Tempest of time (poems)

Tempest of time (poems)

-Kondapalli Niharini

Translated by Elanaaga

31. Bathukamma – Women

Like weaving poetry, uniting family,
women cross the roads of ups and downs,
make corrections to their journey.
They pile up flowers in rows
to make Bathukamma, pour out hearts
to sing songs of experiences.
Crossing the innocent age of
five-tiered and seven-tiered Boddemmas,
they reach the play of nine-tiered ones
and become hearths on parents’ bosom.
They are lamps of life,
so sing songs while playing Bathukamma.
They offer at least six eatables
to Gowramma in the morning
on the festival day; get busy in the works.
They stack flowers in circular piles,
take the help of cohabitants, but don’t tell
about the fountains in which fishes swim.
Like lifting pitchers, cooking curries,
dousing hunger flames, they place
copious smiles on their heads.
Since they know the travails of life,
coughs of hags, stenches of clothes,
in the evening they meet friends,
sing along with them.
Like the melting tallow of candles,
the evaporating oil under the wick,
the earthen lamps breaking
when dropped from a height
some women are hapless
for they cannot blame darkness.

Some can differentiate
between gloom from a beam
Some women sing the raga of swing
as if Seeta’s exile turned into songs,
as if Urmila is in sleep ragas,
as if scolding Siva who’s silent
between Ganga and Gowri.
Their claps are not for appreciation,
nor for effervescing revelry.
For squeezing out moisture of the heart,
or spilling out tears from eyes
they defer all other works, dust sibbis,
and become colourful flourish of strange things.
If time assaults stealthily,
they bring smudges of lightning;
tell their subsequent views in other talks.
During the festival of Bathukamma,
they don’t wear old saris,
nor quarrel with their husband.
On listening about parents’ house
they frisk around gleefully like deer.
They become garlands of jasmines
in the oiled untangled head hair.
Hiding deftly the signs of grief
they go into banter while bending in play,
singing with refrains and ragas.
Blotted out by sisters-in-law,
they become blooming trees in the graveyard,
open the eyes of brothers to reality.
They sing credible stories during the nine days
as the greenery of Thangedu gardens
spread out all over the forest.

Becoming sacred avatars in youthful talks,
they throw Bathukammas in heaps
before temples or lakes with meagre water.
Why can’t they sing, play as well
as sprouted crescents bloomed in new times?
When hearts fly as kites
with new fashion styles of Kolatam,
adulterated talk of TV anchors,
modern movie trends, they become threads
in the hands of males holding manja!
In any situation, the women playing Bathukamma
are eager to know the meaning of life.
Telangana is now
a dazzling curtain of shining stars;
the white moon emitting silvery light,
the red sun giving new lustre all the time.
They are gunuguflowers, sesame flowers
with white gaiety in the festivities.
They blow sweet smells from hearts
in the form of Bathukammas.
Women signify Bathukammas;
vice versa is true as well.

They are the hues of bonhomie
smeared on the portrait of life.

Published in Telangana, a monthly magazine, September 2017

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(To be continued-)