
expensive coolies
who leave behind a nation milked dry.
Ours is an unequal society
that allows only those who own horses to play polo..
Half-broken skeletons
should be fitted with backbones here!
Between you and me..
When lives are marked by caste
wouldn't there be caste based reservations!!
If you stuff the only available jobs into your pockets
on the grounds of marks,
Shouldn't all the land
be given to those who till it..!!
It is silly..
To think that any race in history that has never worked
ever possessed any merit!
Do they have any history of working as serfs..
Do they have any history of cleaning streets..
Do they have any history of being trampled
under the wheels of discrimination..
Now all asses
think of themselves
as being very smart..
My translation of the Telugu poem 'virigina asthipamjaraalaku vennemukalu' by Thullimalli Wilson Sudhakar (from his collection of poetry 'daLita vyAkaraNam').