LABOUR ROOM - A POEM BY KOMDEPUDI NIRMALA (ENGLISH TRANSLATION)
PALANA (pAranandi lakshmI narasimham)
Labour Room
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Kondepudi Nirmala
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The moment you enter
the labour room
you see inferno in 3-D:
either hell on earth
or the earth in hell.
A river of pain on each table.
Hands stifling screams.
Cries, calls.
Howls. Yowls.
Throes. Spasms.
All normal, quite normal.
Walking, talking, laughing
and such, and all biological features
get a new form here.
What counts is a cry, or at least a moan.
Legs spread wide helplessly,
looking forward in the climactic crest
of catacxlysm,
like a coin crushed flat
on the rails by the wheels of a train.
Saw dust wounds as a ball
given to the blade of the saw.
No room to think.
No deadline between life and death.
May be the fish on the hook writhes like this.
May be a dumb animal trussed in a sack cries like this.
Well, this is not the end.
Much depends on pain, more pain.
This is yesterday's case:
the pulse is weak.
That is the latest case:
the foetus is transverse.
Still nothing happens to you.
Wait, wait for the clock
to turn on its hours.
Look, there she comes, full term,
by bus, car, rickshaw, and on foot.
A saline bottle upside down
to give away life drop by drop.
(Translated from Telugu by the author and edited by A. K. Ramanujan)
Frankly, here is an excellent example of what good editing makes
this 'controversial' poem! It sounds very much like an original poem in
English.
This was taken from the anthology entitled "In Their Own Voice," edited with
an introduction by Arlene R. K. Zide and published by the Penguin Books in
1993.
Let me quote a few lines from the introduction.
'Transcend! Become "universal"! When will you stop writing as a woman?'
Hindi poet Gagan Gill asks, 'If I am born with that sex can I write as something
other than what I am? Are men "universal"?'
Her words are personal, her own; but she reflects the views of most of the women
poets in this anthology. Beheroze Shroff's ( who when not writing beautiful
poetry
in English makes films - VRV) words too reflect this view: 'We need to stop
seeing each
other through men's eyes(and language!); we have to have a different "women's
voice"....'
Hence the title of this volume: 'In Their Own Voice,' not HER individual voice,
or a
cacophony of their separate, individual VOICES, but focusing on seeing through
women's eyes, a different women's-eyed view of the world in poetry - their own
collective women's ' voice'.
I rest their case.
Best wishes.
Venkateswara Rao Veluri
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____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: "Sreenivas Paruchuri" <sparu...@hotmail.com>
Date: 1/7/98 10:44 AM
hi: btw, who is rajani?
v