U Atreya Sarma (Voices Within)

U Atreya Sarma is a published poet, reviewer and translator (Telugu/English) besides being a freelance editor with 23 years of experience. He is Chief Editor of Muse India, a literary e-journal set up in 2005. He had earlier edited Bharatiya Pragna monthly and Cyberhood weekly, both from Hyderabad. Also as the Contributing Editor of Muse India for Telugu Literature, he has so far presented four exhaustive features on the subject. His collection of English poems, Sunny Rain-n-Snow made it to the final three shortlisted for the Cochin Litfest Poetry Prize 2019. In all, he has edited, translated or collaborated on 16 books. And he guest edited a feature “India @ 70” for the Pittsburgh-based online journal Setu (Aug 2017). Atreya Sarma had maintained a poetry column ‘Wordsmith’ in The Hans India, a Hyderabad based English daily (Jun 2013 to Jul 2018). He is a recipient of two awards — ‘Setu Award for Excellence 2017’ and ‘Shambhabi Samman 2019’ for “outstanding contribution to literature.”

A cosmic seesaw

Our steady hearts know their magical spell better

Far better than our hazy and wavering minds.

Our hearts whisper out their intimate arcana

Aloud from atop the highest elevation

Of our growing and converging relationship

In a silent spring of bracing words gushing out

From the artesian well of their deep recesses

Audible and lucid only to each other.

Let’s do make our steady hearts ready

For a unity they’ve been craving

For how many ages we lost count.

“Fortune favours only the brave, now be brave,”

Let’s obey the voice of the oracle.

Time to make true the cryptical dreams

Let not the rendezvous worry us

Anywhere could be the meeting ground.

Out of the maze of cobwebs let’s break;

Sprigs of our wishes a nest would make

A downy one on a mountain bough.

Let our winging hearts their seesaw play

Enjoying the cosmic concaveness

Between the empyrean ceiling

And the sublunary esplanades.

Labouring under child labour

A child is born out of labour.

A child is sent to school

And made to recognise things

Read, recite, and write

Draw, count, and play.

The child undergoes labour

In all these movements

Of mind and limb

Whether he likes it or not.

If a child learns too fast

And sets a precocious record

In his studies or GK

Or in singing or dancing

Or in acting or in a sport

We laud him as a prodigy.

A school child is made

To work or wait for hours

Under the scorching sun

For a political or governmental event

(And with no snacks or water)

Whether he likes it or not.

It’s civic training,

A practical exercise,

Shrama daan (labour of love)

Of the citizen tomorrow’s.

So catch them young!

If a child wants to be free in this free country

From loads of books and exams of rote

And play in the lap of nature, like a fawn or a cub

And begin to study life in the open school

And learn the letters of the art of living

And helps himself and his parents too

By willingly working as a help

And earns a few dimes

To drive the wolf away from the door

And survive in the rat race of this world –

No, he isn’t allowed

For it’s child’s labour

A cognisable offence!

The child with a silver spoon in his mouth

If labours with his mind

Is hailed with accolades

And promoted by sponsors

And reaps golden harvests.

The child with a pewter spoon in his mouth

Who labours with his hands

Is dubbed child labour

And rudely snapped from his patrons

Who are raided, reviled, and punished.

And the tear-dried starveling

Is left in the lachrymose lurch and

Heartlessly denied his only honest means

Of keeping body and soul together.

Human orbits

Stars stay in their place;

Planets move within their orbits;

Seas sway over their assigned vastnesses;

Rivers flow through between their banks.

If they go astray

            It wreaks havoc.         

Let’s too the humans

Well be within our bounds,

Honouring space in between.

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Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020