Beauteous Torture … Vimala, Telugu, Indian
.
When we reduce to
Measuring 34-24-35…
Growing pimples, losing hair,
And a size-zero waistline
Become our perpetual worries…
When our life’s sole aim becomes
Yearning for a beauteous body…
What a torture we suffer from!
.
Boring our ears and nose
We hang rings and nose-beads…
We daub and dab colors to our
Lips, fingers, eyes, and eye-brows…
We chain our neck, waist and feet
With varieties of shackles…
Pricking our body every minute
With tools of beauty
We mob the marts and malls to buy beauty…
Suspending varieties of clothing
To the body-hangers…
Applying oils
Curing it with pastes and turmeric packs,
We knead and knead our figures
Until they get parenthesized between figures…
No matter whether we smile, stroll, speak or sit
We crave for a pretentious beauty…
Cuddling, and cuddling snugly into the moulds
We believe this self-imposed torture
Is connate with us…
.
Whenever we look about ourselves
I am reminded of scare-crows of the corn fields
Stuffed with reed and grass…
Hollowed out of all that we are from ourselves
We look hollow like ‘Egyptian Mummies’…
Even if muscles were measures
For our intellect, for our love, for our responses, and
For our emotions,
And we were reduced to mere bodies…
Then,
Even our bodies are not ours in the end …
What a hideous beauty is this!
.
Where beauty is a competition
Where beauty is a commodity
Let’s hate that trading of beauty!
If beauty were inevitable for our existence,
Let’s hate that very existence!
.
Where we are white-washed,
Erected like walls to hang photos on,
Reduced to decorated ‘bulls’
And hurt with this compulsive ‘beauteous torture’
There
Pals!
Let us call for a life
Nude,
Yes, as nude as when we came out of our mother’s womb,
Sans decorations…sans any measures of beauty!
.
అనువాదలహరి 