Poetry:
Momila
An Urban Courtesan's Proclamation
Like a prince described in once- upon-a-time story
My solti rajai!
Today in an enormous storm
I recalled your tight embrace
After I stumbled years back
Today as the firmament violently roared
I recalled that years back
I did thrust my head on your bosom
And heard your pulsation rather than thunderbolt
Eventually I had thought our journey was of love
But pretending love
What a weird wall you erected
All my dreams are secluded outside the wall
Do you understand! One day
Dismantling this mammoth wall
All my dreams detached from me
I will surely make them return
To my own embrace
Till then, like a tiny plant safely grown
Erecting a wall of sharp pen
Do tell poet Bashu Shashi
To securely keep my bundle of dream!
I loathe barricades as the poet does
But sometimes I need to answer barricade
By erecting another barricade
Let the public openly know it.
Solti rajai!
I pledge on the name of red rose you gave me
Someday in the past
Putting vermillion powder of faith on me
You had placed me inside this wall
Making me your beloved bride
But as time passed
Putting mark of urban courtesan
On my forehead
Don’t know how far you kept flying
Even though you sold me
I promise on the name of my love
That you couldn’t sell with me
Inside partition I got paralyzed here in hell
Through the courtyard of my house in village
Shamelessly you kept moving
As if you were heading to heaven
Rajai! I just heard
On the melody of long strands of hair
Entangled on the button of your coat
You are taking an oath
Of the portfolio of Women's Ministry
Do you know or not
The hair strand waving like flag in your coat
I had thrust in the button of your coat
As a memento of love fallen on pillow
On our bridal night
Sorry, the greatest treachery is caused
By our own people
Why did DNA test result come opposite?
Tell Surya that Kunti has this query!
In childhood mother would put
Black mark on my face to avoid evil eye
But the big mark of your guileful eyesight blocked it
Today, me, indicted an urban courtesan by you
I am entirely a desert
Extended over my own youth's sea
And inside this fence
Changing into a ghostly black shadow of my own life
I am haunting to myself
Rajai! One day the ghostly black shadow of my life
Certainly will come to haunt you
And majestically sit on your honored chair
Your sinful eyes won't see me that moment
Instead you will see a comfortable chair
Moving swiftly after a human
Recently left it and moved away
The moment you frightfully run away
Your security-giving gatekeepers
Will be waiting to manacle you on my behest
All the witnesses of this happiest event
First of all convey this message
To my poor mother, like me, living in the countryside
These days
Light doesn’t make eye contact with me at all
My relatives don’t like to talk to me
Perhaps light sees me ugly and deformed
Perhaps relatives see me
A dwarf dissimilar to the height of their prestige
Mother! Now I am nature
Without male who doesn’t want to accept my height
I am charioteer of thundering storm, cloud and river
Getting dismantled in myself
Getting torn into pieces in myself
Flooding and spilling in myself
Through grave color of my own action
I want to omit black mark on my luck
Mother! On the goddess- residing altar
Where I used to worship with tender hands
Now, not only black tilak
But also sharp sword compulsorily preserve for me
Solti rajai!
Now, you are inside the wall you raised
And me outside the wall
Your offspring on my lap
Waiting on the door not your shelter but father's blessing
My dear!
Love and ego
Never can silently sleep in a single pillow
Tell it to all who are on co-journey of life
Translation: Suresh Hachekali
