Bruised, but not Broken (poems) – 1. Rain

Bruised, but not Broken (poems)

-Challapalli Swarooparani 

1.Rain

Rain means
Memories –
Flying termites
That shed their wings from
The wet anthills of the mind

Rain means
A paper boat that I fasten
To plunge into the pond of infancy

When I look at this rain
I remember my damp thatched house
That woke us up at midnight
The sound of it
Dribbling down into vessels
My mother
Keeping awake through the night
Draining with basins the rain water
And the discomfort

My father
Not knowing what to do
Sitting on the edge of the cot’s leg
Setting right our blanket
Lighting his beedi
They loiter in my memory

In that tiny heart jubilation drizzled
As rain meant
Our thatched school shut
down Our monsoon resonated
with Pipkin-roasted red lentils
Radio songs, cowries shell games
Fights, deceptions, quarrels.

When the sky was overcast
My mother became a cloud of
sorrow Thinking of the next meal
And how to provide it
In a jobless rainy season.

Brass pitchers –
Mother’s gifts from her natal home –
Disappeared
Only to turn up
Either as dry fish curry
Or groundnut chutney on hot, hot rice
On a dank rainy night.

Then
Rain drops tinkled down
From the gaps in the palm-leaf thatch
Now, from roofs of memory
The rain sheds alphabets.

(Telugu: “Vaana”, translated by Prof. Guntapudi Swarupa Rani, Dept. of English, Sri Padmavathi Mahila University.)

*****

(To be continued-)