“through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us. . ."

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Tiny Concentrations of Pain

I would like to introduce a Tamil poet of our times, Sri.Shanmuga Subbiah. Two of his poems, taken from New Writing in India (ed.Adil Jussawalla.PenguinIndia 1974) are given below. Incidentally, my copy of the book was bought at Trichy in1982. It had been lying deep inside the shelves....

AFTER READING THE DAILY

On the top floor
Of Parliament House
A dead rat
Stinks. Phew!
Is there no one
To sweep it away
And bury it
Fathoms deep?
In this land
The only thing
That can be said
For the likes of us
Is
We can smell things.
You great ones
Who rule over us
Haven't you the heart
To feel it?
****
1968

ASK THE BELLY

Scratch your head
Bite your tongue
Grin
Bow low
Keep your hands tied
Your feet pressed firmly together.

'What's all this?'
You'd better
Ask the belly.
It'll tell you.
*****
1968

Translated from Tamil byT K Doraiswamy.


42 years hence, I do not find a better portrait of our country.

*********
Balachandran V, Trivandrum 25.09.2010

4 comments:

  1. Simple, yet meaningful. Something to think about! The original Tamil version would have been even better, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stark. Stunning. To the face. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. thanks for sharing this.. its sad. we dont seem to have moved from square one... ask ure belly like he says...

    ReplyDelete
  4. @RGB: You gave me THE IDEA! I will try to get the original; I know Tamil.

    @ Arun, K: Yes, his words are so powerful, aren't they? I cringed inside,reading it.

    ReplyDelete

Leave a word, please!