Deebam

THE LAND OF ‘*YAAZH’ {The LAND of LUTE/ LOOT}

2010-12-14T11:13:00.000-08:00

By Deebachelvan Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

01
The sound of ‘Yaazh’(lute) rings, bruised and battered.
The hands that come to take away the land
drags off the lute, tear it and smash it.
“Let this lute break into pieces;
Or, better still, turn into ashes”.
Thus, with secret slogans
all and sundry arrive,
uproot the lute and throw it away.
The cups held in the hands of those who are
seated in those lined-up air-conditioned cushions
under the shade of those sky-piercing cut-outs
that hide all faces,
are filled to the brim with
Yaazh’s ashes.

In the city of Yaazh someone has hoisted another song
and they are gulping and munching the Yaazh,
its ashes and all.
All over the town, all over the land
many a broken yaazh are strewn
for the feet to stamp on them, ground them.
That evening
in the Land of Yaazh
they gobbled
the anguished moan of the nerves
tearing apart-
relishing and revelling.

02
With the children of the refugees
who know not their home lands
unaware of the Yaazh, dozing along the train tracks,
those who have been driven out of the
high-safety zones
remain on the streets
with no abodes of their own-
resembling the abandoned street-children

Are those trains to come again?
With wheels where blood and flesh are thickly stuck
are they to enter inside the zone
for finding their routes?
Are they to butcher again those hapless ones
who keep wandering for their land?
These children born on the railway-tracks
have seen no trains.
These children who have no house of their own
have never once smiled, you know…
And, everyday they smash and ground those
heavy rail-stones with their tender feet.

03
Our children have no toys in their hands
These children who are born in a life
that itself has turned into a
plaything
are holding tight rubbles and garbages
instead of toys
and they play tin-wastes
as substitute for Yaazh.
In the mornings
when others are yet to wake up
they come with garbage bags
in the corners of the city where all sorts of wastes
coming from all directions
overflow
they befriend the ‘Ilayaangal’
believing in the Wastes
and are being born and brought up
with Wastes.

The School-bags which they collect
from the wastes,
the pens with ink dried-up-
the heads of dolls -
Oh, how do they name them and ask for?
When these children, with the smell of wastes all over,
kiss, the nerves of Yaazh-heart burst and explode.

04
The walls that have shrouded the ashes -
Oh, will they break off due to the intense vibrations?
Again and again they attempt
to throw, not just stones but also torches
on these books,
to dig and stir the ashes
that are stuck on the shrunken and parched walls.
Just like our Land-
as an exhibit in every sense
our books remain, without being comprehended.
When we spread open these books
ashes spill over on all sides.
They steal away our ashes too.
In our books, with the pages changed
new tales are written and collected.

05
These ones too came along with burning torches.
They saw Syril Mathew and
Gamini Thisanayaka
swallowing the ash-oozing burnt books and languishing.
They saw in those countenances
the faces of Today’s Rulers.
With vengeful memories
they threw away those books.
They have no mind to leave those sorrow-struck mothers
writhing in pain, wailing for those books too,
butchered along with their off-springs.
Cruel hands keep stretching for ever
to tear to pieces the tales of
the ‘sons of soil’ of our Land
that keep whispering into our ears,
noiselessly.
That evening, all over the city of Yaazh
Our books torn to pieces kept floating in the air
And finally settled on the sea.

These tyrannous vultures keep hovering over,
Steadily circling
to kill our books.
They are all set to do all that they can
against our books too.

06
In the place where we had been chased away with guns and uniforms
Some others came and sat.
The documents that we have
are forcibly snatched and torn off
by the tyrannous hands.
And the new cool documents being brought
as substitutes
declare us aliens in our Land.
Not contented with having those
mammoth mountains
They ask share in our Land
and attempt to write in our archives
deep-rooted underneath our soil-
the *Arasa-Mara (Pipal Trees) tales of Buddha..

Buddha who is in deep meditation with eyes closed
Oh, how we wish him to have at least opened them
when our Land and people were being torched.
The idols of Buddha with their legs widespread
wearing military uniform
keep moving with their eyes tightly shut.
Buddha, the Unseeing,
your sons are roaming all over the street of Yaazh
with guns.
Their cruel hands are ever stretching
to divide our Land
and gobble the particles.

Oh You, the Sea, who has alighted here?
In the damaged and demolished abodes of
the inhabitants of this coastal land
tales of sorrow-filled time, unheard and unread,
lay stuck; embedded ;aplenty.
Alas, who have strewn all over our soil the seeds,
along with the roots too, of alien trees?
Our sea has been bruised to the core.
With the mouth of Yaazh brutally broken
it remains wordless as never before.
__________________

*Yazh – Lute
*Arasa Maram -Pipal Tree

PLEASE PRAY FOR MY LAND

2010-12-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

By Deebachelvan Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

Out of those hands
that come forth to slice and smash into fragments
the Land, fallen and steeped in sorrow
as the commands unfold -
Our land writhes in pain untold

When our hapless people are instructed
to get displaced yet again
the children turn terror-stricken and cry
feeling the soil with their tender hands.
The Land that used to turn damp and nourished
on a rainy day when the rivers flow kissing the soil
lies all scorched, parched and boiling.

We have nothing left
except despair and disappointment.

The burglars of broad-day-light tear into shreds
any Hope left.
Oh, how many hands assault the Land
again and again and again?
How many more laws are being written
to rob us of our Land?
Alas, what all shapes and forms lusting greedily
To loot the Land where we were born and brought up?

With all our strength gone
when we, betrayed and abandoned by all gods,
languish here feeding on sorrows and sufferings -
will you be kind enough to pray for my Land
-Oh, My Dear Unknown Friend…

Terribly anguished, ever languishing, the people
who keep running from pillar to post,
for retrieving the documents snatched away
of the lands forcibly seized,
have no words that could sprout into tender shoots.
The present climate when Time-the tyrant
that gobbles the dwellings
and unleash unending harassment on the people,
terrify us.
With all the promises and assurances for their
own piece of Land belied
and betrayed
People are being butchered along with their Land.

For our people, let down and betrayed -
For our children who cry for their
Lands , wandering in search of it -
For our own small dwelling -
Please do pray, My Dear Unknown Friend
The low-land is made all the more lower….
Along with the rivers
the Marudha’ trees too tremble,
squirm in anguish and sway, intensely restive.

The very personification of pain and sorrow – Oh, Mother
Your tears and the blood of your children
Gush forth, flooding this river.
Oh, my dear children of this low-land
Where at all can we go?
The Land still damp with Blood and Tears
is made all the more wet with unbearable sorrow

From street to street, village to village
town to town_
the too long and broad hands of those swindlers of soil
go all stretched and grabbing
Oh, please do continue to pray for our Land;
Won’t you?
___________________
November 2010

Note: In the low-lying areas of Rathinapuram where I live the State has Ordered more than 25 families living there to vacate and shift to some other place. The people living in Rathinapuram village which is located on the outskirts of Kilinochi town have been living here for ages and are the ‘sons of the soil’, so to say.

THE LAND OF *‘erukkalai’ flower

2010-12-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

A POEM BY DEEBACHELVAN

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

Are you listening to those voices that keep wandering
all over the ‘erukkalai land?
“Oh Mother, “Ever our Dear Mother Land!
_ So I can hear those words unleashed
rising up from the debris of tombs
that are smashed and broken

From the seed-pit filled up to the neck
with tears of a mammoth mass of humans,
blood oozes out.
Do you realize that you have killed but the Immortals?
Pieces of bones have popped up and
broken apart.
Hand over those smashed fragments of bones
and that of tombs.
So the Mothers wail, beating their chests.

Oh, I can hear it all

The ‘erukkalai’ saplings sprout aplenty

Our hands have no saplings
The coconut trees are not in a position
to give us saplings
Upon the land where the tender ones lie dead,
burnt beyond recognition,
gigantic trees stand with wounds all over.

The Mothers who were hoping against hope
that the tombs would bloom
refuse to believe that you have butchered the tombs too.
The Land that used to shine red figuratively,
with lights and lamps
Today, turn red literally with the blood
flowing out of tombs sliced and smashed

Wearing the erukkalai blossoms my beloved
surfaces out of those pits and approaches me.
In the roots of the erukkalai tree
my brother has spread his contenance.
The children have nothing
except erukkalai leaves to read and play.
“They are there, underneath the ground”_
so blabber the words of mother turned child.

This Great Land is turning into a land
of the erukkalai flower
Did you hear what those wandering underneath
speak?
Did you see their dreams and visions?
The more they are cut – the more bloom
the karthigai flowers

The lives wide-awake, unable to lie cease raging and sleep
keep wandering for ever.
In the butchered tombs the ever alive dream overflows
In the smashed bits and fragments
why have the erukkalai come to sprout?
They grow dense, intense
as our Dream
___________________

Image: The Memorial of the Dead in Kilinochi has been destroyed

*erukkalai : a shrub that grows aplenty in Cemetry/burial grounds

SORROW-FILLED SOIL

2010-11-19T19:37:00.000-08:00

- Deebachelvan ----------------------------------------

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY LATHA RAMAKRISHNAN

01
Danisha, please don’t look at me and wave your hand!
Your face, the very personification of sorrow,
languishing for the Lost Land,
overflows as the defeat of people betrayed.
I can’t go past a great distance.
As they didn’t stop me on the way, just as usual,
I could see you.
Your voice which keeps sounding again and again
in this land of sorrow, Oh_
I just can’t listen to it.

The day of solution arrives.
Breaking open the thorny fence
You are going to enter into your own piece of land.
Come! let’s catch hold of those who greedily grab
and take away our land;
let’s shake their hands and retrieve ours.

Snakes and centipedes
surround your tent.
Danisha, will you teach me also to smile?

That I am a terrorist_
do you know Danisha?
They have passed the verdict that
because of this ‘terrorist’ the people’s safety is at stake.
But still, I will move along these streets.
For I long to see children like you
who remain suffering in this sorrow-filled soil.

Asking the people to get displaced again-
when the announcement came
Danisha said ‘no’ with tears in her eyes.
This Land has been taken by the king.
And the king who keeps munching the forests and soils
keeps flying straight above, hovering over this Land.
Without Land what are the children going to do?
The birds are yet to return.
This land with no guard lies in whose hand?
_children like Danish begin to enquire.

02
Once upon a time this Land belonged to us
and the children were very happy.
The militants kept vigil over it.

The Buddha who was the commander of the modern troops,
waged war.
And, climbing on the papal tree
when he was laying siege on this land
the king’s shadow was falling on people’s soil.
The king ate the temples,
The king drank the pond,
The king grazed the forests,
With legs of ashes
he visits our cities carrying a sword.

My face, branded as the face of the deadly killer
was photographed by them umpteen number of times,
from numerous angles.
All the words invariably give the same verdict as gift.
I am destroying my own self.

When this so-called terrorist arrived at the city in the night
his ears were so full of your voice
forcing your way through the landmines when you go
towards your piece of land
I too go along with you.
Danisha, for you and me they don’t even give a tent.
Neither you nor I have no idea
what a lovely house looks like.
With tents, bushes and weeds and the soil
we keep going
In this gloom-filled soil _
why the sorrow being so persistent?
______________________
Image: child Danisha of Poonagar.

THE BATTLEGROUND

2010-11-19T02:23:00.000-08:00

o DEEBACHELVAN ----------------------------------------

(TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY LATHA RAMAKRISHNAN)

The dolls return to the barren Land
In the hands of all those who travel
in the bloated wagons,
In the big bags that they have
they carry their Land filled to the brim
_so the aged keep blabbering.

On the battleground the child’s doll
lies dead, badly mutilated.
The child which has forgotten to enquire
after its mother and father
who had been killed,
went in search of its doll
and has retrieved one half of it.

With a few pieces of ‘Tharapaal’
taking several ‘poovarasam’ twigs
the children keep their toy-houses closed
and remain inside.
In the toy-house with no walls nor partitions
Wind and dust and heat,
finding entry, have come to stay
As the illustration of Time.

For the homes of those dolls in the hands of children who,
hugging the soil with their hands and
bathing in the muddy water in the land
all soaked in the dampness of heavy downpour,
the War begins.

The children smell the odour of war-torn Land
where destructions abound.
The smell of the smoke of explosives piercing the heart
and pervading,
drinking the water saturated in poison, turning blue,
the children quench their hunger.

In the hands of children who kill their own selves
nothing but broken dolls remain.
In the Land turned poisonous, ravaged and devovoured by War,
for a place to squat the fight goes on.
_________________________
Picture: In Visuvamadu a doll lies in half, dead and gone.

THE PILLAR AND TOMBS SMASHED AND MADE TO FALL BY THOSE SECRET MURDERERS WHO DESTROY DREAMS

2010-11-19T02:09:00.000-08:00

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

o DEEBACHELVAN ----------------------------------------

The Memorial Tower filled with the dreams of the Hungry One
has been smashed, uprooted and taken away
by the secret murderers who are all set to destroy dreams.
From that day onwards He keeps wandering along this street
with the fire of hunger raging in him

Those killers who fear even the tombs and so dig and destroy them
are moving around, all over this city.
Today I visited the Land of Hunger where dreams lay scattered;
were shattered, torn apart and taken away.

‘They are on the prowl to butcher our dreams’
-So the children are terrorized.

Blood is spread all over the place
“We just removed the tower”
say the murderers having changed their attires.
That which he had asked for
under the grip of all-pervading hunger
these annihilators of ethnic identity
try with all their might to demolish.
Smashing the light that was glowing there in deep hunger
they have thrown it aside.

On the same day when the burial grounds
within which raging souls unleashed are staying
were also ruined,
they attempted to kill an illumination.
The pillar and tombs that are felled and uprooted
appear as the cradles of their children.
Jerking them out of their sleep, causing them anguish
and butchering them, the killers have once again caused
untold sorrow to the hapless mothers.

Upon the pillar of He who remains in raging hunger
some birds have come to sit, that day.
With none allowed to light a lamp for Him
He has been betrayed and left abandoned by the terror-struck Time.

The fears so overpowering in you
steeped as you are in all your greedy enterprises
and the delirious frenzy to erase our identity
_ Of course he knows them all too well.

Don’t try to remove the lights and brightness of our streets
Oh, merciless murderers!
You might come across He who keeps wandering
with his body consumed by raging hunger.
From that day onwards He keeps wandering along this street
with the fire of hunger raging in Him
_____________
Thanks to ADHAVAN

DREAMLAND / LANDREAM

2010-11-18T19:52:00.000-08:00

o Deebachelvan ----------------------------------------

(Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan)

01

In the land that ceases to be yours with the tents of the dead
drawing closer and burning
throughout the day we are getting drenched in incessant fire.
As we remain helpless not being able to chase off the ‘ilaiyaangal’
that come to sit on our food and shit
they divert the roads that go to our small square of lands
With the roads laid by us remain closed
fresh new roads lead us to new camps.

