“Deliberately ending one’s life is really something that sets Homo sapiens apart from other animals, even better than the ceremonial burial of the dead.”
—Gordon Child, suicide note found in the 1980s.
suicide of an archaeologist
He wrote his last letter: Goodbye to a friend. and started
His Journey in the Rain That Changed the World
In an invisible stroke. He crossed vast landscapes
of lifeless as the conversation in his head
Developed as a dangerous crime scene.
He arrived at the excavation site at that Promethean hour
where they found a thousand year old skeleton
A Homo species with an incandescent heartbeat.
In that silent world of canceled wars and lost landscapes-
he saw the mystery of the universe
Beats to free himself.
They Remembered the Great Aztec Burial Ceremony
His Childhood Dream: An Enthusiastic Imagination Overtook Him
As was the case with the first human who observed a phosphorescent streak
of light that destroyed the whole forest to the ground; Human
Dreamed of future screams and rubble at night.
He curbed an accident with the greatest care of a grand funeral,
and threw himself off the cliff, fell to the ground
Like a wingless crow—leaving you behind
Glasses, hat and compass.
Photo by Shutter Stock
nihilist manifesto
I don’t go anywhere to meet anyone;
nothing comes in my way,
I don’t wait for anyone.
I walk around in a landscape of absence
Like a ghost in ruins.
I sit in a cafe and sip empty-handed
coffee cup. I smoke extinguished cigarette,
Collect waste wine bottles.
The bus I travel by is always empty,
i have a weightless bag
With dreams and clouds.
my love letters are hollow,
I sleep in foreign rooms,
god is my nightmare
I pray in silence.
my face is blurry like pages
Of a flipped book in one go.
I am a bloodless metaphor,
I can die in the blink of an eye.
The last flags were folded,
last money spent and all our
Protest crushed and massacred.
in the blooming season
and broken glass,
in the city alive with
shadows and whispers,
I don’t wait for anyone
Nothing comes in my way.
after you and me die
~Chitrakonda Gangadhar
(Translated by Rohit)
The hunters are lost forever due to hunger and thirst. The bushes shrink at the speed of their shadow. The whole game of drama is in vain. Humans disappear with dark clouds in their hearts. After shaking hands and talking: all beliefs die in dust and dusty clothes. Predators die by stabbing themselves. Due to the fierce fire of their pyre, rotten livers are cured. Gamblers and drunkards die in the froth of beer, never pleased with their own dreams. Yes, they drown. And thus illuminating the fear and loneliness in the homes.
But
The sad birds will keep their dominion over them.
the blue sky that has always existed; the past is
Inaccessible to your and my imaginations.
Those who hid their faces from punishment, the deceivers, walked around naked in the chambers of their hearts. From his life, a refuge from his dull nights was forever omitted. Those who wish to see the cruel dust that rises with time, should repair a closed clock and sleep idly. Young people have pitched their tents in the depths of the relentless volcanoes. As far as the pantomimes and masks extend, they erupt in mortification and desperation.
But
Children and children will continue to walk in these streets
Forever – as in paper boats, backstroke paddling, without worry.
Its past is inaccessible to your imaginations
and mine.
Stray, rejected – they disappear after the last evening. Even in their snowy life the autumn season must have begun. The blue-bodied child had become one with the cosmos and the lunar rocky shores. He came back home with a sample of a boat made of darkness and cold against his heart.
But
From times inaccessible to you and my imagination
In all the forests of this earth, and gardens of flowers with sunlight
The moon sleeps forever – without any worries.
A brief note on Gangadhar: He was last seen in August 2001 by his friend B. Ajay Prasad had seen it. he disappeared. He died by suicide. He left his shoes and a letter on the shore and went to the lake. What is in that letter is unknown. A poem, maybe? He used to publish poems in Telugu literary magazines between 1990 and 2000(?). He wrote stories. He wrote a novel with Icarus as the main character. He liked the films of Pasolini and Angelopoulos. During this he worked in Hyderabad. Earlier he was with the Naxalites in the jungles. Later, his closest friend Ajay Prasad wrote in an essay that Gangadhar was having strong auditory and visual hallucinations. The only available picture of him is blurry. His most productive writing periods coincided with unprecedented changes taking place around the world. The old world of the Cold War, revolutions, people’s movements, utopias, etc., was coming to a certain end, to be replaced by the new world of Coca-Cola, disaster capitalism and micro realities. It was in such a fatal phase that Gangadhar found himself writing poems in the grand Moloch called Hyderabad, where he had left his village. These ongoing contradictions can be seen in his poems, between the old world of the defeated utopia and the new world of the gloomy past.
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Rohit is a doctor and poet from Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh
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