134

Kerala

Your green carpets of paddy fields

the waving palms of coconuts

and the spray of the surging blue seas

haunt my dreams still.

Your graceful fair girls

in dark pottus and long silken skirts

Though covering their physique with modesty

still draw passionate blood into my veins-

But the agonised scream

of the poverty stricken multitudes

from the backyards of your towns

tears through your veil of beauty

and turns my dream into a nightmare.

The toiling fisherman of Maryanad

battling the seas in late nights

to feed you in the morning,

can he enjoy the serenity of your evening seas

crimson with the reflection of the setting sun

when his mind is turbulent with anguish

the anguish of seeing the profits of his labour

grabbed by the boat-owning Mudalali

living in the urban luxury of far away Trivandrum?

The female labourer of Manjadikari

sweating under the hot sun in the fields

can she be proud of her beauty

which defiantly breaks through the sweat and dust

when she is pained at being cheated

with a day-wage of rupees twelve

while the upper caste land-owner at Kottayam

dines at Hotel Aida on biryani and roast beep

She is anxious about the gigantic task

of collecting a dowry

so she can buy a cheap groom for a fair price

at the marriage bazaar-

135

But, faraway in the bustle and glamour

of Trivandrum's city halls

the portly Syrian Christian patriarch

resplendent in his star-dotted scarf and red gown

thunders against exploitation, oppression and repression;

his heart understands not

the beautiful words that his mouth utters

words thanklessly borrowed

from the long Marxist tradition of his state

Words which strike the city walls

and echo back hollowly

jarring the ears of the lower caste labourer

toiling in the Patriarch’s boundary-less fields.

Kerala, you are an image of

disturbed harmony

Your physical beauty is but a

superficial dressing

over the bleeding, tormented center.

Suresh

Sri Lanka