User talk:Roshniswapna

Welcome
ROSHNISWAPNA;young Malayalam poet ,novelist,short story writer,and translator,has published two Novels-‘’Aroopikalude nagaram’’, “Vala”,211 poems,41 short stories,60 essays and edited some literary magazines and anthologies of poems.Her poetries and short stories have been translated into english,hindi,kannada and tamil.She has been a juniour fellowship scholar of kerala saahithya academy.She also translated around 300poetries from English,Greek ,Hindi,Kannada,Arab and hungary;Recipient of Vallathole Poetry Award,Basher memorial poetry award,Purogamana kalavedi poetry award,Phoenix poetry award,Rainbow books poetry award,New delhi ‘katha’award,Bashaposhini story award,Gruhalakshmi story award,Kanyaka story award,Puzha.com short story award.She used to paint with the medium of water colour and get shankers weekly international painting award.She is a karnatic music singer in kerala and she won all India radio music award also.Now she is completed her Ph.d research work on Theatre and classical music and working as Malayalam lecturer in st’aloysius college,thrissur HER THIRD NOVEL “Ulvanngal” will be published this November. keralam.Add.parokkad house, ,east nada,irinjalakuda.680121,thrissur,kerala

POETRIES

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= 1 .Treading the Memory Lane ---

1 Memory has an exceeding leap In roads sans flag signs. Like the playful grazel of cats Between the benches. Like, if one writes something, Something else becomes clear. There’s transformation All on a sudden Even then– There’s certain slight rust Left by the stupor of the cane on the table.

2 The cat now turned a rabbit In the wind– And thistledown’s swapped For pages on books. Aren’t memories heading the woods! Until we sight a forest We’re rival nations. It’s when we reached the woods That we forfeited the signet ring... Forgot each other Became conscious and oblivious together

3 The “uppumavu”1 she gave me While in class one, Tasted acrid. Today as blood ooze on tongue How easy it is To forget the lessons learnt. Having sent her children to school With empty Tiffin boxes– While she sits stitching flags Green, red, blue, all mingled– She’s calling me. “I could have sent them off With a weapon too”, She was saying quite unaware. When a page is being burned A million memories are dispensed with. Then suddenly a recollection Of going in search of pepromia plant Which hemmed my legs in. Having known all– The road, the bridge, the rain water The fish bite, the swim and the silence, The loud speaker, you, me... You wouldn’t relinquish The tip of my finger. Even now there is Among the burnt-out memories Curtain dampness of the cat’s sleep. I’m in class one still, Very much in class one still.

1.	Uppumavu :	The confection made by Reva.

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2 .A Child Wrecked in the Current ---

At every rain A nose, an ear, a tuft of hair, a finger... And the like Flow on and on.

“Come unto me; Come into me.” So did Every flow invite

At each turn, The river disclosed dreams: The dawn that blooms the stars; Chasms that lend darkness; Kisses bereft of a smuggled message; The unsodden sun; The Song; Curls of smoke... The blood oozing flesh, There narrates The thousand and first story.

Won’t there be– The honeyed fragrance of Konna1 in the breeze? The rain spattered Poovara2 of the mind? Or a glass mansion showing the rainbow?

Every leaf suggests, “Go get back after a dip” To smack the lips over and over With the Pollen grain And at its finale Be raised bodied forth to the skies, Or be crept back to the sea, Or be squeezed into the earth’s interior Or be widened to the sky’s extent,

And as I remained staring, Stalk severed rose apple berry Fell on the forehead. Savoring one of those And stretching the sun-burnt gown One sobs ones heart out.

Just literally caught in the flow, Never ceasing, From land to sea And further to confinement And to the burial place...

Though wings are soaked And the nest crushed And the funeral pyre charred There’s certainly a little ash To flew on and on Into the mind and the like...

