perspectives of the bards

i am recording here, a part of a conversation about telangana movement between kuffir and chittibabu padavala happening in another forum where it may become difficult to retrieve after some time.

kuffir: there is a huge pool of dalit bahujans activism, as you say, in the telangana movement, but i don’t know if there are any strong currents of dalitbahujan thought in the movement as it has shaped up until now.

gaddar said in a recent interview: ‘manadikaani kotlaata manam kotlaadatunnaam’ (‘we’re fighting a battle which is not ours’). but he says we’ve to fight. but why? to own it, like you said? how can we fight someone else’s battle and win/own it?

gorati venkanna’s song, ‘palle kanneeru pedutundi..’ and prof.jayashankar’s theory of internal colonization– both were used as strong arguments for telangana. while venkanna’s song about the dying village and dalitbahujan distress could be about any village, in any region in the country wilting under the effects of globalization, jayashankar talks specifically about telangana.

gorati vekanna rises as the kabir of our times, or phule and asks (in this song and others)– this gaundlodu, this upparodu, this chakalodu, this kummarodu, this kammarodu, this kurmodu, this madigodu, this malodu, this erukalodu, this merodu, this turkodu– how about their right to life? he speaks with, not for, the village, the dying stream, the dying tank, the dying wells, the dying palms, the dying birds and even the dying babul trees.. it’s a stirringly human plea. a very dalitbahujan perspective. or, what i think is a dalitbahujan perspective i should learn to absorb. 

For a fistful of self-respect

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.

Kalekuri Prasad‘s Telugu poem ‘piDikeDu aatmagauravam kOsam‘ (from the collection of poetry ‘daLita kavitvam- 2‘ ; originally published in another collection ‘manDutunna chunDuuru‘). Translated by Naren Bedide.

From The Shared Mirror

modern?

 

temporality is a petty tool. don’t carbon date me with my own words

my ancestors chiseled words into couplets that cusp universal ethics.

another, oiled tanned and unstitched brittle form into free flowing humanity

light a torch and shine it on your kind, look under the morass of hypocrisy

our words, thoughts, gods, you burgle. what webs woven to keep the loot

go untangle that if you dare. it would leave your descendants bare

so instead you continue weaving that ancient web of thievery

your greed is a calendar

our humaneness has no chronology

 

Awwal Kalima

You won’t believe us

but no one’s talking about our problems

now, again, it’s the tenth or eleventh generation scions

of those who lost glories

who are speaking for all of us.

Is this what they call the  loot of experience?!

In reality, Nawab, Muslim, Saaheb, Turk-

whoever’s called by those names belongs to those classes-

those who lost power, jagirs, nawabi and patel splendours

they have retained, at least, traces of those honours

while our lives have always been caged between our limbs and our bellies.

We never had anything to save.

What would we have to recount….?

We who called our mothers ‘amma’

never knew she was to be called ‘Ammijaan’.

Nishedhanama

Your produced regions of deception

With sharp beaks take my bites, in the surrounding intense wailing,

And beautiful crudeness you call literature

Dazzled by ornate words you call Mahakavi

You worship dirt covered with flowers

To infinite poverty you narrate story of king and queen

You write literature, write shashtras and philosophy of convenience

But here is the dominance of some people

I will go saying it by showing, wailing

While going I won’t remain dumb I will go cursing this clutter

From her side

kanchipuram sarees

in five different shades

same border, same mundaani

her side

thinks we are schoolgirls 

thali and koora podavai

from our side

wedding-hall breakfast,

lunch and dinner

from her side

some guests left

without thambulam

not enough coconuts

who did the buying? 

someone

from her side

——–

mundaani: palu

koora podavi: bride’s saree 

The hypocrisy of such transactions could make for many a standup comedy shows, if it was not so tragic for the ones at the lowest end. It is a common belief that the lower castes in general do not practice dowry. It is far from the truth, as they try hard to match up to the dominant hindu social and cultural practices, dowry exchange is rampant. All my life i have heard this phrase ‘from her side’ always with a negative and accusatory tone.  Since all my siblings are in intercaste marriages, and many cousins are in caste marriages, and some are in villages and some in metro cities, I often get a wide view of practices of atleast half dozen castes (mostly south indian) and they are all the same when it comes to heaping it on the girls side.

some memories

random thoughts on dalit and black movements: i don’t see the black movement as a monolithic one, but rather as a cohesive one, facilitated largely by the powerful linkages of common language, religion and culture (relative to dalit’s cultural range). for dalits, it has to remain as a series of movements in parallel motion, with a deliberate attempt to develop interconnections between the movements. not with the intention of becoming a homogenous, monolithic one, rather for the purpose of communication alone. with such plurality of movements, are we reconciling that differences cannot be overcome? before that, is there a need for differences to be overcome? isn’t the understanding that the fight and goal is the same for all, enough? 

and some random memories:

East Station Bangalore

mine is a patriarchy

men don’t cry, its said

i say, no. i have seen

a man wail

for a small bag of rice

stolen from him.

