English

 

RUMINATION

 

                                                                  

Of course education has made me smarter Ma !*

Perhaps you won’t find on the torn shorts

And the collar of the tunic

That I wore in childhood -

The dirt of the culture of Hind.

 

How relieved it used to make you Ma !*

To be given a potful of buttermilk at sunrise

To quell the fire in our belly,

Wasn’t it thus that labour, buttermilk,

Untouchability and Rotlo** filled our empty lives ?

 

Such was Jethabhaa’s*weaving skill

As would put a weaver bird to shame

In the whole of the land

They used his pachhedis* to sleep

Whereas we were robbed of our sleep !

Now when I revive the memory,

The loom lies still,

The spinning wheel laments,

And the spindle longs for

The gentle touch of fingertips,

 

And yet the land is no longer the same.

The people standing on their heads,

The people here and there,

To the right and to the left,

To the left and to the right,

The people are distorted in this city.

 

And miles away they are from themselves

I can’t help feeling nauseous.

Sitting on a broken cot

I have been waiting for ages

And hoping for my condition

To be flung away by a powerful cyclone.     

 

Translated by Dr. Rupalee Burke

 

Ma = Mother                       *Jethabha = Name of father

Rotlo = Bread                       Pachhedi = Big scarf like Coverlet of cotton weaving