Belarus before and After Chernobyl
Haikus based on oral account by Larisa,Z mother
© 2016-2019 Ramaswami
Ashok Kumar
References:
1. Svetlana Alexievich.1997. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral
History of a Nuclear Disaster. Translation and Preface by Keith Gessen.
Picador. New York. Part II. The Land of the Living. Monologue about Old
Prophecies. Larisa, Z., mother.
2. R. Ashok Kumar. 2013. Glaring Lacuna in meeting water
needs: The Chernobyl Disaster : The World's dam surges may have caused the
unprecedented power surges: THE CUMULATIVE DYNAMIC NUCLEAR EFFECT OF DAMS MAY
HAVE BEEN THE INITIATOR OF THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER LIKE FUKUSHIMA. Read this is
conjunction with the wikipedia report:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
HAIKUS
By R. Ashok Kumar
My little daughter-
She is different from others
She is growing up.
She will then ask me:
Why aren’t I like the others?
She was born no child.
She was born a sack
Not a single opening
Except the two eyes.
The medical card:
Multiple pathologies,
Many aplasias.
That of the anus
Of vagina, left kidney-
That’s medical talk.
Simply, no pee-pee,
She had no butt, one kidney-
Was operated.
Her life’s second day,
Saw her get operated,
Opened her eyes, smiled!
I thought she would cry!
But God! She smiled! Ones like her
Don’t live, but she did.
Love did make her live.
Was operated four times,
In four year period.
Belarus’s only child
Survived five pathologies
I love her so much.
No more child bearing
Back from maternity ward
His bed-kiss I fear.
On Katya docs talk:
That girl wasn’t born in a shirt,
But in armour suit.
Terror of terrors
If we showed it on TV
None would procreate.
Non-clonal nightmare
About our daughter’s birth
We can’t love again.
Church: Minister told:
You need to pay for your sins.
But we no killers.
None of us have killed.
What then am I guilty of?
Modern ways of “life”.
First: evacuate!
Then they crossed us off their list.
Government cashless!
Just then I fell in love,
Didn’t know love forbidden here.
Thereby hangs a tale:
Many years ago
Grandma read from the Bible:
There will be a time-
There will be a time
When everything is thriving
But nothing useful.
Family line dies
Non-clonal reproduction
Made extinct by man.
I listened to them
Didn’t believe those prophecies
Scary fairy tales.
Please tell everyone
About my daughter Katya
She is four years old.
She can sing and dance
She knows poetry by heart
Mentally normal.
She does not differ
From the other children –No.
But her games differ.
She plays hospital.
Gives dolls shots, puts on I.V
Takes temperature.
If and when doll dies
She covers it with white sheet
She lives hospital.
We also with her
We cannot leave her alone
In the hospital.
Does not know that she
Is supposed to live at home
Not in nursing home!
Not in nursing home!
When we all go home
For a month or two, she asks:
When do we go back?
Hospital is home
Her friends are growing up there
Abnormally schooled.
Her anus was made
A vagina made for her
Chernobyl’s children.
They operate and
Urinary functions failed
Yes: No catheter.
Doctors advise us
Seek medical help abroad.
But cannot afford.
One professor told
She with her pathologies
Priceless case for science.
Write to hospitals
They would show great interest
In other countries.
I cried while writing
By hand we squeeze out urine
Sadly every half hour
The urine comes out
Through vagina’s openings
Artificial.
How long this goes on?
Small doses of radiation
Effects on a child?
None knows the effects
On a child’s organism
Of chronic low dose.
Mother Teresa
Take my child even if its
No experiment.
I want her to live!
Even as a lab rabbit
God! Wrote dozens letters
She is a child yet
But some day she will ask us:
Why I unlike them?
Why cannot I love?
Why cannot I have babies?
Why unlike the birds?
Fault was not our love
I fought for four years with docs
With the bureaucrats
I knocked on the doors
Of people who matter
Important people
It took me four years
To get a paper from docs
That confirmed connect:
Between “low doses”
Ionising radiation
And her condition.
Four years they maintained:
Congenital handicap
Is her condition.
What? She is victim
Of Chernobyl explosion
Don’t con us with lies.
My family tree:
Nothing like this has happened
Saw eighty moons life
My grandfather lived
Until he was ninety four
Docs forced to tell lies.
Such type incidents
Are general sicknesses
Call them so or else!
When in thirty years
Data base of Chernobyl
Is available:
Then we will connect
Such states to Chernobyl blasts
Radiation doses.
But for the moment
Science is ignorant of it
Does not know enough.
But I cannot wait
I want to sue them all
Sue the government.
They called me crazy
There were also such children
In ancient Greece too!
One bureaucrat yelled:
Chernobyl privileges?
Compensate victims?
How I did not faint
In his office that moment
I will never know.
There was one issue
They didn’t want to understand:
I needed to know:
I needed to know
It wasn’t our fault, not our love
She broke down and cried.
She is growing up
Don’t print our name or neighbours’
She is still a girl.
Even other folks
On our floor do not know it
The phenomenon.
Put a dress on her
And handkerchief and they say:
She is so pretty!
Pregnant women here:
I give the strangest of looks
I glance at them quick
Have mixed feelings
Surprise and horror, vengeance
Jealousy and joy.
Once I was thinking
I look the same way at this:
At pregnant monkeys
Neighbour’s pregnant dog
Healthy triplet puppies born
Looking triumphant!
My girl born a sack
Science deeply interested:
Her pathologies.
Irreversible
Modern Civilization’s
Abnormalities.
Given enough time
Modern Civilization
Ends in extinction.
Nuclear energy
Specialists call it a boon
Extinction breeder.
Oh! Power corrupts;
Nuclear power corrupts
Yes, absolutely.
Church renovation
Government finances full
Crores of Rupees cost.
All priests join the spree
Host a pogrom nuclear
Of perfect mass deaths.
Fukushima deaths
Caused by the world’s dams’ earthquakes
By nuclear effect.
All Indian babes killed
From 2028 each year
By Fukushima.
Living in the world’s
Society of specialists
The stupidest wins!
Stupidest tribesman
Living by his own will, skill
Is more competent
Yes more competent
Than the most intelligent
Modern specialist.
