Bruised, but not Broken (poems)
-Challapalli Swarooparani
21. Bruised Childhood
Whenever I read of a pleasing pretty childhood
Complete with teeny-weeny fluffy frocks
Chubby cheeks
My childhood ―
A book of tables bereft of pages and
Pressed down in an old trunk box ―
Stretches out its leafy hands to be turned into poetry.
If I were to remember my mucky childhood ―
A wet memory of my mother
Kissing my tear-stained cheeks.
I wept unceasingly when,
Tying my leg to a cot,
She left for the fields to plant saplings.
My mother bringing a tuft of seedlings
From the field
That memory lingers in my eyes.
And of my mother wiping her eyes at the hearth
After she had beaten me, twisted my braids
Because I went to pick gherkins
And neglected to stop cattle entering
The chilly field I was to have kept a watch on
While she swept the threshing floor.
Childhood beatings
Getting rapped by upper caste teacher, when,
Forced into playing truant
I had to go gathering, into the fields.
Memory is
Feeling the scars on my back
When I was thrashed with a broom that my friend got
Saying, ‘see the intelligence of the girl from a family of illiterates’.
If I were to touch my bruised, peeled-off childhood
I remember how my private tuition master
Threw my bag of books out for not paying
A monthly fee of twenty rupees.
To touch my childhood
Is to plead, hold Jesus by the chin
And ask him, who was to be born tomorrow,
To give new clothes, if not to us,
At least to our brother-in-law
As I listen, wide awake
To my parents as they lie
Sleepless into the chilly night
And discuss, turning themselves upside down
Wondering
How to provide new clothes
For their son-in-law.
Peacock-feather memories too:
Of holidays during
My bare-footed lovely childhood
When, tucking my grandfather’s upper cloth
Into my frock, I played at cooking
In the lane, between houses.
Of tying anklets of snail-shells to my feet
Running noisily down dry field ridges
Stealthily plucking green gram pods
And riding over the jute field’s scent.
When I visit my grandmother’s house
I recall the village where I romped
Ripened neem fruit memories
Pull me back
Like the jasmine creeper in our backyard.
(Telugu: “Pechchuloodina baalyam”, translated by Prof. G.Sheela Swarupa Rani, Dept of English, Sri Padmavathi Mahila Viswavidyalayam and published in Mankenapoovu, an anthology of poems by the author, 2005 and K Suneetha Rani (ed), Dalit Women’s Writing, 2012.)
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(To be continued-)
Challapalli Swaroopa Rani hails from a village, Pyaparru, Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh. She is one of the five daughters of Mariyamma and Mantraiah. Went to Govt school in her place, completed her college at Guntur, the District head quarters. Then shifted to Hyderabad Central University and involved in student politics as a founder member of Ambedkar Student’s Association. She had her master’s in History & Archaeology, M.Phil in Medieval History and Ph. D in Regional Studies. Swaroopa has obtained Gold Medal in her Masters Examinations. She has got her first recruitment as Asst. Professor in History at Potti Sriramulu Telugu University, Srisailam and got selected as Associate Professor in Buddhist Studies in Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur. She lives in Vijayawada. Presently she is a Professor of Buddhist Studies and Director, Center for Women’s Studies in the same University. She is specialized in studies on Buddhism, Caste, Religion, Gender, Tribal Studies, People’s Culture and Literature.