Tuesday, October 14, 2008

 ఆయ్య అమ్మ ఆట సిద్ది లో కొంత బాగం

 PLAYING THE PARENTSAyya-amma aata*Vemula YellaiahAa…

                  Padma! How come you’re here? Are you taking care of hens here?    How’s that your hens are here in the field?Saidga! Why’ve you come here to our fields?                                                                                As of me, I’ve been coming to my fields both mornings and evenings. I’ve to bring the hens and take them home. Since the cats are knocking away the hens at home, baapu, my father assigned me this work, as it’s vacation time for the school.Padma! I came here to graze my buffalo. This buffalo was given to us by the government-folk. Ayya, my father asked me to graze the buffalo here.Arei, you Saidga! The buffalo belongs to the government; you are boasting as though it’s your own buffalo! We own so many of them you know! There’re labourers to take out our buffaloes for grazing. Do you know about it?Padma! For that matter, are the hens your own? Are they born of humans or what? Where did you get them from?Long ago an eagle dropped a chick in the yard of our cattle-shed while knocking away somebody’s chicks. Having grown up, the chick grew into a hen and made so many hens by laying eggs, you know!’If you feel so proud of the hen that belonged to someone, how should we feel about our own buffalo? The government gave it to us because we’ll pay them. That’s how we could get it. It’s our own. Do you come here everyday, Padma? We can play like friends everyday – the game of cooking rice, cooking curry – playing the parents!It’s too late; the rest of them all have left for the village, Saidga!So what? We two can play!But, Saidga! I don’t know how to play! Would it be enjoyable? I’ll come in the morning a day after tomorrow; the same way we met now. Let’s make it, so that we can play. Saidga! What’s that you are eating? Why don’t you give me some?The other day I had given you some; you got vomited after eating it. It’s the same thing – the roasted pieces of dry bullock-meat. It tastes better than horse gram. If I don’t munch the pieces of bullock-meat now and them, I feel hungry. If I have a few pieces with me, I don’t feel hungry at all for any number of days.On the first occasion, I felt it nauseating to munch them. But the next time when you had given me a piece, I found it very tasty. I felt like eating it again and again. Saidga! Why don’t you give me some pieces so that I’ll go home eating them up. It’s already noon. The hens are pecking each other as it got delayed. Saidga! We’ll play the game a day after tomorrow. The other day I dreamt of playing this kind of game with you. I’ll go home ra!The buffalo’s new to this grazing yard. It’s crossing over the grazing yard. It might graze the crops. We’ll play a day after tomorrow; you may leave Padma!The sun’s about to get into its nest. The buffalo is longing for its calf, as its udder is full of milk. I must go home quickly.What’s the matter, my son? You have come home with the buffalo even before the sunset? Did you think that grazing the buffalo’s like attending a school?Yes, amma! I really thought so. I don’t feel like staying at the grazing yard; it’s been the second day. I’m not able to give up the earlier schedule. The game of playing the parents is going to be a day after tomorrow. Amma! I’ve to be awake early in the morning. I’ve to cook rice and the curry of dry bullock-meat in the game. Prepare the meals for the lunch. You have to give me ayya’s dhoti, shirt and head-cloth. His new pair of cheppulu, sandals too. What else I need? Why don’t you give me your thali, consecrated nuptial-knot, that’s there around your neck? You have to give me the baasingam (triangular brow-mask used at wedding), which you had preserved. Do you listen to me amma? It’s going to be a funny game you know?What’s the matter ra, my son? You are speaking as though a real wedding is going to take place. Are you mad or what?’Amma! It’s only a mock wedding; not a real one! Did you get the meals ready to be taken for lunch?Yes. I’ve served some curry of bullock-meat. I prepared the meals-box. Eat your fill when you feel hungry. Do you follow what I say?Amma! You said you would go for fetching potable water; you can leave now.I’ll accompany you up to there ra; the buffalo might defecate and I’ve to collect it for making dung-wedges.No, no. you must leave, amma! I’ll go only when you leave. Otherwise I’ll not leave.I’ll leave ra, then. Eat your fill. Drink water in the rivulet. My son! Take care at the grazing-yard.I’ll leave vay. Have you given me everything I had asked for? Don’t you find baasingams? It’s alright. I’ll manage with flowers by gathering from the forest. Doesn’t Padma agree? It’s a mock wedding anyway! We’ll have to play it in real terms. Is it a fun? We’ll have to attend to everything. We’ll have to learn about how to run a family. I’ll have to run the family seven times more than ayya had done. Only then I’m what I’m. Oh there she seems; she’s already arrived. I can see her who’s waiting behind the crooked branches of the bastard-teak wearing langa, full-skirt; she’s standing there. Oh you buffalo! Keep walking at a slow pace. There I see my Padma in full-skirt of flowered designs.Padma! Have you already arrived? Let’s go and play.Arie Saidga! My hen has escaped and ran into the trees. When I’m worried about the hen that’s escaped, you are hastening me to play. I’ll break your legs; you, the one with a charred face!Why are you angry just for such a small matter? Don’t I look handsome? You had never said I looked ugly! Had you let me know it earlier, I wouldn’t have befriended you at all! Mine’s not a charred face; it’s only dark in complexion. Mine’s not a rounded face like my mother’s; it’s a long face. My amma always rejoices looking at my face, you know! In that case let’s cancel the game; I’ll not play.Ei! I said in a lighter vein. I came here when the dawn broke you know! Having come so early, I’ve been waiting here without being seen. Since I had been waiting for you, my fingers lost grip and the hen escaped into woods. It took so long to sight the hen. It got stuck up in the bushes. Having been stuck up in the thorns, my langa got torn. You’ve come riding the buffalo just as a lord would ride his horse. I got irritated when you refused to play. Then why did you propose to play first of all? Did I know this kind of game? I’ll complain to my baapu; you know what kind of man he is! Didn’t he beat you the other day when your buffalo grazed in my fields! I had witnessed it; he had thrashed till your shorts got off, you! Didn’t you urinate at his thrashing? You fellow! I’ll get you thrashed the same way! Since yester day, I’ve been thinking of playing the game of cooking rice; cooking curry – playing the parents. I’ve brought toy-utensils and broken rice and chilly powder too. If you refuse to play, I’ll sprinkle the chilly powder in your eyes. Will you play or not? First of all find me my hen. Go and catch hold of it. Let’s both catch hold of it. I’ll try at the other side. Saidga! Why don’t you speak out? You remained standing motionless like a snake that had gulped soil!Padma! I got scared; developed shivering in my spine. Didn’t you say that you would get me thrashed! It’s alright if you sprinkle chilly-powder in my eyes, but don’t get me thrashed by your baapu. I don’t want to play this game, Padma! May the game be damned! I apologize to you. I’ll not stay here; I’ll go running. Why should I worry about the missing hen? Let me run scurrying till I reach home.Look at my langa; I’ve tucked it past the knees facilitating to run. Do you want to escape ra? Don’t you know that I stood first in the running race in the school? Even if you escape to your house, I’ll drag you here and play with you. First of all let’s run chasing the hens throughout the grazing lands. As you run in the front, I’ll run behind you. Arei! There are shrubs; there are thorns; I find it difficult to keep pace. Run on the path if you’re a gallant. Then I’ll prove myself. Arei, arei! You’re hopping over the hedges like a rabbit. How to catch hold of you? Arei! I’m about to die; I’m bitten by a snake. Oh my amma; oh my ayya. Arei Saidga, you shit eater! Come running and rescue me!Ammo, Padma! Is it a snake that has bitten you? Do you know that I had killed snakes in the past! I’m coming Padama; just wait. I’m there within minutes. Oh! Have you collapsed on the floor? Don’t cry Padma. Don’t think otherwise. Show me the snake; I’ll kill it just at a strike. Where’s it bitten you? Climb up on to my shoulders; let’s go to the village. I’ll get a manthram chanted to exorcise the pain. I’ve a stone at home that sucks the poison. I bought it from a snake charmer for using in emergency. Come on; climb up on to my shoulders. Don’t cry; lest the poison might spread over the body. If the poison spreads over, one doesn’t survive. Believe me, Padma!I only told a lie so as to hold you back. Let’s play now. There’s neither a snake nor nothing. You’re a snake yourself sans poison. The sand of the rivulet is so soft ra, Saidga. Do as I say. Both the buffalo and the hen have runaway. I only played a mischief with you since you had refused to play. Let’s play the game in real terms – the game of cooking rice, cooking curry – playing the parents.Alright, then. Let’s play! Here you are! This is the head-cloth. Sport it as a sari. Ei remove the tucking, and tidy your langa. Now you look like my amma; yes that’s how you should look like. Now act like your mother. Did you observe your mother at work?I’ll act like my amma. She cooks rice and curry. By evening she gets herself made up and get into the other room. I noticed them once unknowingly. Ever since, I felt an unknown sensation in me. I felt like playing the parents with you. Imagine that it’s curry; this is rice. We should sit facing each other and eat rice together like parents. Then you should play like ayya. Do you seem like ayya now wearing dhoti and a shoulder cloth?Padma! Let me tell you something. Once, there was an emergency nature call in the midnight. I woke up. It was then that I had seen. Ours being a single-roomed thatched house, I saw it when my ayya laid on my amma. I thought that my amma might die of suffocation; that my ayya’s going to kill my amma. I thrashed him with a stick. I felt as though he had fallen off the cot. They got up and tidied their clothes. I kept awake throughout the night laughing to myself. When I was asleep, I thought of playing similar game with you. Do you know?Imagine that you are my baapu; I’m like my amma. What do you say, Saidga?Padma! It’s an insult to me vay; in our community it’s not like that. I only will sit on you. I only will be above you. What you say is not the way at all! I’m your husband; and you’re my wife. Is it fine? Is it fine now? I’m like my ayya; you’re like my amma. What do you say, Padma?How can you be above me? Being a Madiga, you’re being arrogant. I came to you because the boys of our caste don’t play. I’ll get you thrashed by my baapu.It’s alright then; you might do as you like it. I’m silent now. Let me ask you a riddle, “A bird got menstruated under a green snake; tell me what it is!”Saida! What kind of riddle is this ra? It’s a girl who menstruates but not birds!Padma! Confess that you don’t know; then I’ll tell you. Shall I tell now? Think about it or else I’ll tell. You’re losing your chance…I don’t know since I’m not educated. You may tell me.Isn’t the chilly-tree green in colour! Aren’t its chilies red? That’s it. Don’t you know?Padma! This dhoti’s my ayya’s; it got wet!Ammo! I’m bleeding, Saidga!.Padma! Did you get hurt? Let me see once. I’ll place herbal leaves on it. It’ll be healed at once.I’m having pain in the stomach. So much of blood! The clothes became damp. I’ll go up to the well. There’s water at the pump-set now. I’ve to take bath. My baapu is over there. Don’t accompany me; lest he’ll kill you. Let me go to the well.