06/09/09

new dream

for having skinned the five spirits
by driving a nail into the sky
another into the patala
and soaking the hide in the seven seas you
deserve those sun and moon gods
as sandals for your feet!
in hunger
or in humiliation
head bowed
you stitch
your skin into shoes
grandfather!
i dream
that this world
should turn into a strap
and kiss
your big toe.

my translation of dr. enDloori sudhakar's kotta kala from 'kaitunakala danDem', a collection of madiga poetry.
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5 comments:

anu said...

Thanks for sharing, Kuffir.

Curious to know what you think of this poem.

Also I've been looking for books with Y.Sudhakar's earlier poems, names would be helpful. :)

10:27 am
Diwakar Sinha said...

truthfully, with a single read, I understood nothing at all

5:47 pm
gaddeswarup said...

From my reading of the poem here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11288941/madiga-krupakar
(the very first poem on page 21)
in these lines
"my head bowed
i stitch
your skin into shoes
grandfather!"
erhaps 'my', 'i' should be 'your', 'you'. But then, my telugu and appreciation of poetry are both weak.

8:15 am
kuffir said...

swarup garu,

the original lines say:

'aakali tOnO
avamaanam tOnO
nee charmapu joLLu
kuTTukunTunna taathaa'

i think you're right. i'd written the first draft more than two months ago, and was not satisfied with the first few lines, and kept trying to improve them. so, didn't pay much attention to the 'easier' lines that followed.

if 'kuTTukunTunna taathaa' had been kuTTukuntunnaa taatha'- my interpretation would fit in. but as you know 'kuTTukunTunna' also means 'kuTTukuntunnaa' in dialects spoken in telangana and certain other places. and as most of the other poems adopt forms of dialect- i think my mind was still thinking along the same lines.

thank you swarup garu. i think i'll edit my translation- your interpretation sounds better.

10:46 am
gaddeswarup said...

For me it was a difficult poem; I have forgotten the significance of 'panchabhutalu' and 'sapta samadralau'. But any other poems in that book are in easy to understand dpoken Telugu which I prefer to the language of books like 'Manu Charitra'.

12:49 pm

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