Bharat Ki Garib Bitia (The Dark Black Girl Smiling In The Hamlet Home) Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

The dark black girl smiling
In the sun-burnt dark hamlets
Shaded against the hills
Where the stories of hunger
Do the rounds.

But after having been ill-clothed and ill-fed,
The neglected and poor girl child of India,
I see her taking the small brother
Into the staggering lap of hers,
Taking and going, that little and neglected girl.

Sweeping the muddy floor,
Helping her mother in household works,
Sucking tears, instead of the spate of hunger to be quenched
And after feeding the younger brother,
She taking the left-overs stealthily.

God knows what it is in her fate,
Which nondescript home
Will she go finally,
Who the unknown fellow to take her away,
How will be it the hand to hold that of hers?

What is it in her poor lot and destiny,
The writ of it,
The crisscrosses of her palm-lines,
Where the palmist determining her fate-lines?
Which astrologer and the horoscope-maker to predict it?

A poor persona,
A small and little tragic girl artiste,
The wide world feels it not the pains of her life and living,
A little girl lisping so beautifully,
In such a lovely way, unmindful of all that what it to befall her.

She is none, but your daughter,
My daughter, our daughter,
The poor daughter of India,
Living in the villages
Where there dwells the soul of the mother land.

A girl not going to school, but working at home,
Helping her mother,
After having fed her brother and the parents,
She taking food
And that too the left-overs in her fate.