MEENA KANDASAMY
Fecha de nacimiento: 1984, Chennai, India. Poeta, novelista, traductora y activista hindú.
Nació en 1984 de padres tamiles, ambos profesores universitarios. Nombrada como Illavenil por sus padres, desarrolló un interés temprano en la poesía, y más tarde adoptó el nombre Meena. Meena completó un Doctorado de Filosofía en Socio-lingüística de la Universidad de Anna, Chennai. Meena escribió su primera poesía a la edad de 17 y también comenzó a traducir libros en Inglés a esa edad.
Los temas principales de su trabajo se centran en el feminismo, la identidad lingüística y la política, sin embargo en su segundo libro Ms. Militancy (2010) también rescata mitos hindús y de la cultura tamil. Fue representante de India en la Universidad de Iowa dentro del programa de escritura internacional (International Writing Program). Kandasamy escribe sus textos originalmente en inglés y traduce a esta misma lengua. A pesar de contar con estudios importantes y ser crítica sobre la lengua y su uso, defiende el uso libre de las estructuras para dar libertar y fuerza a la palabra en la poesía, prefiriendo valerse del discurso académico para sus discursos activistas. Actualmente es autora de tres libros de poesía y una novela.
Trabajos notables
Biografías
(with M. Nisar) AYYANKALI: A Dalit leader of Organic Protest. Foreword by Kancha Ilaiah, Other Books, Calicut, January 2008, pp. 103.
Poesía
Ms. Militancy, 2010, published by Navayana
TOUCH. Published by Peacock Books, Mumbai in August 2006, ISBN 81-88811-87-4 .
(Chapbook) 16 elegant, untitled poems have been hosted as an e-chapbook The Eighth Day of Creation on the poetry website Slow Trains.
Novelas
The Gypsy Goddess, Atlantic Books, April 2014.
Las traducciones de esta muestra corren a cargo de Andrea Rivas.
http://circulodepoesia.com/2017/04/poesia-hindu-meena-kandasamy/
Backstreet Girls
Para la policía de la moral
Esta mujer, ella es la puta. Y esa chica
de ahí, ella es la insaciable. Y yo soy
la perra con tatuajes sobre la impúdica cadera.
Esta oscura dama ha bramado en su discurso,
Esta otra golpea oro como una bruja de medio tiempo,
Y yo soy una arpía con veranos en mi nombre.
Con las lenguas desatadas, tragamos soles.
Firmes como putas, desvestimos hombres al azar.
Sin sueño, hay polvo de estrellas en nuestros párpados.
Y sí, queridos míos, todas somos amigas.
No habrá sangre en nuestra cama matrimonial.
No somos aquellas a las que eliges para ser tu esposa.
No somos aquellas a las que puedes dar una sentencia de por vida.
Shock Fucsia
Mi cama huele a libros de texto
y ha pasado más de un mes
desde que soñé con la luz del sol y el abrazo
del cielo. Incluso las opulentas vanidades de una mujer,
seda escarlata y brillante oro, se han perdido
en mí. Estoy atrapada en un mundo de aguamarina, fucsia
y lima montado peligrosamente contra el blanco y negro.
Palabras atrapadas firmemente,
aprisionadas en una conglomeración de
colores neón, comparto mi esclavitud.
Estridentes, las intrusiones coloridas
han decapado el pasado, dejándome saborear
la saturación. Oh maldición, incluso mis sueños atesorados
han sido decolorados en matices de tres o de cinco.
Sálvame, de esta
insoportable dureza
de fluorescencia; donde hay líneas
que repiten las páginas brutalmente, moviéndose
con sonidos de escrutinio de espectáculo…
Porque todo lo que soporto comprender
es la pérdida de la osadía: mi cobardía protegida.
Y el único confort que anhelo, entre sofocadas
lágrimas, es el amor robado bajo los cristales manchados de las ventanas.
