The Shared Mirror

Oh learned men!

You surely know

that impurities of touch

completely dissolve

when a high caste man

takes a dip in water

and changes his clothes

 

But look at the untouchable hordes!

Howsoever much

they rub themselves

with soap and water

and splash and dip

and scrub and polish,

they cannot shake off ‘untouchability’,

which clings to their bodies.

 

That is how and why

they have remained untouchables

over the millennia.

No-one has been able to decide

if untouchability

is a colour or a touch,

a feeling or an ideal;

whether it resides

in the one who touches,

or the one who is touched.

 

A learned high caste man

could start a coaching center

and make good money

if he could simply teach untouchables

how to shake off untouchability

with a single dip in water

and a change of clothes.

 

Basudev Sunani is an Oriya poet; his poems have been translated by Rabindra K Swain and  J P Das. His poetry collections include Asprushya (Untouchable), Karadi Haata (Bamboo Shoots Market) and Chhi (Sneer), and several critical essays and short stories. He is a veterinarian by training, and blogs here.

Courtesy: The Poem Hunter

It is just as well
that I got to know 
your blindness
from the very start.

Simply because my feet
touched the ground
you are seeking to purify it, 
sprinkling holy cowdung water.

Had I requested 
your house on rent
you would have been enraged
and driven me out
like a pariah dog.

Perhaps you do not know
that the land your house stands on
is surrounded by air
suffused with my dirty breath.
The bricks of your house
have been made from clay
from the river bed
where my humble hut stands, 
moulded by the supple hands
of men whom you have discarded, 
calling them untouchable.

Now you have moved
into your beautiful house
you preach that untouchables
are not human beings, 
that they are worse than animals, 
to be despised.

Dear sir, 
if you have the moral courage, 
strip open the walls
and look at the rubble 
and see, 
how each atom of brick and sand
bears the sweet smell
of untouchability.  

 

Basudev Sunani is an Oriya poet, his poems have been translated by Rabindra K Swain and  J P Das. His poetry collections include Asprushya (Untouchable), Karadi Haata (Bamboo Shoots Market) and Chhi (Sneer), and several critical essays and short stories. He is a veterinarian by training, his blogposts can be found here.

Courtesy: The Poem Hunter