Painting by Sudeshna Majumdar

RIGHTS

You’re such ill-fated that God’s own blessings
are not meant for you
gloominess appears to stand after every prayer.

The chanting of mantras for thousands of years
yet, hasn’t led even a ray of light to the doorpost of yours
the curse of many millennia yet floating in the atmosphere
you’re surrounded by many invisible sentries
lest you’d go across the barrier
lest you’d come to claim your rights.

A lot has been told about you
in pity, sympathy and in anguish
in every humiliation and in every death of yours
only a tiny hullaballoo has been born and a barren
cloud has dissolved in the pretext of pouring down.

Yet, you exist in the helplessness of the wriggled
tongue and of the tired hands.
Yet, you exist within the harsh perimeter of the
prohibitory lines drawn around you
Where’re your rights—in which snake’s burrow,
in which tiger’s cage, in which locker of the greedy
or the closed chamber of a citadel?

For you saints came barefoot and have gone back
the rebels have been martyred while fighting
the poets have lost their voice while singing
Where’s your weapon—on the floor of the salty sea,
at the peak of the vexed mountain?

As to hold it, you need to dive like a fish
and fly like a bird and ultimately you’ve to
come out of it like the hero of the three ages.

Translated from the Odia by Pitambar Naik

COLONY

The eagles hovering over your head
can visualise your future from far off
the reptiles pirouetting around you
can feel the smell of yours.

What smell is coming from you, Odisha
your malnourished body hasn’t died
the tear-splashed soil hasn’t been dried
whose smell is this then—
of your minerals, of your iron-ores,
of your bauxite, of your chromites or coals
whose abundance has thronged your interiors?

Detecting that smell, they’ll come from far and near
they’ll construct the roads and the rail lines
you’ll be mined, slashed and exported
your limbs and internal parts won’t be there
with you, except for a pervasive hollowness
where you’d preserve the darkness and hunger
when the civilised would be frolicking after the loot.

Odisha, are you in a lackadaisical state of silence—
a new colony of greediness of the steel
because of which there’s a deal
of the barons over your chest?

Don’t you know till now how to live
and protect oneself?
Is the roaring from your farmland
and mines not heard?
Don’t your mountains and forests germinate nails?
Is there no dynamite in you to explode?
Don’t you know till now what rebellion means?         

Translated from the Odia by Pitambar Naik

Land

Is this the same place where the blood
had spilt from someone’s severed head
metamorphosing into a venomous sunset?
Where a headless torso squirmed
over the penance of the outcast wishes
and a question elongated into the centuries
amidst the wall of obeyance and defiance.

Who had been born in this land except for me?
Who had been sacrificed in this land except for me?
Under the whip, a back had been cracked,
a protest had been trampled under the feet
a man had fallen beheaded on the ground.

Who claimed the rights over this land?
Who drenched the roots of the life tree in blood?
Who submerged the faith in hate? Demons or Gods?
Who marked this land in which name?

Who is digging the pit here to drag the smell
of God from the archaeology?

Wherever you dig,
my bones and skull will be found;
the weapons of the ancient criminals will be found,
my disfigured ribs shackled for centuries will be found.

This land belongs to me; not to any king or god.

Translated from the Odia by Pitambar Naik

THE BLIND SPOT

Why it so happens
that everything comes to ahalt
near that blind spot
where a black hole
sucks into itself all the light!

You just stare blank
as if everything is going smoothly˗
all our studies and search
speeches and deliberations
all our songs of patriotism
our predestined paths.

On that very spot
comes and stands a question˗
a man
carrying in his presence
the festering wounds of several ages.

Why it so happens
that all of a sudden
spreading their wings birds fly away,
spectators flee the hall,
redemption achieved half way
turns still and motionless.
The colour of faces turns pale,

the size of the eyes alters
along with the pace of the breath.

The intellectuals
spin around words and figures
for no exact cause
without any satisfactory solutions.
There was nothing new to invent.
Principles  are exhausted
in the conspiracies of answers.

The one, who stands before you
is a man after all.
But, one wonders
the moment you see him
you throw your arms around a pillar
and tie yourself into a knot
to shrink into a dark blind spot!

Translated from Odia by Durga Prasad Panda