We have grown thin
Voices wail for land.

At a distance where we can see clearly, unfolds
the Land of Children.
Right in front of our eyes
they steal and snatch away the blossoms of
coconut trees
the tender shoots and leaves

The wagons that take away heaps of sand and stones
whiz past us.
We have withered acutely.

02

Again and again landmines sprout out of our soil
In the night when the moon fails to come
countless landmines have shot up.
Whether the landmine would grow into a tree and give us ripe fruits?
So children shoot at us questions during night.

For planes to fly and to land,
For the money-spinning mills and plants to open
we are being turned into refugees again and again.
The tyrants and looters like our soil so much.
Children cry to sleep on the land

For having been born in these villages
the children are made to stay
in the space so full of the hot sun
This camp keeps its entrance wide-opened for ever.

03

Leaving through the gates of the camp that has no army
with riffles, where at all we are to go?
In these camps and those camps
opened and shut, opened and shut
The ways to the land are doubly blocked.
As we remain prisoners caged in our own land
our piece of land lies so close to us.
Children who throw away their tri-cycles
stand in readiness with one foot set forth
These children who long to return to their homes
are not afraid of the shells or the gun-shots.
And they refuse to get into any vehicles.

In the dream land the shadow of ghosts tries to spread and capture.
The children’s Dream Land stands like a furnace
In full view of us all
when our ancestral land is being hauled
are we to cover and shut tight our children’s eyes?
______________
07.08.2010

Shanthapuram people in Image

THE GREAT LAND : WITH THE DANGER OF POWER EMBEDDED

2010-11-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

o Deebachelvan ----------------------------------------

(Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan)

Inside the thickly grown weeds and bushes
the danger of power is lurking.
The mothers who caution their children not to go far
and play,
try to enclose the fence and lock the doors of their tents

The goods abandoned are strewn everywhere,
smashed beyond repair.
When at last reaching, lean, weak and broken
the first thing we want to do is to fall flat on the ground
and weep uncontrollably.
All over the Land nothing but Power,
Control and Capturing are being planted.
Our city which was once a beautiful land
is being re-molded now by plundering brains.
The children attempt to probe the dangers lying hidden
inside the bushes and weeds.

This looks like some alien land, not my own city.
The people who have landed here seem not to be mine.

Time had played hide-and-seek with us
and finally left us in the lurch.
In the barren land,
losing all our belongings, looted for ever,
our life which slowly rehabilitates itself
is languishing in the tins of detention camps.

In the camps
with bundles kept ever-ready
more and more people keep arriving.
Records, photographs buses – so in all,
running from pillar-to-post, spent out to the core_
and such other strains and constraints
await them with Sorrow overpowering.
After intense tortures
they cover them with tin-sheets.

The cows go past the place where the men
are plucking out the landmines.
Right from the spare parts of smashed cycles
we go searching for everything.
We crave all too acutely for a decent living.

From utensils left behind,
photographs and a lot more
we keep searching, over and over.
They bring things that don’t synchronize with this Land.
All over the Great Land so cruelly mutilated
plants sprout out of debris.
In the terrible environment where total annihilation
remain frozen
the children begin to smile.

_________________
13.10.2010

Courtesy: TheeraNadhi, April, 2010

THE PIECE OF LAND ON THE RIVER BANK WHERE MOTHER HAS RETURNED

2010-11-15T22:52:00.000-08:00

o Deebachelvan ----------------------------------------

(Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan)

-------------------------------

in the field, so full of grass and weeds in the almost destroyed piece of land
Mother’s fatigue is set afire.
On a day when we felt that all gods have abandoned us
Mother remained in hunger with nothing to eat
In front of goddess Parasakthii the provider of each one’s piece of land.
Oh, why have goddess Parasakthi abandoned this piece of land
Lying on the river-bank?
Mother has given her word not to let know

anyone any of the tortures during her stay in the camp.

the birds of these river-bank
celebrate our homecoming
on a day when the river swelled and flooded
Mother had her overflowing in her palms.
Dragging me off and offering me its roots as hands
The river enabled me to climb ashore safely
In the closed down river-bank
The destroyed banks are not to be seen.
Beloved Mother’s blood shed for the Evergreen Dream
is all over the shores; wide-spread

in the ‘Noovel’ tree that has lost its branches
how can my sister tie the swing and play?
In the benign smile of my Mother, fondly caressing its ‘still alive’ roots
The tree pours down its shade transcending Time.

The children who used to collect the fruits fallen down,
crowding under the tree
are sadly missing.
Mother who searches for the walls
takes out the time-worn visas.
Elder brother’s image has long since ceased to be.

standing alive and erect yet
The Marudhaani tree and several ‘Poovarasu’ trees.
A Marudha tree stands there with its half shade intact.
Upon the traces of ashes a new tent has been erected.
The way Mither believes that sky’s wound
Would soon turn to be mere scar
So my little sister believes that our home would
grow once again
Once again songs sprout in the low-land.

With the watery regions and boundaries of dreams turning into nought
The thrown away palm-seeds have burst into nothing.
Our smiles keep calling back all those birds migrated from
The river-bank.
__________________________
09.05.2010, Rathinapuram, Kilinochi.

“My mother and younger sister were taken to the detention camp at the close of the Eelam war, on the 16th of May, last year. After completing the course of punishments for their alleged involvement in the war which was effected after almost one year they have returned to their piece of land on the 9th of May 2010.

Image: My tent in the low-land region of Rathinapuri it was built in September , seeking shelter from heavy rains..

WHOSE SKELETONS ARE THESE?

2010-11-15T22:49:00.000-08:00

o Deebachelvan ----------------------------------------

(Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan)

The skeletons pushing the lid of toilet-pit and surfacing
were seen first by children.
Whose skeletons are these that have lost their lives and are wandering still?
Even in the wooden-planks with which the corpses were tied and so buried there lie incomprehensible notes.
In the dry palmyra leaves the words with sound torn apart are stuck
Mothers who search for the life in the hidden corners of those polythene bags which had been pressed and dumped inside those toilet-pits,
have gathered

in those cyanide tubes they have filled their last words and left
amidst those knots that were in those black threads tying the number-plates round the arm
the time of sorrow stays deep-rooted.
In two skeletons that wear just the pants of their uniform
The map of the Mother Land so mercilessly destroyed
Is sketched in lines.
In the bucket used to fetch water from the well
A mother has secured the eyes of her son
Why were the corpses hidden in the toilet-pit?

Pieces and particles of flesh yet to rot and wither
Peel off and scatter as the remains of a great grand dream.
In a skeleton that wears just the pants
A woman fervently seeks her husband’s ‘never to die’ smile.
In the skeleton that is clothed in a sari
The scratches too many and too deep
Are counted by one and all
in the skeleton that is stark naked
the children find their fathers and mothers.
The wounds and swellings that remain engraved on the polythenes
As identification marks
The mothers, the sight proving unbearable, feeling terrible
long to apply balm and provide cure
who are they who feel unduly elated dumping corpses into the toilets?

in the well which has been closed by the invaders
I see the smell of the tortured life
Emanating

In the well into which they climbed down and washed their hands
There are blood stains floating in the water- so says my mother.

And the heads of skeletons with deep torturous lines all over
Pressed together and closed all too taut amidst the rubbles of
Fortress-wall – even these the children saw first.
Why do skeletons keep surfacing?
in the city turning into skeleton
Please come with your palms covering the eyes of children
These are the skeletons of whom that we keep searching for?
___________________________
04.06.2010
Image: Gajani

Refugees’ Land of Sorrow

2010-11-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

01.
In a street that moves off on a rainy day
Inside the tents that resemble pits dug
Why are the Palestenian children huddle in hiding?

on the day when the people were won over
As refugees
The refugee-children of all world
cry in one voice
on the day when boys hold the guns
all over the forest where the mothers wander carrying their baggage
one and all have been chased on some action

The way their houses were destroyed without a trace
The way the city was turned to rubbles
With its very face changed beyond recognition
These refugees would try to bear with it all
Their days are filled with anguished.

wanderingsagain and again carrying their bag and baggage
Not being able to walk several more meters or kilo-meters
These children sit down
These feet do not want to venture into
Forests or sea-shores where people never tread
The home where fire was on burning in the heart
For preparing food for children
is burnt by the raging fire of war.
The rows of refugees that kept on elongating in the city of gogad
banged against the mountains.

02.
For those buildings destroyed beyond repair
What for the Eelam children are entering?
The children of the Congo Republic come and stay in
Our tents at night
Into a piece of bread, for a cup of ‘kanji’
For a cup of water
The refugee-children all over the world
Cry in one voice
The State with dreams dismissed, divided and torn apart
and joint as one
the terrible misery of the refugees that time
has left behind forever to remain
the invader are busy probing, turning upside down
Whether a hell of a downpour or just a drizzle
these tents are unable to withstand
the aggressors who sever away all the dreams that sprout on the soil
and so kill the Land
are moving ahead on all directions
in great haste
There is no need for the chieftain of the aggressors
to teach the strategies of pilfering the ethnic shades and colours
Somalia’s bowls of Hunger were buried in Matalan.

Those who set out to squander the forests
Those who try to rob the well
Those who are all out to grab the land
Those who have left for destroying
The Rights
Invariably killed the children
At the very outset
The dream of refugees has turned all wet in children’s blood.

03
The way the people were driven away from their homelands
amidst the deluge of refugees’ sorrow-
On the day of celebration with full of power won over
the chieftain of the aggressors describe
as the forces marching ahead carrying gun in one hand
and Manuals of Human Rights in the other
And it was the very same Manuals that were taken along by the troops
that kept on chasing the hapless people
till the very end of life.
With life snatched away all of them
were uprooted from their native land
and turned into refugees.

All the children lie in the dust
holding the same kind of cups and bowls in their hands
And even the baggage that they carry along as an extended limb
they have to leave behind somewhere
When the invaders barge in with their troops
They hurl words worse than their bombs
Though tents and refugees fill to the brim the entire world
the refugees have learnt to smile.
The kids of Darfur with tents made of sticks
own worn-out lone slipper
and all torn shirts.
The troops that take with them condoms
during holidays bring to their chieftain female organs.

04
War is so humane as to
chase off the hapless people to somewhere faraway
With the debris and destructions of Iraq
the country keeps glowing still.People were chased away in Kashmir
People were forcibly sent out in Godhra
Displaced in Orissa
Sent away to valleys, mountains and woods
With the kids in Manipur
The kids of Darjeeling too began to destroy forests
Religion Sea and Woods and all keep chasing away the people
And they kill those who refuse to leave

The Victory Flag of the State that has retrieved Land from its people
fly high from the hands of refuges.
From all lands the world over
Refugees keep wandering on all days.
Oh, people are steadily being displaced from their dwelling places

_________________________________
June 20 : This poem is being published in commemoration of World Refugees’ Day.

A POEM IN TAMIL BY DEEBACHELVAN
TITLEDAGADHITH THUYARVELI
(Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan)

WHO IS THERE FOR US

2010-06-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

Why are children being born
again and again
whenever we come across these children who,
turning terrorized on seeing
chaos around and shiver uncontrollably
our faces writhe and twist and smash
There are none to see their smile
There are none to listen to their words

In the city where that boy was strangulated for money
and crushed to death
In the street with his blood-stains all over
How can I wander in peace and gay abandon?
Oh, Mother, why have you given me birth in this morbid land?

None has an iota of kindness
I am conversing with
Faces full of blood and vengeance
On all my sidesman-eating wild animals wandering in
gay abandon
Oh Mother, why am I like the friend dragged away
by a bloody animal?
The children who suffer for want of
the Milk of Human Kindness
are going in front of me
The mothers who suffer for their children’s sake
talk to me
Oh Mother, why have you reared me
in this Morbid Land?
Those who drag away the children
can take me also just like that one fine night
no, none seems to speak about you and me?
They speak about their cups
Their houses
Their wagons alone
Oh Mother, why have you let me walk along
this vengeful Land?
What more I have to lose
to see the flowers?
Why am I still being chased
by the cruel time of guns piercing the heart ?
I wish to walk along a lane of this city on a peaceful night.
I long to go wandering in the illumination of lights
Without a care in the world.
Oh Mother, how looks a beautiful life?

The cravings and longings for happiness
turn into mere dreams
Time has taken a beating in all senseyou are still lying there under the scorching sun
being acutely burnt
Oh Mother, who is there for us?
____________________

04.06.2010

THANKS: ANANDHIPHOTOGRAPH:

TAKEN IN ALLAARAI DETENTION CAMP ON

A poem by Deebachelvan titled

எங்களுக்காய் யார் இருக்கிறார்கள்?

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE SILHOUETTE OF MURDEROUS SCENES

2010-05-23T03:16:00.000-07:00

01
The anguished voice of the boy, arising out of tortures,
who breathed his last being in the midst of gory murders
is being heard incessantly.

First they arrested one and all
Blindfolded some
Handcuffed some
Eventually all of them were blindfolded and handcuffed
They were made to stand in a row and were
dragged along the green lawn and withered leaves and weeds
with the too well known sounds of torture resounding

In the land where demonic scenes of murder,
of mammoth proportion, were staged
Strewing flowers upon blood
the little girl who has identified her father keeps waiting
Again the sky lay frozen on those very same days
Melting, it pours down
wailing so loudly.
The hands were tied at the back
The guns keep conducting enquiry.
The undivided land has turned all dark.

In the land overflowing with corpses
In the blood of the Dream broken to pieces
In the delirium of the grossly unjust turning victorious
the continuance of the terrible murders
that left an ethnic group
writhing in agony untold
unfolded.
That blood-shed had to flow outside
Those gory scenes had to surface
Those wails and screams couldn’t be suppressed
With tortures of the worst order the Great Land was
reverberating so horribly.
They were made to stay in the land which had turned
all red, drenched in blood
Made to stay in the land where the soil was so cruelly
mauled and mutilated
The rain, terror-struck cries all the more.

02
The attires of the troops turn greener still
They were honoured as troops that stand for the
honour of a nation;
honoured as ‘men in uniform’ who safeguard
the very humaneness;
As great lovers of guns they have retrieved many rusted ones.
From their ‘Smile of Arms’ the earth-quake of the ghosts’ dance
surface and move on.

They are the ones who fulfill the affectionate wish of the King
They are the ones who carry out the orders of the Generals
As the grand finale the troops feast the King and Generals
with blood-dripping flesh-pieces.
The General keeps on bloating further and further
The King too bloats more and more
The smile of the King too turns all bloated
The stars of the Generals keep bloating
The troops are fed with more and more devilish frenzy and so
grow on.

