We too can’t breathe
Telugu Original: J.Goutham
English Translation: Akella Rajkumar
Black sea is roaring again
Black heart is surging and hurling the claws
Black sky is burning ablaze
Black eyes are thundering with blood shot lightnings
Black summits are joined by some white clouds too
Its raining raging thunder storms on
The white empire’s hate edifice
The distraught white wolf has sought refuge
in some stray bunker
Heartbroken humanity is kneeling down
The simmering anger of the victims around the world
has turned the helpless wails into fierce war cries
I can’t breathe.. I can’t breathe.. I can’t breathe
George ! Like you..
We too can’t breathe here.!
The land we tilled breathed life into the plants
The plants we sown breathed life to ripen the crops
The canals we dug, breathed to help the harvest put the food on the table
The path we trode, breathed to turn into a high way
The brick we raised breathed to become a metropolis
And yet George, like you,
even our country doesn’t love us
We too can’t breathe here.
The Corona upheaval made our bleeding feet
walk till the horizons of earth and sky
Our shadows outran us
Our lives outran our shadows
In this incessant journey
soaked in the trauma that embodies the migrant lives
not just the massive weights to carry
on heads but their own unbearable existence
or of their little ones, awaiting bondings and
thirsty affections, none can breathe
Neither the body parts
strewn on the rail tracks
Nor the struggling souls bathed in blood
can breathe
And yet George, like you,
even our country doesn’t love us
We too can’t breathe here.
My father breathed his last in the untouchable ghetto
And my mother followed suit without seeing anything change
All my ancestors lay buried in their graves, unable to breathe when alive
And yet George, like you,
We too love our country.
May we still be pariahs to sight our deities
Unworthy still, to offer the sacred food
Yet we persist to worship our gods and offer our prayers
Gallows hang on our each breath
Bigotry morphs to enslave us over
Still we love our beloved country
and our thirty million deities
And yet we will persevere to till our lands
sow our plants, lay our high ways
and build our metros
And that dwindling hope
that our babies of distant future may breathe free
fuels our fight through gasping lives
And perhaps George,
Like your little Gianna portended
You may just be changing the world.
George, Like your Black sea
We too shall surge breathing free
Where our freedom is throttled
We too shall roar with the ordination of our rights
Against worlds and minds that foster the desires of enslaving us
We too shall rebel armed with our constitution
George! Like your Black sea..
We too shall call out all the loathing and hatred
We too shall chase all the oppressions into the bunker.
*****
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Akella Rajkumar is a Film Producer and Chairman of Anti Video Piracy Cell. He served as an Executive Member of the Governing Council of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce – TFCC, Hyderabad. He received the MPA Asia-Pacific Copyright Educator Award in 2016.