Translator’s note: R. Vatsala, a recipient of the Kalaignar Nootrandu award, is known for the finesse with which she crafts story poems which draw generously on life material, as evident in her most recent poetry collection Vatsalavin Thernthedutha Kavithaigal (The Selected Poems of Vatsala, 2023).
Given that she happens to be my mother, translating her has been an intimate and somewhat overwhelming experience. I am not quite sure how the entangled nature of our personal histories have impacted my reading of her poems. Perhaps there’s both too much knowing and too many blind spots. But it is precisely the strange and paradoxical nature of my relationship with Vatsala’s work that has served as mulch for these translations.
I have experimented with lineation, stanzaic patterns, visual topography, and pace. The rhythms and syntax of the Tamil original are obviously quite different from the translations which have landed on the page. My attempt has been to give Vatsala’s poems an after-life while preserving their tone and emotional truth.
– K. Srilata
§
Holding Appa’s* Hand
(Appavin Kai Pattri)
As a young girl holding appa’s hand,
taking in the world’s wonders,
I spotted a firefly with its tail-light.
With the moon around,
why does the firefly carry a light?
I asked appa.
My love, he said, the firefly is wise.
It knows, only too well,
that from time to time
the moon, the sun and the stars
disappear without warning,
and so it’s best to keep
a small lamp handy.
And that’s how,
even in the pitch dark,
I walk without groping my way,
my path lit,
much like the firefly’s,
by the tiny flickering light within.
*Appa is the Tamil word for father.
§
Amma’s Worries
(Kavalai)
I
Amma’s first worry:
Would I ever shed the dark skin I was born with?
Her next:
Would somebody lure me with chocolate?
Would they take me away to the red-light district?
Then:
Would I attain puberty and what when I did?
And then:
Would I attain puberty at all and what if I didn’t?
Next:
Would any man be willing to marry me?
And if indeed there was such a man,
how much dowry would he and his folks expect?
And after that, the worry:
what sort of man would he turn out to be?
Then, the worry:
Would I have a child?
And after that:
Would the child ever shed the dark skin she was born with?
And so on and so forth…
II
Before leaving home,
I have choked back
the tears which threaten to burst forth.
Rushing to board my flight, I wonder:
In the loneliness she wore in her last days,
did amma worry
about what they would do
if they found her —
at home or on the streets —
an orphan corpse?
Did she wonder, did she worry:
Would they burn her or bury her?
§
The Blue Bucket
(Neela Nira Vaali)
It’s all over and yet,
it lingers in my heart —
that blue bucket.
What would his mother have done with it?
Would she have left it behind?
But then, on the other hand,
wasn’t she the same woman
who had once ordered
that the oil from the pot
she had demanded as dowry
be emptied into a biscuit tin?
Hadn’t she then carried the pot
away with her on the train?
Surely, to a woman like that,
this blue bucket
wouldn’t have seemed a heavy burden?
I had pleaded with him to get me
a bucket I could use to bathe the baby.
With his permission, I had bought,
at one go,
two boxes of laundry detergent.
The bucket had come free.
I had talked the shop keeper into giving me
the blue one.
My one year old loved blue.
When I stood her inside the bucket
and bathed her, her joys spilled over.
What could have become of that blue bucket?
Tired of hearing him scream, “Go away! Get out!”,
I had left with the clothes on my back,
the baby on my hips.
Despite the passing of many years,
amma continued to scold,
“You went and left everything behind!”
She had scrimped and saved and gone without,
to put together
gold, silver, brass, steel…
That mother-in-law of mine
had apparently helped herself to all of it —
almirah, cot, sofa, U-foam mattress.
Her demands had swallowed,
even Appa’s provident fund.
She had later sold each item at half price.
I had not grieved these losses.
Then, as now,
there’s only one question which plagues me.
Even after forty years have passed,
I wonder sometimes
as I bathe my granddaughter,
Whatever became of that blue bucket?
§
That Moment I
(Andha Ganam 1)
We walked together,
labelling by colour,
dew drops dancing
on tips of grass
ran,
holding hands,
our feet not touching
the burning sands
spotted,
by lightning flash,
tiny puddles,
dipped our feet in them.
Even now,
we walk together.
Only
to different beats.
I can no longer do this.
Allow me to walk back.
Let me meet
that moment.
Meet it in order to crush it, stamp it out of existence.
Allow me to walk back.
Let me meet
the moment in which
we slipped away from each other.
§
Not That I Have Forgotten
(Athanaiyum Adangiya Adhu)
Do you know that these days
I no longer grieve
when I think of you?
Not that I have forgotten you
or the love you poured into me.
Your affection, your concern,
the respect you held me in —
I have forgotten none of it.
Not leaving behind a single thing,
I have stuffed them all into the small pillow
I hold close every night as I sleep.
R. Vatsala (born 1943) is an award-winning Tamil poet, fiction writer and former Systems Engineer at IIT Madras. Her most recent poetry collection Vatsalavin Thernthedutha Kavithaigal (The Selected Poems of Vatsala) was published by Red River in 2023. Her books include four poetry collections and two novels.
K. Srilata is a poet, fiction writer, translator and academic based in Chennai. Her most recent collection of poems Three Women in a Single-Room House was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2023.
