Poet BOOMA ESWARAMOORTHY
(Tamil Nadu)
Poet BOOMA ESWARAMOORTHY:
(Tamil Nadu)
Born in the year 1952, in Thirunelveli, one of the Southern districts of Tamil Nadu, significant for it rich culture and heritage his original name is Eswaramoorthy and he has been contributing creative writings in various renowned Little Magazines of Tamil. For the past four decades.
His formative years – Schooling, College studies were in Thirunelveli. After getting married and begetting children, Mr.Eswaramoorthy, an employee of Indian Overseas Bank moved over to Chennai
He began to write after 1977 and he is an ardent reader one who believes in debating issues threadbare. spent in ThirunelviPrimarily a poet his writings attempt to highlight the extra-ordinary shades and nuances in the day-to-day ordinariness of man’s existence on Earth.
Primarily a poet he has four poem-collections, a short-story collection, a book comprising critical essays on the salient features of Neo-Tamil Poetry. He has also co-authored an anthology of Neo-Tamil Poems titled ‘Sittragal’.
He was one of the founders of a Literary Forum called Kavidhaikanam and he has launched another Literary Forum called Porunai India
He has written several long poems and poems on specific themes. His Collected Poems have some forty poems on the Theme Kannaadi. The Tamil word Kannaadi stands for both Glass and Mirror and also Spectacles. Ten poems on Kannaadi are rendered in English here.
Having an in-depth knowledge of Indian Philosophy and its deficiencies too, Booma Eswaramoorthy writes poems with bare minimum words and lets silence play a significant role in them. He writes long poems also, dealing with the various moods and shades of a Theme or metaphor. Thus he has written some 40 poems on the theme – Mirror out of which some 16 are rendered in English here by me.
Latha Ramakrishnan
THE SEED FOR A SEA
By Booma Eswaramoorthy
0.01)In the corridor somebody barefoot keeps walking to and fro, criss-a-cross, in great haste and anxiety. With no peace, unconscious of sleep and rest, someone keeps on walking non-stop. And, I keep looking outside and watching within. Efforts are on to mar the alignment of my innermost layers.
In a small measure or on a grand scale in new lines.
0.02) The water of this moment keeps rising and rising and filling in the dam to the brim and overflowing ceaselessly in the mirror of this moment.
0.03) The numerous-various stallions of my numerous-various selves have but got used to go wandering round and round this flowery pond, take rest and make love and drinking water to quench their thirst.
My different persons call it a pond. Padmini calls it a Mirror.
0.04) Keeping my everyday Self to wait outside, I enter inside.
Searching for the chisel , probing through the overflowing foams of the ash-colour cup and at last finding it, for hours together I start sculpting again and again. Holding the beloved face of unending love, depicted in the yellow liquid, in both my hands. I move towards the doorway, watching each and every step of mine with great care.
0.04) A rain. A silent rain. A silent rain in the harem. In the harem where you are, a silent rain. In the harem where you are beyond the wall of mirror, a silent rain.
In the harem where you are beyond the wall of mirror which is going to melt and dissolve in the magical flute of the poem that is going to be, a silent rain.
0.06) None has the Mirror which the love-smitten sparrow, oblivious to hunger, having lost the memory of its habitual flying keeps on pecking at it with anguish unleashed.
0.07) She and Myself were copulating. In front of a mirror. A man resembling me was copulating with a female resembling her in the same Mirror.
Wonder where he is, I am now here with you.
0.08) A knock at the door is heard. ‘Who is it?” She asked. “It is me”, said darling daughter’s college friend. “Coming” said she and was about to open the door but eyed at her face in the mirror for a split-second.
0.09) Not today. It took place on another day, long back. I was attractive then. I had no enmity then. I too had wings. With smiles free of pain and anguish I used to go round and round. That’s how a Mirror told me about my own self.
“I have kept it hidden in your first poem that you had written with errors and lapses lost that I’ve kept it hidden. Go, take it”, said this ash-coloured cat in full realization of the sorrow of myself who has been searching for that ever since, in vain.
0.10) With so full of loneliness a world in the universe keeps revolving round its own self.
With so full of loneliness it lies there, looking at the sky. On the Earth, a lake with the great agitation of loneliness keeps running hither and thither. There are Fish, small and big, in the lake. On the edge of the lake a fish leaps and jumps. Just a lone fish. The space and the sky inside water.
0.11) The deep-rooted faith and belief in God. The proclamation that god had never acted in a manner befitting that faith. Both are on the corridor of the hospital.
The pleasure regarding ‘Self’ and the denouncement of Self are in the same mirror, at two different thresholds.
0.12) So very rarely, none other in the house. Bolting the door and hurriedly going to the interior room, closing the door, disrobing, viewing the nudity of Self in the wall-side mirror, wearing the clothes in great haste, opening the door, entering into the front room, she sat there as if nothing had happened, with a secret glow.
Mother who had entered inside the house after quite some time, looking at the secret glow, started wondering.
0.13) What all various and numerous flowers seen in the mirror. They all smell the same.
0.14) In the Land of Mirror
0.15) In the illustrative road where picture drawn by him, picture drawn by her, picture drawn by you and me together, picture drawn by the unknown multitudes – so those waiting in long queues, one which stands in the beginning and the one at the end remains a Mirror.
0.16) The beloved flower never bloomed. The face seen in the Mirror reminds without fail.
O
