Heroin Poem by Sathya Narayana

One male animal leers at her
as if a thousand dirty tongues
came out of those eyes
and are licking
the fizzy creams of her
pinky youth!

An emaciating masculinity
spits ruddy paan
into the red-rose vase,
sniggers with those lascivious lips
and makes a vulgar remark at her.

One shady brute surreptitiously passes
his shaky hand around her waist
and tries to slither it somewhere else,
when she feels a spider
crawling all over her skin!

She neither stops them nor says anything!
She hangs down her head
and smiles, sometimes laughs aloud
crushing the gushing out disgust
from deep inside of her entrails!

Her directors compliment her
'You act so well! '

Again she suppresses
her spilling out tears
and bursting out ire.
She wants to cry aloud
or at least deliver a punch-dialogue
with a lot of sarcasm
looking at them athwart;
as she did so many times
on the screen.


No, no,
no sound comes out of her mouth...
as she becomes a normal woman
with no histrionics
and no melodramatic expression.

She keeps watching long
at the photographs hanging in her bed room..
Marlyn Manroe, Meena Kumari and Savitri...
and feels their voices in unison...
'That's life in cinema! '

She turns morose
and leaps into deep tranquility.
Her hand suddenly smear
the scar inside their thigh;
a human-canine made
before she signed her first film
and the recent nail-made
bloody scratches on her breasts
and she tries in vain to touch
the cigarette burns
in the middle of her back.

Thinking of the pain
and thinking of the ugly moans
she made pretending sweet ache
gulping the retching out abhorrence;
she laughs again and again!

After all, she climbed
the slippery stairs to stardom
and standing alone at the pinnacle
holding aloft her pennant of glory!
How many times she crept up
and slides down...oh!

Now every cell in her body
knows how to act...
well the twinkles in her eyes
conceal the nausea of mind...
Her shiny skin hides
the nagging bruises inside
and the niceties her lips spell out
censor so well
the four-letter words
she so much pines out to eject!

(Inspired by award winning Telugu novel PAAKUDU RALLU by Sri Ravuri Bhardvaja)