They are all eager to share the vile strategies of War
and the bare cruelties of Victory.
They are all too ready to explain any number of times
in minute details
about the genocide carried out
and the way they had butchered en masse
for achieving it.
As so valorous and brave-hearted
they are all eager to stand in front of the dead bodies
posing majestically
and to pile up the corpses in deep hollowness

03
The white flags have become spies hiding murder within
They acted in sharp readiness and immense eagerness to
shoot at whoever happened to come across
Those who surrendered were gifted away to murder
Those arrested were chosen for torture
After butchering
they had covered the children with white flags
After raping
they had shrouded the women too with white flags

They had turned into handcuffs, the shirts worn outside
and the shirts worn inside
With ropes filled with the evil designs of homicide
they had the hands tied.
As each one of them was looking on
they witnessed their blood flowing out of them;
witnessed their blood streaming down
into the very depths of the soil turned muddy,
all mixed with blood.
Dead bodies of all sorts were shown to them.

The troops trained to butcher and torture and to root out
do not feel it fit to end it all with just standing in front of the corpses
and sharing their victory
but, they lie in wait to carry out orders afresh for more annihilation.
They only want to go on elongating and the dreams of blood.

The troops carried out all kinds of activities to retrieve the Land.
The troops died in order to annihilate the people.
So the troops killed the people.
So the troops killed the militants.
So the King killed the Land.
With blood and flesh the King has built his palace.

04
What have you done to those eyes wherein
the fear of death remained frozen?
What have you done to those faces which keep agonizing,
looking at all the faces with their eyes so full
of miserable longing ?
What have you done to that boy who was caught all alone?
What have you done to that child which,
slipping from the hold, was left abandoned?
Why did the heavy boots come dangerously close?
Why did the demonic uniforms move dangerously close?
Why did the guns that are on a destruction spree
draw dangerously close?
Why did the dictates to finish off
hover so dangerously close?

The face of the boy, dying out of all too brutal tortures,
is still convulsing on all the Small Screens
Children keep hovering beneath the land.
______________________
19.05.2010

*Note: A Documentary on war-crimes comprising some more photographs showing
the way the Tamils were tortured and killed and information about the gory
scenes and incidents, including an interview of an Army commander giving
detailed account of the way the Army behaved in the final battle-zone has been
released recently in Channel 4 by Jonathan Miller.

A poem by Deebachelvan titled
கொலைக் காட்சிகளின் நிழல்
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE GREEN SUN THAT LAY IN THE EAST

2010-05-21T04:15:00.000-07:00

In that blood spread sandy land people
left only belatedly
The militant also, who stood extending the riffle till midnight
Began to lose his last ray of hope
The people were walking along the path of the dead
The sister who observed that smile still prevailed in Mullivaaikkaal
started leaving through the sorrow-flowing fingers
The sky began to darken in a big way.

Results which proved unbelievable to one and all
were surfacing.
Tears which none could bear flowed as a deluge.
With a wound so intense there was bleeding all over.

with the commands subsiding the appeals sank,.
The monstrously shared blood seeping through the white clothes
was deceiving one and all.
In the land which was always exploding and turning to ashes
You have left someone behind.
In the sorrow-filled battle-field where the souls wander
Someone was still fighting with all his might.
Someone had fought till the very end to save the ground.
When all the guns ceased to sound
When all were turned silent
What was left?
My dear sister, did you see the abandoned smile so ruthlessly killed?
What had befallen your Hope?
Did you ever believe that the fingers would break apart
and fall off?
The sand had shrouded and buried all the thirsts
and the hunger of dream.

They had laid the Sun there in an awkward position
In the field of life all the young ones lay, dead and gone
Did you see a mother lying there dead, hugging her children?
In the end why fire glowed and then it was all gloom there?
Why did the sky turn dark bringing heavy downpour?
What were the last words of the Man?
What was the sky telling by way of lamenting?
Why was the Great Land frozen to the core?
What for our cities were broken to pieces?
The last man has left somewhere.

With blood streaming under the bush
With the skull looted, the Green Sun was lying in the East.
The blood drenching everyone’s face all red, applied danger on all of them.
With an all too magnificent Dream which could never be wiped off
staying glued to the Great Land
the final moment of the ticking hearts stand lost and still
with the clock-hand broken irrevocably.
_________________
(May 18) (மே 18)

Thanks : PONGUTHAMIZH

A Poem in Tamil by Deepachelvan titled
கிழக்கில் கிடந்த பச்சை சூரியன்
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE SURRENDERED CHILD OF THE ARRESTED MOTHER

2010-05-17T19:49:00.000-07:00

There lay many a countenance
in *Nandhik-Kadal
In cyanide cups
the children drank milk
The mothers with guns
went past carrying kids.

All the godowns of Mullivaaikaal
close down.
From there corpses and their children
surface and come.

With the Sea captured, the sand getting displaced
is hauled away by the Sea
The barbed wires welcome
wearing the faces of indivisible countries..

With the region released
turning into the air-conditioned rooms of Death,
in the songs of torture
the night keeps reverberating.
With the great land turning into burial ground
the refugee camps are fast approaching

The mother had been arrested
The child had surrendered.
The gun stands between the two.
The thorny wire spreads as the attire.
The dead bodies come to lie in one corner
of Nandhik-Kadal.
Sri Lanka finishes devovouring Eelam.
_____________________
17 May2009
Thanks: AMRUTHA, JUNE 2009

A Poem in tamil by Deebachelvan titled
கைது செய்யப்பட்ட தாயின் சரணடைந்த குழந்தை
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

The City Wandering Without Words

2010-05-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

Death with a cruel face finishes
devouring the children
Along with a militant
twenty civilians around
were shot at and felled.
The house is plunged in a digit.

In the wrong estimation
those who celebrate Deaths and are startled,
turned anguished to the core seeing the
withered flowers of
the city wandering without words.
In the front page of the Journals
the tears of words remained brimming.
At the entrance of the Media office
that the sounding guns pursue,
the all too terrible caution of blood was heaped.

The remaining one who cries losing the corpses
with the coffins ever- ready
is lying inside.
The city remains dumbstruck.

All over the city which is laid under siege by flags
the last region of people’s defeat
is drawn.
The children
wearing the banned uniforms
are made to stand under the corpses
that keep falling down and scattering on all sides.

The city, all the while wandering without words,
finally hiding itself inside the coffin
the children carrying them
are wandering all over the city.
_________________
20.05.2009
Thanks : VADAKKU VAASAL

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
சொற்களற்றலைகிற நகரம்
Translated into English by latha Ramakrishnan

THE DREAM OF DEAR SISTER WHO HAS LOST ALL EYES

2010-05-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Dear sister who has lost even her second husband
whom she had bade farewell with the word to return
bringing to an end the war
Has sent word informing that she is still alive
With no answer my words keep wasting away
With voices that are laden with anguish
She keeps asking for her sights always
And she keeps searching for her children which
would always be playing in front of her

The scenes sabotaged and destroyed
are filling the soul to the brim
“I have lost all my eyes”-
So she goes on telling.
It was the shell that had snatched away the eyes which
uprooted her two girl-children.
It was when she was writhing in agony, sightless
that she was removed from the ground where
a deluge of people have
lost their eyes.
Her eyes were stolen
And she went on searching for her children and eyes
The blood of the scattered children
drenched even that spot where her wounded eyes lay

She had seen the great land in its final stage
steeped in the blood of children.
And she has returned unable to see her
Mother Land ever again.
Since the day taken away by the Sea
losing her dream she has been searching in vain for her world.
Bits and pieces of shells pervade all over her body
Dear Sister who has lost her eyes keeps on speaking about dreams
_________________________
Thanks: MARUPAADHI , Issue 03.

A Poem in Tamil By Deebachelvan titled
எல்லாக கண்களையும் இழந்த சகோதரியின் கனவு
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THOSE LOST ON THE WAY, ON THE LAST DAY

2010-04-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

This day is miserably brimming with
the tales of lambs that have been lost on the way.

This Radio* is broadcasting the Programme which still keeps searching
for those who had lost their way.
Every mother laments in that Programme wailing
“Oh, how did you slip through my grip and fell off?...”
From that last day till date
your Mother** is searching for you**.
The shirt I have, in your memory,
How can that be advertised in any journal?
And, another page of an other journal keeps on writing
about the tales of those frozen bodies of those
who had been lost along the way
just the way the photographs had been lost.

Another journal keeps enquiring after those lost,
with so full of letters…
Bringing letters filled with words of great sorrow
each week keeps arriving

All these letters read just hope that they would all return.
How would have been the cry of the child that had slipped and fallen
turned silent?
How would have been the night of the little girl
slipped from the grip and disappeared once and for all?
How would have been the path of the lad who had been lost all alone?
What would be the pain of the mother who has lost her children?
What would be the direction of the wife separated from her husband?
How would be the anguish of those forced apart from their brothers?

The letters loaded with the sorrow of those who have been
separated from all near and dear ones
keep swelling and weighing the density of Separation.
With questions that have no answers
the night lies there completely shattered.

The wait and the hope that they would return keep growing.
With the paths where they had been lost shutting down
the letters that underline the lasting separation dumped deep down
and the sand is poured upon and spread even.
Unable to disclose that none has returned
the Night Programme of Radio melts into a close.
And, for a letter written by someone lost
filled with words of hope and happiness
Your Mother keeps on waiting…

______________________________
09.12.௨00௯ * SURIYAN F.M, ** Gajaanandh’s Mother, *** Gajanandh, *** Sudaroli Weekly**** Mithran Weekly

A Poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil
titled IRUDHI NAAL VAZHIYIL THOLAINDH POENAVARGAL
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE DECLARATION OF WAR PURSUING THE YEAR

2010-04-24T08:59:00.000-07:00

All the years
scatter just the empty nights alone.
Just like the yester year when I didn’t meet you
nor shared anything with you
this year is
lying in wait to come at midnight
and wake me up.

On the day when it was declared in advance that
War would destroy our village
and bring our dream to an end
all that have been captured so far
are going to be displayed.

In the space where You and I are
so easily ignored
and where War is drawing near,
stands writhing in pain
Our house sans celebration.

You , Our Words
and all the Spaces where we are to be
sharing them in joyous togetherness.
are being devovoured by a creeping serpentine
all too quietly.
The year is pursued in a hot chase
by the Declaration of War with further wanderings and displacements.
_____________________
14.04.2009
(This poem is for recollecting the yester year)

A Poem of Deebachelvan in Tamil
titled வருடத்தை தொடருகிற போரின் பிரகடனம்
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE SECOND DIOLOGUE ON THE STORY OF ‘APPAM’

2010-04-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

You would always be reminding and recollecting the first dialogue.
On that semi-wall where cigarette pieces would be
neatly piled up in one corner
we had ever and again conversed
umpteen number of times.
Each night had in the end
made us converse with each other.
Your leg which would be carrying the Appams
and the evening when the flour for that would be ground
we have indeed lost.
as a result of the War we have lost our very lives.

In the stream that stands next to the tea-shop where we used to smoke
rows after rows stand the sediment of ash.
In our city which had developed by leaps and bounds
we used to go wandering
relishing bear.
When holding our glasses aloft
We used to sit there and share our experiences of selling the edibles
our city was glowing in
an enchanting light.
We have toiled for our city.
We have held it close to our heart.
When we used to sit behind those shops
deep in conversation
when we were hiding there
fearing the terrible air-crafts
You were close by my side.

My dear Friend, we had always been those
getting a good thrashing for the sake of cigarettes.
Just like all other things
now, our beautiful city is not there
for you to shout and sell the edibles;
nor your tasty Appams
and the cigarettes;
nor the evening hours when you would be
grinding the flour.
But, as the mega dialogue of our intimacy,
the cigarette infinite
you keep simmering inside .
In that debris of the semi-wall what have the cigarette –pieces turned to?
The War has destroyed everything.
Oh, we should not have lost you.
With you we have lost everything.

When it is said that your dead body, lying abandoned
had been identified by somebody
your second course of dialogue about Appam
begins all alone and
goes on and on and on…
Where did you get lost?

I wont be returning to the all too shattered city.
Will there be someone calling out and selling ‘Appam’?
Who at all would be waiting to buy them?
Every cigarette I light keep
burning for you.
The cup filled with liquor for you
is always there in front of me
____________________
08.09.2009. That, my very close friend SriGajanath, who was my dearest pal, one who was closer than all the others hailing from the city of Kilinochi had caught in the vicious attack of the final battle and breathed his last and that they had seen his corpse they say. Even after searching all the Detention camps it was not found anywhere.

A Poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil
titled APPATHIN KADHAI PATTRIYA IRANDAAVADHU URAIYAADAL
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE MONUMENT WHERE DREAM HAD SPROUTED

2010-04-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

They have fortressed the Monument with terror
not allowing anyone to approach it
the Mothers who have buried their children
keep saying that in those burial-grounds
dreams keep surfacing, being pushed out.

All the Mothers pay their homage
To the Monument Tower
Where Souls reside.

The Monument of immensely terrible hunger
with Dreams sprouted
was shockingly damaged on a night.
Who destroyed it?
Oh, why?
In that night which still remains a mystery
the anguish and sorrow of Dream overflows.

On that very same night when those men
stealthily coming
had dragged away the children
this Monument had been damaged.
When that child, searching for its parents
cried in agony unbearable
the lap that cradled his dreams
was cruelly attacked and destroyed.

Who at all could forget the face
filled with the great grand hunger of Dream
In our cups full of hunger the torn flesh, broken bones
and clothes of our children alone
come to be.

To say that we are being killed again and again
there are absolutely no other words.
In the city where the children dread
the prospect of coming out, stepping into the street
in the bones, broken to pieces and thrown away
the fear-filled blood of the kids is wide-spread.

Destroying a dream
and strangulating a child
cause the same unbearable sorrow.
The Mothers come and see
The hunger of Dhileepan burning in the heart still.

_________________
A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled

KANAVU ARUMBIYIRUNDHA NINAIVIDAM

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE SAND WHERE WORDS TURN DECOMPOSED

2010-04-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

I am listening
Please speak
As it proves impossible to share
the way Sorrow keeps pouring and overflowing
in the woods with no words
I swallow the words that keep breaking into two
and turning decomposed.
Don’t mind me.
Keep telling about yourself
In the Woods sans words
My ears get filled up with sand.

Except the noise
of shells falling down
planes roaring above
gun-shots going on everywhere-
Absolutely no other sound at all.
Your phone-call.
The sand-dam surfaces.

Except being alive
there is nothing else.
Even the life reduced to half
the words getting decomposed come
one by one.
Except one or two words of yours
being scattered by shells
I have got nothing.
The sandy floor begins to burn.

In the conversation that hangs suspended midway
The fear for your safety resurfaces
From the moment you had disconnected
I keep waiting for your words
after the terrible battle.

