To all the MOTHERS of the World:
Berhane Zerom
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 14:50:34 -0500
From: Tonse Raju <udupa@uic.edu>
Reply-To: nicu-net@u.washington.edu
To: NICU-NET <nicu-net@u.washington.edu>
Subject: A Poem for the Mothers'Day
For Mother's Day, I am posting an English translation of a beautiful poem in
Kannada---a South Indian language, my mother tongue. This I read during my
college days. Please indulge in reading it.
"My Mother" by P. Lankesh
My mother, a fertile black soil.
Like the spread of green leaves and a festival of white flowers.
The more burnt the stronger
The more one puts up effort, the more fruits and flowers.
If the children kick her, her whole body would thrill.
She kept down the basket from her head,
groned and her her eyes became still.
She lifted sacks of rice and won the admiration of my father and bracelets.
She ploughed the fields with her own hands and grew pepper, beans, and cereals,
becoming a flower with a flower, a friut with a fruit.
She looked after the field of corns and spent her youth in torn sarees.
She is dead:
How old was the hag?..
How many times did she weep for money,
for the spoiled harvest and the dead calves?
How many times did she go from village to village
to find the old buffalo that gave many a slip?
No, she wasn't the devoted women of your legends, or of the books of history...
She never worshiped the God's, nor listened to the scriptures...
Like a bear of the forest
She carried her children,
She amassed coins and looked after her husband
Like a hurt dog she growled and fought.
Meanness, mocking, and irritation---all like a monkey
But, for all that, the motto was prosperity at home.
She would be enraged
Only if the son went wrong, or the husband to another bed.
For this bear of the forest, your Bhagavadgeeta was irrelevant.
My mother lived for hay and grains,
for hardwork and for her children.
For a roof above, rice, bread, and rugs.
And, to walk upright, village bugs!
My tears of gratefulness for having given birth, for rearing us;
I liked the way
She lived on this earth, and the way quietly she passed away
as if she went from home to the fields.
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Author: P. Lankesh (currently an editor of a weekly in Bangalore, India)
Translation: Sumatendra Nadiga.; Source: "60 Years of Kannada Poetry"
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Happy Mothers Day: Tonse Raju, MD
*************************************
Tonse N. K. Raju, MD
University of Illinois at Chicago
E-Mail: UDUPA@UIC.EDU, OR U40200@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU
Mailing Address: Department of Pediatrics, M/C 856
840 South Wood Stree, Chicago, IL 60612
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