Poems by Prathibha Nandakumar
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Dilemma
If you insist you want a small boy you won’t get a grown man. The two don’t go together says an old proverb. In that big house they’re both asleep on the same cot a small boy and a grown man on both faces, a gentle smile. I am standing by the door the white owl on the tree is asking Are you a mother or the friend-lover? Translated from the Kannada by Madhav Ajjampur Reason for Turning Back I saw nothing that was new nor did I forget what was old. At a familiar turn, I turned the scooter—right opposite the paint-smell of the new gate affixed to that old compound. Why did I come? Beats me. Translated from the Kannada by Madhav Ajjampur |
Prathibha Nandakumar is a Bangalore-based Kannada poet. She came to prominence in the early 1980s as one of the pioneers of modern, female-centred women’s poetry in Kannada. In addition to being a poet, Nandakumar is a short-story writer, playwright, director, and journalist. Her poetry has received the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Award and the Mahadevi Verma Kavya Samman besides being anthologised and translated into a number of different languages.
Madhav Ajjampur is a writer and translator. His essays, poems, and translations have appeared in several publications, including the Hindu, EKL Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Midway Journal, Kyoto Journal, Metamorphoses, and Modern Poetry in Translation. He is the author of The Pollen Waits on Tiptoe, a book of his English translations of selected poems by D. R. Bendre, Kannada’s foremost lyric poet.
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