English Translation: 'The Plough's Ruin'
The Plough's Ruin
I am searching for him.
I searched and searched until I was weary.
I remember my stinginess then —
when I saw him, I just glanced indifferently,
without even a fleeting, insincere smile.
I recall a day I mocked him,
the one who would touch a fallen grain to his eyes,
without a trace of arrogance, as if it were sacred.
Now, in this jungle of people, he is lost.
I am searching for him with my heart stitched into my eyes.
Where is he trapped among these skyscrapers?
Has he been blackened by soot between the smokestacks?
The more his whereabouts remain unknown, the more I remember him.
Every time I sit down to eat, my thoughts are tormented.
If only I could see him, I would turn every morsel I eat into flowers
and shower them at his feet.
I pray he has not fallen on some shore of forced death.
He, who was bound in a relationship with debt,
he, who lifted his face to the sky for a soaking rain,
a single drop hanging from his eyelids,
he, who believed that six feet of toil under a rain-cape
was the true definition of farming.
He, who yearned for hearts to know the value of toil,
for humanity to know the value of soil.
When they stopped measuring in bushels,
stopped weighing in quintals,
and began balancing stacks of notes in yards on their heads,
he became a dam with its walls breached, standing still.
Thinking of how he walked away —
from a hearing devoid of greenery,
from people whose humanity had evaporated,
from a poverty where there was nothing at all —
thinking of his state, his plight,
tears well up, reminding me of the flooded Munneru river.
He, who spent his entire childhood and twice his youth
buzzing like a dragonfly in the green fields,
shriveled by sun and cold, his strength drained,
became like fruit falling from the stem before ripening.
He was found stumbling, stumbling
at a crowded crossroads,
begging with an outstretched palm.
When I looked into his eyes in sympathy,
I saw the traces of shattered green dreams.
Walking beside him, I smelled the scent of ripened agony.
If he opened his lips, it was an outcry flowing like lava.
"Where is the village? Where is the lake? Where is a handful of soil?
When a JCB ploughs the rain-soaked city,
what use am I anymore?"
His words ring in my ears at midnight, at unholy hours.
The ruin of development
seems to be dancing in the center of our homes,
with free wifi as its witness.
—
©️Vanaja Tatineni
Translate 31 May 2026
మూలం: నాగలి విధ్వంసం - వనజ తాతినేని.
11 నవంబర్ 2016.
నాగలి విధ్వంసం
బాల్యమంతా దానికి రెట్టింపు యవ్వనమంతా
11 నవంబర్ 2016.
కామెంట్లు లేవు:
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి