Reality, reality ... - Translation of a Hyderabad fragment ರಿಯಾಲಿಟಿ ರಿಯಾಲಿಟಿ 'Reality Reality' from AKSHAYA KAVYA

Here is another ‘Hyderabad’ fragment from K. V. Tirumalesh’s AKSHAYA KAVYA ... he returns to one of his favourite walking haunts, Seetaphal Mandi ... 

 

POET: K. V. Tirumalesh

KANNADA ORIGINAL: first line of the fragment: 

ರಿಯಾಲಿಟಿ ರಿಯಾಲಿಟಿ

‘Reality reality’ from AKSHAYA KAVYA (2010)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

 

Reality, reality ... 

Do you want reality?

 

The boots that I brought from England

What will I do with them 

As soft as fur and as pure but 

 

the street I walk on every day is Seetaphal Mandi

Rotting vegetables flies spittle dust 

This is reality

 

Water from broken sewage pipes puddling everywhere 

I leap across all these and as I was feeling triumphant,

the railway-crossing gate had dropped

There eternity makes us sit and wait

 

Two dogs in the garbage bin

scavenging among eggs, ovaries, 

and sanitary pads

 

All are waiting the beggars too

Saint Thomas Aquinas told me

Nothing happens without a reason

 

The train from a different era comes in

as if slashing through people’s vision-lines

Shaking the earth belching fire

Shaping the cause-and-effect correlation

For two minutes

 

Should I look for clean places to walk on

Should I teach my boots the trick of leaping

Should I reveal the natural smells of the earth 

and meld it with the land or

Should I send them flying forth 

from the balcony across to

 

The Arabian Sea Mount Ararat

The Sahara desert and the Atlantic Ocean

 

If only history were just an underwear

We could turn it inside out

We could wash and dry it when dirty

A saint

one who has lost the sense of dirtiness, and

one who is free of it is the ‘supreme-swan’ 

one who wears no clothes is empty 

of all questions and the

only one who stands here every day

sells leafy greens just on a whim

***** 

THIS YEAR’S YUGADI - Translation of 'EE SALADA YUGADI' ಈ ಸಲದ ಯುಗಾದಿ

ANOTHER YUGADI POEM FOR YUGADI ... ಯುಗಾದಿಗೆ ಇನ್ನೊಂದು ಯುಗಾದಿ ಕವನ

Continuing with the spirit of Yugadi ... here is my English translation of a Yugadi poem by K. V. Tirumalesh ... EE SALADA YUGADI ಈ ಸಲದ ಯುಗಾದಿ ... from his 1986 collection 'AVADHA' ... 

 

 

Kannada original: EE SALADA YUGADI ಈ ಸಲದ ಯುಗಾದಿ

Poet: K. V. TIRUMALESH

English translation: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

THIS YEAR’S YUGADI

 

This year’s Yugadi is not like last year’s Yugadi 

Last year’s Yugadi was like a dry thunderstorm; 

it flashed and rumbled and went away 

without soaking the earth.

 

This year’s Yugadi would truly begin 

a new year – and so, as soon as I sit down 

to pen new resolutions, I was attacked

 

by mosquitoes!  You, at the beginning of this year, 

we, at the end, they sing.  I won’t fear 

for I have bought a new mosquito net.

 

This year’s yugadi is not like last year’s Yugadi – 

how would these insects know this?  On last year’s 

Yugadi we had poppyseed payasa, seekaraNe*, new clothes,

 

a movie, company of women, lots of fun, honestly; 

this time none of these.  Only memories.  

Memories are sweeter than reality I believe and

 

I savour the breeze, and the aroma of my

beautiful neighbour’s cooking that floats in with the breeze! 

For this year’s Yugadi I have Greek plays

 

Ionesco’s stories, Ananthamurthy’s ‘Avasthe.’

Enough no, what more does a writer want?

Apart from these, there are few bits written by me.