1.	Konna	:	The tree Castia Fistula whose flowers are considered auspicious

2.	Poovara :	The tree Thespesia Populnea.

3 .Memory Card - Before we were born The mustard fields Had run to seed And gone dry

Leaving the green, Leaves had changed nests To the tawny

Rivers that wouldn’t even like To reminisce about the bridges

The clefts, Oceans perfected in flowers Were called colours

The kisses, The rain bestowed on wounds The “Kunkumam”

All around is plunged in oblivion; Father forget s his daughter; The house, its country. The flowers, the forest The roots, the sky Love, the green

2 In the spot of thunderbolt You pointed at, A slender leaf was seen Painfully clambering up in the wind

In the place Where you deceptively uttered It’s the fire flame There is now The word–gone–dry dampness

Where we looked We perceived Neither the tumult Nor the crimson sky

To what extent Was the cleavage of the black sea Between us? As we woke up after a dip, Words were Seething new dresses. We were granted A boon of oblivion Through Performance of penance.

We wrote on sea, drawing it Fashioned the sky, though words A single verdict was reached “Moolyachuti”1

3 We wrote in recollection, And the bow of the word broke off. We who went to see the woods, Were transformed to the forest leaves. Those segregated words, Without being dissociated Are with us together

We clambered on– Those that sang aloud As emptiness Others that moved to bloodshed and sacrifice As vapour. Forgetfulness does not torment us now And so we are cautions. An inch thick iron foil Is always with us To assemble all ingredients of memory Like those old iron nails in the knapsack.

1.	Moolyachuti  :	Loss of values

4. ---The Fingers of Forfeited Children

The fingers of the forfeited Sketch butterflies, Merged with the soil; And mark a bindi, At the tip of their wings, With their little fingers.

Frequently, They wake up with a startle From the afternoon nap And smile, In the sweetness of a jackfruit

Sucking the tip of the index finger Keeping it, Between the plaque – coated teeth Gave it a pallid complexion.

At heedless times They drew With a thick piece of charcoal On the white washed walls, Flowers, leaves, eyes, wild seeds...

The barks of Chrysanthus Fall off and lie together With the grains of sand On the courtyard Those little ones Just old enough to pluck pepromia plants, Having picked up The Fallen beads of anklets Were hurt as they ran Among the touch-me-not plants. And there were scars on their fingers

Having been frightened of The marks of lips As they kissed the bell flower, The sobbing sounds Were in search of the ant-lions; They left their finger lines On the sand pits As they counted their victims– One... two...

Then pointing at the sea They skulkingly uttered a sob; Not even knowing Where that goes Not knowing where to point out There remain silences.

5.Butterflies Betwixt the Colliding Trains -

1 What was said finally Wouldn’t possibly be About wings or flying. When it’s ripped apart and burst forth The mustard fields go red. Then pirouette unbridled.

2 What’s with the butterflies To be betwixt the two trains That gives each other a smack? It’s a crash That can char the chilly fields And the mud-mountains, Which flanked the rails. There’s an unpleasant poem in it.

3 Glance into the distance And you can see– The heap of human palms broken off, As these fancied To point their finger at one another; A mount of iris, Detached from faces, as these Throbbed to look askance At your hidden places and your nights; The sea of severed feet As these leapt across To pierce open your bosom.

4 Between memory and sound Variegated granules Sunder and drop off Like the pollen grain. Do the wriggled out Railway lines Still have– That orange and vermilion dust Of the crushed wings of butterflies? The red ochre She laid out from these On her forehead and clothes? The finger with three heads That ripped open the butterflies?

6. 6Koottupurikam1 -

It would certainly seem so... The vision before it spreads To its own stretch It’s a carefully raised Black, magnified fence stakes

It’s untouched Being above the eyes By slightly tepid tears Which lay on A salty taste on tongue.

At a former time I too have drawn With a tip of a pencil On the space Between two crescent shaped marks.

“Howsoever you make yourself up Your can’t be, An Afsath, a Jameela or a Laila” A boy in class four Howled in derision.

Those trapped from birth in its fence As they lay their head down At the gloaming, Wished if it gets at all Withered down.

2 However much at logger heads The eyes Never chanced upon each other The right iris Never did even make a peek At the left one

Though spaced parallel The flight of eye – line Disperse in contrary course. For marking her a “sindhurapottu”2 I was given a good thrashing

How does P K Afsal’s initials Become my own? Even then The two that remain Kissing each other above the eyes Inside the black masks Spied on me desirously.