* * *My daughter! Why are you crying? Where are the hens? It’s midday; wherever have you gone to? Why are you keeping your hands back? Turn back, you donkey; widow. Oh! You’ve come of age. Get into the cattle-shed and be there.Baapu I’m scared. Saidgaadu played with me.Why do you talk of Saidgaadu? What do you mean by playing? Baabu! Madiga-Saidgaadu played with me the game of cooking rice; cooking curry – playing the parents.Is that so? Where’s he? It’s alright; don’t speak anything. Get on board the bullock cart. Let’s go home…Oh you, my wife, where are you! Our daughter has come of age; make her sit in the house; I’ll go out.Why don’t you set the bullocks off! How long the bullocks would remain standing? Why are you leaving in a hurry? (Turning to her daughter) Oh my daughter! Why do you cry now after everything’s over, you pig!* * *Patel! What’s the matter? You’re coming to the Madiga-wada? Why don’t you tell us the reason?Where is the house of Papi-gaadu?Ayya! Over there, the one with the festoon of bullock-meat; that’s the house of Papi-gaadu.You Siddi! You Papi-gaadu! Where’s your son?He came home a while ago. He’s eating some rice. Why are you asking about him, patel? Has the buffalo grazed in your fields? We’ll pay you penalty. Don’t get inside; I’ll bring him out.What do you mean by bringing him out? You wretched fellow!Why do you kick in the stomach of the tender boy? Such is your foot; such is his tender body. Stop kicking him; he’s vomiting blood! Do you want to kill him or what?Arei! You Madiga-chiefs! Don’t you all know how young my daughter is!Yes she’s going to be of marriageable age. But what happened?My daughter used to go to the school. Such a tender girl that she’s. This boy who’s like a donkey molested her. Is it right on his part? Speak out! She’s frequenting my fields these days. How dare he spoke to her? She had just stopped suckling recently. Is he born of dogs and foxes ra?He has ruined the life of my daughter. She’s still so young you shit eater! You’ll lose your eyesight because of the sin you had committed, you! She’s bleeding. Are you a human being at all? You have no sense at least as much as an animal has. A bull that copulated with a cow will never even smell it again! I wish I defecated in your moth; may there be my urine in your eyes!Patel! Why do you scold him like that?You had sent him to the school. Now do you see what he had done? Had you not sent him to the school; had you sent him for the field labour work, this wouldn’t have happened.Patel don’t kick him. The boy got tossed up when you kicked him. His mouth’s bleeding. Patel! We’ll find out from him when he comes to consciousness. No, no! I’ll get him arrested by the police. I’ll go and lodge a complaint. Only then you’ll be under control. Don’t I know how you would settle the dispute? Are you superior to the lawyers? May the folk of your jati be fucked!I’ll pray your feet; we’ll teach our son a lesson. We touch your feet. Please don’t go to the town, ayya!How dare you touch me? Let me kick you!Patel! Don’t kick me.I’ll settle the matter in the town ra. Wait and see!The patel has left. Splash some water on his face. The lad might die. He’s thrashed my son; kill us too. We reared him bearing travails! My son seems to breathe his last even when we are alive. The caste-men are all simply looking on. None of them has rescued my son.He’s the patel of the village. How dare we stop him while thrashing your son? What your son had done was anyway cannot be supported. How to stop him; how to rescue your son? Just because we belong to the caste, shouldn’t there be a valid reason to support you?You’re such important people who visit the neighbouring villages for settling the disputes! Can’t you manage this?Eh! This Madiga woman is speaking a lot. Her son being at fault, how could one rescue him? You wretch! Go and settle the matter in the police station, not here!* * *What’s the matter saar, sir? You’ve come to the police station?I’ll let you know it confidentially. Saidgaadu, son of Papi-gaadu molested my younger daughter. I’ll offer you some money. But you should prove what the police are up to!* * *Who’s Papi-gaadu here? Is Saidgaadu your son? Let’s go to the police station. The patel has lodged a complaint. Come to the station with your bed-sheets. You have to go to the jail tomorrow. Bring money for the bus fares. Get into the bus.Ayya! I touch your feet. The lad’s done it innocently. Penalize us. We’ll pay by selling out house and land.There’s no question of imposing penalty. Is it a cattle shed or police station? Arei Saidga! Get inside and the rest may go out! Arei constable! Fasten a brick to his penis and hang it over the other side of the wall. Let his penis get snapped. The wretched fellow!Certainly saar.The others may leave the station. We’ll send him to the jail tomorrow. Go and settle the matter in Warangal. How much money do you have you? Arei constables! Grab the money from them.Oh my son, Saidga! Ah my son, Saidga! What do we do my son! We can’t stand your agony, my son. We can’t stand you starve, my son! * **An excerpt from Siddi, a Dalit novel, 2004Translated by K. Purushotham Posted by GURRAM SEETA RAMULU at 10:20 AM 0 comments వేముల ఎల్లయ్య మట్టి గుడిస - కక్క VEMULA YELLAIAH’S KAKKAA Mud-House Dalit నోవెల్Jashuva’s Gabbilam is considered the first groundbreaking work that deviated from the contemporary literary tenets of Telugu literature. K.G Satyamurthy’s ideological deviation from the aesthetics of the Left is the second most important landmark in giving an impetus to the evolution of the Dalit literature.1 In this order, Yellaiah’s Kakka, which came out in the beginning of the new millennium, assumes equal importance in the evolution of Telugu Dalit literature in respect of the deviation from not only the contemporary mainstream literature but also from some aspects of Dalit language and literature. Kakka is a signpost in the transition of Telugu Dalit literature in respect of representing Dalitness in content and culture; and reclaiming the Dalit language. The novel assumes significance in the way a Madiga story is delineated in at least three distinctive ways: by the nature of the events presented, by the way they are treated with symbols of Madiganess, and by marking its linguistic distinctiveness.Kakka is an inward looking Dalit novel portraying Dalit experience in terms of poverty, disputes and violence vis-à-vis intra and inter-caste rivalries. The events presented in the novel revolve round deprivation, violence, the question of land, self-respect and the politics of Dalit empowerment. It depicts the Madiga life in transition through three generations: the grandmother, the mother and the lead character, Kakka. The novel opens with an exquisite visualization of a generation’s lifespan compressed into a few pages dealing with his grandmother. The Dalit life in the pre-Independence period was entirely carried out by slavery and gleaning the leftovers in the fields as represented by his grandmother. The life of the second-generation Dalits is portrayed by means of Kakka’s mother, Kalemma, a widow. The travails faced by her are the classic instances of the intra and inter-caste contradictions, characteristic of the caste system. Men belonging to her own caste subject her to physical and mental violence accusing her of sexual relations; alienate her along with her son from their community. Meting out unimaginably inhuman torture, the mother and the son are excommunicated denying them work in the village.Kakka resolves the problem of his mother by getting her suitably remarried. Widow Remarriages among the Dalits are as common and real as the socio-economic problems they confront in the hands of the landlords. The rest of the novel is about Kakka’s growth into a mature adult who realizes that the problem of caste is too complicated with its subtleties and nuances subjecting the Dalits to the oppression both within and outside the caste. The agrarian relations, Madiga culture and ritual, politics of anti-Nizam agitation, inter-caste rivalries, hostility against the Dalits and the futility of the State in changing the Dalits’ lives are portrayed so realistically that the incidents portrayed in the novel sound stranger than fiction to those who are not familiar with the rural Dalit life. The events presented are characteristic of, what may be termed, the Madiga nationalism.Yellaiah’s credit in representing the Dalit life lies equally in the way they are treated. The novel Kakka is an attempt to narrate the un-narratable. The novelist chooses to deal with the lowest social and economic levels characteristic of the social destitution. The treatment of the social subalternity of the Madigas is accomplished by liberally drawing from the symbols of Madiganess that include the Madiga rites and rituals, myth and ceremonies, Dalit and folk deities, which are all essentially different from those of the mainstream Hindu order. The events are treated with the Madiganess as a guiding motive in the characterization, imagery and delineation. The brought-up, growth and maturity of Kakka is rendered realistically tempered with defiance, which is expected of a deprived Madiga. The treatment of the events can best be understood in terms of a series of insights for a social anthropologist. It is in this respect that Kakka stands out to be a true Dalit novel when compared to the most accomplished English novels, Untouchable by Mulkraj Anand and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. In both the novels, the untouchable heroes are portrayed improbably as the ideal, as the desired ones. Anand’s Bakha is depicted as intelligent, able-bodied strong and dignified unlike the average scavenger, who is uncouth and unclean. Roy’s Velutha is built like a God, very gentle and sensitive. The untouchable social subalterns in these novels are created akin to their privileged counterparts in certain respects. This kind of “bestowing a particular kind of individuality on the untouchable characters is limited”, improbable and unrealistic.2 In contrast, Kakka is not even one among his caste folk; he is less than the rest in the Madiga hierarchy having been excommunicated and denied of caste-occupation and even a bride. Kakka and the rest of the characters in the novel, their occupation, their homes and the surroundings are characteristically uncouth