 

So that they don’t fly away I have kept 

them under a stone procured from Haridwar.  

A round stone that had bathed in the Ganges for 

thousands of years and turned smooth.

 

It is, in reality, sitting on my conscience

soaking up all the sins of my words and their senses,

gaining weight every minute.

 

 

* A kind of sweet salad made using raw mango or plantain fruit, sugar, milk, cardamom seed powder, etc

 

*****

SUNDAY MARKET - Translation of the fragment ಸಂಡೇ ಮಾರ್ಕೆಟ್ ‘Sunday Market’

Here is another ‘Hyderabad’ fragment ... this fragment is from K. V. Tirumalesh’s AVYAYA KAVYA ... an extended poetic creation in the form of a symphony, as Tirumalesh says. He goes on to say that, in a sense, Avyaya Kavya is a continuation of his earlier long poem Akshaya Kavya and more dramatic.  I, for my part, read these long poems to see if I can pick out Hyderabadi pearls ... this fragment is one such Hyderabadi pearl ... 

 

Just as Tirumalesh, the poet, uses poetic licence, I thought I’d experiment with ‘translator’s license’ ... I don’t know if there is one.  In the fifth stanza, the poet mentions various vegetables ... he uses potato and tomato as English words to create rhyme and rhythm ... whereas potato has a Kannada counterpart, tomato doesn’t; tomato is tomato in Kannada, pronounced differently ... but for onion and garlic he uses their Kannada counterparts eeruLLi beLLuLLi to create rhythm.  I decided to use ‘translator’s licence’ and have retained the Kannada words for onion and garlic in my English translation to retain the rhythm.   And all other names of vegetables end in kaayi again creating rhythm.  Bittergourdand snakegourd rhyme, but cucumber doesn’t rhyme with them.  And out of the blue, he mentions pumpkin (white pumpkin) using its Telugu name gummadikaaya (vegetables in Telugu end in kaaya) and references a popular proverb in Kannada and Telugu, when loosely translated reads – ‘when somebody said ‘pumpkin thief,’ he checked his shoulder.’  An English counterpart would be ‘Guilty conscience pricks the mind’ and its Hindi variation – chor ke daaDi mein tinka.’  He then mentions the Kannada term for ‘pumpkin,’ so that the proverb is understood by Kannada readers.  And it looks like the poet is doing all this to lighten the mood before the final two stanzas where the poem is taken to another level ... remarkable ...  I have retained ‘chhatrapati’ in the penultimate stanza; it works in Kannada, but I didn’t want to let it go so that at least some people might make the connection ... 

 

As you can see, Tirumalesh uses quite a few English words here, and an entire line in the second stanza is in English in Kannada script in the original.  There is also Telugu ... I have italicised those parts that appear in English and Telugu ... and I have ‘bolded’ the words that I have retained in my translation ... all this to retain the multilingual intricateness of this fragment ...  

 

Thank you all ... this experiment is mine alone, so blame me if you find this too much to handle ... 

 

 

POET: K. V. Tirumalesh

KANNADA ORIGINAL: first line of the fragment: ಸಂಡೇ ಮಾರ್ಕೆಟ್

‘Sunday Market’ from AVYAYA KAVYA (2019)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

 

Sunday market Monday market Tuesday market

Each day a different market

What we have is Sunday market

 

Every Sunday it rises up like magic

out of nothing really

on both sides of the wide road

opposite Gokul Mart 

Its excitement is infectious 

Those who go there once go there every week

 

Some are covered, some are bare, some on the ground

Some on pushcarts and some more on their imitations

Like Plato said no pushcart is real

The pushcart of truth is not here

On the earth and on the sky and 

everything here are imitations

Among them us too

What’s real what’s an imitation 

Why did we come here I don’t remember 

We wander around or stand around

 

These busy ladies are perhaps Rambhas, Urvashis 

and Tilottamas, celestial maidens, in disguise, 

have come here tired of heaven or cursed by someone

This is a Goblin Market

Come here, come here, they call you

Whose shop do we go to, whose shop do we skip

We like all of them though

 

