MACHILIPATNAM

History’s spilled leaf soaked

beneath the mossy stones of

time’s cornered light, scents

of the English and the French –

the squares of my domicile’s

identity, prides in this sweet

amber earth – Bandar Laddu

– that rotates its Telugu flavour,

proclaimed by Krishna’s mouth of

the Bay of Bengal and the rhythmic

melody of kuchipudi steps that the

grey haired brush of Kalamkari art

paints in the farm fresh fruit colours

shining as the Chilakalapudi rold

gold that smiles bright like the

morning sun at Manginipudi beach,

the proud tricolour of a forgotten

patriot’s hand humbly shoulders the

Cambridge of South India slowly

losing its traces in the trajectory of

time. A fragrance of another evensong

from an ancient mausoleum’s pulpit of

St Mary’s Church flits across the Koneru

Center’s fountain eye that jets a moist

silence into its stilled clocks of our

deserted memory. We are boats,

anchored to the promised port still

roped to government’s greasy palms.

Notes: Noble College which is one of the oldest colleges in India was established in 1843 is popularly called “The Cambridge of south India.”

Bandar Laddu: A famous Indian sweet originated from Machilipatnam

Kalamkari: A hand-painted cotton textile from pedana

THE INDIAN ENGLISH AFTER THE ENGLISH

The questions,

The English or English?

English Medicine or Allopathy?

Allopathy or Homeopathy?

Homeopathy or Anandaiah medicine?

always flicker here

like the restless flame

on Mahatma Gandhi's Tomb

with the teasing definite article

or hidden mischief of the

alluring coordinating conjunction.

My Experiments with truth of

a handful of hidden nuances

sandwiched in the crevices

of this colonial tomb in the

corridors of our patriotic psyche,

crawl in and out

with their spindly legs,

alluring our the proficient hands

that hold the letters of the nation.

The English' alphabet's

the integral subject of

our academe's perennial

present continuous tense,

with we being it's

green-bunched predicates

the verbal action of which

incessantly flows in

our flamboyant veins,

with our ever-fresh status

of being direct objects

with clenched fists of

our syntactical fury against

the perennial noontides.

The tireless struggles

to shake off it's hold

ends in those grace marks

our own teachers give

in the final exam results.

The perfectly grammatical active voice

with those intransitive verbs of

our passive voice still whine at the

scattered, and greying

colonial foundation stones

that grin in ubiquitous plentifuls

at our chronic addiction

to vocal and aural tips

of our higher education's

anglicised body.

My son proudly salutes

to our royal flag in the

school Independence day costume

looking at the brimming

Aphrodite chocolate basket,

it's holder being

the Sanskrit teacher,

who calls him aside

after the momentous flag hoisting

and tells off,

Yatho Hasta thatho Drishti,

Yatho Drishti thatho Manah

Yatho Manah thatho Bhaava,

Yatho Bhaava thatho Rasa

But again the embarrassed English grammar

blinks on the school's peeling Black board

that whitens only in strokes of

momentary chalk scripts

in his Grammar class.

In the visions of those winkless motifs

of my subconsciously preoccupied notions,

a mason always leisurely spreads

the-vengeful faced lichen-tinted bricks

from this Good Earth for the intensified,

tense future tense of a de-Anglicised grammar

on the flickering pages of my academe.

On the shifting sands of the Suryalanka Beach

the last flock of gray-winged Gulls explode

a take-off heading west, leaving behind

those rhythmic cackles of crystalline intonation

of a non-ethereal language.

FEAR OF HANDCUFFS IN PANDEMIC

Bhayiom Aur Behanom!

in this Good Earth today the

police handcuffs search for the

rickshaw pullers' and coolies', hands

which, tired of finding work, pasted

the anti-government posters, resorting to

avenge the opposition's voice to protest the

scarcity of children’s vaccine sold off

in the welfare of national vistas, seen

in the jaw-dropping sculptures,

naked, crowds of Kumbh Mela

or the magnificent domes of Ayodhya.

Elsewhere a special team searches

for a photo journalist that captured the

pictures of the government ambulances

a minister used to transport cement for

a new parliamentary Bhavan, while the

TV channels don’t cover their absence

in government hospitals fearing handcuffs.

Note:

1. Bhayiom Aur Behanom is typical of Prime Minister Narander Modi’s public address

Kumbh Mela: an annual Hindu pilgrimage festival that happens on the famous Indian river banks

IN DEPENDENCE

after August 15th 1947

The long freedom’s hunger

slithers into the decomposed

heaps of tranquillity, for a bite

or two to inject the unity of

the wiping strength in the

sacred fangs of the fanatic

belief in the tricoloured fold

of a maturing diversity where

politics is wedded to religion

before the holy fire of a non-

violent history. A lost beggar

counts his hard earned alms

of freedom on the pavement

of the potholed national highway

that bears the government convoy

which invests an amicable smile

of saccharine electoral promises

for another flickering victory of

empty pages hard bound to bear the

scribbled ideas that will jam again

at the empty ATMs, and death of

the only bread winners of the poor.

In mercy’s untouchable can of excreta

that hangs down her helping hand

is the real burden of untouchability

stinking with the pride and prejudice

of a faith’s mounting aberration that

sets the constitutional order which the

the Ashoka Chakra spins on the unfurling

colours of prosperity and peace our saluting

hands of mere independence day patriotism

are innocent of for that frozen conscience

naturally repels the light of democracy.

Does the lionized emblem on the Adhar Cards

rewrite our fate ensuring the ration to the

thatched shadows in Machilipatnam slums?

Another august handful of peace explodes

in a minister’s hand as a ritual of freedom

while the battalion of nation’s pride marches

off another year into a new beginning,

with the unchanged garments of self-

justice, “of, for and by the people.”

DEFILED SATURDAY

(in the memory of the victims of Lumbini Park & Gokul Chat Bomb Blasts)

A notorious adventure

triumphs over us, off its grip

life gropes its

stuttering fingers elsewhere.

Once again a familiar panic

spiders from a defiled Friday to

those celebrated spots

of a city's pride and redefines the life

heedless to the call

of that something called truth or love.

Gokul and Lumbini are but

mangled remains, dislocated hands of time

pass an irrational legacy

to the ends of the nation and beyond.

Readily the television

calls us to identify some half nude torsos

in the safety of

the government morgues.

Some earthworms in

the cosy womb of the earth

or cockroaches

in the crevices of a rock

or beetles in the

stinking layers of a dung heap

or even pigs

wallowing in the slush

would've been safer

for their deaths have a special providence.

We've become

dangerously contented with our own safety.

Feelings start to die in

the stoic fold of our blood and

we still go in grand processions to

dip the lifeless idols in contaminated waters,

slash out blood on

the soulless hearts of heroism

in street rituals

in the painful memory of a great escape

a mutual provocation

for another history till again somewhere

some tiny tots

do not return home.

Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian poet, current poetry editor of Kitchen Sink Magazine, Alumni Writer in Residence, Athens and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. He recited his poetry in University of Oxford, John Hopkins University, Heinrich Heine University and many others. His poems appeared in A Honest Ulsterman, Christian Century, Memory House, Heartland Review, Tulsa Review, A New Ulster, Nebraska Writers Guild, Poetry Centre San Jose, Athereon Review, Ann Arbor Review to mention a few. His book Poems of the Void was finalist for the Eyelands Books Award Greece, 2019. He is the recipient of Immanuel Kant Award for his collection of poems on Silence 2020. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother.