Hi, pal! Howdy?
It’s ages since you penned your last letter!
Nay, eons!!!
The moments we caressed our wounds together
And the pep talk that transcended epochs
Still lie under the creased folds.

A Letter is an elixir
that doubles-up enthusiasm for life
every time you breathe…
It’s an amazing leaf that reassures
your heart with letters.

Hi, pal! Howdy?
Home, children, neighborhood,
Loans, allowances, office, other mundane concerns…
Why waste a call for festival?
Send a message; That will do!
Am talking from the land-line,
So bye for now, bill would soar!

The blossoming blue sky
Touch of the verdant grace
The sudden appearance of rainbow
The thundering of elegant rainy cloud…
Where is the room for romance of language
when diction itself crumbles down
in abv.’s and acronyms like spores?

Be that cell-to-cell is free
Or the ‘space-compressor’ cell is a boon
Can you hear the beat of the heart
Behind that pronounced word?
Can it echo the true Symphony
behind that array of words?

A letter is an epic
How many times ever it was re-licked!
It’s an inerasable imprint on the heart
How many times ever you have read it!!
It’s an immutable form of the volatile word
True soul of the suppressed dreams…
Where had they gone…
those assertions of mutual welfare?
Where were those ‘Yours friendly’ and
‘Yours lovingly’ leave takings?
Only Hello’s, Hi’s Bye’s or CU’s
A smattering of courtesy
A scattering of scissored words strewn
And an asphyxiation of essence of words!

Hi, pal! Howdy?
Whenever I saw a letter stuffed into the door handle
My heart would leap up… fledged!
Flashing in my memory over and again,
It used to spring an inadvertent smile
whatever I did!!
Gee God! What happened!!!
Dull… dry …dreary conversations, and
Angst shadowing the heart
Are ‘cut’ behind the ‘bills’
Many calls you can’t afford to miss
Are languishing as ‘missed calls’

Pal! Dear pal!!
Isn’t the Letter only memento for the next life?
An oasis that quenches your thirst by degrees?
Life is immortal in a lively letter
If the Present frightens
The Past in the letters exhorts!

What do you see in the postman’s bag these days… after all,
A few LICs, some ‘On IGS Only’s,
and at best, an occasional land-line bill.
Post card has become a relic of the past.
Not to speak of the Inland Letter
Or the gloom-enveloped Envelope.
No use ruing, it’s our own undoing.

Clocks… Alarms… Mails…
Cell is now all in one!
Radios and Cameras
Are on her morrow’s menu!!
Pal!
There’s no time to speak
Nor time to spare for the pen.
Hello! Hello!!
Pl. mail this msg. to all!!!
Land to land
Or cell to cell… no matter.
Pl. send this msg urgently.
See it’s prominently displayed on cell screen
And the phone could hear:
“Here Letter is on it’s death-bed.”

(About the Poet: Geeta Madhavi, Kala, is a Postgraduate in English and a Ph.D. in Telugu from the Andhra University, Waltair. She is a prolific writer with very fine sensibilities and has brought out 3 volumes of poetry in Telugu … ద్రవభాష (Fluid Language)- శీతసుమాలు (Flowers of Snow) –శతాబ్దివెన్నెల (Moonlight of the Century) so far. She runs her blogs అ-ఆలు (అనుభూతులూ-ఆలోచనలూ http://kalageeta.wordpress.com)and 21వ శతాబ్దపు తెలుగు. She also runs a regular Column “నా కళ్ళతో అమెరికా” in Vihanga, a Telugu Web Magazine. She is a resident American living in California running her own enterprise.)

Translated by: Nauduri Murty