[fwd]cherabandaraju
Prasad Chodavarapu (chprasad@hotmail.com)
Tue, 02 Sep 1997 06:40:28 PDT
[Forwarded from SCIT]
Title: [AP Times, Literary]: Cherabandaraju - Questioning the accepted
Author: srinivas@hpaneqb4.an.hp.com (Chukka Srinivas)
Date: 28 Aug 1997 18:38:22 GMT
[Andhra Pradesh Times]
LITERARY
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Questioning the accepted
The day I do not spell out
The betrayal of August 15
I don't feel I earned my meal
said Cherabandaraju, a revolutionary poet, some twenty years ago. Though
he
did not live to see the current euphoria of golden jubilee celebrations
of
independent India, he was very much in the thick of the affairs and
expressed his anger against the silver jubilee celebrations in 1972. In
a
satirical lyric on the silver jubilee celebrations he wrote:
It is a silver jubilee, they say,
Of execution ground?
Jails are the property of masses, isn't it?
In a serious poem after some time, he said:
I was 25 in 47
That day my mind was a
full blossomed lake with slogans of freedom
I was the edge for a generation
A ray that cannot be humbled by any weapon
I was the dawn that walked through
Upright over the history
But, now you know what is my age
This senility is not mine
But a symbol of failure of
Parliamentary democracy that
Destroyed me and my generation No, this legacy should not continue
Cherabandaraju was an unmistakable powerful rustic voice who started
composing free verse during the mid 1960s. He began as a poet while he
was
in the group of six poets who called themselves Digambara Kavulu (Naked
Poets). The poets’ group, was in fact, a shock treatment, like a
reaction to
the stagnation and hypocrisy existing in society and literature at that
time. They questioned every accepted value in society and literary
establishment.
A number of parallels could be drawn between them and angry young men
like
Beatniks, Black Panthers, Bhooki Peedi, etc., who raised their voice all
over the world during the same period. The poets started as nihilists
and
publicised their poetry through sensational means. Starting from a
confused
philosophical nucleus, four of them moved slowly towards Marxism and
Naxalite politics.
During the transformation, Cherabandaraju wrote a memorable and
controversial poem `Vandemataram' in 1968:
O my dear motherland
You are the mother, the father and the god
Yours is the chastity that flirts with thugs
Yours is the beauty whose every limb is
pawned in the world market
Yours is the forgotten youth that sleeps in the rich man's embrace,
Your intoxication is unruffled though spat at or denounced
You, dear mother, are the Bharati who
stands resigned
To rats and bandicoots that burrow in the ripe fields
You are the lush prosperous land that feeds no mouth
Vandemataram Vandemataram
Yours is the courage that has got flags stitched
Out of the cloth on your body
and goes naked
Yours is the wretchedness that
moves restless
In the mansions built with borrowed money
Yours is the woe that fails to comfort
Children crawling over your milkless breasts
Yours is the famished coquetry that has taken
To the streets, decked in borrowed trinkets
Mother Bharati! What is your destination?
Vandemataram Vandemataram
The poem stands at the cross roads of Cherabandaraju's life in letters.
It
contains both the hangover from Digambara diction and sensationalist
elements as well as an anguish for motherland and a hoarse cry in search
of
a way out from the predicament. That search led Cherabandaraju to
express
his sympathy openly for Naxalite politics. He became one of the key
figures
in the formation of Viplava Rachayithala Sangham (Virasam -
Revolutionary
Writers' Association) in July 1970 and he served as its secretary for
sometime as well as on its executive body. Cherabandaraju was one of the
first few who realised the need to popularise the message in the form of
a
song. With a reed-like voice he used to sing the songs written based on
lyrical metre and folk tunes. One of his early songs, ‘Kolimantukunnadi/
Thithi ninda gali pothamga vunnadi/ Nippari poniku Ramanna/ Poddekki
poniku
levanna/ (The furnace is lit and the bellows are full with air, let not
the
fire go off, let not the time slip off) was an instant success in the
period
when Gaddar and Jana Natya Mandali had not entered the scene. People
would
ask Cherabandaraju to sing again and again his satirical song on Indira
Gandhi : Ammamma Indiramma/ sesindi saalu pomma/ nee nakili socialism
maakasale vaddamma (Enough is enough, we do not want your fake
socialism)-Indira, Indira,/Began you Though very soft spoken, gregarious
and
emotional Cherabandaraju became the source of wrath for the powers that
be
as he wrote:
They erase with swords
The wetness on the children's cheeks
When I kiss them
His opposition to the establishment led him to prosecution and
persecution,
detentions, legal and illegal, implications and dismissal from his
teaching
job. Due to continuous imprisonment for more than three years between
1971
to 77 his health started deteriorating. But his determination was
unflinching:
I will sprinkle my blood drop by drop
As the seed for the liberation of this land
Though I am in prison, I am not a slave
If I am shaken or slashed
I will rise like a wave again and again
What began as a chronic headache when he was in the prison turned into
brain
cancer. Cherabandaraju had to undergo surgery thrice between 1977 and
1981.
Even as he was on his death bed, the government dismissed him from
service,
which, however, was revoked latter after a wide spread protest.
Two years before his death, in 1982, he wrote
I'll ridicule death
And defy the enemy
I suffer from a disease
A warrior I am nevertheless
Even if the hand is cut
My fist will not let loose the sword
Of course, his sword was not a sword of a blood-thirsty person. As he
himself admitted:
This soil fostered me by feeding my daily morsel
I will repay the debt by
Delivering her from the demoniac
feudal oppression.
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