Syamala KalluryTelugu: Mandarapu Hymavathi
English: Kallury Syamala
1
Kunti
In the garden of youth
The nectar-like fruits of experiences
We ate together, partners in crime
But, the burden of pregnancy
The wound of childbirth, mine alone
When punishment is meted out to one
The pointing finger of accusation
Aimed at me only
The flow of Ganges
The banks of waves
The hospital surroundings
Orphanage entrances
Drainage water
Thorny bushes
All- all are for infants
Beds of arrows
After satisfying body’s thirst
The drops of left-over sperms
Brushed off by fathers
Not saying a single word
The society pretends unseeing
The obvious
With no hatred
The boon the Rishi gave
In appreciation of services rendered
Becomes the bite of a snake
As unwed mother
The entire world
Including her own son
Hated the one woman
Kunti, the unfortunate one
With raw wounds in her heart
Either the Rishi who gave the boon
Of children to an unwed virgin,
Or the witness of all things, The Sun-
God appearing on invitation
With pleased hands of rays were
Not the culprits
But her childish fickle-minded
Had become a life-time’s curse
Not just then, but now also
For generations, my inheritors
The girls who were caught
In the net of love’s deceit
To flow like rivers of love
To surrender the flower-like bodies
Has always been our crime
The mothers deprived of
The flower of compassion not touched
The mothers whose love has not felt
The scent of motherhood
When they write about them
In national headlines or
Show them in bold letters on small screens
In a society’s double standards
In the world’s Manu’s scripts
The needle on balance of right and wrong
Tilts towards the woman
While in an age of innocent childhood
The toys they played with for a while
They keep them safely, as they
Cannot throw them away
Then how can any grown woman
Throw away the infant
Who has been part of her
Blood of her blood
Cell amongst her cells
Body within her body
Who has taken birth
The smallest bird
Whose two wings have not blossomed
She cannot abandon
But cannot keep and breast-feed either
Hundreds of seasons- of sorrows
Surround her all at once and
No poet can ever describe in words
With wet breast though
In sympathy she cannot sign in acceptance
She moulds the tender babies
Into huge warrior trees
‘I lived all my life as long as I can
Like a temple tower.’
The Ugly Picture
Among the pair of Krauncha birds
One has lost its companion
She, left alone was a personified melancholy
Naggings or taunts
Whatever the bond that kept them
Together for decades, snapped
She was drowned in a well of sorrow
The raw wounds rubbed afresh by people
Who came to visit.
The flood of tears underneath her eye-lids threatens
To break the barriers
She was like a goddess
Turmeric smeared, kumkum applied
Bangles on her hands
And flowers in her hair
She was a sacrificial animal
She was a violent picture
Of an animal about to be sacrificed
Barbaric age
Or modern times
Fundamental norms have not changed
Manu died long ago
Male centric traditions of dharma prevail still
In the atomic age where victories are the norm
The iron shackles of rituals
Tighten around the woman’s neck
Like the sorrow of the new widow
Darkness surrounds
Without a single woman witnessing
She goes to the stream in a
Carriage with curtains drawn all around
She is coming! She is coming!
Close the doors
Do not look even by mistake
Next minute you too will become a widow
For a woman it is more important to have
Her turmeric and kumkum than have her life
Even when one is drenched
In the whirlpool of tears
The words like whiplash
Enter the ears faintly
Leaving burn marks on the mind
Only the hearts still alive
Turn into stones
Hell is here, nowhere else
The daughter you loved
More than life
The siblings who always
Share your joys and sorrows
Runaway as if at a spotted snake
Just by the sin of one glance
The tilak on your forehead
Would be erased, or so the fear
That makes people move away.
She cannot go to
A neighbour’s house even
She remains in a room
Closed on three sides
Where even the God of breeze
Deserts her company
Every single minute
Tightens as of a hangman’s noose
No Chitragupta can keep
A count of the sorrows she lived through
For not fulfilling a wifely duty
As mind responded just one minute
Society’s double standards
Cause heads to behead
For the crime of being born a woman
She had to stay in a dark room
Without windows
And as they would see animals in a zoo
Or a strange object in a museum
One by one as they come and go
Subjecting her to torture as
Meat broken to pieces on a piece of wood
A sadistic pleasure that breaks
The mind to pieces
Wife’s funeral pyre as witness
The husband becomes a new groom soon
They erase her tilak
Rob her of all happiness
Break the bow of her rainbow
And stamp her as an inauspicious
The woman they see everyday
But on that day
After the barred moments are over,
Gathering courage, she peeps out
Of her house.
Then in white sari and blouse
Tilak made of sacred ash
She was an ugly picture
Drawn by religion!
*
Mandarapu Hymavathy is a leading poet in modern time in Telugu literature writing on feminist issues. Her poetry touches the conscience of the reader rather than provoking the anger and indignation on gender issues like human rights violations and domestic violence on women.
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