March 8th, 2011 by admin
Now
We refuse
To cool the fire within us
In the sea of pain
And we grow
In our sad eyes
The raging volcanoes.
Now
We refuse
To give palpitating embrace
To hateful inequality
And in the terrified palms
We draw lines of fate afresh.
Now
We refuse
To preserve the worn out walls of
A narrow world
And beyond horizons
We soar
The new sky.
G K Vankar's translation of the Gujarati poem "We refuse' written by the poet B N Vankar.
March 4th, 2011 by admin
In the distance
in the horizon,
yes, I can perceive a shape like a deep valley.
A bird is passing and lo,
It disappears all of a sudden!
Do my eyes play a trick on me?
I rub my eyes, open them wide,
Try to lighten the load on the eyelids
And the shapes change –
Someone’s head separates from the body swims in the air,
Some feet crushed from knees gallop
As if from a balloon a red color drips, the red tears flow from
The cut breasts crushed by venomous fingers.
On the fourth floor the wild bears clench their teeth
And slaughter meek men,
Below –
The blood rushes:
Man-thirsty blood.
An invisible bird
Settles on the unseen land of mind,
Searches for its wings!
The shapes disperse,
The silence weighing in the sky
Is embraced in the anxious arms of the earth
S l o w l y.
G K Vankar's translation of Harish Mangalam's poem 'The valley' from his poetry collection Prakamp.
Harish Mangalam, born 15 February, 1952, is a Govt. officer (Gujarat Administrative Service). He is editor of 'Hayati', published by Gujarat Dalit Sahitya Academy, Gandhinagar. He also served as the editor of Pratinidhi dalit varta (1997). He has to his credit one collection of poems, 'Prakamp' (1991), and two novels, 'Tirad' (1992) and 'Choki' ( 2002). His short story 'Talap' was published in Katha stories (2001). He is recipient of St.Kabir Dalit Sahitya Award.
March 2nd, 2011 by admin
Give me some water from Ganges,
and add waters of seven sacred rivers.
I want to wash thoroughly the brain hanging from
the broken skull of this Chittapavan Brahmin.
Give me a Tata detergent cake
I want to wash each and every cell of his brain.
I want to scrub and scrub to remove the rust on his
thinking since centuries.
This is the Brahmin’s center of hearing,
Along with hymns of Vedas,
Anustupa Meter of Valmiki,
Verses of Upanishadas,
The stanzas of Manusmriti are also taped here.
O’ Brahmin, you are free to chant Upanishads on
the bank of the Ganges at dawn,
But there is no need of the venomous curses of Manusmriti.
This is the center of vision which has given me
black identity since centuries.
O’ Brahmin,
See the blue sky of winter, see the green of forests,.
see the seven colors of rainbow, too
But why do you see the black color of my skin?
This is the Brahmin’s center of smell.
It is stimulated by the stink of my perspiration,
my breath, my karma, my existence.
O Brahmin, there are flowers of jasmine on the earth to smell.
And if there is stink
It comes from corruption, hoarding and lies.
Why my odor is a stink to you?
This is the Brahmin’s center of touch.
This center turns green at the slightest touch of Mahasweta’s breath.
Even with touch of my shadow, it turns bright red hot.
O’ Brahmin, if we had fought together against intruders
We would have not become slaves in history.
In this cell, there is anger against reservation,
Here there is disgust, here hate, here rage of Durvasa,
This false sense of being superior.
Please bring one more detergent cake.
I want to wash each and every cell of your brain thoroughly.
O’ Brahmin, even curd is spoiled if it remains unattended for long.
Your brain is as it is since Vedic times.
See, how disordered, how rotten, how dirty has it become.
Please bring more water from the Ganges and waters from seven sacred rivers.
G K Vankar's translation of Pravin Gadhavi's poem Brainwash from his poetry collection The Bayonet (1985).
February 26th, 2011 by naren bedide
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.
February 25th, 2011 by naren bedide
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.
February 23rd, 2011 by naren bedide
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').
February 22nd, 2011 by naren bedide
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'.
February 20th, 2011 by naren bedide
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').
February 18th, 2011 by naren bedide
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').
February 16th, 2011 by naren bedide
I was born in a Turk* home because I was a kismetwali, they said,
as if I had grabbed an unattainable good fortune
and from that moment, as my folks had decided,
I had become a real Muslim
—
How low should one bow to each relative
Who should not see you
Why one should stick one's head inside the pallu..
Meaningless rasmo-rivaaj and a half-learnt language:
I became a rolled paan caught between two jaws
but my folks had decided that
I had become an asli Turk girl
—
Though realizing that I am being sacrificed, when like a dumb animal
I go to some Walima or Gulposhi
Amidst the rustle and flashes of their zari and Urdu
My voice shrinks and shrivels
into a lonely cotton sari
An unseen feeling of helplessness
clasps my mouth like a bridle
I am spun around the hall, even as I stand still,
by the whirlwinds of their stares
blowing through the branches of their eyelids,
Does she or doesn't she– my knowledge of Urdu
is tested by a display of their own skill and aptitude
and as the results show in the smirks on their faces
my tears of embarassment, which can't dare break boundaries,
wallow within my eyes, exactly like me.
—
No one recognizes me as human,
looking at me as a heap of cleaned cotton
they are always eager to blow me away with mere words
But my folks have decided
that I have become a pucca Turk girl.
—
Why should I become an answer in inverted commas
About unknown riiti-rivaaj
About unpronounceable Durood Suras–
To the endless question marks on their faces?
When my shouhar doesn't assume my Dudekula-ness**
Why should I bear the stamp of asli Muslim-ness?
When poverty swallowed my dreams and hunger my time,
my childhood, spent sobbing into floor rugs,
learnt only to stitch mattresses,
Why should I grieve
over the Urdu and Arabic I didn't learn?
Ab sau baar sabke saamne chillaaoongii
haan..main Laddaafni hoon..!
Laddaafni hii rahoongii!!
My translation of the Telugu poem 'laddaafni' by Shajahana ( from the collection of poetry 'alaava: muslim samskRti kavitvam' ).
* Turk: or Turaka ( pronounced turaka ); a term used by Non-Muslims mostly, often derogatorily, for Muslims.
** Dudekula/Laddaf: community associated, traditionally, with cotton carding.
Other Urdu/Hindustani words/phrases used in the poem:
kismetwali: lucky woman/girl; pallu: loose end of the sari; rasmo-rivaaj and riiti-rivaaj: customs, rituals and traditions; shouhar: husband.