The hollow sand opens its mouth all too wide.
How long I would be swallowing
my words being decomposed,
hiding myself from you?
The phone remains there weighing heavy.
The sand stirs up and blows.
__________________
(May 2009)

A poem in Tamil from Deebachelvan titled
SORKALL SIDHAIGIRA MANAL
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE IDENTIFICATION NUMBER

2010-04-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

In a solitary island they have confined you.
The Identification Number stamped on the back
remains stuck on the thorny fence.
The watch-towers atop the trees
are going past myself.
In the spaces where the wind keeps wandering
endless vacuum keeps swelling.
In the house built of thorny-wires
the cock writhes and moans.
With the sky melting and filling up the rice-pot
You stir up the Hope of
living for the sake of children.
Of those streets and lanes that you know not
I won’t be saying anything.
Time is going past us all too hurriedly.

The thorny-fence is worn round
the child’s person, as attire..
While I was coming through the green fields
the usual shrieks of unbearable torture could be heard.
Many a penis and vagina keep floating
in the Sea-Lake
The watch-towers have thronged the old bridge,
devovouring it.

Caught between Night and Day
You are crushed and torn apart.
The Identity-Card is hanging in my neck.
In the relief-food that has come after a long time
You calculate the Modern Economy.
In the house with no walls wherein dust enters
The colonial cities
are coming and installing themselves.
Words are there still.
You leave without saying something.
Your words are piled up in the emptied cartridges
of the shells that have dumped us here in a heap
are neatly kept in rows.
The poem that you are unable to write -
Please read it to me.
Words keep pouring down behind.

When the time allotted for me gets over
the noise of the cock comes to be.
Now I recollect once again
The Identification Number of Yours.
_____________
(May 2009 )

A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
MUTKAMBIGALIL PADIGIRA ADAIYAALA ILAKKAM
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE DREAM OF ARULLAMMAA WHO HAS WADED THROUGH THE SORROW-STRUCK SPAN OF TIME

2010-03-29T01:37:00.000-07:00

In the face-to-face session with this old lady
who has lost all her precious times
in incessant and irreparable destruction
Words have turned frozen.
The dream of life that lies dormant in her voices
and her hunger that remains
non-satiated
She keeps telling again and again

AruLlammaa who had escaped from dreadful moments and returned
has her eyes filled with God.
In the Land of immensely deep perils
they have brought her times in a chair.
Arullammaa’s ever elongating prayers
grow bigger than the size of God.
The dream for Life remains frozen in the words of Life
that has come to its close with nothing but disappointments.

The tales she has in store
laden with the cruel experiences of War
And her body that has refused to
explode and scatter into bits
Her long, full-fledged life that has
refused to be silenced
keep nurturing never-ending dreams.
The old lady who has defied the War
keeps sharing with the kids
the Great Tale of Colossal Destruction
Arullammaa is speaking to the children about nothing else
but the unrealized dreams
______________

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
THUYAR MIGUNDHA KAALATHI KADANDHA ARULLAMMAAVIN KANAVU
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

(Thanks: Pongu Thamizh)

THE GREAT LAND : WEARING ALL WOUNDS IT STANDS THERE SMILING

2010-03-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

(A lot more news yet to be accessed lie there, buried deep in that Great Land)

Deaths that none have yet realized in full
Keep seeping on the seashore of Nandhi-Kadarkarai.
The cassettes that entwine all kinds of tortures in a long chain
The troops watch in their exclusive night Channels
as a great pastime.
In the great land captured by the accused and criminals
all that are desired are being carried out.

In the ground where men, holding tight their dreams
were so buried
they have planted the soldier who holds the gun
that reminds everything-
the soldier filled with venom and violence
keeps showing his gory face on all sides
of the Great Land

He keeps elaborating on his glorious tales
of defeating and annihilating the people of the land.
Splashing his victory song up above the sky
He drenches the whole land with it.
In the region where entry is prohibited to children
With Death oozing out and pervading
The demonic women having skeletons tied in their legs
keep performing their terrorizing dances.

Wherever the Emperor of the Song of Valour and Victory treads
Death and Blood are being felt.
With the voices murmuring and turning silent
everything is buried down under.
The soldier who is made to stand there by the Emperor
adorned by the garland of victory
Is busily giving out the tales of those fallen
and the ways in which they were made to fall
releasing their visuals in photographs

Wearing all wounds the Great Land stands there smiling.
_____________________
9.12.2009 (Thanks to Pongu Thamizh)

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled PERUNILAM: KAAYANGALAI ANINDHU PUNNAGAITHUK-KONDIRUKKIRADHU

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

WHAT DO THE CHILDREN WANT?

2010-03-22T01:25:00.000-07:00

The children have got their wide range of responses
from the query of the Emperor.
In the street elongated in a maze
all the children entwining their hands, ask
what the children want
Listening to the query
The Emperor responds saying
that it is the Time being offered by Him.
With he saying further that
it is prosperous and so full of Liberty and Equality
the Children begin their queries
from the very words of the Emperor.

The Emperor has applied his smile of absolute power
on all the syllables and words
and he turns towards the children
the face that turns them terror-stricken.
In the book designed by his numerous brains that
exploits and swindles the world of children
He speaks of children and children alone.

He who had snatched away and plundered everything
from the hands of children
He who has shaped the monstrous Time
that has plunged the children in terrible gloom
declares that he is going to gift the prosperous Time
of Cruelties to the kids.
The children know everything.

The children do not want
that Power that shrouds everything
and allow them to rot
all the while scattering on all sides
a Smile
The children do not want
the aims and objectives that
devovouring one’s natural self
imprisons with all too evil schemes
The children do not want
those thoughts that have gifted Curses
and destroyed Histories
and have become so wide-spread
The Emperor keeps wounding
the children’s tender hearts
with his responses
and their eyes
with his smile.

________________________

A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled

KUZHANDHAIGAL AASAIPADUVADHU ENNA?

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE BOY WOULD COME BACK

2010-03-22T01:23:00.000-07:00

Just the way his mother believes
Just the way his father and brother believes
Let us also believe that he would come back.
But, where are those ways today?
It was with many children
many little boys
that he had disappeared.

My dear friend!
The whole stretch of the Great Land
has tasted defeat
with the blood of children everywhere.
In the elegies and obituary-notes being written
all too unexpectedly
I had to write one for him too.
Having to write elegies for kids and little ones
causes pain unbearable as a terrible Curse.
That your words were waiting for him, I know

You were searching some detention camp
and some prison
running from one to other.
Someone had seen
his torn pants.
That the shells would swallow children
and kill them
That boy knew very well.
Witnessing all the deaths taking place
right in front of him
He remained terrorized to the core.

Will our little ones smile again?
In the land where he was dissolved
Ii what hues and shades will the flowers bloom
Hence forth?
Oh, where would he have taken and preserved
His face and smile?

My dear friend!
Please keep the books for him.
Completing all his exercises and home-work
He would return to class.
That he would return, retrieving all that had been kept hidden
Let us also believe.
____________________________
(To Dharmegan who was killed in the War)
A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
ANDHACH CHIRUVAN THIRUMBI VARUVAAN
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

THE PAGE THAT WAS KEPT CLOSED FOR THE BLOODY DIOLOGUE

2010-03-22T01:21:00.000-07:00

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled

RATHAM VADIGIRA URAIYAADALUKKAAI MOODAPATTIRUNDHA PAKKAM
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan
___________________
O1

Though I thought of
writing down in some form of note
the all too secret a call
that shuts all the doors real tight
I wrote and sent it in a brief sms
which would reach belatedly
and I wiped off
the blood streaming down my face
in utter secrecy

covering everything with the help of very thick ‘padangu’
I remain quiet, not revealing any of the
actions being initiated against me.

For three hours networking was closed.
Yet again I searched for
Real dense words.

That the drawings in our ancestral house
and the big bold words engraved there
are indeed very peace-loving
- so I have told them.
All the telephone-calls that came my way
I was sending back.

Hereafter nothing will be told to you
Through these Poems.
The dialogue that I had in that blood-sucked and dried-up carpet
The blood that flowed in the words and lost for ever
I have no intention of sharing any of those things.
This page wherein the explanation is to be given
remains empty.

02

My friend and Myself went on laughing
during all those
terrible words
we were throwing away the eyes
and the misery of defeat
that have come to spread upon our face
under the fence
and through the thorny wires
into the adjacent ‘Kaani’.
They were swallowing us
in a demonic speed.

The way the riffle piercing our face
tearing and engaging us in a diologue
sucking our blood
We won’t tell these to anyone.
That none threaten us
- so we have issued a statement on our own.

After the dialogue
for how long
these all too terrifying words
would be seeping behind this Motor-cycle.

That the actions initiated against me
proved so very sweet -
I had written on that late evening
at length in this page.
My friend and Myself
are not going to tell anything about the blocked website
That we have observed about Time proving
real sweet and great
for all things concerned –
so they hold about the bloody dialogue of that day.
-----------------------------------------------------
(25.11.2009)

YET AGAIN MOTHER HAS ANNOUNCED A DATE

2010-03-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
AMMA MEELAVUM ORU THIGADHI ARIVITHIRUKKIRAAL
TRANSLATED into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

___________________
The dates marked in n the calendar having days utterly spent out
Are losing the hues and shades applied on them.
That arrangements are made for home-coming -
Mother has announced yet another date.
In the house of someone
Our food is being cooked.
On the evening of the day before when it was announced
that Mother’s application to leave was accepted
I bought and kept ready the rice and
vegetables.

Along the path where the rotten buses that have
long since completed their life-span
covered from head to food in dust
keep coming along
In a bus that refuses to move ahead
Mother comes
Tying tight her hair that is yet to grow
comes kid sister
This city is singing about their smile
that has been eaten away by the scorching Sun.
The paths of the city branch out
in different directions.
While bringing Mother along
who keeps on waiting
with the dates going past
holding the refugee-bags
verifying the landmarks
bearing the burdens of Time
the people of the Great Land keeps wandering.

That there is no home to return
nor any address for letters to reach -
Mother keeps saying.

As a wandering refugee with no home
Nor address
I bring the bag with my attires which was kept
in someone’s house
to another someone’s place.
Each and every house
Each and every street
turning into miserable refugees
we keep wandering.
While coming from one city to another
I am getting displaced again and again.
In the earthen pot of someone unknown
the lunch is getting ready.
Right from the heavy carry-bags
everything is sharing and distributing words.

In the city full of wandering refugees
Mother says that we would surely return home
and gives yet another date.
In the evening hours the dust-covered bus collects
the refugees
and sets out in the direction of
the detention camps.
______________
(From the city of Vavuniya – 16.02.2010)

THE HOMELESS CHILDREN SLEEPING IN THE GARDEN

2010-03-22T01:15:00.000-07:00

A Poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
POONGAAVIL URANGICH CHELGIRA VEEDATRA KUZHANDHAIGAL
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan
__________________________
When their eyes are filled up with sleep
the children come to the garden
where entry is free for the kids.
The boy who has lost his hands
begs for an artificial limb
with the remaining bits and pieces.
He keeps wandering, carrying along
the dream for hands.
Converting into photographs his mangled face
and the fragment of his severed hands
He goes on asking for help
Everything remains deep in slumber
far away.
That boy, added to the loss of his hands,
has lost his smile too.

When the nine year old little girl
who has gone to School
is being gang-raped by
wild animals called army-men
these children are fast asleep
in the garden en route.
Text-books and note-books of children
are all blood-smeared and drenched.
These children eyeing the ice-fruit
are wishing with all their heart to have it.
With blood dripping non-stop
the fruits are being eaten away by Time.
They keep sharing among themselves
the whole lot of violations.

The world snatched away from the children
in a terrible scheme
of too great a magnitude
and sabotaged beyond repair
The world of children torn and thrown away
so thoroughly destroyed,
their dreams nipped and ripped apart
in an all too expensive plan
are being torn and thrown away gleefully
by the Monkeys
that keep telling tales in the garden incessantly.
When evening sets in
the homeless children
keep going back somewhere.

Throughout the day
the homeless children were playing
by my side.
With their Smiles and Hopes and Mercy
for the new world
they went on filling up
the applications.

And all those appeals
that the children were
writing and forwarding all through the day
have been thrown away in great haste
as part of the heap of garbage
into the disintegrated railway-lane.
Seeing the way blood seeping
out of the books brought by their off-springs
the Mothers begin to agonize.
The trees of the garden
where the children slept and left
are withering away and falling.
_______________________________

SHE HATES THE ROTI-SLICES

2010-03-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

A Poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
ROTTITH-THUNDUGALAI AVAL VERUKKIRAAL

Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

________________________
She tells those kids holding ‘rotis’ to shun them.
Whenever they raise their food-bowel
‘rotis’ alone come to fall right in front of her eyes
The rotis rusted and frozen are smelling there always.

The whole night they had to be in the bunker
With the blood circulating dangerously
fast
“The children could have stayed behind
not wanting the rotis’’
_ So observes the mother.
None stepped outside.
In the very second steps of the bunker
the stove remained burning.
Writhing in hunger
The children were waiting for food.
Ma was preparing, one by one,
the rotis.
With the first roti roasted
One by one the children were getting their share.
Then, mother’s roti was getting roasted
On the tin-sheet.
All too easily the shell tore apart
The roti, tin and dad.
With father’s blood
the night had turned all drenched
and bloated.

In the ‘rotis’ of one and all
Blood came to spill over and scattered everywhere
The children listened to those tales about rotis and turned shell-shocked.
The children who have read
different tales in different forms
go on staring at them, not eating.
_________________________
(12.11.2009)

THE DAY WHEN I SET FOOT IN THE CITY SANS SHADE

2010-03-14T00:07:00.000-08:00

A Poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil captioned
NIZHALATRA NAGARATHIL KAAL PADHITHA NAAL

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan
___________________

In my city where flowers have ceased to be
just today I have set foot
In my city where I used to wander in
gay abandon
after the period of time
loaded with the sorrow of annihilations
I wander a little distance
I search for the things I had
Left behind
some people have returned
Collecting the ashes in their hands
They have returned

That night, for the second time
I had set foot in my city
I was all the while searching for the faces
The soil proved unsuitable for kissing
mixed as it were
with blood and flesh
The walls of my home-town
which have lost their beauty and luster-
I read as a lonely soul.

That the spirits of those sacrificed
hovering everywhere
writhing in anguish, hanging suspended
above the city
_so saying an old lady lies
beneath the wall
The city filled with darkness lay plunged in
nothingness.
The semi-trees and fragmented structures
would sprout again
_ The old lady keeps saying it aloud.

In city torn and ripped apart in curses
Wherever I tread the Earth caves in.
Slowly, inch by inch, I would retrieve my city
from the thorny barbed wire.
From the hands of decay and destruction
I would nourish it and make it prosper
step by step.
In the city of flowers dreams would bloom
My hope that everyone would return
in the coming days
I chanted in the well of night
when I left my City.
And, the City sans shade keeps counting
the footprints of me, the lone visitor.

