‘Heartless’ by Akhila Nayak 

Translated by Sailen Routray

 

A Windmill in the Netherlands (2020)
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

No tears get shed. The last drop gets sucked after squeezing the mud dry. The pot bites the earth and rolls on the bank as if it is angry at someone. Over it hovers a thirst; it does not know what the pot contains. While flying, the tortoise falls down; its sighs hammering to the same beats as the cowherds’ excitements. The nets in the fisherfolks’ hamlet get torn not long after being sewn. The stone weighed down by the fish-bones mumbles its displeasures. That stone, that stone is the eye; no tears get shed.

Note: Akhila Naik works as faculty in Odia in Kalahandi University in Bhawanipatna, Orissa. This poem was originally published in his collection titled 'Gadhua Bela' - 'Time for a Bath'. The original poem is in free verse, although here I have attempted the translation as a prose poem. 

Akhila Naik's work has been at the forefront of a process of transformation of Odia poetry over the last three decades where the language and concerns of the common people have come to the fore. Although he is primarily known as a poet in his home state, with multiple collections published to wide acclaim, to the wider literary field in India he is known as the writer of the the first Odia Dalit novel 'Bheda' (originally published in 2010) that was translated by the Delhi based academic Raj Kumar and published by OUP in 2017.