We haggle we appeal we cajole a bit

We remember the farmer who’s not here

potato tomato eeruLLi beLLuLLi

haagalakaayi padavalakaayi tender southekaayi

The gummadikaaya that reminds you of the thief of yore

I mean kumbaLakaayi

watermelon pineapple and papaya 

 

The shops selling plastic toys that attract children 

imitation jewellery cell-phone 

a bear that laughs when you twist its ears 

a cat that cries when you pull its tail 

 

An old man used to sit on one side with a heap of lemons

An unfurled umbrella resting on his shoulder 

as if he were a chhatrapati

He sat detached as if he had nothing to do with the lemons

Doesn’t call out to anyone doesn’t look at anyone

One day he was not to be seen 

As if he had gone to Plato’s truth-world 

Nobody asked where he was 

That place remained vacant

 

On a Sunday subsequently, in that place 

lemons were seen, the umbrella was seen

Under the umbrella an old woman was seen 

She too was silent 

More real than anyone else

 

*****

O’ book collector - Translation of ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಸಂಗ್ರಾಹಕನೆ ‘pustaka sangraahakane’

Dear friends ... here is another Hyderabad ‘fragment’ from eminent Kannada Prof. K. V. Tirumalesh’s Sahitya Akademi award winning AKSHAYA KAVYA.  The Hyderabad location is not mentioned in the poem, in the final analysis the location is just a hook for Tirumalesh anyway, but from the description, it is the Sunday Book Market, the Sunday ‘footpath’ second-hand book market, at Abids ...   

 

Since these are untitled fragments, it would be improper, I thought, to force-fit titles to these fragments.   I have borrowed this idea from the German poet, Ulrike Almut Sandig, who, instead of a ‘titling’ a poem, ‘bolds’ a word or phrase or line in the poem that would serve as the central idea.  Here, on FB, I have used quotes.  Friends are welcome to offer their suggestions.          

 

POET: K. V. Tirumalesh

KANNADA ORIGINAL: 

first line of the fragment: ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಸಂಗ್ರಾಹಕನೆ

‘pustaka sangraahakane’ from AKSHAYA KAVYA

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

 

O’ book collector!

One day the books will fall on your head

and you’ll die, get this!

Don’t accumulate so many books

 

It doesn’t matter how death happens

let it happen through letters

“Like every writer the reader too

ends life as a book”

 

or begins

Today I have to journey along the Sunday footpaths

That’s my destiny

 

Book heaps call out to me

Opening each book opens out 

unreachable worlds before me

I sit and read

I stand and read

I become a bookworm 

I bore 

 

a tunnel

from earth to heaven

When nobody is watching

Russia Poland Yugoslavia 

 

I alter the maps

Like dried leaves it crumbles to touch

Century-old paper

Magic on the first page in the letters

 

a name written with great love

Below that the date of gifting  

The year the first world war began

Wishing a thousand years of happy life

 

From my hands too this will escape

back to the footpath again

This my half-clouded moment

will return one day again

Another similar evening it will land in

 

another person’s hands 

and perplex him too

after that an arduous two-thousand-mile journey  

 

Forbidden City Lhasa  

 

*****

Beside the dargah sits this man - Translation of ದರ್ಗದ ಬದಿಗೆ ಇದ್ದಾನೆ ಒಬ್ಬ 'dargada badi iddane obba'

Dear friends ... here is a Hyderabadi ‘fragment’ from eminent Kannada modernist Prof. K. V. Tirumalesh’s Sahitya Akademi award winning AKSHAYA KAVYA. AKSHAYA KAVYA is a series of untitled monologues, if I may say so, that touch upon a wide range of topics.   There is no continuous link, so it is not ‘epical’ in that sense.  As the poet himself says, Akshaya Kavya is a poetic experiment that violates more norms than it obeys.  In my continuing engagement with Tirumalesh’s poems and search for his reflections on Hyderabad in his poems, I came upon a series of fragments on Hyderabad in Akshaya Kavya.  I was delighted, of course ... and this marks the beginning of the second phase of my ‘Hyderabad Project’ of translating Prof. Tirumalesh’s Hyderabad ‘fragments’ from ‘Akshaya Kavya’ into English ... Caesurae and Muse India were kind enough to publish two sets of my English translations of Tirumalesh’s Hyderabad poems from his early collections Mukhamukhi and Avadha.  

