Poem
Adhavan Deetchanya
A Real Estate Problem
Panguni-chittirai,the tamarind season.
Appa would buy it cheap
to last a whole year.
At harvest time,
he’d wrangle
a good bargain,
some seven-eight bags—
beans, dal, rice.
He wouldn’t return home
from a Salem passenger journey
without four measures of vegetables
from the vendor-woman.
Would always boast
that what for others fetched a day’s supply
yielded enough for a week.
My father who’d walk a mile
to save a rupee,
my father who was like that,
bought a cent of land
some nine miles away
from town
for a lakh of rupees,
a new township,
much like Gandhipuram,
Annanagar,
or Kamarajapuram colony.
Ambedkar colony,
a stone’s throw from the bus stand,
went for the price of a worthless cow.
Even land
has a caste.
© Translation: 2011, K.Srilata and Subashree Krishnaswamy
From: The Rapids of A Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (co-edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom, Subashree Krishnaswamy, K. Srilata)
Publisher: Penguin/Viking, New Delhi, 2011
From: The Rapids of A Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (co-edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom, Subashree Krishnaswamy, K. Srilata)
Publisher: Penguin/Viking, New Delhi, 2011
A REAL ESTATE PROBLEM
© 2005, Adhavan Deetchanya
From: Thanthugi
Publisher: Sandhya Publications, Chennai
From: Thanthugi
Publisher: Sandhya Publications, Chennai
Poems
Poems of Adhavan Deetchanya
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A Real Estate Problem
Panguni-chittirai,the tamarind season.
Appa would buy it cheap
to last a whole year.
At harvest time,
he’d wrangle
a good bargain,
some seven-eight bags—
beans, dal, rice.
He wouldn’t return home
from a Salem passenger journey
without four measures of vegetables
from the vendor-woman.
Would always boast
that what for others fetched a day’s supply
yielded enough for a week.
My father who’d walk a mile
to save a rupee,
my father who was like that,
bought a cent of land
some nine miles away
from town
for a lakh of rupees,
a new township,
much like Gandhipuram,
Annanagar,
or Kamarajapuram colony.
Ambedkar colony,
a stone’s throw from the bus stand,
went for the price of a worthless cow.
Even land
has a caste.
© 2011, K.Srilata and Subashree Krishnaswamy
From: The Rapids of A Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (co-edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom, Subashree Krishnaswamy, K. Srilata)
Publisher: 2011, Penguin/Viking, New Delhi
From: The Rapids of A Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (co-edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom, Subashree Krishnaswamy, K. Srilata)
Publisher: 2011, Penguin/Viking, New Delhi
A Real Estate Problem
Panguni-chittirai,the tamarind season.
Appa would buy it cheap
to last a whole year.
At harvest time,
he’d wrangle
a good bargain,
some seven-eight bags—
beans, dal, rice.
He wouldn’t return home
from a Salem passenger journey
without four measures of vegetables
from the vendor-woman.
Would always boast
that what for others fetched a day’s supply
yielded enough for a week.
My father who’d walk a mile
to save a rupee,
my father who was like that,
bought a cent of land
some nine miles away
from town
for a lakh of rupees,
a new township,
much like Gandhipuram,
Annanagar,
or Kamarajapuram colony.
Ambedkar colony,
a stone’s throw from the bus stand,
went for the price of a worthless cow.
Even land
has a caste.
© 2011, K.Srilata and Subashree Krishnaswamy
From: The Rapids of A Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (co-edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom, Subashree Krishnaswamy, K. Srilata)
Publisher: 2011, Penguin/Viking, New Delhi
From: The Rapids of A Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (co-edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom, Subashree Krishnaswamy, K. Srilata)
Publisher: 2011, Penguin/Viking, New Delhi
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