Sreekanth Kopuri
Content Warning
Mention of sexual violence
Whose Ayodhya is it Anyway? after the Supreme court’s judgement 9th November 2019 At the Charminar square my brothers celebrate the government’s promise of lord Rama’s temple. Under a question, that hangs over our heads, I take a fistful of history on the banks of the Sarayu. It only scents of the Earth, that hasn’t a religion as is the River. We fix the boundaries to limit the freedom of our Gods for our faith’s sake, while they never come to the rescue of our land. If my neighbour’s ancestors owe me five rupees, generations back, and I kill one today for the same, can I still be outside the prison? When our faiths, the first and most beautiful temples are still strong and so are our beliefs in the omnipresence of our Gods, why then rupture this ancient scar some fanatic emperor left? Maybe it’s time our clenched fists of fanatic determinations became sober for a noble cause for it is hunger and injustice that still mock the power our electoral promises gave us. This is that Good Earth brothers, once conferred with the earthly honour for its non violence and today too for a mother’s love and her sacrifice for the hopeless and the dying. Our televisions blare the debates, tirades and the bloodshed we invest to win our faiths unlike for that tragedy of a poor man shouldering his dead wife home, miles away as the government has no ambulance to provide. PS: On 6th December 1992 a great historical monument “The Babri Masjid” was demolished by a Hindu Nationalists, claiming that it was the Ramajanmabhoomi, the birth place of Lord Rama. As a sequel of this demolition, on 9th November 2019 the Supreme Court of the Government of India ordered the land to be handed over to the Hindus.
Palm Root Truth the Sower's parable from Machilipatnam Suri walks back to the old palm lines after school, to search for those seeds kernelled with secret meanings in the shells hardened against the sands of time but are discarded in invasive shrubs and some by Manginipudi high road as from a farmer’s hand. Perhaps they hold some meaty promises inside, fulfilled if planted with diligence, and watered with natural rain of love for root that proclaims the truth in the way of life. So he brings his siblings to plough the heart of their fields before the Sun for more for the harvest is near at hand. It’s time today, small hours now, the timeless eye of the Light waits for the the clock’s first crow to raise the still resting folk to dig and dig the faithful unsoiled soil till they feel the pulp of another season – the end of grace period – to pluck them, cleanse, pot its mouth sealed to preserve these roots, the pure, life’s unfading signatures that still hold the strong hands of clock, and then gather all those dead fruitless branches and wheat chaff to burn these ripe faithful pulps of un- paged meanings till their bright blackened faces lit the silicon valleys of dying metros.
A Bazaar Scene french peta square, Machilipatnam The first tuk tuk un-tucks the village women, arranging the cane baskets of fresh vegetables along the pavement, the farm-fresh colours smile, like the prisoners being released but, only draw the cow, the same trespasser again they whisk off she humbly moves to the just arrived Huassain’s pushcart of bananas for consolation and gets one, the squint-eyed Gopal watches from his grocery, opposite, while he makes pious gestures at the wooden money box for an auspicious start, when the newspaper, the paper boy suddenly flings hits, the headlines being "High Onion Prices" which news the television in Rajastan tea stall too blares. It swarms with the morning walkers and hawkers who abuse each other in a lighter vein over sips and cigarette puffs. As some are too inhibited to complain, grumble and quit for the nearby Hanuman temple, being drawn towards the broken bits of chalisa, emanating from those long-defective speakers the endowments department never bothers about nor about those beggars who diligently form a cross legged line at the temple gates for the day's certain alms from the more diligent devotees with their firm faith in salvation through good deeds unlike the ogling nature of the priest at the sanctum sanctorum. Inside the fly-swarming, shabby beanery beside, his son hand-mixes the rice batter while his beautiful daughter in law sits at the cash counter, and watches the butcher on the other side calling the customers, displaying the fresh, blood-dripping meat torsos, pointing at their plump scrotum, as most folk believe the male ones are tasty, and a stray dog diligently stares at his hand for his regular fling of bones in the stagnate drainage canal beside that adjoins the town's police station where a raped youth waits another day for the justice that lies in the inspector's greasy palms while the municipal worker collects the garbage the town heaped at the dilapidated Gandhi statue stained by the bird droppings.
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Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian English poet, an Alumni Writer in Residence, Athens and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. He has recited his poetry and presented his research papers in University of Oxford, John Hopkins University, Heinrich Heine University and many other countries. His poems and research articles have been published in Heartland Review, Nebraska Writers Guild, Poetry Centre San Jose, Underground Writers Association, Word Fountain, A New Ulster, Synaeresis, Wend Poetry, Vayavya, Ann Arbor Review, Halcyon Days Magazine to mention a few. His book Poems of the Void was the finalist for the EYELANDS BOOKS AWARD Greece, 2019. He is the recipient of IMMANUEL KANT AWARD for his collection of poems on Silence 2020. Kopuri did PhD in English from Sri Venkateswara University and Masters from Andhra University. He is presently an independent research scholar in Contemporary Poetry, Silence, and Holocaust poetry. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother teaching and writing.