Dream after dream
Girl for a boy and boy for a girl
Dream of turning into dollar trees, hugging tightly.
Once things of pride, these migrations,
Now ‘trishankous’ that swing the parents slowly
Into a lonely old age that twists their insides
They clutch their computers to their laps…
Hoping maybe one day…
One day it will shed one tear drop for them
On its own.
Or enjoy the touch of their loving hand
They live on cheating themselves
And start learning to walk afresh.

Original: Smt. Aduri Satyavathi Devi (Telugu)
Translated by: Syamala Kallury

And before dawn
In chalky designs they get adorned
As if milky ways were spread out,
A swarm of swans were floating away,
And seem a queen’s entourage
Has been sojourning in that floral palanquin.
** ** **
And there in that remote corner of the village…
A leftover place after the city had engulfed
Every inch in its reach…on that half-quarried hillock
A hunch-backed old hag
Looking like a hackneyed moon,
Sapped of all energies
Labours in the pit in front
Herself ……becoming a fistful of hunger.

She anneals the bones bitten by cold with the rays of the sun
And becomes a machine to grind the hill to dust.
Filling up her basket with her labour
And bearing her life support overhead,
She march-pasts the six-bus stops distance for three hours.
Measuring distances in her accustomed way
Of the [...]]]> Caught in the chilling web of sagittal month
Time shivers in the bitter biting cold
Even in the congested cities
The foreyards of houses take a head bath
And get cleansed of their inured dirt

And before dawn
In chalky designs they get adorned
As if milky ways were spread out,
A swarm of swans were floating away,
And seem a queen’s entourage
Has been sojourning in that floral palanquin.
** ** **
And there in that remote corner of the village…
A leftover place after the city had engulfed
Every inch in its reach…on that half-quarried hillock
A hunch-backed old hag
Looking like a hackneyed moon,
Sapped of all energies
Labours in the pit in front
Herself ……becoming a fistful of hunger.

She anneals the bones bitten by cold with the rays of the sun
And becomes a machine to grind the hill to dust.
Filling up her basket with her labour
And bearing her life support overhead,
She march-pasts the six-bus stops distance for three hours.
Measuring distances in her accustomed way
Of the amount of sweat she perspires.
She bargains her appetite with the city dwellers
For a hunk of bread and few drops of tea
And satiates her hunger.

Positing the change in the navel
She retires for a nap under some wayside tree
Or some shade under the sun.
Reminiscing her experiences ripe as her chalky head,
Between those half asleep eye lids she shivers in fear all of a sudden
Fearing her fate if the city were to snatch even those
Remains of the hillock.

When it happens, wont the foreyards of houses pale away
Devoid of chalky designs
Like a queen divested of her decorations?

Original: Aduri Satyavathi Devi (Teulgu)
Translation: Nauduri Murthy

Original: Aduri Satyavathi [...]]]> Whenever he runs into me
The stink envelopes me even before.
Embalming his skin with earth
He enters like clay sundered by the wintry wind
With a basket of dung over head.
He infuses the life into the awaiting plants
Combing and caressing the roots.
Greeting with his looks
He teaches words to the sprouting twigs in silence.
Doctoring the infested and the diseased
He bathes the Banana saplings
Like new born babies
Standing them in order of school children.
Taking the charity of his labour
And relishing the music of his crooning
The tap roots transform to milky-ways.
‘Been sun-burnt the whole day
Sweat and soil disconcerting,
He asks for water becoming a bowl of thirst.
Bringing it in a dazzling steel vessel, I demur.
Reading the essence of my actions
He drinks his thirst out cupping his hands
And throws at me a smiling glance.
I sink my head to that look
Which bears the aeonian nobility and forgiveness.
He walks away…
Like a colossus
Straight and upright.

Original: Aduri Satyavathi Devi (Telugu)
Translated By: Nauduri Murthy