A certain fiction bit me
a distortion
a slander
August 10, 1955
that’s the day I was born
in a small village
in a remote corner of Krishna District
Long before I was born
my name was listed among traitors
History depicted
son as stepson,
divided brother from brother
and left me alone
Textbooks laughed at me
in my childhood
I was just becoming a person
when this history drove strange fears
deep into me
tortured me, threw me
to the howling winds
The present makes me responsible
for things I’ve nothing to do with
The present casts around me
shadows of suspicion
Shadows watching me
over my head
always, all ways
They squeeze my existence into numbers
They see 1947
in the umbilical cord, freshly cut
its end still wet with the blood
of the baby born in my house
Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan
Muslim go to Pakistan
Another place to go as well
You will know its name as hell
Helpless in the theatre of slogans
I’m imprisoned in the present
No constitution pats my back
The throne of three lions
smiling behind their whiskers
takes no notice of me
I have no human form
except as an alien
as some kind of memorial to 1947
in the mind
of the first class citizen
Translated from the Telugu by Velcheru Narayana Rao