_______________________

THE KING DENOUNCED BY THE DEFEATED PEOPLE

2010-03-14T00:02:00.000-08:00

A poem in Tamil by DEEBACHELVAN titled
THOERKADIKKAPATTA MAKKALAAL NIRAAGARIKKAPPATTA ARASAN

Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan
_____________________
We had been defeated from Time Immemorial
The Great Grand Emperor defeating the
hapless people who had denounced him for his
deeds that smelt of foul Power
has ascended the throne.
It is from deceptions that he has won a Wholesome Form
The faces have been burnt for all times
Who have won
and who have lost -
The children begin to declare
Before all the kings
Before all the victories
Before the results too we have lost
Our Sky crashes down.

In the Seat made of many a deceit
The Great Grand Emperor sitting,
From the Time of Fear
Into the Emergency Period of
Terror and terrible suppression, annihilation
we are(un)settled in.
This too has settled as a cursed evening
Destroyed to the core
by Assurances, guarantees
exploited by Agreements and Treatises
and thus cheated as never before
In the bitter rivalry of Power
The very Life has been torn and thrown away.

For everything
we are going to kneel down before him
He who has devovoured voices
sings on our behalf
He who refuses to listen to words
would be strewing words all over tomorrow
He is going to smile again
He is going to curse us in our own-tongue.
The crops to sprout are lost forever
The fertile Time, he had fed upon.

The people are losing from the very beginning.
From thee fallen generation
There is not even a tiny gap of Time to do anything
with an iota of earnestness.
For our street and courtyard
We have to beg him.
For us to live on we have to
serve him in return.
At frist
We had met with a colossal defeat amidst ourselves
And, since then we have been losing out to them
steadily.

Directions, Moments, Words, Hearts,
Spaces, Holes
as separate entities
are being sacrificed.

Time is determined by him
In the Great Grand Emperor’s grazing ground
as meek goats
with no directions nor dwelling sheds
We keep wandering
Blocking the words he has tied the mouth shut
Today someone has won
someone has lost
Losing Time forever, children are being deceived
day in and day out
Defeat pursues us from time immemorial…
__________________

THE SAME THORNYBARBED WIRES, THE SAME NIGHTMARES

2010-02-16T19:01:00.000-08:00

A poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
ADHE MUTKAMBIGAL ADHE BAYANKARAM
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

_____________________________________
All Announcements are over.
The News and the Images have
made one and all believe.
Inside the same thorny barbed wires
My Mother’s face remains
withered and shrunken.
Younger sister’s hair has not yet grown.
Between us the same thorny-knots
That insist on wounding with a vengeance
My Mother’s too rare a smile.
They keep on tearing apart
the book in my little sister’s hands.
For my sake Mother had come
Carrying ‘Pittu’
The boundaries of Long Wait,
The dream of returning Home,
The hope of going back to the City-
Mother has inserted them all
in those thorny barbed wires.
In the night when ‘Nulumbugal’
Take away the tent
with bulbs fixed on the thorny fence
in the same tent that has
ceased to be one
folding her legs
My Mother huddles.
My Mother’s request for permission
to go to the shop in the distant city
has been rejected.
At the entrance
which allows not to go closer
and embrace
It is written that the
doors of the Detention Camps
had long since thrown open.
And, the Thanks offered profusely
in the Dailies and Journals
for opening the doors of the
Detention Camps
are being ready by many,
including my own self.
Of the thorny barbed wires
we have spoken
iquite a lot indeed.
All announcements and
uprisings are over.
Inside those fences
surrounded by those thorny
barbed wires
that we’ve been speaking all along
I saw children playing.
________________________________
(02.01.2010)

THE FLOWERS OFFERED BY US FOR THE FRUITS BROUGHT BY THE EMPEROR

2010-02-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

A Poem By Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
ARASAN KONDU VANDHA PAZHANGALUKKAAGA
NAAM VAZHANGIYA POOKKALL
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

___________________________________
The Emperor has come with fruits.
Yesterday he was throwing
all over the field
the fruits plucked in the War.
I ask even now
to give back those trees which have their rightful place
in our fences
and also the dolls of children.
My dear, affectionate People!
with our napes bleeding
all that this field asks for-
¬it’s you who have created.
Our appeals
and the Emperor’s deceitful promises
are hidden in the poisonous fruits.

Oh, Our Father
who keeps worrying over our days
froze in sorrow,
One day when the children
were hiding in the bushes
getting up in the well of night
carrying a Cross, oh, how
You were beseeching, appealing!
In front of us
it was but the mutilated bodies of children
that were piling up.
When the King ordered that
all the children should be butchered
with immediate effect
and threw into the cellars all the people-
For those hapless children and people
You were doing penance and praying,
pleading with God…

For children who were writhing in
indescribable agony
separated from parents,
staying in rooms brimming with sorrow-
My Father, who gave
Food and Words to them -
Oh, what are you going to tell
your lone child
about the Emperor’s fruits?
To disrobe us and scrutinize
To tear off our attires and make us run in the nude
It was the King
who had issued Ordinance.
And, we have honoured him
with the prestigious ‘Ponnaadai’.
Our compulsions and cursed life
continue to kill one and all.

He who had mutilated our Dreams
Who had snatched away Our Land
Who had plundered our streets and lanes
Who had built monstrous prison
on children
Who had been washing his face in
People’s blood
has come bringing fruit
plucked in the War
in basket woven with
treacherous weapon.
And, we too had eaten them
and thrust them into the hands of
our Children
and gifted him
with fruits drenched in
the deluge of people’s blood.
The Emperor leaves
with his hands full of lovely flowers.
_______________________________
(10.01.2010)

THE MOTHERS WHO ASK FOR THE BICYCLES OF CHILDREN WHO ASK FOR MILK-POWDER BAGS

2010-02-16T18:56:00.000-08:00

A poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil, titled
PAALMAA PAIKKATRUKKALAI KOERUM KUZHANDHAI GALIN
THUVICHAKKARA VANDIGALAI KOERUM THAAIMAARGAL

Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan
__________________________________
For trying the cradle made of cloth
for children
They went around requesting everybody.
Having their children in the rear-seat
of their borrowed bi-cycles
they go.
Tales abound in the pages of books
that they simultaneously play the roles of
Mothers and Wives.

About widowed female students
and those separated from their husbands
I have written very many letters.
In their letters written to me
tears swell and overflow.

With children waiting for long
wandering in search of houses
in vain they return in the evening hours.
Taking hold of their child and books
with great care
they drink the tea that remains
acutely restive.

All that they ask for
are milk-powder bags for their children
and books.
Boiling evening time.
Seems like the Sun, going down,
has fallen into their tea-cup.

How many days have gone since we began to
stay in our relative’s house?
Right from morning the child keeps on crying.
In the book
the houses sprout and multiply
marvelously.
In the centre of the book thrown open
cycles
and milk-powder bags lie in abundance.
Spreading the evening and mother’s book,
wide-opened,
the child keeps on reading them.
_________________________________________

ONCE UPON A TIME THIS DAY WAS WITH US

2010-01-18T19:33:00.000-08:00

A poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan, titled
‘MUNBORU KAALATHIL INDHA NAAL ENGALIDAMIRUNDHADHU
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

______________________________
In the dry branches of
the tree where no bird comes to sit
fruits would sprout and turn ripe
_ So we hoped.
Mother, did you see those birds anywhere?
In the courtyard that keeps falling down
on our heads
there are no sticks now.
This year
smashed our house and took it away
in wagons
and also kept on unfolding, one by one
nothing but fear-filled days.
Except for a mere one or two sticks
nothing remained.

In our village forgotten by birds
In our city where cycles were
broken and turned paralyzed
For serving a smile
For coming together and
having a cup of wine
Oh Mother, who at all is there?
In your hands, the tea-cups
which bring the evening from yonder
are not to be seen
And in the bus
which goes through
the village of no return
and city of no halt
I’m going to travel
Tomorrow.

This day brings back to mind
just the sweet days alone of last year
The night bursting
would be over in a short while.
Someone or other come and go
Something and all lie in front of me.
In this year which has ended
we have suffered a heavy loss.
Speechless my cycle wanders
in streets and lanes
that my houses searches for
Once upon a time This Day
was with us.

Will they give back to us -
The birds
the barren tree, our house beneath it?
With the barren tree burning
and turning into ashes
the birds lie buried deep down.
In the countryside with houses dissolved
no landmarks remain.
I keep asking for the Smile and words that were
with me, on this day
Once upon a time.
In the great land the New Year
is brought along past midnight.
-------------------------------------------
01.01.2010( Peru Nilam)

THE GREAT LAND : THEY HAVE EATEN AND THROWN YOU

2009-12-26T12:10:00.001-08:00

A poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
(PERUNILAM: UNNAI THINDRU POETTIRUKKIRAARGAL)
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

(More and more things unknown lie buried in that Great Land)

_______________
Yesterday an image of yours was
taken out of a bush and displayed…
Sister! Out of those hands
that had disrobed and destroyed You
our Time extends.

For the miserable Mothers
whose hands beat their own heads
with pain and anguish indescribable,
born of the apprehension of
what might have happened to the corpses
that are yet to be unearthed -
For those sisters who were ended with
deluge of blood-shed
the photograph of your mutilated person
keeps telling tales of all that had taken place at
innumerable nooks and corners.

Destroying, where they had thrown you-
Who had butchered You-
You are reading out yourself
as Headlines…
In the Channel where the Songs and Films
that you’ve acted in
are being aired
Your semi-size image
hangs in a corner as
a sight unbearable.

In the land laid under siege
by the same troops
a woman just like your Mother
is searching for her daughter
feverishly, as the very personification of
Agony.
In the farthest end
of the battle-fronts of those troops
which have reared and nourished
the male organs
and placed blood wide-spread
as Offerings
They had peeled off your uniform
and cast them away.
They had dissolved your
courage and valour.
Your missing revolver
is in the hands of those Troops.

In the same land where
You were earlier rendered victorious
You seemed to have surrendered.
Guns and Penis
with similar gaping mouths
had gobbled the whole of You.

In the courtyard, street, agricultural fields
underneath the landmines, wherever the soil
rolls over
Uniforms and such other attires
Blood, Cyanide bottles , Photographs,
and also some Notes keep on
surfacing.
Oh, where would you have left
the Poem which you had got from me?
______________________
( To Isaipriya ) 25.12.2009

BROTHER KILLED IN THE PHOTOGRAPH

2009-12-22T04:05:00.000-08:00

A poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
PUGAIPPADATHIL KOLLAPPATTA SAGODHARAN
Translated into English by latha Ramakrishnan

------------------------------------------------------------
It was only after renouncing all our memories and dreams
on the last day that we could surrender
the Mothers, on their own tore off
the photographs of their Sons.

My Brother, till the final day of War
Somehow we had kept you hidden
On a night when it rained cats and dogs
And when all our faces were swept away
by the floods
Your face alone remained with us.

The moment had arrived
When even those photographs having you-
We had to do away.
The lights have turned dead.

On the day when we were
said to have surrendered,
or when we felt that we were taken
as prisoners
the news reached us that
Your tombs had also been exploded.

I saw you all writhing and bleeding
It was said that they were gong to bury you
in a wide, deep pit.
In that mammoth coffin, blood was seeping,
drenching our Beloved Land.
Learning that you had been butchered by them
Even unknowing to others, silently,
we couldn’t shed tears.
Where and how did your death place _
we are unable to know.
The evenings that love and rever You
turning forever lost
and the memories turning terribly vulnerable
in too huge a coffin they have filled to the brim
ashes of the whole lot of tombs.

My Brother, Mother says that when she had to come,
leaving behind Your photographs,
her hands bled.
We have nothing with us by way of reminding you.
They have killed you in the photograph itself.
The coconut-shoot which You had planted
had also been uprooted.

The candle that your younger sister
and my child
hold and go around,
glows and burns my hand.
______________________
20.11.2009

WISHES OF CHILDREN OF THE TENT-DWELLERS

2009-12-22T04:01:00.000-08:00

A Poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil, titled
KOODAARA MAKKALADHU KUZHANDHAIGALIN VIRUPPAM
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

---------------------------------------

I have told you
that these children always want to go out of the Tents.
So small and narrow-
this Tent is intent on throwing open
demonic tortures in the manner of jail.
Unable to walk anywhere, the roots of wild trees keep
pricking the faces hard
Friend, beware, talking about the Tent-dwellers
might prove Dangerous to you.
Stopping our speech, avoiding our demands _
So everything keeps taking place.

Even in this dust and mud, They
forever remain beautiful children.
We are unable to answer their questions.
All the tales that they share
revolve round the Tents of the Globe.
In the all too sharpness of Power
Their smiles and their playgrounds
have all been damaged beyond repair.
For people, like us, of the world
Tents are being made.

Friend, for the sake of these kids
we are not able to tell any tales-amusing; amazing.
They throw away dolls and other such toys.
Inside the Tent their World remains all too narrow.
‘Well within the thorny-fence
the children can very well wander anywhere,
play and return’ – So the Camp rules say.
Boys, a little older, feel the urge
to do anything whatsoever
for finding a way out of the Camp.

We have been here in the Tents
for quite too long a time.
Without refusing, permission is given
for allotting Tents made of mud
and also for these Tents for the Dying.
We have been asked to
give birth to babies inside this
and also to rear them here.
Looks like with all that The children speak
as they grow
The refugees all over the world would be in peril.
Our movement is arrested
Well within the boundaries of the Tents.

These Tents with windows and doors
_the growing children have all drawn
in their note-books.
The Tent-Dwellers keep piling up.
For our growing children also
Some Tents would be given next week
_ So they have said.
And, they keep unloading Tents
Of different hues and shades.

That our children and our selves are prepared
to step out of the Tents when permitted
Or remain inside for ever _
We have told the Media
voluntarily.

After having given Tents
all too hastily
they have been planted
permanently.
__________________________

(*27.10.2009. the Chief of the Committee of Asian Human Rights’ Commission,
Basil Fernando refers to the Vanni refugees as ‘Koodaara Makkal’(Tent-Wellers)

How Far/Long Would Mother Wait

2009-12-15T22:35:00.000-08:00

(Photograph taken from inside mother’s tent)

A Poem by Deebachelvan
Title of the Original poem in Tamil-
AMMA EDHUVARAI KAATHUKKONDIRUPPAAL
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

____________________

01
Mother is one who could patiently bear everything.
Just for the sake of going home
she keeps waiting in the scorching heat
and in the dense rain
of the horrible wilderness
My Friend, after so many days
You have given me a glad news.
Your happiness born of the fact that
your mother is waiting for you
with dishes prepared by her own hand
in her own land -
that alone has caused the smile to sprout
in the faces of all those here

I am waiting for that.
How far/long my mother would be waiting.