3 Desire does hardly ever raise A huge wall called “Koottupurikam” Damming the vision up Holding back the breath Or, even when someone’s initials Become mere alphabets And stand for another, Reminding that heritage Might even be probed.

Not even a hair of the eyebrow Sprouted above the nose Even after you took Your eyes off knowledge.

4 She came yesterday With her tresses and the eye-brows All withered down; Masks taken off; In a dream – To narrate the story of infants Who perished on streets.

Those eyes have become wells Into which of them had I got sunk? It had made me cry aloud... Silence now prevails.

1.	Koottupurikam :	The hair in the space between two eye-brows

2.	Sindhurapottu :	Decorative round vermilion mark work on the forehead.

7.Ruptured by Water --

Sometimes They purr like a cat; And cry out aloud Light is a fraud.

The accusing gaze Of the reflected image Paved the way for me To bow down in confession

As you keep watching The facial features Get creased and mangled By rainwater.

It’s the pallor of the mirror– After it got to old age From childhood, teenage, youth...

In the drizzling That’s outside the frame Its glassed–in silence Will be soused in pain Piercing that There’s a squall... A certain yowl... A clarion call

It will be transformed Into mere glass, Reflecting the front and the rear end.

And finally, Bosom burst It pours out purring

8.Colour --

1 There’s not a bit left to mix – Dawn, noon, evening night, yesterday, today, tomorrow ... Nothing at all. Not a drop of water Should spurt and fall On the cloth on line Swaying in the wind. A spurt–second would suffice For the colour to change; A half–stroke will do.

Renting the minds of raindrops, A blue light leaps forth. It’s sunny. Holding an umbrella, The colours step into the tarred road. If buffeted by wind, They bound back indoors on their own Try pouring a green blob On wilted dry leaves. This musters a mob Whose bluster well-high Resounds in all four directions.

2 There’s wind On the colour’s outer limits– A question that hardly has any answer ! It triples down On the white head-dress Of disgraceful words, Fastening the colourless light. The face, a white sheet of paper Where, colours spill over and ooze out. It’ll rain And the renegade of a “vethalam”1 Will come to take a list of the springs. How many colours there are For the silence of the gaping eyes of idols.

3 The colours, of which we say “How succulent they are” Are brought down by wind from the mountains These, for which we endure The scalding heat, are those That spring out of the earth’s cleavage These, of which, we bracingly reckon “How cool it is!”

Only those fingers that ache Sans wounds, know How quickly water blends with colours. As to the case among us How easily a colour Becomes a sea Turns out to be a wall Changes into a non-colour.

1.	Vethalam :	a corpse possessed by evil spirits

9.The Woman who Adorned her Hair with Flowers1 -

Petals left forgotten Those that leapt to be wilted And those that throb to bloom; Those broken, detached, crushed petals Did really become petals There are those with fragrance Those without And others, indistinct.

In the act of being crushed by two fingers The two splinters of the wind fondled them, “Only when suffocated Did we cry without fear”, They lied so.

Gifting colours in alternation to Destitution Gravity Distress Love And so on... Who are they that–

In a world where flowers vanish– Let unlock the black tresses Separate Cut flowers Crush them...

1.	This poem is based on Edward Reginald Franto’s painting “Flora of the Field”

9.Garments

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Those were of the colour of Sandal paste That quickly passes on to the eyes; Their odour, that of an egg; Their shoulder measure, reaching the elbow.

During the vacation, while in class VI, Two of them step in silently with my father

They dressed me alternatively As I flew to school With the bundle of books and the mist.

Pegging them from sky to the earth They covered my feet

From the hanging bridge to the waterfall They kept dangling over.

That’s their declaration of non-cooperation. Harkening to the slogans Crouching from the tea-gardens, I could hear the song of leaches Under the Casuarina tree.

Children used to get into company And separate their each thread Dresses aptly robe themselves With variegated colours In keeping with the light

Now: The star-seared building Replaced the Casuarina trees. A cascade flows over Without those little fishes

Unfit for proper size, Stiffened up Pershing in the afternoon snooze Swaying in the air Garments get discarded In old pillow cases.