Forgotten Telugu Songs

The humming starts again

twenty odd years after silence

Familiar tunes return,

illogical, improbable,

sorrow threaded close

to sudden, reckless joy.

The sacred rushes and dives

into the shameless, 

blending harmonies into 

unfiltered racy tracks  

seamless, unashamed.

One by one, the songs spill

from places thought

long dissolved,

now crowded with self deprecating 

humor, quiet griefs

naked truths hidden away

for fear of exile.

then these mad songs 

breathed dew

into spring leaves, bloomed

an abandoned forest

turning breath into light.

And now, twenty odd years later

her breath rises as a hymn,

as if Telugu songs were reborn

to install in her, 

that very lightness of being