– Prasen

Which language, which idiom, whether classical or colloquial, I have now no doubts!

As I stammered with elastic words
and stumbled through alien speech,
unpronounceable terms
have cauterized my tongue, haven’t they!
You have re-scripted my words,
in your language with a ring
tied to a sacred thread
on a bed of rice, haven’t you!

Letters written in oil convey nothing.
I don’t know why
the Pedda Bala Siksha
is not in my language,
nor do I know why
my mother tongue has
become a distant relative.

It’s true
my speech cannot differentiate
geminates, dentals and alveolars,
stress and syllable collapse in our idiom,
a sentence does not break where it is
supposed to.
Wearing its gaps as symbols of wounds.

Mine is a mother tongue that
does not score marks.
What letter to trace,
what dialect to learn by heart,
what answer to produce,
I have no doubt.

This alien tongue of Teluguized Sanskrit,
The language of god brought down
to earth forced on my childhood.
My initiation to letters is a
descent into meaningless silence.
My tongue doesn’t twist it’s true.
Five-six-seven letters roll out as speech sounds.
This new dialect
the non-letter that mutters meaning,
both answer and question.
What language to speak,
what idiom to write,
what rhyme to sing,
there’s not an atom of doubt
I remember being taught to pronounce
“My last rites”.
“Feed crows – my ancestral spirits”
clearly,
I also remember
mispronouncing, and
my outstretched palm
Turning into a bloody flower.
Wall sits,
welts on my back,
the pandit’s barbarous
signature on my cheek,
my broken teeth hailing
from between my jaws
all these stand out in memory.
I now don’t care for let’ers and forms
My quarrel is with meaning, isn’t it?
A barrel full of errors
I muttered
wrote
utter’d
feeling good…

 

(With apologies to the Marathi Dalit Poet, Arun Kamble)

From “Maatru Bhaasha Maaruvesham”, Chikkanvutunna Paata Kavitvam Prachuranalu, 1995 pp 151-153

Translated by Manohar and Srivatsan

Prasen works as Journalist with TV5 in khammam.