and unclean with the stink and squalor surroundings. However, in spite of their illiteracy, subordination and all kinds of destitution, Kakka and the other Madiga characters in the novel are guided by the materialist rationalism in their outlook; their understanding of discrimination, exploitation, disputes, protest and rebellion, which are germane to the Madiga Others. The social, economic and political subalternity is treated with the symbols of Madiganess.Then comes the most important aspect of the linguistic distinctiveness of the novel. Yellaiah chooses a suitable form to represent the Dalit life in Kakka. While the Dalit literature itself is a defiance of and deviation from the aesthetics of the mainstream literature, Kakka deviates even from the modern Telugu Dalit literature produced during the last two decades. The main deviation of Kakka lies in respect of the distinctiveness of the language that Yellaiah employs in his novels and poetry alike. His attempt is aimed at reclaiming the Dalit language, which he accomplishes at three seminal levels: the orality, the dialect and the register.First, the use of different forms of the oral tradition in the narrative. What is remarkable about the narrative is that there is not a single instance of written mode of communication throughout the novel; the novel is written making use of different aspects of the spoken mode. This is in keeping with the reality of the illiteracy of the Dalit characters and the Dalit reality portrayed in the novel. One of the striking features of the Telugu letters used in the novel is that the novelist avoided diligently certain letters, which are characteristic of the written mode. He replaced the letters meant for written mode of communication by such letters, which find their place in the informal oral communication. Most of the Telugu letters that Yellaiah expressions are not ‘acceptable’ in the written mode. He has successfully avoided the use of the ten aspirated allophones that include, kh, gh, chh, jh, th, dh, thh, dhh, ph and bh, the letters which are characteristic of written mode; which are hardly used in speech even by the educated speakers, except the ones belonging to a particular caste. Further, Yellaiah also avoided the use of the post-alveolar sounds, /n/, /l/; the alveolar, /nt/ and the velar /ng/ (the latter two are hardly used by anyone) and the writer admits that they cannot be overcome overnight, and would ascertain the need for overcoming such non-Dalit features of Telugu: “How can Telugu Dalit literature come of age without overcoming the post-alveolar Sanskrit /l/ in the word ‘Dalit’?”3 According to Yellaiah, there should be no place for the non-Dalit features of Telugu in Dalit literature. “Dalitising Telugu should begin at least with Dalit literature,” Yellaiah affirms.4The next aspect of the linguistic distinctiveness of the orality of Kakka is about morphology, the structure of words. Most of the words Yellaiah uses are not free morphemes; he synthesizes words by mixing with the morphs of other words. Several words used in the novel are not lexical in the sense that they cannot be found in the dictionaries; they cannot be found in isolation. They need to be understood as separate words forming into a new entity. For instance three separate words, katha (story), cheputha (I’ll narrate) and vinu (you, listen) are combined into one portmanteau, kathjepthinu. He would inflect or derive novel forms of words by strangely joining separate words into one word. The joining of the words is accomplished in a different way. This aspect of combining the words, which is characteristic of the oral communication, strengthens his narrative.The structure of the sentences in the novel too does not conform to the established Telugu syntax. Not to conform to the established syntax too is a form of Dalit defiance of the notion of acceptability. Instead of writing sentences in the order of subject-object-verb (SOV), the novelist would go on piling up series of verbs without commas, before introducing the subject and the main verb. The novelist breaks the rules of grammar of written Telugu. His sentences are, opined a reviewer of Kakka, neither grammatical nor ungrammatical. The dexterity of the novelist is demonstrated in the use of the words, which are different from the written mode but familiar to the spoken mode. Another unique feature of the narrative is doing away with punctuation, especially commas and full stops: avoiding commas almost completely, Yellaiah uses full stops sparingly. Most of the paragraphs in the novel run into succession of sentences without being separated by either commas or full stops. The novel abounds in direct speech and what may be called the ‘thinking aloud’ by the characters. He would straight away introduce the direct speech, and in most of the cases, the reader would come to know the speaker of the sentence at the end of the speech. These features are characteristic of orality.Sindu Yakshagaanam, the most popular form of the Dalit folk art; the art of the Dakkali’s who recount the family-lineages of the Madigas; the manner of the speech of an illiterate Dalit in the day-to-day communication have a perceivable influence in the narration of Kakka. The avoidance of the punctuation allows the flow of narration in the manner of Dalit street-plays. The use of the work-chants/songs, songs of various rites, festivals, bonfires and the songs from the street plays is characteristic of the Dalit forms of fork arts. Other features of Dalit folklore include the use of proverbs and abuses that Kakka abounds. A word of explanation concerning the abuses that the novelist employs may not be out of place. The abuses are the most intrinsic part of the conversation of the illiterate Dalit men and women. But what is noteworthy is that the Dalits use the abuses without meaning or intending the pejorative sense of the abuses. Yellaiah uses the abuses in the novel true to the conversation of the Dalits in real life.The second linguistic distinctiveness is the use of the Telangana dialect, which is employed not only for the dialogue but also for the narrative. However, it is not a new experiment to write a novel in the Telangana dialect. Other writers who successfully experimented with the dialect in fiction include Thummeti Raghothama Reddy and Allam Rajaiah in the Telangana dialect, Chakravenu and Namini Subrahmanyam Nayudu in the Rayalaseema dialect and Ravi Sastri in the coastal dialect. In Kakka, Yellaiah goes ahead of these writers by using the Telangana dialect as spoken by the rural illiterate Dalits.Finally, Yellaiah complements the oral tradition and the Telangana dialect with the Madiga register. On this count, Kakka is the first of its kind as far as Telugu Dalit literature is concerned. What the novelist achieves by means of this is that the readers get an original feeling of what Dalit language is like. The portrayal of incidents dealing with the Madiga occupations such as processing bullock-hide, making leather goods, playing on the drum, rendering agricultural services; cultural aspects like the rituals of birth, death, wedding, puberty, eating bullock-meat and so on are rendered using their own register, as the incidents portrayed are culture-specific; Madiga-specific. The Madiga register that the novelist employed would best represent the ‘stench’ of the Dalit life. To express it in the stylized, standard and neutral Telugu would have been at the cost of the essential Dalitness. Neutral expressions would generally convey positive connotations romanticizing the Dalit experience. Yellaiah avoided the neutrality of expressions successfully by employing the sociolect of the Madigas.In effect, Yellaiah’s attempt at reclaiming the Dalit language by means of linguistic distinctiveness is aimed at Dalitising Telugu language by liberating it from the influence of Sanskrit as well as the written Telugu. A Dalitised art form would have to be produced as an antithesis of and in opposition to the conventional art form. This is accomplished in defying all the established and known forms and worldviews of the conventional art. As defiance is the crux of Dalit protest, defiance of the conventional art forms the core of Dalit literature. The net impact of all the forms of the orality employed in the narrative is that the novel attains the feature of a genre, shravya navala, an audio-novel – a novel that is read aloud for the pleasure of its sounds, proving that “reading is also a creative act” by means of the “power of language.”5IIThen how would one go about translating the linguistic distinctiveness of Kakka? Whether it is possible to render these features into English is an important question. It is true that they make the translation much more complicated and challenging. The feats of a translator are to perform a kind of linguistic gymnastics to achieve a semblance of the effect of the original. The oral tradition, the dialect and the register employed in the novel are the cultural matrices of the experience of the Dalits. To render the experience, which is their own, into a language which is not their own (to use Raja Rao’s paradigm) is but approximating the original by means of cultural transfer. The target of any translation therefore is to provide the reader, to the possible extent, the richness of the source text in terms of language and culture. My objective has been to represent the novel without upsetting the readability of English.An English translation of Kakka should not read non-distinctive as in the case of Alburt Camus’ The Stranger or Hemingway’s original English novel, The Old Man and the Sea both of which are characteristic of neutrality of language devoid of local flavour. Instead, the translation of Kakka is expected to carry the flavour of Telugu, the Telangana dialect, Madiga register and the spoken mode. This is partly accomplished by Telugising English. The method followed to Telugise English is by means of syntactic emulation. The verb-final structure of Telugu is preferred at times to the English SVO structure, but not at the cost of intelligibility. This aspect of syntax gives the reader a feel of reading a non-native English. This may suit a target text produced in the written mode, for it is the written language that conforms to the established word order. A Dalit text is essentially about the illiterate people whose Telugu is different from that of the educated ones. The feature of linguistic distinctiveness that the novelist accomplished by defying the ‘acceptable’ forms of syntax, punctuation and the established phrase structure, which cannot be rendered verbatim in a language like English; an attempt has been made to ‘bend’ English without hampering readability. The best way of recovery in translation is not by standardizing the style but by approximating the linguistic ethnicity of the original.Another problem that confronts the translator of a work of this kind is the lexical features. There is a practice of transliterating the source words in the name of retaining the flavour of original Telugu. But this can be avoided in the case of exact substitutes that can transfer the original