For the permission to take me with her
For the loudspeaker which would call aloud
her/my name
Mother is waiting.
When the days are getting postponed
She tolerates it all.
How long/far she would be waiting -
I don't voice this as a query.
after all, aren't people returning to their homes...

2)
They have let her go out just today
She didn't go carrying any bag
to the fish-market
or to the cloth-shop.
That the return to the camp is inevitable
Mother doesn't deny.
She is always prepared to
get back to the camp and confine herself there.

That the way they have returned your houses
in your own hands
they would return ours too-
So Mother hopes and believes.
A friend of mine has asked the size of
the breadth of the door that has thrown open today.
What would you do if the thorny wires are again to be
tied together tight and taut - asks he.
I add this one also with the queries
we have not answered.

At the time when the Camps would be thrown open
the lenghth of the waitings of so many
would be known to one and all.
The tents with sorrows piled up
everyone would have seen.
Your Mother would surely be knowing well
the long wait of my Mother and myself.

the hapless people are let out
so that they can give something in return
that they have now
are but dried-up and weakened bones.
after the residual blood in the deep corners of
the bones too got sucked
what little remains of our bones
would be taken to our respective places.
Mother is prepared
to give even that.

Mother would bear with everything.
in this space
My Friend
your consolation
and happiness at going home
I do share with my Mother.
_____________________
(29.11.2009 for Sathish and his Mother)

THE CURRENCY-NOTES OF WAR__COLLECTED FOR THE SAKE OF CHILDREN

2009-12-12T20:42:00.000-08:00

A poem by Deebachelvan in Tamil titled
KUZHANDHAIGALUKAAGA SEGARIKKAPPATTA PORIN NAANAYATHAAL
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan
______________________
“who lived in Kudumi-Malai?”_ the children ask
Having a whole lot of questions as to
why that mountain is being attacked by boats
filled with weapons and missiles
They keep looking at the currency-notes
where the battle is taking place

The War is somehow being reminded repeatedly
This currency-note has drawings of all the
annihilations
right till date
etched on it.

The incidents and defeats
that would prove unbearable to retrieve-
They’ve heaped
with the help of that mocking sheet
made of the Tales of those days
that indeed freeze our memory
They have collected for Children
Only those success of the
Cruel Times
that horrify Us

that why these aircrafts
still keep flying everywhere
with a diabolically hungry speed
and that why helipads
kee flying so low
still
_ these children keep on asking.

The smile of the face so sinful
Wearing the very holiness
Engraved at the backside
And the hands
Extended towards a direction-
I’m not able to translate.

For everything we have to go, carrying these
Currency-notes.
And hold it in our hands
And not only we have to live so
But, work for IT also.

In the all-burnt nation what for the Cheyinflec
tear apart the land still _ ask I.

Terrorizing forms get inside
the Iranaimadu Pond.

The act of biting and devovouring
the burnt land
and your smile on the other side
stay inseparably together;
one upon the other.
The all-too sharp dagger
that this monarch holds aloft
Is sure to slice my children
in all the days to come.

Oh father, who has drunk our Sea?
_ so our children have started asking.
“on what they had planted the ‘Big flag’?
And whose blood was shed there?
And where were those pour souls
residing there
chased away _
The children of our Tomorrows
are sure to enquire.

In the Currency-Notes collected
and kept safe for Children’s sake –
The guns of the troops in action
The Stars where Rank and Power grow
_ all the children keep calculating it all.

______________________

THE DREAM INFINITE OF THOSE NO MORE

2009-11-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

A Poem by Deebachelvan titled
ILAADHAVARGALIN ALAVATRA KANAVUGAL
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

___________________________
They with Great Dream
kissed Death
In the end we don’t have even
tombs filled with their memories
The mothers have lost their torches
along with their sons and daughters
Wives have lost along with their smiles
their words on the tomb too.
With innumerable memories of the dream
the sky weighs heavy, looking crest-fallen.

No flowers bloomed this time
With blood oozing out of the leaves,
the roots of the flowery-trees had been torn apart
Banging the heads against the electric-post
The heart calls out to those who are no more
Sucking out the Dream and taking it off
The world has finished devovouring them.

The Elegy written on them
lies inside fire and turning to ashes.
This Day they declare
as having wiped them out completely.
The child which comes carrying a torch in its hand
digs the sand
searching for the tomb.
Even the last priced possession of our Memory
they had erased with utmost haste.
And even the right and the day to cry had been snatched
away by them
In the hearts
tombs are surfacing everywhere

Somewhere in a remote corner the Dream is raging and burning
and pouring down.
In the deserted land
Abandoned and so full of terrible wilderness
skeletons filled with the great sorrow of History
Rise up and move on.
Turning the soil upside down
the walls of the tombs
having words of heroism written on them
are further pushed inside, deep down.
The war of tombs have come to an end.
With the people their tombs too
are wiped off.

None have flowers
None have tombs
The torches extinguished keep wandering everywhere
The photographs of courageous faces have all been
dissolved.
People have been betrayed.
The warriors were won over in the end.
This day is filled with abject defeat.

From the great land where
the Dream was nourished and nurtured
the stench of the burial ground
where the gruesome genocide had taken place
gathers and shrouds everything all too suffocating.
------------------------------

THE WORDS DRENCHED AND DAMPENED IN A RAINY VILLAGE

2009-11-17T10:33:00.000-08:00

A poem by Deepachelvan titled
MAZHAIK-KRAAMATHIL NANAINDHU OORIP POENA SORKKAL
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

__________________
With words stiff and frozen
the Rain is bathing in the people.

They have retrieved the
body of the little girl
who had breathed her last
buried inside the makeshift shit-pit.
The water-fetching containers
keep floating in Kallaaru River.
The Rain is drenching the
Relief –Village fully.
With waters filling inside the tents
children remain floating.

The remote forest-village
turns into a wilderness of Rain.
The thorny wires are swept away.
Washing the tired face
the Rain is filling it to the brim.

The lads who were previously
playing in the open ground
are standing huddled, away from the downpour.
The tents are floating in the water
With the rice-pot breaking and falling
the earthen stove
dissolves and
ceases to be.

The heart has turned frozen
The tent moves towards the hollow ground
Mother’s feet
that run after the utensils
which are being swept away
in the canal water
are getting stuck in the wet-sand

The waters that have washed the floor
have wandered through the
thorny wires
and have filled the village
as a pond.
Words getting drenched
remain bloated with water
All the six villages are getting
buried inside the mud and slush.
----------------------
13.09.2009
Chettikulam Detention Camp villages

THE DISCUSSION ON WAR-TIME INCIDENTS

2009-11-12T18:48:00.000-08:00

Deepachelvan’s Poem
Translation of his poem in Tamil titled
யுத்தகால நிகழ்வுகளின் கலந்துரையாடல்
Translated into English by Latha Ramakrishnan

________________________________
About Our War-Time incidents
They are going to discuss.
No one has committed any crime _
This is what all Enquiries say.
The children know everything.
Even the most brutally cruel nights
They call snow-covered
The hands of all do have
criss-cross lines of blood-stains.

Whether they had properly handled
the weapons
Whether they had deftly thrown
the bombs
Whether they are aptly positioned_
So, all the Commissions keep
enquiring.

All the Enquiries
that collect and hold
the blood oozing out of
the Tables of Democracy
are tricky; vicious.
In the Land for which
the boon of children is banned
They bring laws
against their rights to live.
How brutally cruel the
War-time incidents
was revealed by children
narrated, weeping,
with blood-stained faces
and deeply wounded voices.
No one seems to have
any intention of
withdrawing the Forces.

They manufactured Claymores
for all generations to come;
Bombs, for all cities
and Atom-bomb against
the very Earth itself.
it is Guns that keep wandering
against all the people.
They so brutally ruined
the World of Children.
Forever War goes on
in some corner.
Somewhere children, terror-struck,
are hiding as the
very personification of fear.

All Enquiries and Commissions
without exception
list out the victories
gained in war.
Exchanging cups they throw open
even more war-zones.
They hang on,
pondering over the ways and means of
creating Power-Structures.
They start probing the
‘Godown’, closed down
They instruct the soldiers
to have a firm hold on their riffles
that grow weak in their
hands.

In Iraq’s oil-wells
children are hiding.
The bombs thrown in Afganisthan
are still simmering
American Forces swell
and pervade
the entire world.

About our war-time incidents
They are going to discuss
For obtaining something,
and also to perform-
With smiles they gather in an
assemblage.

One and All so cleverly hide
the fact of
One and All being ‘War-Criminals.’
The Children know Everything.
---------------------------------------------------------
* America has declared that in connection with War-Crimes it is going to conduct an Enquiry on the former Army General of Sri Lanka, Sarath Ponseka,

YET AGAIN I HAVE LOST SEVERAL THINGS…

2009-11-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

A Poem by Deebachelvan
Tranaslation of Deebachelvan’s poem in Tamil titled
MEELAVUM SILA PORUTKALAITH THAVARA VITTURIKKIREN
(மீளவும் சில பொருட்களைத் தவற விட்டிருக்கிறேன்)
Translated into Tamil by Latha Ramakrishnan

-----------------------------------------------------
I keep my things in a state of readiness
to carry them along at a given notice.
But, we were called at an unexpected late hour.
Indescribable illumination and joy
were standing tall in front
fading everything else.
The loudspeaker attached to the bus
which carried us along
announced that we were being taken
to our own household.
I saw the unbearable sight of
the land turned to ruins.

Last week, that too
on an evening
Nithilekha and her child
were taken in a wagon
for re-settlement.
All that she was to leave behind
she gave to me
I had to part with her dear child
which was so attached to me.

She had become accustomed
to forget her memories and to
bear anything.
She has forgotten the shock of
the way her husband had fallen a prey
to a shell en route.
She speaks everything to her child.
As she was confined on the
other half of my tent
I felt some relief.
That we could forget all memories
related to the War,
so she would always say.
That which I am unable to carry
I leave behind.

That we are still moving from
place to place
let not anyone disclose.
I keep my things in a state of readiness
to carry them along at a given notice.
We happen to migrate gladly
and sometimes come back with sorrow.
While returning, observing all routes
I am wandering
in places which could not be seen.
On the way I have lost several things.
The tent that had been uprooted
they had once again fixed.

Nithilekha is now detained in her School.
She would go to her ‘Kaani’
and return.
How nice are the dreams of homecoming-
we do know.
Nithilekha has talked a lot
about that with me.
This tent too, inclining,
sleeps with me.

These days I keep
telling tales of Land
that stands
all alone
where none remains.
Again they are distributing things free.

Yet, everything is in a state of readiness
to carry along at any given notice.

How many a longing and
anguish we have stuffed inside
our bag and baggage…
They untie the loudspeaker
and allow its
heat to subside.
------------------------------------
(30.10.2009)

THE EMPEROR’S CITY, PALACE & THE SEA-SHORE

2009-10-26T19:10:00.001-07:00

A poem by Deebachelvan
Translation of his Tamil poem titled _
ARASANIN NAGARAM, MAALIGAI MATRUM KADARKARAI
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

The Emperor’s City revels,
Laughing throughout the night.
My friend, after the conversation
I remained waiting, at the sea-shore
for long.
Forcibly removed from there
being in front of the ‘Vaadi’ tenament
where I was staying
I keep sending you
along with the sea-shore
all possible messages.
Please, can you tell me,
what am I to do, henceforth?

The Sea-shore keeps telling
something.
The roaring laughter of Power
keeps going past the Sea
Spreading in all directions.
The Sea doesn’t derive any
Happiness.
Pushing off its waves on
all sides
It keeps telling something.
All the communications so full of appeals,
it is the Sea which is giving
a thorough reading.

How to reveal that those communications
which, taken away,
were crushed and grounded?
With whom we can share
our humiliations?
That Palace which is being
fed and nourished by Power
has confined us in a
small tin-shelter.
It has pasted our
still damp blood
everywhere.
The Monarch keeps laughing
always.

The Palace reverberates
with the great joy of the Monarch.
From the dream-torn Sea-shore
that is kept as an exhibit
in the street opposite
what at all can be uttered?
Wherever we turn we see
the Monarch laughing
From atop the images of
our defeated sand-mounds.
Their City is still
celebrating the Victory.
Devovouring our lives it shines.

I have to make you realize
how cruel were the words uttered
by the Monarch –
Yet, I am unable to
repeat them.
With our faces darkening
we suffered wordlessly.
The Minister said that we should
clap and laugh happily
to please the Monarch.
Some of us did oblige,
doing their best
to keep the Monarch amused.

One and all stood
facing the sea-shore,
telling that they had
lost their smiles and hands.
Only after the Monarch had
reached his abode
and relished his food
we were allowed to go to our
‘Vaadi’ tenaments.
After all these, even after several days
I’m not able to share with you
anything; anything at all.
We are being cheated; deceived
ever so.
Unlike our Nation here
we can have
the nights in full.

Night after Night
the smiles and hands of one and all
have been taken away
across the Seas.
The Monarch’s City too keeps laughing
night after Night.
On the sea-shore I remain
spending the entire night.
O
* 12.10.2009 – Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksam A Meet, Colombo, the old Parliament structure, Sea-shore.

About Deebachelvan

2009-10-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

Poet Deebachelvan has emerged as a significant voice highlighting the plights of the Tamils in Today's Eelam. He is one of the important poets of Eelam. He depicts the war-ridden life of the Tamils with shells pouring from above day and night in the Sri Lankan soil, in a very poignant manner, being there right in the midst of it all, experiencing the miserable life of the hapless Tamil population in the Island.

The sufferings and hardships that the Tamils plunged all too deep in a life of violence, discriminations and uncertainties , their extensive loss and miseries that are hidden from the world's knowledge and purview and the innumerable cold-blooded murders, shielded from the world's eyes are being recorded with a sincerity and seriousness that make his poems and interviews stand apart. The cruel State-sponsored genocide in Sri Lanka is shown in raw flesh and blood in his poems which give a graphic description of the extensive destruction inflicted on the Tamils.

The main reason for Deebachelvan’s poems to be so powerful and poignant could be his life in Eelam, witnessing the horror and sorrow from close quarters. This proximity has raised his poems from being empty rhetoric to powerful and poetic documentation of all that is going on in the Island.

Apart from poems he is revealing his skill and expertise in other fields too, such as painting, photography, writing critical reviews, using all his talents and potentials towards creating the much-needed awareness about the hardships that the Tamils of Sri Lanka are undergoing.

His poems have been published in two volumes and have won wide-acclaim.

His blogspot (http://www.deebam.blogspot.com/ / http://www.edeebam.blogspot.com/ ) is also giving a true and graphic picture of the miserable life of the Tamils in the island.

