Meghya
They feared
a single drop of your blood, if shed,
will sprout into a rain-drop
Hardened by any number of blows
that left no trace
your body administered a shock
to those
who thought they hung you
to an electric transformer
in the chowrastha
as a warning of death to all.
The freedom-loving birds
that offer withered blades of grass
to scare-crows
located the man in the corpse.
People identified the rebel in the man.
All summers are not alike.
Only for desert-lives an oasis appears
at some place.
When there is the shade of this date palm
the flash of a thunder in the north is enough
for the dry branch,
languished in long summer,
to flower again.
Like a cloud that hid the thunder
in its heart
people preserved your memories
even in repression.
When people became a windstorm,
a thunderous roar, a sea of humanity
in the same chowrastha
you became a perennial stream
descended to earth.
You became a fountain-jet that sprang from
earth’s heart-interiors.
Summer seems to get hotter every year.
And no trace of a tree nearby.
No taste of a wet-mark, a drop-touch
for a parched throat.
All along the road
only trenches, truncated paths, topless man-holes,
horrendous horns, dusty oil-marks,
sudden breaks, uninhibited ride of sten-guns
in open jeeps, brazen sirens,
the sweating of fears, hot summers
and road-rollers,
the blood-sheds of angry revolts,
lathis, tear-gases, bullets,
broken chappals, daily routine’s miasma-
In a fierce city-summer
you are like a victory-post
planted three years ago.
You come coolly into the hands.
Jetting along swiftly,
you touch the lips, taste the tongue
and going down gently through the throat
you offer a soothing touch to the heart.
The soil under the feet is wet too
with memories
as it unfolds an experience of a life intertwined with
water, sweat and blood
in a new scene
in yet another adventure of a day.
***
Translated by: K.Damodar Rao
(In Warangal during the Ryat Colie Sangham Conference in May, 1990 public taps were provided at different points in the town on a war footing at the instance of the organizers. For the last three years these taps have been of great relief to the people of Warangal. The organizers named one such tap at Hanamkonda Chowrastha as Meghya. Meghya was an activist of RCS. He was killed by police and hanged to an electric transformer in Hanamkonda chowrastha in 1988. There is always great rush at the tap.)