sense. Lest they not only impede the intelligibility but distract the flow of reading.Translating the lexical features of a Dalit text is the crux of the work. Some of the words dealing with the Dalit experience do have their English equivalents, which if used, defeats the very purpose of translating a Dalit text. For example a word like ‘beef’, by all means, is the exact rendering of the original. But it would convey the meaning in the Western sense of beef. Instead, an expression like ‘bullock-meat’ or ‘cattle-meat’ would perhaps represent the food habit of the Dalits. Similarly shitting-enclosure is preferred to lavatory; hut for house; head-cloth for turban; shoulder-cloth for towel; wada/hamlets for street; meals for breakfast/lunch; fall on one’s feet for prostrate are some of the examples of how the former in each set may, to some extent, represent the Dalit way of life, while the use of the latter would have either Anglicized and Hinduised or neutralized the original expressions defeating the very purpose of translating a Dalit text.The caste hierarchy and inter-personal relations among the people of various castes is communicated, and best understood by the inflections suffixed to the names and pronouns of the Dalits by the upper caste men. Morphs such as, arey, vay, ra and various forms of abuses and scolding are rendered in English to convey the sense of social hierarchy in the caste system.Thus translating a Dalit novel like Kakka would entail the need for not only Telugising but also Dalitising so as to represent the linguistic ethnicity of the source text by avoiding the translator’s pitfalls of Anglicisation, Hinduisation and neutralization of the Dalit expressions.Notes1K.G. Satyamurthy, who wrote under the pseudonym, Sivasagar was a prominent revolutionary poet and aesthetician, and authored several poems with revolutionary theme before turning into a Dalit thinker. Satyamurthy initiated differing and deviating from the ideology of the Left to adopt Ambedkar’s thought. Though the output of his Dalit poetry was not voluminous, he played a seminal role in getting the literary thrust shifted from the class to the caste. Thus the coming of age of Dalit literature has to do with the giving up of the Left by the Dalit activists 2Tabish Khair, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English novels, New Delhi: Oup, 2001, 1463The author holds radical views in respect of the use of certain aspects of the non-Telugu features that crept into Telugu during the phase of the transliteration of the Sanscrit texts into Telugu. During the course of the translation of the novel, Yellaiah expressed several views against the use of the Sanskrit words and certain sounds and letters even by the Dalit writers. 4Yellaih expressed these views as a part of the discussions held with the translator at different points of time.5Kalekuri Prasad in a review of Kakka in The Book Review, (February, 2002), 26. K. PurushothamKpku62@gmail.com Posted by GURRAM SEETA RAMULU at 10:09 AM 0 comments వేముల ఎల్లయ్య కక్క ఆంగ్ల అనువాద పరిచయం She Fastened her Chastity with a Hearty హొపేAn excerpt from Vemula Ellaiah’s Kakka: A Dalit నోవెల్Once Ellaiah had visited Kalemma’s house as usually. Agamaiah noticed him. He thought it’s the right time to accuse them of having an illicit affair. Ellaiah called out Rammallaiah, and said, ‘Look, my sister-in-law is a whore; she sleeps with Ellaiah. Go and see it for yourself. He is very much in her house at the moment.’ He took him to her house, and showed Ellaiah at Kalemma’s house. ‘You being the chief of the caste, listen to me! We have to decide and settle the matter. Why is he visiting her?’Agamaiah brought the matter to the rachabanda, stone-pedestal for the public resolution of the disputes. Rammallaiah, the chief of the caste, gave them a week’s time setting the conditions, ‘To settle what kind of a man he’s, and what kind of a woman she’s, each one has to choose four representatives for arbitrating the issue.’Thursday. As the sun rose scorching, both of them deposited a thousand rupees each, and gathered at the tree of Mysamma, the folk-deity.Kalemma who didn’t have a male-support, deposited her contribution of thousand rupees by selling a plate and a glass. Agamaiah and Ellaiah called for Kalemma to the rachabanda, where the caste folk assembled, ‘Under this tree of ours – as Pochamma, the folk deity stands witness – tell us precisely what exactly had taken place. There should be nothing to hide. Rei, you caste folk, Agamaiah! You are the one who knows the fact; come to the fore, and tell us what had happened,’ they asked.‘Oyya, you the elders! I don’t ever lie. Let me tell you the truth. Blinded by smugness, she’s whoring herself to Ellaiah. She has lowered the status of our family; it’s no sin even if she is killed. Having spread the end of her sari to sleep with Ellaiah, the wretch seems naïve. If she claims that she is not sleeping with him, she should prove herself by swearing; she must place her hands in the cauldron of simmering oil; she should hold a blazing crowbar in her fists. Ask her if she agrees to these conditions,’ Agamaiah challenged.The representatives of Kalemma asked, ‘Do you yourself agree to the conditions set by you?’‘I am ready for everything. If I do them all myself, would you get her head tonsured? Would you draw lime-designs on her scalp, and parade her in the streets seated on a black-donkey? (meanest forms of punishment) She should be driven out of the village. Are you ready for the conditions? I swear by my wife and children. I swear by deity Muthalamma. I swear…’ Agamaiah poured a pot of cold water on himself making the atmosphere tense.The representative of Ellaiah got up to say, ‘My client might be going to her house! Don’t you ever go to anybody’s house? Is that the reason why you had lived in the towns? Aren’t we humans? Are we animals? How could one manage without ever going to others’ houses? What has he done there, and how? Speak with conscience. We consider it a sin if at all we happen to witness the mating of the crows. Have you ever seen while they had met? Don’t ever indulge in sinful talk; you will lose your eyes. Stop speaking lies! We are ready for anything if it’s proved that our client is guilty.’‘Oho, is that so? Why does he visit the house of a lonely woman? What else do they have to do together? In that case, if I were to visit your house in your absence, will you ignore it?’ Agamaiah questioned back.‘Aha, you are the one possessing a house in the village, and do you venture visiting my house ra? O.K, then; visit my house! Let me see how you would! I’ll pierce you with a knife and garland you a wreath of cattle-meat. You whoreson!’ the representative of Ellaiah fulminated.They had fisticuffs with each other. Agamaiah’s dhoti and the banian were torn and soiled; the man seemed like a lump of clay. Having been humiliated, he said, ‘Look, do you all understand now? You must tell me now. The caste folk are all one; they all plotted to kill me. She would certainly get me killed. Isn’t she a whore? Aren’t there men who carry the cot yearning for the cunt, as the saying goes! Such a big altercation has taken place just because of an utterance; all of you can see it. Is it for nothing that he visits her, if it’s not for sleeping with her?’ Agamaiah dusted the soil off his clothes, and began to cry rubbing his eyes.‘Ei, stop for a while,’ another representative among them said. Standing up, he continued, ‘What’s the issue we have assembled here for? What’s this awkward talk about? Do you keep quarrelling among yourselves without examining the tussle? Will you keep quiet or not?’ Every one kept quiet.‘The dispute is not going to end this way but…’ another representative intervened, ‘Arey, O Irrigation-Eeraiah! Keep ready twigs of tamarind tree for beating her. She would speak out the facts only when thrashed. Is it going to be settled when we discuss the matter this way? Drag out that woman, Kalemma, ra.’ Then, Irrigation-Eeraiah dragged Kalemma into the public by her hair.The representative of Ellaiah said, ‘You must let us know if what all your brother-in-law had told us is true.’ Some of the elders spoke that Kalemma’s not guilty.Rising up with pleading-hands, Kalemma said desperately, ‘Ayya, I am not guilty of any wrongdoing; why’s it that I am harassed in this manner? I don’t know anything about it. You have insulted me amid so many men; you have called me a raw-whore. I am not going to swear, since you all have insulted me and dragged me by hair.’Then, the elders in the crowd discussed among themselves, ‘What’s this! How come she is speaking like that? She seems to have really slept with him. That’s why Agamaiah might have planned for the public resolution of the dispute deliberately.’An old man among the elders said, ‘Let her sleep with him. But let’s settle the matter by asking her to pay penalty for the offence she had committed.’‘Are we men or women? If we settle the matter this way, would any woman be scared of us in future? Keep quiet if you don’t know!’ they got irritated.They placed ready the canes of tamarind tree, a cauldron of simmering oil and a crowbar. Kalemma, who had noticed them all, got a wrench in her innards. She went to the heap of soil, and tossed it all over herself. She rolled around in the garbage, and behaved hysterically mad and foolish. She shouted, ‘Arey! You are all the men with a fistful of manly moustache, aren’t you? A thousand rupees each that we have deposited is not meant for drinking toddy and liquor. O.K! You may drink! You are accusing me that I had slept with Ellaiah. If I really slept with him, does it shame you? You all have your wives and grownup daughters at home. Did they also sleep with him? Tell me if it’s an insult to you. If anything, it’s me, who is ashamed!’ Kalemma screamed at the top of her voice.Getting up, Ellaiah said, ‘Ehe, did I sleep with you? No, I didn’t; I’m not of that sort. What’s this, Kalemma?‘Wait, you are anyway a man! Why are you worried? It’s me who should be ashamed. Why do you worry? Ehe, keep quiet!’Some of the elders pacified Ellaiah.‘My son is not young among the youth and not an elder among the grown ups; he’s of eighteen years old. I swear by my lad. I’m not going to leave this village. Let me see how you’re going to send me out of this village. Wasn’t it in this village that my husband died; wasn’t it here that he was buried? Wasn’t it here that I had given birth to my lad?’ Kalemma spoke out composed.Irrigation-Eeraiah whipped her on her back with canes of tamarind tree. Having developed cold sweat, Kalemma shivered, and urinated dripping past her legs. Irrigation-Eeraiah kicked on the bosom of Kakka, who tried to rescue his besieged mother. Kakka got tossed up, and fell down with a thud. They tied the lad with a damp rope as he was writhing in pain on the floor like a sacrificial goat at the deity of Mysamma. ‘Are you coming to shield your mother who shamed herself?’ they called him names.Both the mother and the son stood thunderstruck being unable to speak as the caste folk uncoiled their talk against them. Though they knew it for sure the one who was in fact at wrong, the elders from each of the Madiga families looked at their face, spitting on them.‘Chi, wretchedness! When we seem nauseating to them all, why should we live in this village? We’ll go somewhere from here,’ Kakka thought to himself.This is the village where Kakka’s ancestors lived as members of the caste. Kakka continued to think to himself, ‘If not this village, which we had considered our own till the death of the ayyamma, where else can we afford to live? Whichever village we might leave for, we may not have the Madiga entitlements. There may not be our rights among the caste folk near the Madiga-well. There’s no question of leaving this village, why should we?’ Kakka, who was deeply engrossed in these thoughts, was alerted when the chief of the Madigas spoke, ‘Arey, Irrigation-Eeraiah! Make a garland of sandals and marking-nuts, and hang it on the neem-tree in front of Kalemma’s house; raise a fence of thorny-twigs around her house. Make a tom-tom with dappu, a drum in the surrounding villages that they have been excommunicated,’ commanded the chief.Having shaken hands with the elders, her brother-in-law, Agamaiah chased Kakka and Kalemma from the rachabanda to her hut. Then, they all pissed in a row around her house as a mark of insult.Having scolded them untiringly, everyone had left the place. The mother and the son entered into their hut, and closed the doors; they wailed and cried wildly. The house and the street seemed reverberated by their screaming, which sounded like a cyclonic wind.Kalemma thought, ‘The adversity of the kinfolk is so powerful. It’s all just for not sleeping with my brother-in-law, a good-for-nothing fellow! He is so vengeful. My son has grown up enough to work as a field-labourer. Ehe, we can survive working hard somehow or the other. I’m a pure woman; if they label me a whore, do I become one?’ thinking so, Kalemma fastened her chastity with a hearty hope.Yet, it’s a life that’s blamed. It pierced their heart having become a cactus. She’s withered and singed having been greatly agitated. There’s none to speak to her. No one offered her work in accordance with the caste-accord. ‘What am I going to do?’ Kalamma endured a lot of persecution.She was not allowed access to the public water. She was not permitted to fetch fire for lighting her hearth. Her house was completely isolated from the Madiga-wada. All those coming from the neighbouring villages to attend weddings and functions labeled her house as the one belonging to a whore.‘She is that kind of a woman; hence, a thorny-fence had been raised around her house,’ everyone commented. Wherever a few people gathered, Kalemma’s episode became a big tale. His mother suffered so much just on account of deciding to stop her son from attending to the field-labour work. Her agony is un-narratable. She thought, ‘The grown up lad has been subjected to so much of humiliation right in front of my eyes.’In the meantime, her son, about whom she’s worried a lot, could become a senior field-labourer. ‘My son, who’s detested by Papi Reddy patel, has now grown to be trustworthy to the same patel.’ Who knows about the steaming of a pot that’s full to the brim?Just that very year, the fields yielded a wonderfully rich crop. The patel asked Kakka to process the grains, stuff it into the gunny bags, and get it by the bullock cart to the grain market in the town. Then, the patel left for the grain market early by his bicycle. The patel made a survey of the heaps of grains in the market finding out the price the government offered. Then he waited for Kakka looking in the direction of the track of the carts.The cart arrived. Kakka stopped the cart, and supported it with the wooden poles. He set off the bullocks, and tethered them placing some fodder in front of them.Every time he came to the grain market, Kakka befriended one Potter-Mangaiah who keeps selling pots at the market. Mangaiah, who noticed him, said, ‘Hei lad! You seem gloomy today. What’s the matter?’Kakka, who had always disclosed to him his pains and pleasures, began to narrate him in detail all that had happened. Kakka broke down holding his hands.‘The people are like crows, my lad. Since you are in trouble, I’ll let you know something, do you oblige me? Hope you don’t mind. You must assure me.’‘I swear by my mother; do I say no if you offer to lessen my sorrow?’‘You’re a grown up man now; you can survive somehow. When someone offers you a bride, you would lead a conjugal life. I can understand the suffering of your mother in your village. Why don’t you think of your mother, my lad? You’re my dear one; don’t think otherwise. There’s a Madiga by name Bolguri Kondaiah in my village. He’s young by age; he’s the only son of parents. His parents died soon after his marriage. His wife died at the time of her first labour. He owns a wide courtyard. His life and caste-occupation are perfectly alright. Let me know your decision if only you would consent, my lad. Human beings endure suffering more than the cattle. We’ll get him remarried. What do you say? Let me know, my lad!’‘What’s this? You’re speaking in such an awkward way! Ehe, keep quiet! You…, damn with your suggestion,’ agitated, Kakka.Having narrated to Kakka numerous problems and episodes, he said, ‘Keep pondering about your mother.’ Potter-Mangaiah narrated the problems that a single-woman would face in the society. He could convince Kakka at last by narrating the problems like knitting one bead after the other.Then, the patel who decided on the price of the grain shouted, ‘Arey Kakka! Unload the grain for the dealer; the price has been fixed ra.’ Kakka got alerted. Having handed over the bags of grain to the dealer, Kakka set the bullocks to the cart, and started for the village. Potter-Mangaiah hollered asking Kakka to think and decide on his suggestion.‘Fine, I’ll come back to the market next Saturday taking permission from the patel.’‘Alright then, you may take leave,’ Potter-Mangaiah waved to him.He led the bullock cart back to the village. Having tethered the bullocks in the shed, Kakka went home by night. Soon after reaching home, he said, ‘Mother, I am feeling hungry; serve me some food.’ She served him a plateful of food in haste, as her son had been out daylong. She served her son to his fill. Having eaten, he relaxed on the cot thinking, ‘Whether to disclose the matter to her or, not?’ Kakka felt pained in his heart.‘Come what may,’ thinking so, he called out, ‘Amma, mother O amma!’ he addressed her so endearingly.Kalemma, who heard him call out, came out, and said ‘What’s the matter, my son, what’s the matter?’ she soothed the legs of her son, who got tired working the whole day.‘O amma, I’ll say something; swear by me not to think otherwise.’‘What’s it… what’s it about?’‘Amma… when am I going to be married off?’‘Why not my son? When we get a good bride, I’ll certainly get you married off? Shouldn’t we search for a girl matching our family?’‘That’s what! I too desire the same as you are struggling all alone.’‘Yes, that’s right; I can toil to any extent for your sake.’‘Really so? Then for my sake, you must get married again, amma! You have to live with another man! You have to say yes, somehow.’‘What’s this, Kakka? Whoever might have told you this? Does the society spare us if one’s son gets one’s own mother married off? Arey, do you advise me to get married again?’ Kalemma thrashed him on his back with a worn-out broomstick.The neighbouring women of the village learnt about Kakka’s proposal. They said one after the other, ‘If there’s no man at home, you’ll be blamed like this in future too. If a husband dies in our families, does the wife stay homebound? The bodily desires would surface one day or the other. You are anyway not old. The lad has grown up enough to cook his own food. Kalemma, you would face similar hardships if you don’t have a husband. You have to but live with someone for your own sake.’The near and the dear of the caste folk convinced her diligently. Even before his mother was awake, Kakka got up early in dark, and went on foot to the village of the new groom. Having gone to the house of Bolguri Kondaiah, Kakka took a look at the house and the surroundings.Then he went to Potter-Mangaiah, who proposed the match for his mother. Kakka said, ‘I’ve seen the groom you had proposed. Everything is alright. I’m convinced. You have to convince Bolguri Kondaiah. I’ll arrange for the second-marriage of my mother to be performed on the next Thursday in the shrine of Muthalamma in my village.’Kakka returned home from Potter-Mangaiah. Having washed his hands and feet at the water-trough, he went to the mother, and sat beside her. Kakka said, ‘Amma, I’ve gone to the village where you would live after your remarriage. The man, Bolguri Kondaiah seemed a good man – the man who would be my father. He is excellent. He’s not a man of anger. I’m fixing your re-marriage precisely for what you had been humiliated. It should be like spitting with a clunk on the faces of all those who had humiliated you in the village!’The following day was Thursday. She ground the millets on the grinding-slab, and cooked gatka with fermented-liquid that prevents staling. She mixed the gatka with onion, and fed her son handfuls. Mixing the rest of the gatka in water, she poured it into an earthen-pot, and placed it in the sling hanging to the roof-beam.Kalemma told her son, ‘Eat the gatka whenever you feel hungry, my son. You can have some of it tomorrow too. I’m going to belong to someone else by next week. I’ve to label myself with the surname of a fellow of another village. From a day after tomorrow onwards, keep cooking a small measure of rice, and eat. Don’t worry about me, my son.’‘Me? I’ll look after myself very well. Let’s go then. I’ve brought the requirements of the marriage. Come; let’s have a look at them. Betel nuts, dates, a sari, a shirt and a dhoti for father, blouse-pieces, waistcloth that forms a pouch, turmeric, kumkum and bangles – I brought them all. Let’s go to the shrine of Muthalamma. Father has already arrived there. He bought toe-rings, bangles and pusthe, bridal neck-string. We have no one for us worth calling our own. They have all rejected us. No one is going to attend the wedding. You will not fall short of anything. When you put on all these, you would look like Yellamma, deity Renuka.’Having accompanied his mother to the shrine, Kakka made Kondaiah knot the pusthe around his mother’s neck. While sending off his mother and father from the shrine through the village, they wailed holding each other. Kakka asked his mother to take care of herself, and his mother in turn asked the son to take care of himself. ‘Amma, let me take leave of you,’ as the son said, ‘Let me take leave of you, my son,’ the mother said. They consoled each other.Then, Kakka approached his stepfather, eyes streaming, and said, ‘Father, take care of my mother well. I’ll keep visiting her now and then,’ he broke down irresistibly holding the hands of the father. Turning back, Kakka banged his head hitting himself on a stone. ‘Why have you hit your head on the stone, my son? Having done so much for me, you have hurt your head; in that case I wouldn’t go.’‘O, amma, don’t worry. I couldn’t stand the grief, and therefore I did so. Amma, you may please leave.’ Having kept hand in hand – the hands of the mother and the father – Kakka led them to the pathway of his mother’s new in-law’s village, and began to go home.The mother said while looking back, ‘Ori Kakka, take care of yourself, my child.’ Kakka already walked too far to hear his mother’s yelling.‘This fellow is so great! Being a son, he got his mother married off,’ the village folk felt it an unusual event. Looking at the people, Kakka was reminded of the humiliating incident of the tamarind-tree, canes, marking-nuts, and the blistered fingers that were dipped in the cauldron of simmering oil – the same hands that his mother reared him enduring so many hardships. He thought to himself, ‘They had excommunicated my mother; accused her of being a whore; the people could say anything, but are they going to help us in troubled times?’ Kakka’s eyes flooded. Having sent off his mother in the pathway of eyes, he thought, ‘I’m the one born the wrong side up, and such a man is damned to suffer. The caste folk don’t belong to me; the mother left this village to lead a new life with another man. As she kept walking to her new in-law’s village, she seemed like seams of clouds that move away in layered sheets.’Kakka returned to his village from the outskirts; he reached home. The mother got remarried. He slept on a cot in the middle of the hut facing the roof. Then he looked at the sling hanging to the roof-beam. The knot of the bowl containing gatka seemed so cute. ‘Mother’s warmth is always like that. My mother, Kalemma should be happy always,’ thinking so, Kakka made the wick of the lamp smaller, and slipped into sleep.Translated from the original by K. Purushotham..........................................................................................................................................................................He can be reached at kpku62@gmail.com Posted by GURRAM SEETA RAMULU at 9:58 AM 0 comments Friday, September 19, 2008 వేముల ఎల్లయ్య కక్క ఆంగ్ల అనువాదానికి ముందు మాట AfterwordIDalits are a community whose rich heritage left unrecorded except as getting mentioned negatively in the Sanskrit epics and plays. They could not record their own history due to illiteracy causing incorrigible loss to what would have contributed to the most advanced productive technology. Having been neglected even in the modern historiography, the Dalits began to represent themselves in different forms of literature.Written Telugu Dalit literature, as a result, has a tradition of hardly three hundred and odd years though not necessarily known by the same nomenclature. It may be traced back to the seventeenth century saint poet, Potuluri Veerabrahmam1, a sudra social reformer who used to make a detour of the Dalit wadas, hamlets educating the people against the caste and untouchability. The hymns written and sung by himself and his disciples were popular among the Dalits who were illiterates. A tradition thus started, continued at different periods of social history of Andhra Pradesh. Another significant writer in this lineage is a saint poet, Yogi Vemana, a non-Brahmin, who wrote simple verse on various forms of superstitions and evil practices including caste and untouchability. Other noteworthy writers like Gurajaada Appaarao and a few others dealt with the caste and the untouchability. However, it should be understood that the Dalits in this period were written about by the non-Dalits rather than the Dalits writing themselves.In the subsequent period, the Dalits grew from the state of being written about to writing themselves during the Nationalist Movement. The Dalit writers of the Nationalist period however confined their concerns, by and large, to the problem of untouchability under the influence of Gandhi. Continuing the Dalit tradition set by such writers as Jala Rangaswamy, Kusuma Dharmanna Kavi, Nakka Chinavenkataiah, Nutakki Abraham, Premaiah and Boi Bhimanna among others, the modern Dalit poets dealt with the themes like untouchability and denial of public places like schools, temples, streets, hotels, and village-wells. Though the Dalits began writing about themselves, they were imitating the mainstream writing both in form and content.Telugu poetic movements, Bhava Kavitvam (Romantic poetry) and Navya Sampradaaya Kavitvam (Neo-Classical poetry) got de-linked from the contemporary socio-political reality. The writers of the former school were worried about themselves while the latter were concerned with the revival of traditionalism. The elements of subjectivity, revivalism and delinking of social life from literature were questioned by Gurram Jashuva, the first modern Telugu Dalit poet known for his outstanding work, Gabbilam (the bat).2 Jashuva questioned the tenets of the established literary aesthetics, and created Dalit poetry in classical form. Jashuva, therefore is considered a pioneer of not only Telugu Dalit literature, but Telugu literature itself.In the post-Independence period, Telugu littérateurs became complaisant and self-serving. This state was bombarded by a group of Telugu poets, who christened themselves Digambara Kavulu, Naked Poets who include Cherabandaraju, Bhairavaiah, Jwalamukhi, Nagnamuni, Nikhileshwar and Mahaswapna. They provided the much-needed jolt to Telugu literature. Their contribution to Telugu literature lies in re-linking literature to society. This was apparent in the way they chose their themes such as poverty, unemployment and political indifference in respect of upliftment of the downtrodden. Their concern for the underdogs was explicit even in the way they got their anthologies launched by making news. The first of their anthologies was released in 1965 at a street-corner meeting by Nampalli Pandu, a rickshaw puller and the second in 1966 by Jangala Chitti, a Hotel servant. Their third anthology, which had kick-started the modern Telugu literature, was dedicated in 1968 to an untouchable man from Krishna District by name Kanchikarla Kotesh, who was burnt alive by the caste-Hindus accusing him of theft. Thus when they dedicated their anthology to Kotesh, they were anticipating the modern social discourses which were to assume the forms of Dalit, feminist, adivasi and other subaltern movements in the times to come.While the first generation educated Dalits were content with the spoils they gained in the form of politics and employment without contributing much by means of liberating their brethren, some of the second generation educated Dalits, being responsible and responsive, took part in the agitations, rallies and public meetings besides making intellectual contribution in the form of academic research, media write-ups and literary output. * * *The Dalit phase in modern literature, society, and politics began late in Andhra Pradesh when compared to Maharastra, where social change and struggles for empowerment of the Dalits gained momentum with the founding of the Dalit Panthers in 1972. In Andhra Pradesh, as in Tamilnad, the Dalit discourse gained its currency in the eighties.The word Dalit became popular in 1985, a landmark year in Andhra Pradesh concerning Dalit discourse and agitations. It was in this year that the notorious Karamchedu massacre3 against the Dalits took place; it was in this year in which Dalit Mahasabha, a social outfit, was founded to fight for the Dalit rights and atrocities against the Dalits; it was in this year that a majour shift in ideological debate and praxis from the class to the caste had been initiated. K.G. Satyamurthy, also known as Sivasagar, a member of the Central Committee of the then People’s War (ML) challenged the leadership of the Party on account of what he had termed caste-based discrimination within the hierarchy of the Party. Having walked out of the Party in 1985, Satyamurthy formed socio-political outfits, and pioneered Dalit poetry becoming a staunch follower of the ideology of Ambedkar.Following the mayhem of 1985, a series of incidents at other places like Neerukonda, Thimma Samudram, Chundur, Vempenta and Cherlapally, among other incidents of atrocities, took place in the subsequent period. Besides the atrocities, the pro and anti-reservation agitations – the BC reservation agitation of 1986 in Andhra Pradesh and the OBC (Mandal reservation) of 1990 helped the Dalits in rallying support and expressing solidarity for the Dalit agitations. As a result, a spurt of Dalit activities, ranging from literary and journalistic discourses to cultural and political forms of protest, had begun. The educated Dalits, belonging to the second generation, who were the beneficiaries of the Ambedkarite reservations, waged various socio-political movements and agitations for self respect, Dalit rights, equality, empowerment and protest.The new generation Dalits began to produce a powerful body of Dalit literature. Telugu Dalit literature in general and poetry in particular, written in the 1990s to the present period, needs to be understood against this background. It was in 1995 that the first anthology of Telugu Dalit poetry entitled, Chikkanavutunna Paata (thickening song) was brought out by G. Laxminarsaiah and Tripuraneni Srinivas, which was followed by another anthology, Padunekkina Paata (sharpened song) by G. Laxminarsaiah4 in 1996. Both the anthologies, though not exclusively Dalit as they contain poems of sudras, are concerted efforts on the part of the poets and the anthologists to bring to light the Dalit ethos, angst, protest, heritage, myth and an alternative vision with a strong element of conscientising the Dalits and the non-Dalits including the oppressor. Some of the Dalit poets included in the anthologies were to become the most powerful voices in Dalit literature showing a direction to the young and emerging Dalit poets. The new generation poets brought out, in the subsequent period, a number of individual anthologies of poetry enriching the oeuvre of Telugu Dalit poetry.* * *It took fairly a long time for the Telugu Dalit novel proper to evolve into what it is now. As in the case of poetry, the Nationalist Movement influenced the Telugu Dalit novel, the most important of which was Unnava Laxminarayana’s Malapalli (a Mala hamlet) 1922 followed by N.G. Ranga’s Harijana Naayakudu (a harijan leader) and Dasarathi Rangacharya’s Chillaradevullu, translated into English as The Lesser Deities. The other noteworthy name in this lineage is Muppala Ranganayakamma, known for her Balipeetham. Kesava Reddy, popular for his Athadu Adavini Jayinchaadu (translated as He Conquered the Jungle); and Aruna, who wrote Elli and Neeli, are known for their writings that deal with Erukala, the pig-tending community. But what is noteworthy of the evolution of the Dalit novel is that while the post 1985 period – a period of Dalit awareness – produced vibrant Dalit poetry, the same was not true of the Dalit novel. There was a void in the Dalit novel after the Nationalist period. The Dalit novel had to wait till 2000, to come of age, which decisively it did. It was in this year that Vemula Yellaiah published Kakka and G. Kalyanarao, Antaraani Vasantham (untouchable spring), a revolutionary novel by a Dalit that shows solution in the extremist violence. The other Dalit novels that deserve mention in this context are Chilukuri Devaputra’s Panchamam and Spartacus’ (Mohanrao) Khaki Bathukulu. * * *The Telugu Dalit literature from its genesis to the present period may be classified into four phases that may enable the readers problematise the writings. However, it may not be possible to demarcate the phases in terms of accurate periodisation.The Dalit literature, exclusively poetry – the novel was yet to take its genesis – of the early period can be termed the Humanist phase in the sense of opposing untouchability and caste without questioning the religious and social sanction of the caste and untouchability. The Nationalist and the pre-Nationalist Dalit writing may be termed the Harijan phase as most of it was an outcome of Gandhian influence during the Nationalist Movement. Dalit poetry by the Dalits and Dalit novel by the non-Dalits were written during the period. The post-Independence period writings, that could be termed the SC phase, by the first generation educated Dalits was imitative of the themes and forms of the mainstream writers who wrote about the Dalits. The writings of the following period could be rightly termed the Dalit phase. The works produced by the second and third generation educated Dalits, who subscribe themselves to the ideology of Ambedkar, who question the predominant Left, attacked the casteist hegemony. It may not be out of place to state that the Dalit discourse – both in politics and literature – strengthened itself and got expanded ever since the Dalits began to question, and deviate from the Left in Andhra Pradesh.It is against the background of the evolution of Telugu Dalit literature through the four phases that Vemula Yellaiah’s writings – poetry and novels – need to be problematised.IIJashuva’s Gabbilam is considered the first groundbreaking work that deviated from the contemporary literary tenets of Telugu literature. K.G Satyamurthy’s ideological deviation from the aesthetics of the Left is the second most important landmark in the evolution of the Dalit literature rather idirectly.5 In this order, Yellaiah’s Kakka, which came out in the beginning of the new millennium, assumes equal importance in the evolution of Telugu Dalit literature in respect of the deviation from not only the contemporary mainstream literature but also from some aspects of Dalit language and literature. Kakka is a signpost in the transition of Telugu Dalit literature in respect of representing Dalitness in content and culture; and reclaiming the Dalit language. The novel assumes significance in the way a Madiga story is delineated in at least three distinctive ways: by the nature of the events presented, by the way they are treated with symbols of madiganess, and by marking its linguistic distinctiveness.Kakka is an inward looking Dalit novel portraying Dalit experience in terms of poverty, disputes and violence vis-à-vis intra and inter-caste rivalries. The events presented in the novel revolve round deprivation, violence, the question of land, self-respect and the politics of Dalit empowerment. It depicts the Madiga life in transition through three generations: the grandmother, the mother and the lead character, Kakka. The novel opens with an exquisite visualization of a generation’s lifespan compressed into a few pages dealing with his grandmother. The Dalit life in the pre-Independence period was entirely carried out by slavery and gleaning the leftovers in the fields as represented by his grandmother. The life of the second-generation Dalits is portrayed by means of Kakka’s mother, Kalemma, a widow. His mother is a classic case of the intra and inter-caste contradictions, characteristic of the caste system. Men belonging to her own caste subject her to physical and mental violence accusing her of sexual relations; alienate her along with her son from their community. Meting out unimaginably inhuman torture, the mother and the son are excommunicated denying them work in the village.Kakka resolves the problem of his mother by getting her suitably remarried. Widow Remarriages among the Dalits are as common and real as the socio-economic problems they confront in the hands of the landlords. The rest of the novel is about Kakka’s growth into a mature adult who realizes that the problem of caste is too complicated with its subtleties and nuances subjecting the Dalits to the oppression both within and outside the caste. The agrarian relations, Madiga culture and ritual, politics of anti-Nizam agitation, inter-caste rivalries, hostility against the Dalits and the futility of the State in changing the Dalits’ lives are portrayed so realistically that the incidents portrayed in the novel sound stranger than fiction to those who are not familiar with the rural Dalit life. The events presented are characteristic of, what may be termed, the Madiga nationalism.Yellaiah’s credit in representing the Dalit life lies equally in the way they are treated. Kakka is an attempt to narrate the unnarratabe. The novelist choses to deal with the lowest social and economic levels characteristic of the social destitution. The treatment of the social subalternity of the Madigas is accomplished by liberally drawing from the symbols of Madiganess that include the Madiga rites and rituals, myth and ceremonies, Dalit and folk deities, which are all essentially different from those of the mainstream Hindu order. The events are treated with the Madiganess as a guiding motive in the characterization, imagery and delineation. The brought-up, growth and maturity of Kakka is renedered realistically tempered with defiance, which is expected of a deprived Madiga. The treatment of the events can best be understood in terms of a series of insights for a social anthropologist. It is in this respect that Kakka stands out to be a true Dalit novel when compared to the most accomplished English novels, Untouchable by Mulkraj Anand and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. In both the novels, the untouchable heroes are portrayed improbably as the ideal, as the desired ones. Anand’s Bakha is depicted as intelligent, able-bodied strong and dignified unlike the average scavenger, who is uncouth and unclean. Roy’s Velutha is built like a God, very gentle and sensitive. The untouchable social subalterns in these novels are created akin to their previlaged counterparts in certain respects. This kind of “bestowing a particular kind of individuality on the untouchable characters is limited”, improbable and unrealistic.6 In contrast, Kakka is not even one among his caste folk; he is less than the rest in the Madiga hierarchy having been excommunicated and denied of caste-occupation and even a bride. Kakka and the rest of the characters in the novel, their occupation, their homes and the surroundings are characteristically uncouth and unclean with the stink and squalor surroundings. However, in spite of their illiteracy, subordination and all kinds of destitution, Kakka and the other Madiga characters in the novel are guided by the materialist rationalism in their outlook; their understanding of discrimination, exploitation, disputes, protest and rebellion, which are germane to the Madiga Others. The social, economic and political subalternity is treated with the symbols of Madiganess.Then comes the most important aspect of the linguistic distinctiveness of the novel. Yellaiah chooses a suitable form to represent the Dalit life in Kakka. While the Dalit literature itself is a defiance of and deviation from the aesthetics of the mainstream literature, Kakka deviates even from the modern Telugu Dalit literature produced during the last two decades. The main deviation of Kakka lies in respect of the distinctiveness of the language that Yellaiah employs in his novels and poetry alike. His attempt is aimed at reclaiming the Dalit language, which he accomplishes at three seminal levels: the orality, the dialect and the register.First, the use of different forms of the oral tradition in the narrative. What is remarkable about the narrative is that there is not a single instance of written mode of communication throughout the novel; the novel is written making use of different aspects of the spoken mode. This is in keeping with the reality of the illiteracy of the Dalit characters and the Dalit reality portrayed in the novel. One of the striking features of the Telugu letters used in the novel is that the novelist avoided diligently certain letters, which are characteristic of the written mode. He replaced the letters meant for written mode of communication by such letters, which find their place in the informal oral communication. Most of the Telugu letters that Yellaiah expressions are not ‘acceptable’ in the written mode. He has successfully avoided the use of the ten aspirated allophones that include, kh, gh, chh, jh, th, dh, thh, dhh, ph and bh, the letters which are characteristic of written mode; which are hardly used in speech even by the educated speakers, except the ones belonging to a particular caste. Further, Yellaiah also avoided the use of the post-alveolar sounds, /n/, /l/; the alveolar, /nt/ and the velar /n/ (the latter two are hardly used by anyone) and the writer admits that they cannot be overcome overnight, and would ascertain the need for overcoming such non-Dalit features of Telugu: “How can Telugu Dalit literature come of age without overcoming the post-alveolar Sanskrit /l/ in the word ‘Dalit’?” According to Yellaiah, there should be no place for the non-Dalit features of Telugu in Dalit literature. “Dalitising Telugu should begin at least with Dalit literature,” Yellaiah affirms.7The next aspect of the linguistic distinctiveness of the orality of Kakka is about morphology, the structure of words. Most of the words Yellaiah uses are not free morphemes; he synthesizes words by mixing with the morphs of other words. Several words used in the novel are not lexical in the sense that they cannot be found in the dictionaries; they cannot be found in isolation. They need to be understood as separate words forming into a new entity. For instance three separate words, katha (story), cheputha (I’ll narrate) and vinu (you, listen) are combined into one portmanteau, kathjepthinu. He would inflect or derive novel forms of words by strangely joining separate words into one word. The joining of the words is accomplished in a different way. This aspect of combining the words, which is characteristic of the oral communication, strengthens his narrative.The structure of the sentences in the novel too does not conform to the established Telugu syntax. Not to conform to the established syntax too is a form of Dalit defiance of the notion of acceptability. Instead of writing sentences in the order of subject-object-verb (SOV), the novelist would go on piling up series of verbs without commas, before introducing the subject and the main verb. The novelist breaks the rules of grammar of written Telugu. His sentences are, opined a reviewer of Kakka, neither grammatical nor ungrammatical. The dexterity of the novelist is demonstrated in the use of the words, which are different from the written mode but familiar to the spoken mode. Another unique feature of the narrative is doing away with punctuation, especially commas and full stops: avoiding commas almost completely, Yellaiah uses full stops sparingly. Most of the paragraphs in the novel run into succession of sentences without being separated by either commas or full stops. The novel abounds in direct speech and what may be called the ‘thinking aloud’ by the characters. He would straight away introduce the direct speech, and in most of the cases, the reader would come to know the speaker of the sentence at the end of the speech. These features are characteristic of orality.Sindu Yakshagaanam, the most popular form of the Dalit folk art; the art of the Dakkali’s who recount the family-lineages of the Madigas; the manner of the speech of an illiterate Dalit in the day-to-day communication have a perceivable influence in the narration of Kakka. The avoidance of the punctuation allows the flow of narration in the manner of Dalit street-plays. The use of the work-chants/songs, songs of various rites, festivals, bonfires and the songs from the street plays is characteristic of the Dalit forms of fork arts. Other features of Dalit folklore include the use of proverbs and abuses that Kakka abounds. A word of explanation concerning the abuses that the novelist employs, and translated accordingly, may not be out of place. The abuses are the most intrinsic part of the conversation of the illiterate Dalit men and women. But what is noteworthy is that the Dalits use the abuses without meaning or intending the pejorative sense of the abuses. Yellaiah uses the abuses in the novel true to the conversation of the Dalits in real life.The second linguistic distinctiveness is the use of the Telangana dialect, which is employed not only for the dialogue but also for the narrative. However, it is not a new experiment to write a novel in the Telangana dialect. Other writers who successfully experimented with the dialect for fiction include Thummeti Raghothama Reddy and Allam Rajaiah in the Telangana dialect, Chakaravenu and Namini Subrahmanyam Nayudu in the Rayalaseema dialect and Raavi Saastri in the coastal dialect. In Kakka, Yellaiah goes ahead of these writers by using the Telangana dialect as spoken by the rural illiterate Dalits.Finally, Yellaiah complements the oral tradition and the Telangana dialect with the Madiga register. On this count, Kakka is the first of its kind as far as Telugu Dalit literature is concerned. What the novelist achieves by means of this is that the readers get an original feeling of what Dalit language is like. The portrayal of incidents dealing with the Madiga occupations such as processing bullock-hide, making leather goods, playing on the drum, rendering agricultural services; cultural aspects like the rituals of birth, death, wedding, puberty, eating bullock-meat and so on are rendered using their own register, as the incidents portrayed are culture specific; Madiga specific. The Madiga register that the novelist employed would best represent the ‘stench’ of the Dalit life. To express it in the stylized, standard, neutral Telugu would have been at the cost of the essential Dalitness. Neutral expressions would generally convey positive connotations romanticizing the Dalit experience. Yellaiah avoided the neutrality of expressions successfully by employing the sociolect of the Madigas.In effect, Yellaiah’s attempt at reclaiming the Dalit language by means of linguistic distinctiveness is aimed at Dalitising Telugu language by liberating it from the influence of Sanskrit as well as the written Telugu. A Dalitised art form would have to be produced as an antithesis of and in opposition to the conventional art form. This is accomplished in defying all the established and known forms and worldviews of the conventional art. As defiance is the crux of Dalit protest, defiance of the conventional art forms the core of Dalit literature. The net impact of all the forms of the orality employed in the narrative is that the novel attains the feature of a genre, shravya navala, an audio-novel – a novel that is read aloud for the pleasure of its sounds, proving that “reading is also a creative act” by means of the “power of language.”8IIIThen how would one go about translating the linguistic distinctiveness of Kakka? Whether it is possible to render these features into English is an important question. It is true that they make the translation much more complicated and challenging. The feats of a translator are to perform a kind of linguistic gymnastics to achieve a semblance of the effect of the original. The oral tradition, the dialect and the register employed in the novel are the cultural matrices of the experience of the Dalits. To render the experience, which is their own, into a language which is not their own (to use Raja Rao’s paradigm) is but approximating the original by means of cultural transfer. The target of any translation therefore is to provide the reader, to the possible extent, the richness of the source text in terms of language and culture. My objective has been to represent the novel without upsetting the readability of English.An English translation of Kakka should not read non-distinctive as in the case of Alburt Camus’ The Stranger or Hemingway’s original English novel, The Old Man and the Sea both of which are characteristic of neutrality of language devoid of local flavour. Instead, the translation of Kakka is expected to carry the flavour of Telugu, the Telangana dialect, maadig register and the spoken mode. This is partly accomplished by Telugising English. The method followed to Telugise English is by means of syntactic emulation. The verb-final structure of Telugu is preferred at times to the English SVO structure, but not at the cost of intelligibility. This aspect of syntax gives the reader a feel of reading a non-native English. This should be alright for a target text produced in the written mode, for it is the written language that conforms to the established word-order. A Dalit text is essentially about the illiterate people who’s Telugu is different from that of the educated ones. The feature of linguistic distinctiveness that the novelist accomplished by defying the ‘acceptable’ forms of syntax, punctuation and the established phrase structure, which cannot be rendered verbatim in a language like english; an attempt has been made to ‘bend’ English without hampering readability. The best way of recovery in translation is not by standardizing the style but by approximating the linguistic ethnicity of the original.Another problem that confronts the translator of a work of this kind is the lexical features. There is a practice of transliterating the source words in the name of retaining the flavour of original Telugu. But this can be avoided in the case of exact substitutes that can transfer the original sense. Lest they not only impede the intelligibility but distract the flow of reading. The method followed, therefore is that a transliterated word is paraphrased in the first occurrence, and then on, its English equivalent is used in the subsequent part of the text. Very few transliterated words are used throughout the text where their equivalents do not exist.Translating the lexical features of a Dalit text is the crux of the work. Some of the words dealing with the Dalit experience do have their English equivalents, which if used, defeats the very purpose of translating a Dalit text. For example a word like ‘beef’, by all means, is the exact rendering of the original. But it would convey the meaning in the Western sense of beef. Instead, an expression like ‘bullock-meat’ or ‘cattle-meat’ would perhaps represent the food habit of the Dalits. Similarly shitting-enclosure is preferred to lavatory; hut for house; head-cloth for turban; shoulder-cloth for towel; wada/hamlets for street; meals for breakfast/lunch; fall on one’s feet for prostrate are some of the examples of how the former in each set may, to some extent, represent the Dalit way of life, while the use of the latter would have either Anglicized and Hinduised or neutralized the original expressions defeating the very purpose of translating a Dalit text.The caste hierarchy and inter-personal relations among the people of various castes is communicated, and best understood by the inflections suffixed to the names and pronouns of the Dalits by the upper caste men. Morphs such as, arey, vay, ra and various forms of abuses and scolding are rendered in English to convey the sense of social hierarchy in the caste system.Thus translating a Dalit novel like Kakka would entail the need for not only Telugising but also Dalitising so as to represent the linguistic ethnicity of the source text by avoiding the translator’s pitfalls of Anglicisation, Hinduisation and neutralization of the Dalit expressions.Notes1 Potuluri Veerabrahmam, whose preachings were recorded in Kaalajnaanam, was famous in the seventeenth century for his preachings and mainly for his remarks on future of the world. He entered Jeeva Samadhi, burial-alive, in the year 1693.2 Gurram Jashuva, Gabbilam, Trans. by K. Madhava Rao, Hyderabad: Jashuva Foundation, 19963 Karamchedu is a village in Prakasham district of AP, where six Dalits were killed and three Dalit women raped by the forward caste men on July 17, 1985; seventeen Dalits were massacred at Chundur on August 6, 11991; in between a minimu of of twenty six of such indcidents of murder or large scvale arson took place klling a total of fifty seven Dalits and setting on fire four hundred and thirty houses of the Dalits. For a detailed account, see K. Balagopal, “Post-Chundur and Other Chundurs,” Economic and political Weekly (October 19, 1991) 4 G. Laxminarsaiah and Tripuraneni Srinivas, Chikkanavutunna Paata, Vijayawada: Kavithvam Prachuranalu, 1995; and G. Laxminarsaiah, Padunekkina Paata, Vijayawada: Dalit Sana Prachuranalu, 1996. 5 K.G. Satyamurthy, who wrote under the pseudonym, Sivasagar was a prominent revolutionary poet and aesthetician, and authored several poems with revolutionary theme before turning into a Dalit thinker. Satyamurthy initiated differing and deviating from the ideology of the Left to adopt Ambedkar’s thought. Though the output of his Dalit poetry was not voluminous, he played a seminal role in getting the literary thrust shifted from the class to the caste. Thus the coming of age of Dalit literature has to do with the giving up of the Left by the Dalit activists 6 Tabish Khair, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English novels, New Delhi: Oup, 2001, 1467 Yellaih expressed these views as a part of the discussions held with the translator at different points of time.8 Kalekuri Prasad in a review of Kakka in The Book Review,

                                                                                                                               Dalit Writer    

                                                                                                                            -Vemula Yellaiah