Written by Latha Ramakrishnan

ABHIRAAJ HAS FORGOTTEN HIS BOOKS

2009-10-16T12:39:00.001-07:00

Translation of the poem in Tamil by Deebachelvan titled
ABHIRAAJ PUTHAGANGALAI MARANDHUPOYIRUKKIRAAN
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan
________________________
Loordhammaa! What illustrations I am to make of
Time?
The words stinking and stifling_
I shake them all for you.
For constructing a house
on the raised portion of
our piece of Land
I keep searching for stones
during nights.

I told them the fact
That children never carried guns
On their own free will.
They say that a gun was retrieved
From Abhiraaj.

I have not yet seen Abhiraaj.
On a day when the
Sun-light was scattered in abundance
despite going quite a distance
he was not to be seen.
No use blaming anybody.
Describing anything at length proves impossible.
Last night the wind
snatched away the tent.
Your younger sisters covered by dust
He probed and taken hold of.
That there is absolutely no memory of the gun
in you_
so I have said in my confession-statement.
See what all I speak…
I feel amused and astonished.

As all the words have been accepted
with no resistance at all
I think I can meet Abhiraaj.
In the books given to him
work-tools were drawn.
He is also being taught
carpentry.

As like you
I too stand in front of
the flag where the lion roars
everyday.
I sing the Sinhalese National Anthem
without fail.
I have taken care to
display the President’s images
in my tent.
Thus_
with no blood-shed
all assassinations take place.
Just don’t talk about guns, please.
Pushed inside a terrible godown
fallen, we languish there.
Sand keep piling up.
The house that I have mentioned earlier
continues its search for us in vain.

I keep talking again and again,
using multi-coloured words.
Dipping my hands into the
blood-filled cups
I keep calling out.
The garbage piled up at
the last stretch of effort
keep simmering.
Abhiraaj has forgotten the books.

No loopholes at all.
That which is called path
drags us on a different course.
All too tightly structured
the fortresses are.
Please don’t forward
your response to me!
I have to see you again
Loordhammaa!
I am unable to write
how the dreams arrive.
The hands of Abhiraaj are filled with
chalk-pieces and chisels.
________________________________

CHILDREN KEEP ON CRYING

2009-10-14T02:10:00.000-07:00

A Poem by Deebachelvan titled
‘Kuzhandhaigal Azhudhukonde Irukkiraargal
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan
----------------------------------------------

Thus I have to give you
but abominable nights always.
Even if it day
I am not able to come
any closer to you.
We are doing everything
out of compulsion.
Of my motherhood
which leaves you abandoned,
what do you lament,
shedding tears?
I did hope that
the lullabies that lie entwined
in the space
would make you sleep.

They say that they would
safely bring you back to me.
In the course of the journey
looking at the houses, wishing them
and so undertaken
a friend has given birth
to a child.

It is for the official enquiry
pertaining to safety measures
that we are detained here.
Refusing to sleep
and turning utterly spent-out
not seeing the Sun
in the morning you are sleeping.
As we can’t go anywhere freely
I ask you to bear with it all
for a while.

My eyes too remain damp.
When I am overcome
by sleep
I am in the unfortunate situation
coming and introducing myself
to you all over again.
Here, along with carrying their babies
on their shoulders
they have brought their better-halves too
with them.
Oh, why have they separated us?
This night is stretching far too
wide, elongating
monstrously.
Who at all can show me
your face which bemoans
in some faraway camp,
with tears streaming?
For various things
children keep on crying.
Tomorrow too come in great haste.
How am I to send my response to you…
They do keep assuring me
that they would bring you to me.
Heeding to my words
and waiting far too long
Your throat has turned
terribly choked
alas, I can tell only that
which they have mouthed…

That these are cruel nights
you would have realized without me
having to tell you.
Your wail can be heard quite close.

Asking you to bear with it all
a little more time-
Oh, how merciless those words
would sound.
My dream is so full of the laps
that cradle you
and tend you to sleep.

All the children
for something or other
keep crying forever.
---------------------------------

THE CHILD COVERING ITS FACE

2009-09-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

Translation of DEEPACHELVAN’S POEM titled MUGATHAI MOODIK-KOLGIRA KUZHANDHAI
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

---------------------------------------------
Those not released today
stand on another side
inside those wires.
the kids held on their hips
keep crying.
The joy that this child has
begun to celebrate
bangs against the
thorny-fence
and scatters.
Ascertaining that
whether its mother’s and father’s names
are indeed selected
and announcing it over the loud-speaker
they let the child
smile into the mike.

I’ve brought words
to welcome you.
Untying the Identification Number
I take you inside.
the child is covering
its face and
smiling.
Listening to the tales,
hitherto unknown of the
outer-world,
those stories also
which it has learnt inside,
it starts narrating
in its own exclusive tongue.
Though it is heard by everyone
none understands it.
For those who have been
born and survived
in Mullaivaikal, in
a bunker
on a shell-filled night
it has nurtured its smile.
To pluck and snatch
those stars that lie
sleeping on the
shirt of an Army General
it strains and gets hold of his shoulders.
The General too looks at the child
and laughs.
The child abruptly
brings to a close its
entire smile.

In between the sounds of children
weeping and wailing
this Child’s smile surfaces
all too often.
They speak – Of the world,
Of Life,
Of children’s Freedom_
The children who keep seeing the
air-crafts straight above
their heads still,
fall on the ground
fearing the impact..

This Child smiled. For the
rest of the children
and for their mothers and fathers.
It gave out a wide, bright smile.
It gave its face too
for the photographs.
‘Please nurture our child
in our own world itself’, said they.

That, henceforth it was the
Child of this Land-
That, though it was found out
that it aided terrorism
It was pardoned
That, as it had surrendered,
prior to the final assault
just in one week
since it was born
it had committed war-crimes
in lesser number than
all others –
They were telling.
The child looks on, holding
Its breath.

Even while being ticked
for the last time
in the attendance-register,
while being allowed to go out
by the sentry at the entrance,
while boarding the bus,
it is photographed
in different angles.
The address where it is being sent
and the boundaries of its
free-movement
are once again being
dinned into its memory.
That he would readily
bring the child anytime,
obeying orders –
so assures the child’s father.

Taking away its hands
the Child looks at
the streets with blood
dried-up.
I begin to utter the words
that I’ve carried along with me.
And, I remained waiting for
its smile.
Seeing another child and
mother who alight there
to proceed to another camp
in search of husband
it covers its face.
When it takes its hands apart
The face has turned red.
Upon its hand
the spot where the Identification Number
had been tied
shows traces of blood.
In front of the house,
standing in the verandah
All alone, the Child
was smiling again.

---------------------------------
*This Child which was born for the students/ couple of Yaazh University who got married in order to escape from the compulsory recruitment of the LTTE, was photographed on 20.09.2009 while she was waiting in Kaithadi Detention camp for her release.

THE LEGS LANDING ON THE GROUND

2009-09-20T02:51:00.000-07:00

A poem by Deebachelvan
Translation of the Tamil poem titled
MANNIRANGUGIRA KAALGAL.
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

--------------------------------
The ball remains
beyond the reach.
With legs not reaching down
but kept up, bundled always,
She keeps walking
through the eyes of others.
“It was when the bunker broke
and the sand came crashing down
my legs turned worse” –says She.

Informing that
when her legs were ripped off
by the explosive
her eyes were bleeding all over,
She keeps the wheel rolling.

My legs seem to be absent.
The legs that yearn to walk
remain hanging suspended
always.
In those nights when She
dreams for the legs
that touch the ground
her heart hangs dangerously
underneath the chair.

Everywhere and at all times
with wheels that revolt against
rolling on,
calling out to someone for
assistance,
She stays on, in some corner of the place
where children play and run.
The eight-year old little girl
slowly moves her wheel-chair
amidst the grown-ups full-fledged
with legs.

Saying that the words of her dear mother
which tell that her legs would grow
are belied always,
she reveals her still bleeding wound.
All huddled and oppressed
remains her World.
Severing her legs
Her walk has been separated from her
_She observes.

Unknown to Her
the Chair keeps rolling,
on the stones,
in the godowns.
Ahead of Her
monstrous legs, taking gigantic strides,
keep wandering everywhere.
She has her legs, folded up,
placed on her lap.

--------------------------------
(* An eight-year old little girl – brought from the Kadhirkaamar Detention Camp in Vavunia on 12.09.2009- is still being retained in Kaithadi Detention Camp. As her legs have been smashed in the shell-attack during the War, unable to walk, She keeps rolling her wheel-chair and so wandering inside the Camp)

THE BACKSIDE OF THOSE BUTCHERED IN THE NUDE

2009-09-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

A poem by DEEBACHELVAN
Translation of the poem in Tamil titled

“NIRUVAANAMAAGA KOLAIUNDAVARGALIN PINPAKKAM
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

--------------------------------------------------------
In the stagnated water,
writhing in pain
and floating _
the eyes, hands and rear of the necks.
Nudity disrobes everyone.
Terrorizing to the core
the scheming riffle
pierces a hole at the backside of the neck.
The soil gets all drenched
in the sadly flowing blood.

No one’s face is visible.

From out of everyone
everywhere blood is overflowing.
In the buses-
in the streets and by-lanes
of the interior city
in everyone’s home
the blood floods out of the
Television set and spreads to
Every nook and corner.
The mothers who have been searching
for their off-springs
start seeking the Channels.

The butchers of the meat-shops
resemble those men-in-uniform.
In the noose, the faces of those men
get tightly entwined-
never to be let loose.

Blood keeps pouring
drenching the entire world.
The faces couldn’t be seen.
As like my children
and your sons and daughters
and of these, theirs and
those
They looked- alas.
On the faces of Mothers
the blood-suck sand-pieces
keep falling all over.

The Mothers whose children have disappeared
just like that
have all wailed and beaten their chests
seeing the backsides of those butchered,
taking them to be
their very own off-springs.
With the heads falling down
in the pool of blood,
the Deaths of those children
whose whereabouts are unknown,
keep multiplying.

The uniforms of those murderers
are filled with the
blood-oozing throats and necks.
Except that they are humans
Everything else is in the dark.
At the backside of one and all heads
blood floods.
In that region
the blood that streamed out of
the Dream that was
smashed and shattered
remain, frozen.
-------------------------------------------------
*On 28.02.2009 the CHANNEL 4 ha released the video-clippings of gory killings of Tamil youths, stark-naked and blind-folded with their hands chained at the back, shown from the rear-side. The gruesome assassinations were recorded in a small mobile-camera and were taken in January 2009, claims CHANNEL 4

THE MUTILATED CITY RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LAND TURNED TO ASHES

2009-09-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

A Poem by DEEBACHELVAN
( Translation of the Tamil poem titled
SAAMBALAAKKAPPATTA NILATHIN NADUVILIRUKKIRA SIDHAIKKAPPATTA NAGARAM
Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan

-----------------------------------------------

The cows wandering,
grazing the landmines buried deep
and the soil too,
with the notion that the
shells are hidden in the cow-dung,
turn away from the City.

People’s Land
has been burnt and
turned to ashes.
In the all-annihilated Land
and so leveled ground
the ghosts have a hey day.
With the Land burnt and
the ashes sprouting
the trees with their heads chopped off
stand frighteningly erect on the ground.
In the space filled with
headless palmyra trees
the ‘panankuthigal’ with
roots withered
remain standing
bearing the vigilant check-posts.

In the ‘Vadis’ where salt is made
the blood and sorrow
of the people who ceased to be
too abound.

02
The hollow pits everywhere
blocking all the ways to return-
they are filled with
miseries to the brim.
In the floor of the
building turned to rubbles,
burying the tombs
and butchering the statues of Memorials
the cows have delivered calves.

Memories
mutilated and erased
are piled up.
With the faces left
being burnt
Sun’s countenance is scorched,
turning black.
In the ashes of tin, born of
the buses and bi-cycles burnt
Buddha remains seated.

Under many a ‘Arasa maram’
that have eyes
wide-opened and wandering,
vessels are piled up.
The Town is
changed beyond recognition.

03
In the road that has lost
all the traces of its identity
the pit turning into mound
and the mound – a
hollow-pit,
the Town has turned into a
stone-plateau.
With the cycles and chairs
set aside in heaps,
ashes spread everywhere.
Beneath the burnt up Sky,
just above the City
Ashes keep sprouting,
scattering non-stop.

From the thoroughly destroyed floors
the windows that would
come off and fall any moment
keep hanging suspended.
With thorny wires
spread over the electric-posts
the long road melts and seeps.
The foremost electric-post of the City
lies there pitiably.

Someone has left a
seat
half-broken,
that must have wandered desperately.
for its place
in the burnt field
With paddy grains yet to be
harvested
Slain and set afire,
except the trees where
Lord Buddha keeps awake,
Shade Nowhere.
The shrines with black veils
blocking the entrance
are painted in the hue of the
Army.
In the Town where the God
of the masses has been
chased away
The bells, torn apart,
have been brought down.
Amidst the ravaged portions
of the very few houses
that still remain
The Vehemence of Destruction
hovers dangerously.
The houses that have lost their
ceilings_
the tankers have pierced thoroughly.
Underneath the boats that
have been left there
In the fields,
fish keep wandering.
In the City where
everything is destroyed
and brought down
the Sinhalese alphabets
are writing the
Slogans of Defeat.
The Schools are covered with
Police-caps.
The long road is shrouded
in Military uniform.

04

In the city
with all traces wiped off
and surrounded by
sand-mounds,
piled up _
nothing is seen.
In the heaps of ashes
the lanes and by-lanes lie
closed
in fear untold;
with no identity of their own
to be disclosed.
Ashes upon the City,
Sand-mounds upon ashes,
Check-posts atop the sand-mounds _
The whole City is being devovoured
by the ‘paval’ moving ahead.
The motor-cycles of the Army - men
go round and round
at all times.
The city has lost all its
hall-marks and identities.
The Ashes dissolving have
filled up the pond.
The words drowned inside
give out a nauseating stench.
With moss spreading on the dream
Entwining itself around the roots
of the lotuses burnt
The great grand Land remain
still; lifeless.
The City has been murdered
in cold-blood.
The Pond is filled to the brim
with the Blood of Defeat.

05
in the direction where
the fire born of the forests
turned upside down
and cast off,
in the long wide root
thoroughly uprooted
and thrown aside
with face terribly
dried –up and withered,
the Hope of the People
has turned to nought.
The well upon which the house
had fallen and
closed down
the courtyard has gulped.
In the ‘Kaani’ where
the open courtyard has plunged
the roots of the ripe trees
of much use
are heaped.
The Space deprived of people
and the Land devoid of its fragrance,
The City sans its hues
and shades
bathe in ashes
and wander in a bewildered state.
The roads which the
corpses watch going past
without setting foot on,
the ghosts and devils
trample everything
under their feet
and heap fresh sand on them,
to the brim,
wiping out the traces of
Everything
and write new words
on them.

