Bruised, but not Broken (poems)
-Challapalli Swarooparani
12. Muddy Hands
With the music of washed vessels.
She wakes up the house.
When the early cockcrows
Piercing through thick darkness
She lights the hut
Feeds the children grains of rice.
She arrives in the fields, porridge-vessel in hand
The landlord welcomes her with abuses.
As she delicately transplants paddy
Bent from her waist and in knee-deep mud
Her stomach rumbles, sets up a horrific dance
For a handful of rice-grains and chilly.
She continues to sprinkle fertilisers
Unmindful of the child who swings in
A makeshift cradle hung on the branch of a tree.
A lovely girl
Neither raised dear nor fussed over plays
In the muddy pond
Her mother’s mud-spattered hands are busy
Pulling at weeds.
Nothing to cook with
She lives her days out in distress
The rice heap
Glitters like gold
Like her skin, whose colour it swallows, makes its own.
As she receives wages for
Bringing forth flowers of gold
Through the labour of her hands,
Her femininity mocks her.
Her husband waits
To drink her sweat like arrack.
She perches in the net
With hopes of filling her children’s bellies
With her two-rupees-a-day wages.
Sucked dry by the sun, rain-soaked
Beaten by husband in the evenings
Getting pregnant year after year
Her body that once glowed
Like marigold
Turns pale
A leafless, wilted twig.
Innocent daughter
Lustreless, and drifting down a canal of tears
Smouldering fire-wood
The setting sun ―
As she carries the cross of hunger
And makes her way through the stones of life.
(Telugu: “Mattichetulu”, translated by Prof. K. Purushottam, Dept of English, Kakatiya University and published in Mankenapoovu, an anthology of poems by the author, 2005.)
*****
(To be continued-)
Challapalli Swaroopa Rani hails from a village, Pyaparru, Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh. She is one of the five daughters of Mariyamma and Mantraiah. Went to Govt school in her place, completed her college at Guntur, the District head quarters. Then shifted to Hyderabad Central University and involved in student politics as a founder member of Ambedkar Student’s Association. She had her master’s in History & Archaeology, M.Phil in Medieval History and Ph. D in Regional Studies. Swaroopa has obtained Gold Medal in her Masters Examinations. She has got her first recruitment as Asst. Professor in History at Potti Sriramulu Telugu University, Srisailam and got selected as Associate Professor in Buddhist Studies in Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur. She lives in Vijayawada. Presently she is a Professor of Buddhist Studies and Director, Center for Women’s Studies in the same University. She is specialized in studies on Buddhism, Caste, Religion, Gender, Tribal Studies, People’s Culture and Literature.