Querido, prodiga tu amor
en los finos tonos de la tierra,
en los colores de piel cantando:
para proteger nuestros sueños renovados,
y para creer, una vez más, en absolutos.
Nota de suicidio de la chica con el chaleco bomba
El Rey ha enviado capitanes del ejército…
Sus pecados y su ilegalidad: no recordaré
Más. He borrado, como una espesa nube,
Sus trasgresiones, y como una nube, sus pecados.
Mi fuerza es hecha perfección en la debilidad,
No hay sino un paso entre la muerte y yo.
Seré exaltada entre las naciones,
Seré exaltada en la Tierra.
Nunca los dejaré ni renegaré de ustedes.
Hoy, estarán conmigo en el Paraíso.
Yo soy el camino. Has tus asuntos hasta que venga.
Yo soy el camino. Sígueme.
Donde no hay cuentacuentos, cesa la contienda.
Este es el curso medio, el camino óctuple
Éste es el camino para acabar el sufrimiento.
La mirada correcta es la precursora del curso entero.
La mirada correcta provee la práctica correcta.
La mirada correcta lleva a una vida virtuosa.
La mirada correcta requiere que sepas
que los moribundos siempre miran hacia el cielo
y por ello debes alistarte a bombardear los hospitales.
Intención correcta
El nacimiento es sufrimiento, envejecer es sufrimiento,
La enfermedad es sufrimiento, la muerte es sufrimiento,
El dolor, el lamento, la pena, la congoja
y desesperación son sufrimiento,
Asociarse con lo desagradable es sufrimiento,
La separación del placer es sufrimiento,
No obtener lo que uno quiere es sufrimiento.
Para la cesación inmediata del sufrimiento
La intención correcta requiere bombardear la alfombra
de las masas que huyen.
Discurso correcto
El discurso correcto se trata de la ausencia de discurso incorrecto.
Abstente de falsedades, abstente de calumnias,
Abstente de discursos ásperos, abstente de la charla ociosa.
El discurso puede romper vidas e iniciar guerras,
así que es mejor salir de las conversaciones de paz.
Acción correcta
Acción correcta significa abstenerse de los actos nocivos
que ocurren con el cuerpo como su principal medio
de expresión. No quites la vida,
No tomes lo que no te es dado,
No te complazcas en el adulterio.
El célibe Buddha y sus monjes
nunca derramaron semen y es nuestro deber obligado
compensarlo violando a todos las mujeres que estén a la vista.
Sustento correcto
El Buddha menciona cinco tipos de sustento
que provocan daño a otros que deben ser evitados.
El primero dice que debemos evitar tratar con armas
así que, por favor, que India y China se deshagan de esos juguetes.
Esfuerzo correcto
El esfuerzo correcto requiere una forma sana de energía.
Dispersar la opacidad llama a un esfuerzo especial
para despertar energía mediante la visualización
de una brillante bola de luz o el reflejo de la muerte.
Para el deseo, un remedio de aplicación general
es la meditación en la impermanencia para borrar
la capacidad subyacente de aferrarse.
Para deshacerse de la opacidad deja entrar la luz en las vidas
de tus enemigos mediante luminosas bombas
y para deshacerte de su deseo por uno u otro
arrasa con sus bunkers y será ésta la última vez
que se aferren a algo.
Correcta atención
El primer paso en la correcta atención involucra
la contemplación del cuerpo y el último paso
en la atención del cuerpo involucra una serie
de meditaciones en el cementerio que requieren soñar
con la muerte y descomposición del cuerpo humano.
Medita en las fosas comunes en Chemmani y Mullivaikkal.
Concentración correcta
La correcta concentración implica reclusión
de los placeres sensuales y reinar sobre la turbulencia de la mente.
La correcta concentración es adquirida mediante al entrenamiento
así que trabaja duro para estimar la exacta cantidad de napalm
O fósforo blanco para baños de cielo
Para garantizar el nirvana a la gente de Tamil,
Porque bendecidos son aquellos que respiran
El gas de risa de la risa de Buddha.
