NUGGEHALLI PANKAJA

NUGGEHALLI

PANKAJA

Oh You Brute 

                            

 You    may    have   raped    my   body

You    brute!

But    certainly not

  MY SOUL. . . . . . .

  Now or ever!

Cleansed    through    suffering,

Higher   and higher

Will    it     soar,

Lighting the path of all,

Shining with blessings

Of those around-above,

While      yours. . . . .. .. .

While yours, cursed-

Cursed     by     my    tears

shunned by everyone around-below,

 Sink   in    dungeon………

With darkness sinister as companion. . . . . .

Growing Up

Frightened it was, burying I itself,

Further and deeper into our chair,

Darting   eyes like poppy seeds

Here and there, everywhere, while . . . .

While the eaglet hovering above,

Scanned the sky for signs of those wings

Searing his beak, wearing out

His patience scorched by hunger intense.

Warming its eggs, mother sparrow

Awaited with anxiety the fledgling sent out

To get its own food –first time on its own

Set loose after a small training the day before.

It dared not go out lest the eggs be stolen

By ruthless hands or eaten by serpents slithering by;

It dared not go out lest the eggs open

Letting out the tiny being’s clack clack clack. . . . . .

Once again foraging for food, so many hungry mouths,

Trained to fend for themselves, they fight,

While the wounded fledgling mustering courage,

Escapes stealthy just as its mother had trained- 

Giving the slip to all birds of prey,

It rushes to its nest cosy among the boughs green,                          

Rushes with corns and fish for its mother and brood-

It had grown up in a day!

To The Beggar Woman

Dawn or dusk

Seems to have lost their meaning

For you in your efforts

To survive, poor soul!

Holding tight that bowl

Handed over by your mother,

You tend to your babies,

Future inheritors.

Believe me, woman in distress,

No change had I on my person,

That morn-- so decided

To bring some without fail

 Next time I pass that way.

Alas, you were not there

That eve!

Only the kids

Holding tight your bowl

Passed on to them-

That sacred bowl

 in their tiny hands ……now.

NUGGEHALLI PANKAJA

NUGGEHALLI PANKAJA: Senior poet and bilingual writer Nuggehalli Pankaja is a recipient of several prestigious awards, the most recent being one of the highest- from Karnataka Sahitya Academy for Literature in 2017, and Karnataka State woman Achievers award for Literature in 2018. She has to her credit many Kannada books in all fields, and English poems, humor, short stories etc. published in various leading newspapers and anthologies.  Two popular Kannada films have been made based on her novels.  She has also translated ‘The KARNATAKA PART’ from   Kannada language to English for the English Encyclopedia brought out by the prestigious Kuvempu University of Manasgangotri, Mysore