Ekalavya Poem by PRATHAP KAMATH

Ekalavya my little fellow
the way you fire with that double barrel
rusting at the roots
reminds me of fake encounters
stabbings from behind
and reward-winning deceptions.
I see on my inner sky
worms battening on a deserted corpse.
How does it, I wonder, that its
open mouthed wreckage resemble
the sniper-sharp genius of yours!

(Mao mao – who is crying in the bush?)

Where did you pick up that stance?
Who taught you the secret of holding your breath
while the needle of your aim passes
through the aperture of death.
The exactness of your fell shot
lynches my brahmin wisdom.
I who have been the master of pedigree killers
suffer in the dreams of my dark edifications
sufferings of shame to see my lessons
duped in anonymity by your penchant to kill.

(Mao mao – who is wailing in the bush?)

And you only fourteen
with just a downy shade
above your lips to show off your balls.
I see my faded black and white
in a leaflet printed in the seventies,
me raising the gun and calling for the eradication
of the class foe – the lords, their apple women
and their ripe and juicy children –
hasting to usher in the golden age of the underdogs.
You say my image guides you through
the darkness of derision and low born shame!

(Mao mao – who is moaning in the bush?)

After forty years my ghost mocks me
from beneath your admiring eyes.
A churning in my bowels passes me
signals of danger in letting you grow
with your fatal skills of kill;
across the field and upon the target
you take aim I read my endangered destiny.
Ekalavya, my child, you should know
that the tradition we flout in the name of revolution
is the loving mother whom the henpecked son disowns.
My higher wisdom seasoned by years
in forests, fortresses and mansions of power
and flavoured with the company of victors
has taught me to embrace it with a full mind.
Know that which sustains my hoary survival
is the clutching at the roots
that I hide underneath our biting-red flag.

(Mao mao – who is hooting in the bush?)

Little master with a torn photo as your teacher
don’t earn the curse of sin
which will burden your journey down
after you gave away precious life for the cause
by denying me, your absent teacher,
my rightful due of your mastery.
Give me your right thumb
blackened by your inferior birth –
the one that helps hold the gun
balanced like a ballerina with held breath
arabesque to the exactness of a hair’s breadth
before the pull the hit and the kill
of the farmer, the peasant, and the soldier
all hurdles in the pathway of change.
Give me my fee my dakshina
let not history not repeat itself.
Thumbs up son, my dear, my dearest.


Note: Ekalavya is a character in the Indian epic Mahabharata who, because of his birth in
a low caste, is denied the right to learn archery, since learning of any kind has been the monopoly of Brahmins and the Kshatriyas (the warrior caste) . Ekalavya learns archery on his own and masters it imagining Drona, the guru of the princes Pandavas and Kauravas, as his teacher. When Drona discovers the genius of this absent disciple, he demands as his dakshina, the tuition fee, the thumb of Ekalavya without which archery cannot be practiced, thereby ensuring that Ekalavya does not practise the art which his caste has prevented him from practising. In the poem Ekalavya is cast into a setting in contemporary India where still discrimination prevails against the lower castes, which in turn drives a section of youth belonging to such castes to extremist activities. The poem is a monologue uttered by guru Drona in the imagined present.