 

I wish to thank a lot of my friends here who supported and responded to my first phase of this ‘Hyderabad Project’ ... and hope to receive the same kind of love for this phase too ...           

 

Since these are untitled fragments, it would be improper, I thought, to force-fit titles to these fragments.   Let me try an experiment of my own, I thought, and borrowed this idea from the German poet, Ulrike Almut Sandig, who, instead of a ‘titling’ a poem, ‘bolds’ a word or phrase or line in the poem that would serve as the central idea.  For this fragment, I have chosen the obvious and less risky option.  Friends are welcome to offer their suggestions.   

       

 

POET: K. V. Tirumalesh

KANNADA ORIGINAL: 

first line of the fragment: ದರ್ಗದ ಬದಿಗೆ ಇದ್ದಾನೆ ಒಬ್ಬ  

‘dargada badige iddane obba’ from AKSHAYA KAVYA

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: S. Jayasrinivasa Rao

 

 

Beside the dargah sits this man

stroking his long beard,

despite the sun falling on his head

and spilling on to the road.

 

The neem tree is kind; after noon it will 

pour its dense shadow on the dargah. 

 

Buses and trucks belching smoke

ply by close to the dargah,

he peers through thick lenses

to see if anything can be seen.

 

Nobody comes to him

I thought as I watched him for long, 

enveloped in beedi smoke

like he knew the world’s secret.

 

A sympathetic smile

 

The power of the amulet alone 

beckons those sinners,

nobody has any sense of time

this is something that belongs to another time.

 

What is going to happen is 

the same that happens every day  

 

There is always a secret hidden in 

his unsaid prediction, unasked by us,  

like a veil over the mind, invisible to all,

however much you search, unseen.

 

So many people running around 

to escape from disappearing

into Hussain Sagar or

under the Charminar.

 

As the sun goes down 

he too gets up and goes away.

 

(Hyderabad, 18 March 2022) 

 

*****

VAN GOGH'S BOOTS - Translation of VAN GOGH-ANA BOOTUGALU ವಾನ್ ಗಾಫ್‌ನ ಬೂಟುಗಳು

VAN GOGH’S BOOTS

(from Avadha 1986)

 

Van Gogh painted cafés

painted streets

painted parks

painted fields

immersed pine trees 

in colour

 

Critics said – 

Tsk-tsk!

Whoever paints

all these!

The Fall of Icarus

The Great Flood

The Resurrection of Christ

These are the subjects of art!

 

Then Van Gogh painted a picture 

of a pair of old boots

Goes down in history

Where are the frustrated critics now?

They are under those boots!  

 

*****

... inspired by Van Gogh's painting 'A PAIR OF SHOES' ... the poem itself tells everything about this painting and Van Gogh ... 

SEPTEMBER 1981 - Translation of SEPTEMBER 1981 ಸೆಪ್ಟೆಂಬರ್ 1981

SEPTEMBER 1981

(from AVADHA 1986)

 

This is the time of the masked-corn,

it’s there everywhere.

 

Glowing coals in the open stove,

peeled corn-spikes on live coals.

 

The local train that had stopped at the station

continues to wail.

 

A buffalo here,

a stubborn boy over there.

 

Careful!

Flying sparks!!

 

In another half hour darkness will envelop

the desolate street.

 

Somewhere in some place,

another corn-field is priming for harvest.

  

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