Peasant Songs

Chirashree Indrasingh

Translated by Sailen Routray

Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons (2020) 

I.              Peasants stay up the whole night, and from stalks of paddy separate paddy and birds from each other. In the morning, someone’s storehouse fills up with bags of paddy. And the birds flutter around looking for beak-sized portions of darkness.

II.         We have a festival for sowing paddy. On that day we do not sanction any leave applications of honey bees. We spin threads out of the sun. We design a saree of our choice made up of clouds, lightening, the winds and of festivals.

III.        A big farmer in our village committed suicide by drinking pesticide because he could not pay back his loans. His grandmother cried and went around the village saying whatever happened, happened. But the bottle that used to store old honey for the children's colds is also gone now.

 

Note: This poem is from the volume ‘Kebe kebe janha ratire’ published by Kitab Bhavan, Bhubaneswar in the year 2012. Chirashree Indrasingh (1966-present) is one of the foremost contemporary writers of fiction in Odia, as well as a formidable poet in her own right. She published her first book of Odia short stories, titled 'Bengabati katha' (Frog Woman’s Tale) in 1997. Since then she has published seven short story collections, two anthologies of poems, and a couple of novellas. 'Utiani Sanja,' 'Aanka Banka Naee,' 'Bidambana,' and 'Sua' are some of her notable works. She is the recipient of Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award, Kanheilal Award, Subrata Rath Memorial Award, and a Fellowship from the Department of Culture, Government of India, amongst others. She teaches Political science at U.N. (Autonomous) College, Adashpur, Odisha.