BECOMING A BRAHMIN
Algorithm for converting a Shudra into a Brahmin
Begin.
Step 1: Take a beautiful Shudra girl.
Step 2: Make her marry a Brahmin.
Step 3: Let her give birth to his female child.
Step 4: Let this child marry a Brahmin.
Step 5: Repeat steps 3-4 six times.
Step 6: Display the end product. It is a Brahmin.
End.
Algorithm advocated by Father of the Nation at Tirupur.
Documented by Periyar on 20-09-1947.
Algorithm for converting a pariah into a Brahmin.
Awaiting another Father of the Nation
to produce this algorithm.
Inconvenience caused due to inadvertent delay
is sincerely regretted.
From: Touch
Publisher: Peacock Books, Mumbai, 2006
ISBN: 81 – 88811 – 87
EKALAIVAN
This note comes as a consolation:
You can do a lot of things
With your left hand.
Besides, fascist Dronacharyas warrant
Left-handed treatment.
Also,
You don’t need your right thumb
To pull a trigger or hurl a bomb.
From: Touch
Publisher: Peacock Books, Mumbai, 2006
ISBN: 8188811874
REVERENCE :: NUISANCE
On walls of reception counters
and staircases of offices, hospitals, firms
and other ‘secular’ institutions –
pictures of Hindu Gods are painted…
so that casual people walking in (or up or down)
fear to spit on the adorned walls.
But still looking around or climbing:
you can always find the work done
an irregular red border underlining the walls
owing so much to betel juice and spit.
And on cheap roadside compound walls
that don’t bear ‘Stick No Bills’ messages or
cinema and political posters — the Gods once again
are advertised. And captioned with legends that read
‘Do Not Urinate’. And yet, the Gods are covered with
layers of smelly urine – they don’t retaliate.
Tolerance is a very holy concept.
Or like someone said,
the Caste Gods deserve
the treatment they get.
From: Touch
Publisher: Peacock Books, Mumbai, 2006
ISBN: 81 – 88811 – 87
THEIR DAUGHTERS
Paracetamol legends I know
For rising fevers, as pain relievers –
Of my people – father’s father’s mother’s
Mother, dark lush hair caressing her ankles
Sometimes, sweeping earth, deep-honey skin,
Amber eyes – not beauty alone they say – she
Married a man who murdered thirteen men and one
Lonely summer afternoon her rice-white teeth tore
Through layers of khaki, and golden white skin to spill the
Bloodied guts of a British soldier who tried to colonize her…
Of my land – uniform blue open skies,
Mad-artist palettes of green lands and lily-filled lakes that
Mirror all – not peace & tranquil alone, he shudders – a
Young wife near my father’s home, with a drunken husband
Who never changed; she bore his daily beatings until on one
Stormy night, in fury, she killed him by stomping his seedbags…
We: their daughters.
We: the daughters of their soil.
We, mostly, write.
From: Touch
Publisher: Peacock Books, Mumbai, 2006
ISBN: 81 – 88811 – 87
MULLIGATAWNY DREAMS
anaconda. candy. cash. catamaran.
cheroot. coolie. corundum. curry.
ginger. mango. mulligatawny.
patchouli. poppadom. rice.
tatty. teak. vetiver.
i dream of an english
full of the words of my language.
an english in small letters
an english that shall tire a white man’s tongue
an english where small children practice with smooth round
pebbles in their mouth to the spell the right zha
an english where a pregnant woman is simply stomach-child-lady
an english where the magic of black eyes and brown bodies
replaces the glamour of eyes in dishwater blue shades and
the airbrush romance of pink white cherry blossom skins
an english where love means only the strange frenzy between a
man and his beloved, not between him and his car
an english without the privacy of its many rooms
an english with suffixes for respect
an english with more than thirty six words to call the sea
an english that doesn’t belittle brown or black men and women
an english of tasting with five fingers
an english of talking love with eyes alone
and i dream of an english
where men
of that spiky, crunchy tongue
buy flower-garlands of jasmine
to take home to their coy wives
for the silent demand of a night of wordless whispered love . . .
