Condemned

The night is dark...
                             dank...
                                      silent and cold...
The plantation crops stand still;
the crickets whirr
                            and for miles around
Everything else lies still.

But hark!
In one of the tiny sheds...
In the dark and the cold
                           amidst swaddling rags,
Witness
the birth of a helpless soul.

A kerosene lamp greets the babe...
                            into an otherwise uncaring world.

No doctors, no nurses...
Just an old neighbour with a blade.
No hospital, no ward...
Just a mat for a bed.

No blankets nor warm clothes...
Just rags and the cold.
No high-pitched wail...
Just a tiny whimper,
a resignation to the fates.

For the tired mother, there's no joy
                         her first born's female...
The tiny rivulet of joy
                                   is lost...
                                               dries...
                                                          shrivels...

In its place
                  a sea of helpless anger
and frustration grows.
The mother sees her daughter's fate
                  no better than her own,
nor any of her kind.

For she is of upcountry stock
                  and being Tamil is her fate.
And unto her daughter
                  she could bequeath nothing...but
a life of suffering...
                             violence...
                                             hunger...
                                                            sorrow...
And finally death.
Blissful, welcomed death.

How to break out...
                  is the anguished mother's cry
To end this awful fate of
                                       poverty...
                                                      malnutrition...
                                                                             slow death.
A monstrous fate hanging o'er them
The future of the plantation child.

The future of her new-born child
                    a daughter of the plantations...
Condemned to a stateless being
                    and rearing yet more stateless.
A fate so cruel -- it has turned
                    a free land into prison.

To break this fate is her mission
                    but tears, prayers and submission
Are all in vain
                    They are of no avail.  

Copyright Malathi Raghavan 1985-86