In the Space
where Life has turned to ashes,
the ancestral life of Culture and Heritage
with its
Land set afire
and City turned to rubbles,
is being excavated
in order to be
thoroughly wiped off.

With the night spreading far and wide,
swelling
as the shores of the
long main road
along which none returns,
the cow begins to
wander.
The toys that have lost their children
lie in the fields
in anguish unbearable.
------------------------------------
02.08.2009 Wanni, Kilinochchi, A-9 Road

THE WRY SMILE OF MY WORN-OUT MOTHER

2009-09-02T01:57:00.001-07:00

A poem by Deebachelvan
Translation of the poem titled
‘UKKIP POEYIRUKKIRA AMAAVIN PUNNAGAI’
Translated into English by latha ramarishnan
-------------------------------------------------------------

(A)
Ragged and skinny
faraway
Mother stood fixed against a
thorny-wire fence.

The thorny- wire was
tearing our faces.
With hands sans flesh
piercing through the thorny-wire
and entwining,
and, in between two curls
the thorny wires
were placed
one above the other.

Mother has lost
her smile.
The dust that has stuck
over the eyes
which her lowered head
hanging down
shield from view-
the tears dissolve.

With the great sorrow of Time
flooding
many a mother
yearning for their off-springs
were standing in a long queue
behind my ‘Amma’.

All the cries and tears-
All enquiries-
All the pain and agony of
mutual sharing
keep swelling inside the
thatched-space.
Amma’s words break
and scatter.

Abandoned children with
their hands extended
and their mothers, who were carrying them,
were stretching their hands inside
the thorny-fence.
Mother’s words
had fallen inside
the curled thorny-wires.

Within the ten minutes,
We were immersed in filling
ourselves with tears, leaving
the untold tales weigh
heavy within.
In just one beep of
the whistle
we were chased away
In different directions.
03.௦08.2009

(B)
Mother’s tent was filled to the brim,
with the terrible Sorrow of Time.
Inside the tent
filled with reddish dust,
the wild trees come to rest.
With mother and younger sister
staying huddled
inside the tent
The Sun lay
fallen on the roof.
The children bursting out
Come running in great haste
and bang against the gun.

The children kept apart
and were waiting to go past
the inner layer of
thorny wire
that scratched against the
anguished crowd
waiting eternally, in an
all too long a queue
for water,
return without meeting
their dear mothers.
As the toilets, filled up,
giving out unbearable stench
and the gutter water
getting inside the tent,
the children stand in queue
to get ‘colour’ water.

Those who had been brought
from the Land –
bent, broken and fallen
were being piled up
in the tents with
ceiling hung low
where they had to remain
crest-fallen.
As those separated-
As those searched and not found-
As those confined-
they fought against
the Sun
sandwiched between
Day and Night.

Amma is withering away…

In the white rice
that bears the logos of
NGOs
the heat of forest
uprooted,
gets buried.
The dust is shrouding
the small hearths
in between the tents.

In the great grand prison-house
well-knit by
thorny wires,
the innumerable tents
that have been converted into shields,
along with their inmates
are being enclosed by Dust.

Wandering hither and thither,
struggling to insert their faces
into the thorny wires
that are tightly knit,
tall and high-
so as not to allow those
torn apart
to have a peep and glance
neither in front
nor behind,
Those, separated
and desperate,
running from camp to camp,
keep wandering
along the road
so full of stones.
All the loud-speakers
keep blaring
‘Rhetoric of Separation’.

Mother’s wry smile,
in the corner of some camp
somewhere,
lay, turning from bad to worse,
amidst the relief-measures.

The dark, deadly gloom
that has devovoured time
drags away my beloved mother too.
04.08.2009
------------------------------------------------------------

THE GLOOM OF PEACE WHEREIN CHILDREN SUFFER DEFEAT

2009-08-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

By Deebachelvan
[English translation of his poem titled KUZHANDHAIGALTHOERKKADIKAPADUGIRA SAMAADHAANATHIN NIZHAL (Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan )

___________________
The city devovoured by War
is reconstructed by the Communique of Peace.
On the day when
the flowers and birds had been uprooted
the white-lane stood open.
With all eyes filled to the brim
with War
hands turned upside down keep wandering in our town.

During the time when words
designed by evil strategies
were being mutually uttered
taking turns-
filled with bombs-
the cement wall had grown
closing down on the heart.
With the light of various times
taken away, with no particle left,
The wandering dream is
tied inside
polythene bags.

Tasting defeat
and experiencing the anguish of failure,
the Earth’s all-pervading fragrance
turns to nought.
After everyone spoke and left,
with the bullets bursting out
scattering all ove
The Words remained yearning
as ever.

Under the Peace that
was celebrating War
Children could see
the lurking and growing
Danger
The shadow of Peace
Is shrouding everybody.
Peace slowly eats
The eyes of children.
Sand-cities keep emerging.

With hamlets buried deep
The endless displacement
Keeps sketching the land.
On the river floats
The boat that brooms and collects
The city.
First, the illumination of words
Being kept hidden in a
Mire without a way to escape
The whole spacious sky
With Time downfallen
Pours
But Gloom everywhere.

In the shade of Peace
The city of letters burns
And turns to ashes.
The children, caught
With the might of gun
were being piled up
in the military wagons.
Standing in front
Were tankers all set
To pour out shells.

Deceiving Hopes
Deceiving Expectations
Words cause Wars;
Stamping on our long wait
there explode new bombs.
The children
witnessing everything
are shaken to the core.

In the late evening hours
that had grazed on the patio,
The old man
identifying the odour
is won over.

Poisonous fruits sprout on
Time
and turn ripe.
Wth the riffles searching for
Human-preys
Death makes closeness easy.
With snakes
Blossoming all over the tree
Thick and dense
The Pond gets fille dup
With poison.
On the rivers
The target of down-fall gushes forth.
The Cannons are ready.
The tankers begin to move.
The riffles straighten themselves
and stand erect.

Tearing off and throwing away
the Words
and getting loaded with
explosives
the passenger-plane unloads them
here.
Peace, prevailing in the white lanes
designs the pattern of War.
In the City devoid of children-
dead and annihilated-
The Communique of Peace
is proclaiming the Defeat of
Children.
_________________

COME, TO LIVE THE LIFE OF THE DISPLACED

2009-07-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

A poem by Deepachelvan
Translation of the Tamil poem titled ‘ Nilam Peyarndhalaiya Vandhuvidu’
(Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan)
_____________
The field that could escape
has brought you here.
On the sea-shore where
the bag you have to carry along
lies
the wind gathers.

With no playful kiss,
with no wandering in cycle,
with Life oppressed to the core
by War
You have been taken away
by the battle-field.
The gun forcibly placed
in your hands
is eating your own self.

Elder brother’s tomb alone
remained an asset;
With his dream shattered
his tomb had also broken.
Now, there is no house
for any of us to live on.
Like our dear elder brother
and like his dream
we keep wandering.

Losing everything
and moving from place to place
in these terrorizing nights
You, whom we have been safe-guarding
as our very own treasure
Oh, what to do with the
Fate that forces us
to see You being dragged away.

How would you shoot at
the foe
who keeps displacing us
as ever before?
At a tender age
when you can’t realize anything,
can’t understand things
War is entrusted in your hands.
The gun forced into your hands
keeps burning the soft heart.
The piece of land that still remains
surrenders to the enemy.

Such a Poem as this
Such a fear-instilling night
Why should they have come upon me?
In the end my words
lie there, belied.
Henceforth, will I write a
War-Poem where children
fight as warriors?

To be in the midst of
Shells, shivering, together
I need you.
Who has dragged you away?
They resembled my beloved elder brother.
He had deep love for you
The way he loved his Native Land.

Hidden in the machine-guns, Our Children -
So my mother observes.

Now, our City is no more
Nor, our Life.
And, bereft of everything
We too cease to be.
Yet, I need You
to share the small quantity of food
half-cooked
And the pulses
boiled in water.

Come soon
Let’s move on
All the more displaced.
_____________________________________

INSIDE THE BARBED WIRE THE BURIED VILLAGE

2009-07-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

A poem by Deebachelvan

Translated into English by latha ramakrishnan
__________________
Even the lone well
That cannot be shared by everyone
The barbed-wire pierced
And entwined.
With the coconut-thatches
hanging upside down
wherever you see
The empty shells of the
Bombs exploded
are scattered.

The heat of the Sun arriving, invading the tents at will
With the sun swallowing the heads
Whose crowns are snatched away
The words keep hanging on
The barbed-wire.

On the seat made of
Spreading even, the boxes sans
Explosives
You and I are placed.
Without our knowledge
The Clock keeps munching
The hours
Granted to Us.

Looks like
There is a bomb underneath the seat
ever-ready to explode
Again and again
Umpteen number of times
The heart breaks with
the splinters scattering everywhere.

In the loudspeaker that keeps
Blaring the digits all the time
The Words
That somebody longs and
Struggles to utter
Reach the altar
And stand there, patiently bearing.
The ears that are given away
To the loudspeakers
Feel as if someone is calling.

Left alone and abandoned
With his kith and kin
Taken away in different directions
With the search for them is still on
Their whereabouts unknown
The boy looks at everyone.
With no way left to escape
The barbed-wire is tightly strung
On all isdes.

With machine guns
standing in line
In surveillance
watching those terror-struck faces
The deep sorrow of being
left in the lurch
in deadly horror
keeps spreading to the brim
in the end of endless
searching in vain
the little boy lets his
head hang on the
barbed-wire.

In the emptiness of not meeting
Anyone
The light and heat of
Sun alone remains
All-pervading.
With the loud-speaker, spent-out
Turning silent
The Sun goes past the village
Retiring for the day.
As the night arrives
The village, hopelessly stuck
Anguished and entangled
Is being buried.

______________________

05.07.2009

THE TROOPS DEVURING A BIG CITY

2009-01-12T22:42:00.000-08:00

--------------------------------------------------
by deebachelvan

the days of carrying
Your baggages
have come again
the troops encircling
the big city
return with corpses.

what load are you carrying
on my old bicycle?
I left it the day
the troops entered
now you are using it
to cart my belongings.

the day snakes surrounded
the margosa tree
the day the mango tree
shed bullets
the courtyard was riddled
by firing.

the kid which lost its mother
in the shelling
is crouching
in the hole
under the guava tree.

since yesterday
the troops have been
gnawing the city
in whose dust
you used to roll

the town
where I used to roam
on my bike
has lost the feet
with no space to loaf
the paths under seege

float in the jungle
heads glued to baggages.

in the lakes
leading to our homes
lie the carcasses
of cattle
wells lie closed.

the tank approaches
bulldozing the recently
built town
the bagger
the pipelines
and the power supply
in the sky appears.

not the sun
but the heli
the dawn corree
through the smoke
rising from the bombs
oblivious of your wandering
without even water
I exist.
------------------------------------------
18.09.2008

THE OPERATION AFTER THE RESPITE

2009-01-12T22:35:00.000-08:00

--------------------------------------------------
by deebachelvan

you’re tired
using the lone phone
in the deserted city
dialing numbers
the calendar and the clock
on the mud-wall
of the roofless house
lie turned.

your very last hope
is dying out
under the poovarasu tree.
you’re counting the days
of your return
on the abandoned gates
and the belongings left behind.

couldn’t figure out
a word from your lament
but your language
was mutilated
in the president’s UN speech
as the sounds of the wail
and the pavements you
trudged on.

are interpreted as laughter
heads nod
finding the fowl
and the chicks left behind
dead
the bats hanging upside down
weep.

everyone evacuated the city
by yesterday.

the hungry boy who chased the UN
(relief) vehicle
was detained at the
oman thai checkpoint
your hunger was written
on the flour bag
that hid the bomb.

you look up
as if the sky has deceived you
not realizing
that your time is up
with the resumption
of army operations
------------------------------------------

THE CITY’S CONDEMNED CHAIRS

2009-01-12T22:20:00.000-08:00

--------------------------------------------------
by deebachelvan

there was love of life
there were dreams about flowers.

after demolishing
the walls of this town
the announwment
about the burial of the houses
as dreams about flowers wither
the solution is reached
by smashing the rows of chairs

when the procamation
to demolish
the flower growing city
was announced
the ancient great walls trembled.

in the blasted glass mansions
consecrated to bombers
lie broken tables
still wet with
tea stains.

when everyone had gone
leaving the chairs broken
the neighboring mango trees
fell down, broken.

the rules of the war game
kept changing
being revised often.

in the mansions erected
at the end of the third war
lay hidden
the fourth war
that would demolish them.

02
in the hospital
at the centre of the city
which experienced
showers of shelling
the injured patient’s moan
encapsulated.

the wail of a population
while the flowers’ dreams.

are supposed to vanish
with this city
its citizens deaths
and the slain fighters
the nation dances
to the rolling war drum.

the time all are declared terrorists
the remaining flowers wither
and the order given
to destroy the city
in the broken arms of chairs
sprout arms.

there was love of life
there were dreams about flowers.
------------------------------------------
05.10.2008

The war begins from the Childen’s dreams

2008-10-13T02:02:00.000-07:00

-------------------------------------------------

by deebachelvan
----------------------------------------------
01.
The militants
withdrew from Madhu.

The war begins
from the dreams
of children
who ate poisoned food

In the numberless evacuations
which make
movement difficult
thier kit bags lost
people crowd under trees.

The war hasn’t broken out.

02
The militans have withdrawn
from Iluppaikadavai.
The State’s war
comes
chasing the terrorists
Some children
drenched the whole night
under the trees
have gone to the front

When the children felt
the thrust of war
the exam papers
slipped from their hands
and fluttered away

By the time
the dry plates
and the clothes
had slipped
from the people under the trees
The President’ statement
gloating over his victory
was released

03
The militant’s withdrew
From Vidathalthivu.

The pamphlets
she aircrafts dropped
startled the children
who were dreaming of
roast peanuts.

All should know
about war.

04
The militants withdrew
from Mulankavil
In the security web
appeared pictures
of captured villages
all ravaged.

We saw
beheaded coconut trees
broken cooking pots
abandoned graves
The war had chased everyone
It had entered every nook
05

People were chased away
from Mallavi and Thunukkai

When the war began
to capture a temple
We lost our very hands
that would rise in prayer
nay, we lost our prayers

The state opened refugee camps

The monsoon will come
We wait under the trees
to get drenched
to be washed away

The bunds
of Vavunikkulam
are damaged
Kilinochchi is now
a city of refugees
Pali will rise to inundate the fields.

The war begins
from the dreams
of children
who ate poisoned food.

----------------------------------
20.08.2008
------------------------------------

bunker life

2008-09-04T00:20:00.000-07:00

A family is in bunker