STORMING IN TEA-CUPS
“a cup of tea is not a cup of tea. . .
when you make it at twilight,
just for him.”
call it a love potion.
liquid dreams.
scented desire.
wishes boiled to a blend.
three cinnamon pods
the dried darjeeling leaves
milk and pearl-white cream
simmering to a syrup to be filtered.
as you sweat in its vapours
and imagine how the tea tastes
against his lips his teeth his tongue
and the pale pink insides of his throat
as you stir in the sugar
and test a spoonful to see
if it stings and soothes and
stimulates the way you intended
as you pour it into his cup
with eyes mirroring supernovas and
study the desirable brown of the tea
an entire shade
that fits exactly
between the desert sand of your skin
and the date palm of his.
almost the color
of your possible child.
AFTERMATH
(to consuming six glasses of orange juice)
the next morning in school during your
english exam you take permission to go to
the toilet where you throw up all the white
and creamy breakfast milk. only it tastes
sour and looks like bits of maggoty curd.
weeks later, you get to know two things
one of which will change your life for ever.
first, you scored the highest in the english
exam. second, you became a gossip item.
you still don’t know what affects you more.
because of your boldness and brashness
and bunking classes your ulcerated vomit
is taken for morning sickness. the sourness
extends when you hear hushed whispers
passing around. girls younger than you,
point at you and speak such banal secrets.
in staff
-rooms, and in ungainly corridors
teachers chatter of your child, so vividly
imagined in the backdrop of your really
empty womb. slander is a slaughterhouse.
even best-friends seek answers as the
rumours inflame. your anger is mistaken
to be toward a crude imagined lover who
disowned you. you know the nauseous
truth of your thighs: you are virgin. But
evidence will not be revenge, for, so many
smoky eyes implore you to supplicate, to
admit alleged truths. impeaching faces lay
down rules: don’t shout or scream, but
swallow the shame. next, confess the sin.
sin yes they will shred your innocent life to
that yes you may fume or froth or boil or
simmer yes you are their staple soup they
need you just this way yes your fury takes
its toll annihilating you not them yes anger
and hatred seethe in your untamed tresses
yes you know how gossip chokes even the
tethered dreams yes something breaks in
you yes dear yes you start the brute search
for sleeping pills and chaste suicide ideas.
NON-CONVERSATIONS WITH A LOVER
don’t talk to me
of sudden love. . .
in our land
even the monsoons come—
leisurely, strolling like
decorated temple elephants
(the pomp, the paraphernalia)—
after months of monotonous prayer,
preparations and palpitating waits.
my darling
his silence
(those still shoulders)
but his eyes dance
his eyes dance
(so wild, so wild)
so i think of raging
summer storms—
like uncontrollable tuskers
trampling in mast
(the madness, the lust)—
across the forests of our land. . .
AMNESIA, SELECTIVE
When memory decides
To no longer bear the burdens—
Of pain, or even plain indifference
She has her winsome wicked ways.
Some day, years later,
Life requires you to unearth
Some event long past and you
Set about browsing your brain
Like a desk-full of office files and then—
Come across a resounding emptiness.
Memories drizzle-fragile
Are not to be found. What
Greets you instead, through
Those yellowing sheets of typed matter is
The blank and ugly blotches of dried whitener
So carefully applied, then. It has a fading smell of
Chalk and chlorine: a blend, like memory, that works at
Your throat. You try to scratch it and the faintest hopes are
Betrayed as the caked pieces of the whitener crumble,
Displaying nothing, but toe curling holes where crummy paper and ink once contained
you.
