After meeting my childhood friend (Telugu Original “Chinnanati Mitruralni Chuseka” by Dr K.Geeta)

After meeting my childhood friend

                       English Translation: V.Vijaya Kumar Telugu Original : “Chinnanati Mitruralni Chuseka” by

Dr K.Geeta

Meeting childhood friend
After a long time
I recalled those carefree dragonfly days
Slept happily tucked in bed
Closed under blanket overhead
Whenever wished, how long we cherished

The beans creeper over there
Rose plants
And the sannajaji canopy
Present before eyes

Funny letters caught in the book racks
Somewhere
The pinion in the book folds
Believed to be given babies
Never fade out from memories

The guava tree on which we maneuvered
Like monkeys
The coconut plant that shot into the skies
Feared still when they see us

The steps in the pond tumbled us with the water pot
Thorns pricked in the Gobbi thrushes
Still derisive at us

On the birthday
The lace my mate brought
With kanakambaram flowers
And the script she wrote in pearly handwriting
On the first page of Geetanjali
That preserved all these years
The warmth in the Iron cupboard looks
Became my soul mate’s welled-up eyes

The bronze Jada gantalu which I have given away
To my soul mate with the lie somewhere I lost
To those at home,
The screech
When she opened the box
Pulsated my heart

The gossip on the terrace in the moonlight
The flowers we folded halved in delight
The white powdered lines we drew in front
The cane we crushed and spat at the backyard well
Everything…appearing
Wherever we walk along

It’s altogether strange
I remind my age all of a sudden
When I met my childhood friend
As if watching ourselves in a mirror
As if replicated copies of us once
When the kids gossip and leap in delight
Assuming the juveniles blush in spirit
I just remind my past
And when I watch
Her undyed hair
And her toiling life till her end
That made her cheeks wrinkled
I just recollected my age.

*****