About the Poet: Challapalli Swaroopa Rani

Challapalli Swaroopa Rani (born 1968) is a Telugu poet. She began by writing about her own experiences, then moved from the personal to the social, gaining confidence and clarity. Her mature poetry consciously deals with issues of gender and caste. Two of her works are Neeli Meghalu and Chikkanavuthunna Pata.

The translator. The poem was translated from Telugu by Uma Bhrugubanda, who teaches at the Centre for Cultural Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. She is writing her doctoral dissertation on Telugu cinema and the production of religious and secular subjectivities.

[Exam Tip] — The poet is Telugu; the translator is Uma Bhrugubanda. Remember both names.

Summary

The poem is written in free verse from the point of view of a Dalit woman. It uses water as a witness and a symbol.

Water knows everything. Just as water knows the slope of the ground, it knows the generations-old strife between the village and the wada (the Dalit locality). Like the dampness on a well's edge that never dries, it knows that untouchability never disappears.

Water knows every kind of difference. It knows the difference of race between the Samaria woman and Jesus the Jew. It knows the sub-caste difference "between leather and spool" (cobbler and weaver). It knows the agony of the panchama, who has no right to draw water and waits all day beside the well with an empty pot until a shudra comes. It knows the humiliation of the wada girl, when the man who poured water from a distance falls all over her and touches her. It knows the righteous rage of Karamchedu Suvarthamma, who faced the kamma landlords with her water pot when they told her not to pollute the pond water.

Water is a movement, not a chemical. For the wada, water is not simply H2O; it is a mighty movement, the Mahad struggle at the Chadar tank. A single drop holds the tears of generations. In many battles fought for a single drop, "our blood flowed like streams", yet they never won even a small puddle.

Memories. Seeing water, the speaker remembers: a wada thirsting all day for a glass of water; the weekly bath welcomed "as if it was a wondrous festival", while the village bathed luxuriously twice a day; her childhood walk of miles to the big canal and back with heavy pots, "with the muscles and veins on our necks straining, bursting"; and the Malapalle burning to ashes, its thatched roofs aflame, "for want of a pot of water".

Water destroys too. Water "can give life but it can also devour lives". The same water that refused to quench parched throats became the killer tsunami wave that swallowed village after village. The poor are but playthings in its vicious hands. It turns villages into dry deserts and sometimes drowns them in floods. Between village and wada, between one state and another, it ignites struggles and can make blood run in streams; yet it can also "sit innocently in a Bisleri bottle".

Water as a commodity. The water from the village well, which forces the wada to perform "many a circus feat", now "slowly, surreptitiously, dances its way into the Pepsi man's bottle". Renamed mineral water, it takes to the skies and raises a storm. Water is now "no mean matter", a multinational market commodity. As they say, water is omniscient; it contains the world.

Central Idea

Water, the commonest thing on earth, becomes a mirror of society. Through it the poet shows three things.

  • Social injustice. Denial of water is the everyday form of untouchability. The wada waits, walks miles and is humiliated, while the village bathes twice a day. Water is "witness to centuries of social injustice".
  • Struggle and resistance. Water is also a "mighty movement": the Mahad struggle, Karamchedu Suvarthamma's raised pot, generations of battles and bloodshed for a single drop.
  • The double face of water, and of the market. Water gives life and devours it, in drought, in flood and in the tsunami, and "the poor are but playthings in its vicious hands". Finally the same water is renamed mineral water and sold for profit, so what was denied to the poor becomes a global commodity.

[Exam Tip] — Two 2025 questions came from this poem: the MCQ on the righteous rage of Karamchedu Suvarthamma, and a 3-mark question on the memories the poet recollects when she sees water.