————————-

Tamil Dalit staple

lemon rice

in wrapped leaves

food from home, for stops

at stations, roadsides, footpaths

heat spoiled food, eaten heartily

lime is a preservative

does not spoil, the general agreement.

————

Chellamma

beauty?

yes quite lovely

yes yes beautiful

sight of cooking rice

brings out the poet in me

i hum, sing, don’t shout at them;

my children!

—————-

Lakshmi

son is dead

7 years old

dead

what can I do?

i tried

but he died.

Construction sites.

Wife

wives trade their bodies

for a day’s work

husbands demand

their pay.

she carries bricks

all day long

satisfies the contractor

does two jobs

with only one pay

that too -taken away.

————————

Child

snotty nosed child

on piled sand

watches the lady

smile and pet

a snooty child.

—————-

her thalattu

never seen, never touched 

my grandmother

feels strange to call her that

she never was an old woman

died young, so young

her last child all of nine years

and i his daughter

grew up with  stories

of him yearning for her.

she remains forever a young boy’s mother

yet she is my grandmother

one who in earnest tried to kill him

my father

when still within her womb

ashamed of being pregnant yet again

mourning her unreturned sons from strange wars

protesting her uniformed husband guarding distant borders 

leaving her as single mother, for the tenth time

herbs did not rid her of this unwanted child

one she would cradle singing 

‘you refused to die then,  for so disregarding your mother’s wish,

you better succeed well as a grown man’

her thalattu padal for him.

Thalattu padal : Lullaby for new borns in Tamil.

causation

smashed skulls, speared groins

water  in Karamchedu.

raped, spread naked dead

land in Khairlanji.

unclothed, unbathed, unschooled

food. on streets. in hovels.

in my country of delicate thoughts

and ancient wisdom

the white man has answers.

the poor man the reason.

pure untouched intelligent and human,

we the ones with land, water and food.

Yashodhara

O Yashodhara!

You are like a dream of sharp pain,
life-long sorrow.
I don’t have the audacity to look at you.
we were brightened by Buddha’s light,
but you absorbed the dark
until your life was mottled blue and dark,
a fragmented life, burned out,

O Yashodahara!
The tender sky comes to you for refuge
seeing your shining but fruitless life
and the pained stars shed tears
My heart breaks,
seeing your matchless beauty,
separated from your love,
dimming like twilight.
Listening to your silent sighs,
I feel the promise of heavenly happiness is hollow.

Tell me one thing, Yashodhara, how did you
contain the raging storm in your small hands?
Just the idea of your life shakes the earth
and sends the creaming waves
dashing against the shore.
You would have remembered
while your life slipped by
the last kiss of Siddharth’s final farewell,
those tender lips.
But weren’t you aware, dear,
of the heart-melting fire
and the fearful awakening power
of that kiss?
Lightening fell, and you didn’t know it.
he was moving towards a great splendor,
far from the place you lay….
He went, he conquered, he shone.
While you listened to the songs of his triumph
your womanliness must have wept.
You who lost husband and son
must have felt uprooted
like the tender banana plant
But history doesn’t talk about
the great story of your sacrifice.
If Siddarth had gone through
the charade of samadhi
a great epic would have been written about you!
You would have become famous in purana and palm-leaf
like Sita and Savithri
O Yashodhara!

I am ashamed of the injustice.
You are not to be found in a single Buddist Vihara.
Were you really of no account?
But wait – don’t suffer so.
I have seen your beautiful face.
You are between the closed eyelids of Siddharta.
Yashu, just you.

By Hira Bansode

+++++++

I, would like to think that this queen actually led a fulfilling life, apart from her, the king also abandoned his Kingdom, maybe she was the guiding hand, making decisions to help in the Governance? And maybe the same amnesiac History forgot that too. Nevertheless I love this poem for the image of Hira herself; Did she stand at the feet of the massive Buddha in the caves of Aurangabad, look up at the peaceful face, and while being mesmerized by those half closed eyes, did her thoughts drift to Yashodhara?

A dalit woman reviving the memory of a queen that husband and history left behind, and she was brought to us by others too, usually in the sadness of her being, Hira a Dalit, calmly, like dusting cobwebs, sweeps through caste, status and temporality to reach out to the woman Yashodhara. Hira who found solace in Buddhism, is taken in by the teachings yet is able to see the Great one, as merely a man, one being only capable of taking leave of his beloved wife, while she slept. She goes further to bring the Enlightened-one to ground level, by seeing in him the devotion of a man to his beloved, as she says -in his eyes an image of “Yashu, just you”.

—

Anybody who has been in those caves, atheists included experience the sheer magnificence and calmness of the statues. The powerful flashlights placed at the base of the massive forms are focussed only on the face and the darkness of the caves becomes a halo around the Buddha’s face, it is an unnerving sight and experience.

Hira Bansode wrote Marathi poetry describing the lives of dalits. Hira’s assurance to the abandoned queen is one she wrote after converting to buddhism……… translated by Jayant Karve and Philip Engblom.

Source: Poisoned Bread.