HE REPLACES POETRY
Two months into love and today I turn into a whore
Hunting for words, tearing them out from soiled sheets
Of mind or pinching them from the world like removing
Jade-green flecks from tiger’s eyes. . . And poetry refuses
Entry into my mirrored life that is bequeathed to him.
I try the mad-woman’s antics: I have pulled my hair and
Bruised my thin wrists and bit the insides of my cheeks till
They have bled a warm red sourness and I have starved
In arrogance to call the words home to me and thrown up
To clear me of him but he, strong dark man, refuses to budge,
Give way or take leave. My dark nights of savage tears have
Gone in search of needy shores deserting me (with the devil
Of a lover who sleeps half-a-dozen streams apart) and so
Have the words that once made me the sad lone woman
I was, and pretended to be. I am happy now he says and
I nod, like a Tanjore doll in breeze, and reply in cloying tones
This is happiness. I know I do not indulge in lies or delusion but
This is happiness and happiness is a hollow world for fools to
Inhabit, where all the dreams eventually die by coming to life.
Love has smothered me to a gay inertia and I long for a little
Hurt and pain that will let me scream and I wait for offending
Words to row me into worlds where I shall cry wildly for whole
Nights like the lament of lonely, old and greying seas. . . Then
Sadness shall come back with its dancing fairy lights and nail me
To wailing crosses. . . Poetry, in the end, shall replace all of him.
MRS. SUNSHINE
She left him without warning.
She left him because she didn't fancy
the way he flaunted his fire, his fist
and his million blistering fingers
that were always in heat.
So, she left him with her shadow
as acting spouse, for keeping house.
He went wild.
He went looking for his absconding
angel of tears and caustic tongue, his
angel of bleeding bare bones, his angel
of monthly mood swings. He went
looking over salt seas that shunned
his shine, over cities with skyscrapers
that stared into his eyes and over
obscure lands that chose to look away.
Lovesick, he lost his fiery temper,
his high temperature, his feverish fondness
for flames and furnaces and he became
a man of moderation. Running behind
a woman on the run, he became
a master of masquerade.
He turned romantic. He longed
for the soiled scents of rain
for the solitary shade of trees
for mist that hung heavy like his heart.
He squandered his insufferable splendor.
He turned black. He turned dark.
She returned in a twilight drizzle
and offered a truce before he made
the final offering of himself. She said:
When the world has closed its eyes
And as we become the one beast
With two backs, you can
Lay your lights in me.
She also whispered:
For old times sake,
I will hallucinate
your halos, your holiness.
POEMS: Meena Kandasamy
MY LOVER SPEAKS OF RAPE
Flaming green of a morning that awai
MY LOVER SPEAKS OF RAPE
Flaming green of a morning that awaits rain
And my lover speaks of rape through silences,
Swallowed words and the shadowed tones
Of voice. Quivering, I fill in his blanks.
Green turns to unsightly teal of hospital beds
And he is softer than feathers, but I fly away
To shield myself from the retch of the burns
Ward, the shrill sounds of dying declarations,
The floral pink-white sad skins of dowry deaths.
Open eyes, open hands, his open all-clear soul . . .
Colorless noon filters in through bluish glass
And coffee keeps him company. She chatters
Away telling her own, every woman’s story;
He listens, like for the first time. Tragedy in
Bridal red remains a fresh, flushing bruise across
Brown-yellow skinscapes, vibrant but made
Muted through years of silent, waiting skin.
I am absent. They talk of everyday assault that
Turns blue, violet and black in high-color symphony.
Open eyes, open hands, his open all-clear soul . . .
Blues blend to an unforgiving metropolitan black
And loneliness seems safer than a gentle night
In his arms. I return from the self-defence lessons:
Mistrust is the black-belted, loose white mechanism
Of survival against this groping world and I am
A convert too. Yet, in the way of all life, he could try
And take root, as I resist, and yield later, like the earth.
Open eyes, open hands, his open all-clear soul . . .
Has he learnt to live my life? Has he learnt never to harm?
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