Rabi Nial, B.A. B.E.D.

Bharat Majhi

Translated by Sailen Routray

 Cows grazing at a hill near Behera, Kalahandi
Photo Credit: commons.wikimedia.org/Riskyishwar

The day after nuakhai,

my son is going to sit for 

the supplementary matriculation examination. 

All our five acres of land are filling with sand. 

No charm in nuakhai sir!

No charm at all!

Last year’s flood was eating all our harvest.

During the last assembly session

we were all going to Bhubaneswar.

We fifty teachers were staying in M.L.A colony. 

If I were knowing that you were there,

then I would be meeting you sir!

Please make a news about the transportwallahs.

Kindly don’t forget.

My younger brother not receiving his salary

for the last three years.

Please be thinking, 

how are they surviving.

In the last elections 

we were fighting very strongly.

But we are not getting any road.

We are full-pant wallahs! 

But because of the stream,

we are wading every monsoons sir. 

Therefore, 

I am not buying a bike also.

I am applying 

for the governor’s award this year.

But that’s a big thing.

Your two articles that you were publishing,

are really helping sir!

But I am not doing anything these days 

any longer. 

You are asking about home?

Perhaps you are not seeing my wife?

She is a wrestler;

She’s hacking wood, 

getting water and doing marketing.

And my work, meaning, 

going to school and gossiping.

My daughter’s proposal coming this year.

A party was home last month;

The boy an overseer at Machhkund.

But what to tell you sir!

My neighbours are conspiring;

they telling the party,

can Rabi Nial be giving

a motorcycle to the bridegroom?

They went back, 

and I am not hearing from them ever since.

Please tell me sir!

Rabi Nial, B.A. B.Ed. 

be not giving a motorcycle to his son-in-law? 

Note: The poet, Bharat Majhi (born in 1972 in Kalahandi), works in an Odia language media house in Bhubaneswar. He has published nine volumes of poems in a poetic career spanning more than three decades. Amongst other recognitions, he has won the Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award in 2008 and the Sanskriti Award in 2004.