Before it Rains Again

Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy's volume 'Before it Rains Again' will be an eye opener for those not acquainted with the social mores of touch and taboo that have infected Hinduism for over two thousand years. Both in its intensity and the pain that it carries, this volume turns out to be a fine example of poetry of witnessing.

Chinnaswamy's poems are intended to hit the reader in the gut and they succeed in their mission dramatically going back in time to ancestral roots. One senses that the power in the poems stems from experienced hurt and injustice. Any attempt at embellishment would be an insult to this poetry.

He writes: When I go to the temple I don't leave my sandals outside, I stay outside myself.

What makes such irony searing is that it is also factual. Rowena Hill's translations have preserved the rasping harshness of the poetry.
-Keki N. Daruwalla