Bruised, but not Broken (poems) – 30. Patriotism

Bruised, but not Broken (poems)

-Challapalli Swarooparani 

30. Patriotism

Sure, sure, Gandhi Sir,
As your divine-self proclaimed
Our country does live in villages
Truly.

That each should live and die
Where he is destined to be born
This secret I did not understand
Until I grew up.

Well, I can’t sing in praise
Of my land or mind
For, where do I have it, in the first instance?
‘My village’? To hell with it.

I too fancy to author
An epistle on my village
But sorrow eclipses
My memories of it.

Still I love my bag
Of reminiscences.
But never, ever did the village
Nurture me or my people.

‘Our’ village asked us
To keep safe distance from it
Never did it give us heart.
All the time, everywhere
Exclusion, execution!
Theirs is one village, ours, another.

There is shame in our name
Gandhi Sir,
Whenever I had to write a letter home
My fingers used to shrink with shame
To write the address: Pariah colony.

I remember those days
When I wrote my address on the
Inland cover, and placed it inside a book.

I took a pledge many a time that
I ought not to love that village
But it is almost impossible for me
To deny it, Gandhi Sir!
Loving troublesome place
That expels us
Or the country which excludes us
Which of these, Sir, is real patriotism?

(Telugu: “Desabhakti”, translated by N.R.Tapaswi and published on Face Book Timeline of the author.)

*****

(To be continued-)

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Challapalli Swaroopa Rani

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.

Swaroopa Rani is poet, story writer, columnist and free lance Journalist. She is known activist and writer. She has started writing poetry during her college days on general aspects and shifted to write political issues of Dalits, Adivasis and Women. Swaroopa has published four books on theory(English and Telugu) and two anthologies(Telugu) and almost 100 articles in different journals. She has organized ten National and International Conferences and attended more than 100 seminars and conferences.  Swaroopa’s poetry is well received by the readers and her poetry is included in many collections and got translated into English, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Academic research is being carried on her works and her poetry is prescribed in curriculum at Graduation and Post-Graduation level.